Chapter Text
It gets harder and harder to ignore the more time passes. He’d never gone easy on himself, even as a boy, and the breakneck speeds of experiments and trials and sleepless nights have taken their toll ten fold.
Therapy, poultices, pills—nothing works that keeps Viktor’s mind sharp, that doesn’t make him long and thrill for whatever temporarily quieted the crawling, spindling ache that clings to him like a shadow.
There are good days. There are bad ones.
Viktor wedges himself into the ancient armchair tucked into the corner of his room, rubbing uselessly at his leg. He grimaces at the taste of the newest poultice, violently bitter, wondering if a bit of sweetmilk would make it easier to swallow. He’d have to get back up to make some. He doesn't think he can.
Time passes in a daze as the medicine runs its course. Dawn had threaded the sky when he’d limped home, and now the sun is high. There's a creak of the door, heavy, even footsteps that halt right before his chair.
Viktor blearily opens his eyes, blinks when a familiar hazel gaze stares up at him. Fingers draw along his knuckles, Jayce threading their hands together. Knelt on the floor, he still seems so take up so much room. Jayce dips his head, kisses Viktor’s upturned palm.
“Bad night?”
“Better, now,” Viktor says, voice sleep soft and dry. “Did you figure out what caused the revolutions to fluctuate?”
“They’re stabilized. For how long, well…” Jayce presses his cheek into his thigh, sighs.
Viktor cards his fingers through Jayce’s hair, relishes the texture of his fade, the faint coarseness of his crown. The man relaxes like a wave cresting on the shore.
“Don’t worry. We’ll figure it out together,” Viktor says quietly.
Perhaps they already would’ve, if Viktor could work as long as Jayce could. If he wasn’t so—
Another kiss to his palm, lingering and soft. Viktor looks down; Jayce is already looking at him. He looks exhausted. He looks energized. He smiles.
“Pretty nice view from down here,” Jayce murmurs. He nudges into Viktor’s hand, lips become teeth, nipping skin.
“Someone needs their eyes checked.”
“Not me,” Jayce breathes. “I’m the one that caught that frequency error, remember?”
Viktor hums. “If your handwriting was a bit more fastidious…”
“Says the man who read my entire journal.”
“It was a slog, I’ll admit...”
His teasing smile falters as Jayce’s breath ghosts over his palm, his hands curling around each thigh, substantial, heavy. Viktor can’t help but wince.
“That bad, huh? I give a mean massage, you know.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
Jayce pffs. “I want to.”
Viktor knows that look, cute like a puppy and just as stubborn. Viktor sighs, annoyance mostly feigned.
“Okay, but to bed right after. I’ll not have the councilor blame me for exhausting you again.”
Jayce barks out a laugh. “She’s far too astute. Mel would’ve made a good scientist.”
The childish pulse of jealousy is quickly displaced by the shift of Jayce’s hand. Anticipation tightens his posture, but Jayce makes a low sound, shakes his head gently.
“Relax. Tell me if it hurts.”
Viktor breathes, willing for the calm that Jayce offers. He tips his head back, closes his eyes.
The first press has him wincing. Jayce corrects himself, traces around his kneecap, along his shin. It’s always so knotted, tendons tight and sharp, but Jayce is patient, careful. He is good at this, Viktor realizes, not just words and bluster. The minutes slip by, and he’s almost afraid to move with how loose and light he feels, that a single shift would undo all the painstaking work of those hands, an unstable experiment bound to go awry.
Not just his knee, behind, lower, working his thumbs into the corded muscle of his calves, rubbing all the way down to his ankle. Back and forth, circular, deepening. A gentle spark of pleasure threads through his belly.
Viktor opens his eyes, watches Jayce through his lashes. He’s so close, thighs splayed on either side of his leg, cradling it, forehead drawn in concentration, not unlike how he looked when jotting equations or taking notes. Viktor loves those moments; he can stare as much as he wants with no fear of being caught.
Jayce rubs around the jut of his ankle, adjusts his foot gently, stretching the joint, then works both thumbs into the arch, down to the heel, along the back, pressing tender pressure points, all quiet concentration and an endless, studying gaze.
Viktor props an elbow on the armrest, leans his face into his palm, worrying gently at his lips. The shift catches Jayce’s attention, and their eyes meet, brown into hazel.
“That feels...nice,” Viktor says slowly, sleepily.
Jayce’s smile is so small, soft, until he glances down, smirking.
“I can tell.”
Viktor realizes belatedly what drew his gaze. He covers Jayce’s eyes with his hand.
“Hey!”
“I know that look,” Viktor says, forcing sternness into his voice. “You don’t have to do anything else.”
When Jayce's hands settle high on his thighs, there’s no pain, only heat, only a different type of anticipation.
“Taking care of you isn’t some burden,” Jayce says, wiggling his face out of Viktor’s grasp. “I want to touch you. All the time, in fact, do you know how distracting you are—”
Viktor captures his mouth in his hand.
“Hush, I…” Viktor swallows. “I get it. Don’t say it.”
He couldn’t stand the tirades Jayce could work himself into, the filthy, shameless things he said when he really got going. It was bad for his heart.
His words are warm against his belly. “I don’t think you do.”
Jayce unbuttons his fly, and Viktor bites his lips, watches Jayce through a gap in his fingers when he buries his face in his hand.
Neither of them get much rest after all.