There May Not Be Meaning, So Find One and Seize It

by FourOddApples

Summary:

“Caring about me is not exactly a good investment.”

--

Or:

Viktor is a dying man on a desperate search for legacy and purpose. Jayce Talis is the man who confronts him with what it really means to be alive.

Chapter 1

Notes:

Heads-up: This one does get a little heavy at times, particularly in the first half, but if you made it through canon you should be fine. I still want to mention some specific trigger warnings at the beginning of each chapter so no one gets surprised by anything!

TWs for the whole story include:

- discussion of death,
- mild/moderate blood,
- descriptions of respiratory illness.

TWs for this chapter include:

- mention of canon-typical suicide attempts by hovering at ledges,
- discussion of suicidal thoughts,
- very brief mention of an unhealthy relationship with alcohol,
- mentions of vomiting.

Story will update twice weekly—enjoy!

---

 

And there may not be meaning,

So find one and seize it,

Do not waste yourself on this roof.

Hear those bells ring deep in the soul,

Chiming away for a moment,

Feel your breath course frankly below,

See life as a worthy opponent.

Today of all days, see

How the most dangerous thing is to love.

 

(Gang of Youths – Achilles Come Down)

 

---

 

Viktor has always had a feeling that he wouldn’t grow very old.

He wouldn’t have been able to explain it if he tried.

Just that there has somehow always been this sense of creeping unease, as though there was something just around the corner that he couldn’t see, something that was just waiting for the right moment to devour him whole.

The few times he dared to really think about it he always disregarded it as simple paranoia born from a mind born in the undercity—where the idea of an early death is an ever-present reality, so of course he would have absorbed it as something of a promise, an inevitability. A pesky trauma response, nothing more.

But even if he didn’t consciously believe it—because as a man of science he knows that premonition does not exist—there has always been a part of him that could feel it come closer.

When he learned in his twenty-fourth year of life that he was dying, it was almost like a twisted kind of relief. Like the other shoe had finally dropped and he could relax, because his nameless pursuer was finally close enough to see its face.

And ultimately, its face looks like the few drops of blood that he spat into his handkerchief the morning of a routine medical appointment.

Banal, really.

There’s nothing heroic to it, nothing worth telling stories about, just another poor, unnamed soul from the gutters getting wiped out because don’t they all, without leaving behind so much as a mention in a history book.

Even footnotes are still only awarded to those who have done something worth noting.

And that is the truly maddening part of it all, the one that really keeps him up at night.

Because Viktor, at twenty-four, has precisely no reason to be relevant enough to write even a footnote about.

“You have so much to offer to the world, my dear boy,” the dean of the academy told him when he became his assistant, and at the time the sentiment was welcome and appreciated; it fed all the lofty hopes and dreams he had at twenty-one.

Now though, all Viktor can think about on those nights—the ones where he lies awake because just the sound of his own breathing makes him too anxious to sleep—is that he didn’t work hard enough to prove him right when he still could, that he let the years run through his hands carelessly and now he has nothing to show for it.

Now, when the beast finally catches up to him, he will be lowered into an unmarked grave, and in a few short decades of the dean’s immortal life he will snap his fingers trying to remember his name.

“Vincent!” he may say. “My assistant Vincent, back in the day. Poor boy. He was from the undercity, you know, died so young. I can’t recall of what exactly.”

And that’s somehow so much worse than dying itself.

 

---

 

Things change very abruptly when he meets a man named Jayce Talis.

Had someone asked Viktor that particular morning where he would see his day going, he may have said a variety of things.

None of them would have included floating just under the ceiling of Heimerdinger’s office, bathed in blue light, with real arcane magic suspending him weightlessly as though he’d never felt pain a day in his life.

And not alone, but along with quite possibly the single most brilliant and fascinating human being Viktor has ever come across, whose name he only ever barely heard in passing before today, with his bright eyes and his bright grin as he pushes a single cog through the air toward him.

Who tries an awkward impression of a somersault in his weightlessness and doesn’t quite manage the momentum, so he hangs head-down for a moment.

Who Viktor can’t take his eyes off.

Pages and pages of hand-signed notes that he came across almost by accident. The idea that he may have easily missed it if Heimerdinger hadn’t been too busy and instead sent him to collect the illegal research materials from the site of the explosion makes something cold run down Viktor’s spine.

He wouldn’t have felt inclined to attend the trial if the strange items and the almost manic scribbles left behind on the chalkboard hadn’t intrigued him.

If Jayce Talis himself hadn’t intrigued him.

He wouldn’t have been there to hear the man’s speech, his words animated, his gestures much too wild and open. Jayce wore his heart on his sleeve and he allowed everyone to look inside, right there on the council floor.

He seems foolish, Viktor thought then. Beyond privileged if he had somehow never had to learn how dangerous that kind of sincerity is. And also possibly absolutely insane, if his research is what he claims it is.

Viktor wouldn’t have immediately gone to see said research with his own eyes.

And, worst of all, he wouldn’t have climbed the stairs back up to that ruined study a few hours later, overflowing notebook in hand, to take another look at the scribbles on the board, and frozen in the door with only a second to analyze the scene in front of him.

He wouldn’t have been there to speak up and keep Jayce Talis from following an awful, desperate impulse that Viktor himself is only too intimately familiar with, and that thought is what truly scares him.

This man was so willing to throw it all away, his work and his own ingenuity with it, and Viktor would have lost the chance he felt at his fingertips before he had time to grasp it.

But all the ways in which things could have turned out differently only make this moment feel all the more exhilarating, all the more impossible.

It feels like just for a moment the beast has given up its chase on him and he gets just this one small respite, this tiny space where time and the concept of running out of it can’t touch him.

It coaxes a laugh, a real laugh out of him.

This right here is his invitation to history, floating all around him in tiny, brilliantly blue particles and quick zaps tickling his fingertips. This can change, on some level maybe already has changed the world, and the possibilities are endless.

It’s quite possibly the greatest gift he has ever received.

One day, Jayce may look back at tonight as that time when a stranger stepped in to save his life before he even knew his name, but he may never know just how desperately that stranger had also needed that lifeline thrown to him.

And as they slowly come down between the commotion of enforcers and members of the council all speaking over each other, and Jayce rushes forward so Viktor can lean on him instead of the broken pieces of his cane, he thinks that maybe strangers is not quite the right word anymore.

 

---

 

“You’re really sure this is okay?” Jayce asks and rubs the back of his neck as they enter the courtyard. It’s the second time tonight he has done that.

Viktor smiles, because they don’t know each other well enough for him to feel comfortable openly rolling his eyes.

“Yes, Jayce, quite. Your rooms got blown up, as I’m sure you recall, and I have a perfectly acceptable couch. Unless you were planning on sleeping in a broom closet?”

Jayce laughs and visibly relaxes. Good. He said the right thing.

“Fine, fine, point taken. Thank you.”

Viktor shrugs. “Eh, you’re the one substituting my cane.”

The walk to Viktor’s academy dorm is not far—like Jayce’s, his rooms are on campus, although in a different building. Still, Viktor is grateful for the arm he has been given to lean on.

It allows him to avoid either an undignified hobble or putting too much weight on his leg and cursing his tomorrow self with a nasty muscle ache that’ll take days to subside.

It’s the least he can do to offer the man a place to sleep for however few hours remain of the night, and if he were being entirely honest with himself he might even admit that part of the reason he offered is that he doesn’t want to cut their conversation short just yet.

This is the first time in his life that Viktor has felt so completely intellectually matched by someone he’s speaking to, to the point that it feels like his own mind has been expanded to two heads, and he doesn’t need to slow down or simplify.

It’s not really arrogance if it’s true.

He’s getting as much back as he’s putting in. And he’s simply not quite ready to set that experience aside yet and retreat to the dark corner of his empty dorm, where inevitably all the darker thoughts come back out to play. 

“No, seriously,” Jayce says, and he stops them a few steps before reaching the door to Viktor’s building. “I have…so much to thank you for, not just the…you know, letting me crash at your place.”

He hesitates, mouth working soundlessly as though trying to figure out what to say and how to say it. The silence stretches for a moment.

Then it stretches too thin and becomes uncomfortable.

Viktor makes an awkward “eh” sound before Jayce can say whatever it is that he’s trying to phrase in his head, and waves his free hand. “You’re welcome.”

And he really does mean that wholeheartedly.

Jayce nods and rubs the back of his neck again, for the third time, and it’s enough for Viktor to conclude that it’s a habit associated with embarrassment or nervousness.

It has absolutely no business being as endearing as it is.

By the time they arrive at Viktor’s dorm both of them are too wired to sleep right away, and Viktor is grateful for it. He feels like the small blue zaps of arcane power are still running over his skin, and Jayce doesn’t seem much more settled either. He hangs up his jacket, sits on Viktor’s small, run-down couch, immediately gets back up again and makes for the little kitchen corner.

Viktor lowers himself on the couch, carefully stretching his leg and pressing into the tight muscles with his fingertips, and points toward a cabinet.

“There should be drinks in there, if you want.”

Gods know Viktor hasn’t felt much like celebrating recently, so he might as well make use of the one occasion where he feels inclined to drink for any reason other than to forget.

Not that he does that.

Not often, anyway.

“Sure, great!” Jayce says, and a childlike giddiness is still audible in his voice.

There’s some rummaging around in the kitchen, and what Jayce ends up bringing back to the couch is an unopened bottle of cheap champagne. Viktor bought it for a birthday, or a promotion, but those occasions seem to pale in comparison to tonight.

“How about this?” Jayce says.

“Looks like a good start to me.”

 

---

 

Viktor is not entirely sure when and why things change that night—if it’s just the late hour, the sleep deprivation, Jayce’s narrow brush with death or his own dramatic shift in trajectory that has him reeling, or if it’s simply the rather impressive amounts of champagne (and then whiskey) they’ve had.

But as they sit and talk animatedly about their ideas and plans and even just pure tipsy dreams that even with the brightest minds in science wouldn’t be a possibility, Viktor begins to notice some things.

He finds himself making eye contact more often. He generally doesn’t like to do that, especially with someone he’s only known for a few hours.

He also finds Jayce sneaking more than passing glances at him when he thinks Viktor is busy refilling their glasses and not paying attention, and they burn on the side of his face, on his neck.

At one point Jayce gets up to get them some water (“Wouldn’t want to give us a hangover, right?”, as if they aren't a little past that point) and when he returns and sits back down on the couch, they’re suddenly noticeably closer than before and his knee is pressed to Viktor’s nonchalantly, as though coincidentally.

And Viktor is not stupid. Nor is he blind.

But this is also a terrible idea. As quick-witted and intriguing as Jayce Talis is, as much as he finds his eyes getting stuck on his lips for a second longer than they should as he talks, or tracking the movement of his gesturing hands, making him wonder, Viktor knows it’s a terrible idea.

He blinks. Jayce is staring at him.

For a moment Viktor fears he may have missed a question, but he doesn’t think Jayce even said anything, he just…sits there and stares. And gods, how does this man carry all his feelings and desires on his face so easily, so fearlessly. Viktor watches his eyes flicker down to his lips for just a second, almost as if by accident.

He swallows.

Jayce’s eyes follow the movement in his neck.

This is a terrible idea.

“Viktor.” His voice sounds low, deliberately even.

A terrible idea.

“Viktor, can I kiss you? I…I’d really like to, if you… May I?”

He should definitely say no, because this man is the key to Viktor having something to leave behind in this world and it’s the one thing he can’t afford to risk. And also because they’re sort of colleagues now and you definitely should not fuck your colleagues, no matter how badly you want to.

But gods, does he want to.

He should say no, but he doesn’t. He blames the alcohol when he thinks about it later.

Viktor has barely managed a nod when Jayce leans into him and slots their lips together and his hand comes to rest on Viktor’s leg to support his weight. His other flies up to fist into Viktor’s hair, nails scraping over his scalp, and Viktor could lose himself in this.

He makes a sound somewhere in the back of his throat that has a tongue pressing at the seam of his lips in response, and Jayce sighs into his mouth as he opens, his insistent fingers digging deep into Viktor’s thigh, and he gives his all into this kiss, because Jayce Talis apparently does everything he does with every single part of him.

And Viktor almost manages to let go.

Where Jayce’s body leans over him he presses into it, fingers splayed against his sides, arches up to meet him with a soft whimper that Jayce swallows down hungrily, and truly the only thing he wants is to forget, just for tonight.

To chase his pleasure on this beautiful, brilliant man’s tongue and the tips of his fingers and to give the same back to him, to give everything he has left, until he’s too spent for a single coherent thought before he falls asleep.

To worry about the consequences later and just give in to the hand that now hungrily wanders up on his thigh, the lips that leave his to instead press hot, messy kisses to his jawline, the side of his neck, the hollow of his throat.

Jayce is offering him the here and now, and all he wants is to be allowed to take it. It doesn’t have to mean anything, they can just write it off as a drunken mishap tomorrow.

But as Jayce’s other hand drops down to the buttons of his academy vest, Viktor can feel the familiar burning and stinging deep in his chest and freezes. It claws its way up his throat painfully, and Viktor at least manages to turn his head and raise his hand to cover his mouth in time before he coughs.

It’s only a short coughing fit, and when he opens his eyes there’s no blood on his hand, but it’s enough to cut through the haze and break the spell.

“Are you okay?” Jayce asks, his hand now rubbing soothingly on his thigh, from heated to comforting within the blink of an eye.

He wishes he could just say yes, just take this and have it not mean anything, but he knows it’s not that simple.

Viktor is a man with a looming expiration date, and those doe-like eyes in front of him are so genuine and so openly caring that it makes his chest hurt in an entirely different way.

Of course it would mean something.

The idea of dragging another person into his suffering, of passing it on like some fucked-up inheritance, makes him feel sick to his stomach—and, even worse, he’s seen the dark places that Jayce specifically can go to when he loses something that’s important to him.

And so the equation is simple, really, and it comes in the form of a sinking feeling as their eyes meet. Viktor can’t get around the part where he becomes something that Jayce will lose, sooner rather than later.

So the only thing he really can do is to make sure that he’s not something important when he does. As much as he can, at least.

He refuses for his legacy to be someone else’s pain, especially not the man that as of tonight he owes just about everything to.

And that means…a lot of things, but right now it means that Viktor draws his arms into himself and carefully shifts away from Jayce, trying to stare at his nose or his forehead instead of meeting his eyes.

The look on his face is something between confusion and worry and a brief flash of hurt as he too draws his hands back and sits back on the couch to give him space.

Viktor thinks he might be able to read every single tiny thought that passes through Jayce’s head in real time if only he looks hard enough at his face. It’s disorienting.

Jayce rubs at the back of his neck again.

“Sorry,” he says. “Too much? I’m really sorry, I—”

“No,” Viktor says. “Well, yes. I’m— I think this is not a good idea. I…would rather stop this here. I’m sorry.”

“Oh. Oh, uhm. Right, no problem! I get it.” Jayce smiles, and he still looks a little taken aback, a little disappointed and trying very hard to hide it, but also so kind and reassuring that it makes Viktor hurt. “Don’t worry about it.”

Viktor nods silently, because he doesn’t trust his voice to be sufficiently neutral right now, as unaffected as he needs it to be to sell his change of mind.

There’s a very long, very awkward moment of pause where Viktor watches Jayce fidget with his hands and his ears slowly turn red as he seems lost on what he’s expected to do now, until Viktor is the one who finally breaks it.

“I think,” he says, “we should probably head to bed. It’s quite late.”

“Yeah, sounds good! I’ll uh.” Jayce points toward the bathroom.

“Of course. I should have a spare toothbrush in the cupboard under the sink.”

Viktor’s eyes absently rest on a small wind-up boat that sits on his windowsill as he listens to the tap flick on and then off.

When Jayce comes back he offers to help him to the bathroom, but Viktor declines. He’s fine, it’s his own home.

And it is only a few steps to the bathroom, but even when he gets there Viktor can already feel his leg cramping—it’s been a very long day.

So he does allow Jayce to lend him an arm on his way to the bedroom.

“Good night,” Jayce says from the doorframe as Viktor sits down on his bed, and the smile on his face looks a little less awkward and more genuine. It does little to alleviate Viktor’s tension, but he appreciates it nonetheless.

He does his best to smile back, but it feels like a mask. “Good night, Jayce.”

The tension still doesn’t leave him when he takes off his leg brace and crawls into bed, and it doesn’t leave him when he shuts off the light, either.

Viktor lies still in the dark and quiet of his room and can’t stop himself from drifting, because he never can.

Even sleep-deprived and only half-coherent, his mind still manages to spin, but this time it’s not so much about the looming imagery of ticking clocks and blood and unmarked graves.

It’s mostly Jayce. His eyes, his hands, his lips, all the things he offered and Viktor can’t accept.

It’s knowing that it isn’t even about Jayce, it’s about the many things Viktor already loses just because he knows where he’s headed, the many ways in which he’s already forced to bury himself before he’s even dead.

It makes him want to scream, but what good will that do. It is what it is.

It takes more than two hours for Viktor to finally fall asleep.

 

---

 

It was supposed to only be a short visit to his doctor’s office, to have her check out the oddly persistent cough that had recently snuck up on Viktor in addition to the occasional one he’d always had. Maybe prescribe him a pill or a spray for it. No big deal.

When on the morning of the appointment he had rolled over in bed and had to blindly reach for his handkerchief because the cough in his throat felt so wrong and wet, and it had come away with little splatters of red, that was when Viktor had begun to feel uneasy.

He still hadn’t expected to spend several hours in the doctor’s office that day, to be sent on to the hospital the same day for further tests, and to finally have a doctor he had never met before sit next to him with a stack of papers and a grave expression.

“I’m sorry,” they said to him, and Viktor wondered if you still do feel sorry for every single patient when it’s your job to tell people they’re dying every day. Or if it gets too emotionally draining at some point and then you have to shut it out, but you still say the words and wear the face because you’re supposed to.

“Thank you,” he said, even though he had nothing to thank them for. The doctor flipped through his papers.

Degenerative lung disease, they told him. Inoperable. Caught too late. Probably been slowly eating his lungs for years.

“There are a few treatments we can try, but I have to be honest with you and say that none of them have shown consistent results in the past. There are always new things in development, though, and it’s important for patients to stay positive.”

Viktor didn’t feel very positive.

He went home that night with his first prescription of pills that would end up making him throw up every time he took one. He couldn’t sleep for a week, and during that first week he lost count of the amount of times his mind wandered to very, very dark places in the dead of night.

It was an odd feeling, to be on the razor’s edge between the blind, desperate determination of an animal to do anything and everything to live, to try every option there was even if they held little promise, even if they would make the remainder of his life hell…and just wanting to open his arms and scream, “fine, take me then!” and end it on his own terms.

During that first week, that first month even, Viktor oscillated between the two extremes almost on an hourly basis, and it was dizzying.

Ultimately, he settled on determination.

The first round of pills didn’t work, neither did the second. The third treatment was intravenous and he would need to be at the hospital for an hour a week.

He was greeted by the same doctor who had given him his diagnosis, and they smiled and told him not to give up yet, and they asked if he had anyone who they could send for when he was done and ready to be taken home.

Viktor hadn’t even told anyone in his life about his diagnosis, simply because there wasn’t really anyone left to tell, not since the woman who had raised him had succumbed to her old age a few years ago. And maybe that was the one part he was truly grateful for, at least his grief wouldn’t be contagious.

He shook his head.

He had to sign papers that confirmed that he had been given the express medical advice to have someone accompany him home after these treatments, and that he understood this and he chose to disregard it at his own risk.

And even on those days when the way home took him three times as long as it usually would and he had to stop halfway to sit down on a bench, or—sometimes—found himself stumbling to vomit in a bush, he couldn’t help but feel relieved that no one was there to see him.

The third treatment didn’t work either. But there were still a few more to try.

Notes:

Fun fact for this one: I re-wrote the "meeting Jayce" part multiple times because I just couldn't figure out how I wanted to go about it. Do I re-tell the entire canon scene and risk boring both myself and the reader by dialogue and action beats being something we already know? Do I skip it entirely and lose out on a lot of aspects of character study? Ultimately, this was a middle ground that was still enjoyable to write, and hopefully also enjoyable to read.

All that said, see you in the next one!

Chapter 2

Notes:

Starting off with the appropriate warnings again so no one gets surprised by any heavy topics:

Please heed the "TWs for the whole story" mentioned in chapter 1!

Additionally, TWs for this chapter include:

- discussion of self-destructive behavior
- discussion of traumatic childhood experiences (grief, neglect)
- visceral descriptions of fainting
- mentions of suicidal thoughts
- brief mention of misgendering (in the context of pre-transition)

The warnings may feel a little excessive, but I'd rather be a little too careful and make sure that everyone knows what to expect—take care of yourselves, friends!

---

 

When they wake up with a brimming headache in the early afternoon, Jayce and Viktor don’t talk about the night before.

Or rather, they do talk about their discovery and their plans for their work going forward, quite animatedly so, but they don’t talk about the end of the night, and Viktor is grateful not to revisit it. The line in the sand has been drawn and it seems that Jayce is happy to simply accept it and move on.

And if Viktor has any particular feelings about the situation, well…he doesn’t have to show them.

If he watches this man almost fall asleep and hit his head on the kitchen table before he’s had his coffee, and then try very hard to pretend that that didn’t just happen, Viktor can take the sudden urge that he gets to kiss him and simply store it away somewhere deep down where it can’t do any damage.

It’s all rather straightforward.

He’s well-practiced at controlling his less sophisticated impulses, prides himself on it, even. The feeling of wanting something and not being able to have it feels familiar like a childhood home; it's almost comforting in its simplicity, a clear rule, a fixed framework.

Plus, they have much more important matters to focus on.

Jayce doesn’t even leave to get a change of clothes or pick up anything else of his things before the two of them get caught up in discussions about which channeling vectors to use and how many oscillations are too many, because after all they did still cause a minor explosion last night.

Viktor goes to grab pens and sheets of paper before they’ve even finished their meager breakfast, each pushing their slices of buttered toast to the side to have more space on the table.

Last night, Viktor wondered if maybe Jayce’s genius was simply a case of one-time dumb luck. Of course he knew it wasn’t, he had seen the extent of his notes. But still, it just seemed too good to be true.

Now, with washed-out daylight filtering in through Viktor’s windows and making it all that much more real and tangible, they still keep up with each other just as effortlessly, and the thrum of potential feels almost physical, making them feel sharper, more alert. Potential that is finally just barely in reach.

Something that is his to take.

There’s this underlying franticness to the way Viktor speaks, as if he can’t get his ideas out fast enough, and in the way he scribbles on the paper in a script so messy he may have trouble reading it himself in the future.

He may have been handed an incredible chance here, but Viktor isn’t stupid—he knows scientific advancements take time. Jayce had been working on this very first step to creating arcane magic for years without success, although he had gotten close.

Viktor doesn’t have years, so he throws himself into the work with everything he has and hopes that it will somehow be enough.

 

---

 

From then on they settle into a certain rhythm.

Viktor quickly comes to understand that there’s no point in wasting too much time on things like sleep. Translating the initial spark of magic into something that is actually controllable and can be harnessed for specific things proves to be more difficult and time-consuming than expected.

It’s not like Viktor was ever very enamored with the idea of going home on time and prioritizing the part of his day where he lies in the dark thinking and waiting and praying for sleep, but with each failed experiment that needs to be reworked his disdain for it only grows.

It feels like betrayal that he should spend eight hours every day unconscious when his conscious moments are already numbered in the first place.

Jayce picks up on this quickly, if only because Viktor always gets to the lab before him and always leaves after him, if at all. He tries to coax Viktor into going home when he does, but he quickly has to learn that that is a lot of wasted effort—so he switches tactics.

Viktor frowns the first day that he comes into the lab to find a small sofa cushion on his chair. And Jayce already here. For a second he’s not quite sure which of the two should irritate him more, but the bewilderment wins out.

“What is this?”

“That’s a cushion.”

They do know each other well enough now for Viktor to feel comfortable rolling his eyes.

“Thank you. With my obvious foreign roots I was dying to learn what this common everyday object might be called,” Viktor says dryly. “What I mean is rather, what is it doing here?”

Jayce shrugs, trying to act nonchalant but failing miserably. “I just noticed you seem hellbent on sleeping in here, so I thought, you know. It wouldn’t hurt?”

Viktor scowls but says nothing. Perhaps this means that Jayce will at least stop pestering him about leaving the lab as early as he does.

Which, if he’s being entirely honest with himself, isn’t even early by any regular standards. But regular standards have never really worked for Viktor in the first place, and especially not now.

Either way, his hope ends up being mostly misplaced, because Jayce still regularly tries his best to get him out of the door at a reasonable hour. Viktor learns to tune it out, and eventually it becomes something of a dance, where Jayce says “it’s late” and Viktor waves him off and Jayce says “don’t stay too long” and Viktor says “good night”, and they both know the other’s responses, but they still do it anyway.

A certain rhythm.

At least Jayce looks less guilty when he comes in in the morning and finds Viktor with his head on the cushion and the cushion on his desk. And though Viktor doesn’t bother admitting it out loud, his back does hurt a little less than it did when he just fell asleep right on the desk itself.

Jayce also gets into the habit of rummaging around the little kitchenette of their lab if he arrives to find Viktor asleep, and by the time he stirs he usually has a steaming cup of sweetmilk next to his elbow.

He feels wildly uncomfortable with this the first few times, but Jayce won’t hear any of it. And so he sighs and says “thank you” and tries to sneak a glance the next time Jayce makes his coffee.

Once he feels like he has a decent idea of how he likes it made, Viktor makes sure to brew some when he’s still alone in the lab and leaves it on Jayce’s desk uncommented on, for him to find still hot when he arrives.

This too becomes a bit of a dance between them, where whoever manages to sneak the other’s drink under their nose wears a smug little smile and the other may mutter something along the lines of I’ll get you next time, but neither of them ever really acknowledges it out loud.

Overall, they settle into a shocking degree of familiarity, and it’s frankly disorienting. Viktor isn’t used to spending so much time with another person in his space, and he’s even less used to being so…okay with it.

Jayce is loud, but he shuts up when Viktor asks him to so he can have a moment to think. He also has a habit of absent-minded muttering, but so does Viktor, and he finds it rather easy to tune out when he needs to.

He’s messy and disorganized, but in a way that Viktor can understand—there’s a system to it. Notes haphazardly strewn around his workspace, but still grouped loosely by topic, or by order of importance. Once Viktor figures out the pattern it’s really no bother to find anything among Jayce’s things, and the mess begins to bother him less.

So really, all of Jayce’s irritating quirks end up being relatively easy to work around, and the whole arrangement of constantly being around each other is not nearly as frustrating as Viktor expected it to be.

They bounce passing thoughts off each other like a sounding board, and sometimes they pull a passable idea out of something that was supposed to be little more than background noise.

Those ideas also follow a certain pattern.

Viktor often proposes concepts that are oriented around whom they can help and how, the functionality of it, a project built systematically from the top down, from use-case to specific implementation.

Jayce tends to be the opposite, wherein he sometimes gets caught up in the possibilities of what they can achieve simply because they can, with little practical applicability. He can offer the extremely specific technical details of concepts that make Viktor stare at him and think, and who is going to need this?

And then Jayce squints or rubs the back of his neck and concedes the point, but they still take the mathematics of it and apply them to the next thing because they’re still brilliant, even if the first application is a little out of touch.

They complement each other rather well in that way—Jayce with his chaotic nature who can easily get off track, and Viktor with his attention to detail who can get stuck on them if he’s not careful.

All that is to say, they work together like a well-oiled machine, and the day-to-day routine they find themselves in is leaps and bounds more productive than anything either of them could have done alone, loathe as Viktor is to admit it.

There are really only two problems.

One, Jayce quickly notices that his coughing is more than just occasional, and at one point he gently brings up that maybe Viktor should go get that checked out. That hurts more than Viktor expected it would, but the lie comes to him easily.

Don’t worry about it. Permanently irritated airways after a nasty respiratory infection in childhood, often aggravated by allergies or dry air.

Nothing serious.

He’s thought about this one, because it was only a matter of time before it would come up.

Jayce believes him so easily and looks so relieved that Viktor knows he should feel terribly guilty, but all he can think of is grief spreading like a virus, infecting everything it touches, and he knows there’s nothing else he could say and forgive himself for.

It’s bad enough that Viktor knows exactly what’s coming—and knowing has already taken so many things from him.

If he told Jayce the full truth of his condition, all that would do is put him through the same process of disbelief, despair, trying everything until he has to accept that there is nothing he can do, and feeling unable to make the best of whatever time there is left that Viktor has spent the six months since his diagnosis steeped in.

More than once, Viktor lay awake at night during those six months wishing that he could instead just be hit by lightning whenever it’s his time to go, without any warning ahead of time. That way his every damn thought wouldn’t have to revolve around it all the time.

It’s not dying that’s so gut-wrenching, it’s knowing that it’s coming and feeling powerless to do anything about it other than waiting for a miracle drug that will never come.

Jayce doesn’t deserve that feeling, especially not when it wouldn’t change anything except maybe distract them both and slow their work down. To share his pain would only double it.

And it’s not entirely a lie either, because Viktor did deal with that exact problem he mentioned for many years, used to have a small device for it that would pump medication right into his airways. He wouldn't know if it still persists—it’s now rather overshadowed by different respiratory concerns. The inhaler hasn’t made much of a difference in months.

He’s long given up on wondering if that infection back then that refused to clear for over a month and left some permanent marks has had anything to do with his current predicament, or whether it’s just the undercity Grey reaping its long overdue tribute.

Knowing wouldn’t make much of a difference, so it doesn’t seem worth expending too much energy on.

The other, arguably more irritating problem with their routine is that despite his best efforts, Viktor himself is not immune to distractions and impairment of judgment.

The more sleep-deprived he gets, the more glaringly obvious it becomes that Jayce is still just as brilliant, and fascinating, and sincere as he was that first night. That his idiosyncracies are not just tolerable but, occasionally, actively endearing.

And that Viktor still wants to kiss him.

Every single time the man has that huge grin he gets when they solve a particularly tough equation.

Or when he pulls his whole face down with his hand in frustration as if trying to slide it off his skull, and then immediately brightens when Viktor makes a suggestion that could fix the problem.

Or when he puts his hand on Viktor’s shoulder so casually, almost as if it belongs there, and Viktor, instead of shying away from physical touch as he usually would, leaves it there uncommented on. Leans into it, even though he knows he shouldn’t.

Or sometimes even just when Jayce does nothing but walk through the door in the morning and look way too happy to see him, as though Viktor is the best part of his day.

When just any smile or passing touch at all becomes enough to derail his train of thought, that’s when Viktor realizes that he might be in way deeper than he thought.

 

---

 

One morning, just as they are getting ready to begin testing their new rune matrix, Jayce pointedly clears his throat from somewhere behind him.

Viktor turns, and for a moment he can’t quite process what he sees. He stares.

“I uh…didn’t want to ruin the surprise, so I didn’t take any measurements, but…I hope it fits you anyway.”

When Viktor says nothing, the words keep tumbling out of him, increasingly nervous.

“Like, I know you got a new cane after your old one broke, obviously, like…you have one, but um. You said it was a cheap replacement, and that it wasn’t as nice as your old one, so I thought…”

Viktor blinks. “You got me…a new cane?”

“Made it, actually,” Jayce says and awkwardly rubs at the back of his neck. “At the forge.”

For a moment, Viktor has no idea what his face is doing, and it terrifies him, because it may be revealing precisely all the many different ways in which the gesture breaks his fucking heart.

Because of course Jayce would hear him complain about his replacement cane one time and immediately decide to do something about it. Of course he wouldn’t think it through and just start working without any measurements—he probably only realized that there are a variety of sizes that a cane can be after he already began the process.

And of course, Viktor is sure, he would insist on doing it all over again if it turns out this one doesn’t fit. And he would do all of it with a smile, happy just to be of help.

The cane is truly beautiful, and it does look to be the right size to fit his height.

And along with that comes the treacherous thought of, I won’t be around to use it for very long.

Several seconds pass before he feels like he has his expression under control again and trusts his voice enough to speak.

“That is very kind of you. That, eh, wasn’t necessary.”

Jayce seems to deflate a little at that and Viktor winces internally—wrong thing.

“I’m sorry, what I mean,” he says, “is that you didn’t have to do that, but of course I appreciate it. Thank you.”

You don’t make things for people who are supposed to not be important to you.

“Really, no problem at all!” Jayce says and a smile returns to his face.

Where did I go wrong for you to consider me someone you would invest this much of your time and effort in?

“Do you want to try it?”

You don’t know just how much of a waste it is.

And when Jayce hands him the new cane and Viktor leans on it experimentally, Jayce looks at him with an expression so hopeful that he reminds him of a puppy waiting to get a treat for doing its trick correctly.

Hoping for approval, for a smile or a kind word.

Something seizes in Viktor’s chest, grips painfully and doesn’t let go.

There’s a sense of unnamed fear that creeps its way up his throat that he needs to forcefully swallow back down. Fear of what, he doesn’t even know.

Jayce’s eyes flicker between Viktor’s face and his hand on the cane and back again, and then they seem to just ever so briefly linger on his lips.

All of a sudden Viktor feels like they’re standing way too close.

Jayce’s eyes meet his and he can’t seem to look away. What he finds on Jayce’s ever-honest, cracked-wide-open face is the kind of expression that Viktor would have killed to see, were the circumstances anything, anything but what they are.

Jayce looks like a school boy with a crush.

And that? Now that is just fucking cruel.

“Thank you,” Viktor says again, and his tone sounds awfully stiff even to his own ears. He takes a step back, aided by his new cane. Jayce’s expression shifts to something hesitant, uncertain. Viktor can’t bear to look at it, so he turns around and picks up his notes again, hoping it’s a clear enough signal to get back to work.

His chest stings, and he coughs once out of habit, trying to expel it, but this particular stinging stubbornly remains.

Clearly he has not been keeping enough of a separation between them, and way too many things have slipped through the cracks. He was careless, assumed that as long as he didn’t explicitly fan any romantic flames there was nothing to worry about—that he was the only one who hasn’t entirely forgotten that drunken impulse the first night they met.

A gross oversight.

He will need to be more careful from now on with how close he allows Jayce to be. It may be uncomfortable, but that is a minor inconvenience he can’t afford to pay any mind to.

His whole life, Viktor has never allowed himself to be a slave to his emotions, and he’s sure as hell not going to start at five to twelve.

 

---

 

Viktor was ten when his father died, and eleven when his mother did.

During that one year, Viktor watched her erode from the inside.

After the accident in the fissure mines that took his father away, Viktor tried to turn to his mother with his confusing feelings of loss and grief—except he quickly had to learn that he had to deal with it alone.

She had no space for his pain, her own loomed so large that it eclipsed everything else.

At first, she didn’t leave her bed for weeks, and Viktor didn’t know what to do, begged her to get up, to tell him how he could help.

Eventually, he went to the market alone and sold all the various items that he had been tinkering with in order to have money to bring home food for them both. It was a tall order for a ten-year-old, but he didn’t know what else to do. He couldn’t let her starve, even though she told him she wanted to more than once.

Thankfully, folks in the fissures weren’t picky with their odd jobs, and so when Viktor had nothing left to sell, he was sometimes given broken pocket watches and other small machinery to fix for a little coin.

He was small and he couldn’t run, so when people decided they didn’t want to pay after all, there was nothing he could do. There were a few people though, mostly shop owners who Viktor knew pitied him, who he knew would generally give him the coin that was promised, so he tried to get most of his work from them. Sometimes they even held items back for him that they could have just as well fixed themselves.

Viktor appreciated that more than he could have ever put into words.

It wasn’t nearly enough for one person to scrape by, let alone two, but the old lady at the food stall down the road knew his mother, and she regularly gave him meals for free. She handed the pots to him across her counter with a smile and an endlessly kind look in her eyes.

That was rare to see down here.

After those first few weeks, Viktor’s mother got her feet under her enough to return to her work at least some days. A very small flow of money came back in, and though Viktor still tinkered with small items here and there when he could get his hands on them and sold them, he eventually also allowed himself the luxury of occasionally keeping a few spare parts. He spent the next several weeks building a single mechanical toy boat, testing and re-testing it, swapping out parts until it worked.

He kept it all for himself when it was finished and hid it away under his bed where no one could touch it.

Although it may have looked like his mother was getting better on the outside, Viktor could see that it wasn’t really true.

She went to work regularly enough, and she made him food most days, but when she got home she went straight back into her room without so much as a word to him, and she didn’t often bother to sit down and share the meal she’d made.

She got even thinner than fissure folks already were, and there was something dead in her eyes that scared Viktor and sometimes even made an appearance in his nightmares.

It seemed that no matter what he did, he was powerless to bring her back to life. Like his father had taken some essential part of her with him to his grave and there was nothing left but a poor imitation of who his mother was supposed to be.

And somehow it was so much harder to grieve the parent that was still here than the one that was truly gone.

She died a few months later of an illness that the fissure doctor said shouldn’t have been fatal. Awful luck, so sorry for your loss, kid.

Viktor knew that it was because she didn’t care to fight. The first thing that offered a chance to take her away, she had welcomed with open arms and left him here. He would never be able to prove that, of course, but he knew.

He never forgave her for it.

It was a few days after news of his mother’s death had made the rounds in the fissures and whispers about what will happen to the little girl with the cane had begun, that a soft knock sounded on the door.

Viktor had been sitting in this tiny but suddenly way too large house, alone, with his knees pulled up to his chest, doing little but quietly wondering how long it would be at this rate until he followed both his parents to the grave.

When after the third knock he finally, carefully, opened, the old woman from the food stall down the road was already two steps away from the door, as though she had resigned herself to not being let in and was getting ready to leave.

She carried a tin pot in her hands and a sad smile on her face as she greeted him.

“I’m so, so sorry for your loss, kid,” she said. “No one your age should have to go through this.”

Viktor didn’t respond, only stared at his shoes.

“I brought you a pot of carrot soup, I figured…well, I figured that you could use it.”

“Thank you,” Viktor said quietly as he carefully took the pot from her outstretched hands, because that’s just what you say when someone offers to delay your inevitable death of starvation.

He kind of understood how his mother must have felt when she said she would welcome it.

The old woman hesitated for a long moment, fidgeting with her now empty hands as if unsure how to phrase what she was trying to say.

“Look, if…and I know that that doesn’t make it better, and it’s no replacement, and I wouldn’t expect…but if you ever wanted a place to stay…well, you know where to find me.”

Viktor blinked up at her and she had the same kind eyes as ever, and after a moment’s pause he simply repeated “thank you,” took the pot of soup inside and bid her goodbye.

There was enough soup for three days, and that was about as long as it took for him to make up his mind. It wasn’t like he really had anything left to lose.

And so, the day after he finished the soup, he approached her food stall with the empty tin pot in hand and asked if her offer still stood. She smiled so brightly that he had no idea what to do with it and wasn’t really sure why he was tearing up.

Viktor had never felt so grateful to another person in his life and he never would again to quite this degree.

Her name was Margo, and with this she quite literally saved his life—as well as possibly the last shred of sanity that he had left, because the tiny home that she took him to was warm and loving and alive, and she accepted Viktor into it without question as if he were her own child.

It never completely healed the wound left behind by his parents, but it gave him something to hold on to.

It gave him someone to proudly show his wind-up toys to when he finished them, someone to ask for help when he realized he hated the things that were happening to his body and giving him all the wrong shapes, and someone to hug him tightly to her chest when he got the letter of acceptance for the academy two days after his nineteenth birthday.

“I know you’ll do fantastic, Viky,” she whispered into his hair.

He only nodded and smiled. She had helped him pick his name, and it still sounded special every time she said it.

“It’s a crime that that sharp mind of yours hasn’t been recognized before, but this”—paper rustled behind his back, the acceptance letter—“is your chance to prove it to them. You’re going to change the world someday, love. I know you will.”

Viktor hugged her tighter and hoped with every fiber of his being that she was right. He pressed a kiss to the top of her head and promised that if he were to change anything, it would be the conditions in the undercity. It would be the state of his home.

He felt sick leaving her behind, even though he promised to visit whenever he could.

There was a special kind of survivor’s guilt that came with escaping the slums and not being able to take everyone else with him. With sitting in a well-lit, heated dorm, with the freshly healing scars of a surgery that he paid nothing for because full-time enrollment at the academy secured all his medical costs.

With never needing to worry again where his food would come from.

Viktor did his best to channel that guilt into determination instead.

The only thing he had taken from home that day when he had left it behind as an eleven-year-old child had been his toy boat.

 

---

 

Viktor can feel when he starts going downhill, even before it is outwardly obvious. He can feel his energy begin to dwindle and he watches the bags under his eyes get more apparent.

Jayce mentions it to him one morning, asks him gently if he has been sleeping okay.

The open concern in his voice makes Viktor’s throat close up.

“I’m fine,” he says, and the smile he gives is carefully measured. “New undergraduate students, you know how it is. They can be rather loud.”

Jayce nods, but he doesn’t look entirely convinced.

He has to swap out his white handkerchief for a dark one, because the tiny splatters of blood become more and more frequent—were they a less than once a month occurrence until recently, Viktor now begins to see them every week, then multiple times a week. If it happens in the lab, he presses the handkerchief firmly to his mouth and scrunches it up, slips it back into his pocket immediately so Jayce can’t notice any stains, runs his tongue over his teeth before he speaks again.

It’s an imperfect system, but as long as he’s very careful with it, it works. If ever Jayce mentions his increase in coughing, he only shrugs apologetically. Allergy season, I told you it aggravates the issue. I’m very sorry if it disturbs you.

A few days later, he notices a small, whirring brass device in the corner of their lab that hasn’t been there before that periodically spits a fine mist of water into the air—a humidifier of some sort.

Jayce doesn’t say anything about it, and neither does Viktor. It should be heartwarming, but all the quiet gesture makes him feel is a little nauseous.

Viktor tries his best to disentangle himself from every part of Jayce’s day that he doesn’t need to be in.

He declines invitations to eat lunch together, he declines Jayce walking him back to his rooms on the rare occasions that he does leave the lab on time, and he repositions the mask that he has accidentally allowed to slip in Jayce’s company. Polite smiles, carefully thought out words, minimal engagement with topics that aren’t work.

Viktor sees how much it hurts him, because Jayce Talis can’t hide a single thing he feels, but he thinks this way at least Jayce loses him in stages.

In bite-sized, manageable chunks.

It’ll be easier to deal with when he’s gone if they haven’t been close in a while, especially now that the ticking in the back of Viktor’s mind seems to become ever louder and he can feel himself get ever weaker.

It was his careless mistake to even let them get that close in the first place, but he tries his best to course-correct.

Were Viktor any other man in any other situation, he wouldn’t be able to stand it.

Here is the person he has to watch himself slowly fall in love with, still, even through all of his best efforts to the contrary, like a landslide that can’t be stopped once it’s begun and all you can do is watch it lay waste to things in its path.

And he has to work with the man day-in, day-out.

As close to twenty-four hours a day as he can get, because Viktor can feel the sand of the hourglass running through his fingers. And in a strange way that is almost a blessing, because it means that that stubborn little heartache gets easily overshadowed.

Pages upon pages of diagrams are scattered across his desk of early warning systems that can be installed in the fissure mines to detect instability hours before a mine begins to collapse.

And Viktor needs to get a prototype working, needs at the very least a real proof of concept before he keels over—because he has a promise to keep and the woman he made it to is no longer around to apologize to if he can’t, and because this is what he wants to be remembered for.

He’s slipping from a hurried franticness into an obsession that will consume anything in its path, and Viktor knows it.

He doesn’t want to be the man who was a stepping stone for others to do great and beautiful things. He wants to be the man who does them, he wants his name on this thing that will save hundreds of lives in the decades to come.

At this point it feels like a desperate sprint that hurts in every single bone in his body.

Nights get a lot longer than they already were as the weeks go by, sleep gets ever more infrequent. He leans heavier on his cane and some days he wishes he had a full under-arm crutch instead, because holding himself up becomes more and more difficult. Sometimes Jayce asks him in the evening when he’s last eaten and Viktor couldn’t tell him if he tried.

Eventually, he begins to avoid mirrors, because what he sees shakes him a little too much.

He looks to himself like a man with one foot already in the grave.

Jayce seems uncertain with their shift in dynamic, unsure where he stands and how he is meant to act, and although he tries at first to adjust to this strange approximation of professionalism that Viktor does his best to establish, soon the façade slips.

And then Jayce looks at him with that worried, anxious crease in his forehead and way too much blatant emotion in his eyes, and Viktor wants to scream, what more do you want me to do?

He can’t avoid Jayce, because he can’t give up working on Hextech, and lying to him is becoming steadily more difficult with every passing day. The idea of telling him the truth makes him want to hurl, and at this point he couldn’t tell him the truth even if he wanted to.

Because this is where they truly clash.

Because as Viktor visibly deteriorates more and more, Jayce tries more and more to offer his help, to ask what’s wrong, if he did something wrong, and the more he does the more Viktor draws back.

He knows that Jayce is just worried, that he means well. He can see the open fear in his eyes when Viktor sways on his feet like a leaf in the wind, when he loses weight off his bones and color from his skin, and he knows it’s only that fear and growing desperation that makes him pushy.

And still he can’t control the way he freezes up under this much pressure, the way he automatically shrinks away from it.

He is not the type of person who can be forced into a confrontation he doesn’t want, who can be forced into anything he doesn’t want, because he’s worked too damn hard to build any sense of autonomy for himself, and having his boundaries ignored makes something deep inside him violently clamp shut.

It reminds him viscerally of being a small, frail child who can’t run and can’t fight back, and who has spent his entire life at the mercy of those stronger than him. And because he can’t run and he can’t fight, he freezes, and he clings to his silence like a lifeline. Clings to his work because every minute of this nonsense takes away another minute from the one thing that is truly important, and he can’t spare minutes anymore.

It gives him the mental image of being a rotting, mangy dog sinking its teeth into a scrap of food that someone is trying to rip away by force. He holds on, even if it will break all of his teeth from his jaw.

One night, Jayce gets frustrated enough to raise his voice.

“I’m not fucking blind, you know!”

“Jayce,” Viktor says without turning around, his tone a quiet warning.

“Are you just too damn stubborn to ever let anyone help you? Does it hurt your pride, or your ego?”

Viktor doesn’t respond, eyes trained on the notes in front of him.

Give me space, he wants to say. Back off and let me breathe. Don’t yell at me. But no words make it past his lips.

“Could you please just stop ignoring me?”

Stop pushing me.

“Fuck,” Jayce mutters. “Do you— Do you think I’m stupid, do you think I don’t notice that something is clearly going on?”

He sounds as lost and scared as Viktor feels.

Viktor just sits at his desk with his jaw set, his shoulders tense. He feels like a small animal playing dead, and the painful irony of the imagery is not lost on him.

There’s a pause where all he can hear is Jayce pacing back and forth behind him, and eventually a hand comes down lightly on his shoulder. Viktor flinches hard enough to hit his elbow against the edge of his table, and Jayce pulls his hand back as though he’s been burned.

A long moment passes in tense silence.

“You’re going to get yourself killed,” Jayce says quietly behind his back. Viktor squeezes his eyes shut. “If you’re going to run yourself into the ground, fine. Be my guest. But…”

There’s a small, almost imperceptible sniffling sound.

“Don’t expect people to help you when you try this fucking hard to shut them out.”

The sound of keys jingling.

“I think I’m done for today. Good night, Viktor.”

Viktor doesn’t move again until he hears the lab door slam shut and aggravated footsteps fade away down the hallway. He presses the heels of his hands into his eyes, willing back the tears that he feels burning there.

And so he’s alone in the lab when things inevitably come to a head.

It’s way past midnight, several hours after Jayce stormed out on him, and Viktor knows he should get ready to head home. There’s something rapidly beginning to pound behind his temples that makes it hard to focus on the pulsating blue crystal in front of him. He really should go home.

He sighs and leans back, and for a moment he can feel his balance waver, even though he’s sitting down. He pauses, sets the pen down, something cold creeping up his back. Something swims in and out of his vision like a blind spot.

Viktor can hear his own breathing in his ears—is it getting louder because he’s paying attention to it or is it actually genuinely getting louder—and then on his next inhale there’s an awful, wet rattling sound deep in his chest that feels like it chokes him, and the cough that rips its way out is violent. Blood sprays on the table in front of him in thick splotches and everything swims out of focus.

That’s when the ice-cold fear sets in.

He grips the table as though he can hold on to it, as though if he just digs his fingers in deep enough nothing can rip him away, even as he splatters way too much blood over his work and it just won’t stop until he can’t breathe through the horrible wet feeling, like he’s drowning in his own body. He can feel his head get fuzzy and his entire vision go dark, and still he clings to the table.

I’M NOT DONE, he wants to scream, but he doesn’t even manage a whisper. Something thrashes inside him like a wild animal trapped in a cage, but his own limbs feel thick and heavy and dead as he feels his fingers slip off the table.

His balance tips over and the whole world tilts.

Notes:

I have spent more time than I probably had any business doing thinking about the intricacies of Viktor’s lung condition. In this one, the idea is that he developed asthma in the aftermath of an infection (which happens sometimes, especially in kids) and pre-existing asthma also raises the risk for future respiratory complications later on in life.

So, to answer your question, Viktor: no, your occasional dry air induced coughing and wheezing didn’t directly cause your lungs to eat themselves, but it also probably didn’t help.

This chapter actually has its own theme song apart from the rest of the fic's theme, because who's going to stop me. It's one of my favorite songs ever, so if you listen to it you officially have all my love!

 

Allocai - Don't Find Out

Chapter 3

Notes:

Warning, here there be explicit sexual content! Note that in this one, Viktor is on hormones and has had T-anchor top surgery and a hysterectomy. Not all of these are referenced explicitly, but I still wanted to mention it. His body is consistently referenced with masculine or neutral descriptors and terms only.

As always, trigger warnings for the whole story from chapter 1 apply here as well!

Additional TWs for this chapter include:

- consensual power dynamics
- detailed description of panic attacks & mild mental breakdowns

That's it, the rest is soft. Enjoy, and see you in the end notes!

---

 

Isn’t it strange, how dreams are something you don’t even realize is happening, sometimes until you’re deep enough in them that they could have already filled hours at the theater?

You don’t ever notice the moment a dream starts, at most you realize at some point in the middle of it that it’s been going on. Or you wake up in the morning and only realize you were dreaming because you suddenly aren’t anymore.

Or you don’t even remember at all.

 

---

 

There are distant, muffled voices in his dream.

There are a lot of other things too, but at some point the rest of it slowly begins to fade away and the voices gradually feel more real, tangible.

They flicker in and out, until eventually they stay, like a radio tuned into the station, but they still remain too fuzzy to catch any words. There appear to be two voices in a deliberately quiet conversation.

It’s too difficult to focus on, so he doesn’t.

There’s also a faint whirring sound that repeats in a consistent, up-and-down pattern. The clear regularity of it feels soothing.

The voices go silent. For a brief moment, only the whirring remains and he wonders if he’s alone.

Then, one set of footsteps nearing. Dragging. Heavy.

Ever so slowly, other senses begin to wake up and also feel more and more real, doing their own odd little dance of fading in and out, solidifying. The feeling of lying down. Something resting above his lip, tickling his nose. The scent of disinfectant.

The first few times his eyelids flutter are completely involuntary, he barely even notices apart from the sudden intrusion of light. A moment passes and he tries again, consciously this time. They flutter, and then they open, and then they blink a few times because the light is overwhelming.

It takes a few seconds to adjust, and the first thing he sees is an unfamiliar ceiling.

“Viktor?”

Right, that is his name.

A few more blinks, and then Viktor can move his head. A bed underneath him, he figured that much. Not his bed, though. A contraption to his left that supplies oxygen through the breathing tube in his nose; that’s where the quiet whirring is coming from.

And Jayce.

On a small, uncomfortable-looking chair next to his bed, Jayce, wide-eyed and immediately getting to his feet, taking two steps toward him and hunkering down by his side.

Jayce, with that awful, awful crease down the middle of his forehead and an even worse red rim around his eyes.

He takes one of Viktor’s hands between both of his own.

“Viktor! You’re awake.”

“Barely,” Viktor croaks and tries to clear his throat.

Jayce laughs. It sounds anxious like the fluttering of a tiny bird. For a long moment he just sits there, running a thumb over Viktor’s knuckles.

Viktor is hardly awake enough to fully think about why Jayce is here, why he is here (less in this room, more at all, still), let alone why Jayce is cradling Viktor’s hand between his own as if it’s the most precious thing he’s ever touched.

Then his thumb stills.

“The, uhm…The doctors, they said…”

Viktor sighs and closes his eyes. “Yes.”

Jayce returns to lightly fidgeting with his hand.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

Viktor doesn’t respond. His eyes are still closed, and he doesn’t open them now. They feel way too tired and heavy and he doesn’t think he can bear to see the look on Jayce’s face.

Plus, maybe if he just stays still like this, Jayce will think he’s simply not strong enough to stay awake yet, that he has fallen asleep again, and then he doesn’t have to have that awful conversation yet. It’s a coward’s way out, really, and Viktor knows it, but then he’s gotten rather used to the coward’s way recently, hasn’t he?

He also knows he probably had some lie ready for this question, but he can’t remember it now and frankly he doesn’t want to.

He just wants to lie here, with Jayce absent-mindedly running his fingers over the back of his hand—because a truly sleeping man wouldn’t move his hand away, right, so it’s really for the best, it secures his disguise, it’s part of the plan if he just lets him keep it. It would be irresponsible not to, really.

And so he leaves it there.

Both of them are silent and still, no movement except for the minuscule tracing of patterns on Viktor’s hand, and the only sounds in the room the continuous sound of the oxygen machine and their quiet, quiet breathing.

It’s a matter of only minutes until he truly falls asleep again.

 

---

 

Viktor discharges himself from the hospital the following evening, against all medical advice and despite Jayce’s protests.

He’s endured several tests, including one that shoved a tube down his throat for a tissue biopsy. Although he was mercifully asleep for it, he feels even more hoarse now than he did before. The pain medication they’ve given him is a blessing, though, and it makes him feel better and more himself than he has in weeks—and that’s more than enough for him to get restless in this place.

Jayce still tries to talk him out of it.

The next time this happens will be the last, the doctors were perfectly clear about that. Viktor knows that.

The only reason he’s still alive and breathing right now is that Jayce came back into the lab in the dead of night and found him there, collapsed on the floor with his blood splattered gruesomely all over their workstation and only the faintest remaining pulse.

And just like Jayce after Viktor saved his life, Viktor doesn’t know what to say, how to even approach thanking him for something as inconceivable as this.

There really aren’t any words that would feel sufficient.

And so they haven’t talked about it.

They haven’t talked about much of anything, really.

The air has been tense, and a million unsaid things have been hanging around them suspended in it like heavy droplets, and neither of them have quite known what to do with that, so their conversations have been rather minimal.

But despite Viktor trying to wave him off, Jayce stayed at the hospital the entire almost two days that Viktor was there.

His mother came by at one point and handed him something wrapped in thin, crinkly sheets of paper. Viktor could only see them briefly through the tiny gap of the door when they got up and hugged, and she laid a kiss on Jayce’s forehead.

Viktor looked away.

A minute later, Jayce re-entered his room, brightened a little when he saw that Viktor was awake, and sat on the foot of his bed instead of in his chair. Easily, as though he belonged there.

“My mom brought us sandwiches,” he said. “I asked your doctor, they uh…they said that as long as you eat slowly, you’re fine to have one?”

Viktor didn’t feel particularly hungry, but that anxious crease hadn’t left Jayce’s forehead even once since he’d first woken up, and he wanted desperately to see it gone. So he took a sandwich, and he ate it very slowly and carefully, and he emphasized how much he appreciated it and how much better he felt after it, and he hoped it was believable.

Jayce’s forehead smoothed over with relief for at least the next twenty minutes, until he got too lost in thought again.

It was more than worth the faint waves of nausea that Viktor felt afterwards.

Truthfully, Viktor only remembers bits and pieces of the first day—he spent the majority of it fading in and out of sleep, partly from the pain medication they gave him, and partly from the sheer exhaustion that seemed to permeate every bone in his body, that had slowly been building there for months and was now taking its revenge rather viciously.

He does remember the important things though.

He remembers that every single time he woke up, Jayce was there.

He also remembers that Jayce seemed to use any excuse to be close, to touch him.

He put his hand on Viktor’s forehead to check if he had a fever at least six times over the course of the day, he held his shoulder to support him when Viktor sat up to drink water, and while he was awake Jayce always sat on the edge of his bed instead of in his chair to talk to him.

Sometimes his hand inched over towards Viktor’s, but he didn’t quite dare to take it again now that he was properly awake.

Viktor used the excuse of his situation to not shy away from any of those touches. If he ever leaned into them at all, it was only ever so slightly—plausible deniability.

Selfish, he knew that.

Of course he knew that.

But Viktor barely had the energy to stay awake for more than half an hour at a time that first day—he didn’t have the strength to fight. Not Jayce, not his own body, and certainly not his mind.

At least that’s what he told himself.

The coward’s way out.

Despite Viktor’s protests, Jayce insists on at least walking him home when they first set foot outside of the hospital doors and the unpleasant lighting is replaced by the soft glow of the evening sun. Viktor immediately finds himself breathing a little easier, despite leaning heavily on the under-arm crutch his doctor insisted he take home.

“You’re already not supposed to be out of the hospital,” Jayce says. “I’m not gonna let you— I just…don’t want anything to happen to you on your way home.”

You can say ‘die’, Jayce, Viktor wants to say, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t want to see what that would do to Jayce’s face.

“Fine,” he says instead.

Because he really doesn’t have the energy to spare on arguing.

And because there’s a quiet, treacherous little part of him that doesn’t want to be alone and uses his momentary weakness to its fullest advantage.

So he sighs and he lets Jayce take the twenty-minute walk with him and lightly hover a hand over the small of his back the entire time. Not touching but ready to catch him if he stumbles. Viktor says nothing about any of it. The walk ends up taking closer to thirty minutes.

The silence gets heavier the closer to campus they get, and by the time they’re climbing the first stairs of Viktor’s building he feels like it’s physically weighing on his chest, making it hard to breathe in a rather different way than the one he’s become so painfully accustomed to.

The final few steps up to his floor have Viktor wheezing quietly, and by the time they reach his door they both pause, and he makes no move to open it.

A long, tense moment passes in which neither of them even looks at the other.

Waiting.

Hesitating.

“Can I…” Jayce starts carefully. “Do you want me to come in? I could…help you make dinner?”

“Supervise me and make sure I eat, you mean?”

Jayce winces. “Viktor, please. You know I don’t mean it like that. I just…” He trails off, and from the corner of his eye Viktor sees him shrug a little helplessly.

Has Jayce always been this much taller than him, or have the events of the past forty-eight hours somehow shrunk him?

Viktor doesn’t say anything. He knows he should, he knows his job here should be to say, no, thank you, and send Jayce home. To sleep and eat the bare minimum he needs to and then be back in the lab as early as he can in the morning.

It’s an awful tightrope—knowing that the lack of rest clearly contributed to his collapse, but also knowing that the more time he spends away from his work now the more his chances dwindle to finish a prototype before his heart gives out for good. A catch-twenty-two that can only really end right where it started, a vicious cycle he can’t escape from.

A warm hand very lightly comes to rest on his shoulder—soothing, as though Jayce can hear his downward spiral—and Viktor closes his eyes. Gods have mercy on his selfish, selfish soul.

“Fine, come in,” he says quietly and unlocks the door.

Jayce does indeed help him make dinner, and Viktor doesn’t protest, even though he can still barely get anything down. He also offers to draw him a bath, and Viktor is too tired to protest even that, even though the sheer tenderness of the gesture makes him feel sick to his stomach and immediately regret that dinner.

Jayce asks if he can look through Viktor’s bookshelf in the meantime.

Viktor blinks. “Of course you can,” he says.

The idea of saying no to such a simple request seems laughable, given the million and one ways that he’ll be in Jayce’s debt for the entirety of whatever is left of his life.

“The, ah, top shelf is only books in my mother tongue, so…I’m afraid those will not be very informative to you.” He tries a small, tense smile, and the carefully hopeful expression he gets in return is too much to bear. So he quickly shuts the bathroom door and allows the warm water to soothe his aching bones and the slight scent of mint to clear his raw airways.

By the time he returns in his sleep clothes and with damp hair tickling his ears where it curls at the ends, he finds Jayce on the couch, looking at the mechanical boat on the windowsill. His brow is furrowed in concentration, as though he’s trying to coax this little thing’s secrets out of it just by looking at it.

There are several books on the coffee table, open on different pages, as if he’s flicked through all of them and found none interesting enough to focus on. Two of them are in Viktor’s language, and he’s too tired to wonder why Jayce would have looked at those.

“I made it when I was eleven,” Viktor says instead as he crosses the room to sit on the other end of the couch.

Jayce looks up. “The boat?”

“Yes.”

He smiles, and there’s a deep fondness in it that hurts, but then again…what did Viktor expect?

He’s spent the last five months trying so hard to wash that look off Jayce’s face, and it’s only proven to be so much stickier than he ever expected. He probably shouldn’t be surprised to see it now.

“That’s impressive. Little you sounds clever.”

Cleverer than adult me, clearly.

There’s a moment of silence, before Jayce clears his throat. “I, um…If you wanted, I could…” He hesitates, and Viktor knows what he’s going to say, but he lets him finish anyway. “I could take the couch again? If you want! No pressure,” he adds quickly.

And Viktor already hates himself enough for all the little things he’s said and done, so what is one more horrible, selfish, cruel decision?

So he nods, and Jayce looks so relieved that Viktor wants to cry.

All the ways that Viktor tried to push him away, the lies, all the valid reasons he would have to spit in his face and slam the door, and instead he wants to stay. And it’s cruel to make him the one to deal with it again if something horrible happens tonight, but the truth is that Viktor is just deeply, bone-chillingly scared. He is terrified that he will go to bed and his body will give out, and no one will be there to even notice.

He knows what that feels like, and he never wants to feel it again.

He doesn’t want to die alone.

Gods, please, he just doesn’t want to die alone.

And with the way Jayce looks at him, he has a feeling that he understands. That he’s also scared of leaving him here, that he’s just as grateful for this as Viktor is.

They go to bed fairly soon after that. Jayce finds the same toothbrush he used last time, and he follows Viktor to his bedroom door even though he has a perfectly functional walking aid this time.

Jayce hesitates in the doorframe, and for a moment it looks like he wants to hug him, or kiss him, or say something very, very stupid, but he doesn’t.

Instead he says “good night, Viktor” and his smile for once doesn’t look entirely honest, like he’s only putting it on for him.

Viktor can’t even bring himself to attempt one in return.

 

---

 

It can’t be more than an hour later that Viktor finds himself suddenly sitting up straight in bed, the noise that comes out of him something between a desperate wheeze and a sob, fingers clawed into his bedsheets and drenched in sweat.

His chest hurts, his throat hurts, everything hurts and he can’t catch his breath. He can’t fucking breathe and he is going to die and there’s nothing he can do to stop it.

There’s no blood splatters this time, his lungs have apparently just finally decided that enough is enough and collapsed in on themselves in a crumpled, fleshy mess in his chest, and try as he might, the pathetic little gasps for air that he manages are not going to be enough to keep his heart beating.

It almost reminds him of the tight wheezing he used to chase away with the little inhaler, but this also feels entirely different. This feels like every muscle in his chest has just given up and all that remains is desperate little sounds and the shallowest of breaths.

He hears hurried, near frantic footsteps and the door at the end of the room flies open. Backlit by the small light in the hallway stands Jayce, looking tired and bleary-eyed, in nothing but his boxers and with his hair a complete mess, as though he’s been tossing and turning as much as the shitty little couch allows.

He looks as terrified as Viktor feels.

“Viktor!”

“I, I—”

He wants to say something, but he can’t, he can’t speak, he can’t breathe. Viktor doesn’t even remember coughing, there’s no nauseating wet sound, no sharp burn under his sternum, just this sudden horrifying tightness like someone is squeezing his windpipe shut in their fist.

Jayce has already crossed the room before he even tried to speak, reaching out and taking Viktor’s hands in his. Jayce’s hands are unbelievably warm and sweaty with fear, and Viktor finds himself clinging to them with every ounce of strength he has left, as if Jayce were the table back in the lab.

He sits on the bed next to him, searches Viktor’s eyes, his face, takes in his trembling form, the sharp, shallow gasps for air, the lack of rattling or coughing or blood.

And after an agonizingly long moment something in his face changes, softens with recognition.

One hand lets go of Viktor’s and comes up to rest against his cheek instead, and it feels like a furnace against his clammy skin.

“Shhh,” Jayce says, running his thumb over Viktor’s cheekbone slowly, soothingly. The relief on his face is so stark that he looks like he is going to tear up. “You’re okay. It’s okay. I don’t think you’re dying, Viktor, you— You’re okay.”

He wants to believe him so badly, but he still can’t get a full lungful of air and that seems like damning evidence to the contrary.

“I think you’re having a panic attack. It’s okay, I used to get them too when I was a kid. It feels awful, but it’s not going to kill you. It’s okay.” Jayce shifts toward him and gives his hand just the faintest little tug.

An offer.

And Viktor has nothing left to fight it with, every bit of his self-restraint tired, worn-thin and eroded.

His carefully constructed and obsessively maintained walls have gathered too many goddamn cracks and he has nothing left to patch them up with.

And so he lets Jayce pull him into his arms and rests his head against his bare chest, absorbing the warmth and struggling desperately to breathe.

“Shhh, in and out,” Jayce murmurs. Takes a deep breath in and lets it out slowly, and then another.

With Jayce’s heartbeat gradually slowing down where he can hear it and his chest rising and falling against him in a steady, slow rhythm, Viktor eventually manages to break his hyperventilating and finds his breath slowly adjusting to match. His heart stops hammering and the blood stops roaring in his ears, his desperate trembling begins to go down and it feels like his lungs slowly reinflate.

They sit there for a long while in the barely lit darkness, with no sound except for their synchronized breathing, Jayce lightly rubbing Viktor's shoulder where he holds him protectively cradled against his chest.

It takes several minutes before Jayce speaks again.

“Better?”

“Yes,” Viktor says quietly, barely more than a whisper. “Thank you. I— I really thought…” He can’t finish the sentence.

Jayce only holds him tighter.

Viktor thinks that he could almost fall asleep like this, with the soothing regularity of Jayce’s heartbeat and the warmth of his body feeling like it envelops him entirely, and he almost does start drifting away when there’s a faint mumble into his hair.

“Sorry?”

“I said…why didn’t you tell me?”

Jayce spends a long, tense moment in silence waiting for an answer that doesn’t come, before he sighs.

“Do you know why I went back to the lab?”

Viktor shakes his head, the slightest movement against Jayce’s body.

“I couldn’t sleep. I tried for hours, but all I kept thinking was that you looked like a living ghost when I left, and I was suddenly terrified that something really bad would happen and I’d never see you again, and the last thing I would have said…the last time I would have seen you I acted like that.”

“You had every right to be angry,” Viktor says quietly. Because he did, didn’t he? No matter Viktor’s motives, the way he went about it was certainly less than ideal; it caused more pain than it prevented. Viktor is angry at himself too.

“No.” The reply comes instantaneously, and so firmly that it almost startles him. “No, not angry. I— Scared, yes, or worried, or— But no, I should never have gotten angry at you. Not like that. I wanted to be there for you, I wanted to be your friend, but…you’d made it clear that you didn’t want me in your business, and…I should have been more respectful of that, too.”

Viktor scoffs at that, and he knows he shouldn’t say it but he does. Quietly whispered, like a shameful, dirty secret. Because it kind of is.

“Of course I wanted you there.”

The fingers rubbing at his shoulder still for a moment. “Then why—”

“What did you expect me to do, Jayce?” His throat feels tight again, but this time it doesn’t keep him from breathing. “Did you want me to just announce, oh Jayce, just for your information, I am dying, and then spend months watching you look at me…the way you do now?”

At the word dying, Jayce pulls him just a fraction closer and Viktor lets him. He’s not even sure if he did that consciously, or if he even noticed at all. But either way he lets him, and he rests the entire side of his head against Jayce’s chest, leans his entire body into him.

Quiet surrender.

“I just wanted to be there for you,” Jayce repeats in a whisper. “I’m sorry for…trying to force it on you when you’d made it clear that— I…was just scared. I care about you, Viktor. I—” But he doesn’t finish the sentence, only sighs into his hair.

And that is the crux of the issue, isn’t it.

“Caring about me is not exactly a good investment.”

A beat of silence.

“Maybe.” And Viktor is not entirely sure, but it feels like just the faintest ghost of a kiss pressed to his head. It makes something sting in his eyes. “I just think that should have been my decision to make.”

Yes, Viktor thinks.

But I know what your decision would have been.

He presses his cheek to the impossibly warm skin next to him, and he doesn’t respond. He just wants to stay here like this, with all his walls down and his resistance cracked open, held in Jayce’s arms for as long as he has left.

“Because if all this was supposed to keep me from caring about you, then, well. Sorry to inform you, but that didn’t work.”

I know.

“Not in the slightest.”

He squeezes his eyes shut around the stinging sensation.

I know.

“You can keep pushing me away, and I meant what I said, I will do my best to…respect that boundary, because I should have already done so before, but…that won’t make me care any less.”

And it feels like something inside him just breaks. Glass that shatters under repeated hammer strikes to the same weak spot, over and over again.

“I know,” he says, and it sounds choked, and then the tears fight their way free before he can even try to stop them. He sobs, and it’s louder and sounds more wounded than he would have ever expected it to.

Jayce immediately pulls him in, wraps his arms all the way around his trembling shoulders, and Viktor doesn’t know what to do with himself.

He’s no stranger to crying, but this is gut-wrenching and visceral, and it shakes his entire body with every broken sob that rips its way out of him, and the last time he cried with another person so much as being in the same room he was a small, small child.

And now that it’s started it just doesn’t seem to stop.

Jayce just holds him through it. His face is buried in Viktor’s hair, and between his soft shushing, Viktor can also hear him sniffle, can also occasionally feel him tremble, and Viktor clings to him like he’s the last fucking thing keeping him from floating away.

“I know,” Jayce says. “I know, shhh…” This time the kiss he presses to the crown of Viktor’s head is unmistakable, and it only feels like it cracks him open further.

“You’re still alive, Viktor…You’re still here. You’re okay, it’s okay, I’ve got you…I’ve got you…”

Viktor loses all sense of time.

He has no idea how long they sit there like that, violent sobs shaking him as though his body is trying to get all of the accumulated fear and pain out at once. All the things that he has tried to shut inside for months until they began to rot and fester, and now they all come pouring out with a vengeance.

It feels like digging himself back up from the already-dead.

After a little while, Jayce’s mumbled words of comfort die down, replaced only by his occasional quiet shushing, and eventually, eventually Viktor can feel his own breathing slowly begin to settle and his sobs quiet down.

The crying has aggravated his throat, and what follows it is a vicious coughing fit that has him doubling over in Jayce’s arms, tasting blood and blindly reaching for his handkerchief.

Jayce holds him through that, too.

He rubs soothing circles over Viktor’s back until his breathing has calmed down and he’s stopped shaking, and Viktor pulls a face as he puts the handkerchief back. It takes him a long moment of just sitting there, breathing slowly and deliberately, before he leans back against Jayce’s body.

It’s quiet then, like the aftermath of a storm.

“Sorry,” Viktor finally mumbles into his chest, his voice still raw and wet. “I’m afraid all of that was…rather a lot.”

Jayce shakes his head. “Don’t you dare,” he says, and Viktor can hear just the hint of a smile in his tone. “This is what I asked for. I said I wanted to be there for you, and I do. I…I’ll be here as long as you let me.”

Viktor swallows thickly and takes a deep, stabilizing breath because that quiet promise almost makes him want to tear up again. And he’s already going to have an awful headache in the morning as it is, no need to make it worse.

Strong fingers on his back trace slow lines up, all the way to the back of his neck, scratching at his scalp, and back down. Jayce presses another firm, lingering kiss to the top of his head, and it feels like he’s pouring all of his feelings into this one and they’re just as easy to read there as they are on his face.

And Viktor has no defenses left, he lies wide open. So when Jayce releases him, he turns his head just the slightest fraction to press the ghost of a kiss to his chest in response. It’s the only spot he could have possibly reached, he will justify later.

He can hear Jayce’s breath catch. And that…well.

Viktor swallows again.

Suddenly he feels rather aware of just how much bare skin he is touching. Jayce’s chest he’s leaning into, the arms around him, his crossed legs that he’s pulled Viktor up to sit between. He hasn’t even really noticed, too busy with various stages of a mental breakdown, but in the quiet aftermath…he certainly notices now.

Something quiet and oh so treacherous stirs deep inside him before he can squash it back down, reminds him with a whisper in the back of his mind that this stretch of warm, bare skin pressing against him is what he turned down that very first night.

Reminds him of how he lay awake that night and wondered what would have happened if he hadn’t.

Reminds him how every time Jayce leaned over him in the lab close enough to feel his exhale on his neck, Viktor had to take a small steadying breath, white-knuckled grip on his pen and legs lightly pressed together.

Reminds him how, occasionally, his professionalism slipped when he was alone in this very room in the dead of night and couldn’t stop his mind from wandering.

And if he’s being entirely honest with himself, Viktor knows that any hesitation he has left is mere posturing, trying to convince himself the inevitable is anything but.

And for once, the inevitable refers not to his own imminent death.

He’s not sure when it became that way—if it was allowing Jayce to hold him to his naked skin like this, or allowing him to stay overnight, or even to come in at all. Or if all of his attempts at distance and separation and swallowing down his feelings were doomed to fail from the very start.

Whatever it is, at some point Jayce came too close. And Viktor has snapped to him like a paperclip to a magnet.

He is so, so tired of fighting it.

And so he does it again. Another feather-light kiss to the vast expanse of skin beside him, then another. The fingers on his neck dig in, blunt nails leaving indents in his skin.

Viktor doesn’t look up, just slowly leaves soft, open-mouthed kisses all over Jayce’s chest and listens for protest, feels for any uncomfortable tension.

But Jayce is not pulling away or trying to disentangle himself. His breath comes just a fraction quicker than it did a moment ago and the fingers on Viktor’s neck seem to only pull him ever closer. And when on his exploration his lips catch on a nipple, the reaction is unmistakable. Jayce gasps and arches into him a little, his other hand flying behind himself on the bed to keep steady.

So, because experiments should be repeated to validate the results, Viktor closes his lips around the little nub, allows his tongue to dart out, and revels in the variety of tiny, tiny noises on Jayce’s breath. Heat gathers somewhere in his abdomen, demanding and so very distracting.

“Wait,” Jayce says, and nudges him back a little. Viktor looks him in the eye for the first time since his panic attack, and what he sees on Jayce’s face almost makes him whimper.

He looks the way that Viktor has seen starving men look at a meal down in the fissures. He looks like he wants to eat Viktor whole, and he’s only holding back because what he has to say is more important.

“Wait, are you— Are you sure?”

Sure that it’s a good idea? No. Sure that I want it anyway? Yes.

He swallows and says the only words that he can parse from his mind.

“I just want to feel alive, Jayce, I want to—” He takes a trembling breath. “Please. If you want me—”

Jayce surges forward and steals the breath from his lips with a bruising kiss. His mouth must still taste of copper and salt, but there is not a hint of hesitation there, just desire and a promise, a question and an answer in one.

Viktor makes a tiny, choked-off noise and this time Jayce does not demand entrance, he just opens for him, offers himself up. And with his tongue in Jayce’s mouth Viktor suddenly feels like if he dropped dead right this second, he might even be okay with that.

It’s like that first night, but also not, because this is Jayce, and he’s not someone that Viktor had never spoken to before today, he’s someone who he’s in love with, and someone who’s in love with him.

And…he knew that. That’s not some new revelation.

But still it completely takes the breath out of him.

Jayce is the one who finally breaks the kiss and leans their foreheads together instead, breath labored.

“Gods, Viktor. Were you not listening when I was dramatically confessing my feelings earlier? Because that’s what that was, if you were wondering.” He chuckles breathlessly and presses another kiss to his lips. “Of course I want you. Fuck, of course I want you.”

Viktor brings both of his hands up to Jayce’s face then, holds it steady between them to meet his eyes directly. “Then have me. Pretend just for tonight that things are okay. Please.”

The sound that Jayce makes is almost a hiss as he crashes their lips back together, presses and slides their tongues against each other, nips at his bottom lip, deepens the kiss until Viktor feels dizzy and breathless and untethered, and that is exactly how he wants to feel.

Make me forget all this, just for tonight, just for right now. Fuck me like I’m still alive.

The way they move against each other, the way he shudders under Jayce’s fingertips makes Viktor feel like they were made to fit together like this—and though he knows that that’s nothing but the high of endorphins speaking, that doesn’t make it feel any less real.

He runs his fingers over Jayce’s bare arms, his shoulders, up his neck, and the skin there at his pulse point feels so soft that he has to break away from his lips to taste it.

Jayce feels like jelly in his hands as he tips his head back to allow him access, eyes half-lidded and hazy, completely submitting to his touch. And Viktor would be lying if he said that didn’t do something to him. He mouths along the thick column of Jayce’s neck, sucks a bruise on it, and Jayce moans under him, the vibrations of his throat under his lips.

“What do you want?” Jayce whispers between ragged breaths. “Tell me what I can do for you. Please, tell me anything you want me to do and I’ll do it.”

And…Fuck.

Viktor hasn’t lived a life that has gotten him used to the taste of any kind of power. He has always been smaller and weaker and slower, and though he's by no means helpless, the world has never once bent to his will—maybe that’s exactly why this simple sentence makes his head spin and a treacherous, slick heat begin to pool between his legs.

“I…So long as I can trust that you will tell me no if—”

“Always,” Jayce says. “I know my limits, I promise. Just…Please, Viktor.”

The sound of his begging is so fucking sweet that Viktor almost just wants to drink it down and hear nothing else for the rest of the night.

He lets one hand run down Jayce’s chest, lightly pinching a nipple on its descent and earning him a gasp, until it drops to the front of Jayce’s boxers. He palms his straining hardness through the fabric and the soft noise Jayce makes reminds him of the whimper of an animal.

Viktor attentively maps out the shape of it as if trying to commit it to memory, slowly runs his fingers up and down, presses on that beautiful little damp spot at the tip.

Gods, he wants to take him apart. Piece by piece until he’s just a quivering, fucked-out mess in Viktor’s hands.

He wants to make him forget his own fucking name.

Jayce still has his head tipped lightly backwards and his eyes shut, and he sinks his teeth into his lower lip under Viktor’s teasing touch. It looks obscene, and Viktor thinks that if there’s only one image he wants to take to the grave with him it must be this.

But his own body is becoming ever more distracting, and so he takes his hand back and revels in the way Jayce ruts forward slightly to chase the friction.

“If you really want to know what you can do for me,” he says and Jayce’s eyes fly open to look at him, the expression in them almost pleading.

“I might suggest you get on your knees for me, and you eat me out until I tell you to stop.”

Jayce’s eyes widen and he nods, his hips giving another involuntary twitch, and Viktor can’t help his eyes being drawn right back down. It takes all the shambles of his self-restraint to not reach into Jayce’s boxers right this second and let him fuck into his fist like a teenage boy just discovering masturbation, or to take him into his mouth until he gags and suck him dry.

Fuck.

Patience.

Jayce is not going anywhere, and neither is he. Not now, not tonight.

His moments may be numbered, but this one belongs to them, and no one can take it away.

With a hand under Viktor’s waist, Jayce readjusts them so Viktor is sitting on the edge of the bed while he slips off it and obediently kneels on the floor between his knees. Large hands roam over his body and pull his shirt up over his head.

And for a moment, something in Viktor freezes up.

He knows he’s terribly thin and pale, and although his skin probably has a little bit of a healthy color back that it didn’t have before the hospital, simply because he’s slept and eaten, he still looks like a specter.

Frail and barely there.

Jayce looks up at him, eyes taking in the sight, until they land on Viktor’s face.

And his expression is both so hungry and so earnestly adoring that Viktor almost sobs again. If he weren’t already sitting down his knees would feel weak at the sight.

“You’re so beautiful,” Jayce says.

And Viktor knows he means it. He knows he means it because Jayce Talis can’t lie, because all of his feelings are always written plainly and fearlessly on his face, and his face right now is that of damn-near worship. This alone might be enough for his struggling heart to finally give out.

Viktor smiles down at him and brings a hand to cup his face, and Jayce nuzzles into it, presses a reverent kiss to his palm, to his wrist. Viktor is just about to lean back when he has a thought that stops him.

“Take that off,” he says and gestures to Jayce’s underwear. “I want to see all of you.”

Jayce nods immediately and scrambles to his feet, tugging the boxers down and kicking them away, and—

“Would you look at that,” Viktor says with a light smile, and Jayce all but preens.

Viktor has seen a few cocks in his lifetime. Especially his second year at the academy—after he had finally gotten his top surgery and no longer felt sick at the idea of being seen naked—had been somewhat busy. But dear Gods, this one in particular immediately makes him want to feel it in his throat.

He leans in just enough for his tongue to run along the underside of it, and Jayce makes a gorgeous, desperate little noise above him. Viktor’s hands come to rest on his hips, snake around to his ass, and he pulls him in.

Jayce is not small, so he can’t take his entire length in his mouth immediately, but he takes him as deep as he can, and he feels his eyes flutter shut with Jayce’s whimper above him.

He sucks him off slowly, and with each little bob of his head he takes him deeper, until he can feel him touch the back of his throat. Jayce keens like a man in pain and his hands fist into Viktor’s hair as if he needs to fight hard not to thrust into his mouth.

Viktor pulls off him and leans back.

If Jayce is upset about it, he doesn’t complain. Good boy.

“Now,” Viktor says with a little smile, wiping his mouth. “Don’t you want to get back on your knees?”

“Yes.” It’s almost a gasp.

The poor man is already losing his composure and the idea makes something dark and mean in him purr.

Jayce drops back down to his knees in front of him hard enough that hitting the wood floor must have stung. He hooks his fingers into Viktor’s waistband, then looks back up for consent.

And if Viktor doesn’t get this off of him soon he is going to soak through it, so he lifts his hips to let Jayce tug his sleep pants and underwear off him, and then there they are.

Both fully nude, just silently admiring one another for a moment.

Jayce leans up, a hand behind Viktor’s back softly pulling him down just enough that he can lap at a nipple, and Viktor gasps. Jayce presses a feather-light kiss to each of the pale surgery scars on his chest and his lower stomach, then to each mole that he can reach.

It’s almost unbearable to be paid such close attention to, to be so openly and honestly desired.

“Don’t tease me,” he hisses, eyes screwed shut as teeth graze his nipple and something electric runs up his spine.

Kisses working their way quickly down, each and every single one of them given his all, Jayce lets go of his back and instead nudges him just a little, a silent offer to lie back and let himself be adored.

All with those goddamn doe eyes of his.

Viktor leans back on his elbows, but he can’t quite bear to give the sight up entirely, so that’s as far as he goes, as Jayce gently spreads his knees apart to give himself space, grabs his thighs to hold them in place with both hands and finally, finally places his mouth where Viktor is hot and wet and wanting.

Gods, it feels like he has been needing this ever since that first night and never stopped, like his body has never taken a second’s break, had wanted not a single thing other than this in all these months. Jayce’s tongue runs along his folds and laps at his cock and Viktor can’t think, and it is a fucking blessing.

Jayce is attentive and patient as he slowly, gently works him up, finding a rhythm, feasting like a man who has been starved for months. He answers Viktor’s soft gasps and moans with his own that vibrate against his sensitive skin.

And in this little bubble of theirs, with his legs spread wide and Jayce between them buried in the heat of him, it feels like they have all the time in the world as he works him up in waves. Like the concept of time and running out of it can’t touch them, like they’re suspended weightlessly in magic.

Viktor’s first orgasm has always had a habit of taking him a while, but Jayce seems only too happy where he is, with the patience of a saint, his fingers digging into Viktor’s hips and making soft, needy noises around his cock, and Viktor loses himself in the sensations.

His breaths get increasingly labored, and soft, whimpering noises fall from his lips with each one. He mumbles something in his own language that doesn’t even make any sense, but Jayce whines from between his legs and increases his fervor and Viktor finally has to drop flat on his back, one hand fisted into Jayce’s hair and pulling him closer, crowding him against his sex until the poor man probably can't breathe, pressing his tongue right where Viktor needs it.

“Fuck, you’re being so good,” Viktor manages to get out between increasingly frantic breaths, and the vibration of Jayce’s needy groan against him almost makes him shout.

One hand leaves the spot where he was digging into Viktor’s thigh, and Viktor is about to gasp out a protest when he feels two fingers pressing to his entrance, waiting, as though uncertain if this would be welcome or unwanted. Viktor blindly reaches down to Jayce’s wrist in response and all but shoves the man’s fingers inside him.

The desperate, high-pitched moan could have come from either of them.

“You’re being so good, keep going, you’re doing so well—” Viktor barely even hears what he’s saying, isn’t even sure what language he’s speaking anymore.

And then Jayce sucks his cock into his mouth and groans around it, and the fingers inside him curl just so, and Viktor’s entire spine arches off the bed.

“Fuck! Right there, just like that…don’t stop, fuck, don’t you dare fucking stop—”

He cries out as he comes, legs jerking up and curling in on himself with muscle spasms, probably pulling on Jayce’s hair and squeezing against his temples. But he just keeps on lapping at him and sucking on him, softly, adoringly, while Viktor rides out his orgasm wave after wave, each with a slight shudder.

Until he finally, finally stops trembling and gently taps Jayce’s shoulder.

“That’s enough,” he breathes, and Jayce presses one more reverent kiss to his cock that makes his whole body twitch, before he leans up to meet Viktor for a kiss. It’s messy, and Viktor feels the dampness all over the lower half of Jayce’s face, tastes himself on his tongue, and all he wants is to fall into this kiss and never break the surface again.

When he finally draws back, the man looks absolutely fucking delirious, as if he’s the one who just came so hard he damn near passed out, and that alone makes Viktor shiver and find his lips again.

He pulls Jayce back up onto the bed beside him without breaking their kiss, rests them side by side, and his hand sneaks down between them. Jayce moans into his mouth as it wraps around his cock and just slowly, languidly glides up and down in a lazy exploration, no fever, no rush.

Jayce’s hips buck, and Viktor smiles against his lips. Patience, he wants to say but he hasn’t caught his breath enough to speak. I’ll take good care of you.

Jayce buries his face in his neck, mouthing, kissing, and sucking the skin between his teeth. Bruises must show up terribly on Viktor’s pallid skin right now, but he can’t bring himself to care, he just tips his head back and allows him to do as he pleases, quiet sounds escaping every now and again.

They stay like that for a while, his hand lazily working Jayce’s dick and Jayce exploring every inch he can find with open-mouthed kisses and teeth.

Viktor slowly draws his hand up and down his length where it feels hard and needy and aching under his fingertips. He runs his thumb along the slit to gather pre-come and spreads it all the way down, and he swallows down all the pretty noises that Jayce makes, quiet at first, then increasingly loud as Viktor settles into a rhythm.

Within minutes, Jayce drops his forehead against him and exhales a shuddering breath.

“You, um— You’re going to have to stop doing that very soon,” he says between shallow breaths.

Viktor cracks an eye open and raises an eyebrow in mock surprise. “What, this?” He gives a single hard stroke and Jayce tries to suppress a moan. “You’re going to come just from this?” Despite the teasing words though, his tone is achingly soft.

Where Jayce can’t hide his feelings on his face, Viktor now finds himself unable to hide his in his voice.

Jayce’s ears burn bright red, but he shudders against him again and brings his own hand down to hold Viktor’s wrist, to keep his hand still.

Viktor breathes a laugh.

“Of course, eh, my apologies,” he says and leans in to kiss Jayce’s forehead. “Wouldn’t want this to be over before you get the chance to fuck me until I see stars.”

“Viktor—”

“What? Do you not think you can do that?”

“Yes,” Jayce gasps. “Yes, I can. I will! Gods, fuck … anything you want.”

Viktor smiles. “Well then. I do believe I’ve waited long enough.”

Jayce dives back in to press a wet, messy kiss to Viktor’s mouth, teeth nipping at his bottom lip. One arm hooks around Viktor’s waist again as he guides them both up.

“Condoms are in the top drawer,” Viktor says and points towards it. “However, I have been tested since my last, eh…encounter, and I do not mind forgoing them if the same goes for you?”

Jayce nods, but there’s something new, something distracted to his expression. Viktor tips his head to one side, questioning.

“This last encounter you mention,” Jayce says quietly. “Were they, um…good?” Viktor laughs and leans forward to cup his cheek, runs his hand down and tips his chin up to force him to look him in the eye.

“Yes,” he says. “So be better.”

Jayce squeezes his eyes shut and gives a fervent nod, and with an almost desperate whimper he sits up to kneel between Viktor’s legs. He hooks one hand under his good one to push them apart, to spread him open like an offering, and the other under his bad one to support it.

He looks like a man on a mission, and the mere sight of his desperately hard, leaking cock makes Viktor clench around nothing.

“Um,” Jayce says, and Viktor’s eyes snap back to his face, impatient. “F-Front, or back?”

Viktor’s gaze softens a little at the real concern in his voice, fearful of doing something wrong, of treating him wrong.

“Front is good,” he says. “Less preparation necessary. Which is good because I want you inside me now. And don’t go easy on me, Jayce, I will not break. Make me feel it.”

Fuck me like I’m still alive.

Jayce nods almost frantically and leans in again to kiss him before he draws back.

Viktor can feel the tip of his cock pressing to the slick heat of him, and with a long, low groan Jayce pushes inside until he bottoms out.

Viktor gasps.

“Move,” he hisses once he’s taken a moment to adjust, and Jayce’s nod looks delirious as he whimpers a soft “yes” and pulls out half-way only to slam back in as deep as he can go, and Viktor cries out.

Dear gods, he sure knows how to follow instructions.

Viktor barely even notices when, a few such merciless thrusts in, his legs hook tightly around Jayce’s back to draw him in closer, and his head tips back on the pillow, gasping toward the heavens as Jayce hikes his thighs up a little further and this angle finally hits the spot where Viktor needs him.

For a brief, morbid moment Viktor wishes that this could just kill him instead, that his heart could stop right here and now and this could be the last thing he sees and feels.

It would be a good death, probably the best he has any chance left at having. The only one he wants.

Jayce tries to work himself up slowly, to make it last, but it’s laughable how quickly that notion is forgotten and he only blindly fucks into him in an unforgiving rhythm, fingers digging into his thighs so hard they’ll bruise.

“Fuck, Viktor, I—”

It’s all Viktor can do to occasionally gasp for air between the quiet curses that fall from his lips, in this language or that, as he dips his hand between their bodies to his own swollen cock.

He jerks upwards as he comes, clenching around Jayce’s length, head thrown back in a silent shout. Jayce picks up his speed and squeezes his eyes shut, and as his breaths come in shorter and shorter gasps, Viktor fists a hand into his hair.

“Come for me, Jayce, come inside me. I want all of it.” He still trembles with his own climax, one hand still relentlessly on himself in tiny, hard circular motions. “You’ve been so good for me, Jayce. Go on, let go, come for me.”

Jayce spills with a shout and a shudder, burying himself to the hilt and leaning over him on his elbows, with his hands gripping his shoulders as if he’s holding on for dear life. Viktor hits another, smaller peak, and leans his forehead against Jayce as he coaxes it from his cock, clenching and trembling, and finally he lets his hand drop and every muscle in his body goes slack.

For the next several minutes neither of them moves, both waiting for the aftershocks to die down, with Jayce’s face buried in Viktor’s neck and Viktor’s hands running over the short hair at his nape.

When they finally come down, Jayce presses a lingering kiss to his jaw and carefully slips out, and Viktor feels something hot leak out after him.

For a long time they just rest side by side catching their breath, Jayce with an arm draped over Viktor’s chest and Viktor with absent-minded fingers running over the back of it.

Right now, he thinks, is probably the happiest he has felt in this entire past year.

Right now he has Jayce in his arms and his seed dripping out of him, and he probably won’t feel his legs tomorrow, and that is quite possibly the furthest he has felt from death in a long, long time.

He presses a kiss to the side of Jayce’s head that he can reach and he can feel him smile against his shoulder and respond with a soft kiss of his own there.

Something burns in Viktor’s eyes again, but this time the tears are peaceful and quiet instead of destructive.

Jayce looks up at one point to kiss him, and his eyes immediately widen in concern.

“Viktor, are you— Shit, did I hurt you?”

Viktor shakes his head firmly and smiles against his lips as they kiss, and the smile seems to put Jayce at ease. He draws himself even closer into the side of Viktor’s body, and Viktor wraps his arms around him and buries his nose in his hair in almost a mirror of how Jayce held him earlier. His tears run silently into his hair, and into Jayce’s hair, until they begin to dry up on their own.

“I love you,” he mouths, quietly enough that even he barely hears it and he doubts that Jayce does. That’s okay, though. He will say it again later.

This one is just for himself.

Eventually, Viktor excuses himself to the bathroom, and when he returns he brings a damp, warm towel with him so he can clean up Jayce as well. The poor man already looks half-asleep when he’s done.

He pulls him back into his arms with a small, contented sigh and Viktor lets him. It’s a silent agreement that they will talk about it tomorrow.

Notes:

Hey, glad you made it through this beast of a chapter! After the last two, I hope this one hurt a little bit less and managed to soothe the soul a bit, it certainly did writing it. Next one is going to be shorter, more than an epilogue but likely not as long as the previous chapters.

Come yell at me on twitter @fouroddapples, I talk about my writing on there & retweet jayvik thirst and just generally have a good time!

And if you want more angsty, life-affirming smut & feels that made me cry, you should check out both Grey Dawn by TheTrickyOwl and divine alchemy of the self by r0sie_p0sies.

One is an E-rated one-shot, the other is about 40k (and rated M, heavier on the feels with just a bit of smut sprinkled in in all the best ways) and they're some of my favorite fics in the entire fandom, I come back to them all the time. This one was definitely at least partly inspired by both of them, more in just general tone and feeling than anything else. Anyway, that's enough advertisement, go check them out!

One last time, see y'all in the next one!

Chapter 4

Notes:

Final installment!

As always, please heed the TWs for the whole story mentioned in chapter 1.

Additional TWs for this chapter include:

- explicit sexual content (briefly)
- mention of needles in a medical context

That's it! See y'all in the end notes!

---

 

Today of all days, see

How the most dangerous thing is to love,

How you will heal and you’ll rise above,

Crowned by an overture bold and beyond,

It’s more courageous to overcome.

(Gang of Youths – Achilles Come Down (cont.))

 

---

 

The first thing Viktor notices is the feeling of a heavy arm draped over his side.

He’s not even sure whether that is still part of a dream, but as he slowly comes to and the feeling remains, he concludes that it appears to be real, tangible. And not just an arm, there’s also a warm chest pressed firmly to his back, and if he concentrates he can feel slow, shallow breaths stir the hair on the nape of his neck.

Viktor doesn’t open his eyes.

If he just remains like this, he doesn’t have to face the consequences of his actions. He doesn’t have to think about the choices he’s made and what they mean for the both of them, where they go from here, how it will affect them now, and how it will inevitably affect them later. He doesn’t have to think about all the things that terrify him.

There’s a sleepy noise from behind him, and he feels himself being pulled in, pressed closer to the body behind him. A feather-light kiss ghosts over the back of his neck, and Viktor shivers.

“Shhh,” comes a faint mumble into the back of his hair. “I can hear you worrying.”

Viktor hesitates, then lets out a long, deep breath. Just a little moment longer then, before he needs to face the noise.

The lips on his neck keep mouthing kisses there, and it makes something deep inside him raise its head. Without ever making the conscious decision, he finds his fingers running over that arm across his chest, caressing it, guiding it to where its fingers can softly brush past a nipple, and he can feel his own breath hitch, his muscles tense. With another sleepy mumble, the body behind him shifts a little, and Viktor thinks he can just barely feel something warm and firm against his backside. He swallows.

And really, it’s a little late for damage control. So what’s one more questionable decision?

This time their lovemaking is sleepy and lazy, nothing like the feverish desperation of last night. Viktor barely has his eyes open, Jayce is barely awake enough for full sentences, and for a long, long while all they do is slowly, softly slide against each other, skin on skin, with no sound except their slightly labored breathing and occasional tiny gasps.

It’s unhurried, like they have all the time in the world.

When Jayce slowly sinks into him, Viktor’s back arches ever so slightly and he rocks his hips back to meet him in a gentle, steady rhythm.

The sun is just barely rising when Viktor comes undone with a quiet moan around the calloused fingers on him, and a few minutes later he feels Jayce tense and pull him ever closer, impossibly closer as Viktor can feel his cock pulse and empty itself deep inside him, every part of their bodies pressed flush together.

He exhales a trembling breath, and Jayce presses another kiss to the nape of his neck—not demanding, not hungry, just…gut-wrenchingly tender.

Like a man irrevocably in love.

Viktor only leaves the room for barely a minute, before slipping back into bed and slotting himself back against Jayce’s chest, seeking every point of skin-to-skin contact that he can. Neither of them moves or speaks, they just lie there in each other’s arms and drift in and out of a light sleep as the sun climbs higher in the sky and soft light filters through the curtains beside them.

Finally, it’s Jayce who stirs first, rolling onto his back to stretch and pulling Viktor with him despite his little noise of protest. With his cheek now resting on Jayce’s chest, he can hear his slow, steady heartbeat. Viktor presses a tiny kiss to his bare skin, and Jayce responds with a kiss to the top of his head.

They still remain there for Gods know how long, watching the sun climb ever higher and wash away their tiny little untouchable space in the dark where they didn’t have to think about anything beyond right here and right now.

Viktor knows he can’t afford to spend this much time doing nothing, and it makes his mind restless, but he also can’t bring himself to move first.

Once they break this moment, they’ll never get it back.

Judging by the way Jayce has begun quietly fiddling with the edge of the blanket, Viktor is not the only one who can’t keep his mind from spinning in the growing light of day.

Eventually, Viktor thinks he hears the quietest of sniffles above his head, and it cracks his heart right down the middle.

“Shhh.” This time it’s him rubbing soothing circles over Jayce’s skin. “It’s going to be okay.”

“No, it’s not.”

“No,” he agrees, “it’s not. I just thought that that’s what people say.”

The teary chuckle shakes him a little bit.

“I’m sorry,” Jayce says. “I should be the strong one here, I should support you. Not the other way around.”

“Nonsense. You…have a great investment in this. It is only natural that it would affect you emotionally.”

He huffs another laugh. “Only you could make being scared of losing the person you love sound so technical.”

There’s that feeling in Viktor’s chest again, like someone is gripping his heart and refusing to let go. There’s a moment of silence that he spends trying his best not to cry again. It’s already happened twice in the past twelve hours, no need to overdo it. But the slight stinging in his eyes does betray him.

“I don’t want to lose the person I love, either,” he says eventually. Jayce noses through his hair again, and Viktor can hear the faintest smile in his voice, even though it still sounds pained.

“I know.”

Of course he knows. At this point, Viktor wears his feelings practically stamped on his forehead.

He hesitates.

“And Jayce…For what it’s worth, I’m sorry. For shutting you out, but also kind of for letting you in. I can’t help but feel that no matter what I do, I am failing you and causing more pain.”

“Hey,” Jayce says again. It sounds stern, and he tips Viktor’s chin up with one hand so that he has to look him in the eye. “Absolutely not. All of this? I choose this, V. It is so much more than worth it, please believe me. It’s a privilege to just be here right now and I choose this.”

And Viktor may not entirely agree with him, but believe him he does. He still doesn’t want to see Jayce in this position, and he will probably never be able to fully stop feeling guilty about the quiet tears on the man’s face. But Viktor is tired, and Jayce is right—he deserves to make those choices for himself, too.

It’s what he would want if the situation were reversed.

When he looks at that cracked-wide-open face full of both sorrow and honest, reverent affection, and he wonders if he would still want this if Jayce was the one whose days are numbered…he knows the answer would be yes.

He knows he wouldn’t even hesitate.

Instead of saying all that, he says, “V?”

Jayce frowns. “What?”

“You just called me V.”

“Do you…not like it?”

“No,” Viktor says quickly, “I do! It’s just, eh…been a long time since I have had a nickname. It…feels nice.” For a moment, he debates telling Jayce exactly what Margo used to call him—but she was the only one in his life who ever did. It was hers. On some level, it feels right to have that remain her privilege alone. And there’s just something about Jayce coming up with his own nickname for him that feels special.

The smile that spreads over Jayce’s face could rival the morning sun.

“V,” he repeats, as if to affirm it, to speak it into existence, and then he leans down to kiss him. When they part, Viktor smiles back despite himself—already, this sounds like home.

Like being loved.

With a sigh, he rests his cheek back on Jayce’s chest, draws himself in closer. He would crawl into his ribcage if he could, just be completely absorbed, the way nature continues growing around broken structures. To become just a part of him, just another organ that has to put no individual effort into keeping itself alive because it’s sustained by his heartbeat.

The silence lasts for several minutes until Jayce speaks again. He no longer sounds like he’s crying.

“I’m not giving up on you, V. You’re still alive, we still have time to think of something. But…either way, I’m not going anywhere. Unless you tell me to. I mean it, I’m in. I’m here as long as you’ll have me.”

And Viktor lets go.

“Prepare to stick around then,” he whispers back.

“I was hoping you’d say that.”

 

---

 

Things aren’t easy after that, but they are easier than before, because Viktor no longer has to fight on his own.

Jayce stops by his dorm rooms almost every day, and he often stays the night.

He helps him with some of his daily tasks and tries to give him space to still do whatever he can do himself, to protect his dignity and autonomy as best as possible. Viktor hates being taken care of and Jayce hates when Viktor tries to do too much, and sometimes they argue about it, but it’s not each other they’re angry at, so it never lasts long.

“I hate this,” Viktor hisses one day when he’s walking by Jayce’s side up the stairs. Jayce, who is currently carrying several linen bags of vegetables on his own while Viktor holds a single loaf of bread in his free arm, like some shitty participation trophy.

“I know.”

“Those are my things, I should be the one carrying them.”

It's such a simple thing.

“I know, V. You can help me make dinner.”

That only makes Viktor feel even more like a helpless child, and they argue about this one. Viktor says some things he doesn’t mean, and Jayce doesn’t take it personally, and later Viktor apologizes, and Jayce tells him it’s okay, he understands.

It doesn’t happen often, because Viktor is generally good at keeping his frustration locked inside, but he hates it nonetheless.

Jayce brings him water to rinse his mouth with whenever a sudden coughing fit splatters blood over the counter. Viktor fears every time that he will recoil in horror and pull back, say he can’t do this anymore and leave him. And then Viktor will be alone again to pick up the broken pieces of the rest of his life by himself.

But Jayce never does. He simply gets a few paper towels to help him wipe it up and then hugs him tightly to his chest, like he never wants to let him go.

He accompanies Viktor to the lab on his good days and brings some of their books and notes over to his dorm on his bad ones. It scares them both how much their work has slowed down, how much Viktor has slowed down, but that is in part because Jayce now actually insists he take care of his basic needs at least some of the time. Viktor pretends it’s just because of that.

They both focus their work on developing the prototypes for the early-warning systems, and although it’s agonizingly slow they do still make progress.

Between all of that, Jayce kisses the back of Viktor’s neck whenever he walks by him and then kisses the gooseflesh it leaves behind.

He takes his free hand to fidget with when they’re both reading through obscure old science books and Viktor lets him keep it, sometimes linking their fingers together.

Sometimes they get distracted from reading.

Viktor tells him about his childhood, as much as he can bear to say out loud. He hates talking about it, but there’s this deep, desperate need to show himself, to lay himself bare while he still can, to be known and be remembered in his entirety. Jayce listens and he looks at him the way he does at a formula that he’s trying to commit to memory in every detail.

He asks Viktor to read some of the books in his language to him and rests his head against his shoulder as he does, not understanding a word and just enjoying the sound of it. Listening intently, as though he can learn Viktor’s language just by paying close enough attention, as though it holds some secret understanding of Viktor that nothing else can give him.

“It sounds beautiful,” he says quietly, and Viktor smiles.

Viktor responds in his mother tongue, and Jayce smiles back. Viktor thinks he can imagine what it is he said.

Jayce uses every opportunity to kiss him and never holds back, even when Viktor knows he looks so frail and sickly, when his lips must still taste of blood. Jayce still sweeps his tongue into his mouth as if Viktor is the sweetest thing he’s ever tasted, and he swallows all his little noises down like he wants to keep them forever.

He fucks Viktor into the mattress of their now shared bed when his health allows it, and simply dips a hand between his legs or gets on his knees for him like a man in prayer when it doesn’t. Viktor reciprocates with everything he has, like it’s the most important thing in the world, because it is. Every time, Jayce falls apart easily under his fingertips, and when he comes it’s with Viktor’s name on his lips.

They both tell each other I love you, often. Viktor wouldn’t usually consider himself the type to go overboard with verbal affection, but there’s an urgency to it, like he can’t ever say it enough. Jayce needs to hear it from him as many times as is humanly possible.

Make up for a lifetime that he won’t be able to say it.

And so, months pass, even though their expectations had quite honestly been closer to weeks.

Viktor gets worse, but he doesn’t get worse at quite the rate they had both feared he would. That’s perhaps not a tall order, given he was already in a bad state and even his good days don’t feel very good, but all things considered it makes them both feel just the slightest bit hopeful, like perhaps they do still have a little time.

And maybe that little bit of hope is all they need.

Between their work on Hextech, they have long started digging into medical journals published in the last few years. And as time goes on and the quiet stagnation of Viktor’s condition spurs them on even more, this soon takes up more and more of their time, with their work coming almost to a complete stop.

It scares Viktor, it’s a huge risk to tolerate, and for just the tiniest of chances—but he can’t help but be swept up in that careful, not even daring to say it out loud sense of hope. It’s a very weak one, but it’s more than the nothing he had before. Jayce refuses to give up, and so Viktor does his best to not give up either.

“Promise me you will finish these,” he says one time, placing some of their blueprints on Jayce’s desk in front of him.

Jayce turns around in his chair to face him.

“You know I will,” he says.

“No matter what happens, I don’t want them to be unfinished and forgotten.”

I don’t want my work to be forgotten.

I don’t want to be forgotten.

Don’t forget me.

Jayce takes his hand as if he can read his mind.

“I will remember. And I’ll make sure that everyone else does, too.” He presses a kiss to his knuckles. “I won’t let anyone forget, not as long as I’m around to remind them.”

Once they know what they might be looking for in those journals, Jayce develops a fervor that Viktor has never seen him work with before.

More and more often, he finds himself falling asleep on the couch and waking up in bed in the early morning hours, with Jayce still taking notes from sixty-page essays under the weak light of the old desk lamp. The bags under his eyes begin to rival Viktor’s own.

And then one day, Jayce wakes him up in the middle of the night with his eyes bright and shining with tears that he doesn’t dare to cry yet, and sleep is entirely forgotten as they both spend the rest of the night hunched over Viktor’s desk.

That day, Jayce accompanies him to the hospital in the afternoon and back home in the evening.

After that, their mail chute is silent for two long, agonizing weeks, until it finally spits out a slip of paper. Viktor holds Jayce’s hands in his as he reads.

 

---

 

“Careful—”

“I gave myself testosterone shots for six years before they had me use the gel, Jayce. Trust me, I know how this works.”

Jayce rubs at the back of his neck and doesn’t say anything else, but he still can’t stop hovering. Viktor flicks at the syringe a few times to make sure he’s gotten all the air bubbles out.

He can feel Jayce’s hand on his shoulder tighten in a wince, and he just knows the poor man is squeezing his eyes shut, possibly turning his entire head away.

Viktor snorts and twists around to look back at him. “Aw, did it hurt bad?”

“Shut up, I’m just…sympathetic.”

“Eh, this was a lot worse for you than for me, believe me.” Viktor rubs at the skin on his abdomen, still a little red from where he pinched it. “There, all done.”

He sets the empty syringe on the bedside table and leans back from where he’s sitting on the edge of the bed, until he can lean his weight on Jayce, whose arms immediately snake around his waist and hold him there. Jayce kisses the side of his neck underneath his ear.

“How are you going to manage watching me do that every day?” Viktor mumbles.

Jayce gives only the hint of a shrug, so as to not disturb him where he leans against his shoulder.

“I’ll get used to it. It’s more than worth it if, well…”

Ah, yes. If.

“This only got approved a few weeks ago,” his doctor told Viktor in their office, glasses low on their nose as they scanned the papers a third time.

“But…I’m willing to explore every possibility, so I see no reason not to try it. It hasn’t been used for your condition, but these are some promising, though so far a little inconsistent, results for similar degenerative diseases. At the very least it appears to not be damaging.”—Viktor knows that; he was the one who copied the information from those studies and brought it in—“I’ll run a few blood tests to see if this could be an option for you.”

That was thirteen days ago. The results reached them this morning, and only two hours after that message Viktor was able to pick up his prescription.

One subcutaneous injection per day over the course of two months, at first. If it shows promising results by that point, he may end up having to be on this medication for years, or even for the rest of his life.

But then there might be a rest of his life.

Viktor turns his head to the side and Jayce meets him for a kiss. He can taste the weariness of the last several months where their lips meet, the anxiety, the hope, the fear of too much hope.

He can’t count how many times the two of them have cried together recently, on both his bad days because they were bad, and his good days because they would end. The most recent time was just an hour ago.

This morning was the brightest that Viktor’s doctor has ever sounded since they told him that he was going to die.

“Some promising biomarkers,” they said. “There could be a real chance for you here.”

The two of them got home that morning, placed the box with the medical firm logo neither of them knew until three weeks ago on the kitchen table, and then they cried. Hope, fear of too much hope.

Now, they just sit here, and they wait. For what, neither of them even knows. It’ll be at least three weeks before they can see any real improvement in Viktor’s condition, if his disease responds to the medication. Which, according to his doctor’s careful estimate, is really a fifty-fifty chance. It’s not great, but those are by far the highest odds Viktor has had since the day he was first sent to the hospital.

It’s enough to send his heart fluttering like a trapped little bird.

So there’s nothing they would realistically be waiting for right now. It just feels like this moment doesn’t allow them to do anything else except sit there and hold each other.

“No one would have found this in time,” Jayce mumbles behind him.

“Sorry?”

“They wouldn’t have looked into it for you, because it wasn’t tested specifically for your type of disease. It’s so new, hell, they probably wouldn’t have seen it at all before—”

There are always new things in development, though.

Viktor squeezes his hand. “Yes, well. But we found it, Jayce. No point in dwelling on what would have happened if we hadn’t. It might not even—”

But he stops himself before finishing the sentence. He doesn’t believe in jinxing things, but he knows Jayce does, so he doesn’t want to say it out loud, not yet.

It feels too…fragile.

It’s important for patients to stay positive.

“It’ll work, V,” Jayce says, quietly enough that Viktor wouldn’t have heard him if he weren’t directly at his ear.

Viktor turns around in his arms to face him.

That beautiful, brilliant, impossibly honest face that he loves so much says beyond the shadow of a doubt that Jayce believes what he says, not breaking eye contact, running his thumb softly over Viktor’s cheek.

He looks like a man who has chosen hope.

Viktor leans in to kiss him. He may find it hard to agree, but at the very least knowing that someone has this much faith in his future—in him—is comforting.

And even if he’s wrong, even if Viktor won’t be here in a year, a month, a week…

At least he knows that Jayce Talis will remember him.

And though it may never truly feel like enough, maybe he could be content with that.

Notes:

There we go!! I tagged it eventual fluff and here I am with the fluff that was promised.

Thank you to everyone who's made it all the way to the end, I've had such a fantastic time writing this and seeing people react to it as I went along, and a lot of the reactions honestly mirrored my feelings while writing, too. It's been incredible to see how many people took time out of their day for my work—I'm still not used to it lol.

Again, I want to direct y'all to the absolutely fantastic song that inspired this fic and that I got the title from:
Gang of Youths – Achilles Come Down

Also, honorable mention and shout-out to the absolutely fantastic Viktor theme:
The Undercity by Daddyphatsnaps feat. Golden EMP on Youtube. If y'all have never heard this one, you should absolutely check it out, because it hits me so hard every time, and it definitely inspired some of this too, it's honestly at the heart of a lot of my Viktor characterizations.

As always, come hang out with me on Twitter @fouroddapples, and see you all next time! <3

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 1 of An Ode to Our Mortality