"If I'm not mistaken, that's a fern of the Leptopteris genus," Dirk said, pointing his free hand off in one direction. "They're fuckin' old, apparently. Supposedly they're Gondwanan in origin, and–"
"Dirk?"
"Yes, Jake?"
"I didn't ask for a history lesson," Jake said. He pulled his hand away from Dirk's to wipe the sweat from his palm. "Just the basics, if you would."
"Fine, fine." Dirk frowned, but he would oblige. Far be it from him to fuck up his boyfriend's very first rainforest expedition—any more than it had already been fucked up, anyway. Jake losing his glasses down some ravine had been bad enough. Might as well make this as entertaining as he could. "There's a clearing that way, you can see the mountains in the distance. More ferns this way. And that over there's a jaguar."
"Whoa, really?" Jake stopped in his tracks, his hand clenching tightly around Dirk's. He looked around nervously. "Where's the little sucker hiding, Dirk? Let me at 'im, I'll protect you!"
Dirk scoffed fondly and squeezed Jake's hand reassuringly. "I was messing with you."
"Oh."
Noting the tone of disappointment in Jake's voice, Dirk sighed. "Won't do it again. I'll be your completely honest seeing-eye dog from here on out. No bullshit."
"You had better. Such deception is ungentlemanly!"
"Right, right." Still, Dirk had to grin. "You know jaguars don't even live in this part of the world, right?"
"What? Oh. Of course I knew that. What god-fearing explorer wouldn't?"
"My thoughts exactly."
As they continued their trek through the dense underbrush, Dirk kept Jake up to date on points of interest. Various trees, endangered birds, horrible buzzing insects swarming around them that Jake was quick to insist I can see those just fine thank you very much, ugh!
None of the things Dirk pointed out, unfortunately, happened to include the designated path that Jake had wandered off of in a fit of exploration, causing Dirk to follow and leading to their current predicament.
Eventually Dirk had to fall silent. His throat was starting to get sore. He stopped to pull a bottle of water out of his knapsack.
"Say, Dirk?" Jake spoke up.
"Yeah?"
"You're being a right good sport about all of this. Thank you."
"What?" Dirk shot Jake a little smirk and waved a hand in the air dismissively, which also had the effect of scattering some of the terrible bugs still hovering about. "Dude, you saved up for this trip for literally years. Like I'd let it get ruined just because you lost your glasses."
"No, I mean– this is my fault, after all. If I hadn't blundered off the path I'd still have them, and we wouldn't be lost to boot. So thank you for putting up with my stupid ass."
"Hey." Dirk reached out to grab Jake's hand again, and he gave it a gentle squeeze. "Don't worry about that. I'm not gonna pretend this doesn't suck, but I was fully expecting something like this to happen from the start. We'll find our way back."
"Are you sure?"
"Of course I am."
In the moment that Dirk pressed his lips to Jake's, he even managed to convince himself that everything would turn out just fine.