Constant

The cornfield started right behind the old barn.

It wasn't endless – if you walked to the end, you'd hit the highway, and beyond it – a gas station and a diner. But if you went in deep, sat on the ground and kept your head down, the world shrank to a golden rustling cocoon. The stalks rose up into the blinding sky, and the sunlight, filtered through the leaves, fell on their shoulders in warm amber spots. It smelled of dry earth, sweet pollen, and summer.

They'd crawled in here an hour ago, fleeing not so much the heat, or boredom, or the adults who once again had some incomprehensible business of their own. Fleeing simply because being together – was better.

Now they sat on the sun-warmed earth between the rows. Xeno hugged his knees and squinted at the sun. His light, almost silvery hair was tousled, droplets of sweat glistening at his temples. He was smiling – wide, open, without his usual restraint. The way he smiled only here. Only with him.

Beside him, in an equally relaxed pose, sat Stanley. One leg stretched out, the other bent at the knee. His light hair was stuck to his forehead. He'd torn a long stalk off the nearest corn plant and was chewing it, holding it in the corner of his mouth. He didn't look like a future soldier. Just a boy. Just tired, softened by the heat, content.

"You know," Xeno said, still looking up at the gaps between the leaves, "this field is like a cocoon. It's like we're inside amber. Or an incubator. Hidden."

Stanley glanced sideways at him.

"Hidden from what?"

"From everything. From school. From people. From the future." Xeno paused and added more quietly, "From what might separate us."

Stanley stopped chewing the stalk. He took it out of his mouth and twirled it in his fingers.

"Can we stay here forever?" he asked. His voice was calm, but Xeno knew that tone. It was the way Stanley spoke when he was asking something important but was afraid he wouldn't like the answer.

Xeno lowered his gaze to his hands, clasped on his knees. He thought about it.

"Not forever. We'll have to come out. You'll become a soldier. I'll become a scientist. We'll grow up. But..." he turned his head and looked at Stanley, "...this cocoon will stay with us. Right here." He pressed his palm to his chest, just below his collarbone. "We can always come back here. In memory. When it's hard. When we're far apart."

Stanley looked at him for a long time. Then he tossed the stalk aside, wiped his hand on his shorts, and without a word, reached out and placed his palm over Xeno's hand – the one still resting on his chest. Xeno flinched at the unexpected touch but didn't pull away. On the contrary – he turned his palm up and laced their fingers together.

"I don't want to be far away from you," Stanley said quietly. "When we grow up. I want us to be together."

"We will be," Xeno said. "I don't know how it works when you're adults. But we'll figure something out. We're us, after all."

"'We're us'," Stanley repeated and suddenly smiled – that same soft smile that Xeno had only ever seen on him. "That sounds like proof."

"Because it is proof. An axiom. Requires no confirmation."

"You talk like a textbook."

"And you chew stalks like a country bumpkin."

"I'm a country bumpkin who loves you."

Xeno blinked. It was said so simply. So casually. As if Stanley had said "it's hot today" or "I'm thirsty." But the meaning of the words hit him in the chest – warm, strong, tender.

"You..." he faltered. "You can't just say that."

"Why not?" Stanley looked at him directly, without a trace of embarrassment. "It's true. I love you. From the first day. From the railgun. From when you started explaining to me what a magnetic field is."

"You remember everything."

"I remember everything that has to do with you." Stanley smiled again, but now there was something else in his eyes. Something very warm and very adult, despite his eleven years. "And I will always remember. Even when we grow up. Even when I leave for the army. Even when you're in your lab and have no time. I will remember this cocoon. And you. And the way you smile when no one's watching."

Xeno felt tears welling up. Good tears. Warm ones. Like this light. Like this field.

"I love you too," he said. "I don't think I've ever said it out loud. But it's true. You are my constant."

"Constant?"

"A value that doesn't change. Always constant. Always there. Even when other variables approach zero. You are the only thing that requires no proof."

Stanley looked at their intertwined fingers. Then back at Xeno.

"Beautiful. But complicated. Let's make it simpler: you are my person. I am yours. And we will always be together."

"Always," Xeno echoed.

And they stayed sitting in their golden cocoon. Two children who didn't yet know how much lay ahead of them. How many separations. How many trials. How many nights by the phone and dawns in worry. But they already knew the most important thing.

Tomorrow they would walk out of the field – to school, to duties, to the future that would inevitably come. But this cocoon, this light, these words – they would remain. Forever. Like a constant. Like a love that never changes.