Work Text:
Viktor needs space.
Not to isolate himself exactly, but because if he doesn't get his space, he'll make everything else in his surroundings take up his own form. An elephant in the room, the elephant being the nimble, smart minded man like himself, except a little too fragile than he thinks he should be. Too big heart with a too big mind with too big emotions and getting space is never enough. No matter how hard he tries to fool himself into thinking.
He takes it anyway.
There was once a time during a wave of emotions far too enormous to ignore, he threw the project that took him 2 weeks to finish, day to night, at the wall. It shattered into pieces and splinters and Viktor got metal stuck under the skin of his thumb for 7 days post-shatter clean up, until he took his own fingernails to the flesh and dug it out. Crying, wailing, blood in his hair, blood on his clavicle, blood on his hands, he sat in the middle of his kitchen floor half naked with his record playing the same song, on the same loop, for 4 hours until he vomited out of exhaustion and lack of sustenance. Only then, he remembered he hadn't picked up lunch nor dinner. Breakfast was a sad attempt at euphoria: double chocolate muffin with buttercream frosting and sprinkles. Zero nutrients absorbed, Viktor was hungry after an hour and it went ignored, he opted to suck out the remaining fudge stuck in his teeth while sitting there. Then, it came to be an hour and thirty-four minutes past midnight and he just sat there, cold, bleeding, hungry and alone.
He went into work the next day with a face so puffy, headache so severe, all he could muster towards his work ethic included clenching his diagrams in his hands and biting his lips raw. Afterwards, when he got home, he slept for 12 hours straight. Upon waking up, Viktor ate anything sweet he could find. To satiate his hunger, and to soften that pointy, stubborn lump in his throat that willed him another session of sobbing alone. Safe to say, his bed was the only destination he could manage the entire weekend.
He holds his own face in bed, leaning into his own touch, gently rubbing circles into the most sensitive spots on his skin, the gentle tug of thin tissue, on his tender scalp, picturing someone behind him and in front of him and below him. To have and to hold.
Viktor thinks about the one who holds him, deep in the burrows of his mind when he spends his nights alone. Who will nip his teeth at the scars covering his body, who will cook him meals he won't ignore, eat too much of, or too little. Viktor wants to be good. So good in fact, that he'd be willing to do and go through anything to feel alive. Touched. Wanted.
He is so, so tired of doing it to himself.
So he lets himself be vulnerable for once.
—
He knows exactly why this is wrong. He knows why this won't work. This is exactly why it makes him feel so warm inside.
Being possessed like this, it suffocates him, and makes his heart stutter in a pattern. Pattern to language, translating to: “Never let me go. I was born from your touch and I'll die without it.”
His touch felt like pins and needles, and God, it stung. A good pain, like pulling out a tooth and swirling your tongue around the bleeding, wet crevice. An unconventional high; a rush of adrenaline that made him giddy inside. Deep, deep inside.
Viktor wanted it to hurt, he wanted love so strong his veins pull at his muscles like rubber bands, nicking a nerve that makes him yelp, bruising from the inside out. He struggles to breathe as fingers dig into his flesh, crescent shaped indents marking a temporary leash that says ‘Mine.’ At this very moment, nothing else exists.
He holds him with strength, with purpose and recognition. Everything Viktor needs. So at this very moment, he's kept, priceless, and beautiful.
He tells Viktor so, every day.
Viktor's body is sprawled across Jayce in Viktor's bed. His lithe waist is held firmly in place by Jayce’s handsome, calloused hands as his shirt rides up his back, messy and intimate and everything Viktor needs. The soft smacking of their lips, legs tangled together, lounge clothes still covering their forms, there's no need for any rush. No rush at all. Nowhere else to go. No one else to perform for.
Jayce grabs the back of Viktor's head, pinky finger grazing the nape of his neck, and pauses before a kiss. Pulling his head back, he whispers, “You're beautiful.”
Viktor licks his bottom lip before responding with a pleased hum, “And you're insatiable.” He presses his lips to Jayce’s. Trails his lips across his forehead, the bridge of his nose, his cheekbone, his eyebrow, and rests his hand above his heart.
Bum-bump.
Bum-bump.
Bum-bump.
Viktor smiles. He's exactly where he's meant to be.
He opens his eyes, and brushes his knuckles across Jayce's cheek, shimmying up the length of his body further. He nuzzles his forehead onto Jayce's and gives him a quick peck.
“You're my star.” He confesses.
“My life,” kiss.
“My calling,” kiss.
“My soul,” kiss.
“Mine.” Kiss, kiss, kiss–
Jayce captures Viktor's face with his palms and flips them over in a hurried fashion.
“Oh, Viktor.” He cries, peppering his face, neck, shoulders with all the possible love he can give him. He nibbles the skin in between his neck and collarbone, and Viktor can feel small wet droplets melt into his pores. Jayce cries quietly, yet hard and passionately as he grasps Viktor in his arms. Squeezing him tight.
Viktor bites his lip with a swirling whirlpool inside his chest. His heart basks in the warmth of his boy. His sweet, lovely boy.
He tugs Jayce down by caging his arms around his neck. They sit there breathing each other in, nuzzling, smiling, making their camp as one together, always together. In the arms of their lover, their mate, their partner.
Viktor knows why it's wrong. Why they shouldn't. He knows how dangerous he can be. How he has all the power in the world, their world, to ruin it all.
However, it's no match for them both. This is where they're meant to be.
“It won't work like this.” Viktor mumbles into Jayce's hair. He listens to Jayce inhale, then exhale, and groan.
“We'll make it work. I swear it.” He mumbles.
Viktor shakes his head with a grin, “You always do.” Combing his fingers through his Jayce’s hair.
“We'll be good. I won't let you hurt yourself like this.” He takes Viktor's hand, “Not if I can help it.”
Viktor leans up to kiss him again, breathing on his lips, “You can't help it, my star, you won't be able to.”
Jayce whips back, picking himself up to rest on his heels, caging Viktor with his strong thighs.
“I'll try. I promise.”
Viktor shakes his head, “Don't say that–”
“I do.” He emphasizes, furrowing his eyebrows and rubbing at his face with his forearm. “You think so lowly of yourself and I couldn't possibly begin to understand why. Just… look at you.” He lifts a finger to Viktor's jaw, tracing star patterns into the hollow of his cheek. “You're beautiful.”
He inhales, “So I don't care how hard you love, or what you'd do for it, because I would do the same, I'll prepare myself for whatever you unleash on me and I won't mind, as long as it's you.”
Viktor knows Jayce means well, that he wants to live up to his word and what he says to him, but Viktor knows it's empty. There are too many things Viktor can't unleash, too many things Jayce can't do to help him, too many things Jayce wouldn't do that he believes so strongly he would.
Viktor won't be stubborn at this moment, though. He won't be accusatory. Jayce is telling him all the things he dreamed he would say.
He sits up, his hands behind him on the sheets while he cranes his neck up at Jayce.
“And if I bleed for your attention?” Viktor asks softly.
Jayce parts his lips in thought.
“I'll be there before it spills over.”
“If I shut down when you're not around?” Viktor tilts his head.
“I'll recharge you, then.” He taps the side of Viktor's throat, “Right here.”
Viktor raises his eyebrow.
And before he can ask, Jayce dips down and bites. He growls into the skin above his artery and licks small, delicate stripes.
Viktor gasps and leans into his hold, pliant and responsive while he tugs on the back of Jayce's hair. Fingers cuffed in his messy curls. He loves it when Jayce doesn't bother with styling. It's intimate, raw, and boyishly charming.
Jayce laughs under his jaw.
“Your port. For recharging. I'm the cord to your plug.”
Viktor snickers, “You sound filthy.”
Jayce rolls his eyes and cups Viktor's face in his hands, forcing them to look straight at one another. “I'll be there to recharge you.” He swipes his thumb over Viktor's cheek.
“I love you.”
Bum-bump
Bum-bump
Bum-bump
“I want all of you, whatever it may be and what I haven't seen and what I don't know.” He rushes out. He shakes him in his hold a quick second, “I don't care. I love you.”
Viktor is suddenly aware of his entire being. His actions, their predicament, his emotions, his lack of, the stains on the bathroom sink and the bruises on his scalp, the rotting cakes and moldy bread sitting in strewn pans in his oven and counters. The way he's pleaded with a God he doesn't even believe in for this.
He inhales a shaky breath.
“I don't know what I'd do without you. I think I'd kill myself.” He says, staring Jayce in his eyes, back and forth, face blank. His words hold all of his weight.
Jayce softens his gaze.
“That's why I'm never leaving. That's why I'm here, with you.” He leans in, still keeping eye contact, “I'd sacrifice my whole life for you so you'll never have to take yours.”
Viktor knows Jayce can't possibly keep his word in a world like theirs.
It's always been so, so wrong.
But at this very moment, it all fits into place.
Yet, he knows he'll feel like it'll all fade away the second Jayce leaves him alone, even just for a little while. He wishes he could cut himself open and shove Jayce's fingers inside, to swallow him. He wants to ask Jayce to give up the rest of his everyday life for him. To not go back to his home, to give up the rest of his responsibilities for Viktor. To beg him, “please, please don't go. I need you here with me right now. Forever. I can't breathe without you and I'll never forgive you if you leave now.” That way, everything they've shared can be theirs. Viktor knows he can't ask that of him. If he did, he would have to listen to Jayce say no, and it would break him all over again.
He loves loving. He hates how bad it feels to love so hard and still feel like it's never enough, like something is missing. With Jayce here, kissing him, touching him and only him, telling him he loves Viktor, he still feels like he'll always love more than he knows how to express, love Jayce more than he loves him. He knows it.
So help him, God, he knows it.
Jayce tries his best within every single opportunity to explain his love for Viktor, even when he forgets how fast time passes, and throws himself into his favorite things, his work. When he goes eerily quiet and doesn't respond to words anymore. When he needs time to himself to shut the world out and get his thoughts into place.
Viktor understands Jayce needs his head screwed on right. To be able to function for Jayce means he needs things Viktor can't fix, can't give, can't help.
Viktor's head is never screwed on right.
He's messy, destructive, and a danger to himself. His life's work is disgustingly complimentary to Viktor's personality and very being. Self explanatory at best. He doesn't plan, doesn't expect, he just does, and whatever happens will happen and that is outside of his business and pay grade.
He understands Jayce is too, only when Viktor believes himself capable of behaving like a normal person, when he keeps his composure, doesn't see-saw between life and death, and takes care of his sweet boy.
They are, at best, always at two different sides of the spectrum of emotion, mental clarity and motivation. This is why they clash sometimes, and also why they always gravitate back to each other. It helps as much as it hurts.
Viktor hurts himself with all the things he wishes. He wishes too often, wants too much, needs too much. Always too much.
And Jayce always thinks himself too much. A ridiculous thought you have, Jayce. Viktor can't see how Jayce would ever be ‘too much,’ but he supposes that's the whole point of them both. Two sides of the same coin, mutual understanding.
Love, in itself.
Viktor shuts his eyes, pushing these thoughts aside for when he's alone, stuck and circling the same cycle he's been in for the majority of his life.
Not for when Jayce is with him, loving him like this. Something he still feels ungrateful for, but needs all the same.
“I love you more, Jayce. I always have, and I always will.”
Even if it kills me.
Even if it kills the both of us.
Even if it kills you.
I'll be there to cradle you beyond living, beyond breathing.
Viktor surges forward and presses his lips to Jayce's. Drawing them both down on their sides. Viktor curled up, one hand covering Jayce's wrist, knees resting sideways on top of Jayce's own. Jayce holding the back of Viktor's head and pulling them closer.
Jayce smiles and shakes his head. “Never.” He whispers.
Will this work?
He hopes.