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His eyes were different. That was the first thing Jayce really noticed. Well, not the first. The first was him standing. Him breathing. His voice, odd but that was to be expected because he was not flesh and blood anymore. But the eyes, now that Viktor was gone, now that Jayce’s mind could be clear, were the first thing he thought about.
Where once there had been warmth and gold, there was a pale, strange iridescence. Jayce probably didn’t really care. A transformation had happened. Some things, important things, were lost, traded for life. For Viktor. A fair trade but maybe Jayce was a little fucked up because anything felt like a fair trade right now.
Viktor’s exit was abrupt and cold. They should have argued. That, with the eyes, was the most different thing about him. He had been so dispassionate, nearly monotone where he had never been either of those things before, not with Jayce at least. He would find Viktor later, make him talk about it, make him come home. He had always needed time to cool off. Coming back to life must have been a shock. Jayce should have been there, cut him from the chrysalis, held him as he adjusted, ran a hand over the strange metallic flesh on his back and told him it would be okay, that he was there. Maybe that was why Viktor had left, the shock had been too much. Another piece of guilt to gnaw at Jayce’s soul when he couldn’t sleep.
For now, Jayce would wait. Only an hour had passed. Viktor would come back, and he needed to be there, to make sure he was okay, to make him listen. When Heimerdinger asked if Jayce slept there, he didn’t know what to say. He hadn’t slept. Every single noise might mean Viktor’s return and the silence just allowed reels from their relationship to play behind Jayce’s eyes again and again and again until he thought he might be sick with it.
Maybe love was the right word for it. Mel thought so. When Jayce hadn’t come home, when he had left her to rush to Viktor’s side (again), she came to the lab. She wasn’t mad that time, worried and tired and scared. He broke down when she tried to talk politics with him, showed her the fresh chrysalis, the thin face peering from it, and she understood. Wiped the tears from his cheeks, pressed a kiss to his forehead, let him hold her.
“If you love him, it’s all right,” she said quietly when Jayce was done crying. “The world is…different now. I won’t…I won’t hold it against you. Or him. I…there are things I wish to say to him too. When he wakes, when he comes back to us, we’ll all have a good, long talk.”
“Yeah, okay,” he said, voice still little more than a croak.
Grief was exhausting. His chest hurt. His throat ached, always on the verge of tears. He didn’t want to leave the lab, Mel gently made him. He still had duties, to his people and to poor Caitlyn, who he hadn’t talked to since her mother’s death. Abandoning all of them for Viktor seemed selfish, seemed like the wrong thing to do, was something he couldn’t help doing.
At the memorial, when Jayce nearly died, when he had been lucky, the doctors said, because an inch deeper and he’d have lost his spine, when it was all chaos and when Mel had been whisked away, his only thought had been that if he died, then no one would know what to do with the chrysalis. That they would both die, and the thought was unbearable and the animal, desperate part of Jayce’s brain refused to let it happen.
Viktor slept for two weeks after that while Jayce tore apart their dream to make what Caitlyn would need to survive. He tore his stitches because working was better than sitting, better than watching, better than the dark fear that ate at him whenever he checked Viktor’s vital signs, sure this would be the time they would be gone.
And then Jayce had only had him for minutes, only held him for seconds, and didn’t say the important words. Viktor had rejected him in such an indifferent way. It must have been a shock. He’d come back, maybe his eyes would still be the wrong color, but he’d be himself with his warm voice and they could finally acknowledge the thing that had sat in the room between them for the seven years they had known each other. The thing that had only been acknowledged once.
Five years ago, Jayce was pretty sure they both knew, but neither of them wanted to push it through that barrier into something more than friends, than partners, than whatever they were late at night or going without sleep or working side by side or ignoring patrons at galas. They had been at Jayce’s house. His old house, the smaller townhouse four blocks from his mother that had a little garden he had to pay someone to keep alive. They were supposed to be getting ready for a gala. They were. Kinda. Viktor hadn’t buttoned his vest yet. Jayce hadn’t bothered with him at all. It was still draped over a chair. They were supposed to be there in ten minutes.
“Drink before we go?” Jayce asked.
“Do we have time?” Viktor replied.
“No, but…”
Viktor laughed and then nodded. Jayce grinned. Back then, getting Viktor alone outside of work was his greatest source of joy. Every second of his time when they were together and not bent over the crystals or at the chalkboard or at their desks was precious. That was when it felt like they were all that there was in the world, that they were somehow special in a way lovers were. He wouldn’t mind if they were. Viktor wouldn’t either. At least Jayce thought he wouldn’t. Viktor was hard to read, even then, even now.
Jayce poured them a generous amount of wine. Viktor had taken his and sat on the couch, vest still undone, cane leaning against it elegantly because everything he was was elegant. Jayce sat on the couch too, a show of bravery. His vest was still folded over the chair. They probably should have just changed in the lab, but this had been his idea. Sometimes Jayce felt a little pathetic how hard he worked to get Viktor alone, outside of work, just for him.
“This is not good,” Viktor said, taking a long sip anyway.
Jayce laughed and shrugged. He didn’t know much about food or wine. It had been an impulse buy at least a year ago, when he had decided to try cooking again and bought wine because that seemed like the adult thing to do.
“Well, we can go if you don’t want—” he’d started.
“I never said that. Just that it wasn’t good. All this money and no taste. Typical Piltie.”
“Hey, come on. I’m not like that,” Jayce said playfully. He’d heard Viktor use the word enough to know that it was not exactly an insult, but it wasn’t a compliment either.
“No, I suppose you aren’t,” Viktor said, leveling a soft look at Jayce with his molten gold eyes.
It had been a bit much. He had turned away with a small thanks and taken a sip. Viktor was right. It was not good.
“A typical Piltie would not work with me, not like you have at least,” Viktor continued, introspective now.
“Yeah, well, they’re idiots. You’re the smartest person I know.”
“Likewise,” Viktor said, raising his glass in a toast. Gods, they had been so full of themselves.
“I also…I really like you.”
It felt like a confession. It barely was one. They had been within an arm’s length of each other for two years at that point. Viktor had seen him cry tears of frustration. He had heard Viktor go on rants half in a language Jayce didn’t understand after Heimerdinger had refused to let them move forward at the pace they wanted. Again. He had heard Viktor talk about his long dead parents. Jayce had told him about his father and the snow and his mother. He knew what Viktor’s shoulder blades felt like through his sweater. Viktor knew the soft press of his hand on his back. All of that meant that Viktor understood. He looked at his glass, took a deep breath and a long sip as if to say he didn’t care anymore.
“The feeling is mutual,” Viktor said so quietly it felt like he had said a lot more.
They were quiet for a time after that. They were about to either cross some barrier or leave it behind forever. The idea of running away from it felt like a knife in his heart, twisted too tight to ever be removed. Viktor cleared his throat and shifted forward, setting his half-full wine glass on the coffee table.
“We should go soon. The gala—”
Jayce moved quicker than he’d ever moved before. Setting his glass down, wrapping a hand around Viktor’s wrist, pulling him close until he could lean forward and kiss him. It was a simple thing. A press of lips. A question. An invitation. A ball in Viktor’s court.
He pulled back. Viktor blinked at him with golden honey eyes that were now strange and cold and iridescent. For a moment, Jayce thought that would be it, but Viktor had never been one to leave a ball in his court. He leaned in, pulled Jayce’s face to his, and it didn’t take long for the kiss to become more than a simple thing.
They did not make it to the gala. They did not make it to his bed. It was a relief now that they were not fully dressed. Clothes were removed hastily and Viktor’s bare skin spread below him, flushed and dotted with constellations of moles. They were gone now, swallowed by purple metal. Jayce had pressed hungry kisses to as many as he could reach.
His flesh had been fever hot, a contrast to Viktor’s, still cool even though sweat was gathering at his hairline. They moved together, as if following steps to a dance they both knew and had been practicing for years. Viktor’s nails dug into his back as they both fell over the edge, leaving red crescents he wished would stay forever, a mark of what had happened between them, a sign that he was Viktor’s.
They did make it to his bed afterwards, tired and happy. They slept until the sun came up and Jayce had been ready for a lazy morning, the kind he had been hoping for years. There was a café. He would get them coffees and something sweet for Viktor. They could eat in bed. They could lounge. They could have a repeat or two of the previous night and maybe, just maybe, forget the lab for one day.
But it was clear very quickly that that was not to be. Viktor was awake before he was, sitting on the edge of the bed, head hanging, shoulders painfully pulled to his ears. He jumped when Jayce placed a hand on his back. Then he turned to look at him and a kind of heartbreak was clear in his eyes.
“This was…this can’t happen again,” Viktor said quietly, reasonably.
“What?” Jayce replied, sharply, strangely.
“I…I am not made for this. There are things…I have kept some secrets from you, that are mine and mine alone. I cannot…I cannot be what you want me to,” he said.
“Don’t be stupid. You’re already what I want.”
Viktor shook his head sadly. He sighed and turned to face him, leaning against the headboard, taking a hand and holding it gently.
“I…you want more than me. You want a…a partner, yes?”
“You are my—”
“No. Not like that. A person to come home to, to stay by your side. A…a family. I cannot…I am not any of those things.”
Jayce was silent. Viktor was all of those things. He wanted to scream, fight, cry, say it was not fair like a small child. He had never loved anyone this much. He didn’t know if he ever would again. It was so much worse than an outright rejection, knowing the feelings were returned, knowing what Viktor’s skin felt and tasted like, knowing that they, as lovers as anything other than friends, were impossible.
“And I…I do not want us to…fall apart,” Viktor finished, conviction in his voice now.
“Maybe we won’t.”
“We will. Or…or it is not a risk I can take.”
Viktor lifted his hand to his lips and kissed it. Jayce was silent, throat closing, knife back in his heart. When Viktor let go of his hand, he let him. He was not someone to push. He would run, like a feral cat. Jayce would never see him again and that was so much worse than what was happening now that it was unthinkable.
“I should go home. I think…I think we take today off, yes? It was…we are both…we need it. And you will need to write to Councilor Kiramman to explain our absence, though I think perhaps you should, eh, bend the truth a little.”
There was a little spark in his eyes then, a bit of laughter, and an attempt to go back to before. Jayce nodded and put on what he thought might be a grin of his own.
“I’ll say we lost track of time, burning the midnight oil, right?”
“Right.”
And then he left. Jayce lay in his now too big bed until the door shut. Then he got himself up, took a long shower, and moped until he could go to sleep, until the sun rose, and a new day started and he went to the lab, where Viktor was waiting as if nothing had happened.
They did not really talk about it. Maybe they should have. Maybe it was too late now. Viktor had changed. Iridescent eyes, strange voice, metal skin, passion gone. That was his fault, Jayce’s to atone for, prostrate himself before Viktor and beg forgiveness until his voice was hoarse. But he was alive. The alternative was unthinkable, unspeakable, something that made him sick with grief. Viktor just needed time. He’d come back when he was ready, like he always did, and his fire would be back and it would be okay. They’d talk. Jayce would say the important thing, they’d fix everything and he’d let Viktor scream at him for creating weapons, do whatever he needed to do. As long as he forgave him everything. As long as he came back, himself again, odd eyes, odd skin, odd voice, same spark. Same Viktor.
He feels remote. He wakes in a chrysalis, panic settling in. Then freedom. Then a certainty he needed to do something. A flare of warmth at the sight of Jayce sleeping at his desk, the last warm thing he feels is his arms around him. He tries to speak, but the words get stuck, as if behind a pane of glass. He watches as they come out wrong, twisted. Jayce understood. He is supposed to understand. He didn’t understand. Viktor opens his mouth to speak.
Something is wrong. It feels wrong. I can’t feel your skin, Jayce. Why did you do it?
“Cold. No, I don't think so. I sense charge. A potential. A recursive impulse. Unpleasant, but…cold isn’t its name”
I had made my peace. It was not yours to take a way, you idiot—you promised. You swore. It was practically my dying wish and--
“I was supposed to die. You promised to destroy the Hexcore.”
You go too far. You lose sight of our dream, of me, of us. I love you. I love you and it’s no longer enough. Something is wrong, Jayce. Something is wrong and it is your fault as much as it is mine now and why can’t you see it?
“Our paths diverged long ago. It was affection that held us together”
Jayce is yelling at him. Pouring his sad little heart at his feet. A fragile and fluttering thing. Viktor knows this. Once, he would have wrapped it tenderly in gauze and tended it until it was whole again. Now, he cannot stop it as it shatters into a million sharp and jagged pieces. He feels very little about it.
“Goodbye, Jayce.”
Peace. Sky is there. The world shimmers. Iridescent footsteps mark his path. Jayce is inconsequential. Still. Something is wrong. The world is shimmering.