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“I love you, but I don’t care about anything,” he says. “Does that make sense?”
Viktor makes a soft sound. It does make sense, the deadness in Jayce’s eyes, the usual sweetness underneath, something barely holding on. He touches Jayce’s head, fingers threading through his hair.
“Then I will care, until you care again,” he says.
Jayce protests.
“Vik, you don’t—” his voice cracks. “I don’t want to be a burden.”
Viktor kisses the top of his head.
“It is a privilege to love you,” he says. “Do you understand?”
—
He doesn’t understand, but he can acknowledge it.
Days getting up at six am, half-dead; coming home after dark, a little closer still. Sitting in his apartment, wishing he was with Viktor. Not wanting to bother him, wishing he knew how to be alone.
It’s never sat well with him. Keeping his own company. Maybe it’s never felt worth keeping.
—
In the lab Viktor says some soft word and Jayce collapses into him, burying his face into the soft warm place in his neck that feels like home.
Viktor holds him gently, one hand buried in his hair, nudging him closer.
“I have you,” he says.
The quiet of the empty room, emptier when it’s quiet, Viktor switching the equipment off. He leans his heavy head into Viktor, his Viktor, and all he hears is the raggedness of his own breath.
“Let’s sit,” Viktor says. He kisses Jayce’s forehead. “You and I.”
He feels like a child, being led by the hand, but it helps and that makes him feel worse: childish, helped. Torn and wishing no one would help him at all, let alone Viktor, with his stillness, his sense of inner strength, wasted on Jayce like money.
“I feel like such a loser,” he chokes. “I feel like—it’s like everyone else got an instruction manual and I didn’t. I’m so bad at this.” He makes a sharp gesture, defeated.
“At what?”
“At—this!” he says. “Life! All of it! I’m thirty-fucking-two and I don’t know how to make friends and I feel so lonely sometimes I—” he takes in a shuddering breath. Viktor’s hands, soft on his back.
“I’m here,” Viktor says.
“I know you’re here, I just—” I wish you were more here, he doesn’t say. He wishes there was less of himself and more of Viktor, less ore and more gold. He looks at Viktor’s yellow eyes and wants.
Viktor’s love was always the best part of him.
“It’s not even failure that made me do it, you know?” he says, rubbing his face. “When you found me up—on the—it wasn’t failure. It was feeling completely sure I was alone and I’d always be alone. I knew that.”
Viktor curls his fingers around Jayce’s.
“I’ve always wished everyone could see in you what I see in you,” he says. “From the moment I saw you at the trial, I wanted that. Unfortunately—” he shrugs. “Some people are stupid. Many more people than I would like. Glory is lost on them.”
Jayce huffs.
“Glory,” Viktor repeats. “You are a lovely man. I wish everyone knew it. More than that, I wish you knew it.”
“Vik—”
“I do,” he says, and kisses the corner of Jayce’s eye. His lips are soft and dry. “I’m taking you home with me tonight. I’ll run a hot bath for you, would you like that? We’ll sit and talk, or you can sit and I can talk to you about nothing in particular.”
“You don’t have to do that,” Jayce says, starting to cry.
Viktor gathers him up, pressing Jayce’s hot face into the crook of his neck. He feels feverish, too worked up to speak, and Viktor kisses his swollen eyes.
“I want to,” Viktor says. “Sólnyshka, it is a privilege.”
—
He doesn’t mean to hurt himself, not quite so much. But he’s in the warm bath, warmth he doesn’t deserve, and his razor feels cold and clear, like a thought. He watches the slow trail of blood spread in the water, blooming, a phoenix’s tail: death, rebirth, impossible to tell apart.
His head slung back, arms heavy and wet. And then, in the steam, Viktor’s tense face.
“I’m sorry,” he says, slurring. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“What exactly did you mean to do?”
Viktor is sitting on the edge of the tub wrapping a towel around his arm, the white bleeding pink. Jayce wants to reach out and touch them but they feel miles apart, impossible. He doesn’t know why everything in his life is impossible. He looks at Viktor through the wrong end of the telescope, too small.
“Hurt,” he says, finally. “But not—I wanted to hurt me, not you.”
Viktor shakes his head.
“You understand this is impossible?” he asks. He finishes tying up Jayce’s arm, reaches over to tug the stopper. The blood goes down the drain, the steam begins to clear, and then there’s only the two of them in this room, with the mess he’s made.
“We are connected,” Viktor is saying, “whether you’d like it or not we’re connected now, you can’t be reckless with yourself. It affects me.” He traces a line down Jayce’s wet hand. “You’re mine, you understand?”
He’d like to. More than anything he’d like to understand Viktor, lovely Viktor, and see the world through his eyes. He wishes he knew, with all the certainty Viktor seems to have, that he’s worth saving. He wishes he knew anything except how much he loves Viktor.
But if he only knows one thing, it might be enough.
“I don’t want to hurt us anymore,” he says instead, touching Viktor’s hand. “I’m trying.”