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“Viktor, are you alright?”
It’s a question Viktor is no stranger to. One might struggle to quantify all the times he’s been asked that very thing and yet he never knows what answer to give.
He can always be honest. He can say to those who dare ask that even on the good days the ache he feels is his oldest friend. So often he feels his pain that it has outlived most memories. Pain soldered into each and every moment, every achievement. The gloom of his childhood even, toxic and unquenchable pain.
Or he can relinquish himself and those alike from the obligation of caring; freedom from the fuss, the oh god I’m so sorry. Truly a gift to all.
“I’m fine.”
He turns to cast his reassurance to Jayce only to find his lab mate staring rather earnestly at him. He must have caught Viktor in his smallest moment of vulnerability just then, having closed his eyes and pressed the back of his hand to cool his forehead.
“I just noticed—" Jayce bows his head as he speaks, and Viktor finds amusement in mimicking him, raising his eyebrows. “That you look—" Jayce pauses, choosing his words very carefully, “I just noticed that you’re quieter than usual today.”
“Ah.” Viktor smiles raising the empty page of the notebook he’d been staring into, “Just coming up with some new material, I’ve wasted all my good quips already.” Though, truthfully, pain aside, Viktor had been feeling flushed since he woke that morning. The fresh air from his usual morning walk hadn’t helped clear away the drab like it normally had.
But turning in for the day was not an option, no matter how poorly he felt. Viktor couldn’t afford to allow his body to continue to sabotage his achievements. Not when they were so close to a breakthrough.
“You guys are still here?” Sky interrupts, peeking in at them in passing.
“Yeah. We’ll probably be here late again tonight, we’re going to test the stabilizers we’ve been working on.” Jayce says as he turns to scribble something else on the chalkboard.
Sky frowns, eyes passing between him and Viktor, “There's a bad storm rolling in. You guys should head home before it hits and pick back up tomorrow.”
Viktor groans quietly, hating the way it draws both of their eyes to him when he uses his crutch to stand, “We’re perfectly safe here in the lab, you go ahead and get home safe.” And it truly was the case. The lab had recently been equipped with new safety features in the event of another Hexplosion, but it would certainly fare well against the elements as well.
Sky nods hesitantly, offering them a small wave before carrying on.
“V,” Jayce says when the quiet has settled for too long, he’s still staring ahead at the chalkboard. “If you need to head home and rest I can handle this on my own tonight.”
Viktor watches the way Jayce’s shoulders tense, the whitening of his knuckles wrapped far too tight around the piece of chalk. It’s clear that there’s something more pressing on his mind, something he’s too afraid to say. Perhaps it’s the part of Jayce deep down that knows he should insist that Viktor take a break dueling with the part of him that wants Viktor to stay.
Viktor wishes he could stay.
Viktor walks over to Jayce, setting a careful hand on the middle of his back. Jayce exhales his worry the moment he feels him, leaning into the touch for comfort.
Jayce’s body is a furnace beneath Viktor’s palm, what must it be like to exude such life?
"I’ll take a break if it gets to be too much.” Viktor lingers there for a moment, eyes scanning the chalkboard but not taking in any of the information. The lie tastes bitter on his tongue.
“Okay.” Jayce sounds immediately relieved by the idea. “And you'll actually eat something today,” Jayce says, eyes finally meeting Viktor’s.
“I suppose that can be arranged if I must.”
“And not just scraps. An actual meal.”
Perhaps Jayce is more observant than Viktor thought.
The storm rolls in that evening just as Sky had warned. The lab had grown dark, lit only occasionally when the clouds flashed bright like a photograph and thunder made the glassware tremble. As far as they knew everyone else had gone home for the evening, ready to wait out whatever monstrosity the sea had kindled.
It’s only when the lab has darkened and Jayce has begun setting up the stabilizer that Viktor realizes that he isn’t doing good.
He’s drowning in his own trembling heat. Even with his collar loosened and his sleeves rolled to the elbows, sweat has his face dewey and sticky. He can feel how saturated his hair has become, matted flat to his scalp after many passes tucking his hair back behind his ears and attempting to cool his forehead with his palm. He tastes salt on his tongue when he speaks, sweat collecting in and stinging the corners of his mouth.
He feels lightheaded and the meager few bites of a meal lay hard and unkind in his stomach doing little to chase away the way his body sways when he stands.
And then there's the pain.
The pain in his leg is bad, seizing his joints with electric jolts that climb all the way up to his hip. It’s not long before sitting down does little to ease his discomfort. Jayce has been distracted the last hour, but by the time Jayce has the two coils set up to attempt their stabilization experiment, Viktor is sitting hunched over the desk with his head tucked into his hands. He's unable to spare Jayce the sight of his discomfort any longer.
“V?” Jayce asks when he finally notices, voice incredibly small. When Viktor does not immediately answer him he strides over to his side, kneeling down so he’s level with Viktor’s face. “Viktor?” He tries again, setting a careful palm on Viktor’s back and rubbing circles into it to help coax him out of his hands.
Viktor lowers his hands, turning to look at him hesitantly. He knows the conversation he’s been dreading is now entirely unavoidable. He watches the way Jayce’s eyes widen and rake along what must be the newly frightful state of his face.
“We’re taking you home.”
The rumble of thunder draws both their eyes to the window, “I think my time to head home has passed.”
“What’s going on?” Jayce asks, voice still softer than Viktor has ever heard. “Is it your leg?” Jayce is so tender with his question that he’s barely able to compete against the howl of the rain outside.
“I suppose it is,” Viktor admits, though it is only a half-truth. “We’ll run the stabilizer and then I’ll stay in one of the spare faculty rooms in this building for the night.” Though a night without medication or pain relief was daunting, Viktor reckoned sleeping through the worst of it would be preferable to braving the storm.
“We’ll run it once.”
“Absolutely. We’ll only need to run it once.” Viktor smiles.
---
“Alright,” Jayce utters, eyes scanning along his notes one final time before he looks to Viktor who is standing a step behind him. “Ready?” He lifts his goggles up over his eyes.
Viktor nods.
Jayce sets a confident hand on the lever, “Okay, powering on.” He pulls the lever down mid-way and watches as the two coils on either side of the Hexcore hum. The Hexcore pulses, and they both take a synchronous step back. They can feel its heat as the core glows its usual blue now along with the pulse of the stabilizer.
“Core emissions appear to be stable,” Viktor says with muted excitement, recording the data onto his own notes.
“Incredible.” Jayce watches it for a while in awe and then turns to look at Viktor again. “Okay, upping the power now.” Jayce lowers the lever further and the stabilizer hums even louder. It whirrs faster as the Hexcore spins and clicks, moving as they have never seen it. It pulses, growing faster and more powerful. The field of blue energy glows outward and then retracts, pumping power in bursts as if it’s a heart.
“It’s working!” Jayce shouts, now barely competing with the sound of the stabilizer that’s humming so loudly it makes the ground tremble.
Viktor’s feet feel unsteady.
Suddenly, a jolt of blue shoots out like a streak of lightning, narrowly missing them both. Jayce and Viktor cowered back a step, Jayce unconsciously lifting his arm in front of Viktor to protect him. The Hexcore shakes violently now, trapped in some kind of horrible arrhythmia. The pair can only watch helplessly as it grows more erratic, spewing out bursts of light like a pulsar.
Unpredictable chaos.
“Shit!”
“Turn it off!"
Suddenly another streak of blue shoots out from the Hexcore, hitting the ceiling. It travels along the rafters and branches out to cover the entirety of the ceiling in tiny branching streaks like little veins.
Immediately the lab goes dark, shutting off the power to the stabilizer so quickly that it's jarring. Like the silence just before a bomb detonates. The large emergency doors slam shut and the room glows a deep, ominous red.
“Shit,” Jayce mutters, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the strange red light as he scans the ceiling above. His ears are ringing. “The stabilizer must have short-circuited the new security system or something.” At that realization he jogs over to the analog control panel, groaning and slamming his hand down on top of it when he sees that the screen his gone completely dark.
Jayce presses the buttons a few times, cursing when it doesn’t shutter to life like normal.
“Hey!” Jayce shouts, pounding on the large metal doors. He tries to pry them apart, but they’re far too solid, too explosion proof. The sound of his banging reverberates around them. "Help us!"
“Everyone’s gone home because of the storm.” Viktor wants to lay down.
“Oh, this is great.” Jayce groanes. “I told Heimerdinger this containment system was a stupid fucking idea.”
“We can just stay until morning.”
Jayce pounds on the doors harder.
“Jayce.”
Jayce turns quickly at that, lightning illuminating the room for a moment as he set his eyes on Viktor. Viktor is leaning against the wall, his voice weak and his eyes dark.
“We should be able to reconfigure that console with a Hexgem.” Viktor hesitates for a moment like he intends to say something else.
Jayce tries pounding on the doors for a few more moments, hand aching too the bone by the time he finally gives it up. He turns to look at Viktor, breathing heavily while he considers what his partner has just just said. “We’d have to disconnect it from the fried power source and rewire it manually. That could take hours. I’d rather just slice through the doors with the mining laser or something.”
“It’s not here.”
“What?”
“It was moved from the lab and even if it was here we can’t risk harming our research.”
“Harming our—“ Jayce groans at that, covering his eyes with his hand and rubbing his aching temples, “I’m not worried about the research Viktor, I’m worried about you!” his voice comes out louder than he’d intended, ringing throughout the lab.
He seems to regret the temperature of his outburst because he lowers his hand from his eyes when the words have had time to root. His eyes curve with softness, regarding Viktor with apology before he finally turns toward the console. “Fine. I’ll work on opening it up and rerouting it.”
Viktor moves to help, but Jayce holds out a hand to stop him.
When Jayce opens the console a small cloud of black smoke escapes it. He coughs, waving it away. “This thing is a mess.” He mutters, testing a few of the wires. The tools he has immediately on hand to use are archaic and the glowing red did little to help him distinguish which of the console’s innards he needed to mess with.
Jayce fiddles with it for a while, how long he can’t say. Perhaps twenty minutes, perhaps more. He’s far too focused on the console and its inner workings to pay much attention to his lab mate who uncharacteristically hasn’t spoken or moved from his spot since the great short-circuiting event (of that evening).
Halfway through his resurrection of the console, he hears the sound of Viktor’s crutch clattering to the ground.
“You good?” Jayce calls over his shoulder absent mindedly. Thinking stupidly that Viktor must have dropped it.
The only sound that finds him in return is the sound of something with a bit more mass collapsing hard onto the ground.
In his confusion, he does not realize what the sound is right away. He simply stops, holding two wires in his hand while he listens for Viktor’s voice.
Nothing.
The implication of his lab-mate failing to answer him does not register until sick realization hits Jayce so hard that it takes his breath away.
Jayce shoots up, tools going flying as panic winds tight in his stomach. Dread drives his limbs into a sprint in Viktor’s direction before his brain has even caught up with his thoughts.
Viktor is face down on the floor, arm outstretched in front of him. He'd fallen down, hard.
“Viktor!” Jayce sinks to his knees, hands trembling and useless as he gently shakes Viktor’s shoulder. “Come on— hey, hey.” Viktor’s body bobs limply along with his touch.
No response.
Not a single coherent thought guides him, only panic as Jayce’s pulse hammers in his ears. He slowly, carefully, carefully rolls Viktor onto his back, hating how easily it is to move him. Hating the limp way his body sags.
Jayce finds only the tiniest morsel of relief when he can tell that Viktor is… breathing but it's shallow. A pair of fingers to his throat tells him that Viktor has a pulse, but it's quick, way too quick like a butterfly just beneath the surface of his skin.
“Hey, Viktor,” Jayce calls impossibly soft at first, leaning over Viktor and patting at his pale cheek. “Hey, you need to wake up now. Viktor? Hello?” Jayce tries again, patting a little harder. Calling his name louder.
His eyes widen when Viktor does not move.
No. Nonono.
Jayce is breathing quickly now, his eyes shift around the lab, desperate for something, anything he can find to help. It's suffocating. It's all so suffocating. It's truly the first time since being trapped in there that he realizes how powerless he is, how small the walls have suddenly become.
Then, a soft pained noise escapes from Viktor, something barely more than an exhale. His eyelashes flutter.
“Viktor.” Jayce breathes the name along with relief, thumbs unconsciously brushing along Viktor’s hairline tucking the sweaty hair back behind his ears. He stares down at him. Eager for even the tiniest glimmer of life.
“Jayce..?” Viktor’s voice is paper-thin, he opens his eyes only slightly. Gaze unfocused.
“There you are. Fuck, you scared me so bad.” Jayce presses his hand to Viktor’s forehead and sucks in a sharp breath. “You’re burning up, Vik.” He whispers, his pulse still hammering so hard he can feel it in his own fingertips pressed against Viktor’s skin. “Why didn’t you say something you stubborn asshole?”
“…did I fall?” Viktor moans again quietly, moving as though he's intent on standing. Jayce’s heart aches at Viktor's rare show of fragility.
Jayce presses a firm palm down against Viktor’s chest, stopping him. “I need you to keep lying down. You fainted, Vik.” Jayce lets go of Viktor to quickly shrug his coat off, rolling it up into a bundle. “I’m going to lift your head up.” He says softly, doing just that and resting it underneath Viktor’s head.
“I’m sorry, Jayce.” Viktor croaks.
A pang of guilt wells up in Jayce’s stomach at that. Emotion overwhelms him and he drops down wrapping his arms tighter around Viktor than he should right now, hugging him against his chest. “Don’t say that, this is all on me. ” He whispers into Viktor’s hair. "You fell down hard. I need you to try not to move. Does anything hurt?"
Jayce can feel Viktor shake his head no into their embrace.
“We’re gonna get you out of here and you’re gonna be just fine, okay?” He isn’t sure if the reassurance is more for himself or for Viktor.
Perhaps the fever has whittled away at his inhibitions, perhaps it has him acting in ways he normally wouldn’t, perhaps not. But Viktor leans his face into Jayce’s embrace needfully, closing his eyes and savoring his touch. He can be greedy just this once, he thinks. When Jayce moves to pull away Viktor stops him with a weak claw around the fabric of his shirt.
So Jayce remains.
Jayce isn’t sure how long he holds him, listening to the faint, uneven rhythm of his breathing.
Every few minutes, he mutters something, something that must be stupid, something repetitive, anything. God he’s terrible at this. Anything just to fill the silence—half-hearted reassurances, uninvolved complaints about how they always end up in these situations, anything to anchor Viktor here.
But time presses on with its presence heavy and taught. Jayce thinks he might be able to do this forever, but he can’t, he must’t. He has to get them out of there.
“I need to get the doors open now,” Jayce says as firmly as he can manage and Viktor finally allows him to pull away. His eyes are open and much more alert when Jayce lifts away to look into them again, but he’s still impossibly quiet.
Before he gets up, Jayce tears a piece of his shirt off, using it to dab the sweat from Viktor’s brow. Sweeping it down and watching the way Viktor's eyes close when he does it, offering him the smallest act of comfort he can afford in that moment.
“I’m right here okay?” Jayce reassures the both of them as he stands. His knees wail from being in contact with the hard floor of the lab for too long. The pain doesn’t matter. “Just stay with me okay?”
Jayce sets to work, hands moving quickly but carefully as he strips and reconnects damaged wiring, rerouting and threading power through the little intact circuits he can scavange. His fingers tremble—sweat making them clumsy in their work.
Every few seconds, he glances back at Viktor, making sure his breathing is still steady, that he hasn’t gone and slipped away again. “You still with me?” He calls nervously now and again.
“Yes.” Viktor calls back each time, voice pinched and weak despite his reassurance.
Jayce isn’t a doctor. He has no idea how bad this really is. But he’s certain of one thing—he isn’t letting Viktor die in this lab.
The thought makes his hands tighten around the wiring. He forces himself to breathe, to focus. He’s good at this, he can get them out of this.
He finds himself managing. He tucks into what he believes to be a crude recalibration of the energy flow.
Then—
The console groans.
The overhead lights flicker back on, recasting the lab back into it’s artificial glow. Jayce hears Viktor moan from his spot on the ground, palm lifting to shield his gaze from the blinding new light.
The control panel reboots. The screen blinks an error message before finally coming back to life.
Jayce stumbles over a few buttons and the large metal doors shutter and then slowly creak open.
Viktor sits up at that, hand still wrapped tight around the piece of Jayce’s shirt.
“Let’s go before it realizes I fucked something up.” Jayce's shaky voice is no foundation for his attempt at a joke, back at Viktor’s side now. “Can I, uh, carry you?”
Viktor nods and grasps tight onto him when Jayce kneels down to wrap an arm around his back and the other at his knees, lifting him up easily into his arms.
They find a bed for Viktor and he thinks it might be the beautiful feeling in the world when Jayce lays him down into it.
"You know, you fuss too much,” he murmurs, voice hoarse as he lowers the side of his face into the pillow. He closes his eyes, inhaling the scent of clean linen.
Jayce chokes out a weak laugh, sitting at the edge of the bed. “Yeah? Well, when you stop passing out I’ll stop fussing." He sets a hand on Viktor to comfort him for what comes next, "I’m going to go get help.”
“No." Viktor coughs, hand shooting out with surprising strength as if to reach for Jayce. “Please. Please Stay.”
“Viktor. You’re burning up.”
“It’s happened before, I just need sleep.”
"Is that supposed to comfort me? This has happened to you before?”
Viktor nods.
Jayce groans, rubbing at his tired eyes. “Fine. You go to sleep and then we take you in the morning.” Jayce pauses, “And I’m staying with you tonight.”
Viktor nods, relief visibly washing over him as he rolls back onto his side. In his hand he’s still grasping the piece of Jayce’s shirt as though for comfort. He rubs the pad of his thumb over it in tired circles.
Jayce’s eyes fall to Viktor’s legs, without a word he moves to take Viktor’s shoes off, fingers hovering over the metal of his brace when he’s finished. “Viktor, should I take this off?” He asks rather meekly and then when Viktor nods he runs his fingers along the metal of it.
Jayce works in quiet concentration, his hands moving with precision as he loosens the straps of the brace. It was an old thing—worn from years of use, the metal corroded and chipped away and softened in places and the leather fraying in others. He’s seen Viktor take it off countless times, always with the same quiet efficiency.
Jayce eases Viktor’s leg up slightly, supporting it with one hand as he unfastens the last buckle. God he was bad at this. He was so awkward. Surely he’s hurting him. He could feel the slight tremor in Viktor’s muscles, the way his breath hitched ever so slightly at the shift of motion.
The brace comes free, and he sets it aside tenderly as if it’s something so utterly fragile. Viktor’s leg feels lighter in his hands without it— far too thin, far too cold. Jayce frowns, his fingers linger against Viktor’s knee, pressing just slightly as if he may feel the suffering beneath. His thumb lifts along his knee, rubbing up and down. He isn’t sure if it does anything at all to help, but Viktor isn’t tensing up. He isn’t pulling away. He almost seems to settled into the touch, eyes closed now as he draws in the softest of breaths.
Oh, actually, Viktor is sleeping.
Jayce watches him sleep from his chair. Eyes following the movement of Viktor's chest raising and falling like a mother watching her newborn sleep.
Jayce’s body hitches, tight with stress at each of Viktor’s sounds, the tiny groans of fevered pain. Each sound make him feel helpless. They make him want to rush into the storm and drag back someone to help.
As the minutes stretch on, Jayce rises constantly to walk over and rest a hand on Viktor’s forehead, to feel the heat of his fever. Then he lowers to feel the gentle rise and fall of his chest. Finger's threading through his shirt as though to assure himself that Viktor is indeed still there.
A few hours go on like that, Jayce rising to check on Viktor and then sitting back in his seat until Jayce turns to leave after checking him again and Viktor grabs his wrist, stopping him.
Jayce stills.
Viktor’s fingers, weaker than usual but still firm, curl around him, holding on. Jayce turns to look at him, startled, watching as Viktor’s eyes flutter open, groggy and unfocused but filled with quiet intent.
“…Don’t go.”
Viktor’s words are soft, barely above a whisper, but Jayce feels them more than he hears them. Before he can respond, Viktor tugs at him— a gentle, insistent pull—enough that Jayce’s balance shifts, his knees hitting the edge of the mattress.
“Okay.”
With as much care as he can manage, Jayce kicks off his own shoes and lowers himself onto the bed beside Viktor, shifting until he’s close enough to share warmth. He can feel the tremble of Viktor’s body.
Viktor sighs, his grip loosening, but instead of letting go, his fingers slide down to Jayce’s hand, his touch softer now, resting against his palm.
Jayce hesitates for only a moment before curling his fingers around Viktor’s, his thumb brushing lightly against the back of his hand. He watches as Viktor drifts back to sleep, his body relaxing for what feels like the first time that evening.
It’s only then that Jayce allows himself to feel his own exhaustion. The way his eyes are heavy and his muscles ache with fatigue. He inhales a deep breath, breathing in the scent of Viktor's warmth.
Perhaps Viktor won’t remember the way his hand curls around Jayce’s in the morning. The way he keened for him to stay, the mold of his body against his.
While Jayce slips away he finds himself hoping that he does remember.