Chapter Text
20 Years Ago:
"Just-- hold still for a moment, mijo," Jayce's mom scolded. "You have something on your face!" She was coming at him with a napkin that she'd spit on -- gross! -- so he ducked around a fake Christmas tree and got in the line to see Santa. Grownups weren't supposed to be in the line unless the kids were tiny babies who needed to be carried or have their hands held. Jayce was five whole years old, way too big for his mom to carry him! And he was in first grade already instead of kindergarten with all the other five-year-olds! So he was way, way too big for his mom to hold his hand in the line to see Santa.
He watched surreptitiously from behind the plastic tree until she gave up trying to call him back over to her and went to stand with the rest of the parents at the exit of Santa's Village. He heaved a sigh of relief.
It wasn't much of a village, Jayce noted. All but two of the little houses were fake, just big stand-ups that looked like houses, like someone had drawn them on the side of a really big box and cut them out. And all the trees were fake, and the giant candy canes were probably plastic, also.
But the elves were scurrying around doing things and looking busy and he really really hoped that this Santa was the real deal. This Santa's beard looked real, at least, not like the Santa at the school holiday play, who'd just been the principal, Mr. Czyzewski, wearing a red outfit and a fake beard with too much glitter in it. And the Santa who had been ringing the bell on the corner near the store last week had been a girl!
But his mom had promised that this Santa was real. That all mall Santas were real. Jayce had tried to argue that they couldn't all be real, because there were at least three malls and he couldn't be in three places at one time. And Mom had gotten that look on her face and said that of course they were all real, because Santa was magic. "How else do you think he brings presents to all the children in only one night?" she had challenged, and Jayce hadn't had an answer for that, so he'd let her finish fixing his hair and endured wearing his fancy clothes so that she could get a nice picture of him with Santa to send to Dad, who was off on another trip but would absolutely definitely positively be home in time for Christmas.
Finally, Jayce got to the front of the line. One of the elves led him up the little staircase and helped him up onto Santa's lap.
"Well hello there," Santa said cheerfully. "What's your name?"
"Jayce, sir."
"Ho-ho-ho, what a polite young man you are! Now tell me, Jayce, what is it that you want for Christmas?"
"Are you for sure the real Santa?" Jayce asked, a touch anxiously.
Santa chuckled. "Of course I am!"
Jayce hesitated. "Pinky promise?"
Gravely, Santa offered his pinky. He was wearing white gloves. Jayce hooked his pinky through Santa's and tugged, and Jayce nodded, satisfied. "I want, a, um, I want a boyfriend," Jayce said, feeling his cheeks pink up a little.
"A friend to play with?" Santa said. "That's a very sweet wish, Jayce, but--"
"No," Jayce interrupted. "I mean, it would be nice if we could play together, too. But a boyfriend. My true love, for kissing, like in my mom's book that I found."
"Well. You're a little young for that right now, Jayce," Santa told him cautiously.
Jayce sighed heavily. "That's what Mom said when she took the book away." He glanced over to his mom, who was watching from behind the village fence with a pleasant smile. "Please? I've been extra good this year!"
Santa chuckled. "I know you have, Jayce. You're definitely on the Nice List." He stared thoughtfully into the space near the fake trees, as if he could read some kind of calculation in the twinkling lights there. After a couple of seconds, he looked back and said, "I tell you what: I'll put your wish down for the Workshop, but I'm afraid it's just not possible this year. It's too close to Christmas now for even my elves to make something like that in time. You may have to wait a few years for that wish. So, what do you think you'd like this year?"
Jayce's shoulders slumped. "I dunno. Some books, I guess? All the books in my classroom are for babies."
"Ho-ho-ho! Books are a wonderful wish!' Santa assured him, but all the hope had gone out of Jayce, then. This wasn't the real Santa, after all, he decided, even as he half-heartedly obeyed the suggestion to look at the camera for a picture. The real Santa would never tell Jayce that something wasn't possible. He took the little candy cane that the fake Santa offered him and shuffled through the fake snow toward the fake village exit to rejoin his mother.
Now:
"Merry Christmas, cariño." His mom handed him a glass of wine before she sat next to him on the couch with her own glass.
"Merry Christmas, mamí. Dinner was amazing, as always." Jayce reached for the first of two photo albums on the coffee table, but before he could open it, she put a hand on his arm.
"You do not have to indulge an old woman's nostalgia, Jayce. If you would rather go out and visit friends, I am content to know you will be here with me on Christmas morning."
Jayce laughed a little and determinedly opened the cover of the album. "Where would I go?" he wondered. "My friends are all visiting their families. I'll see them next week, for New Year's. And I enjoy going through our pictures, too. You're not the only one who gets nostalgic around the holidays, you know."
She leaned into him a little. "My sweet little boy has grown into a big, strong man," she sighed, "but still as sweet as ever."
Jayce kissed her temple and then pointed to the picture at the top of the page. "It's still hard to believe you were ever that little."
She chuckled, perhaps a bit damply, but took a sip of her wine and launched into a story of some mischief she and her sister had gotten into when she was around the age in the photo. Jayce had heard it half a dozen times or more, but he nodded and laughed and prodded for more details, the same way he always did.
This was their tradition, that they'd started fifteen years ago -- not the first Christmas after his father had died, but the one after that, when the grief hadn't been quite so sharp, but still weighed heavily around both their necks.
It wasn't as heavy anymore, though it gained mass at certain points during the year, Christmas being one of them. Sometimes, Jayce worried that he was forgetting his father's face, but their annual slow stroll through these albums kept it from fading entirely, and took the place of other traditions that Jayce remembered only in his mother's telling of them, really. But as long as they remained sharp in her memory, he would indulge her. He could not fathom the thought of leaving her alone on Christmas Eve for longer than it took to run out to the bodega to pick up some more sugar or milk.
The first album was mostly from her childhood and earliest adult years, though some old photos that had belonged to his dad were stuck into the last few pages, along with some pictures from the time his parents had been dating. Weird as it still was to think of them young and courting, and all the mental images that conjured up, he loved how happy she looked in these pictures. Young -- younger than Jayce was now, even -- and full of life and love. His dad looked young, too, and eerily like Jayce himself looked. Dad had paler skin and was thinner, but their faces were almost identical. Even their haircuts were nearly the same.
The other album began with his parents' wedding photos. His mother had been a stunning beauty, Jayce thought, though she always scoffed when he told her so. His father, in those pictures, mostly looked too small for his suit and mildly shellshocked, though deliriously happy, as if he couldn't believe that the beautiful woman beside him was really his.
There was a pair of pictures that Jayce always lingered over. In them, everyone was toasting the happy couple. In the first, the bride was smiling at her family, but Jayce's dad was only looking at her, as if she were the only thing in the world worth looking at. As if she had hung the stars in the sky. As if he were ready to fetch down the moon for her, should she ask it, and would dedicate his life to trying to make her just as happy as she made him. As if he'd only just realized that home wasn't a place but a person.
In the second picture, it was Jayce's dad who was looking away, grinning goofily at his best man to show off the gapped front teeth Jayce had inherited from him, and it was his mom who was giving her new husband that same look of utter adoration.
Jayce wanted -- had always wanted, ever since he could remember -- that kind of love for himself. Someone who would be his home. Someone who would make his life better just by existing. Someone whose home he would be, whose life was improved by him.
...That last bit was the one that had tripped him up, every time.
More fun was the rest of the album, in which Jayce was heavily featured. His mom always laughed over a baby picture of him sitting on the floor with oatmeal on every possible surface of his body and a perfectly pristine spoon in one hand. Jayce liked the one from his second birthday party, in which he was flipping off the camera (accidentally, of course, as he hadn't even known what it meant, even generally, until he was in elementary school). His mom insisted, every time, that it wasn't at all funny, but Jayce couldn't help but note that she was the one who'd curated these albums in the first place.
They turned another page, and-- "Oh my goodness," she said, chuckling, "I'd nearly forgotten about this one!" She pointed to a picture of Jayce sitting on a mall Santa's lap. There were several similar photos scattered through the album, but in this one, Jayce was absolutely scowling into the camera and clearly hovering right on the edge of bursting into tears. "What were you so angry about? You never did tell me."
Jayce remembered the incident with a startling clarity, actually. Every word, every facial tic, every gesture. He remembered the music that had been playing over the mall's shitty PA system and the slightly medicinal, chemical smells of cinnamon and peppermint and pine that had probably come out of an aerosol can. He remembered the feel of Santa's cotton glove and faux-velvet suit. He could still taste the too-strong flavor of his consolation candy cane. Everything.
And he wouldn't share anything so embarrassing with his mother even if she were on her deathbed.
"I don't know," he laughed. "It was so long ago -- how old am I in this? Five? Six? They all blur together."
"Really?"
Jayce shrugged. "Maybe I was beginning to suspect that Santa isn't real." That much, at least, was probably true.
She chuckled. "Well, whatever the reason, it makes for a funny picture now."
"Yeah," Jayce agreed, because it was funny, that much raw fury in a body barely big enough to come up to his mother's waist.
They continued through the album, remarking over Jayce's startling transformation from a little boy to a gawky teen (they hadn't taken a lot of pictures in the couple of years after Dad had passed). They smiled a little wistfully over pictures of Jayce's first girlfriend, and then his first boyfriend, and then his graduation. Those years had gone so quickly, it seemed now, and he'd spent them desperate for time to go even faster: to get to college, to get out of college, to get on with his life.
And now he was here, wishing he'd known to slow down and appreciate it all more.
The last few pages of the album were empty, waiting for new memories to be made. "I suppose I'll need to buy a new album in another year or two," his mother remarked, her fingers trailing down the blank pages as if imagining the pictures that would someday grace them. Of Jayce with some future partner, perhaps, an echo of the older album.
"Eventually," he agreed, and drank the last swallow of his wine just as the hall clock chimed eleven. "Time for bed," he suggested, and wrinkled his nose at her playfully. "Santa can't come until we're all asleep, you know."
She laughed and leaned over to kiss his cheeks, one after the other. "Sleep well, cariño," she said.
"Good night, mamí."
Jayce woke slowly, content and warm. The novelty holiday pajamas that his mom had gotten for him this year were very comfortable, even if the print was a bit eye-searing, with its candy canes and sugar plums and cookies-and-milk. He stretched, grateful that his mother had replaced his childhood bed with a larger one shortly after he'd gone to college.
He could smell bacon and cinnamon and coffee, which meant his mom was up and working on breakfast, so he shouldn't lounge around in bed for too long. He laid there for a bit longer, though, picking out little bits of music filtering in from downstairs. After a little while, both his bladder and his stomach informed him that it was Time To Get Up.
He stopped in the bathroom first. While he was washing his hands, he considered shaving, but his stomach growled again. Fuck it, he thought. If his mother was going to insist that they wear their matching holiday pajamas until after breakfast, then she could also deal with his scruffy face.
He detoured back by his room for his slippers, because the kitchen floor was cold in the winter. When he walked into the room, something looked... off.
Wrong.
But he wasn't sure what it was.
The still-unmade bed looked the same as it always did, the Christmas quilt draped over the foot of it. There was his suitcase standing in the corner. The bookshelves looked the way they had for years, piled with his mom's craft supplies and old cookbooks that she couldn't bring herself to throw out and other random stuff. The geodes he'd collected in middle school were still lining the windowsill, glittering in the morning light.
He shook his head. He must have had a weird dream or something that was still lingering in the back of his mind. Too much wine just before bed, perhaps. He shoved his feet into his slippers and headed downstairs.
He paused as he reached the kitchen door, blinking in confusion. His mother was standing at the counter, wearing her own sugarplum pajamas and drizzling icing over a large tray of cinnamon rolls, which was what he'd expected to see -- and there was a man standing at the stove, tending a pan of bacon, which he absolutely had not expected.
Who the hell would be in his mother's house on Christmas morning? Especially wearing the exact same ridiculous pajamas as Jayce and his mom? Jayce was so shocked that he couldn't even move or speak.
The man turned his head to say something to Jayce's mom in a low voice, and Jayce couldn't help thinking but that the man was... beautiful. There was no other word for it. He was young, close to Jayce's age, and his skin was pale, thinly traced with the soft map of the veins under his skin. His hair was auburn-brown and looked fluffy and soft, though slightly flattened on one side, as if he'd just woken recently.
Jayce's mom laughed at whatever the man said to her, and as she recovered, she noticed Jayce, lingering in the doorway. "Cariño! You are awake, finally!"
The man glanced around and smiled warmly, as if there were a secret he and Jayce shared. "Good morning, sleepyhead." His eyes were the palest brown, nearly golden, and his voice was smooth and accented and lovely.
"Good... morning," Jayce managed. He took one step into the kitchen, and then another. "Merry Christmas."
"Merry Christmas!" his mom exclaimed.
"Yes, merry Christmas," agreed the man. He gave Jayce another one of those warm looks before turning back to the stove to tend the bacon.
"And... who are you?" Jayce asked, his voice cracking just a bit.
His mother gave him a strange sort of frown, as if she was waiting on the punchline of a joke.
The man glanced at her, then sighed, playfully exasperated. "Just because I prefer to sleep in," he chided, "does not mean that I cannot wake early. Besides," he added, with a quick smile at Jayce's mom, "I am still in the currying favor phase."
Jayce blinked. "What does that mean?"
The man gave him a look that he couldn't interpret, then pressed his lips together and turned to Jayce's mom, handing her the spatula. "Ximena, will you take over the bacon for me? I need a quick word with Jayce." He didn't give either of them time to protest, just crossed the kitchen -- using a cane, Jayce realized when he took his first step -- and snared Jayce's arm, pulling him back toward the living room.
"What is this?" Jayce demanded. "Who are you?"
"My name is Viktor," the man said quietly. He glanced toward the kitchen, and lowered his voice even further. "And I am your boyfriend."
Jayce stared at him. "I don't have a boyfriend," he said. "Or a girlfriend, or any other-- I mean, I have friends, obviously, but I'm not seeing anyone."
"You are now," Viktor said with a small smile. "Your present, that you requested from Santa. A bit late, but, eh--"
"Twenty years late," Jayce corrected automatically, because he couldn't understand what was happening.
"True," Viktor acknowledged. "I hope you do not mind the wonky leg too much, but people take a lot of time, actually, and I am told there was a small accident at the Workshop during my early growth. There was no time to begin again, and the lead designer judged that you would prefer to prioritize mental compatibility over physical."
He was looking at Jayce with a slightly anxious expression, as if Jayce could possibly care about his leg when what he was telling Jayce was categorically impossible. "I-- Mental, yeah," Jayce said faintly. "But what the fuck are you talking about?"
Viktor looked relieved. "Good, good. The Workshop does its best, of course, but the population keeps growing and some orders are harder to fill than others. Or so I was told." He glanced toward the kitchen again and lowered his voice even more. "Listen, I literally cannot talk about the Workshop or any of that when anyone other than you can hear me -- it's a built-in failsafe, it will work even if I'm not aware of the person listening -- so if you want to go upstairs to discuss--"
"You're... what, like an android?" Jayce hazarded, grasping for straws.
"No," Viktor said, looking almost offended. "I'm a person. Your boyfriend. Or partner, if you prefer that term. Your perfect soulmate, in fact. The Workshop takes a great deal of pride in its craftsmanship, even under these sorts of conditions."
"You," Jayce said slowly, "are a person."
"Yes."
"Like. You have... an ID. And a job. And a family and everything."
"No. Well, yes, I have all the appropriate paperwork and a job -- we work for the same company, actually, isn't that nice? But I do not have a family."
"So--"
"My family are all gone, now. My last living relative was my mother, who passed only a few years ago. Your mother quite reminds me of her, in fact."
"You have memories?"
Viktor rolled his eyes. "Of course I have memories. Doesn't everyone?"
Jayce suddenly felt dizzy enough to stagger and stumble, even though he'd been standing still. Viktor caught his arm, looking actually quite worried. "Jayce? Are you all right?"
"I... I may need to sit down," Jayce managed weakly.
It had taken Jayce a while to recover from the shock, and he had to admit, he was grateful to Viktor for running interference to keep his mom from fluttering around him and making his headache worse.
He did eventually regain his equilibrium again, after which they opened presents. Jayce had to stare hard at Viktor when he saw that there was a gift under the tree to Viktor from his mother -- wrapped in her own wrapping paper, even. She didn't seem to think anything was unusual at all. As far as Jayce could tell, she was certain that Viktor and Jayce had arrived together a few days ago and that Viktor had been cautiously (and unnecessarily) trying to earn her approval ever since.
When he cornered Viktor about it later, Viktor just looked at him with wide eyes. "Memory modification, and some accessories," he said. "It's totally harmless, I promise."
"Why didn't they modify my memory, then?" Jayce asked.
"It's important for you to know that your wish was fulfilled," Viktor said seriously, as if that made any sense at all.
Jayce rubbed his hand over his face and pressed against his forehead, right over where a fresh headache was forming. Then he paused, arrested by a sudden thought. "I didn't bring a suitcase with me," he said. "I threw my clothes into a gym bag." That was what had looked wrong in his room earlier. He looked at Viktor.
Viktor shrugged, a little sheepishly. "It wouldn't fit enough clothes for me. They had to change it out."
Jayce stared at him, hard. "When I go home, is my apartment suddenly going to have all of your things in it?"
"Of course not," Viktor said. "We have only been dating for three and a half months. I have my own apartment. I'm sure you will notice a few changes, but they are quite minimal. A toothbrush, an emergency change of clothes, that sort of thing."
Jayce sighed. "Right." If he'd had a real partner, he would be thrilled for there to be visible signs of it scattered around his apartment. But he wanted to have experienced that gentle encroachment himself. To have invited it. It felt like he was missing something, that he hadn't been able to have a happy, bashful conversation in which he suggested that his partner bring a spare change of clothes over, just in case. It felt wrong, that he hadn't spent those three and a half months getting to know his partner, becoming enchanted with stupid little quirks or staying up all night arguing about movies or spending a rainy, lazy Sunday in bed making love.
His friends would already know Viktor, probably, when he went home. They would probably actually know Viktor better than Jayce did, because they would have received several months' worth of modified memories that included Viktor. Memories that Jayce didn't have.
He managed to avoid his mother for most of the day by claiming he was still feeling slightly unwell -- which was perfectly true; his temples throbbed every time he glanced at Viktor and saw Viktor already looking back, as if those golden eyes couldn't find a single other thing worth looking at.
The light outside his bedroom window was beginning to fade when his mother came in to check on him.
"Cariño, I do not wish to pry--" Jayce barely avoided a snort of disbelief. "--but I cannot help noticing a certain... tension. Between you and Viktor. And now you've spent most of the afternoon hiding up here. Is everything all right with you two?"
"It's fine, mamí, I just have a headache."
"Because the holidays are a very stressful time, even for a long, settled relationship. And Viktor is under even more stress, you know. He is in an unfamiliar place, celebrating unfamiliar traditions, trying to make a good impression on a person he's never met before, and you are his only support network, here. And you are avoiding him."
"Mamí--"
"He is a lovely young man," she overrode him, "and whatever argument the two of you have had, he seems quite worried for you. I do not believe he would be so upset if you only had a headache. And I do not believe, if you merely were not feeling well, that he would choose to linger with me in the kitchen rather than come up to comfort you."
"He's... giving me space," Jayce protested.
"Yes, well, you have given him too much space," she said tartly. "I will not ask what you argued about, but you need to mend it. It is Christmas, Jayce. Do not spoil the day for him, or he will never wish to come back. Now. Go wash your face and take some aspirin, and then come down to dinner. ¿Claro?"
She wasn't going to let him wriggle out of it, he knew from the tone of steel underlying her quiet words. He sat up with a sigh. "Fine."
"Good boy." She patted his shoulder as if he were eight again. "Things will seem better once you two have made up, I promise."
She kissed his forehead and then left. Jayce gave himself another couple of minutes to hide, then went into the bathroom to do as she'd commanded. When he came back to the room to grab his phone, Viktor was sitting on the side of the bed.
"She thinks that we're fighting," Viktor told him, and a faint smile tugged at his lips. "She made me come up to bring you down to dinner, even though she was just up here."
Jayce snorted. "I know." He shoved his phone in his pocket and scrubbed his hands over his face. "This would be easier if they'd messed with my memories, too," he muttered. "I don't even know how we're supposed to have met."
"We were put on the same project at work," Viktor said gently, and his cheeks turned pink. "Late this past summer. I was a new hire, and you were very kind to me, showing me the ropes. And then you learned I was also new to the city, so you offered to show me around town a bit. I -- somewhat over-optimistically -- thought you were asking me on a date. It made for a somewhat confusing evening for both of us, but when I summoned up my courage to kiss you at the end of it, you kissed me back."
Jayce stared at him. "That's... almost offensively cute."
Viktor smiled. "I know. But I am an incurable romantic, so I love it."
Jayce kind of loved it, too. Jayce looked into those shining golden eyes, and resisted the urge to touch that tousled hair and find out if it was as soft as it looked. "I wish I'd gotten to actually live it."
Viktor's smile faded. "I know. But we'll... we'll make new memories together, Jayce. Even better ones. I promise."
It was not Viktor's fault, Jayce reminded himself, that Santa's Workshop was apparently completely fucked up. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Come on, then," he said. "Let's go have dinner. If she asks how we met, you get to tell the story."
"Of course," Viktor agreed, and at Jayce's gesture, preceded him out of the room.
"That wasn't so bad," Viktor suggested later that night, after they were back in Jayce's room. "Was it?"
"I guess not," Jayce said. He'd been at a loss every time his mother asked a question about their relationship, but Viktor stepped in smoothly each time to rescue him and then steer the conversation back toward safer topics. Oh, tell her about that ridiculous hat that Heimerdinger wore to the office party!
Jayce was reasonably certain his mother hadn't noticed. But he was exhausted as he gathered up his absurd pajamas. "I'm going to go change in the bathroom," he said. "Can you pull off one of the blankets for me? I'll go back downstairs and sleep on the couch."
Viktor didn't say anything, and Jayce turned to look at him. "Vik?"
Viktor twitched a little at that, though Jayce wasn't sure why. "Why?" he asked.
"Why... what?"
"Why any of that?" Viktor said. "I am your partner, we can sleep together."
That made Jayce twitch. "I'm not sure that's a good idea."
"I meant just sleep," Viktor elaborated swiftly. "I know you don't truly know me, yet. And this is your mother's home, anyway."
"That's not the problem," Jayce said. "The problem is that you are really, incredibly beautiful, and if we're in the same bed, I'm probably going to..." He waved a hand. "It's not going to stay at just sleep."
Viktor's lips curved into a smirk. "Even better," he murmured.
Jayce frowned at him. "No, that would be bad."
"But why?"
"Because!" Jayce said, throwing his hands up. Viktor glanced worriedly toward the door and the hall that led to Jayce's mom's room. "Because," Jayce repeated more quietly, and then stalled. "Look, you said you're a person, right?"
"Yes, of course."
"And then Santa--" It still made his head throb, thinking about that, so he moved past it quickly. "--gave you to me? As my gift! To be my boyfriend? That's... That's like. Slavery or something, I'm not going to be a party to that!"
"Oh," Viktor said, and weirdly, he looked relieved. "You don't have to worry about that, Jayce. This isn't slavery, I am not compelled to obey you or anything like that. I want to be here with you. I love you."
That took the wind from Jayce's sails. "You-- you do?"
Viktor smiled. "Of course I do. The Workshop wouldn't have missed a detail like that!"
And that filled Jayce's sails right back up. "...Yeah. Which, if I'm understanding this correctly, is something that you didn't consent to! They just. Just made you, and told you that you're in love with someone you'd never even seen? That's pretty horrifyingly far from consent!"
"But I'm consenting now," Viktor said, on the edge of pleading.
Jayce couldn't stand it anymore, the way Viktor's expression wavered between temptation and supplication, desire and despair. He grabbed his pillow and the top blanket off the bed, bundling everything under his arm, and left the room.
Viktor, wisely, didn't try to follow.