Work Text:
They don't kiss.
Jayce knows that despite appearances, despite his own yearning, despite how desperately he wishes it to be otherwise, this is not his Viktor. Maybe it was, once, a long time ago; but this is a Viktor who killed a world, who did unspeakable horrors in the pursuit of something that he thinks his own Viktor would consider at the opposite end of the spectrum of good. It hurts, to see him--to see him aged, which makes something awful and complicated twist inside of Jayce's chest, something Jayce thinks his Viktor never would have gotten to be. He wants it to be his Viktor, but time changes all things, and immense time changes things immensely.
And Viktor--well, this is his Jayce, in the way that all things that belong to a person's past exist in totality of what they were, their edges defined by time, their stories written in full. But his Jayce has been gone so long--dead--or, not dead, but as good as, an empty husk kneeling in his final resting place, an echoing vessel to act as receptacle for all of Viktor's thoughts and regrets--that this man in front of him may as well be a ghost. Ephemeral, untouchable, and there is a part of Viktor that fears--if he reaches out to embrace Jayce the way he wishes too, will the illusion dissolve under his touch? Will he find only smoke and ash where he longs for heat, for something solid to rest his hands and heart against?
Jayce feels the yearning for Viktor like a physical ache, under the suspicion and guarded anger he holds up like a shield between them. There is still (always, always) a magnetic pull to him, originating from somewhere deep in his core. He leans, stretches, resists, but still his body can't help but fall into the gravitational well of Viktor's face, his voice, his very presence; he feels muscles in his neck tighten as he fights it. He holds himself back; but he can do nothing about his eyes, nothing about the way they lock onto Viktor, intent and desperate, and Viktor--oh, Viktor meets his gaze, not a hint of his typical sardonic smirk on his lips, just a soft, slack smile that ticks up the corners of his mouth, lines wrinkling around his eyes in fondness. Jayce stares, memorizes. He will never get to see his Viktor with lines like those. His Viktor would have died before he reached anything near to this age.
His Viktor will die with Jayce's return. He will die at Jayce's hand, to prevent him from becoming this, wreaking this. It is a better thought than to consider that everything that made him Jayce's Viktor is already dead.
Jayce's draws in a deep, shuddering breath, his eyes brimming with tears at the weight of what he needs to do. Viktor matches it, his chest lifting and falling under the robe, his eyes still holding Jayce's, not looking away. They breathe, together, silent; two breaths, three, like all the oxygen in this broken world exists between the two of them.
Jayce's heart thunders under his ribcage, his skin throbbing with its pulse--
Viktor's heart stutters awake, an empty, desolate thing suddenly flooded with the memory of what it was to feel, to care, to need and want and love--
And when Viktor's hand lays on the shoulder of the husk that once was Jayce, or will be Jayce, and now perhaps, with luck and resolve and love, will never be Jayce--
They both feel it, eyes on one another, a shiver wracking Jayce's entire body as tensions bleeds from them both, still matching one another's gaze, matching one another's breath, and it hits like a blow, like a supernova, soft as the beat of a butterfly's wings, an intimate connection, crossing a vast plane of time and space, the coalescing of everything that was or will be or could be or maybe won't, that single point of connection as Jayce and Viktor tunnel through time and space once again, to this moment, from immeasurable physical and emotional distance to this most simple moment of convergence, and it's not his Viktor and it's not his Jayce and yet it always will be, I am here with you, and I am here with you, and I am here with you, all of it spoken and seen and understood in the eddies of their shared breaths--
In all timelines, in all possibilities, only you can show me this--
The hammer is released, and Jayce takes it up, and the swirls and currents of the magnitude of the connection between them--despite neither of them being the other's, despite both of them always being the other's, despite them being each other's, I would know you anywhere I would love you anywhere I will find you I will save you I will kill you I will love you I will not fail you--it carries Jayce away, snatches the breath from his lungs the moment he is ripped away from Viktor to be spat out from the anomaly once more, knowledge heavy on his heart, nerves singing and breath shaking, every part of him alive in beautiful agony, trying not to gasp
--because the air in his lungs is still the breath they shared and he is scared to let it go
--because that wasn't his Viktor, but his Viktor is waiting
--because he knows what he has to do
--because Viktor asked him to--
But no. They don't kiss.