V,
I’m writing this from the forge in the hope I’ll have a better chance of keeping it a secret, but every time something inside the furnace clanks or pops I’m jumping out of my skin thinking it’s your cane on the grating and you’re coming down to bust me.
I told Sky it was your birthday—I know, I know, please don’t be mad. She threatened to twist my ear off if I didn’t tell her when it was. I know you don’t like anybody making a big fuss about you, but we’re doing it anyway, because we love you, and if you don’t let us, it’ll hurt Sky’s feelings. Maybe mine, too, but who’s counting.
Ever since the day I met you, I’ve been trying to work out how to put into words what you mean to me. Even now, I’ve crumpled up more pieces of paper than I’d ever admit trying to get it out of my body and onto the page. It never feels quite big enough to simply say you’re my best friend in the world. Don’t get me wrong—you are. Your friendship is the thing I’ve treasured the most over the past seven years. Every award, every prize, every shiny stupid heavy thing someone handed me hasn’t felt anywhere near as good as getting to see you hiding out of view of the audience sidestage, (you lucky bastard), grinning up at me with your crooked little tooth shining in the dark.
It doesn’t feel like enough to tell you that you’re my favorite part of the day, every day, and I miss you whenever we’re apart. I won’t ever be able to thank you enough for everything you’ve done for me. For taking even my craziest ideas seriously. For treating me like your intellectual equal when we both know you quietly fix up my calculations without making me feel embarrassed about it. For not laughing at me that time I panicked when I got my finger stuck in a wheel nut and you got the jar of engine grease to help me get it out.
It doesn’t feel like enough to tell you your quiet strength, your dignity, your humility, your wisdom, your fierce, unswerving kindness and your commitment to doing good, to making the world better than you found it, gave me a reason then and give me a reason now. For inspiring me simply by being the person you are. Choosing to see the best of people, wanting to see them happy and cared for, and never asking for a thing in return. Like the day two summers ago when a bird got into the lab, and you caught it with your hands and took it outside so it wouldn’t hurt itself, even though it pecked your fingers like crazy.
It doesn’t feel like enough to tell you meeting you felt like the right thing—the only right thing, the most right thing.
I know you don’t believe in fate or destiny or soulmates or any of that nonsense; in fact, I can almost hear you clicking your tongue at me, but humor me for a second here. If there’s any other version of me somewhere in an alternate universe, I believe he’d have found whatever version of you existed there, too. Whatever it is that makes me me, whatever combination of carbon atoms and molecules it is that’s holding me together, I believe was meant to find you. Maybe at the inception of the universe, when everything was new, we were together then, and we’ll be together again at the end.
And maybe you’re rolling your eyes, or snickering at dorky mushy Jayce with his head in the clouds, too many fairytales—but it’s the truth. I love you, V. Here’s to another year of burnt coffee and sleep-deprived arguments about who’s better at drawing a freehand circle (it’s me, but for the sake of your birthday let’s just call a draw for now).
Happy birthday, Viktor.
Yours,
J.T.
( @askviktor | @peregrines-glorious-evolution )