Chapter Text
The world is hazy and Victor can’t tell if that’s the ceiling or the floor they’re looking at. It’s swimming, though, warping like it might cave in over him, and his hands are so cold. Something hot and slick is spilling over their fingers, and vaguely they think that might be a bad thing.
“Don’t you dare,” someone is saying, and it’s sharp like knives and familiar in a way that twists them deeper. “Fucking—open your eyes, Victor.”
And Victor doesn’t know why he’s listening, has no idea when he closed his eyes or who’s demanding otherwise, but he forces them open anyway.
“Keep them that way,” Mac is still telling him, and it’s Mac, because of course it is. Victor wants to say something, make it light and laughing and worth pushing the wild light out of Mac’s eyes, but their tongue is so heavy.
The ground against his spine is like ice—that is the ceiling then, and there’s a mystery solved—and the air is like falling snow, and Mac’s fingers are fire where he’s drawing something out across Victor’s ribcage. Victor wonders vaguely what’s burning, what could possibly—then realizes the heat is theirs too, that of course Mac doesn’t have proper ink with him. His pens and back-up pens were lost in the chaos, gone long before the gun was leveled at him, that he’s using the spilling scarlet to trace heal-stop-not-yet-please-not-yet wards, over and over and over again into their skin.
And Mac’s hands are stained, dyed black always whether they like it or not, but it’s been a long, long time since Victor was worried about them being stained like this. But here they are, Victor’s blood across Mac’s fingers, and it feels like a joke warped cruel.
Victor wants to reach out, touch the hair clinging to Mac’s temples,
his lips are moving because he wants to say something, maybe tell him it’ll be alright, maybe say god I’m sorry, I’m sorry—
They doesn’t realize they’re reaching out until Mac’s pushing the hand back down, fingers too-tight around their wrist.
“Don’t move,” Mac snaps, and it’s so familiar that Victor wants to laugh. He can’t, though, because there’s something bubbling up in his lungs, and there’s a flicker of something raw and desperate across Mac’s face in response. It doesn’t fade, and that more than anything makes a twinge of concern in Victor’s gut churn.
“Damien’s going to kill you,” Mac says, and it sounds harsh on his tongue. “Damien’s going to kill you, Victor, you can’t do this to him again.” There’s a splinter there, not quite a crack but sharp and afraid still. Victor watches Mac swallow, watches him re-trace the wards on their ribcage with too-steady fingers.
He wants to say something, but everything is so slow and the edges of his vision are buzzing with static. Still, it’s clear enough for Victor to see the panic grow and fester in Mac, can see when it clenches around his throat. And that gets them, that makes them nervous, god Damien’s going to have to see them like this, Mac is already seeing this—
“Victor,” Mac is saying, urgent and sharp, may have been saying it for long minutes. His hand is sliding up, pressing to the pulse at Victor’s throat and staying there like he can force it to keep beating with desperate fingers.
There’s a beat of silence, real silence, not the kind that is pulsing at the back of Victor’s skull. The room is heavy with it, but there’s shouting in the distance. It’s also familiar, in a hazy way, and Mac calls something back in response. His eyes never leave Victor, not for a moment, and Victor’s grateful but can’t think of why.
“You’re coming home,” Mac promises, quiet and just for them, and he’s vicious in it, radiant and furious and cracked around it all, and Victor loves him, loves him like the blood spilling across both their fingers and the bullet buried in their ribs, and Mac is—
“I’m bringing you home,” he’s saying, and the hand is curled against Victor’s jaw now, is pushing back hair and isn’t steady anymore. “You fucking idiot, I would’ve survived that shot, I’m bringing you home.”
And Victor believes him.