Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

He has a strange dream, in which he is back in Reveck’s nightmarish workshop, but he is not alone. Jayce is there, looking haggard and telling Viktor that he has built Hex-powered lungs for him. He stands tall, swathed in the purple sheen of Rio’s tank, holding the lungs in front of him like a strange, abnormal specimen of a fleshy butterfly: blue-veined and wet, pulsing lightly in his hands. 

How can this work? Viktor wonders. He almost reaches to touch the lungs but cannot bring himself to it. He has a feeling his touch would contaminate them, somehow. How did you make them? How will you put them in me?

He tries to speak but cannot. He tries to move, but cannot. 

Jayce reaches forward, and presses the lungs into Viktor’s chest, slowly, slowly. 

He says, “Sleep, Viktor. Everything is going to be alright.”

Viktor still cannot speak—and then he is sinking back into the strange, iridescent, gelatinous water which holds him, beckoning him into deeper sleep. 

⚙

Another dream, later, in the early morning, even more improbable:

Of someone stroking his forehead, in sleep, and then kissing him.

⚙

Viktor wakes with a start, naked and alone, sprawled in the very middle of his own bed and sore in places he’s forgotten he could be sore in. There is no time for the sort of lethargic, confused drifting towards wakefulness he usually indulges in on the weekends—awareness slams into him like the Mercury Hammer he has repeatedly glimpsed Jayce doodling in his sketchbooks.  

For a moment, Viktor merely lies there, aware of every inch of his body, feeling like his blood is vibrating inside his veins, changed, somehow, and like he is trying with all his might to refute it, deny that something irreversible has happened.

“Fuck,” he says, emphatically, to his plain blue ceiling.

⚙

It’s hard to as much as cherry-pick the first thing to fret over, from the bountiful array of them he has managed to rack up overnight. Viktor bites down at the inside of his cheek, dimly noticing that even his lips are sort of sore, and tries to ground himself with the coppery taste of blood when his teeth puncture flesh. 

He tries to focus, first, on the empirical. The body.

His skin is sticky, with sweat but not exclusively sweat, and there dwells a sort of deep, satisfied ache inside his muscles that he has craved for a long time: something that comes with release of tension, calming and tethering him inside the body he usually wants to vacate. 

Ache which, nonetheless, promises that more difficulty than usual will go into standing and remaining upright today. 

Vaguely, he remembers the previous weekends’ worth of his theories surrounding the rumours about him and Jayce’s potential reaction.

Well, Viktor thinks; a reaction has certainly taken place. It was not one he could have predicted, even in his most forward hypotheses: he had predicted disengagement. He had not factored in a collision, first.

Collision, which will now be followed by—

Viktor bites down on his cheek again. 

He tries, within the scope of logic, to imagine a positive resolution of something so explosive and unaccounted for, but somehow cannot, his stomach tying itself in knots. Jayce had been enthusiastic and intense, and it had been good—absurdly good—the sort of good that can be neither denied nor easily described; the memory of it a blur of sensation, rather than any sort of coherent sequence of events.

That being said—

There’s a horrible crash from the kitchen, followed by a loud hiss and some sort of terrible gurgling noise.

Fuck, Viktor thinks again, Jayce is still here.

⚙

Suddenly, he feels awfully exposed: the soreness in his body transforms into weakness, and he is aware of his skin, pallid and easy to bruise, and of his uncooperative, strained limbs. He tries to lift himself up, a little, on the pillows.

He has to recalibrate, now, from the original assumption that Jayce had left in the early morning, chased by a Mordovian Roulette of guilt and shame, regret or simply a continuation of his—now evident—identity crisis. Viktor is not one for denial of facts: the Jayce of the previous evening and the better part of the night was nothing but evidently and with abandon enjoying himself. Still, it is one thing to enjoy something and a whole other animal to come to terms with having enjoyed it or, better yet, continuing to enjoy it.

Viktor is no stranger to dealing with a quandary like that. 

More muffled but alarmingly nondescript noises reverberate from behind the wall, followed by what sounds like first a curse, and then a loud vibration.

Viktor recalibrates. Jayce is still here. Jayce, based on the noises coming from the kitchen, is:

1. In the process of trying and failing to quietly leave. 
2. Trying to prepare either coffee or something to eat (presumably, in this case, for them both, as Viktor can’t fathom why he’d want to linger solely to make himself breakfast from the scraps in Viktor’s kitchen).
3. Having a panic attack after fucking his male friend and research partner of several years.
4. Some convoluted combination of the above.

Viktor considers the ceiling, attempting to plot the methodology for dealing with each variant:

1. Let him. 
2. Thank him, join in to show his own maturity, then likely suffer through variable levels of awkwardness and conversation attached. 
3. Find a way to calm him down while somehow preserving his own dignity and will to live.
4. Same as above.

As he ponders this handful of thrilling options, Viktor picks up on the sound of hushed conversation in what does not seem to be Piltovian. Frowning, he strains his ears. 

Jayce speaks fast, harsh—but not in an angry way but more … impatient: “Una vez más, no, no voy a almorzar, y no, no puedo llevar a Viktor conmigo—”

Oh, god, Viktor thinks, with a sinking feeling, his mother. 

Probably the panic attack, then.

Shit. He raises himself up on his elbows. Tries to consider the relative merits of adding himself to the equation now. Chances are that seeing him will spook Jayce into something more unstable, and he is in no rush to incur the wrath of Ximena Talis on top of everything else.

He had met her, a handful of times before, and she tended to fix him with the sort of penetrating X-ray of a look that made him wonder just how transparent he was being about Jayce. 

Or maybe he can get over himself and act normal and well-adjusted enough in front of his friend to get Jayce to calm down and talk him down from his crisis. Then, perhaps, Viktor can gently but firmly steer them back onto a path of comfortable denial—

Jayce’s voice gets suddenly louder, like he is coming closer. “Mamá—! No, no lo haré. Lo tengo bajo control. Deja de llamarme. Te quiero, adiós.”

The bedroom doorknob rattles. 

Before Viktor—suddenly panicked—can do anything other than drag the thin sheet covering him up over himself, the door opens again and Jayce bursts in, looking … sheepish.

“Sorry,” he says, slightly out of breath, “I don’t suppose there’s a chance all … that didn’t wake you up, huh?”

He gestures, broadly. He is, bizarrely, wearing yellow rubber gloves and only his thin white undershirt, straining over his chest, tucked into slacks. The front of both seems to be splattered with water.

Viktor blinks.

“… Are you fixing my kitchen sink?” he blurts out, forgetting all his plans.

“Don’t worry about it,” Jayce dismisses. “You want coffee?” And, before Viktor can move. “No, no—stay where you are. I’ll make it. With sweetmilk. Just—yeah. Don’t come into the kitchen. Be right back.”

He slams the door shut behind himself.

Viktor closes his mouth.

Then he promptly swings his legs out of the bed, aiming to storm into the kitchen and inspect the damage there. 

He is stopped in his tracks by the realisation of his own state of complete undress—a state he does not usually like to land himself in, in the context of a hook-up. He is not sure how they even got to a point of peeling him out of his entire protective exoskeleton last night, only that it seemed to become, at one point, Jayce’s Holy Grail. 

Cursing softly, he attempt to orient himself in his bedroom.

After some fumbling, he manages to retrieve a haphazard combination of clean underwear and some of the clothing strewn wildly about the entire room. He is wearing some sort of a T-shirt and a pair of boxers, in the middle of fastening his leg brace on bare skin—having failed to find his own slacks, leading him to the worrying thought they were discarded before reaching the bedroom—and propped awkwardly against his dresser, when the door opens again.

Jayce shoulders his way in—sans the yellow gloves, but wearing an unbuttoned, crinkled shirt now—carrying two mugs of coffee. 

“Oh, you’re …” a vague note of disappointment in his voice, which Viktor manages to catch before it is swiftly followed up with, “Well, okay. Here, your coffee.”

And then Jayce somehow seamlessly, innocuously crowds Viktor back against his own bed, until he is not so much forced as gently nudged to sit down and accept the mug.

And Jayce sits down, too. The side of his knee nudges against Viktor’s own, unclothed one. Accidentally. 

Or not. 

“… May I?” Jayce then asks, politely, gesturing downwards to—Viktor’s … underwear?

“Khm—hm?” Viktor manages, blinking rapidly, brain seemingly refusing to parse the disorienting input. The warm, sweet scent of sweetmilk wafts off the mug, distracting him. Jayce, even just sitting next to him, seems to radiate warmth. Distracting.

Jayce’s fingers graze the undone topmost clasps of Viktor’s leg brace.

“May I?” he repeats, still so politely and Viktor finds himself nodding dumbly before he can even think to refuse, and then it is too late already, as Jayce pulls his thigh forward, gently, almost as though he has practiced it, and begins slotting the buckles of the brace in place.

Viktor watches him do it in a dizzy sort of silence. Short of ideas on what else to do, he drinks some of his coffee. 

Jayce clears his throat. “There, all done.” 

His fingers linger a little, a little too long, dragging both past the inside of Viktor’s thigh and his knobbly knee, before finally withdrawing.

Viktor lets out a breath he did not realise he’s been holding. Jayce looks up, eyes meeting his own; so guilelessly it’s anything but.

Viktor lowers his mug; lowers his eyes. Clears his throat. “You didn’t, ah … need to do that.”

“I don’t mind,” Jayce says. 

Viktor does not know what to say to that, so he takes another sip of his coffee.

For a moment, Jayce also says nothing else; only sits there, ignoring his own mug in favour of staring at Viktor. 

It’s maddening.

“What?” Viktor asks, at last, becoming a little unnerved. His plan of remaining aloof appears foiled at the outset. Each tiny stretch of him that Jayce’s eyes land upon on seems to react, buzzing, tingling. Like a memory of touch. The warmth spreads. “Do I have something on my face?”

Jayce stares a bit more; Viktor can’t help but risk one sideways glance. 

With a strange little look of determination, Jayce leans in and kisses his cheek.

“… Now you do,” he says, smugly.

Viktor scrunches his nose, before burying it back in the mug.

“It’s a really nice morning,” Jayce goes on, innocently. “Wanna sit out on the balcony?”

⚙

Viktor had considered agreeing to be a tactical move: an easy escape from the heady closeness of that stuffy, sticky bedroom and Jayce’s hooded eyes and fingers and the knee digging into Viktor’s own. Yes, leaving that room would surely grant him enough clarity of mind to be able to meaningfully assess the situation. 

What he had failed to take into account is both that the balcony is microscopic in its own right and that sitting out there together has a distinctly different … flavour, in broad daylight.

It’s a warm day—too warm for how dishevelled Viktor feels, and how badly he needs a shower—and the sun seems insistent of prying everywhere, each crinkle and crevice, bringing all manner of weakness into sharp relief.

In effect, he can no longer quite meet Jayce’s eyes. Jayce, who looks almost radiant in the sun, as though it is refracted from his unblemished skin, doubled or perhaps tripled; like he is made of it. 

Viktor is, admittedly, struggling—to reconcile the weeks-long, nauseating tension between them, and all his misery-fuelled overthinking, with the sort of resolution it reached; with how unnervingly calm Jayce appears to be about the whole thing.

Well, maybe not … calm. He does seem jittery, still, knee bouncing up and down, and remains constantly just a little bit in-motion, casting a myriad of tiny looks Viktor’s way and re-adjusting their arrangement, his position, the cups and items of furniture around them.

Still, it’s a far cry from the awkward panic Viktor had envisioned.

Truth be told, Jayce on the whole had been very different from whatever Viktor had allowed himself to picture the scant few times he had indulged in picturing—almost punishing in his scenarios, which revolved mostly around Viktor being conveniently present for Jayce to take out some frustration on—

The truth was—well, the truth was—the intense, almost reverent attention devoted to Viktor alone—

Suddenly, he is embarrassed to even think about this; which is absurd in its own way. He’s blunt. He’s a blunt person. It would be ridiculous to find himself suddenly shy. But he can feel the sunlight on him, and Jayce’s eyes on him, and he can’t seem to tell the two apart: his cheeks are warm, and sweat gathers under his collar. Horrifyingly, his blood seems to be stirring somewhere lower, as well. 

Running out of coffee to studiously drink, Viktor casts Jayce a sideways look. All it does is make matter worse: the boastful sunlight casts its bright glare onto the plummy splotch of a vicious bite-mark on Jayce’s neck, under his tactically open collar. 

Despite himself, Viktor thinks, Well, nothing shy about that.

Jayce catches him looking. Something smug appears on his face. Viktor’s eyes narrow. He studiously drinks some more imaginary coffee out of his empty mug.

How odd. To be—as Jayce had put it—figured out. 

It all still feels a little bit like waiting to have the rug pulled form under his feet.

They sit in silence.

Then, a slight push. Jayce’s knee bumps into his again. Viktor risks one more slanted look, eyes dropping once again to the opened collar. He lets himself quirk an eyebrow.

Jayce grins. “Admiring your own work, are you?”

“I do always appreciate work thoroughly done,” Viktor mutters.

“Oh,” Jayce says, voice lowering. “I know you do.”

Okay, Viktor allows himself to think, licking his lips. Recalibrating. Maybe we will be fine. 

⚙

Then Jayce sighs, suddenly and loudly, and makes a strange, jerky movement forward. He makes a face—something tormented, like he has been suffering for ages untold and has simply run out of patience to continue doing so—and then takes the empty mug out of Viktor’s hand, sets it brusquely aside, and kisses him hungrily on the mouth; his whole body pressing Viktor’s so far back into the chair, he might as well be trying to push him clean through it.

Dimly, Viktor is aware of the clatter of the mug falling off wherever Jayce had tossed it; aware of all the people surrounding them inside their own homes, trying to have a regular morning without witnessing whatever this is; people, down on the street, down in Zaun—but it all becomes, inevitably, only a trembling sort of inconsequential background noise to the overwhelming epicentre of lips moving on bruised lips. Jayce tastes of sweetmilk and coffee. Viktor licks it off him. His hand is on Jayce’s chest, the centre of it, fisted in the fabric to keep him in place. His own heart is overexerting itself, and so is Jayce’s. Both of them, in sync.

Don’t get ahead of himself, don’t, he tries. 

But it’s too late, too late.

“Sorry,” Jayce says, out of breath, trying to pull away even as he drags his lips past Viktor’s again, and not sounding sorry at all. “Sorry. I know we should talk. You’re just so—”

“Yes …?” Viktor asks, despite himself, watching him through lidded eyes. Jayce presses up to kiss him one more time, with a strange, short noise; almost a whine.

Good god, Viktor thinks. What have I even discovered here. Something world-ending, for sure.

“I’ll behave, now,” Jayce says, all the same. “We should talk. I’ll behave.”

And—

Don’t, Viktor thinks. He bunches his hand in Jayce’s shirt and drags him back, wanting to prolong this, too: wanting more out of this already improbable morning, even if only to remember it better, sun-ripe and so flush with blood. Even the tackiness of his own skin, both of them dirty and sweaty, the unwieldy awkwardness of his limbs. All of it, everything.  

Eventually it becomes untenable; a sharp twinge in his back joins in with his stiffening hip. Jayce, somehow sensing it, kisses the side of Viktor’s jaw one more time, before leaning up.

“So,” he says, sighing again, “we talk.”

⚙

Three words, all neutral enough on their own—and yet it suddenly sounds like they are rallying themselves for battle.

Feels somewhat like a cloud has covered the sunlight—though it hasn’t. 

Viktor looks down, swallowing. His eyes catch on the metal of his brace, the reddened indents below it. If he pushed up the hem of his shorts, just a bit, he’d see the marks Jayce’s teeth have left on his quad last night.

“What are we doing, Jayce?” he asks. “What are you … doing here?”

Opposite him, Jayce shrugs, somewhat theatrically. “I’m just … with you.”

“With me,” Viktor repeats quietly. Something inside him tightens, painfully.

Jayce looks at him, a strangely sharp glint to it. Instead of the other chair, he’s seated himself on top of Viktor’s overturned fruit crate, knees criss-crossed with Viktor’s own, positioned slightly below him.

“Yeah,” he asserts, forcefully.

“And once we are … out of here?” Viktor asks. 

Jayce shrugs again, maddening. “Whatever you want, I guess.”

“Whatever I want?”

“Vik,” Jayce says. He sounds, of all things, a little pained, and something inside Viktor bristles, readying itself for an altercation. Then Jayce reaches out, rubbing Viktor’s bad knee again, grounding.

He takes a deep breath, bracing himself. 

“I never thought you even wanted this—with anyone,” Jayce says, after a beat. “You told me you didn’t.”

There is a thin note of accusation to it that Viktor can’t quite allow himself to ignore.

He hesitates. “You misinterpreted what I said,” he lands on, cautiously.

“Well, yeah—clearly—but—”

Viktor raises a placating hand. “I allowed you to misinterpret it,” he says. “On purpose.”

Jayce shakes his head, jaw clenching a little. “Yeah. I … I still can’t pretend I get why. But …” he hesitates. “I guess, the first thing is, I’ve gotta ask. Do you … regret me … finding out?”

Wincing, Viktor shakes his head. Once again, he is past the point of denial. “No,” he says simply. “I had wished to tell you. I just … thought this was wiser.”

“Wiser?” Jayce repeats, sounding dubious.

“Easier,” Viktor corrects himself. He winces again. Tries to hide it in his mug.

Jayce is quiet for a moment. “I wish you had told me. Earlier, I mean. Back then.”

“I am sorry that I didn’t,” Viktor concedes. “I am not … certain if it would have changed anything or not—but please believe me, Jayce, fundamentally it had … very little to do with you. It was just something I saw as a precaution. Self-preservation.”

Jayce says nothing. 

Instead, at length, he says, “Okay.” And, after a short but audible breath, “And—do you regret what happened last night?”

Viktor hesitates—not having expected the question asked so bluntly—and watches Jayce tense, visibly, out of the corner of his eyes.

Unwilling to let him draw any such unkind and unfounded conclusion, Viktor pushes himself past his own thick discomfort and lightly touches his forearm. The tense muscle underneath relents, instantly. It’s like magic, really, like some sort of superpower Viktor’s never realised he has. He tries not to feel too lightheaded about it.

“I … it depends only on whether it will negatively impact our … partnership, going forward,” Viktor hedges, feeling a little too dizzy for his own liking, “or not.”

“Not on my end, it won’t,” Jayce vows, earnestly.

“Then, no,” Viktor says, without meeting his eyes. “I don’t.”

Jayce lets out a little sigh, at that. Folding himself forward, he pulls Viktor’s hand away from his forearm and presses his face into the palm of it instead. There’s been a lot of that, last night, Viktor thinks, despite himself; pulling his hair, giving directions, of guiding and following.

“Me neither,” Jayce says, almost redundantly. “I really, really liked it.”

Something ill-advised but unquenchable bursts to full force inside Viktor’s abdomen, where it’s been lurking all this time. He runs his hand past the side of Jayce’s face and his temple, slow and methodical, and watches him shiver with hungry eyes.

A beautiful experiment, Viktor thinks, to be part of. 

“I admit I was … I am … surprised,” he admits, quietly. “I never thought you’d—”

“Nobody has, huh?” Jayce looks up, looking surprisingly present for how out of it he’s seemed the mooment prior. “But … I don’t know. I wasn’t surprised. Not really. Not once I … once I realised.”

Viktor blinks. “That’s … good.”

This is addictive, he thinks. He should pull his hand back. This is dangerous.

He tries to—wills himself to picture the sort of person Jayce could end up with, after—after Viktor. The sort of people he will get to experiment with, live with, and the sort that he might settle with. He had thought, a little despondently, that Mel Medarda would be the one, but it’s beginning to dawn on him that Jayce might need something else. 

Something, possibly, more similar to Viktor himself, and if that is not fucking heartbreaking to realise—

He pulls his hand back.

“Okay,” Jayce says, straightening as well. Something in his face changes, seeming scared, like he has noted the shift in Viktor’s demeanour. “So—what now?”

Viktor tries to keep his voice steady. “How do you mean?”

“I mean, did you—” Jayce cuts himself off. His voice sounds odd, strained. “Did you like it? Would you—would you be interested in taking this … further?”

Viktor stares at their knees, pressed flush together, fabric to brace. He takes an almost excessively long while to answer. 

“Yes,” he says in the end, quietly. “I did like it. But I don’t know if taking it any further is a … good idea.”

Jayce is silent for a long while, too.

“Okay,” he says at last, quietly. But evenly. “Can I ask why?”

Viktor nods. This is fair. A fair, mature exchange.

“Correct me if I’ve interpreted this wrong,” he says, eventually, “but I … I take it that your interest in this is a little beyond … casual, yes?”

He can picture it, easily: Jayce’s advances shifting from wanting to explore Viktor’s bedroom and their dynamic therein to inconspicuously arranging dates and semi-public excursions, bringing him to more events, inviting himself more and more often into— 

Jayce is staring at him. His face is blank, inscrutable. After a somewhat uncomfortable pause, he admits, “Yeah.”

Viktor nods. He looks down, at his pale, knobbly knees, one cinched with metal. Smacking his lips, he goes on, “I’m afraid I am … not the most well suited for that.”

He chances a look at Jayce.

Jayce looks … thoughtful, mostly, as he takes this in. There is something else at play, something that he is, Viktor thinks, very carefully reining in. Disappointment, perhaps, and Viktor loathes to cause it. Hates himself for causing it. And something else, too, buried even deeper. 

“You only ever do … casual?” Jayce asks.

After a while, Viktor nods. It’s … true enough, he supposes, for the purposes of this conversation. Save for a few bad ideas—back when he was too young to know better—it is true also literally.

It might not have been a conscious decision, not to begin with—but it has become one with time.

Jayce seems to chew on this for a while. “I mean …” he then says. “I could do that. If you can, uh. Put up with the fact that,” he trails off, “that I’m not really a very casual … uh, person, deep down. But I can … act the part.” He pauses again, chewing on his lower lip. Quieter, he adds, “Nothing has to change, aside from … well. Friends can have … benefits.”

It’s such a bizarre, unexpected offer that Viktor finds himself momentarily out of words.

“Wouldn’t it be easier,” he asks at last, hesitating. “To just—not pursue this?”

At length, Jayce nods. The movement is stiff, a little jerky.

“We can also do that,” he says. “Yeah. That’s … also fine. And I mean that. I know I just asked for more, but … I’ll be fine. Like I said. Nothing has to change. You’re … ” Jayce inhales, sharply. “You’re my best friend, Vik. No matter what.”

“And you are mine,” Viktor says, carefully.

There is a silence. It should be companionable, contented, even, like the previous evening—they’ve settled quite peacefully on the smartest solution, after all. 

Viktor himself might have no way of dampening the well known traitor inside him—where that hungry, genuine, lonely creature of Viktor lives; that wants more and more and more and balks at being only ever further deprived—but he is dismayed to find a strange mirror of this sentiment in Jayce, who sits in front of him, still and subdued.

“… Jayce?” Viktor asks, hesitant. He wants to touch him, soothe him, but suddenly feels that he can’t; that he has just forfeited his right to it, willingly. It fills him with an almost unbearable sort of grief. He only had it for so little time. A fool, the creature howls, a fool. 

Jayce flashes him a not-entirely-convincing smile. He looks, suddenly, several shades paler than mere moments ago. 

“I’m okay, V,” he says, unconvincingly. “I … listen, I know this is probably all a bit jarring for you, but, uh, if you can believe it, I … I’ve had a lot of time to think this all through.”

Viktor frowns. “Think what through?”

“How you might react and what you might want—or not want, out of this,” Jayce says. 

He is rubbing his gemstone band, hidden between his knees: the subtlest of his tells of spiking anxiety. Viktor’s heart twinges at recognising it, but before he can try to intervene, Jayce goes on. 

“Believe it or not, I assumed this would be among the most likely outcomes, and I … I’m fine with that, V. I never meant to foist anything onto you that you’re not comfortable with, promise. I’d never want that. As long as you don’t regret what we … what happened yesterday, I’ll just be … happy. That it happened. But I won’t ask any more of you than what you are comfortable with giving.”

At length, a little hesitantly, Viktor nods.

It sounds … reasonable, mostly. Though somewhat … confusing. 

And there is one more thing to clear up—if he is reading Jayce’s reaction right—though he is struggling, selfishly, to bring himself to voice it.

Still, despite his assertions of being fine, Jayce is beginning to look nothing short of distraught, so Viktor stamps down on his own discomfort, and picks up. “Jayce, I just want to say—I do not want you to be … discouraged by this,” he says. 

Jayce gives him an odd look. “Huh?”

Viktor stares intently at the banisters of his balcony, trying not to wince. Carefully, he begins, “Everything I have told you about Zaun, and about … taking … pride in your own defiance, your authenticity … it is true. But it does not pertain only to Zaun. If you find this side of your identity worth pursuing—if you’ve … enjoyed yourself last night—I’d … I cannot think of anyone in their right mind who would not be honoured to share this with you, and I think—I think you should go where this leads you. There is a lot of … joy to be found, in this. And I think you deserve to … find it.”

He can’t look at Jayce. It would make it all ring just so much more genuine, but he cannot bring himself to do it. 

The silence between them is kind of strange, anyhow. Dense. Strained.

“I—thanks, Viktor,” Jayce says, eventually. He sounds strange, too, and distinctly uncomfortable. And not in the abashed, excited way that Viktor had guessed he might be. “I … don’t get me wrong, I appreciate what you’re saying, and I’m sure that’s … true for many people. But I don’t think I want that.” There is a moment of silence. “No, I … I know I don’t want that.”

Viktor blinks, rapidly, at the vehement rebuttal. “Oh, I—I apologise, Jayce. I did not mean to pressure you into—I thought you said you, eh, liked—”

“I did,” Jayce says, stiffly. 

“Then, there is no need to limit yourself—”

“God, Vik,” Jayce interrupts him, strained. He screws his eyes shut, winces, and rubs the bridge of his nose. The newfound discomfort is radiating off him in waves, much more in line with what Viktor had expected earlier in the morning. Viktor is confused, to say the least. 

“I’m—” Jayce says. Sighs. “Listen, I know you mean well, but you’re … you’re sort of killing me, here.”

“I’m … sorry,” Viktor says, feeling stumped. It is evident that he has misstepped, missed something, but he does not know what. He is clearly causing Jayce pain, and perhaps it is his own pain that’s preventing him from realising it. “I think I’ve … misunderstood something.”

Though he is not sure what.

Jayce shakes his head, eyes shut. “No, it’s okay. I’m just … I’m just not interested in anything other. Than—” He does not finish the sentence, tense head to toe. 

And Viktor waits, because surely the sentence cannot end where he is suddenly beginning to suspect it ends.

“Other than … ?” he prompts, eventually, unable not to. His heart has started racing again, unexpectedly. His wrists feel weak.

Jayce stares up at him, almost defiantly, as though to say, come on, Vik. 

Don’t be dense.

“… me?” Viktor asks, incredulously.

Bizarrely, Jayce nods, still mulish.

“I,” Viktor begins. Stops. Tries to start again. He feels stunned. “Jayce, I am flattered, but I assure you—I am far from the … ceiling you should be scaling up towards.”

“I don’t want to scale up towards anything,” Jayce snaps, sounding annoyed by now. “I—you might not—but it’s different for me, okay? You were right, I don’t … I can’t do casual. That’s what I meant, all those years ago, when I … misunderstood you. It’s not really a necessity for me, and it’s made college a bit of a minefield. I don’t need it or want it most of the time. Not like that.”

“… But you want it with me?” Viktor asks, before he can’t stop himself—because he can’t stop himself.

 “Yes,” Jayce grits out, “obviously. But that’s because …” and suddenly he looks mortally embarrassed, and as though he wishes to shrink into himself. “I … you know.” 

“I … don’t,” Viktor admits, at a loss.

“Because I’m in love with you,” Jayce grits out, a little uncomfortably.

Viktor stares at him. 

After a full, hollow, lingering minute of this, Jayce inhales, a notch spasmodically. “It’s not a problem,” he declares, forcefully. His voice a little high-pitched. “It’s not going to be a problem. Okay? This isn’t new. It’s not new. I promise you nothing will have to change.”

Viktor—feeling somewhat as though he has inhaled something highly  toxic and hallucinogenic in the lab and is now floating formlessly in zero gravity while still tethered feebly to his petrified, leaden mortal body—finally regains use of his vocal cords. “… Jayce, you cannot be serious.”

Jayce shuts his mouth with a click. Bizarrely, he hangs his head and says, “Sorry.”

“Sorry?” Viktor repeats, high-pitched as well, now. Yes, he has definitely inhaled something. “What do you mean? You—Jayce, you cannot be in love with me. I know you are probably a little overwhelmed right now, but—”

For the first time since declaring … that, Jayce looks him straight in the eyes and frowns, looking annoyed again. 

“Oh, shut up, Viktor,” he says, “don’t patronise me. What, you think you can somehow … what, mathematically prove me wrong? You think you can forbid me?” He sounds strangely petulant. “Tough luck, V. You might not like it, but you’ve got no say in this. Like I said, I’ve spent a long time thinking about this, and it has been years in the making. So … yeah. Nothing has to change, but don’t insult me by pretending you somehow know better.”

Viktor just keeps staring at him. He is aware, dimly, that his mouth is hanging open, and that he has lost what little control over his facial muscles he’s had thus far.

Something horrific is happening inside him.

Something awful, unstoppable, huge—

—that will annihilate everything, any manner of logic, if he lets it, but he lets it. He must let it. He has no power to stop it.

Heedless of the Evil Process occurring inside Viktor, Jayce sighs, frustrated. He pinches the bridge of his nose. 

“Viktor, goddamn it,” he grits out. “Just when I thought I’d … of course I fucked it up. Listen, you. You don’t need to—I don’t—I don’t need you to love me back, okay?”

“You don’t—of course I love you,” Viktor chokes out, reaching his limit. 

It’s quiet and out of breath the way bad days are, the last of last strains, here at the limit of his tolerance for self-denial; the limit of his logic. The annihilation is over. His fingers are digging into the armrest and into his own bad knee, as though to hold himself  back from reaching for Jayce and devouring him whole. 

“I’ve always loved you.” 

Followed by a ringing silence.

It hurts, like he is pressing on all the sorest pressure points, every bruise his brace has ever pressed into his leg. It feels good.

And there Jayce is, staring at Viktor as though he has personally solved the key to devising HexTech—again.

“… You do?” he asks, sounding stupid with hope. 

“You cannot not have realised,” Viktor says, sounding, to his own ears, hysterical. 

“I don’t think you realise,” Jayce retorts, almost equally deliriously, “just how  fucking—obscure and difficult you are to understand sometimes.”

“Well, forgive me,” Viktor snaps, irrationally embarrassed, “for not making it easy to see through my … my most private troubles.”

“Troubles,” Jayce says, in disbelief.

A little abruptly, he pinches the bridge of his nose, and then he—laughs. 

Loud and carefree, and delirious again. 

“What are we talking about?” he asks, still laughing. “What have we been—how do you start a conversation by telling me you don’t want us to ever hook up again because I’m not casual enough to sleep with you without catching feelings and then somehow land on the fact that you—what, have the same feelings? For me? I’m—I’ve not misunderstood again, have I?”

“No,” Viktor says. “No, I—do. I do. You haven’t.” 

Jayce shakes his head, staring at him in amazement. “What did you even mean by the casual thing?” 

And Viktor hesitates. 

“I meant,” he says, slowly; and pushing past this last wall is neither easy nor any less scary. “I meant what I said: that it is not a good idea. I thought you might … like to see our friendship can evolve into a … different sort of relationship. I knew you … cared for me. But, Jayce. I am not a very viable option for … long-term planning. My past relationships, if you can call them that, have all been fleeting and transactional in nature. I am, like you have said, difficult. To parse, but also to cohabitate with. I have a set of … routines and rules I adhere to that I am not willing to compromise on. Sometimes I just … need to be left alone. I am not particularly kind. Not affectionate. And I have an … expiry date.”

When he looks up, agonised, the expression on Jayce’s face is, predictably, unbearable.

“Viktor, this is such bullshit I can’t even begin to address everything that—” Jayce cuts himself off, as though physically forcing the words down. 

Viktor half-wishes to sink back into his chair, sink back into his clothes. Crawl back to his bedroom and burrow in there, caught red-handed and sullen. Despite the morning chill, his skin feels like it’s burning all over. 

The exposure is over, and now he feels mostly foolish. Cards played. Skin peeled. The raw creature underneath, unburied, not fit for sunlight.

Jayce, meanwhile, is leaning forward—elbows propped on his thighs—looming closer and closer, with his sweat and cologne and his warmth, chasing Viktor until they are face to face, almost nose to nose.

“Okay,” Jayce says, staring him in the eyes. Viktor can’t bring himself to look away. “Okay. Listen to me. Are you listening, Vik?”

“Yes,” Viktor says, noiselessly.

“Okay,” Jayce is still staring directly in his face, but the defiance has softened, broken in half into something almost liquid. He reaches out, carefully, and takes Viktor’s face in both his hands, as though to pre-emptively stop him from looking away. It’s so slow and careful he almost shivers, and his eyelids twitch—he has to stop himself from shutting his eyes. 

“I don’t give a fuck about any of that,” Jayce says. “Okay? I just want to be with you. I don’t care about the particulars, or about exploring my options, or whatever the hell else you’ve made up in your ridiculous head. I’ll follow all your stupid rules. That okay with you?”

“Yes,” Viktor whispers.

Jayce’s face softens all the way. Then he gets up from the fruit crate, one arm hooked under Viktor like that is where it’s always meant to fit, lifting him up to his feet, towards sunlight. 

He kisses him on the mouth, again, in broad daylight.