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“I like it when you touch me,” Viktor murmurs against Jayce’s shoulder. Brave under the protective dark and quiet of the dorm room.
“V…” Jayce tucks his face further into the shared pillow, ears no doubt warming in that charming way they do when he blushes.
Viktor wets their lips with the tip of their tongue, “I wish you’d do it more. Without thinking so hard.”
Four months. They had known each other for four months and gods, it felt like lifetimes.
Viktor could remember meeting Jayce on the first day of classes. A sweet boy in their engineering program who did everything he could to make himself smaller. Pressing himself to the walls of the elevator to give Viktor and their cane room as they rode down floor after floor only to end up attending the same intro class.
They'd told themself they wouldn't get distracted at college. They begged and promised a god they didn't believe in that they'd use whatever time they were granted for something good, please, just shrink this damn mass—
But then there was Jayce Talis.
There’s a brief pause, just enough that Viktor worries for a moment that they’ve misstepped. But then, Jayce clears his throat.
“Hah… How?”
“How?”
“How… Do you like to be touched?”
Their heart pounds against their ribs and their blood rushes in their ears. Was their mouth always so dry? Gods, Viktor, get it together.
“Just about any way, when it’s you,” they admit. “But I really like it when you… Touch my lower back… Or when you hold my leg when you’re done rubbing it… It feels…”
They search for the word, but never quite finds it. Not when a large hard is reaching back and wrapping around their thigh, hiking it up over Jayce’s hip.
“Oh.”
“Like this?” Jayce asks, voice quavering and gods it makes their heart ache.
“Yes,” they breathe. They tuck their nose against the nape of Jayce’s neck, “Yes, exactly like this.”
Everything about Jayce Talis was distracting.
The knotch above his eyebrow that Viktor would come to learn came from falling out of a tree his mother had warned him not to climb. The gap between his front teeth that he still covered with the back of his hand whenever he laughed because a girl in middle school had teased him about it. The curl of his hair that he could never quite tame, breaking down hair product that was desperately trying to keep him looking slick with every pass of his hands.
The way he bounced his leg when he tried to focus in class, and the way he nodded his head to music Viktor couldn’t hear when they studied together. His pencil tapping out a rhythm that matched the phantom drum stick in his other hand, eyes trained on equations and seemingly unaware of the way his hands moved.
The way he smiled at Viktor each time he caught their eye.
The way he wormed himself into Viktor’s personal space and personal schedule and yet, Viktor didn’t have it in them to shoo him away.
They had sworn on everything they still had left in them that they wouldn’t get distracted but they did not know men like Jayce Talis existed. Who looked at them with barely concealed awe when they told him they were not a man, nor a woman, but something else entirely. Who asked thoughtful questions and talked of theories Viktor had never even considered and massaged out Viktor’s leg without being asked. A man who found every reason he could think of to touch them when he was drunk but got so nervous as soon as it was daylight and neither of them had vodka on their breath.
A man who would certainly overthink himself to an early grave.
They lay like that for what feels like hours. Jayce’s hand drifts, up to Viktor’s hip and down to their ankle where he thumbs at thin skin and knobby bones. Like he’s mapping every awful dip and twist of their bad leg.
“What are you thinking?” Viktor finally dares to ask.
“How do you know I’m thinking?” Jayce squeezes their delicate ankle something so gentle before smoothing his palm back up. He settles his hand over Viktor’s knee, arm hugging their thigh tight against his body, heavy and lovely and warm.
“You’re always thinking,” Viktor teases and smiles when Jayce scoffs a laugh. They move their hand to his chest, then higher. Fingertips soft as they skim his collarbones and then his throat.
“I’m thinking… That you’re very warm… And Dmitri is gone…” He trails off and takes a deep breath, his whole body filling the minute spaces between him and Viktor. Steadying himself, maybe. “And that if I was more brave, I would…”
Oh Jayce…
Viktor presses themself more firmly into his back. They tuck their fingers into the collar of Jayce’s sleep shirt.
“Jayce…”
“I want to be brave so bad, V.”
“You’re so cool, V.”
Viktor had laughed, shrugged one shoulder and ignored the way the praise made their chest buzz.
“I’m serious,” Jayce insisted with that boyish grin of his. He didn’t try to hide it when he was drunk.
They sat together on a porch swing at a house that belonged to someone Viktor couldn’t remember the name of. Someone in their cohort, no doubt, but who escaped them completely. Perhaps that’s why the two of them had chosen to step out for fresh air.
“Cool is not a word many have used to describe me,” Viktor knocked their thigh against Jayce’s. Not that it took much effort, not with the way Jayce kept them glued hip to hip.
“What should I say instead?” Jayce asked. “You’re a genius and you’re… You’re kind and you’re patient and you’re so… brave.” He huffed a laugh and shook his head, looking out into the quiet of the yard.
“I am hardly brave,” Viktor couldn’t help but roll their eyes. It was a word they’d been ascribed many times and each time, it felt nothing more than placating. They were brave for getting surgery after surgery, they were brave for going through chemo, they were brave for burying their mother at eighteen. Brave was simply what people said when they didn’t know how else to talk about it. The unavoidable elephant in the room.
“You are, though,” Jayce said, though he didn’t meet Viktor’s eye. He sat forward, then, elbows meeting his knees. “You are… One of the bravest people I think I’ve ever met. It’s…” He trailed off.
His eyes seemed to glaze over and Viktor furrowed their brow. They watched and waited and when Jayce didn’t continue, they set a hand on his back. Gently, they dragged their fingertips up and down his spine.
“I don’t… know how to be brave,” Jayce finally said, voice lowered like maybe someone in the party may overhear. “I wish I did. I wish I could be brave like you…”
“Jayce…?”
He sat upright suddenly, nearly knocking Viktor’s hand off of him. He twisted in his seat and looked at them with honey eyes, bright and kind as if unaware of the tears threatening to spill.
“I don’t even know what I’m talking about. I think that drink Dmitri mixed me was way stronger than I thought.”
“Right…” Viktor watched him carefully. “Maybe we should head back to the dorms, yes?”
“You’re already brave,” they promise. “You’re terribly brave, and I’m right here. And I’m not going anywhere.”
There’s a heart shattering shudder on Jayce’s next exhale. One that has Viktor doing their best impression of an octopus, or perhaps a koala, wrapping themself around him and holding his pieces together. Viktor shushes him and does their best to murmur kind words against the shell of his ear, letting him cry himself dry in the forgiving moonlight that filters through the slats of the blinds.
✧˖°.
They wake to the soft sound of Jayce’s alarm, ensuring they actually wake up and get Viktor out. It makes Jayce grunt and haul himself out of bed, grabbing and silencing his phone but he returns in mere seconds.
He returns to Viktor’s hold, laying on his back and oh…
Viktor can’t help themself. In the gentle morning light, they move closer. Their hand finds the short, soft hair on the back of Jayce’s head, fingers splaying wide and oh so fond.
They do nothing but breathe. They don’t speak. In, out. Jayce shifts closer, so Viktor does, too, and then they’re pressed nose to nose, lips already practically slotted together.
Viktor feels dizzy with it. They drag their nails through Jayce’s hair and listens closely to the way his breath catches.
“We should get up,” Jayce whispers.
“We should,” Viktor agrees.
Neither of them make a move.
“Jayce…”
“I know,” he breathes. “I just— I want… I want to try. Just… One second…?”
They smile, soft and sad, “You may have all the time in the world…”
“Can you do it?”
Viktor blinks their eyes open in surprise. They nearly melt when they find golden eyes looking back at them, a soft furrow in the brow above them.
Jayce is… so terribly pretty.
“Me?” They check.
“I don’t think I can.”
So Viktor nods, soft, knocking their foreheads together with the movement, “Okay. Okay, yes, of course.”
They take just a second, nothing more, to collect themself. Then they close their eyes and gently press their lips more purposefully into Jayce’s. Closed-lipped, chaste, and anxious.
For three breaths, they’re both frozen. They merely sit in the reality that they’re kissing—a real, proper kiss. It’s only when Viktor moves to pull back that Jayce acts.
He takes Viktor’s face with both hands, startling a soft sound out of them. Jayce pushes deeper, parting his lips to let Viktor in. Warm and wet and something that is completely theirs.
They shiver when Jayce’s tongue meets theirs and they, against everything in them, pull back.
“Dmitri,” they remind through gulps of air.
“V,” Jayce practically whines, dropping his head to the pillow and looking so pitiful Viktor nearly cracks.
“You are the one who insists your roommate cannot catch me here,” they say, even with one hand making itself comfortable on Jayce’s sleep-warm chest.
Jayce pouts at them before sighing, overdramatic as always, “I guess.” He takes Viktor’s hand in his own, bringing it to his mouth to press a line of kisses against their knuckles. He stops and lingers, eyes closed and looking far more at peace than the previous night.
“We can get breakfast together, yes?” Viktor uses their free hand to pet through his hair. A not-so-subtle attempt to get Jayce moving.
“Yes. Yes, okay,” Jayce concedes. He drops Viktor’s hand and climbs out of bed once more. “I’m… Gonna shower, I think. Meet you in the lobby after?”
“Perfect,” Viktor purrs. They smile as Jayce passes them their cane from where it’s resting against his bedframe and they coax him down to press a kiss to his forehead. They chuckle kindly when it makes him flush.
They make the quiet and slow walk back to their own room just down the hall and around the corner. They unlock their door with the most earnest attempt at being quiet, but not even they can outwit the heavy groan of such solid doors.
Their roommate looks at them with bleary eyes.
“Back already?” She asks.
“Yes, we’re going to grab breakfast after he showers. I figured I might do the same,” Viktor shrugs like it’s nothing. They can feel the way her eyes track them all the way to their closet, though.
They’ve played this game plenty of times, only with the roles happily reversed. Viktor, always, sat on their bed and awaiting for Sky to break and tell them about whatever date she’d been on. Sky, always, fluttering around like she wasn’t dying to tell them all about it.
It’s… Odd. To be on this side.
They clear their throat and paw through shirts until they shrug and offer, “We… Ah. We may have kissed.”
“What?”