Archive of Our Own ^beta

“Why do you insist on walking up six flights of stairs?” is the first thing Viktor hears when he opens the door to their shared flat. 

“How did you know I took the stairs?” Viktor asks, feeling a little bit winded. He takes a moment to lean against the wall. 

Jayce stomps his way to him, a frown on his face and his mouth pressed into a thin line.

“Viktor,” Jayce says, tone stern. “You’re out of breath,” 

“Must’ve skipped cardio, then,” Viktor pushes himself off of the wall and past Jayce. Jayce, who stops him with a hand to his shoulder. “Jayce, please, I’m fine,” 

And he is - he’s perfectly fine, thank you. Jayce doesn’t need to hover over him like a chicken with her hens. So Viktor isn’t particularly athletic. So he likes to take the stairs - 

Okay, that’s a lie. Viktor doesn’t like taking the stairs because sometimes his leg cramps up halfway through and he’ll have to stop, lean against the wall, and think about taking the lift, but by then it’ll be too late and he’ll be too proud, goddammit, to take that godforsaken lift. So he gives his leg a few minutes to rest before he trudges on the last three flights. And if he feels winded, if his leg hurts after it all, if the bag of groceries in his other free hand is threatening to spill all over their kitchen floor, then so what. 

The lift is a nightmare waiting to happen and Viktor will not get on it willingly. 

“The lift is a nightmare waiting to happen,” Viktor tells him, dumping the bag of groceries on the kitchen counter. 

Jayce moves over to sort through it, shooing Viktor away to the couch. Viktor takes the lifeline for what it is and collapses on the couch. 

“You have to stop doing this, V,” Jayce says as he organises their fridge and stuffs the rest of the non-perishables in the cupboard that Viktor has to stand on his tip-toes just to reach. 

“It’s good exercise, don’t you think?” Viktor calls from the couch. 

He just knows Jayce is rolling his eyes. He hears a groan from the kitchen.

“The lift isn’t going to kill you,” Jayce joins him on the couch now. He still looks a little mad but mostly just concerned. Viktor resists the urge to smoothen the furrow in his brows with a finger. Resists the urge to ruffle his hair and laugh at him. 

“Oh, you’re wrong about that, Jayce Talis,” Viktor starts, leaning towards him. “One day I’ll think about taking the stairs but change my mind on your insistence and it will be just my luck that that will be the same day the cables snap, and then where will that leave you?”

Jayce blinks slowly at him. There is silence for a few beats before Jayce bursts out laughing. 

“Alone in an empty flat, grieving you terribly,” Jayce says with a shake of his head.

Viktor leans back into the well-worn cushions of their couch and tries to reel in the smile that threatens to break over his face. He sniffles instead.

“Good job,” Viktor nods, pleased. “That is precisely what’s going to happen.”

—

See, the thing about their building is that it’s old. Jayce likes to call it a historical landmark. Viktor weeps at the thought of how anyone would even think to call it that. It’s old and creaky and makes strange noises in the middle of the night. It gets draughty in winter, too. 

The heating system is all but shot as well but that’s really all Viktor can complain about when it gets even the slightest bit cold so it’s not like it needs any special mention, Jayce is already well aware of this. 

“It has its own personality, V!” Jayce will always like to remind him whenever he starts complaining about the lift. The very same lift Viktor refuses to use because it groans and creaks if even so much as a child steps on it–it groans! It creaks! Viktor can even feel it sway a little bit when it starts its ascent. That lift is a deathtrap, thanks, but no thank you. 

The rest of the building – with its brick facade and the occasional tenant reading out on their balcony does have personality , Viktor will admit. But two things can be true – the building might have its charms but the lift is also a nightmare. A deathtrap. 

Jayce loves it - he loves the stupid lift that groans and creaks. He loves their small balcony – it’s tiny, it really is – loves to sunbathe out there with a cup of tea as he looks out onto the street, talking out loud and pointing out something as silly as a cat chasing after a pigeon only to lose that fight when the bird flies away. He narrates all this to Viktor who likes to curl up on the couch and nap.

Jayce loves the lift and the balcony and their little kitchen. Add the kitchen to that list because he tries, he tries so very hard to cook and Viktor doesn’t have it in him to tell him that perhaps he should read the recipe again, or watch the video on a loop for another hour because Jayce is always so proud of his cooking, always prepares a plate for Viktor without him even needing to ask. 

So yeah, their building is charming, if you squint. Like, really squint. Squint so hard you almost close your eyes. That level of squint. Their flat has character. God, too much character and history that some days Viktor can be convinced to consider it a historical landmark, but perhaps only after his tragic accident in the lift – that one’s coming soon if Jayce doesn’t stop pestering him about it. 

“Do you ever think about moving out?” Viktor asks him one afternoon. Jayce is out at the world’s smallest balcony again, leaning against the rail and soaking up what’s left of the summer sun. 

“With what money?” Jayce shoots back at him, a ridiculous grin on his face. For two people so strapped with money, they sure just like to laugh about it. “Do you?”

Viktor thinks about their flat – a simple two bedroom with a kitchen Jayce loves, and counters Viktor can prop himself up on so he can watch over Jayce’s shoulder as he over seasons the chicken. He looks out to the world’s smallest balcony, thinks about all the mornings Jayce has spent just sunbathing out there, at all the late nights they’ve both spent on opposite ends – hardly ever any space because, again, world’s smallest goddamn balcony – with a drink nestled in their hands and the rest of the city beneath them. He feels out the aged couch beneath him, this one he knows needs replacing soon because it’s starting to hurt his back. About his own bedroom at the farthest end of the hallway, how his bed always feels a little bit too big, his books and papers perpetually strewn across his desk. 

Viktor thinks about the tiles in the bathroom that they both refused to replace because it’s an original – or so they’ve convinced themselves. 

It’s all quite quaint, if you think about it. Very lived in, if you want to say it outloud. 

“Not really,” Viktor finally says, breaking the silence. He walks over to join Jayce out on the balcony.

Jayce moves to give him more space – ha! As if there was much of that to give – and offers him the solitary chair. Viktor just shakes his head and leans across the guardrails, looking down at the rest of the city. There’s a pub just at the end of the street. He sees a couple of people stumbling out, heads thrown back in what could only be laughter. He can barely hear them over the sound of cars zooming past. 

“We need to replace the couch, though,” Viktor says. 

They can replace broken things, can slowly work towards small home improvements. It’s going to be a nice project for the summer, Jayce had told him right before summer had started. They’re right in the middle of it now and no such home improvements have been made but then again– 

Then again, it’s not like they’re in a hurry. Not like they aren’t busy outside of this flat that they share. 

“Yeah, soon,” Jayce agrees. He looks over his shoulder at their couch. Well-worn. Viktor sleeps on it more than he does his own bed, he feels. “Is it hurting your back?”

Jayce always sounds so concerned, so thoughtful. It’s sickly sweet, sometimes. 

“Not really,” it’s only half a lie. It does hurt his back but not all the time, only when he spends too long asleep on it. He has a bed for this very reason. “I’m fine, Jayce,”

Jayce squeezes his shoulder like it’s the most natural thing to do. 

Viktor sighs.

—

So this is how it started–

“Do you want to move in together?” Jayce had asked him nearly a year into university.

“Yes,” Viktor had said without spending another second to think about it.

And here they are. 

No, really. It had been that simple.

Viktor sometimes likes to think about that day. They had been friends, sure, but perhaps not enough to ask each other to live together.

But the thing with Jayce is that he likes to run. He likes to do things on impulse, even. Viktor has noticed that about him – has noticed how he takes up new hobbies whenever he’s stressed. How these new hobbies stick sometimes – like cooking – or how he forgets about them as quickly as he’d picked up on them – like knitting, that one odd winter they’d been cooped up. 

Their life together has been easy after that, with the both of them falling into their own routines. Jayce continues to go to school. Picks up a job at an autoshop to help with the bills. Viktor starts his residency. Everything about living together has been so easy that it makes the rest of what Viktor does outside of the flat a little bit harder, but he’s never been one to shy away from the struggle of it all. He supposes that going back home, where it’s warm when the heater works properly, and positively sweltering in the summer when the AC is out again , makes it all the more worth it. Coming home, that is. 

Everything else after that, as they say, is history. 

—

So, yeah. Home.

Viktor likes their home.

Jayce likes their home. 

Viktor likes their routine.

Jayce loves their kitchen. 

“Keep at it,” Viktor tells him one morning, patting Jayce’s shoulder. “I’ll see you later,”

Jayce steps away from the stove to walk Viktor to the door. 

“What time are you going to be back?” Jayce asks, opening the door for him. He does too much, sometimes. Viktor doesn’t really mind. 

“A bit late, I think,” he never really knows. Anything can go in the hospital. It’s going to be hectic again, that’s for sure. Everyday has been hectic. “Don’t stay up,”

Jayce’s brows furrow again. He frowns.

This time, Viktor reaches out to smoothen his brows with a finger. Smiles softly at him because it’s barely past seven in the morning. It is still too early. 

“Or do,” Viktor watches as the smile unfurls in real time – it starts slow and ends bright and brilliant.

“Don’t tell me what to do,” Jayce is unconvincing because his smile breaks off into a grin, now. 

Viktor makes a show of rolling his eyes. 

Jayce settles a hand on the small of his back and walks him to the lift. 

“Jayce Talis, you cannot be serious right now, it’s too early–” but Jayce steps into the lift with him and rides it all the way down. He keeps his hand on his back the entire time.

“Go cure people,” Jayce says, a bit sheepish. He grins at Viktor all the same, though. “Or whatever it is you do,”

Another roll of his eyes, but only half meant, now. Viktor smiles at him, because he thinks his words will fail if he even tries to say anything, if he tries to make sense of whatever just happened. 

“Okay,” Viktor says, making his way down the stoop carefully. “I’ll see you later then,”

“Yeah, okay,” Jayce nods. He waves at Viktor. 

Viktor fights the urge to look over his shoulder to check if Jayce is still there. He doesn’t need to. He knows he’s still there. 

—

Viktor’s day often goes by like this–he leaves the house early for his shift at the hospital. He gets through it easy enough. He’s spent years studying, just trying to get to  this single moment. The past few years of his residency has wrung him dry. It doesn’t make him stop, though - because how can you stop, after you’ve dedicated your whole entire life for this one thing?

His mother always did say he liked to work with his hands. Jayce always did like to comment on how everything he does with his hands, he does with a certain grace. Perhaps that’s what led him here. 

Steady hands. Graceful hands. Soft hands that have seen blood. Hands that have handled people in their last moments. Hands that have saved people. 

It’s alway a tug and you never know which way you’re going to fall until it’s too late.

And so Viktor’s day goes by like that. In and out of different rooms, following after the attending doctor. Listening. Taking mental notes. He assists. He takes breaks – or, is forced to take one when he takes a moment to check his phone and find it full of Jayce’s texts telling him to check his bag, to take a break.

Viktor checks his bag. Jayce had packed him lunch and dinner, even a drink and some snacks. 

Some days, Viktor wonders what he’d done to deserve Jayce. A joy of a roommate and a wonder of a friend. Best friends, is what Jayce likes to call this friendship of theirs. Best friends, is what everyone else around them echoes. 

Caitlyn likes to put too much emphasis on that word – friends – and Viktor always brushes it off. She’d been something like a childhood friend to Jayce, a few years younger than both of them. She just likes to tease, Jayce had decided long ago. 

Before Viktor sets his phone aside, he makes sure to send Jayce a photo of the empty box of food along with a small thank you . 

Viktor stops by to grab dessert for them before he heads back home. It’s a little bit too late for dinner. His shift had run long, as it always does. Some last minute reports that he needed to do. Some misplaced things he had to find. Sometimes, Viktor wonders if he stalls on purpose. The thought is gone before he can entertain it any further. He sets his eyes on the display case in front of him–an assortment of baked goods. 

He’s not particularly fond of them but he knows Jayce will enjoy them so he grabs a few scones and muffins just for him. Grabs a drink for the both of them as well and sets back out into the late evening like that, with a paper bag tucked under his arm and his hand gripping his cane as he makes his slow walk back down to their flat. 

The building looms over him as he grows closer. It really does look historic, but that’s only because of how old it is. Definitely not what it stands for–and even that Viktor is doubtful about. The building could crumble any day now and it will not surprise him in the slightest. 

“Hey, V,” he hears Jayce’s voice from over his head.

Viktor looks up to find him waving from the balcony, because of course he’s still out there. 

Viktor waves back at him.

“Stay there!” he’s gone before Viktor can ask just what he’s planning. 

He doesn’t have to wait long, however, because Jayce meets him right at the entrance. He looks fresh from a shower, hair still a bit wet. Viktor purses his lips, pulls back on the urge to tell him off, to ask him to go back up to dry his hair. It might be summer but people still get sick even when the weather is warm – he’s seen it often enough at the hospital. 

“Now you’re just being unreasonable,” Viktor says as Jayce leads them both into the lift. “I am not afraid of the lift,” 

“Sure, sure,” Jayce says with a shrug. “You just hate it, different thing, I know,”

Viktor doesn’t have an argument against that so instead he passes the paper bag to Jayce. Tells him there’s a muffin in there for his troubles and a drink. 

“For my good behaviour?” Jayce asks, a bit cheekily. He takes a muffin out as soon as they’re back home.

“I don’t know who would call it that,” Viktor sets his bag down on the counter and sinks into the couch soon after. He could fall asleep like this, right now, even if he could forget about wanting a shower. But he feels disgusting after a twelve hour shift. Not as long as last week’s but still as tiring. “But eh, sure,” 

Jayce joins him on the couch and passes him the extra drink. Viktor takes it but ignores it for the most part – he doesn’t really have the stomach for it now. All he feels right now is the cramp in his leg. He tries not to make it too obvious as he shifts on the couch but Jayce notices all the same. Helps him sit up to get into a more comfortable position. Viktor lets him. 

Jayce touches him easily enough but he doesn’t linger, doesn’t want to impose this time. Viktor thinks he’d let him, even, which is a dangerous train of thought to have after a long day. A dangerous thought indeed when they’re this late into the night. He shakes it away, pushes it into the backburner of his mind and brings the cool drink up to his cheek. It’s nice, the cold. 

“I got the AC working again,” Jayce says, leaning against him. His weight is a familiar one. Viktor doesn’t have the energy left in him to be casual about this at all. Instead, he leans into Jayce as well, their shoulders pressing together. 

Viktor sighs. Jayce yawns. 

“Thank you,” Viktor says, patting Jayce’s knee. “Although I think you didn’t have to,”

“The heat’s going to roast us alive in here,” Jayce says quickly. 

Viktor laughs, short and low, “No, not about the AC. I mean – the food. The lift,” 

“I like doing that, though,” Jayce says, sneaking a look at him.

There he is again with his wide eyes and his earnest smile. 

Viktor forces himself to look away, if only because the moment feels too heavy. Jayce always feels that way - like a vortex constantly threatening to pull Viktor in. One day he might just fall and then what?

And then he doesn’t think at all, because that will only bring him down a road he doesn’t want to imagine. Right now is fine. Right now is perfect, even. Living with Jayce. In their stupidly old building, in a flat that has the world’s smallest balcony. This is fine and Viktor will not explore anything – not within himself and definitely not beyond the confines of what he knows to be true: Jayce is his dearest friend and Viktor is happy with that. 

“If you insist, then,” Viktor says, tipping his head back until he hits the well-worn cushions of the couch.

Jayce leans his head against Viktor’s shoulder and continues to sip on his drink. It will be too sweet for Jayce’s liking, Viktor already knows. It is sweet enough for him, though. 

Jayce never seems to mind. He makes a face at the first few sips but he never complains the same way Viktor never complains about the food–it’s not even that bad most days. Jayce just gets too heavy handed with the seasoning sometimes, gets too into experimenting with his own recipes to forget. 

But the smell of his cooking always wafts out of the kitchen and fills the flat with the smell of different spices. It’s part of the package, Victor has long since realised. Part of what makes this space they share that much more like home. 

—

The rest of their days are easy. They function well enough in a flat that barely does. 

“I was in the area,” Jayce tells him one afternoon. He gestures at the packed lunch bag in his hand. “Sorry, I forgot to tell you about this earlier,”

Viktor hadn’t even thought of lunch at all today. It’s well past it already. 

He checks the time quickly and decides he should be halfway through his break already. Even this Jayce knows like a science. 

Viktor relents at Jayce’s gentle prodding and follows him out to a picnic table. The rest of the hospital’s noise fades out as they both settle in for lunch. 

It’s not too salty this time, not too spicy. It’s just right. 

“You should be at uni,” Viktor tells him, poking at his salad. 

“I just had to submit a paper today,” Jayce tells him, pushing one of the other containers towards him. “Here, potatoes. I figured you wouldn’t have enough time for dinner later,”

More because Viktor always loses track of time when it comes to himself, never when it comes to work. Everything else simply takes a backseat during his shifts. 

“Thank you,” it’s funny, the sound of it. How many times has he said it already? How much more will Jayce have to dote over him before Viktor finally, finally tells him that he doesn’t have to pause his whole day like this just to go out of the way for him?

Perhaps that time is now. 

“You need to focus more on yourself,” Viktor says, finally looking up from the table to meet Jayce’s gaze. Jayce holds his gaze, an unreadable expression on his face. It’s easy sometimes to tell what he’s thinking. This time Viktor hardly knows what he might say. He waits. 

“This is nothing,” Jayce confirms what Viktor had thought all along. 

Viktor nods.

Colour bursts across Jayce’s face. “I mean – I didn’t mean it in a bad way. I mean that I’m not going out of my way at all. I want to do this,” 

It is not surprising, not really. Jayce has always been good with his hands, his heart on his sleeve for all to see. He has always been good at taking care of other people. 

“I won’t forget the food next time,” Viktor settles for this middle ground. It is a bit shaky. He knows Jayce will still insist but Viktor – the thing is, he doesn’t want to feel like a burden. Like a child that Jayce has to continuously look after. “And next time, you let me know if you’re coming to see me at work,” 

Jayce nods, a bit placated. 

“And you don’t have to keep coming with me to the lift, Jayce. I can take it myself,” the question there is if he will but that’s for him to decide later. “I need you to focus on school,” 

“Okay,” it’s Jayce’s turn to play with his food. “I finish work at nine today. Let’s go home together,”

Ah, Viktor thinks, tipping his head up to look at the branches of a tree just overhead them. He can never truly win against Jayce especially not when just the mere prospect of Viktor telling him no is enough to get him to look at him with those wide eyes of his. With that shaky smile he always flashes him that looks very much like a dog that Viktor’s just accidentally kicked on his way down the street. The very thought of it makes him ache. 

So Viktor nods his head and agrees, telling him not to come to the hospital - it’s out of the way for him, a completely unreasonable commute when Jayce already works pretty close to home. 

“I’ll pick you up,” Viktor looks back up at Jayce who flashes him a steady smile. Strong. Persistent. It’s a very nice smile. “I’ll bring you coffee.”

“That sounds perfect,” Jayce says. 

Viktor has lost another battle.

There will be more next time. He thinks he might lose them, too. It is hard to win against the summer sun. 

—

It’s a two way street, this give and take between them. Jayce pleads with what Viktor can only call puppy dog eyes and he relents. Viktor, on the other hand, will simply fit a straight expression on his lips and stare. Jayce folds every time as well. 

“You guys are downright despicable,” is what Sky tells him with a snicker after Viktor had spent the better part of their afternoon break just recounting all the things Jayce had done for him the previous day. “Are you sure nothing’s going on?”

Viktor refuses to even so much as address that accusation. He sniffles instead and looks pointedly at the wall. 

“Just pulling your leg here,” Sky says again with a light laugh. She pushes herself off of the bench and heads back into the hospital.

Viktor enjoys the rest of his break in rare silence. 

—

“Hey,” Jayce calls out to him as soon as he spots Viktor in the crowd. Students are milling about, conversations about school, projects, an upcoming final. It brings Viktor back. 

Jayce jogs over to him, that same bright smile on his face. 

Viktor grips his cane tighter. 

“You finished early,” Jayce squeezes on his shoulder, the task of it all too easy for him. How easy he touches Viktor – he might not linger for too long but the feeling of it always does. It makes his skin burn. “How was work today?”

Jayce falls into step easily enough beside him. Viktor tells him about work, about a patient Sky had handled earlier that morning. They spend the rest of the subway ride back to their stop like that, just recounting their day. Nothing really stands out from today, Viktor thinks, only his attending physician getting a bit cross with one of the other residents. He didn’t like it, the raised voices. He tells Jayce as much. 

Viktor leans against Jayce, a bit too tired from his day. The hospital can be so grueling sometimes. Even the thought of their flat isn’t enough to make him feel better. He still has to go through his notes, still has to study. He likes that part, though, the studying. Likes that the AC is finally fixed and he can enjoy the cool air in the kitchen, poring over his notes as Jayce makes them dinner. 

“This is new,” Jayce observes, stopping in front of a flower shop. The flowers smell too sweet even from where Viktor is standing. “Look, V, they have succulents,”

That intrigues him. He braves the smell of all the different flowers and ducks into the shop right behind Jayce. Looks at the succulents, at the different plant starters. There are even bonsai trees in the back. He wonders if it’s possible for them to start a garden and thinks that that might be a foolish thought given their schedules. 

“We should start a garden,” Jayce says, perusing through the different seed packets. He pulls up a packet of tomato seeds. 

Viktor stops by the several sacks of soil lined up against the wall. 

“We have no space,” Viktor reminds him, wanting to be the voice of reason for this all too sudden need to start gardening.

“No, no, we do,” Jayce insists, taking another packet of seeds. Viktor doesn’t see what they are. “We have the balcony. Look, we’ll start small. Just these two. You go pick the pots,” 

It’s so silly. Viktor does not want to clutter the world’s smallest balcony with garden pots. He does not. He will not.

Viktor goes and picks out two pots anyway. 

They pay for the starter seeds - tomatoes and peppers, just in time for the summer - and each take a pot.

“The plants will die,” Viktor warns Jayce as he tries to balance the pot in one hand. “And you’re going to spend the entire season just pouting over them,”

Jayce shakes his head. “No, no, listen - this is a great idea,” 

Viktor makes the mistake of looking at him then. He sees the exact moment that the smile breaks across his face. Jayce’s eyes light up. He’s almost too bright like this. So, so bright. It is like staring directly at the sun.

“You like plants,” an astute observation based on the two barely-alive plants Viktor has tried to keep up with in his bedroom. “And we can use them for cooking. Besides, the balcony can use a little bit more life in it,” 

And so they walk back home with their two pots and seed packets. Jayce’s excitement is palpable. Viktor gives in because Jayce is right–he did mention wanting a garden, once. Offhandedly so many years ago when they’d first moved into the flat. Before Viktor realised there is literally only a sliver of space for it out in the balcony.

They make it work until they look at the pots and the seed packets and realise that they’d forgotten one very important component. 

“We forgot the soil,” Viktor tells him flatly.

Jayce blanches. 

“I’ll be right back,” Viktor doesn’t even bother to stop him anymore, just lets Jayce shoo him away from the front door. “You won’t even notice I’m gone,”

Except Viktor does because the flat always, always feels too big whenever he’s alone. 

—

So they have a garden now. 

Viktor writes up a schedule for it on a little whiteboard right next to the balcony door. 

“I feel like you’re going to overwater them,” Viktor says. Knows Jayce will do just that with their schedules never quite overlapping. 

“What if that’s the secret to making them grow faster?” Jayce tries, stepping into Viktor’s space. Always around him, Jayce. 

Viktor bumps their shoulders together – or whatever of Jayce’s he can reach, anyway. 

“You’re ridiculous,” Viktor sighs. “But try it and see,” 

Jayce just shakes his head. He leans into Viktor, mindful enough not to put too much of his weight against him. 

It’s always been some sort of contention with Viktor, people treating him too carefully, with too much caution. Like he breaks easily. He never gets that from Jayce, though–there’s something about the way Jayce deals with him, the way Jayce touches him. Never really too careful. Just gentle. Soft. 

“I was joking, V,” Jayce walks out to the balcony. Pauses when he reaches the rails to look over his shoulder at Viktor. “I’m excited, though,”

Viktor follows him to the balcony. It’s an even tighter squeeze with the pots crowding the other side. 

Jayce winds an arm around Viktor’s waist, pulling him close. Like this, if Viktor closes his eyes, he thinks they almost slot together rather perfectly. But he definitely doesn’t think about it, doesn’t think about how he can hear Jayce breathe right next to him. Doesn’t think about Jayce leaning his head against the top of Viktor’s, like he’s some mild mannered cat enjoying the summer afternoon. 

They spend the afternoon like that, just looking over their balcony. Jayce keeps his arm around his waist, his hand on his hip. Viktor definitely tries not to zero in on that at all and instead focuses too much on Jayce pointing at a child tripping on the sidewalk. They can faintly hear the mother fussing over her. 

They get a view of the sunset, just over the tall buildings. Barely a view, really, but Viktor can make out the colours of it all the same. He looks up at Jayce and sees the sunset reflected on his face. 

He takes a breath. Breaks the spell and steps away from his touch, away from the balcony. 

“I have to catch up on a few things,” Viktor tries to explain rather lamely. 

“I’ll start dinner, then,” Jayce says, walking back into the flat with him.

Viktor tries. He really tries to focus on his notes but it’s a fruitless effort. He stirs from his desk when Jayce knocks. 

“Come taste this,” Jayce asks him, pulling him into the kitchen.

Jayce brings a spoonful of soup up to Viktor’s mouth. Viktor takes a tentative taste. 

“What, you don’t like it?” it’s not that he doesn’t like it, it’s just that being spoon fed has sort of fried his brain. That or he’s just sleep deprived from all his shifts at the hospital. 

“It’s good,” Viktor hopes he sounds convincing. “Let me heat up some bread,” 

They work around the kitchen quietly until Jayce calls that the soup is done - there’s also some roasted chicken in the oven.

“What’s the occasion?” Viktor asks once they’ve settled on their dining table. It is, surprise surprise, a very small dining table meant only for two people.

“Don’t really need a reason to eat good food,” Jayce says easily enough. “Although maybe we can celebrate the garden,”

The same garden that’s hardly grown. 

“Ridiculous,” Viktor says without much affliction. “I don’t know what to do with you,”

“That’s why you keep me around,” there’s a strange tone in Jayce’s voice now, his face looking a little flushed. It must be the heat in the kitchen. Viktor makes a small note to lower the temperature right before bed. 

“Perhaps,” is all Viktor says out loud. 

The soup is very good. 

—

The summer heat takes them all, in the end. 

On the blissful days when Viktor has more than eight hours to himself–he has three straight days this time, actually – he likes to tend to their garden. It takes him like five minutes to do so because they literally only have two things growing out there. But he tends to the tomatoes and the peppers all the same. He likes to sit out there in the late afternoon, when the heat isn’t as blistering and he doesn’t feel like he might just drown in his own sweat. That’s how it usually goes until the heatwave strikes and their AC sputters to a stop. 

“Come home,” Viktor tells Jayce over the phone. “Come home and fix the damn AC unit,” 

Viktor can prod around it or maybe even whack it with his cane but he knows that won’t do much. He tries not to put too much pressure on his hands–it is the best of him, people have always told him – and wrestling with a broken AC unit definitely counts as putting too much pressure. So he looks away from the stupid, broken thing and looks pointedly out at a window. 

He hears Jayce laugh on the other end of the call. How dare he, Viktor thinks. He laughs while Viktor is stuck in what can only be a sauna. 

“You’re gonna come home and I will be nothing,” Viktor says, cutting through Jayce’s chuckle. 

“A puddle will be all that’s left of my wonderful roommate,” Jayce is awfully amused for something that’s so life shattering. “I’ll scoop you up and use you to water our children,” 

It must be the heat, Viktor realises. The heat is making him hear things. Making his face flush and his head all dizzy because there is just no way Jayce thinks about their ridiculous, barely-alive plants as their children. God. It’s all a joke. Viktor will not address it. Jayce is just being playful. He is ridiculous. 

“I will be nothing,” Viktor says instead, arm splayed on the back of the couch. He considers throwing the balcony doors open. Considers just going out to walk the few short steps to the cafe right across from their building. Or the pub. The pub will be cold this afternoon. He considers all of that and then remembers that he will have to take the lift again. He ultimately decides against it. He will just stay here in their small apartment and die from a heatstroke. 

“Cait says hi by the way,” Jayce tells him conversationally. Viktor can hear the sound of paper shuffling over Jayce’s end, can hear Caitlyn’s voice say something about him–he hears his name and doesn’t pick up on anything else. 

“Hello, Caitlyn,” Viktor says because while he is dying from the summer heat, he can still remember to be polite and well mannered. To other people, that is. To Jayce, he grits his teeth and says, “Fix the damned thing,” 

Again with that burst of a laugh, Jayce finding too much amusement in the situation. 

“I’ll be home soon,” 

Viktor drops the phone, not at all feeling dramatic. Definitely not dramatic. The situation calls for it. People have been dropping like flies from the heat – he’d seen it happen all too much at the hospital. 

When Viktor blinks his eyes open, it’s to find the whole apartment a bit blurry. He’s groggy, head heavy now. He doesn’t know how long he’d been asleep or how he even managed to do that with the heat but he did. 

“Like a cat,” he hears Jayce say right next to him. 

Viktor takes a moment to appreciate the cool air now blowing through the living room. He stretches on the couch and makes a point of sticking his feet against Jayce’s leg.

“Your feet’s so cold,” Jayce complains but doesn’t pull away. Instead he lifts Viktor’s legs and props them over his lap. He folds his fingers over Viktor’s knee and squeezes. “You got me worried there. I got back and found you passed out on the couch,”

“I was not passed out,” Viktor says, maintaining some sense of shame now. “I meant to take a nap,”

Again, Jayce squeezes on his knee. Lets his fingers tap against Viktor’s skin. 

“Sure you did,” Jayce smiles. “I fixed the AC,” 

That he did. Viktor is grateful. So grateful that he leans back into the cushion and closes his eyes again. A second nap in the cool room sounds divine right about now. 

“World record right now,” he hears Jayce’s voice, slightly muffled by how heavy everything is all of a sudden. Heavy and cool, the weight of Jayce’s hand on his leg the only warm thing that Viktor feels. “Two naps in a row,” he says it all too fondly. So fondly that Viktor feels his heartbeat jolt, ever so slightly. 

“Shut up,” Viktor says, waving a hand at Jayce’s general direction. He will not open his eyes to look at him–Viktor already knows what he’ll find: Jayce looking down at him with that same fond, warm smile on his face. He will not look at it. Instead, Viktor says, “You might as well join me,” 

What he doesn’t expect from that is for Jayce to take him up on his offer literally. Their couch is barely big enough for them both like this and it definitely cannot handle two grown men stretched out on it. But for some divine reason, it does. Jayce makes it work.

Like the balcony all over again. 

Viktor hears, “Hold on, sorry–” and then quickly feels himself getting manhandled. Not too rough, Jayce taking care not to jolt him around too much. Viktor is halfway asleep, can’t find it in him to complain but he is aware enough of what’s happening. 

Jayce slots Viktor right against him, his back to his chest. Viktor breathes in deeply. Jayce loops an arm around his waist and nuzzles just at the base of his neck. 

“Okay, is this good?” Jayce asks, finally settling behind Viktor. 

It’s such a tight squeeze. They really do need a better couch. Bigger, too, if only for naps like this – as if this kind of napping arrangement is something they did all too often. It’s not, they don’t–

They don’t do this and yet here Jayce is, quite literally breathing down Viktor’s neck.

But Viktor is too sleepy to complain. Doesn’t even think he wants to complain. He can’t deflect, either, or ignore it because there is no deflecting or ignoring a Jayce-sized cushion behind him. 

“It’s perfect,” Viktor tells him. He finds Jayce’s hand and gives it a few short pats. 

Jayce hums behind him, that same little tune he’d been humming over the phone just that afternoon. It lulls Viktor to sleep.

—

Viktor wakes up from that nap feeling more refreshed than ever. It takes him a couple of seconds to realise that Jayce is still asleep behind him. He turns slowly, carefully, until he comes face to face with him. 

Ah. 

The novelty of it all, Viktor realises. 

Jayce sleeps with a furrow in his brows.

Viktor smoothes it out with a finger, pulling back quickly enough as to not wake him.

But Jayce wakes up all the same, stirs against him and yawns. 

“Good nap?” Jayce asks as if Viktor’s face isn’t right next to his. As if there exists more space between them than it does. So casual, like this is–this is nothing.

This is nothing. 

Viktor feels his shoulders stiffen.

Jayce feels it, too, and squeezes on his waist, nuzzles in closer. 

“Something wrong?” Jayce asks, face practically buried in Viktor’s shoulder. 

He is so close. 

They are so close and Viktor feels like he might just burst. His fight or flight activates briefly before he realises that there is no room to fly away and definitely no drive in him to fight this so instead he just allows himself to lie perfectly still and calm in Jayce’s arms.

Jayce, who has the nerve to inch closer to him, his breath tickling Viktor’s neck.

“No,” Viktor hears himself say, voice so small and quiet. 

Jayce is still sleepy. Or must still be asleep.

Or–

Or Viktor is just dreaming. Of course, that’s the only logical answer to this. Viktor is in Jayce’s arms and he is dreaming. 

“What are you thinking so hard about?” Jayce asks him in his dream. This is a dream. It has to be a dream. 

“That you talk too much even in my dreams,” Viktor says, a little bit more courageous in his dreams.

Jayce’s laughter rocks both of them. Vibrates through Viktor. It sends shockwaves that start from his head and ends at his toes. 

“You think this is a dream?” It can't be anything but a dream. 

Viktor stretches, feet grazing against Jayce’s leg.

“Are your feet always cold in your dreams, too?” Jayce’s voice is musing, playful. He keeps an arm thrown around Viktor’s waist, fingers tapping on his hip, now. Slow and measured. 

“Yes,” the conversation is ridiculous, going nowhere. Because it’s not really happening. He’s like, already sixty percent convinced.

Again, Jayce laughs. It washes over Viktor, cool and refreshing. It envelops him. That’s all he feels, the strength of Jayce’s laughter right next to him. Around him.

“You’re really silly sometimes, V,” 

Viktor makes the grave mistake of meeting Jayce’s gaze. He’d done so well earlier to just look away–to simply not look at him. But here he is all the same, feeling like he’s floating untethered as he looks at Jayce. 

Jayce pinches his cheek then, not too hard but enough to make Viktor frown at him.

“What was that for?” Viktor asks, squirming. There is barely enough room to squirm. He nearly rolls off the couch but Jayce catches him. Pulls him back until they’re staring at each other again, nearly chest to chest. 

“Just to see if you were still dreaming,” another pinch, this time to his nose. 

Sleep rolls off of Viktor then, quick and sudden. He is now hyper aware of everything. The balcony door is slightly ajar, the AC unit is fixed, a blanket pools around their legs. The couch is too small. Jayce is looking at him like he sees something Viktor doesn’t and Viktor–

Viktor is awake and this is most definitely not a dream.

He shoots up straight. It startles Jayce enough to follow right after him. 

“Sorry–” Viktor says, already moving to push himself off the couch. He wants to make a run for his room. The bathroom. Out the door. Anywhere. Maybe even fling himself off the balcony. Yeah. Yeah that works. 

“What for?” Jayce asks, pulling him right back to the couch. Jayce hooks a chin just over his shoulder. It keeps Viktor in place. 

Jayce is a warm presence behind him. Jayce’s hand is a warm sensation over his leg. Jayce is warm and welcoming and pleasant and Viktor will–

He will not , not tonight. 

“Sorry for waking you,” Viktor settles on this instead. He settles against Jayce, leaning back on him. Jayce welcomes the intrusion like it is no problem at all. Like having Viktor this close is no problem at all.

A lesser man might put too much meaning on the here and the now but Viktor is no lesser man. He knows who he is, knows Jayce. He knows exactly where his place is. 

But every so often, Viktor finds himself wanting. He wants so much that it feels like a monster inside of him. It’s only for a flash of a second before it’s gone again. It always goes. 

“Nah,” Jayce gives Viktor’s waist a little squeeze. “I’m getting hungry, anyway,”

It rolls off of Jayce so easily – just. The everything of it all. The everything in this situation.

“What do you want for dinner?” Jayce asks, as if Viktor isn’t spiralling right in his arms. 

Viktor – he can want, is the thing. He can want and want and want all he wants. He is used to looking at things from afar. He will simply want and never reach out. So he allows himself a moment to breathe, a moment to appreciate Jayce pressed right against his back. He takes a moment.

The moment passes and he gets up. 

“Let’s go out for dinner,” Viktor says, hoping he doesn’t sound as shaky as he feels. He can hear Jayce stir behind him, slowly getting off the couch as well. 

“Sounds good,” Jayce says, squeezing his shoulder as he passes by Viktor to his room. “Let me just go get changed real quick.”

The moment passes and the spell is broken. The glass shatters. 

Viktor walks out to the balcony and bends down a little bit to observe the growing tomatoes. 

“Am I actually stupid?” he whispers to the poor plant. 

That thought doesn’t bother him for too long because Viktor has spent his whole life being very aware of how intelligent he was. So definitely not stupid, not when it came to academics. Medschool. Decision making - 

Okay, yeah, definitely not decision making. Definitely not when it comes to anything that happens in this flat. 

“Maybe I am,” Viktor muses, straightening back up.

“Maybe you’re what?” Jayce asks from the door, already dressed and ready to go. “Were you talking to the tomatoes?”

“Yes,” Viktor says all too quickly. He allows himself a small smile at the absurdity of it all. “Would you like to come say hello?”

Jayce smiles, too, and bends down to say hello to the tomatoes. He asks the peppers how they’re doing while he’s at it.

Viktor’s heart swells. 

—

August and September pass them by in a whirlwind of colours - reds, oranges, and just the subtle hints of blue sprinkled over the fading summer skies. 

Their plants have grown and blossomed. They harvested them just at the tail-end of summer. Jayce had made a salad out of the tomatoes and peppers - it had been good. Viktor rubs a leaf between his fingers, marveling at how large the plant had grown over the summer. 

“Pumpkins,” Jayce calls from somewhere inside the flat.

Viktor immediately shuts that down with a hard and resounding no . 

“Just joking,” Jayce says, popping his head out the balcony doors. “What are you doing out here?”

“Sunbathing,” is the only excuse Viktor can think of. The thought of colder months ahead of them is always hard, always an ordeal he has to go through. His leg cramps at the most inopportune times when the weather drops too low. His back aches. Everything aches. He never has enough energy come December. The nights are longer, darker. Everything ends all too soon. 

Jayce drapes a thin blanket over his shoulders. Viktor pulls it close to him, his thanks murmured into the fabric of the blanket. It’s nice and soft. Smells good, too. He breathes it in. It smells a little bit like Jayce. 

“Think about all the hot cocoa you can drink,” Jayce tells him, stepping out to finally join him. 

“I don’t need cold weather for that,” Viktor moves just the tiniest bit to allow Jayce enough space to lean against the rails. 

“Yes, but the ambience. Just think about it,” Viktor relents. He thinks about it. He doesn’t quite like hot cocoa - would prefer more milk in it than chocolate, which is exactly how Jayce makes it. Exactly what Jayce orders from the cafe down the street all the winters prior to bring to Viktor. 

“I suppose,” Viktor says, following Jayce’s gaze to look at the street below them. A few people walking down the street with groceries in their arms. A small group of friends in their uniform, chattering away. A family rounding the corner. It’s always nice to sightsee from this little perch of theirs. Almost like peering into other people’s lives, their day to days. 

“We shouldn’t be having any problems with the heater,” Jayce tells him, quite matter of fact. “I fixed it,”

There’s so much to fix in this little flat of theirs. Just as soon as the season settles, something will break, Viktor is sure of it. It’s happened in the past. God, it happened just this summer. The AC unit had broken down a total of three times. Perhaps it’s just the strength of the heat, how it could barely handle it. Viktor had barely handled it. But then again, he barely handles the cold. 

How miserable, he thinks. 

“We need to update that,” and the couch, and the creaky faucet in the bathroom. 

“Next year,” Jayce says, bumping lightly against Viktor. 

He says it like a promise. Something to look forward to.

Perhaps it is.

Viktor lets the cold air settle around them. Breathes in the smell of Jayce from the fabric of the blanket – it smells fresh with just the slightest notes of jasmine. Viktor quite likes it.

“How are your classes?” Viktor takes the time to ask. “Do you think it’s time to stop working at the shop?”

Jayce just shakes his head. “No, no, I think I can handle it,”

He does handle it pretty well, Viktor is aware. But it’s still a weight on his shoulders thinking about Jayce spending long nights studying and even longer afternoons after school working at the auto shop. 

“The auto shop’s fun, I don’t really mind it,” Jayce leans against him then, an all too familiar weight against Viktor. 

“If you insist,” Viktor says, looking away from the street to glance sideways at him. 

“And the hospital?” Jayce asks. 

“Terrible,” Viktor tells him. “I haven’t slept in days,” which is a stretch of the truth but there are some hints of it underneath it all – he doesn’t hate working at the hospital, god, he’s excited, even, to finally complete his residency. But it’s also true that he hasn’t really gotten much sleep. More to do with his racing mind whenever he tries and never with the workload of the day. 

“Poor baby,” Jayce’s tone is playful, mischievous, even. It makes Viktor blush all the same.

Jayce turns to him and wraps his arms around Viktor’s waist. It’s all too familiar now and Viktor really can’t quite dismiss this as a one time thing because – because it’s not. It’s a several-time thing.

“Come in then, we’ll go take a nap,” still with the lighthearted tone, with the playful smile. There’s a glitter in his eye as well. Viktor falls for it everytime. 

“Enticing,” Viktor tells him. He doesn’t allow Jayce to drag him back to the couch though. “But I have a shift tonight,” 

Jayce's face falls as quickly as he’d smiled. Viktor will not be subjected to his pouting so he turns away, looks back out at the balcony again. 

“I’ll walk you to work,” Jayce tries again, hand squeezing Viktor’s hip. 

“I will not walk for two hours,” the hospital isn’t exactly far – by train. By foot? Viktor would rather just curl up on the sidewalk and die. 

“Fine, to the station, then,” Jayce insists. He holds Viktor in the circle of his arms and prods him to meet his gaze. Viktor finally does and again he hears it, just the smallest sound of something cracking. Breaking. “Call me when you finish?”

“Maybe,” is all Viktor tells him as he finally, finally brings himself to break away from Jayce. To walk away from the balcony. “It’ll be too early in the morning, though, so maybe not,”

It’s Jayce’s turn to roll his eyes. 

“I really don’t mind, V,” Earnest. Eager. Persistent.

Like the de novo cold of the approaching winter. Too fast. So soon. 

“I’ll be fine, Jayce,” Viktor calls over his shoulder. “Sky can always just drop me off,” 

Jayce doesn’t say anything for a long time after that and Viktor wonders if he’d just dropped the subject altogether. He very well should have. But still Viktor feels compelled to stop, to turn around and look at him.

There is a weird look on his face. A furrow in his brows and his lips pressed together tightly. 

When Jayce notices Viktor staring, he gives him a smile and a shrug. It’s not very convincing, that look. Viktor should know – he’d patented that look himself. 

“Yeah, okay,” Jayce tells him, stepping back into the living room. He closes the door behind him and pulls the curtains close. The living room is dimmer without the light from the open balcony. Viktor moves to turn on a lamp. “Wake me up anyway,”

Earnest. Eager. So, so very persistent. 

Viktor offers him a smile. It feels like a lifeline. 

Jayce takes it, smiling back at him. It reaches his eyes this time, the weird look on his face from earlier gone as quickly as it had come. 

“Maybe,” Viktor repeats, moving to gather his things. “Maybe not.” 

They spend the walk to the station in silence. 

—

Things at the hospital get busier. Viktor starts doing sixteen-hour overnight shifts. They’re not too bad, really. He’s used to working on little sleep. Used to spending the nights awake. 

The only difference now is the smell of the hospital and how bright the lights are. Clinically bright that Viktor finds himself just blinking wearily well past his sixteen hours. 

Okay, maybe that’s not the only problem. The other problem is that with overnight shifts comes an empty flat whenever he drags himself back home. He takes the lift sometimes when his body feels heavy. On other days he takes the stairs – he makes it all the way up to their floor before he even feels the pain in his leg. He’s fine if he takes it slow and steady on the last flight.

The flat is still empty. Jayce is at university and then at work until the evening. Viktor comes home to the heater on, though, and always with soup in the fridge ready for him to reheat. 

Viktor takes a shower and shrugs off the day’s work off of him. The smell of the hospital sticks to his hair, to his skin. He’d grown accustomed to it while in the hospital but smelling it in the flat that smells so much like the spices Jayce likes to use, like the perfume Jayce likes to wear – it’s wrong. So Viktor scrubs harshly at his skin. Scrubs hard enough that his arm starts to flush red. He stops eventually when the water gets too cold.

His phone buzzes on the kitchen counter. He sees a message from Jayce, checks it to see a photo of two kittens curled up together and asleep right under a tree. 

Viktor texts him back. Says, “I want the grey one.” 

And then he dims all the lights, turns the heat up a little bit higher, and grabs the blanket Jayce liked to leave lying around in the living room. He throws it over himself, curls up on the couch, and closes his eyes. 

—

Viktor wakes up to the soft sound of purring. He reaches around blindly, thinks it’s just his phone buzzing somewhere on the couch next to him. His hand closes on something small. Soft. Furry. Viktor’s eyes open and he sits up, heart racing.

“A rat–” Viktor sputters out, breathless. “I touched a rat–”

Jayce comes running out of his room, eyes wide at the rise in Viktor’s voice.

“What? A rat?” Jayce asks, joining Viktor on the couch. “Where–”

A shocking realisation. Viktor had never let go.

He unclasps his hand and leans away from the furry thing. 

Jayce ducks down. 

“Viktor,” Jayce’s shoulders are shaking. Viktor can’t make out anything else but that, the room is still too dim. He can barely make out the look on Jayce’s face. “This isn’t–this isn’t a rat,”

Jayce leans over Viktor to turn a lamp on. The room is instantly flooded with warm light. 

Viktor blinks up at Jayce, finally seeing the lump of fur in his hands. 

Orange. Furry. Fluffy.

“Jayce Talis,” Viktor is breathless. This is unbelievable. He leans in to get a better look at it. “You did not ,”

“Well, you did say,” and here Jayce sounds sheepish. Viktor can make out the faint flush creeping up his cheeks. Can see that same playful glitter in his eye. “And I couldn’t leave them alone out there – it’s gonna get too cold. Think about the poor things,”

“Them?” Viktor repeats, still not processing the idea of Jayce taking home a kitten just because Viktor had said that he wanted the grey one. This one is definitely not the grey one. This one is very orange. “You–”

“Here, hold her,” Jayce passes him the kitten. Viktor’s hand cups around the small thing immediately, careful, delicate. She’s so thin, so tiny. Viktor hears her purring against his palm. “And look–” Jayce pulls the second one up to the couch with them, like a magician pulling tricks from his hat. 

Viktor definitely does not stare at the other cat open-mouthed.

He does. He really does. 

Jayce laughs, amused. Happy . 

“Oh my god,” Viktor throws himself back on the edge of the couch. Hits his head on a cushion and slinks down low. The orange cat climbs up to his chest and continues purring. She kneads her remarkably tiny paws on his chest.

Jayce drops the second one –the grey one. The grey one. The second one?

The second one - on his chest to join the orange cat. 

Viktor pets them both at the same time. 

Jayce laughs even louder. Warmer. It wraps around Viktor. It fills the entire flat with a warmth nothing else could ever compare to. 

“You’re impossible,” Viktor tells him. But it is too late. It is far too late. Viktor is petting the kittens and they’re snuggling up to him. This, he realises, is the point of no return. 

—

Actually, the point of no return is when they start naming the kittens. 

“Rio,” Viktor says, pointing at the orange kitten.

“Okay,” Jayce rubs at the back of the grey kitten’s ear. He thinks. He thinks really hard before he says, “Hex.” 

“We’re in it now,” Viktor murmurs, lifting Rio up to his face. The cat blinks wide green eyes at him. Viktor feels himself defrost. 

“Did you even get them anything?” 

The look on Jayce’s face is answer enough. It’s the soil situation yet again. 

“Jayce Talis,” Viktor is impressed with how he made that sound. Evenly. The threat thinly veiled under the use of Jayce’s full name. 

“I have treats,” Jayce says, as if treats will keep a cat fed. Will keep two cats fed. 

“I will feed all your socks to the kittens,” Viktor sets Rio down on the couch. He grips Jayce’s arm and pulls. “Come,” 

Jayce follows after him, nearly tripping over his own shoes.

They make their way out of the building at a little past seven in the evening. The autumn air is cold. Viktor is not wearing enough layers to be out in the cold like this. He shivers. 

Jayce stops him with a hand on his elbow. 

“Wait,” and to his complete astonishment, Jayce starts to shrug off his jacket. He hands it over to Viktor, who stares at it. “You’re cold,” is all the explanation Jayce gives.

Viktor takes it for lack of anything to say, or anything else to do. He puts it on. It’s too big. It’s massive. It swallows him whole. It smells like Jayce. It’s warm. Heat rises up to his face. It’s suddenly so hot and everything. Everywhere. Everything smells like Jayce. Fresh and light and with the barest notes of jasmine. 

Viktor quickly turns away from him, doesn’t want to see him suddenly flushed and raw like this. 

“Thank you,” Viktor’s voice breaks on the last word.

If Jayce notices, he doesn’t say anything. He just falls into step next to him, matching Viktor’s step effortlessly. 

They come back home with temporary litter boxes and cans of cat food. Viktor passes Jayce his jacket back. His face still feels so warm. Their fingers brush at the exchange. Viktor pulls his hand away, curling his fingers into a pocket. It tingles. 

Lingers, the feeling of it all. The warmth burns.

—

So they have two kittens running around their flat. Their flat that barely functions. Two kittens who like to sunbathe out on the world’s smallest balcony. Two kittens who greet Viktor home after long shifts, who curl up on his chest or by his feet whenever he takes his naps out on the couch. Two kittens who purr so loud Viktor can’t hear himself think. But not in a bad way – he falls asleep to the sound of purring kittens. It is heavenly. Dreamlike.

Viktor dreams. He sleeps well. He likes coming home now before Jayce, doesn’t mind that the apartment suddenly feels even smaller because the kittens keep him company. It doesn’t feel so lonely. Viktor isn’t as alone with them.

Jayce comes home before it gets too late into the evening. He comes home to Rio and Hex rubbing against his leg, purring, meowing. Yelling at him as if Viktor hadn’t just fed them. 

“Greedy little demons,” Viktor says from his spot on the kitchen counter. He’s reviewing right now, studying. He closes the book with a loud shut and stretches. 

Jayce stops right next to him and smiles, reaching out to him. Viktor anticipates it. His eyes flutter to a close when Jayce squeezes his shoulder. Such a familiar way to say hello, now. When the tides had turned, Viktor couldn't quite say. But he accepts it. Leans into it. He wants. 

“Hey, d’you wanna go to this party?” Jayce asks after throwing everything everywhere - shoes kicked off to the side of the door, bag dropped right next to the coat rack. Keys thrown over the small bowl right next to the door – Viktor heard it clatter against something decidedly not made out of glass and thinks it might have just fallen on the floor. “Powder’s having this birthday party next week. Vi’s younger sister. Vi said you should come, too,”

Well. 

“I don’t really know them too well,” Viktor says, hoping that’s enough of an answer. 

“Nah, it’s alright,” Jayce tells him, touching his arm again as he walks around the counter to get to the sink. “And besides, what better reason to spend more time with them,”

Well . 

“Fine,” Viktor relents. It’s just a party. He’s no stranger to parties although he is very good friends with the prospect of leaving parties much earlier than intended. 

“It’ll be fine,” Jayce promises. “Now, moving on to more pressing matters: what the hell do we get Powder?” 

Viktor doesn’t really know Jayce’s circle of friends. Well, mostly in passing. Okay, he knows them mostly because Caitlyn always likes to extend him an invitation. But he hasn’t made that much of a great effort, is the regrettable thing. And here he is with another chance to possibly not get to know them again. Except this time Viktor feels enough guilt that he figures he’ll give it a good try.

So he tries to think about Powder – a bit eccentric, that girl. Brilliant, too. Perhaps that’s why Viktor likes her so much – she shows a lot of promise. 

“Get her a speaker set,” Viktor says, more as a joke than anything. 

“And have Vi bash through our door for that,” Jayce laughs at the idea. 

They spend the whole night thinking of possible gifts and eventually settle on a robotics kit. She’d always shown interest whenever Jayce talked about engineering. 

“And a new pair of headphones,” Jayce says.

Viktor nods, agreeing.

It's a good backup.

—

Here is where it comes. Here is where Viktor slips and nearly falls over the edge.

The festivities of Powder’s birthday are just about to dwindle down. The party itself is full of familiar faces. Full of easy conversation and laughter. There is Caitlyn and Vi, newly engaged and so, so happy. There is Powder and then there are a couple more others that Viktor had never been introduced to before the party. Ekko, a young boy, and then Isha, an even younger girl. Why, she still looks like she’d be in primary school. It’s a fun party, Viktor will admit. But the party is also too many people all at once.

He slips out when Jayce is busy talking to Caitlyn, gesturing at the ring on her finger – both their fingers, really. Jayce doesn’t notice him.

Viktor leans against the wall. The atmosphere inside the house hadn’t been too much, not exactly. Just a lot. A good occasion. A happy event. Viktor enjoyed it, he really did, but he is also starting to feel tired. 

His grip tightens around his cane. He tilts his head back until he hits the brick wall.

He is not nearly as drunk as he would like to be – and who would be, given it had essentially just been a teenager’s birthday party. Just a respectable amount of alcohol. Just a little bit. But Viktor has never been too good with his liquor. He is also awful when it comes to the cold. 

This is how Jayce eventually finds him. Light seeps through the crack from the door. Viktor can still hear the music inside, can hear Powder and Ekko’s voices all the way out here. The door closes with a soft thud. Jayce stops right in front of him. Bends down all the way to the ground where Viktor had decided to sit. 

It comes, right here, right now.

Jayce reaches out to him, hand gently cupping Viktor’s cheek. Asks him without actually saying anything out loud to look at him. Viktor does.

“Hey,” Jayce says softly, voice low enough that Viktor thinks this is a conversation away from the rest of the world. Just the two of them. 

“Rough night?” Jayce asks, a glimmer of a smile starting to blossom on his face. He is being too kind to Viktor right now, with his warm hand and even warmer smile. With that look in his eyes that can convince Viktor of anything. Anything . 

“It was a children’s party,” Viktor tells him. He moves into Jayce’s warmth, leans into his hand. Closes his eyes. 

“Hey, don’t let Powder hear that,” Jayce tells him, matching his tone. Jayce sits on the ground in front of him, keeping his hand steady on Viktor’s face. 

His face is burning, he can feel it. Jayce must feel it, too. He would be a fool not to notice.

“What are you doing out here?” Viktor asks, finally opening his eyes again to look at Jayce.

Jayce moves his hand over his cheek. Viktor misses the warmth immediately but he stills when Jayce runs his fingers through his hair, brushing it out of his face. Out of his eyes. As if Viktor could not see him clearly with his hair obstructing his view. 

“I was looking for you,” Jayce’s hand falls to Viktor’s shoulder, like it always does. A weight. A promise. A comfort. “We should go home,” 

Viktor just shakes his head.

“No, no, I’m fine,” he tries to stand up but Jayce just pulls him gently back down on the ground next to him. “Really, Jayce. I’m fine. Go back to your friends,” 

“ You’re my friend,” Jayce tells him.

There it is. 

Friends. 

They are friends. 

It is more than enough to clear his head. 

“Of course,” Viktor says, rather curtly. 

“Is something wrong?” Jayce, for his brilliant mind, can sometimes be so dense. 

Their faces are so close, Viktor really only needs to lean forward and - 

And he doesn’t. He pulls back.

But the moment comes to him all the same, the feeling. The sensation.

It comes to him quietly, like a hushed whisper. There is no sudden realisation here, just a gentle dawning of the truth. It descends upon Viktor like the cold autumn air. 

Viktor briefly touches their foreheads together. His heart hammers in its ribcage, a thump, thump, thump so loud Jayce must hear it. 

Jayce’s fingers slip through his hair again, pausing very briefly to give it a tug, nothing that would hurt. It never hurts. At least not in the way Viktor thinks it’s supposed to.

“Let’s go home,” Jayce says, so close to his ear. 

Jayce helps him up, hands holding onto Viktor’s and tugging him back up to his feet. He gives Viktor his cane first and then his arm next, waits until Viktor takes it. Loops his own around Jayce’s. 

They only separate for a minute, enough for Jayce to pop back into the house and tell everyone they’ll be leaving. Coursework, hospital shifts, whatever reason he gives them Viktor doesn’t hear. 

What he does hear is Jayce bounding back up to him, a shy smile on his face, like he isn’t sure this is something Viktor will approve of. Not something Viktor will like.

But Viktor takes his arm again, a quiet understanding having dawned upon him. 

Home is the old building that Jayce always liked to call charming. Home is the world’s  smallest balcony with the two plants they managed to grow over the summer. Home is where the two kittens Jayce had rescued wait for them. 

The cab ride back is quiet. Viktor spends it leaning on Jayce, head right against his shoulder. Jayce keeps an arm around his waist, keeping him close and steady as the roads turn a bit bumpy, as the cabbie drives a little bit too fast. 

Here is where the moment comes even stronger, like a breeze blowing past him. In this nightmare of a lift. 

Viktor steals a glance at Jayce, who looks like he could hold the sun in his hands. Here is where Viktor starts feeling like he’s staring too long at the light again because it’s blinding, Jayce’s smile. How the light just floods right out of him. It’s blinding and warm and it feels like home before they even get home, in a mess of thick winter coats and scarves. 

Jayce’s smile turns a bit softer now that the night has settled. He looks like he’s ready for sleep, and who is Viktor to deny him that? 

“Come here,” Jayce guides him to his bedroom, right across Viktor’s own. 

Who is Viktor to deny him that? 

They fall asleep like that, legs tangled under the thick covers and Jayce’s arm around him. 

Morning comes, because it always does only this time the feeling stays, that unsaid, hushed feeling. He looks over at Jayce, still sleeping right next to him.

Viktor brushes his fingers over his forehead, allows himself a small smile at the sight of Jayce like this, so unburdened. Weightless. 

Viktor will want but he will never take. 

Later, when Jayce wakes up to pad barefoot into the kitchen, he looks for Viktor. With sleep in his eyes he calls out to Viktor first and then the two kittens, who come running straight to his feet.

Viktor passes him a cup of tea. 

Jayce takes it.

A lot of things need not be said. 

Jayce does not talk about what happened last night and Viktor–

Viktor will never take. He settles instead. 

—

Winter is always hard and not just because of the cold. He thinks about his mother the most whenever winter rolls around. It never takes him by surprise but it always feels like a bullet train speeding straight at him. He is caught in the impact. He lies in the wreckage. He closes his eyes and remembers the sound of her voice.

She would have liked Jayce, Viktor thinks. 

“I think my mother would’ve liked you,” Viktor says. 

Jayce drapes the same blanket around his shoulders. He slides a cup of tea across the coffee table for Viktor. 

“Tell me about her,” Jayce has heard all the stories about his mother. They always have this conversation in the winter. Viktor says the same thing, year after year. Jayce asks him all the same, listens to him patiently. 

“She was much better at you than knitting,” Viktor starts it off differently this year. He blows on the warm tea. 

“That hurts,” it was a hobby that Jayce had picked up quickly. He dropped it even quicker. He laughs anyway. 

His laugh bounces on the walls. 

Rio is asleep by Viktor’s feet. 

Hex jumps up to sit between them and Jayce immediately rubs behind her little ears.

“We always spent my birthday together,” it was just the two of them for most of Viktor’s life. They never had much but they had what they needed. 

Viktor hadn’t had much when she got sick, either. They lived too far, in a rural town that didn’t have the best hospital. Didn’t have the medication she needed. 

She went quickly and quietly. 

“I think it was for the best,” Viktor gives up on the tea. It’s still too scalding. “She went without pain,” 

The doctor had told him as much.

Viktor hadn’t really understood all the jargon back then but he does now. It doesn’t hurt any less.

Jayce scoots closer to him.

Viktor lets Jayce’s arm loop around him again, feeling their jagged edges click together as they lean into each other. 

“For what it’s worth, I would’ve loved your mother,” 

Viktor’s shoulders start to shake. He nods. Jayce’s hold around him tightens. 

Jayce wipes away his tears before Viktor can even realise that he’s crying. 

Viktor doesn’t say anything, just tries to still the shaking of his shoulders. Closes his eyes and feels the tears track down his cheeks. 

Jayce thumbs them all away, fingers gentle over Viktor’s face. 

“I miss her,” Viktor finally tells him after the worst of it all has subsided. 

Some winters are easier than others. He doesn’t always end up crying in Jayce’s arms. 

Then there are winters like this, where all Viktor can think about is the white sheet over his mother. The monotone voice of the doctor telling him that she had passed peacefully, that there was nothing they could do. There was nothing Viktor could have done, but he mourns all the same. 

Their small home with a warm hearth whenever the cold rolled around. The threadbare rug beneath their bare feet. All the colours plastered on the walls - she had liked to paint as much as she liked to knit. She did a lot with her hands. She made wonders with her hands–

The same hands that had held Viktor whenever he had trouble sleeping. Who fed him soup in bed when he got too sick. Who’d lift him up on her back and laugh as they made the walk down to the market. 

If Viktor tries hard enough he can almost hear her voice, her laughter as she says, My little boy, you’re perfect. She never struggled to carry him but he outgrew the piggybacks. 

Everything comes and goes.

Some go sooner. 

His birthday is coming up and soon the new year. 

“I bet she’s proud of you,” Jayce’s thumb grazes just over his cheekbone, settling somewhere beneath his eye. Viktor lets him, is feeling a little bit more selfish than usual tonight. “I’m proud of you,”

Home is different now. It’s no longer the small house he had grown up in, no longer the same house his mother would pitter-patter in on the early mornings, working in the kitchen to prepare breakfast. Viktor no longer needs to get up on a stool to help her wash the dishes. It is not that kind of home anymore but it is a home, this little thing they have. This little thing they share.

And how far has he come, from that small rural town that nobody’s really ever spared a single thought on. How far Viktor has had to claw his way up just to be here. 

Jayce rubs soothing circles over his back.

In their little flat with the world’s smallest balcony. With two cats asleep by their feet. Wrapped in a blanket that smells so much like Jayce, Viktor is always reminded of home. 

He’d struggled with the thought when he left home for good – a part of him always knew he’d never go back. He looks back on it still but that is all he does. All he can do.

But a house will eventually reshape itself around the people who live in it and home isn’t exactly the structure itself.

They could be in the middle of that train wreck again and Viktor would still think it home, being in Jayce’s embrace like this. 

“God, I’m all gross now,” Viktor sniffles, peeling himself away from Jayce. “Just throw me out with the rest of the trash, then,” 

It’s a half-hearted play at a joke, at brushing the sudden episode away. Jayce does not buy it. 

“I hate it when you talk about yourself that way,” Jayce’s mouth twists into a frown, his eyebrows furrowed. 

It is Viktor’s turn to slide his arms around Jayce. He presses his nose against Jayce’s hair and waits until Jayce falls into the hug. 

A hand curls over the back of Viktor’s neck, Jayce’s other looping around him, pulling him close. The comfort of having him so close to him, so warm against him is enough to make Viktor burst into tears again. But he doesn’t. It will do him no good. 

It’s all so intimate, this closeness. There is barely a gap between them. Jayce knocks their foreheads together before he hooks a chin over Viktor’s shoulder, grip around him tightening. 

Viktor breathes in and hears Jayce do the same thing. 

“Sorry,” Viktor says, more to Jayce’s hair than anything. He rubs at Jayce’s back, a motion so similar to what Jayce had done for him earlier. It is easy to fall into patterns like this. Easy to slot right next to Jayce and feel like he belongs, like this is where he should be. “Old habits,” 

“Maybe I overreacted,” Jayce murmurs. It sounds like he’s trying to talk underwater. They must be – just the two of them underwater, where everything flows and ebbs away easily, where Viktor doesn’t know where he starts and where Jayce ends. 

“It’s okay,” Viktor brushes his fingers through Jayce’s hair, feeling him relax against him. Viktor holds him as tightly as Jayce does and it’s intimate, god, it’s so intimate, this single moment, but Viktor has never felt so bare. 

It is only right, he supposes. 

“Okay,” Jayce repeats, still underwater. 

—

It snows on Viktor’s birthday.

Jayce announces as much when he bursts through Viktor’s door with the cats hot on his heels. They launch themselves into Viktor’s bed without much preamble. Viktor can’t tell just which cat is kneading his hair and which cat is trying to bite his knee but it’s fine, this is fine. 

It’s more than fine.

Jayce sits down next to him and drops a small box on his chest.

“Happy birthday,” Jayce grins.

Viktor sits up. He plays with the ribbon. Looks at Jayce again and then back at the small box in his hand. 

“You didn’t have to,” Viktor’s birthday is so close to Christmas that people never gave him two presents. Well – his mother used to. And then – and then Jayce, all those years ago. Two presents for two different celebrations, Jayce would always tell him.

Jayce says as much, nearly word for word. 

Viktor opens the box. The ribbon slides off and one of the kittens immediately starts pulling at it – Rio, he thinks. Hex pulls on the other side. Jayce makes a halfhearted attempt at making them behave but gives up when both the kittens wind up with opposite ends of the ribbon ripped to shreds. 

There in the middle of the box sits a bracelet. A silver chain loops around a single blue gem. 

“Well,” Viktor says, staring at the bracelet. He’s a bit dumbfounded. His Christmas present hardly warranted a bracelet of this quality, this degree. “Jayce–” 

“No,” Jayce cuts him off. “Just – if you like it, then please take it. If you don’t then I’ll go get it exchanged. We can – we can get something else, if you want,” 

Viktor is still staring at the bracelet. It’s too much. He doesn’t think he deserves it – he can’t even wear this at work. But it’s beautiful. The gemstone is blue and bright.

“Jayce,” Viktor repeats, reaching out to squeeze his shoulder. Jayce is starting to ramble on and on and isn't going to stop unless someone cuts him off. Viktor does. “It’s perfect. Thank you,”

Jayce helps him with the bracelet, loops it around his wrist. His thumb lingers on the inside of Viktor’s wrist, rubbing small circles over it before he pulls away.

“That’s a relief,” a curious flush has crept up from Jayce’s neck and into his face. The colour makes him look sun-kissed in the middle of a snowy day. “It’s turquoise,” 

Viktor doesn’t know what it means exactly. He makes a mental note to look it up later. 

For now, he thumbs over the gem. Smooth and cool under his touch. 

Jayce’s smile is wonderful, such a stark contrast against the frost that clings to the windows. 

“Happy birthday,” Jayce says for a second time. He waits until Viktor finally, finally tears his eyes away from the bracelet to meet his gaze.

Viktor looks at him and his heart is full.

—

So his birthday comes and goes only this time Viktor is reminded so clearly of the morning. The gemstone presses against his skin, a testament to a cold day they mostly spent indoors. 

Sky finds him just playing with the bracelet, feeling the cool silver against his skin. 

“Good birthday?” Sky asks, shrugging out of her coat. She stops to open her locker, shoving the rest of her things in there without really looking. Viktor hears a few things fall off the rack and rattle against the metal when she shuts it close. 

“Yes,” Viktor admits, finally unclasping the bracelet to slip into his bag. “It snowed all day, though,”

“Yeah, but you still had a great time with that loverboy of yours, yes?” Sky is all too quick to talk whenever she senses anything interesting, anything new. Gone is the shy girl who’d approached him first in their first year lab. Viktor sort of misses her, but then again not really because Sky talks enough for the both of them, now. 

Viktor’s face heats up at the mention of loverboy and he turns away from her.

“You have to stop calling him that,” he chastises. It is not the first time the nickname was dropped. Viktor fears it will not be the last time. “You know we’re not–” and here he stammers a little bit, at a loss for words. Always at a loss for words when it comes to Jayce. 

“He’s my best friend,” he settles on this. It is a familiar answer. A safe answer.

Sky rolls her eyes.

“Okay,” She says, still with a teasing tone. “Whatever you tell yourself, Viktor.” 

—

There is a lot to unpack in the winter. Viktor unpacks the memory of his mother. He unpacks the first birthday he ever spent alone. He unpacks the first birthday he spent with Jayce. There is a lot to unpack but not everything hurts. Some old wounds can feel as raw as the day he got them but they scar and then eventually fade after. Memories. He keeps them in a safe, tucks it into a chamber in his heart where it is safe. It sits right next to where Jayce is, right next to best friend . 

Viktor is careful on his walk out of the station. The street is filled with sludge, snow melted and disgusting now. It’s slippery. He’s tired but he’s also just out of a miraculous eight hour shift where nothing had truly gone wrong and he didn’t have to stay too late. 

He meets Jayce by the stoop of their building, talking to someone Viktor doesn’t recognise. 

“V!” Jayce calls, meeting him halfway. He helps Viktor up the steps – he doesn’t need to, but he keeps a hand on the small of Viktor’s back all the same, says it’s because the road is too slippery right now, you can never be too careful. They stop in front of the woman Jayce had just been talking to. “We were just talking about you,” 

“I’m Mel,” she introduces herself, reaching a hand out. 

Viktor shakes it. 

“Viktor,” he tells her, still a bit confused as to why she’s standing outside their building. 

“I was just leaving, actually,” Mel says, smiling at Jayce first and then at Viktor. “I’d love to stay and chat but I have to get back to work,” 

She waves goodbye to the both of them before she makes her way back to her car. 

“Mel?” Viktor asks when they’re in the lift. 

“A friend from uni,” Jayce tells him with that same easy tone in his voice. That same easy smile on his face. “She’s brilliant, actually. You should meet her,” 

“I did,” Viktor says slowly, a sinking feeling in his chest. It roots itself right there in the middle of his ribcage. He can’t shake it off. “We met. You saw it,”

“No, no, I mean like talk to her for real,” Jayce continues excitedly. He helps Viktor out of his coat before he takes his off. Jayce hangs both of them on the coat rack. 

“Are you–” Viktor isn’t sure if he wants to start this question, isn’t sure if he wants to know the answer. But he has already started and whether or not he wants to hear it is something out of his control. So he continues, pushes on and asks, “Are you guys?” 

Which is truly a pathetic and weak attempt at a proper question but it is all Viktor has for now.

Jayce comes to a sudden stop.

“Are we what?” Jayce stumbles right into their kitchen counter. He winces. 

“Dating?” Viktor asks, feeling just the slightest bit sorry when Jayce runs into a second kitchen counter. “Will you look at where you’re going for once?” 

Jayce laughs, a little nervous. 

“No,” he says, shaking his head. “God, no, definitely not,” he repeats, looking at Viktor. 

“Okay,” Viktor starts to walk away from the kitchen. He’s about to feed the cats when he hears Jayce say, voice as shaky as he looks nervous: 

“We’re just friends, V,” 

And isn’t that something Viktor knows all too much about?

—

Of course Viktor is aware of the possibility of Jayce dating. It is not like Viktor himself shies away from the idea–

Okay, so maybe Viktor hasn’t had a real date in a while now. But he did, in the past. Jayce did, too, with someone Viktor can’t remember anymore – can’t remember the face, the name, where they came from. Must’ve purged the whole memory out of his brain as soon as it ended.

Jayce never brings them up, anyway, so there’s really not much to remember. 

But still – it is a possibility. 

Viktor doesn’t know how he’s supposed to feel about that, after – well, after everything. He reminds himself, rather briefly, that he doesn’t take. Isn’t supposed to take. It is enough to get him through the rest of the afternoon, that is until Jayce plops right next to him on the sofa and says,

“I’m not dating Mel,” he knocks their knees together, trying to get Viktor’s attention. “She’s not interested,” 

And then, when Viktor still doesn’t say anything, Jayce follows it up with, “I’m not interested, either,”

“Okay,” Viktor says slowly because it looks like Jayce is building up to something here. 

“She’s just a good friend, promise,” Jayce trips over his words like he’s worried about something. Or like he’s trying to catch up to a bullet train at full speed. 

Viktor levels him with a stare.

“You don’t have to explain yourself, Jayce,” Viktor pats his knee rather absentmindedly.

Jayce takes it as a clear enough sign to curl up against Viktor. 

“You asked,” Jayce reminds him.

He did. Viktor had asked a question he wasn’t prepared for, a question he thought he wouldn’t be ready to hear the answer of. But here they are – Jayce with his head on Viktor’s lap, staring up at him. 

Here they are, on their couch that has seen much better days, in the middle of their flat. Here they are.

Viktor runs his fingers through Jayce’s hair, resists the urge to pinch his cheek. 

He leans against the couch cushions. 

“You’re overthinking it,” Jayce says, squinting up at Viktor. 

Viktor squints back down at him, barely reigning his smile in.

It unfurls as easily as Jayce’s bursts through the clouds.  

“I’ll have you know I like to overthink everything,” he stills in finger-combing through Jayce’s hair to pick up a kitten that’s using his leg as a scratch post. He dumps Rio right on Jayce’s chest. 

“You get lost in there a lot,” Jayce says, closing his eyes. It must be uncomfortable, lying on Viktor’s leg. Jayce doesn’t complain, doesn’t even look like he’s got any intention to leave so Viktor allows it. He resumes brushing through Jayce’s hair. 

“Do I?” Viktor asks him. 

“Yes,” and here Jayce opens his eyes to look at him. He stares long enough that Viktor is the one to break first, looking away from him to look at the frost-covered window, a constant reminder of the freezing temperatures outside. “It scares me sometimes. What if I can’t catch up to you?”

A silly notion because Viktor can’t imagine himself going anywhere without Jayce closeby. He keeps that thought close to him, right next to the chest of memories from his childhood, a chest full of old wounds and aches. It’s safer if he doesn’t say it outloud. It is how a secret thrives. 

“You run fast,” Viktor bursts out into laughter. “You’ll catch up to me in no time.”

—

Jayce drags him to a New Year’s Eve party Caitlyn and Vi are hosting. 

“Your next shift isn’t until the third,” Jayce says before Viktor can even begin to argue his way out of the situation. “Please, just this once? It’ll be fun, I promise,” 

It will also be loud and filled with people who will consume too much alcohol. 

Viktor weighs his choices – he could say no, flat out just say no and insist he spend it with the kittens. He could also say yes and spend the rest of the night against the wall, pointedly shutting down anyone who even thinks of talking to him.

See, strangers – Viktor doesn’t really warm up to them as quickly as Jayce does. He prefers to spend his time away from the crowd. He likes to people-watch instead.

“Tell Sky to come,” Jayce must feel like he’s about to lose. “I’ll even tell her myself, hang on–” 

Viktor watches in dazed amusement as Jayce pulls out his phone to call Sky. 

“Yeah, Viktor’s going to be there – okay, I’ll text you the details,” he slips his phone back into his pocket and looks at Viktor again with big pleading eyes that Viktor has seen on both the kittens whenever feeding time came around. 

“You’re as bad as the cats,” Viktor says, pushing past him to head to his own bedroom.

“Where are you going?” Jayce calls.

Viktor shuts the door in his face.

“Apparently there’s a New Year’s Eve party I have to get to,” Viktor yells through the door. “I’m going to get dressed,” 

From the other side of the door, he hears Jayce’s whoop out a laugh. Hears him call out to the cats in an apology for leaving them all alone for New Year’s. 

Viktor still hesitates even when they get on the lift. 

“The noise,” he tells Jayce. The noise will startle the poor things. 

“It’s fine, remember? We’re on a quiet street,” 

Which is true – their neighbours keep to themselves, the shops around them closing early for the holiday. They are far away from all the noise. It’s fine. The cats will be perfectly fine. 

“Yes, okay,” Viktor says just as the lift stops on the ground floor. They make their way down to the station where Jayce spends the whole subway ride convincing him that the cats will be fine – besides, who’s got the backyard for fireworks anyway?

Jayce is right.

Viktor starts to feel at ease.

The party is well underway already as they step through the doors. There’s a lot of people Viktor doesn’t recognise. A lot of people that Jayce smiles and says hi to but he doesn’t really stop for any of them, doesn’t leave Viktor’s side at all. He keeps a hand on Viktor’s back as they make their way through the house, doesn’t step away from him even as they stop to say hi to Caitlyn and Vi.

Vi, who looks at the both of them with a raised eyebrow, and Caitlyn, who squeezes her arm and quickly says, “Have a drink,” 

They both take a beer. 

Viktor makes a face as soon as he takes a sip of the thing. 

“What, too strong?” which is hilarious if you think about it because between the two of them, Viktor can hold his liquor much better than Jayce can. 

But just because he’s better at it doesn’t mean he has a taste for it. Not the beer or the hard liquor. Maybe wine sometimes, when he’s feeling like he needs a little bit of that something more to fully unwind after a stressful day. But hardly. Viktor never drinks for pleasure – doesn’t find much pleasure in the taste at all, really.

Jayce doesn’t, either, but he does like to drink socially. He’s not very good at it but he likes it all the same. 

Viktor nurses the same can of beer for the better part of the evening. Jayce paces himself. They are never too far from each other but eventually Jayce does let go of Viktor to talk to a couple of people from university.

Viktor lets him, doesn’t want him to be the reason Jayce isn’t having fun at this party.

Viktor walks out into the garden. It’s quieter here, less people. This is where he finds Powder and Ekko sprawled on the ground. 

“What are you two doing here?” Viktor asks, tilting his head up to look at whatever they’re so engrossed in. Nothing. Just the night sky. Or perhaps that’s exactly what they’ve been looking at. 

“Viktor!” Powder jumps up to her feet immediately. “Love the headphones, big V, thanks. You remember Ekko,”

Ekko gathers himself up off the grass. He smiles at Viktor.

“Hello, Ekko,” Viktor is well aware that he’d just ruined whatever these two were doing – staring at the sky. Holding hands. More staring at the sky. It’s cute, Viktor thinks. “Sorry to have disturbed you two,”

“No, we weren’t doing anything,” Ekko says quickly, cheeks a bit red. 

Powder rolls her eyes. 

“Yeah, nothing,” she says. “You taking a break from the party? Where’s Jayce? I saw you guys practically glued together earlier,” Powder snickers at that. It makes Ekko laugh as well.

It definitely does not make Viktor laugh. He groans. 

“Don’t start,” he tells them both. “And yes, I’m taking a break. It’s getting a bit too loud,”

“You sound like an old man, Viktor,” Powder makes a show of crossing her arms. She sighs heavily, just to be dramatic. “Live a little. Or a lot, doesn’t matter, just pick one.”

Again she laughs. But it’s not teasing in any way, not mean. It’s a good kind of laugh. 

Viktor smiles at them both. 

“Don’t sneak in too many beers,” he tells them, walking away from their small patch of the garden.

“We did not–” he hears Ekko say, quickly overshadowed by Powder’s own, saying, “Okay, just enough, then!”

Viktor steps back into the party. He spots Vi by the kitchen. She waves to him. Tilts her head, a question if he needs some company. Viktor just shakes his head. 

He’s better off by himself at events and parties. Anywhere, really. But it still surprises him when people seek him out. First it was Sky, who had yelled at him over the sound of the music that he’d just saved her evening plans. Second was Caitlyn, who found him sitting outside, who asked if he was alright, if she should go help him find Jayce? Third, and most surprising, was Mel, who tapped on his shoulder gently and smiled at him. 

“All dressed up,” she’d remarked, eyeing him. “You look good!” 

The music had been too loud that it had everyone practically raising their voices just to be heard. 

Viktor is still reeling from that last run-in. It’s not like he doesn’t appreciate it, it’s just – sometimes it’s just weird. Too much. But he knows they mean well. They always do – they’re Jayce’s friends and Jayce is surrounded by a lot of good people, at the end of the day. Viktor appreciates them, he really does.

“Hey, I’ve been looking everywhere for you,” the night is getting late. Midnight is almost here. Jayce shoulders past a group of people to reach Viktor, hand searching through the space between them to grasp around Viktor’s. Jayce holds onto his hand. 

There it is again, that warmth. 

“Are you drunk?” Viktor asks, leading him away from the loud room. 

Jayce laughs, loud and playful. 

“No, promise,” he’s still laughing, so, so loud and so, so warm. “Drank a little bit. Mainly just talked to people,” 

His voice lowers. They are out of the house, a different part of the garden. For a split second Viktor remembers Powder and Ekko, wonders what else Powder might say if she sees them like this, holding hands. Alone. Away from the rest of the world.

“Are you okay?” Jayce grips both of Viktor’s shoulders this time. When he squeezes, Viktor feels like he might just fold over. “We can leave,” 

“Think it’s too late to leave,” Viktor says, gesturing to the door, slightly ajar. He can hear the countdown already. It is faint but it does drown out the rest of the music. 

Here it comes again, that hushed and quiet feeling that Viktor has done so well not to acknowledge. It comes for him, wraps around him, so familiar. Like the same blanket Jayce likes to drape over him whenever he catches him asleep on the couch.

The world doesn’t really change, not exactly. Viktor kind of feels like he might just slip and fall but Jayce cups his face with his hands. He thumbs so gently over Viktor’s cheek. Jayce keeps him in place, keeps him steady. 

Jayce leans down to kiss him, barely there at first, barely anything but a press of their mouths together. Jayce kisses him the same way he holds Viktor – delicately, with a certain kind of grace that squeezes at Viktor’s heart.

It’s light and fleeting, this first kiss.

Sound erupts from the center of the house. Fireworks bloom over their heads. 

Viktor is stuck in this single moment, with Jayce cradling his face and looking at him almost imploringly. Waiting. 

Live a little, Viktor remembers. Or a lot. 

He decides to live just enough and for the first time he decides to take. 

It is Viktor who leans in again, head tilting up to kiss Jayce. 

Jayce kisses him with renewed fervor, one hand slipping behind him to cup Viktor’s neck, the other still on his face, still so warm. So warm Viktor wonders if he’ll leave a mark there right on his cheek the same way he’s left a mark all around his heart. 

They kiss again and again, they kiss for so long Viktor starts to feel dizzy. They kiss for even longer than what could have been excused as a cheeky midnight’s kiss with a friend, just banter, really. They kiss until they’re both breathless, Viktor’s hair a mess and Jayce so flushed he’s sunkissed. 

“Viktor,” and Viktor understands this feeling. This sensation. This warm breeze that has settled around him. He understands it all too well. He acknowledges it. “Was that okay?”

“People are supposed to ask before, not after,” Viktor sounds just as breathless. Winded. Like he’d just sprinted up six flights of stairs. 

He watches as Jayce’s face falls. Watches as his shoulder sags. His hand slowly drifts away from Viktor, back to himself, away. So far away.

Viktor catches his hand, brings it back close to him. He twines their fingers together. 

And it’s odd how things come so quickly in the night. How everything seems to fall right into place in the safety of the darkness. 

“Happy new year, Jayce,” Viktor can barely hear the sound of the party, can barely make out Jayce’s face under the dim light of the lone lamp somewhere behind them. This is fine, this is safe. In the dark, everything is where it should be. 

He hears Jayce sigh, sees him lean in again.

Jayce pulls him in for a hug. This close, Viktor can hear the steady thump, thump, thump of his heart. 

—

They don’t talk about it. 

Really, they don’t.

Like, there is a visible effort not to talk about it. It is so visible that Viktor nearly strains himself from trying so hard to not bring it up.

Jayce bumps into a lot of their counters. Bumps into the back of the sofa and nearly topples over from the pain. He hits his toe on their coffee table. 

See, they don’t talk about it. 

—

“You look awful,” Sky tells him first thing in the morning on the third day of the brand new year. “I didn’t get to say goodbye after the party,” 

Viktor feels his face heat up. He busies himself with his coat. The bracelet around his wrist, suddenly feeling so, so heavy. 

“Hey, you’re not telling me something,” she steps up close to him, grips his arm and looks him over. Inspects him. Viktor tries not to shrink too much under her gaze, tries not to give anything away. But Sky is smart and quick to pick up on things, she always has. She picks up on it immediately. “Oh, Viktor,” 

Sky pulls him into a hug, her arms tight around him. 

“It was nothing,” Viktor says, mostly to her hair. He hugs her back. “It was – maybe it was the drinks,”

Maybe it was the party. People have been swept away by less. 

“I’m gonna send him a very angry text,” Sky says when they finally pull away. 

“You won’t,” Viktor tells her, knowing her all too well. 

She deflates. “You’re right, I won’t,”

“It wasn’t his fault,” even now he comes to Jayce’s defense. “It was nobody’s fault, I think,”

It was the drinks. The party. It was just Viktor, in a moment of weakness. 

“For what it’s worth, I don’t think it’s nothing,” Sky tells him one last time.

There is no room for more after that because the day begins. 

—

It’s fine. Everything is fine, eventually.

Viktor doesn’t leave the room whenever Jayce walks in and Jayce eventually stops running into the assortment of furniture in the flat.

Eventually, they fall back into old habits, old routines. 

Jayce leaves a blanket over Viktor, stops to brush his hair out of his eyes when he thinks Viktor is too deep in his nap to notice. 

Viktor, in turn, sits on the edge of the kitchen counter again and looks over Jayce’s shoulder as he cooks. He plays with the bracelet around his wrist, touches the gemstone whenever Jayce turns to him and asks him to taste it, to let him know if it’s too spicy. 

It’s all too easy, how things fall back into place. 

Everything is easy until it’s not, until Jayce gets a call in the middle of the night, the walls so thin the sound of a phone blaring at two in the morning wakes Viktor up.

“Viktor–” comes Jayce’s voice then, hurried, alarmed. Viktor wakes up fully, sits up just in time for Jayce to throw his bedroom door open. He looks like a man haunted. “My mother – the hospital. An accident,” is all Jayce can say before he crumples on Viktor’s bed, before he crawls up into Viktor’s space and clings to him.

Viktor loops his arm around Jayce, feeling like he’s lost at sea. Like he is back in his old no-name town, in their rickety house where the roof leaked whenever it rained. Like he’s back to being that scared sixteen year old when his own mother had collapsed in the kitchen.

“I have to go–” Jayce says, hands shaking. Shoulders shaking. Jayce is shaking. 

It is Viktor’s turn to hold him still, hold him steady. 

“Okay,” he tells Jayce. With a free hand, he feels around his nightstand for his phone. “I’ll book us flights,” 

Viktor catches it, the singular moment of clarity that flashes in Jayce’s eye.

“What about work?”

Viktor goes through the different available flights. The closest one is at eight in the morning. They can make it. 

“What about work?” Viktor asks. 

“You have work today,”

Trust Jayce to know his schedule inside and out.

Viktor breathes out sharply.

“Jayce Talis,” he steadies his hand on the back of Jayce’s head and guides him back down into bed with him. “Fuck work, yes? I’ll come with you, if that’s alright,” 

“Of course it’s alright,” Jayce still looks shaken, like he’s ready to hit the ground running. Viktor draws the blanket over his chest, runs his fingers through his hair, and then back down, where he traces fingers over the planes of Jayce’s face.

“It’s settled, then,”

Viktor stays up until Jayce falls back into a fitful sleep that has him tossing and turning. It is not easy. It will not be easy, but Viktor was never one to break promises.

—

Jayce is a ghost of himself after a morning spent by his mother’s bedside. She is unresponsive, a trauma to the head after the car crash.

The worst of it all has passed, is what Viktor gets from talking to her attending physician. They will continue to monitor her. He doesn’t make any promises, though, just tells them to hang in there, that they’re doing the best they can. 

It’s all standard protocol after that. Jayce spends a lot of his mornings with his mother or talking to family. It’s a less than ideal family reunion but it is family all the same. 

Viktor floats in and out of the hospital, always there whenever visitation time ends. Always there even before Jayce can start to look for him. He is always there with a drink and some food. 

Viktor presses the food into Jayce’s hand, tells him he has to eat, that it’s no good now if he gets sick as well.

Jayce just sits on a hospital bench looking like a shell of his former self, a man completely drained. 

It is painful to see him like this.

Viktor sets his cane down right next to Jayce. He takes a few slow steps and stops right in front of him. 

Viktor bends down enough until they’re eye level, until Jayce stops hunching over himself. 

“Hi,” Viktor’s voice is soft, barely a whisper. The wind will blow it away. “Hey, look at me,"

He cups Jayce’s cheek.

Jayce finally looks at him, gaze a little bit unsteady. His breathing is still shallow. He looks like he hasn’t slept at all the past few days. Looks like he’s barely eaten anything–

Because he hasn’t.

But Viktor doesn’t want to talk about that, he just wants Jayce to look at him. 

“There you are,” Viktor feels like his smile must fall too flat, like it is just a bit too sad. But he smiles at Jayce all the same. 

Jayce nuzzles into Viktor’s palm, leans ever closer, the gap between them barely there. 

He thinks, rather belatedly, that being bent down like this isn’t good for his leg. He perseveres, anyway. A cramped leg is the least of his worries right now. 

A bad leg is apparently something Jayce is very well aware of because he pulls Viktor up with him, the movement so sudden that Viktor trips. 

Jayce catches him, keeps him close as he draws him in for a hug. 

“I don’t know if she’ll be okay,” Jayce says into the crook of Viktor’s neck. 

Viktor tightens his hold around him. Tethers the both of them to the ground, right here in the middle of a hospital hallway. 

And Viktor, well, Viktor knows all too well not to make promises he can’t keep, so he doesn’t say anything, doesn’t whisper empty promises or claims about Ximena’s condition. Viktor just holds on to him. 

Jayce’s shallow breathing turns heavy, like he’s about to cry. But he doesn’t, instead Jayce says,

“Thanks for being with me,” 

Now this–this is also something Viktor knows very well. 

“I’m right here,” 

This is a promise Viktor can keep. Something he can hold safely in his hand. Something that he can bring to rest over his chest, right where his heart is. 

—

Jayce cries for the first time since the early morning call. He cries as soon as they get to their hotel. Buries his face in his hands and cries. 

Viktor holds him through it all, rubbing soothing circles over his back. He wipes the tears away when he can, when Jayce lifts his head up out of his hands and looks at him. 

Viktor wipes a single tear off of his face when Jayce falls asleep next to him. The circles under his eyes are so dark. He looks gaunt. Viktor throws a blanket over him and curls up on top of it. His feet will be cold. His hands will be cold. Viktor always runs too low, too cold. It will only wake Jayce up.

So he falls asleep over the covers like that, fingers curled close to Jayce’s hand, almost touching but not really. It is enough. 

—

Viktor is the first to wake. He glances down at Jayce briefly, confirms that he’s still asleep and makes his way out of their room. He calls Sky. 

“How is she?” Sky asks him, worried. 

“Stable, but that’s it,” she still hasn’t woken up. 

“How are you?” 

“Stable,” Viktor attempts at a joke. He can almost hear her roll her eyes from over the phone. “No, really, I’m fine. Jayce isn’t doing too well, though,”

Given the circumstances.

But still, it’s hard. 

“How are the cats?” 

Viktor listens as Sky tells him about the kittens, about how they’d been nothing but restless the first few days. She promises to send him photos later when she gets back home. She also promises not to give in to their constant whining for food – that’s a scare tactic that they’ve mastered already, cheeky little things. 

The call must run longer than Viktor realises because he hears the door to their room open. He sees Jayce step out, still looking like he needs an extra twenty-four hours of sleep. His hair is a mess. His eyes fall on Viktor as soon as he spots him.

Viktor drops the call and walks towards him. 

“Hey–” Viktor feels the wind knocked right out of him as Jayce envelopes him in a tight embrace, so tight Viktor finds it difficult to speak. 

“I woke up and didn’t see you,” his voice is ragged, broken. Like he might start crying again. 

Viktor squashes on the panic that rises within him. Jayce had just woken up a bit confused, is all. 

“I thought you left,” Jayce continues, voice practically muffled as he presses his face into Viktor’s shoulder.

Viktor pats his back, slowly guiding him back into the room. 

Viktor helps Jayce back down on the bed, makes to move the covers over him again but Jayce pulls him down right next to him. He curls into Viktor. 

“I told you, didn’t I?” Viktor touches Jayce’s face, letting his hand linger. If Jayce is bothered by how cold his fingers are he doesn’t say. Viktor smiles at him, slow and soft. Like a secret that the two of them can keep in the darkness of their hotel room. “I’ll be right here, Jayce.” 

“You promise?” Viktor can see the curtains of sleep slowly closing around Jayce. 

He laughs a little, just a bit. “Yes, you big fool, I promise.”

“That’s nice,” Jayce yawns, curling an arm around Viktor. He pulls him right up to his chest. “I like it when you laugh.” 

Jayce kisses Viktor’s forehead and falls asleep. 

—

The train back home is spent in relative silence, not unlike the plane they took so early in the morning just over a week ago. 

Jayce spends it the same way he did on the plane ride, pressed close to Viktor’s side, constantly dozing off. Waking up in fits and starts when he does.

Viktor always guides his head to his shoulder whenever Jayce slips into sleep, always wakes him after a few hours to hand him a drink or a small piece of food. He looks better now. Looks like he’s caught up on sleep, if only slightly. Started eating again, too.

Ximena will be alright – or, when she wakes up, that is. The doctor had told them she was stable and that’s all that mattered right now. He couldn’t say when she’d wake up. It could be tomorrow, or in a few days. A few weeks, or a few months. It could be whenever she’s ready to wake up again.

Jayce’s aunt had sent him away yesterday, telling him staying will only be counter productive. It is his last year in university, he has to go back home and focus on his own affairs. 

“We’ll call you the minute she comes to,” she had let Jayce go with a hug. She’d hugged Viktor, too, and that was strange – they’d only just met. The smile she smiled at the both of them was grateful but still so tired. Viktor remembers her eyes, the lines on her face, the sleep that eluded her.

He closes his eyes. 

They arrive back to the city late into the afternoon. Viktor insists on dropping Jayce off first and then stepping out again to take the cats from Sky, who’d probably suffered enough under them. 

“No, I’ll go with you,” there he goes again, glued right next to Viktor. Jayce doesn’t even let Viktor get a word out, just walks them to the right platform, away from the one that’ll take them home. He has a hand on Viktor’s back the whole time, fingers curling over Viktor’s coat. Heavy. Warm. Familiar. 

They take the cats from Sky who looks so relieved Viktor can’t really blame her. 

“Let me know if you need me to babysit again,” she says although Viktor has a feeling she’s hoping it won’t be for a long, long time from now. 

Viktor smiles at her and tells her goodbye. Jayce takes one of the crates, bringing it up to his face to say hello to the orange cat who has no doubt reigned terror upon Sky’s flat. 

Hex is a little bit more well behaved, just curling in her crate and napping. Viktor tries to nudge her with a finger but she doesn’t budge. The pieces of home are slowly coming together, he can feel it. Viktor smiles. 

Home looms just over them, an eight story building that Viktor swears can breathe. It breathes life into the nightmare of a lift that they step into. Breathes warmth through the radiators out in the hall. It breathes, with its history and character, with its personality that Jayce always, always insists is just so charming . 

Home is the doorknob that they have to jingle the keys in a little bit until they get the lock to open. Home is two kittens zapping right out of their crates to nudge at each other’s noses first and then rub around their legs second. Home is the kitchen that barely smells of the spices Jayce likes to use, not after they’d been gone for so long.

Home is Jayce bumping into a stool that one of them had left right in the middle of the living room. 

Viktor drags it away from him, his smile tucked away into a small laugh. The relief that washes over him at finally coming home is impalpable. Viktor doesn’t notice Jayce coming up behind him, is surprised when Jayce winds his arms around Viktor, when his back presses right up against Jayce’s chest.

“I think the plants are dead,” Viktor notes, staring at the balcony door. They are in the thick of winter, January winds blow cold and unforgiving. The plants have been dead for a long time. 

“Yeah, they’ve been dead for a while, I think,” Jayce laughs into Viktor’s hair, the sound of it sending shockwaves down his spine. Jayce’s arms tighten around him and Viktor breathes in deep. 

Home.

“The cats would’ve chewed through the leaves come the spring anyway,” Viktor closes his eyes, letting the world sway around them. 

Another laugh from Jayce, this one sounding much more full. Much more alive. It sounds like summer, this laugh. Summer, bright and warm, in the thick of winter. Right here in their dim living room, with two cats already running around. Viktor hears something fall over in the kitchen. He will deal with that later.

For now–

For now, he settles in Jayce’s arms, hands coming over to rest on top of Jayce’s. 

“How are you feeling?” Viktor asks him when Jayce’s hands travel higher, from his waist and then up to his chest, one hand settling just over Viktor’s heart, where it thump, thump, thumps underneath the warmth of Jayce’s palm. 

“Like I’m home,” 

Viktor turns around in the circle of his arms, wanting. Wanting just a little bit more than usual. He hides his face into the crook of Jayce’s neck, lets his arms wind around his neck, lets them stay there if only for a moment. Just a moment. Viktor lets out a laugh that he can’t push down anymore. It bubbles out of him, like water trickling from a fountain. It comes slow, quiet, until it grows in size, encompassing the both of them. It fills the entire flat. 

The heat is off and the windows are still frosted, a testament to how freezing it is outside. 

But Viktor feels warm. 

It is the warmest he’s ever felt. 

—

Winter blows cold but it doesn’t overstay its welcome. Spring comes, bringing with it cool weather and warmer afternoons. Jayce is back to basking outside in the world’s smallest balcony when temperatures are high enough. 

The cats are a little bit bigger, a little bit louder. Their appetites have grown with them. Hex still likes to nip at Viktor’s leg. Rio has taken to napping on top of Jayce whenever he sits outside on the balcony. 

Home is much warmer now, much more crowded.

They take to planting tomatoes again because Viktor likes eating them when they’re fresh and plump. The second pot is filled with flowers Viktor can’t name but Jayce insists will be a nice surprise come the warmer weather. Come summer. 

Jayce’s mother is still at the hospital. He throws himself into coursework until there is nothing else left to do but wait for his grades. 

Viktor is back at the hospital, easily catching up to what he’d missed. Sky is a comforting presence next to him throughout their long days and even longer nights. 

Caitlyn and Vi stop by their flat one evening to hand-deliver them an invitation for an engagement dinner that’s been due for too long. They’d wanted to have it in the spring, when the days are longer and everyone is feeling a little bit lighter, not as bogged down by the rain and sleet of the winter. 

“Check the registry,” Vi calls rather cheekily before they leave. Her grin is wide and her wave rather aggressive. 

Viktor just smiles back at their retreating figures. Waves to them again when they stop just in front of the balcony to call out their goodbyes again. He watches them walk down the street hand in hand, shoulders bumping occasionally. Happy. Loved up. It is a beautiful thing, Viktor thinks. 

“What’s this?” Jayce calls as soon as he steps through the door and sees the invitation on the counter. He joins Viktor out on the balcony as he reads through the invite. “Oh, wow,” 

“Yeah,” Viktor says, looking  at him. Beautiful, he thinks again. 

“Will you be able to come?” Jayce sidles up next to him in that all too familiar way that he does, finding all the different ways that he can to fit right next to Viktor in this cramped balcony. 

“Yeah, I have a sixteen hour shift the day before but I think it’ll be alright,”

They’re alright, despite it all. 

—

The engagement party is beautiful. 

Viktor spots Powder and Ekko dancing somewhere off to the side in their private little corner. 

“Hello, Vander,” Viktor greets the tall man who calls out to them. 

“I haven’t seen you in a while,” Vander says, clapping him on the shoulder. His eyes flit over to Jayce and he offers him a smile as well. “Don’t let me keep you,”

They mingle for a little bit with all the familiar faces in the party. Mel stops by to hug Jayce fleetingly. She smiles at Viktor as well and apologises for practically yelling into his ear at the New Year’s Eve party. Viktor waves it off, tells her not to worry. 

She talks to him briefly about her final dissertation. It keeps her busy. Viktor listens and watches her talk about it the entire time. There is a light in her eyes, a passion just behind them. Viktor understands why Jayce gets along so well with her. 

It is Caitlyn and Vi who find them after that, plucking them away from the refreshments table to thank them for coming. 

“Congratulations,” Jayce tells them both with a smile. 

The conversation comes easily enough, the laughter even easier. There is food and drinks and Viktor tries not to drink too much, just takes a glass of champagne and nurses it for the better part of the evening. He likes the taste of this one, he notes. 

Jayce notices as well when Viktor makes to grab for a second glass. 

“Hm, perhaps we should pace ourselves,” he says, more as a joke than anything.

Viktor rolls his eyes. 

“What, or else you’ll kiss me again?” 

It comes completely out of left field. 

The champagne bubbles look like they’re about to burst in his glass. 

Viktor feels like he’s about to burst. 

Jayce spares a look around them – so many people, too many people. But it doesn’t matter, the words have already left Viktor unprompted. Accidentally. Jayce grabs his wrist and drags him away. 

They slip away from the party, away from the function hall full of people they know. Away from the dancing and the music. They’ve started to pick up the pace, a hallway lined with paintings blur in Viktor’s vision. Jayce’s hold around his wrist is tight, burning. Viktor cannot keep up with him anymore. 

Jayce pushes him against a brick wall. They are outside. Viktor can smell freshly watered flowers. The grass is wet beneath his feet. He can smell just the hint of zest and then jasmine as Jayce looks at him, wide eyed and frenzied. 

“Sorry,” Viktor says, catching his breath. His hand tightens around the head of his cane. He wants nothing more than the earth to swallow him and drag him down. The world has started spinning again, too fast. Too fast. It threatens to throw him over and under, spit him right back out until there is nothing left of him. Perhaps it will be a mercy. “I’m sorry I said anything,” 

“Do you regret it?” Jayce asks, the question spilling out of him like a dam breaking. He’s still holding onto Viktor’s wrist. It still burns through his skin. “You never – you never brought it up,” 

Incredulous, Viktor thinks. Absolutely incredulous. 

He stares at Jayce, studies the planes of his face, the hair that swings just over his eyes. He wants so desperately to push it away, to get a better, fuller view of Jayce. To see him up close like this, to watch. To want.

To need. 

Viktor’s fingers close into a fist. 

“Do you?” Viktor asks him, eyes tracing over his face. Watching. Studying. Viktor has always been great at that, studying. 

Jayce breathes in sharply. It betrays everything – Viktor sees his shoulders stiffen, sees his mouth press into a hard line. Sees something else, something akin to desperation on Jayce’s face. He thinks he can even hear it, that cold and resounding, Yes, I did . But Jayce does not say it. 

Perhaps he doesn’t need to. 

Perhaps this is how a secret dies: when you bring it up to the sky and pry it open. It will leave you with nothing but wounded hands and skin that will bruise for a long, long time. 

Viktor’s skin will bruise for a long, long time. 

Jayce’s hold on his wrist slackens. Viktor takes that as an opportunity to duck away from him. He moves to avoid Jayce when he reaches out again - wounded hands, scarred hands. Fingerprints that ghost over his bruised heart. Jayce looks like he wants to cry. 

“I think this is enough, then,” Viktor hears himself say quietly, like he’s still keeping a secret. Like they still have one to share. But it is too late when everything has been spread out in the open like this. “I have to go,” 

Viktor leaves him there by the red-brick wall, where it smells like freshly watered flowers and rain, which is strange because it hasn’t rained in days. 

—

There is a checklist of all the easy things in Viktor’s life: 

Reading. Reading is easy, no matter the topic. Viktor reads and he reads until he falls asleep with a book on his chest or over his face. He reads like it is his single source of life. He reads like his mother had asked him to, so many years ago, so early in his childhood. It will bring you to different places , she used to say. So Viktor had picked up book after book all throughout his life, had read high fantasy, scholarly articles, non-fiction and then several medical journals whenever he felt like he needed to. Wanted to. 

So he reads and he studies, it is easy. Good grades were easy, too. This residency – his specialty. It is not exactly easy but Viktor enjoys the work, enjoys learning. Anything you enjoy enough will come to you easily, eventually. 

Agreeing to live with Jayce that fateful day, so many years ago, had been a decision that had come as easy as breathing. Living with Jayce – not exactly the easiest but it is comfortable. It makes him happy, makes him smile and laugh even when the rain threatens to flood through their old little flat. 

It had been easy, living with Jayce. 

Viktor also finds that avoiding Jayce is a pretty easy thing to do when he has the hospital to run to. Avoiding Sky’s questions is an even easier thing when Viktor just brushes them all away and tells her he has a surgery to attend to. When Viktor excuses himself to rest. Twelve hour work days turn to sixteen hour on-call shifts where Viktor finds himself sleeping more and more at the resting quarters, out of sight and out of mind.

Running away is easy, too, he thinks. It’s the first thing he ever did by himself, all those years ago after his mother died – he ran away from the town that had held her memory and found himself in a city that threatened to swallow him twice over. Crush him, bones and all. 

So Viktor starts sleeping at the hospital, only stopping by the flat to shower and grab a change of clothes. He fiddles with the bracelet on his hand the whole ride over back to the hospital. Tries not to think too much about the flat, about the cats that he misses more than ever, and Jayce who looked like just the thought of kissing Viktor was going to make him cry.

Had it been that bad, then? 

Of course, Viktor thinks. Of course it had been that bad. 

The days go by like that, one after the other. Viktor starts to feel the burden on his body halfway through the week. Sky has to drag him out for his break, sit him down rather forcefully on a bench and force him to eat. She doesn’t move until he starts. The salad is bland. Viktor thinks it could use some tomatoes. 

“Why aren’t you going home?” Sky asks him pointedly.

“I am,” Viktor says, closing his locker door. 

“You’ve been sleeping here, Viktor,” she gestures at him. The poor state of him. 

Viktor winces.

“I’ve been on call. It’s easier to stay,” 

Easier to forget about the red brick wall and the smell of flowers that makes him sick. Easier to forget about the look on Jayce’s face. He was about to cry , for god's sake. 

“You’re going to kill yourself like this,” is the last thing Sky tells him before she leaves him alone again. 

But it is easy being alone.

Viktor goes through the motions of his day. He attends to different surgeries, writes up his reports. He sleeps in the hospital with a few other residents. He waits until he is needed. 

He also loses his bracelet and spends the whole morning with his heart in his throat and his fingers trembling. They tremble so bad that it’s embarrassing, he can barely hold anything. He drops everything. 

It is Sky who brings it back to him. 

“You left this by the sink,” she tells him after dropping it into his waiting hand. His fingers close around it. The gemstone is cool to his touch. “Viktor, I think you need to go home,”

So Viktor does. He goes home, takes a shower, grabs a different change of clothes, a different set of scrubs and a different pair of shoes, and he leaves the bracelet just by his nightstand. 

He goes home and leaves after feeding the cats. The couch looks inviting, the balcony bathed in sunlight. Viktor wants to step out, wants to spend an afternoon out there just watching. Just basking in the sun. But he doesn’t.

Leaving is easy, especially when Jayce isn’t there to talk him out of it.

Viktor leaves for the hospital again, another on-call shift that he can use as an excuse for anything and everything and it works. It works.

It works until it doesn’t, until Viktor’s hours are back to normal and he no longer has a reason to stay. Sky insists on driving him home, asks him if there’s anything she can do for him. She reaches out across the console to touch his hand tentatively, the look on her face heavy. Worried. 

“I’m fine, Sky,” Viktor tells her. Tries to make it sound convincing – he fails, he knows he does, because her face falls and she shakes her head. 

“I’ll see you later then,” she calls out from the window.

Vitkor waves her off and starts for the lift. Hesitates. His bag is heavy – so many clothes, so many fears packed tightly in there. All his fears. He decides to take the stairs this time. 

It is an ordeal, the stairs. But he takes it slow and steady, paces himself. He has to stop halfway through when his leg decides to act up. He leans against the wall and breathes in, tells himself he should just maybe take the lift. The nightmare of a lift. 

He is halfway there already so he thinks against it and continues on.

Viktor  drops his bag of fears and regrets and it falls heavily onto the floor with a loud thump . 

“Viktor?” Jayce calls his name. He sounds like he’s underwater again, muffled. He sounds like he’s lost at sea. 

Jayce closes the distance between them, taking long strides to get to Viktor. He stops just in front of him.

Viktor brings himself to look up at his face and meet his eyes. Jayce looks a little bit ragged, a little bit worse for wear. His hair is a wind-blown mess. For a second, Viktor catches a glimpse of it, that haunted look on Jayce’ face. It is gone when Jayce blinks at him, a little bit startled, a little bit alarmed. He looks like a mess.

But Viktor is not one to talk about that – he’d spent the last week in and out of the hospital, barely stepping foot in their shared flat for more than twenty minutes and always, always when he knew Jayce was away. 

Viktor cannot say anything.

The silence that sits between them is cutting, cruel.

Jayce, Viktor knows, is not a cruel man. He is the first to speak.

“I thought you left,” his voice trembles, shakes. Their whole flat runs to a quiet stop the very second that Jayce does. “I thought you left me,” 

Winter has long come and gone but it is cold all of a sudden.

A breeze whistles past Viktor, grazing his cheek. It will leave another scar, he knows. 

“I was on call at the hospital,” Viktor tells him, trying to make his tone easy. But this – this is not easy. Looking up at Jayce, who worries at his bottom lip and who looks at him like he’s just seen him for the first time. Like Viktor has broken him again . “It was easier to just stay there for a bit,”

“You left me,” Jayce repeats, his voice an echo that rings hallowly in Viktor’s ears. Viktor cannot bring himself to look at him anymore. He tries to move past him but doesn’t really succeed. Jayce’s presence has always been a little bit larger than life. Nothing could ever contain his light. Viktor cannot snuff it. Will not. 

“I was just busy with work,” Viktor tries again, tries to move past Jayce but his feet betray him. He cannot move. He is rooted to this spot, like a lone tree facing against a raging storm.

“You weren’t taking my calls. You weren’t answering any of my messages. Viktor, I didn’t hear from you at all,” Jayce takes a step towards him. He is a broken man like this. Viktor does not like it. 

He remains completely still even when Jayce tries to bridge the gap between them. Jayce lifts a hand as if to reach out to Viktor, to touch him. It falls helplessly to his side. 

Viktor’s fingers clench into a fist. 

“You didn’t come home and I thought,” Jayce heaves a deep breath. Tries to steady himself. He does not break eye contact at all. He looks like a man starved, like the grey skies of winter. “I thought that was it, that you’d just – just left,”

“Did you really think I would move out without telling you?” there it is again, that feeling. It dawns upon Viktor, this need to reach out. To touch. To want. To finally take. He snuffs the flame out and finally, finally moves past Jayce. He is tired. His leg is starting to go numb. He is so, so tired and his bones are so, so heavy.

Behind him the bag filled with his fears and all the regrets he’d carried all through the years threatens to burst from its seams.

Viktor lowers himself a little shakily onto the couch. 

“Did you think I was so heartless, Jayce?” 

“No,” it comes louder this time, like he’s finally broken through the surface. Jayce rounds the couch to stand in front of Viktor, hands empty at his sides. “You just left home. You left me – you left the bracelet,” 

“Because I didn’t want to lose it at the hospital,” he doesn’t tell him how that had nearly sent him into a panic a couple days ago, how his hands shook so much Viktor could barely do anything. “What is wrong with you?” 

There is a pause again, another quiet that settles around them. It is not as cruel as the quiet that had enveloped them both earlier but it is still unsettling.

Jayce breaks it, because he always does. Always wants to throw Viktor a lifeline, always wants to reach out. 

“Are you, though?” and then, after a beat, “Are you moving out?”

Viktor will admit that he’s never thought about it. Never thought about the idea of stepping out of the door and never looking back. He left, sure, but only for a few days. Only to avoid – to avoid this, perhaps. Mostly to just stew in his own thoughts, try to get his head right. Try to give whatever this was between them the time to ebb and flow and then, eventually, as all things do, fade away. 

He tips his head back. He can hear the faint sound of traffic drifting from the streets below them. The open balcony door brings with it a cool breeze. Viktor is still so tired. 

“Would that be so bad?” he settles instead on this hypothetical. 

Would it?

To leave this flat with the creaky faucet, with the kitchen that has brought Viktor so much joy because Jayce always likes to keep himself busy in there, always asking him to try, to taste, to stay and wait until the food is cooked. The cats. Viktor’s draughty bedroom. The world’ smallest balcony. He thinks he might even miss the death trap that is the lift. Viktor will miss all of this. Everything. That is if he can even get past the door. 

Running away is easy, yes, but leaving – leaving will be hard. 

When Viktor opens his eyes it’s to find Jayce knelt at his feet, hands balled into fists on his knee. Viktor is alarmed. He leans towards him, already reaching out for anything he can get a hold of. His hands settle on Jayce’s shoulders and Viktor holds onto him as Jayce peers into his face and says, utterly gut wrenching,

“Don’t leave,” Jayce says. Asks. Pleads. He lifts a hand up to touch Viktor’s face, fingers barely there on his skin until it falls to Viktor’s lap. 

A red-brick wall. The smell of rain on the wet grass. Freshly watered flowers. Jayce looking like he might start crying again. It all comes rushing at him. 

Viktor presses a thumb to his cheek, allowing himself this one saving grace. Small mercies. 

“For fuck’s sake, I didn’t say I was going to leave,” Viktor chokes on his own words, feels them wet and heavy on his tongue. He thinks he might be shaking again, his fingers trembling as they cup Jayce’s face. “Listen, Jayce, I’m not–”

“You promised,” Jayce rests his head on Viktor’s knee. He closes his eyes. His shoulders are still shaking. He’s still on the verge of leaping.

Viktor thinks it might not be so bad, to take the leap and allow himself to fall. 

“You promised me,” Jayce repeats it again. A promise. A vow. It springs to life all on its own, like ivy that clings to the brick of their building. Like ivy that has stayed and weathered the seasons. The years. All this time, all this time. 

Viktor’s hand drops from Jayce’s face. He leans back and squeezes his eyes so hard that he starts to see stars erupt behind his eyelids. 

The sun breaks over the horizon.

The world turns.

The scales tip off balance.

And Viktor finally, finally, finally says,

“I’m in love with you,”

Here is where he says it, on the couch with Jayce’s blanket just pooled beneath him. Viktor’s favourite blanket. 

Here is where he acknowledges it, that hushed and quiet feeling. The secret that he keeps in a chamber of his heart, in a little lockbox he’d been sure he’d lost the key to. Here is where he takes it out, where he dusts it off for fingerprints and all the seasons and years that have settled around it.

Here is where Viktor feels his heart ache painfully, with Jayce at his feet, in this flat. In this stupid, old flat in this stupid, old building. Here is where it happens–

Viktor is home and Jayce is with him. Jayce is quiet, unmoving.

Jayce is not a cruel man, Viktor is sure, he will not leave him hanging. He will not leave this in the air. But Viktor cannot wait, does not want to wait. If the worst is yet to come then he might as well kick the door down and allow it entry right here and now than prolong any of this. 

“Did you hear me?” Viktor sounds like he’s so far away, even to his own ears. He supposes that he is. He feels untethered again, like he could just float away. Far, far away. 

Viktor tries to push himself off the couch, tries to stand. He tries to pry Jace off of his knees but Jayce only pushes them both back down to the couch.

Jayce, who looks a little frenzied now, a little dazed. His hair is such a mess but his eyes are bright. So, so bright. And warm. They have always been warm, this Viktor has always known.

“Yes,” Jayce breathes. He breathes. He speaks. He looks at Viktor here. Right here. Jayce engulfs him in an embrace, pulling Viktor into a hug so tight, Viktor feels the wind rush right out of his chest. He feels his heart squeeze. 

Here is where the world turns over again.

Here is where the feeling stays, warm and comforting. Familiar. 

Here is where Jayce looks at him, tears pooling at the corners of his eyes. He smiles, brilliant and beautiful. Sunkissed.

“Yes,” Jayce says again, still so out of breath. But his smile erupts on his face the same way the sun does when the storm is over. Orange and reds and blinding. Beautiful. “God, I heard you,” 

Viktor only has time for one long, deep breath before the sun starts to spill through the clouds. Before summer comes for him. 

Jayce crosses the distance, that infinitesimal distance, and kisses him. 

Here is where Viktor feels himself moored.

Viktor kisses him back, letting his fingers thread through Jayce’s hair. He wants so much and this time he takes, pulling Jayce closer, ever closer until there is hardly any space to breathe without breathing him in, without feeling the rise and fall of his chest against Jayce’s. Viktor gives in to this overwhelming feeling – it is freeing. God, is it freeing. 

Jayce whispers his name in between kissing him. Again and again, he calls for Viktor. Again and again. Jayce takes his face in his hands and just looks at him with a smile that Viktor loves. With a smile that Viktor has always thought of as home, even before he’d learned that home could be anywhere. That home was just this – Jayce in his arms and holding his face, kissing the edge of his mouth once, and then his cheeks, so many kisses pressed to every inch of his face that Jayce could reach. His hand is warm on Viktor’s face but it doesn’t burn. 

This is unlike that first kiss. It almost feels like a lifetime ago, New Year’s. This is new altogether and Viktor loves it, loves the warmth of it all. He feels like he might drown from it but Jayce pulls him back all the time, kisses him fleetingly, lips brushing against every inch of Viktor’s face. 

Viktor thinks that perhaps this is the easiest thing he’s ever done, kissing Jayce. He thinks he could do this for an entire lifetime. 

—

They fall asleep like that. Viktor doesn’t remember who fell asleep first. 

But a new day dawns and he wakes. 

The cats are slow to wake but they come up to join them on the couch and Viktor, for a brief moment, thinks that today might just be the day the flimsy old couch breaks.

Rio nuzzles into Jayce’s hair while Hex bumps her face against Viktor’s cheek. He tries to pry them away from Jayce, not wanting to wake him too early, too soon.

Jayce wakes, anyway. Stirs in his sleep before he slowly blinks his eyes open.

Light washes through their sheer curtains to colour the living room with the faint light of the early morning.

Jayce’s smile starts slowly. Viktor watches it unfold, watches as his face lights up with the morning. 

“Good morning,” Jayce says, pulling Viktor close to him. Viktor follows. He goes easily. “I love you,” 

It is not a secret anymore, not something Viktor will keep in his fist. It is out in the open. It takes on a life of its own. 

Jayce closes his eyes, his smile pressed into Viktor’s cheek. Jayce leaves butterfly kisses all over his face.

“Hello,” Viktor hums into the crook of Jayce’s neck. His fingers wind their way through his hair, sleep-mussed and a bit of a mess, still. “Good morning to you, too,”

Jayce laughs. He shakes with the force of it all.

Viktor smiles quietly, pressing a kiss just underneath his ear. 

Sunlight breaks through the clear glass windows of the balcony door. 

Summer is here. 

—

There is a checklist of all the easy things in Viktor’s life: 

Reading just about anything he can get his hands on. 

Studying. 

School. 

Work.

Agreeing to move in with Jayce so many years ago. Another lifetime ago. 

Viktor walks through the door, kicks his shoes off and arranges them tidily against the wall. He drops his bag on the couch and walks over to the kitchen where Jayce is cooking. 

Jayce turns away from the stove and smiles at him, light and brilliant. He opens his arms and Viktor steps into his embrace easily. 

Viktor tilts his head up to kiss him, more his chin than anything, and it makes Jayce laugh. Makes him push Viktor against the counter to kiss him even better. He kisses Viktor for so long that he forgets about the stove, about the pot already bubbling over. 

They hear a hiss from the stove and Jayce quickly turns, an oh shit on his mouth as he starts to panic. He tries to save dinner.

Viktor laughs.

Dinner can barely be salvaged.

They order take away instead.

It is easy.

—

“How is it like being back?” Viktor asks after all their bags have been dropped off somewhere next to the door, after Jayce had made a whole show of touring him around. After Viktor had pointed at the drawings tacked on the fridge door. After Viktor had teased him, just a tiny bit, for the school report right next to his childhood drawings. Cute, Viktor thinks, allowing Jayce to push him onto the bed.

It’s a little bit too small for the both of them but they make it work. They make their couch work so they’ll easily make this work. 

“Enough,” Jayce groans, burying his face against Viktor’s shoulder. “Should have never shown you around,”

“Yes, that was a big mistake,” Viktor rubs soothing circles over Jayce’s back, letting his hand rest there until Jayce finally lifts his head up to look at him. 

Jayce kisses his chin, just a small and quick peck.

They got the call about his mother getting discharged from the hospital just a couple days ago and decided the weekend would be the perfect time to visit her again. She’s slow to move and her strength hasn’t exactly come back to her yet but she is here. She is present. 

“Do you think she’ll mind?” Viktor shifts on the bed, propping himself up on Jayce, elbows digging into his chest. Just for a little bit, just so Viktor can watch Jayce beneath him, all sprawled out on his childhood bed, hair fanning around his face. 

“Nah,” Jayce looks shifty now. He winces a little bit at Viktor’s weight on top of him but otherwise makes no move to push him off. He doesn’t move at all.

Viktor raises an eyebrow, suspicious.

“What did you tell her?” because of course Jayce had spoken to his mother prior to their arrival. Of course he would have.

Jayce squirms again, avoiding his gaze.

Viktor grips his chin and pulls him in. He narrows his eyes.

Jayce just bumps their noses together and smiles, a little sheepish when he finally admits, “Just told her I was mad about you, no big deal,” 

It is still surreal, this feeling. Still so surreal that Viktor can want so much and finally take. It’s actually even worse now because he feels it in the depths of his chest, in his very core. How this want has slowly turned over and evolved into a need. Viktor knows to take what he needs, now. Knows he can live a little.

Or a lot. 

He settles for kissing Jayce instead. He feels a little overwhelmed. This is still new, this name around them. This acknowledgement. But the feeling is old, he knows. It has been here, lying dormant. Like the fingerprints over his heart that keeps him warm. 

“No big deal,” Viktor muses, rolling off of him, finally relieving his chest of his shrap elbows. “I see,” 

Viktor is teasing, means nothing when he says that because he understands, now. Understands all the winters they’d spent together, how Jayce always made sure he was warm first. That spoke volumes.

It still does. 

“That’s not what I meant,” and here comes Jayce, all big and loud, hands clutching at Viktor’s shoulders and squeezing. Here comes Jayce with the force of a thousand suns. “I would like to set the record straight: I am madly in love with you,” 

Jayce traces a finger over his face, stopping just above the edge of Viktor’s lips. 

“I love these little moles on your face,” so that’s what his wandering hands are always touching, always tracing. “Love when you wake up looking like you’re ready to punch the daylights out of the sun,”

The steely expression Viktor had settled on breaks slowly. It starts with the flush that creeps up his face. So warm. So hot. He tries to subdue it. He tries so hard to keep a straight face but it’s hard when Jayce is still talking, still listing a litany of everything Viktor had done just the other day. 

“Enough,” Viktor says, pushing him away. His face is burning. “I understand. I was just joking,” 

Jayce smiles at him, sudden and playful, teasing.

Ah, Viktor truly understands now.

It goes both ways, then. 

“You look like you’re about to toss me off the bed,” Jayce’s laughter spills out of him, bright and beautiful. 

Viktor can’t even find the strength to push him off of him, much less off the bed. He doesn’t want to. Instead, he just pulls Jayce back down beside him and pinches his cheek. 

“You’re impossible, Jayce Talis,” Viktor curls his fingers over Jayce’s hip. Their legs tangle at the edge of the bed and Viktor feels ridiculous, so, so ridiculous, but he also feels happy. “Never say that again,”

His face is still too warm, still too hot. 

“Just teasing you, V,” Jayce says, leaving a trail of butterfly kisses over Viktor’s forehead. “Still meant it all, though,”

So silly. So playful. Utterly ridiculous.

Viktor doesn't know what to do with him sometimes but right now Jayce is in his arms and he’s laughing. He laughs his way through Viktor’ day, through his thoughts, through the very core of his being. He laughs right through his life. 

—

Ximena insists that she can help with lunch but Jayce tells her he’d spent years in the kitchen just cooking for Viktor so lunch for the three of them will be a breeze.

Viktor feels his face grow hot again at that but Ximena just smiles fondly at the both of them. 

She shows Viktor old photo albums, mostly of Jayce, chubby cheeked and running in the backyard. At school, smile wide and beaming as he accepts his awards. So many awards. So many photos, so many memories as they flip through the pages.

It is how Jayce finds them in the living room. 

“You can’t show him that,” Jayce tells her, reaching for one of the photo albums. Viktor pulls it away from him quickly. “I mean – you know what, lunch is ready,”

He folds pretty easily, which is another little thing that Viktor has learned. It’s a secret for now, something Viktor will keep close to him. It will be useful someday, Viktor thinks. 

Lunch is simple and delicious. They spend it talking, just easy conversation about anything and everything that Jayce can think of. Ximena listens the whole time, tells them both that she will have to visit them one of these days – if only to meet the cats who have grown so big and so quick that they can almost overwhelm Viktor on the couch, can almost convince him to take a nap with both of them curled on top of his chest. Viktor never wins that battle, but alas, some battles need not be fought at all. 

The weekend blurs past them. Jayce fusses over his mother and she tells him she’s fine, that she can’t believe she’s kicking him out of her house again. She sends them away with a hug. 

It surprises Viktor at first but he leans into the hug without missing a beat, winds his arms around her and squeezes. It is warm. 

“Come see the cats,” Viktor tells her again as they make their way down the driveway. 

“Just the cats,” Ximena says, an amused little smile on her face. 

Jayce twines their fingers together as soon as they get into the cab, palms pressing warmly against each other. Once more for that holy palmers’ kiss.

“We have to stop leaving the cats with Sky,” Viktor says when they finally get back home and open their crates. “They will be the death of her, I think,”

“We can try leaving them with Caitlyn and Vi,” Jayce scoops both cats into his arms. Once, they had been barely there, barely fluffs of grey and orange. Now, they spill over Jayce’s arms, meowing loudly. 

“Powder’s going to love them, I think,” Powder will also probably train the cats to launch at anyone at a single word but perhaps that is just the price they will have to pay for the cat sitting.

Jayce sets the cats back down after a series of forehead kisses that has both the cats swatting at his face. 

“You deserved that,” Viktor says, smiling. 

Jayce feigns a wounded look but he folds. He folds so easily. 

They make their way out onto the balcony. Summer is still here but the afternoons are a little bit breezier. It is not unpleasant. Viktor likes it, actually. 

“We should go on a trip,” Jayce tells him, arms winding around Viktor. 

Viktor settles easily against him, likes the feeling of Jayce’s chest rising and falling whenever he breathes. It is a good reminder. 

“We just went on one,” Viktor tells him, staring at the commotion below. A group of primary children this time, all yelling at each other. Viktor can hear the noise but can barely make out anything they’re saying. He watches as an adult just ushers them all into the building across from them. 

“No, a proper holiday, I mean,” Jayce kisses the back of his neck. It tickles. “Before the summer ends,” 

Summer will bring with it a lot of endings, Viktor thinks. Jayce will be graduating soon, top of his class. Viktor will finally be specializing at work. There will be new beginnings, too. A lot of them.

A whole life of beginnings to look forward to. 

“Okay,” Viktor says, squeezing  Jayce’s arm. “Wherever you want to go, then,” 

“We should visit your mom, too,” this time it is a whisper. A question. Another secret, perhaps.

Viktor breathes in deeply. He feels Jayce exhale behind him.

Viktor blinks. He will not cry here, not out here in the world’s smallest balcony. It is not winter, he does not have to cry about her. But his chest tightens all the same and the corners of his eyes start to sting. 

Perhaps even the saddest of memories can exist past the winter. 

“I think she would like that.”

—

One thing that they both forgot to do was actually tell their friends about this new development. 

It happens over dinner at Vi’s childhood home, with Powder swiping aggressively on Viktor’s phone to look at all the cat photos and videos she’d missed while they were away. 

It happens when Viktor leans over to Jayce to swipe at a smudge across his cheek.

It happens when Jayce responds to it with a kiss that he presses softly against Viktor’s lips. 

It happens. 

“Oh my god,” is what Viktor hears. Caitlyn, he recognises.

“I told you,” Vi says, a little smug. “I called it,”

So it happens.

Jayce laughs out an apology. 

Viktor wants so badly for the floor to swallow him but Jayce finds his hand and twines their fingers. Jayce tethers him, holds him still, holds him steady. 

Later, when the night has died down and they’re getting ready to leave, Powder finds Viktor. 

“You told me to live a little, do you remember?” Viktor asks her.

Powder is as brilliant as she is cheeky. 

“Looks like you lived a lot, big V,” she smiles at him.

It looks like he has.

—

It’s almost too fast, the way Summer ends.

Summer leaves and takes a lot of things with it–

It takes away the cool afternoons spent just lounging out on their balcony. 

It takes away the afternoon naps that start out too hot but always end with Viktor curled up on the couch clutching tightly at a blanket that smells like fabric softener and Jayce. 

It takes with it Jayce’s school years. 

Jayce graduates top of his class and Viktor cannot be prouder of him, tells him as much when Jayce barrels into him after the ceremony, arms around Viktor and pulling him close, close, close, until he leans down for a kiss right there in the open, with the summer sun beating down on them. 

Summer takes so much but that is fine. Viktor has come to terms with the changing of the seasons. He enjoys them all, now. The rainy days of autumn will not wash him away. The prospect of cold and grey winters doesn’t seem so daunting anymore. 

They stumble back into their flat on the final day of summer. Autumn will come, sooner or later – the leaves will change colour. The whole world will flush a beautiful red and orange, so similar to the sunrise. 

The cats meow by their feet. Viktor gives them both a satisfying scratch beneath their chins.

Jayce tidies around the flat. He turns the lights on. 

Viktor opens the balcony door and lets the light spill in. 

Music drifts from the small speaker on the coffee table. 

Jayce comes to him, already reaching out.

Viktor steps closer and smiles. 

Jayce takes his hands and guides them over his shoulders. He rests his hands on Viktor’s hips and he leads them into a dance, a silly little dance that’s a little bit off beat compared to the sweet summer song that plays from the speakers.

It starts with a smile, then a laugh. 

Jayce presses his laughter into Viktor’s skin, first his forehead and then his cheek. He laughs, loud and bright. He looks sunkissed.

The song fades into something quieter. 

The last traces of sunlight spills from the balcony. It colours everything like the sunset.

Viktor smiles at him, slow and soft.

The changing of seasons will find them right here dancing to a totally different tune in the middle of the living room that’s a little bit too cramped for them and their two cats.

But the balcony door is open and it brings with it a breeze that ruffles at their hair, that makes Jayce look at him with warm, gentle eyes. 

The song continues to play. 

“I quite like this,” Viktor hums, linking their fingers together. 

Jayce smiles a summer’s smile at him. 

They are home.