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Viktor met Jayce seconds from throwing himself into death’s arms. Unafraid, or failing that, at least ready and willing.
Skip forwards a few years, and Jayce is as alive as he’s ever been – while Viktor is railroaded, on a too-short collision course with death, scraping raw along the ground to slow it.
Further still, leaving their footprints past the end of the world. They are both on the other side of it now.
The inside of Jayce’s wrist is all scar. Too much of his body is, but here, tender, precious, he gouges at every raised edge. Trying to separate the scar tissue from his skin, to tear it out and give his flesh another chance.
They both know it will look worse in the aftermath. It always does.
He would be doing some serious damage if his fingernails were anything but broken, scabbed, bitten to the quick. Growing back wrong. Viktor wishes he could restore it all.
God, it still hasn’t been long enough – the story of the torment is still plain to read, printed black and blue under Jayce’s skin. There is no point ruminating on things that can’t be done. Can’t be undone. He is taking care of Jayce with everything at his disposal here and now, but guiltily, he thinks of the things he would do if his touch could heal as simply as it once did.
Every inch of Jayce would be covered in his fingerprints. Rivers he’d trail along, pouring down every path those nerves misfire. The mental image makes Viktor shiver.
He longs for the privilege to dip beneath Jayce’s skull, to ease the part of his brain in constant danger-ready overdrive.
He could even be persuaded to leave his scars alone, every single one beautiful, shining if Jayce would say they didn’t bother him. Viktor loves him invariably; the marks are less than nothing to him, except, of course, where they’re not. Except where they hurt – the knee, the back, mangled and arcane-rotted. The blood that never stops seeping through bandages. Jut of his bones, waste of his muscles. Viktor wants each part whole and clean and glowing. Golden wherever they approach each other. The way it is inside, the way Viktor always sees him, even if he can’t see himself.
It’s only in the mirror image he feels the truth of the words that had once reverberated around him in Jayce’s voice.
“God, I’m sorry,” Jayce mutters to the floor now.
“It’s alright, Jayce, dearest,” Viktor tells him every time, absolution he doesn’t know he can give.
Carefully, Viktor stands between his legs where he’s sitting at the edge of the bed.
“You are so good for me. You are my warmth,” Viktor says, and means it. He is smiling, benevolent. Inordinately pleased at just getting Jayce upright.
Jayce is alternately skittish and feral, or playing dead.
Viktor runs his hand through his hair to comb out the knots, and Jayce is pressing his face into Viktor’s stomach, mumbling.
“'m nothing.”
“You’re brave.”
“I don’t want to be…” He chokes off. But the way Viktor understands it, it’s a full sentence.
“Jayce, please,” he says desperately, almost regretting how it sounds a second later. He’s not meant to let the need show through. Never was. It’s the truest thing he has now, though. “My Jayce,” he repeats.
The way he looks up at him, like his eyes only ever focus on Viktor, and barely that.
“I want it to stop. I can’t, I can’t. And it never goes away, this fucking hole in my chest– I– Sorry. That was insensitive.” The last part comes out quiet, and Viktor laughs, a real one, however small. It startles Jayce. He’s shrinking back, and Viktor follows him, already reaching to soothe.
“Lásko.”
Face crumpling, Jayce curls tighter. He slams his fist into his thigh – no real power behind it, it would barely bruise – but Viktor sits down beside him, interrupts the motion with his own hand before Jayce can repeat it. His fingers close over Jayce’s fist as he shakes his head gently.
Jayce wants to scream.
(He wants to apologise to his mother for ever being offended at her assessment of his sanity. She was never cruel, but she should’ve been.)
He hates being like this, but in a deeper, worse part of himself, he craves it as well. Tiny under Viktor’s gaze. It’s always been this. He doesn’t know what he would do without it.
“Viktor,” Jayce gasps. They’re on the floor and it’s hell on both their bodies. Viktor is surprised he can even get the words out, sobbing as hard as he is.
“Hush. I have you.”
He wraps himself around Jayce as best he can. The physical affection is… decadent. A little overwhelming. Viktor has to suck in deep breaths, and then keeps going, modelling them for Jayce.
Of all the things he’s ever been, now he tries to be a tether, a comfortable weight, a remedy.
“I can’t,” Jayce cries into his shoulder. “Want to– Can’t kill myself now. Too late. I should already be dead.”
Viktor feels like he’s been gutted.
“In the snowstorm, in the fucking womb, God, I wish– if I had never been alive, it just would’ve been so much easier that way, and I…” He grabs at Viktor’s arm, rough, terrified and terrifying. “I’m so sorry, and I love you so much, and– Viktor, I’m sorry that you love me too. I’m a wreck.”
“Jayce,” he interrupts, suddenly dizzy with the certainty in the statement, but Jayce gets louder, voice broken open.
“No, just listen to me! Please just listen.”
Viktor falls quiet and simply caresses Jayce’s hunched back as it convulses with sobs. Kisses his face. Loves him, yes – wave crash and all.
Jayce is somewhere beyond coherence, beyond editing his words, the riptide of his emotion pulling him swiftly from shore. Always too big, too fast. The fact that he isn’t trying to hide it anymore is nothing good, despite the strange relief Viktor feels. He never really could hide. But it’s all laid out on the table now.
“It’s not just the… self-loathing. I try not to. S– Sometimes I hate myself so much, but it’s not even that, that’s not why I wish you weren’t in love with me – you are the best thing, the only thing, I’m so grateful, but… I know hearing this is hard on you.” Jayce is sobering as he talks, tears petered out until he’s just watching Viktor with red eyes. Viktor starts to rock them back and forth a little.
“Oh, zlato. Zlatíčko. I am right here, and you will be okay.”
“Listening to me whimper about how much I want to die hurts you, Viktor.”
Blank, bleak silence between them.
“I know I’m a burden but I’m a fucking self-destructing one. I hurt myself; I hurt you. I can’t stop feeling like this. But even worse, I can’t stop telling you about it. I can’t. I don’t want to exist. I love you, but–”
He’s growing more pliant now. Taking too-short, hitched breaths. Viktor, going numb, tries his best to rearrange their limbs. Reverently traces the strip of Jayce’s skin exposed where his shirt has rucked up. Presses his fingertips into the spasm at the base of his spine. It’s all tension release.
Jayce meets his gaze, suddenly begging Viktor to understand. Since before the beginning, he has only ever wanted to be understood.
“Please, please don’t think I don’t love you.” Viktor nods shakily, unable to imagine anything else. “I know you want to think less of yourself. But please believe me, Viktor. I love you so much, I would do anything for you.”
“Live for me, zlato. That is all I want.”
“I knew you’d say that. You’re getting predictable,” Jayce whispers. “Some life it is, anyways.”
He doesn’t get any response. Viktor is still holding him, still touching him, scar-patterned fingers trembling and so incredibly delicate over his swollen eyelids, still wet, still coming down.
Jayce nuzzles into Viktor’s palm like he fears every moment it will be ripped away.
“I promise it gets better.” Viktor’s voice shatters around the words. He clears his throat and turns away to quickly scrub at his own face.
Very gingerly, he shifts. Thinks about getting to his feet and nearly wants to give up before they’ve started. He misses his cane, whether or not this body strictly needs it. But he forces a smile when he looks back to Jayce. He could say, please Jayce try to eat something for me try to keep a meal down for once I know it is hard. But he does not. Instead, he tilts his head: “I am hungry. Come with me.”
Viktor jolts awake to Jayce rigid and unmoving beside him. Ice-cold panic swallows him – until he sees Jayce inhale, pressing his back to the wall, blinking hard.
Viktor curses under his breath before he relaxes.
“You’re okay, you can sleep. It’s only me,” he murmurs into the dark when he’s confident he can sound calm.
He feels some vague almost-guilt as he says the words, as if it’s a lie, or a manipulation. It’s not.
Either way, Jayce does not close his eyes.
“The nightmares, yes?” Viktor turns to his side, reaches out and twines their fingers together. It wins him the smallest nod. “Oh, Jayce, I understand. But they don’t stop if you refuse to sleep. You’ll see them when you’re awake, too.”
Viktor’s arms are wrapped around Jayce, but Jayce’s are limp by his sides, like he doesn’t have the energy to move them. Viktor knows the feeling. He brings one of those broad, warm hands up so he can lay kisses in the centre of his palm. When Jayce twitches, he smiles, and Jayce thumbs over where his mole is.
He’s taking advantage of the range of motion he can now technically manage, kneeling into the bed to straddle Jayce’s thighs. Honestly not thinking of much else past the closeness of it. He wants Jayce to hold on to him. He wants Jayce to do many things, only a few of which he can. But it’s okay. It has to be, for now.
“I don’t want to be alive. I don’t want to.”
Viktor is sick to his stomach. He always feels like this now. Sick with love; sick with worry. “I know.”
Jayce simply stares at him, hollow.
“You want to hear what’s fucked up?” A curve to his lips that looks so wrong.
Something inside Viktor sinks, because he’s not sure how much worse it can get. He’s tender, and it never ceases. He holds Jayce’s face between his hands.
“Talk to me. You can tell me anything you want to.”
Jayce breathes out a harsh not-laugh, like he can’t believe it.
“Everything I did. After the mage. Everyone thought I was saving Piltover. And I tried, I tried, I did. I did what I could, but… all I cared about was you, and making sure you didn’t face the same end he did. Coming down and realising that I was gone, that it was a massacre, that the Hexcore chewed you up and spit you out and left you alone. Forever. I couldn’t let that happen to you, Viktor. ”
Shakily, Viktor leans into the crook of Jayce’s neck. Then remembers to shift to the side a bit – not too close to his throat. Like this, he can feel the vibrations of Jayce’s voice through his sternum, grounding, physical.
“If I found some ledge to jump off right now, you… you’d be alone. The fallout, I always used to think about the fallout. Now it’s– just you. Maybe it’s not much, but you’re so big to me. It’s only that. Only that.”
Viktor swallows, a little flayed open. Small and big and small again.
“Isn’t that vile? My list of, hah, deepest fears, it goes: you leaving me, you being alone, and then everything else. And my list of wants goes: I want you, I want out.” Another jagged, hysterical noise. “But look at me now. I’m barely company like this. I hope you’re happy, Vik.” He looks sharply away, too honest.
This, at least, Viktor knows how to respond to.
“No. None of that. Do you hear me?”
He moves to turn Jayce’s head back to him, squeezes his grasp on his jaw.
“I am happy with you. With you alive, Jayce, no matter how hard it is.” Viktor tries to keep his composure as their foreheads touch. “I will carry it if you let me. You are not any kind of burden, and you should know this damn well, considering every word out of your mouth when I was dying. It is no different. I will take care of you. I do not need… schematics and welding equipment and equations from you all the time.”
Jayce squints. His nose brushes Viktor’s.
“Most of the time,” Viktor reconsiders.
It’s a losing battle lately, but he keeps trying to coax a little happiness to Jayce’s expression. A little of that golden sunlight. He murmurs his name, then tries the endearment. “Zlato. You are so loved.”
Jayce exhales with a shudder and finally pulls Viktor’s body close in his lap, arms banding fiercely around his waist. It has to be enough for now.
He tries to picture the person he’d be if all his time wasn’t spent holding Jayce together like this. Has to stop picturing anything at all soon after. It’s an exercise in humiliation.
But now, it’s Jayce. Even in the throes of pain, of trauma relived, of being lost and being found again by Viktor’s hands. When Jayce is a supplicant by his feet. When Jayce kisses him sweet on the lips like worship, like love. Viktor plays pretend. Imagines he’s someone accepting the touch solely for Jayce’s sake. A favour, selfless, to collect the overflow, wiping tears, staunching blood. A place given to put his heart when his own ribs don’t suffice.
In truth, Viktor is weak for Jayce, and he is selfish with Jayce, and that is that.
The hallucinations are predictably horrible – much worse now that the association is right there, the memories of shadowy figures moving oddly in the corners, always watching.
Jayce is exhausted enough by this point for his body to just… give out at any moment. Scary little micro-sleeps where every system shuts down, and Jayce doesn’t even seem to realise it afterwards. He’s nearly cracked his skull open on a table more than once.
Viktor’s concern, feverish and weighty, only eases when Jayce starts letting his head be pillowed safely on Viktor’s lap, then his chest.
Jayce is a much better patient, so to speak, than Viktor ever was. Despite it all, he accepts everything Viktor gives him. Unsurprising. He is better in every way.
The bed is theirs, always has been, but Viktor buries his fingers in Jayce’s hair, humming softly, and only then does it become the one place Jayce can get any real rest.
Viktor tries to summon a tune. The beat is kept by his heart.
“What do you want?” Viktor asks, out in the kitchen, and then scrunches his eyes shut. “I mean– what do you like?” The rephrasing is transparent, but some days, it works, when wanting is too hard. Today, Jayce is silent, sitting like there’s no-one there at all.
Viktor suppresses a sigh.
Lately, when it hurts like this, he keeps running his knuckles over his own sternum. The way you do for someone unresponsive, soul-deep tired, a corpse. Jayce was right, though Viktor would never say it aloud. He is a serrated knife pointed at himself, and every time Viktor pulls at it, he can feel his hands slicing open along the same scars.
Jayce’s face is blank and tight from dried tears. He lets the weight of his head drop, facedown into some article of clothing that smells like Viktor but faded, lacking his heat. Somewhere along the way, Jayce stopped ever laying on his back.
“Are you going to be alright here for a second if I go and wash quickly?” Viktor asks, gentle. Too far away already.
Would it be too codependent to go with him? Definitely enough to make Viktor worry, which means Jayce is not going to suggest it.
“No wrong answers. Yes or no, lásko. Will you be okay?”
Jayce nods yes.
The little words Viktor uses for him. The echoes behind his eyes. His concentration slips as Viktor lingers a moment, still massaging his most painful muscles. Fingers wrapping solid around his thigh. Shifting his kneecap in a scary way before he tenses, and Viktor strokes his skin, apologetic. Don’t go. He wants to cry again.
This thought, this memory feels important.
“You told me it was… harder in your language.” His throat feels raw.
Viktor glances down at him before he makes the connection.
It’s years and years ago; Jayce is grinning, mock-grandiose and perched on a lab chair, proclaiming something to laughs from an audience of exactly one who doesn’t understand a word. Speaking in his own native language with an ease that belies the weight of belonging.
“You told me you felt freer, easier in your second language than your first.”
“Yes, well.” Viktor swallows, caught off guard. “Maybe I don’t want easy. I want you. I want it to feel more; I want it to be heavy. I will call you lásko until the world ends if you would like. It is true, you know.”
Jayce’s vision is darkening around the edges, like the room’s collapsing in on him.
Viktor leaves not long after that. Leaves him staring daggers into his arm. He wants to…
He wants to do something that would make Viktor come back to find him bloodied. But then Viktor would make that expression, and it would haunt Jayce forever. It’s only that, stopping him now.
He can’t quite shake the thought that that is how Viktor will find him, if not today then one day. The universe finally coming to collect its debt. How Viktor was supposed to find him on the pavement beneath the ruin of his apartment a decade ago.
Viktor’s first and most overwhelming instinct has always been to push. Push back, push away. Stall until it’s almost too late and then find a hole to die in alone.
He can’t do all of that anymore, but he can approach it from the other side. Jayce is right here, Jayce needs him, so he can push away the guilt and all the rest of it to focus on this.
In the bathroom, the mirror taunts him. He briefly considers just smashing the damn thing. Not like Jayce can stomach looking at it anymore either.
Viktor closes the door. Feels faintly ill. Does not lock it. Checks the time. Turns the tap on until it’s loud white noise.
They never really talked about it, suicide. That long, that close together, and Viktor has seen Jayce take his meds, has seen him not take his meds. Viktor got good at intuiting, and Jayce knew he knew, and that was all they needed.
Now, he hunches over the sink and tries to avoid his own gaze in the reflection, but all at once, he’s crying. He clamps a hand over his mouth and hopes against hope that Jayce cannot overhear him. A deeper memory wrenches out of him, unbidden. It’s the same way he used to weep when he was young. In agony, watching his parents working themselves to the bone trying to get him pain relief, any relief, anything at all, and the pure unfairness of it all had something ugly trying to crawl up his throat.
And, of course, he’s scared.
Viktor knows, logically, that nothing bad is going to happen – he wouldn’t have left Jayce alone for even a second if he suspected otherwise – but there’s still no escaping it, the vice around his chest. Words Jayce repeats between cries, new marks on his body Viktor treats but says nothing about…
The nausea is back with a vengeance. Jayce wants to die. It was that simple. Viktor gags, heaves over the sink. Nothing comes up except stomach acid.
Shivery after it, Viktor checks the clock again and tries to breathe. He’s running out of time. He forces himself upright, rinses his mouth, strips his clothes off. Closes his eyes in the bath. Makes himself as small as he can be. Moves robotically – and that in itself is a horror he doesn’t confront. He scrubs hard but does not linger, refusing to catalogue the ways his body is changed. He knows Jayce’s better than his own, now.
He doesn’t want to blame Jayce for any of it – but it makes Viktor very sad, sometimes. What Jayce could’ve been if he hadn’t chosen this to make of himself. If he had listened to Viktor and left him.
But then, like he’s watching a child, it softens helplessly into something fond. Silly boy. He scratches lightly at Jayce’s scalp. So smart. Stupid, to stay.
There’s blame enough to drown in. Really, it matters little. Jayce is his charge now, asleep in his lap, whether or not Viktor thinks himself worthy of taking care of him.
It should be harder, but Jayce has always been so easy to love.
The skies are opening up, and the feeling is an old friend – Jayce is once again ants-under-his-skin restless.
Viktor with the blue smudges under his eyes, Viktor with the tiny red broken capillaries from crying or throwing up or both. Viktor has held his hand and led him on slow walks outside in the even grass and washed his hair. Talked him down a hundred times or more, until his promises began to look true, until the ledge became more the exception than the rule.
It’s… kind of lovely, all of it. It’s footprints in the snow, heading towards life.
Jayce is still itchy.
What he wants – and he can’t lie, it’s good to have some nice, normal wants again – is to do something for Viktor. So badly it’s eating him alive. He settles for fetching a damn blanket.
When he limps back, using the walls to support himself like Viktor used to, the sunset light is flooding in through the windows. Burnished, Jayce thinks, and then, zlato. He smiles. Viktor is napping, head atop his crossed forearms on the table. Jayce is taken right back to a lifetime ago – a kinder image than the ones that usually split his vision. This time, it’s just Viktor, relaxed, beautiful. Viktor, spread out over countless notebooks and mugs long gone cold.
That vestigial urge, to scoop him bodily up and carry him to their bedroom.
It feels a little wrong now, just as it felt wrong back then. Not to mention he doesn’t think his leg can take the weight. He doesn’t have to carry him to love him, though.
Jayce steps forward, moving like he’s fighting against the current again, but the important thing is he’s still moving.
He bends, draping the thick, knitted blanket over Viktor’s sleeping form. Kisses his fingertips and the curls of his hair. Has to pause to nestle there for a bit. There is pain enough to strain at his borders sometimes, but so much of his life is lovely, now, and he cannot believe he gets to have it.
Jayce stares into the kitchen, lost in thought, and finds another way he can be a bit of warmth for Viktor.
Lavender buds, steeped in hot water. Jayce stirs in wild honey. Hypnotising circles with the spoon. The tea is meant to soothe anxiety, he thinks, he hopes – but like always, he really just hopes Viktor will accept it, the palm-up offering. Will let himself enjoy it.
He makes just the one, knowing Viktor will smile and let him sip from the same cup soon enough. An indirect kiss.
His hands tremble, in the space of the few steps from the kitchen to the table. He manages not to spill it. It’s trivial, and small, but the accomplishment tastes sweet as he sets the cup in a safe place before Viktor. The steam drifts in the air. Jayce figures Viktor will notice the scent, will wake before long.
He lowers himself carefully to the floor and settles, the length of his back pressed to the table leg. It’s slightly sore, knobs of vertebrae against rough wood, but he remembers Viktor’s crooked spine and nearly tears up, bittersweet. Jayce hasn’t seen it since– well.
That’s the next step they’re taking, he resolves. Engraves it in the soft metal of his mind. Not Viktor taking off his shirt, but just Viktor in general. Whatever he needs, whatever he wants, whatever he’s been hiding behind the role of caretaker for this long.
Viktor’s leg – the worse one – is slanted off his chair right in front of Jayce, and he wants to cling onto it, wants to rest his head on that thigh. It takes a moment to remember he’s allowed to. Encouraged, really, judging by the noises Viktor always tries to hold back when Jayce maps the scant exposed inches of skin. With his mouth. Thoroughly. Scientific method, and all that.
(His conclusions so far: Viktor, after everything, is… different, but that is to be expected. They both are. Viktor is soft, and sensitive. Viktor is watercolour scars – the same as around Jayce’s broken knee, but Viktor seems to be made from them wholly. In a word, Viktor is gorgeous.)
Jayce closes his eyes, leaning peacefully into Viktor’s, matching his breathing while he waits for him to open his golden eyes.
In the quietened blizzard inside his head, he repositions those footprints. They were pointing to love the whole time.