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Jayce presses his face into the pillow and scrunches his eyes closed. Patterns of otherworldly colours bloom across his vision. He quickly blinks his eyes open at the uncomfortable familiarity of it.
His head pounds, a low level of nausea roiling his stomach. In the small still-rational part of his mind, he knows there’s nothing to be worried about. They’ve both made it more or less through every single worst-case scenario imaginable. They are, somehow, safe. It’s not that easy to believe it, though.
Exhaustion aches at his bones now, but it doesn’t change the way Jayce can’t find any peace in sleep.
He turns to lie on his back, staring up at the ceiling.
This place, far on the outskirts, it’s…
The midnight sky is dark, but it still has a certain luminosity to it. Distant city lights glowing off the clouds over lush fields. None of the stars Jayce was used to seeing from Piltover, but it’s nothing like the little that Viktor has told him of Zaun either.
He supposes that’s exactly why they’ve come here to hide from the world for a while.
The still half-healed gash on Jayce’s back protests at his position, so he rolls onto his side again, careful with his leg, careful not to dislodge Viktor. There had only been one bed – a big one, to be fair – and given everything Jayce and Viktor had gone through, it didn’t even cross either of their minds to say anything.
That’s what Jayce has to thank for the peaceful sight he’s met with now.
Viktor’s right there with him. Even now. Even still.
His presence is a grounding force, safe and calm and reassuring, as it always has been, really. The furrow between Jayce’s brows begins to ease as he watches him breathe.
Close enough to touch, lying beside Jayce on the bed. Longer hair spread out like a halo. Eyelids heavy. One of his hands lays not far from Jayce’s own, violet fingers open, lax. Unbidden, it reminds Jayce of how he’d looked after–
Jayce clenches his hands against the tremble of them. Against the need to reach out and grasp, hold, cradle, to just feel Viktor.
Images flash before him, sharp, insistent, over and over.
The gaping wound in Viktor’s chest that had somehow meant so little in the end. He’d survived. Mostly.
That didn’t mean Jayce hadn’t grieved. Didn’t erase the sense memory of raising his weapon against the one person he never, ever wanted to hurt.
Fever dreams split and shatter once again, and he has to shake his head to clear his vision.
Viktor doesn’t move an inch. Jayce wastes long minutes thinking about things that can’t be undone.
It’s so painfully quiet. Disorienting, deadening, the darkness that feels impenetrable even to a scream that gets caught in his throat. Silent – apart from a soft inhale, exhale, in…
Jayce tries to focus on it, telling himself that this is what’s real, that Viktor is breathing and he is asleep and he is alive alive alive–
Starved of all other sensory input except Vik – not that he’s complaining about that – Jayce studies him desperately, intently. Clings to the sight of him like driftwood, and he’s not drowning now but it feels like he is.
His eyes scan expanses of skin laced with grooves and scarred metal. It burns itself into his memory. Viktor looks as he did yesterday, presumably as he will tomorrow, but still, still, the fear of losing him. He’s not running out of time anymore, but his body still buckles under its own weight without a support. He’s not struggling to breathe or coughing up blood, but he seizes sometimes with pain when he moves too much, tender all over like the freshest of scars.
On every scale, there’s something deeply ironic about the lengths they’d gone to to fix one problem, only to end up with other ones. Road to hell, good intentions, so on.
But then again…
Jayce didn’t crawl his way out of hell for nothing.
His gaze stutters over the stretched-out neckline of the old shirt Vik’s wearing. One tiny mole sitting on the curve of his collarbone. Two more on his neck. Jayce might be seeing things, but he’s fairly sure the contrast of dark marks on pale skin weren’t visible there, lost in the unnatural colour of the pseudo-metal he had for skin even a few days ago.
Evidence of Viktor’s humanity peeking through. The sharpness of his cheekbones, face more familiar than it has been in a long time. It’s not that Jayce needs the reminder, despite what Viktor himself seems to believe.
What… am I?
The words linger. Jayce doesn’t care. It’s just that he wants to kiss every one of Vik’s moles.
He wonders about the future, if the arcane purple would continue gradually to fade from Viktor’s skin, if by the same mercy that they’d survived, the intrusion of the Hexcore on Viktor’s body had been reduced to something much more harmless, nothing more than an infection for his body to fight off. The thought leaves him dizzy. So many unanswered questions – but Jayce is a scientist, he can deal with those. Now, his head spins simply because nowhere in the past… few years, really, had he ever thought he’d get a future.
Much less one with Vik by his side.
He still remembers, as clearly as if it were yesterday, as vividly as if the bones were still shifting in his grasp – Vik’s too-fragile, too-limp, too-cold, too-dead body braced between his hands.
He remembers, too, everything that’s happened since. What happened in the realm of the arcane… it’s Vik, it’s always Vik. He’d been holding onto him then too.
Jayce feels sick again.
His pulse starts to hammer.
Suddenly, he can’t stop thinking about Viktor and himself, everyone else they’d ever known, split down the middle, a thousand times for a thousand realities. Combinations and permutations, each one different. The fates they faced, over and over.
They were so close to losing it all.
He hasn’t stopped picturing a version of himself, kneeling, surrendering, rusting over. A version of Vik, watching it all, left in eternal solitude next to a husk.
He’s shaking, he thinks. It’s fine. It’s just anxiety, he knows this. Not his first rodeo, not exactly.
He’d never quite realised how often it had been Vik to pull him through. Years of enduring politics and high society, the manic highs and the lows, and it was the thought of Vik staying in the lab for him to come home to. Vik letting himself be dragged to the worst of the worst events – no shortage of complaints there – just to reach out beneath the table to rest a hand over Jayce’s when he’d trembled.
Jayce is the one to reach out now. Instinctively, he captures a strand of Vik’s hair between his fingertips and just takes a second to feel. Soft, beautiful, soul-crushingly important.
Viktor huffs out a sigh and shifts his bronze-inlaid shoulders beside him, and it brings Jayce back.
They’re both alive. A hair’s breadth, a lucky shot, an anomaly – Jayce looks over at Vik and he doesn’t have any words to spare. It doesn’t matter.
There’s no question of how, really. All that matters is that they are.
Vik’s hand comes up, brushes momentarily against the hastily-wrapped wound on Jayce’s wrist. The arcane markings binding runestone to flesh are gone, but the wound remains, deep and painful. Vik quickly pulls away, but Jayce has never been so grateful to hurt.
Scarred bodies and minds and all, he’ll take it gladly for the second chance to live. He’s never been happier than now, knowing Viktor will too.
Bedsprings creak beneath the two of them, loud in the dark room.
“Mmmh. Jayce.”
“Yeah?” he breathes in reply.
“What is with all this, eh– tossing and turning?” Viktor’s voice is low, accent thicker from sleep, and Jayce’s chest aches with fondness. “Do you want me to die of sleep deprivation, Jayce?”
“I just–”
But he doesn’t know where the sentence is going, so he lets it drop. His heart still beats, too fast, too hard.
Finally, Vik raises his head, peering scrutinisingly across at him. Jayce meets his gaze, but can’t stop his lips curling upwards in an almost-shy smile. Viktor rolls his eyes – his irises are back to that warm gold that Jayce knows so well – and for dramatic effect, lifts a hand from the bed and waves it lazily in the air.
“Listen–” Jayce tries again, but he’s cut off when Vik manoeuvres himself up. Shuffles closer. His limbs resonate, metallic. Jayce wants to say something, wants to ease the pain of the movement, but he’s frozen, body not responding to his commands. Vik comes closer still. He rolls up over Jayce’s hip, and then he’s lying on his front, directly on top of Jayce’s body.
It feels… right. Real.
Then, for a second, all he feels is right, real, sharp elbows, ribs, hips, as Viktor squirms a little, but he stills and…
It’s more contact than they’ve ever really had, and Vik’s never been the one of them to initiate like this, and it’s not really doing Jayce’s heart any favours that he’s so very aware of each inch of skin to skin.
It feels good.
Vik flashes a glance up at him, and he finds himself holding his breath. He doesn’t want to do anything to scare Vik off or make him move – even though, to be honest, Jayce is probably the more skittish of them both right now.
Viktor proves that thought right almost immediately. He smacks Jayce’s side with the backs of his fingers, then tangles their legs ever-so-carefully together.
"Stop that," he scolds gently.
"What?"
“I would like it if you resumed breathing.”
“Oh.”
Jayce dutifully reminds himself to inhale. Something loosens like a knot behind his sternum.
He surrenders to Vik’s weight pressing down on him, welcome and warm, and air fills his lungs so much easier despite it.
Vik nods, apparently satisfied, and settles back down. There’s not an ounce of tension in his body, head pillowed comfortably on Jayce’s upper chest, and it quiets the buzz of his mind.
He feels more at ease than he has in a long time.
He only hesitates a moment before bringing a hand up to cup the back of Vik’s head. His fingers thread into his soft hair again, enjoying the length of it, and he watches Vik’s expression melt into the softest of smiles.
Quietly, Vik murmurs something under his breath. The words slip past Jayce in a language he doesn’t know, but he gets the feeling they weren’t meant for him anyway. Jayce simply cranes his neck and presses his lips to Viktor’s forehead for a moment in response.
He relaxes back and lets his eyes close, his other hand coming to rest on the slight curve of Viktor’s waist. The gentle rhythm of their heartbeats begin to lull him to sleep, and he holds Vik like a part of him had wanted to since the moment they met.