Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The things we bury never stay buried. They continue to breathe under the surface, feed the worms in the ground, and produce fertilizer for the flowers. And eventually, they bloom in the cruelest hours, when you least expect it.

Viktor is older now. Thirty-eight to be exact, though the mirror might argue otherwise. Grey has already started to thread at his temples, contrasting against the auburn like frost in a late autumn that still insists that it has time left. It has grown out in the back, brushing the nape of his neck in a way that would have once irritated him. But now? He hasn’t had the time. Or maybe he simply stopped caring. The last time he touched a pair of shears to it was before the divorce. Before the long silences, the loud arguments in the kitchen. Before Elara started sleeping in his bed just to feel some kind of safety. Oh, how much he hates himself for all she had to see.

His glasses sit crooked on the bridge of his nose, fogged faintly from the climb up the three floors with no elevator, because the landlord promised it was being fixed “next month.” They’re smudged, too. Some from his own fingers, pushing them up mid-migraine. But others are smaller, sticky juice box prints that only a child could leave behind – his daughter’s tiny hands in action, tugging at his sleeve, his face, his attention.

He hasn’t slept properly in days, maybe weeks. Maybe even longer, making his body feel like a clock left to tick with a dying battery. Time has passed in strange ways lately, weeks compressed into hours. Uprooting a life is never clean. Doing it with a child who’s just learning to spell “goodbye” is even harder.

His ex-wife used to say he worked too much. And maybe she was right. Maybe all those late nights at work, all those deadlines and grant applications, were just another form of cowardice. Easier to drown in blueprints and fumes than admit you didn’t know how to be loved.

Now, he’s left with the consequence of that distance.

The apartment is modest; third floor, creaky stairs, a strange hum in the walls that never seems to leave. The tiles are cold underfoot, the cabinets crooked with years, and the wallpaper peeled in the corners, covered with cheap, glossy paint by the previous renters. 

He breathes it in; the stale air, a hint of old smoke, and faint lemon cleaner from the showing two days ago. The place isn’t beautiful. It’s not even particularly clean. But it’s a start. And more than that, it’s a fresh start.

The kitchen window overlooks the Piltover skyline, all arrogant angles and self-assured shine. The heart of innovation, they call it. He remembers it from his student days, walking those streets like he had something to prove. He majored in engineering. He could have belonged to that glittering world. But somehow, he’d always found himself just outside the light – too Zaunite, too strange, too distracted by ethical questions that made his professors uncomfortable.

He’d built machines that could have changed things, that could’ve actually mattered. Then watched them gather dust in favor of sleeker designs with market value. He hadn’t made peace with it. He probably never would.

He unlocks the door with a sigh too heavy for his frame, one hand clutching a battered suitcase, the other curled tightly around the smaller, warmer hand of his daughter.

Elara. Jupiter’s most beloved moon – his most beloved orbiting stardust.

Seven years old, shoelaces always untied, her hair a mess of brown curls that refuse the order of his brush. She is impossibly expressive, full of unfiltered wonders, yet soft as the sunrise, and entirely unlike him in every way. Some days, she’s his shadow; others, she disappears into her own world, only resurfacing to ask questions he can’t answer, like why people fall out of love, or what it means when people leave.

Her eyes are not entirely his. Not her mother’s either. They are a color he cannot place, something like a golden mango, but darker in certain light, as if the sun has taken root behind her irises and refuses to set. He doesn’t know how she got them. Maybe she was born with sunlight inside her. Maybe she stole it and made it her own.

“Are we home now?” she asks, squinting at the ceiling like she can see ghosts sleeping in the water stains above. Viktor breathes out through his nose, tugging at her hand to stop her from straining her neck so much. “As close as we’ll get,” he murmurs, not quite meeting her eyes.

She nods, content. Trusting him more than he deserves. Kids her age should ask for more, demand things he can’t give. But Elara never does. She adapts. Too quickly. And it terrifies him.

Her pink-orange shoes hit the floorboards with a soft thunk as she kicks them off, and her backpack is flung into a corner like she’s marking territory. Then, she spins with spread arms, mapping her surroundings, trying to find seams where she fits in. He watches her with the kind of aching fondness that feels dangerously like grief. He doesn’t cry. Not yet.

She darts around on socked feet, jumping from corner to corner, room to room. “It smells... old,” she calls, nose wrinkling as she tiptoes back to Viktor’s side. Her father huffs a laugh in return. He shifts the weight of the suitcase from his fingers to the floor with a tired thump, reaching instead for the cane he'd leaned against the wall upon arrival. “Like me, then, hm?”

Elara giggles with a silver-bell sound that doesn’t belong in this place, and runs off to open every door, explorer mode activated. Viktor watches her go, then lowers himself carefully to sit on the couch – old and secondhand, picked up from a marketplace listing. He rests his hands on his knees, palms open. The apartment is small, yes, but not disappointing for the price. Cracks in the plaster. A radiator that looks like it hasn't worked since before the second world war. But it’s a roof. A door that locks. Four walls that they can fill with something new.

The last suitcase waits beside him, smaller, lighter. Inside are his essentials. Folders of Elara’s school forms. A water-damaged copy of Collected Works of Elemental Science. A jar of screws and bolts from his old desk drawer. And, tucked beside a faded hoodie, a crumpled pack of cigarettes.

He stares at them. Thumb brushing the edge of the cardboard. There's only one left. He considers it.

The balcony door sticks when he tries to open it. He shoves harder. It gives with a groan, letting in a rush of cold air, city noise, and the smell of exhaust mixed with distant rain. He steps out just enough to breathe, just enough to see the skyline and pretend that the ache in his chest is something else. It’s the same skyline he once dreamed of changing the world in. He’d been twenty-six then. He had a different cane – house Talis colors, made by the same person that carries that name. No daughter. No cigarettes. Viktor taps the last one out, rolls it between his slim fingers.

Then he looks back over his shoulder.

Elara has made a nest in the middle of the living room floor. Cross-legged, surrounded by a mismatched army of stuffed animals pulled from her boxes, her back to him. She hums a soft tune under her breath while handling each toy like it’s alive. Dusts off their fur. Cradles them. She speaks to them like old friends, reintroduces them to one another, as if the move wiped their memories.

“This is General Puff,” she tells a small plush tiger, serious as a diplomat. “He’s very brave.” Elara then turns to a small stuffed bear, one that was gifted to her when she was born, nowadays more thread than stuffing. “And this is Baby... not a baby, his name is Baby. He has anxiety but he’s trying.”

She presses them gently nose-to-nose, nods to herself, and sets them side by side, tiny shoulders straight. Her movements are delicate, like she’s reassembling a broken world and needs to be careful not to lose any of the pieces.

Viktor watches her, and suddenly the cigarette feels heavier between his fingers. Poison wrapped in paper. A choice he keeps making.

He sighs slowly, quietly. Then slips the cigarette back into the box. Folds it shut like sealing a letter he’ll never send. He walks into the kitchen, opens the sink cabinet, and tucks the pack deep into the furthest corner of it. Out of reach. Out of sight. The desire doesn’t go away, but he tells himself it’s has to last now.

Elara looks up from the floor as he reenters the room, legs tucked under her in a makeshift throne among the plush toys. There’s a smear of jam on her cheek from the sandwich he handed her hours ago during the long drive up from Zaun. Viktor crouches carefully despite his knees beginning to flare up, and wipes the jam away with the corner of his sleeve. She doesn’t flinch, just flashes him that same crooked grin.

“You’re gonna like it here,” she declares, full of certainty, as if she’s the reassuring adult here.

He wants to tell her he hopes so. That he’s trying. That it’s hard; harder still when you were the one who decided to leave.

But he doesn’t.

He nods instead, voice fond. “I like it anywhere with you, brouček.”

Elara squints at him, then crosses her arms with theatrical offense. “I’m not a little beetle, dad! I’m a full-grown Hercules beetle now,” she insists, puffing out her chest and flexing her skinny arms like she might actually lift something twice her size.

Viktor laughs, warm and tired and full of love that doesn’t know where to go except into her hair as he tousles it. “Alright, můj velký brouk ,” he relents.

Lately she’s been obsessed with insects. She checks every windowsill for antennae, names the ants on the sidewalk one by one, calls their microwave the “Bug Zap Zone.” He indulges her. At least bugs don’t call him a bad father and leave.

Later, when all the essential furniture is set up, the bedframes don’t wobble, and Elara’s shoes are lined up at the front door like she’s lived here forever, Viktor stands at the windowsill and watches the skyline with arms folded across his chest. He tries not to think of the old street just a few blocks down. Tries not to think the apartment, the different version of himself.

He’s taken a research post at the university he once studied at. Date management, systems architecture, all the back-end drudgery that keeps him out of the spotlight. It's work that doesn’t require eye contact. He doesn’t expect to see anyone he once knew.

That’s the promise he made himself. That the past would stay folded like an old letter he never mailed.

Three days pass. The boxes shrink, bit by bit.

They buy a plant for the windowsill; a little pothos from the corner florist, whose shop smells like dust and sun-warmed ceramic. Elara names it Commander Leafy, insists it has a rank. They both forget to water it. Twice. Commander Leafy droops like he’s been personally betrayed.

Elara teaches him how to braid hair using her favorite bear, Baby. She sits on the living room rug with deep concentration, tongue between her teeth, tiny fingers looping yarn strands as she narrates the process like a tutorial channel. Her mother used to do all kinds of hair styles for her – Viktor barely knows how to make a proper ponytail. He watches, amused, bemused, then learns, clumsily at first. Her own hair is harder. Softer. Real. He tries anyway.

Viktor burns dinner on the second night.

The smoke curls like accusation from the skillet, and he doesn’t even try to make a joke. Just stares at the blackened mess with a heavy sigh, rubbing at the back of his neck as Elara offers a single potato chip from her emergency snack bag with her usual generosity.

“Five stars,” she mumbles, chewing. “Very crunchy.”

He smiles, barely, yet he forgets to reprimand her about talking with her mouth full.

On the fourth day, they go to the local market. Elara picks cereal based on mascots alone, Viktor forgets half the list. The overhead speakers crackle and buzz between songs, and then–

He hears it.

A familiar rhythm. Acoustic, melancholic. The opening chords of "Obstacles." It floats through the fluorescent-lit aisles like the ghost of someone else’s voice and Viktor comes to a full stop.

The cereal box slips slightly in his grip. He remembers it – not just the song, but the feeling. Summer heat thick on the back of his neck. Jayce’s laughter, slurred and sweet, tangled with rooftop stars and rooftop liquor. The nights when they had nothing but each other, nothing but want. The night they sprinted down the university halls, barefoot, soaked from the rain and giddy from too much stolen champagne.

Jayce had sung along to that song once, off-key and shameless, holding Viktor’s wrist like they could outrun the future if they just ran fast enough.

“Someday, we will foresee obstacles, through the blizzard.”

He exhales slowly, placing Elara’s obscenely bright cereal into the cart. The ache in his chest flares and folds in on itself, quiet and cruel. Suddenly, his daughter tugs at his sleeve. “Dad, look! They have the dinosaur mac and cheese!” He just nods, swallowing whatever lump tried to force itself out of his soul.

That night, they try cooking again. Something simple. The dinosaur mac and cheese, peas stirred in for “health”. Elara insists on grating the cheese herself and nearly shreds a finger. Viktor hovers too much after that. Commander Leafy leans toward the window like it’s already giving up on them.

In the background, the bluetooth speaker they unpacked from one of the final boxes plays softly. Viktor’s playlist. One of the old ones, from his university days, with all his favorite songs, albeit a little edgy. “Obstacles” hums into the room again.

Elara stirs the pot with a plastic spoon, swaying a little to the rhythm. “Is this a sad song?” she asks suddenly, without looking up. Just then he notices that she’s using a plastic spoon and quickly switches it, sighing. Viktor pauses as he ponders her question. “Maybe,” he murmurs, folding a towel over his shoulder. “It used to be someone’s favorite.”

Elara shrugs like this means nothing. How could it? She never met the someone. “It’s kinda pretty.”

He nods.

She hums along, half in tune. Off-key.

Viktor sets the plates, and neither of them say anything about the playlist anymore.

Then – finally – a Friday rolls around that feels ordinary enough to be harmless for once. But that doesn’t hold on for long as his coffee begins to tremble as if there’s an earthquake. Elara bursts through the front door after school with her backpack half-zipped and her shoes already kicked off in the hall. She’s breathless. Glowing – which would be good, if she weren’t wearing that kind of incandescent joy that makes Viktor’s nerves flood with unease.

“Papa!” she calls, her voice too big for her lungs. “Papa, look!” She’s holding someone’s hand. A smaller girl, younger by a year maybe, but louder by several decibels. The child is all elbows and energy, tugging Elara forward like a comet pulling its own gravity.

“This is Mae!” Elara beams, eyes lit. “She wanted to come over. Is that okay, dad?”

Viktor steps out of the kitchen, dish towel slung over one shoulder, cane tapping against the tile and then wood as he moves towards the hallway. He carries the scent of vanilla, soap and rosemary in his clothes.

And stops.

Like a camera flash to the soul.

Mae looks up at him with the unabashed confidence of a child who’s never been told no. Her grin is missing a front tooth, framed by cheeks still round with baby fat. Her hair is wild, a brown bramble tied into three crooked pigtails with glittery ties that don’t match. He’s no expert in hairstyle but three ponytails is a little excessive. She’s in the middle of speaking, has been speaking, never stopped, voice tumbling in every direction like marbles on hardwood.

But it’s her eyes that make all the syllables drown out.

Hazel. Wide. Curious.

Familiar.

His breath stutters in his throat. It catches on the edge of her name like a splinter in his side. Viktor leans back just slightly, as if the threshold is a ledge he’s about to fall off and not a doorway. 

With a hard swallow and an awkward cough, he finds his voice. Soft, forced. “Hello, Mae.”

The girl beams brighter, as if she’s hearing her name for the first time. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Viktor!” Then, she immediately launches into a winding story about their math teacher, something about frogs and glitter and why the number seven is “sneaky.” Elara listens with full-body attention, hands clasped, eyes round, the way she does when someone else gets to be the main character for a while.

They migrate like a raging storm into the living room, spilling markers and stuffed animals across the rug, declaring wars and royal treaties between teddy bears and plastic horses.

Viktor doesn’t move from the doorway. His fingers curl around the frame, white-knuckled.

He watches. He watches her.

Watches him in her.

Not in the mouth or the nose. But in those eyes. The confident way she fills a room. The cadence of her voice. The refusal to be small.

He turns toward the sink, blindly. Runs the tap. Forgets why.

In the living room, Mae is explaining her theory about why glue should count as a food group. Elara disagrees. A passionate debate ensues.

“I already told you, Vik. This accelerator is too weak, it can’t possibly power this whole thing!”

“Not impossible until we try it.”

He dries a cup that’s already dry.

The knock comes late in the afternoon, when the sun has begun casting every wall in a soft peach. It was polite. Harmless. Like the mail man, or the kind grandma from downstairs, who loved bringing cookies. Viktor doesn’t think much of it at first. He wipes his hands on a dish towel, glances at the clock. 5 PM, a reasonable time for every possibility.

Despite all that, Viktor opens the door with a little too much caution. And time collapses.

Jayce Talis stands on the other side, haloed in gold from the sun and silver from the lights above.

He’s slightly taller than Viktor remembers, broader through the shoulders, his once-boyish face matured by exhaustion and a little sorrow that Viktor can read in his eyebags. His hair is longer now, but it’s still him. Every inch. And there’s a beard, just slightly grown in.

Though, the eyes hit hardest, hurt him most. Those same hazel depths, sun-warmed and impossible to forget. The eyes that used to look at him with such shine.

Jayce doesn’t speak at first. He just stares. Both just stand frozen like the awkward teens they once were.

Then–

“Viktor?” he breathes, like the name spoken will wake him up from this impossible dream – or nightmare. The sound of it hits like a flare to Viktor’s chest, and he flinches, barely. How he missed those letters from his mouth. He wants to catch each in the air, tattoo the echo into his ears so he’ll never forget the sound ever again. The girls chatter behind them, oblivious.

Jayce recovers first, weakly. He offers a smile that looks like a wound split open just when you thought it healed. “Didn’t think I’d– I’d, uh, see you again.”

Viktor can’t speak. His hands are trembling. The doorframe feels like a noose. He doesn’t trust what might crawl out and see the light of day if he opens his mouth.

Mae bursts into the entryway with Elara on her heels, the older girl helping her friend to pull on her jacket and talking over each other. Something about their stuffie multiverse and a doll war. Jayce gently reaches out, rests his bigger hand on Mae’s shoulder; soft, loving, natural. The small child giggles, jumping up and down excitedly as she babbles about her day with Anna.

And Viktor – Viktor feels it in his bones. That instinct. That gentleness. The part of Jayce that used to belong to him. And he can’t help but wonder who else it belongs to now, if not him.

His heart is thunder beneath his ribs.

Jayce glances at him one last time, that same lopsided smile on his tan skin, one hand tightening at his side. “Thank you, Vik– uh– Viktor. For taking care of my Mae.”

Viktor swallows hard. Nods. He still can’t speak. Not without falling apart.

Jayce lingers for half a second longer, like he wants to say something more, like the words are right there on the cusp but–

Viktor closes the door. And he’s alone again.

Later that night, the apartment is dim, lit only by the yellow glow of the living room lamp, the one Elara insists on keeping on “so the plants don’t get scared.” The air smells faintly of lavender laundry soap from an earlier washing and the remains of dinner that went mostly uneaten, mainly by Viktor – his appetite vanished after this afternoon. It was a calm evening, on the surface.

But Viktor walks like the walls are thinner than they used to be. Like something might hear his heartache through them if he breathes too deep. He finds Elara curled on the couch, one sock half-off, her mouth slack in a deep sleep. Her arms are tangled around a bear blanket and a sheet of printer paper clutched in her hands. A drawing.

Viktor eases it free, careful not to wake her.

Crayon on white portrayed two girls in extravagant dresses and crowns, standing atop a hill of stars. Elara has wings. Mae is holding a fire sword. Above them, in blocky lettering: Queen Elara and Knight Mae, Defenders of the Stuffie Realm!!! (Yes, three exclamations marks.)

His chest aches. Viktor crouches beside her and smooths her curly hair back from her forehead, brushing a kiss there. She sighs and turns into the thin corner pillow.

He lifts her gently, relying on his brace for the few steps. He’s done this many nights before – after story time, after nightmares, after falling asleep during cartoons. She’s grown heavier, but he doesn’t mind, not as much as his back does at least. It means she’s healthy, growing. Her father’s little girl still.

Once he reaches her already brightly decorated room, he tucks her in. Folds the blanket up to her chin. Leaves the drawing beside her on the nightstand with a cup of water.

And then he leaves the room, closing the door until only a sliver of light spills in.

He stands in the hallway for a long time after that, still in the shirt he never got around to changing. The buzz of the fridge drones from the kitchen. His laptop glows on the table. The glass of wine he poured earlier – his second – is untouched on the counter, condensation dripping slowly down its stem like sweat.

His hand presses flat to the front door. As if touching it might somehow bring Jayce back. As if he might still be on the other side, breathing just as shallow, wondering if he should’ve stayed.

Viktor swallows. The air tastes like dust.

He told himself he buried it. That it had been years. That the pain had settled into something manageable. A scar, not a wound.

But scars remember how they were made.

Some things don’t stay buried.

Some things are just shorter now, smaller, full of sugar and new beginnings and someone else’s genes. They have hazel eyes and a gap-toothed smile. Two things, actually.

Some things come home.

Chapter Text

The college halls’ fluorescent lights flickered in and out of the waking, casting everything in a ghostly blue haze. It was always too cold in winter and too warm in spring; never quite comfortable, always a little off. The walls echoed midnight footsteps, whispered debates, and the clatter of vending machine snacks falling after getting stuck in the first cycle.

Somewhere down the corridor, a dorm door hung open just enough to leak the rhythm of “Tek it” by Cafuné into the air, an upbeat, dreamy thrum. Jayce’s laughter mixed with the tune, full of life, bouncing off the linoleum like light off a waterfall in a clearing. Bright. Effortless. It was the kind of laugh that made people turn their heads, just to see what joy could sound like. And Viktor – Viktor had memorized that laugh. It lived in the same part of his mind as the periodic table and every theorem he'd ever solved, only louder.

He used to pretend he didn’t hear it, didn’t feel it deep in his bones. But the sound always managed to find him anyway.

The cafeteria booths became a strategy table of their academic conquest; coffee-ringed napkins filled with overlapping equations and wild sketches of machines they swore they'd build someday. Some of them still lived in Viktor’s notebooks.

The college’s lab became their sanctuary, a space they were granted access for by Professor Heimerdinger. It was claustrophobic with whiteboard marker fumes, their mixed scents, and the smell of burnt coffee. Viktor always chose the same stool, worn down just enough to know he belonged to it. He’d sit hunched over code, pencil wedged between his teeth, jaw tight with concentration. But his eyes – those traitorous things – kept wandering.

To him.

Jayce, sprawled across two chairs like rules were made for other people, scribbling formulas. Hair wild, lips curved into that charming half-grin, throwing out ideas like sparks between two stones hit repeatedly. He made even disorganization look elegant.

It wasn’t the theories Viktor had trouble solving. It was him.

That song – “Tek it” – became the anthem of their shared rhythm. It sang in Viktor’s music player during the moments between classes, in the subway seats they shared on late-night city runs, when Jayce would nudge Viktor’s shoulder and say, “C’mon. I’m not letting you rot in our dorm tonight.” And Viktor, against all reason, would go. Every time.

Neon lights smeared like their personal watercolor painting across rain-slicked streets. Jayce would walk too fast, then double back with a grin when Viktor fell behind. They talked about everything and nothing – how science could change the world, how it never felt like it would, how the future stretched out ahead of them, where they might be in ten years. Viktor still remembers the warmth of Jayce’s shoulder brushing his, the matching pulse of the beat in their chests, how alive it all felt.

He should’ve known better. Should’ve left sooner. Should’ve built a wall and moved on.

But gravity doesn’t bend to anything except itself. And Jayce was his gravity. Not able to be put into words, a miracle, a mystery; inescapable.

There were moments that were bright as sodium flame, sparking between their bodies and threatening to burn them alive.

They were the brush of Jayce’s hand over his when they reached for the same textbook. The crooked smile he wore when Viktor beat him on a problem by thirty seconds. The nights where they argued philosophy at 3 AM, eyes burning and drunk on exhaustion, too tired to notice how close their knees had drifted under the table.

But it was that one night – the night that changed everything – that remained the core of Viktor’s memory.

Rain, in form of silver fingers, slammed against the dorm window, furious and insistent, rattling the panes like it was trying to get in, like it wanted to witness the inside, too. The cheap bottle of whiskey from the nearby gas station stood between them, half-empty and glinting like liquid gold in the low amber of the desk lamp, casting shadows across the tangled heap of books and discarded jackets on the floor.

Jayce was spread out across the IKEA rug they recently bought, limbs long and loose, the collar of his sweatshirt tugged askew. His head tipped back against the side of Viktor’s bed, neck arched, catching the light in a way that made him look almost soft, like he wasn’t all broad shoulders and Greek god features. His cheeks were flushed a soft pinkish-red from the alcohol, his smile lopsided, his eyes half-lidded and searching the ceiling for something that Viktor hadn’t found yet either.

He, on the other hand, sat cross-legged, a little too stiff to be casual, nursing the neck of the bottle with one hand, the other curled into the fabric of his own sleeve like it might bring back the senses drowning in liquor.

It was silent. Nothing unusual for the two, having learned to speak in just the flutter of their eyelashes, but this – this was round, overflowing at the edges with something close to the dread yet excitement you feel when you get sick on a school night. The realization that you can be comfortable, nuzzle back into the warmth of your safe space; and despite it all – oh no, I’m sick.

Viktor felt sick. That’s it. Jayce pulled him out of his spiraling mind then when he looked at him with those glossy, hazel eyes, and the air shifted.

“I think you’re the only one who really sees me,” he murmured, voice slurred at the edges but oh so heavy with an unbearable truth. “Not the grades. Not the money. Not the future version of me. Just... me.”

The words hit Viktor like a truck had just driven into his chest with full force. His fingers tightened around the bottle as he took a swig. The whiskey burned down his throat, blessing and curse all at one.

“Don’t say that,” he managed once he swallowed the liquid pain, hoarse.

Jayce blinked, not hurt, just curious. “Why not, V?”

“Because I want to be selfish, keep this version of you,” Viktor replied, and it sounded too much like a sinful confession to a priest.

For a beat, nothing moved. It seemed as if even the dust particles catching the clouded spark in the eyes across from him stopped.

Then Jayce reached across the small space between them, slowly climbing up onto the bed, like the moment had already happened a thousand times before. His fingers found Viktor’s cheek, callused and flaming hot, tracing the line from temple to jaw with a featherlight touch.

The world condensed, merely reduced to the drum of the rain, the taste of whiskey on their tongues, the warm breath they keep exchanging. Everything else – the flickering beside lamp that desperately needs a new cable, the music from down the hall, the damp chill from the old window – fell away. All that remained was the precarious tilt of this moment, the coin spinning in midair, wondering what side it’ll fall on.

Viktor didn’t move. Neither did Jayce.

Tails. Talis. Jayce Talis.

The kiss, when it came, was careful. Not hesitant, but considerate, like they both knew how delicate this could be, and neither of them wanted to break it. It was a slow fall. A breath drawn between verses of a song.

Slowly, it deepened. Floodgates finally giving way.

Jayce kissed like he’d been waiting forever, waiting for it in every laugh they’d shared, every late-night study session, every shoulder brush and near-miss. It tasted like cherry wine and whiskey. Sweet and stinging and dizzying. It tasted like every bad decision they were about to make, every sleepless night they’d spend staring up at the ceiling. It tasted like god, finally.

Jayce’s hands found Viktor’s jaw, held him like a precious offering, while Viktor’s fingers, slow and unsure, curled into the hem of Jayce’s sweatshirt. That kiss carried the wind chasing their laughter like a dare. Of ducking into empty lecture halls just to talk, just to be close, tracing dreams onto chalkboards until the sun came up. Of stargazing on the dorm roof, Jayce’s voice low as he whispered stories into Viktor’s skin. He listened intently while connecting freckles on the taller’s tan skin like constellations he wished to explore.

And in the space between heartbeats, somewhere between touch and breath and too-late, Viktor let himself fall.

He didn’t know yet that this would become the memory he’d turn over and over in the years to come. That this was the moment that would ruin him for anyone else.

Their bodies moved slowly, clumsy and delicate all at once. Each motion felt new, learning the language they’d been aching to speak for years but only now dared to practice aloud.

Viktor’s shirt was halfway gone, hanging off one arm, the exposed skin of his chest flushed and glowing in the low light. Cool air skimmed over him, drawing goosebumps in its wake, and Jayce’s hands followed them like fire chasing smoke, palms shaking where they touched down on his hips, grounding him, claiming him. Every brush of skin against skin carried a gravity too holy to rush.

Viktor leaned forward, pressing his face into the curve of Jayce’s neck. The scent of him – pine soap, cologne with hints of citrus and leather – made Viktor’s head spin. Stubble scraped against his cheek, rough yet intimate, the last thing anchoring him to the now. One hand fisted tight into the bedsheet, the other dragged trembling lines up Jayce’s back like he was trying to memorize him by touch alone. His map.

Jayce whispered his name over and over, as the rain outside drowned over the last syllable every time. His voice cracked with the weight of what he felt; how it felt to learn a human by the soul. The words slipped out broken, raw and unfiltered.

“I love you,” he whispered against Viktor’s shoulder, voice thick and trembling, bordering the edge of a sob. “I love how you see things I miss... how you make me want to be good, even when I’m not. You’re the thing I didn’t know I was waiting for.”

Viktor’s breath hitched painfully between the pleasure and those words he longed to hear for years. He didn’t know if it was real, or if the whiskey and the warmth of being wanted had just wrapped too tight around Jayce’s tongue. But he let himself believe. Just for this moment, he let those words curl around him like sunlight through cracked blinds, bottling it inside his heart for darker days.

Jayce’s lips traced a shaky path along Viktor’s jawline, kisses light as rainfall, dotting down like ellipses. “You taste like peonies and morning dew,” he murmured, breath hot and sickeningly sweet with the mix of alcohol and mint gum. “Like home I forgot I was missing.”

Viktor shivered beneath him, skin hypersensitive, alive to every stroke, every sigh. Jayce’s hands held him with a gentleness that bordered on awe, like Viktor was a rare and flickering flame, and if he held too tight, he’d go out. Every touch was a vow. Every sigh, a confession of devotion. Every glance, a promise they hadn’t dared speak in daylight.

Viktor's body was alight, nerves flickering like struck matches under Jayce’s mouth, the press of his hands, the whispers falling from his lips in a seemingly endless stream. “You make me feel like I matter. Like I’m more than the mess I carry. I didn’t know love could feel like this.”

And when it all reached the peak – when the world tipped sideways and everything narrowed to heat and pressure and the sound of Jayce moaning his name into the crook of his neck – Viktor let go. Shuddering. Shaking. Burned open by tenderness and a pleasure too immense to hold alone.

Jayce followed, burying his face in Viktor’s shoulder, his kisses turning frantic, scattered shooting stars across flushed, milky skin. His voice was wrecked, desperate. “You’re mine,” he gasped, over and over, like if he said it enough it might merge them together permanently. “Always mine.”

They lay tangled in the glow, the sweat, the dreading consequences. Viktor curled into Jayce’s side, the other’s fingers brushing lazy circles over his back, pressing apologetic kisses to his fingers as if they’re a magical balm. Their skin still thrummed, sensitive and damp, hearts thudding out the last beats.

They had no more words. They just held each other like they had time. Like dawn wouldn’t break. Like love could make a promise and keep it.

The next morning, Jayce didn’t say anything.

He moved through the dorm like a ghost pretending to be him, slipping a hoodie over bare shoulders, the fabric catching briefly on the fading heat of skin that still felt how they fit together just hours before. He brewed coffee like this was their average Tuesday, the clink of the spoon against ceramic the only sound between them. As if routine might scrub clean what had happened. As if the night hadn’t sunk teeth into them and left marks.

When Jayce finally handed Viktor a mug, their fingers brushed for the briefest second and yet, Jayce still didn’t look at him. His gaze stayed fixed somewhere just over Viktor’s shoulder, on nothing at all.

The bruises blooming along Viktor’s neck, soft violets, dusky wine, a few smudges of red where kisses had turned desperate, stood exposed in the morning light spilling through the window. They bloomed like ink on damp paper, ugly and beautiful all at once. Proof of that this did happen.

Jayce didn’t acknowledge them either way. It was as if they weren’t there. As if he wasn’t there.

Viktor didn’t ask why Jayce hadn’t stayed beside him in bed. Didn’t ask what the hell that night had meant. Didn’t ask who he was to Jayce now. Words curled behind his teeth like rusted nails. Every time he opened his mouth, they cut deeper. So he said nothing.

The taller just moved around the dorm like Viktor was an afterthought, getting ready for his classes. Like the night before had been a mistake he didn’t know how to erase.

Eventually, the weight of it, all that silence, all that not-enough, pressed too hard on Viktor’s ribs, made it hard to breathe through the struggle of staying above the surface of rising water.

So he left.

He didn’t slam the door. Didn’t cry or plead or ask Jayce to stop him. There was no dramatic exit. Just a gathering of things while Jayce was gone: his notebooks, his coat, a scarf Jayce had once wordlessly draped around his neck on a cold walk home where he forgot his own. He folded it carefully, as if it still meant something. As if it ever had.

He scribbled a transfer request to Zaun’s Institute in messy, shaking handwriting; three weeks’ notice, no explanation, no goodbye. The ink smudged where his hand trembled too hard. It didn’t matter.

He vanished from Jayce’s life with the same silence he’d been given.

And still, as he stepped out into the bitter morning air, something inside him hoped that Jayce might stop him. Might call after him. Might say something.

But there was nothing. That was good. A cleaner wound would scar faster, he reasoned.

Back in Zaun, Viktor tried to rebuild something out of the broken pieces left behind.

He met someone new, a woman with a voice like honey and a silken laugh that didn’t flinch when it was met with his silence. She smiled at him like he wasn’t a cold corpse. She called him brilliant, kind, with no trace of pity in her eyes.

Her hands were warm, certain about holding own. She never asked why he sometimes woke in the middle of the night, breath caught in his throat, eyes scanning the dark like it might give birth to a missing form. She never questioned why his touch was hesitant, always a little delayed. She never noticed how his eyes remained hollow in the morning. How he sometimes stared past her shoulder, chasing the outline of a memory only he could see.

They married quietly. With touches that meant warmth, eventually a raging fire.

It was enough.

Until it wasn’t.

Months later, during yet another sleepless night, Viktor found himself staring at the blueish glow of his laptop screen. He rarely checked Facebook anymore. But some habits linger, even if he deems himself too old for this nowadays.

Jayce’s name still sat untouched in his friends list. He hadn’t deleted it. Couldn’t bring himself to. It felt like erasing the last proof that something had once existed.

He clicked on his profile mindlessly, and before he could stop his fingers, they began to scroll.

Their old messages were still there; snippets of late-night escape plans, discussions about their latest ideas, questions about the meaning of life shared at 2AM.

Then, he was flashbanged. Not literally, but it shot straight through his stomach.

A photo.

Jayce stood tall, radiant, in a charcoal suit that fit him perfectly, hands around someone’s lithe waist, his smile crooked – just like it always had. He apparently never got braces either, the small tooth gap still prominent. Next to him stood a woman. A woman people noticed.

She was striking, a model kind of beauty. Her deep tan skin glowed under golden hour light, long black hair falling over one shoulder in waves like tar spilled in motion. Her eyes were a dark, warm brown, eyes that held no hunger. She had the kind of smile built for photographs – pearly white, perfect, glossy.

A wedding.

The date stared up at him: One year ago.

Viktor’s chest ached like the bride’s eerily straight teeth took a bite out of his lungs. He blinked once. Twice. His fingers hovered above the keyboard, trembling. Every word they’d once traded felt like a foreign language now, fossils of a species no one had warned him would go extinct.

There’d been no announcement on his profile. No warning.

Jayce had married someone alive, beautiful, whole. Someone ambitious enough to match him step-for-step, who probably filled their shared home with laughter that didn’t gain looks. A woman who didn’t notice when Jayce came home late from the lab, or perhaps didn’t mind. Someone who didn’t ask where his thoughts went when his eyes grew distant.

She had stepped effortlessly into the spaces Viktor had once filled. The ones Jayce spent so long to cover, and let Viktor pry them open. She sought warmth in the cracks that Viktor carved in his shape.

Jayce had moved on.

And he had done it without Viktor.

He numbly clicked the screen off. Sat in the dark with only the faint clatter of the city outside to keep him company. His wife stirred in the next room, having insisted on sleeping on the couch after yet another argument. Blissfully unaware of the lightning cracking through every nerve ending inside her husband’s body.

The apartment door burst open with the flurry of small boots and big voices.

Mae and Elara spilled in from the cold spring air like twin hurricanes, cheeks flushed pink from the Piltover wind, arms tangled in paper, tape, and some aftermath of a glitter bomb that now all fell onto the freshly cleaned floor. There was glue on Mae’s sleeve, a purple star stuck in her hair, and enough energy in her footsteps to shake the furniture.

“Family science night!” she yelled like a battle cry, her silver-bell voice bouncing off the walls. She flung her backpack down like it was on fire. “It’s mandatory.”

Elara followed behind her in a quieter ripple, the smaller breeze chasing the destructive storm. The peacemaker. She knelt to straighten Mae’s tossed papers, careful not to crumple the corners, brushing glitter from her fingers like she didn’t mind it sticking to her skin.

“It’s not,” she corrected gently, smiling up at her dad with wide eyes that already glowed with the shine of all the stars in the universe. “But we really want to go. Please?” Oh god, not the puppy eyes.

Viktor’s hands froze where they hovered over the sink, submerged wrist-deep in soap and water. The sponge was still in his grasp, squeezed tight enough that it threatened to tear at the edges. He turned, slowly. Mae met his eyes first, her hair wild and knotted with bits of tape, her sleeves streaked with even more glitter. Triumph in her eyes. And Elara, soft and gentle beside her, eyes lit not with mischief, but with hope. Her twin sun eyes.

His heart gave a slow, traitorous thud.

Eventually, he smiled. It was warm on the surface, but it followed by bruising the eyebags under his golden gaze with darker shadows. “Mae is here again, huh?” he teased lightly, not immediately answering the question. God, she had his hazel eyes. The same fearless look Jayce used to wear before he turned softer with age and responsibility, before life sanded down his edges.

Mae grinned, showing off the apparently signature Talis tooth gap, utterly unbothered by the teasing question. She rummaged through her school folder with fervor and shoved a crumpled flier into his soapy, dripping hands in response. Viktor cringed at the feeling of sticky paper against his wet fingers. “You have to come, Mr. Viktor,” she declared, eyes wider than the distance between Neptune and the sun. “We’re making a volcano that explodes pink. For feminism.”

Elara giggled behind her hand. “For fun,” she added, ever the translator of Mae’s rambling. But her smile wore the same level of excitement. She wanted this. Both of them did.

Viktor dried his hands slowly on the dish towel slung over his shoulder. Purposefully deliberate – he was buying time. His joints ached as he leaned back against the counter and looked at them – really looked. The kitchen had already been overpowered by the smell of paper and paste. The sweet, sticky scent of childhood creation. Future sparks distilled into Elmer’s glue.

A Piltover school event.

Where the people still whispered of his presence like an error in the code. Where his limp had been cataloged in every attendance sheet, every sideways glance. He remembered the weight of cautious eyes. As if being from Zaun meant he might shatter their high and mighty world, his accent resembling the sound of nails on a chalkboard.

He cleared his throat softly. The question caught on the way out. “Is your father going, Mae?”

The little girl shrugged without looking up, trying to find a pink marker in Elara’s bag in the living room, but her chestnut curls kept getting in the way. “Dad always goes.”

Like it was obvious. Like Jayce had never been the kind of man who forgot. Viktor felt it crack something inside him. Because Jayce did forget something – he forgot him.

Viktor’s gaze lingered on Elara. She sat now, legs tucked under her on the carpet, smoothing the edges of their volcano blueprint. There was glue on her sleeve too. A pink smear near her elbow. The flier lay on the kitchen table in front of him, crumpled and hopeful, fluttering a little in the warm air of the coughing heater.

A chance to stand beside his child in a school that once tried to pretend he wasn’t really there.

He looked away, throat tight. After a deep breath, he decided. “Okay,” he murmured, albeit this wasn’t a full agreement. He could still play sick, book an important appointment, excuse himself from his own daughter’s most important wish.

Mae let out a victorious whoop. Elara beamed at him like Viktor just hung a new set of stars just in her name. Honestly? He would.

The flier sat where he’d left it – on the corner of the kitchen table, its neon lettering dulled by the increasing amount of sunlight. Once bright, it had faded into the scenery, half-buried under a pile of unopened bills, math worksheets, and a single plastic googly eye clinging for dear life to the woodgrain. Viktor picked it off with a sigh.

One day passed. Then two.

Then, it became furniture.

Until Thursday arrived.

Caitlyn stepped in without knocking, as always. Her coat was tailored to her form, navy with silver buttons, like medals on a soldier. Her heels clicked with the strength of a woman who could arrest gravity if it misbehaved. In one hand, she held two coffees, their heat fogging the lids slightly. In the other, a manila folder, thick with custody paperwork that smelled like printer toner, late nights, and things too adult for the kitchen table.

She was midnight-blue from crown to voice, hair pulled back in a sleek bun, sharp aquamarine eyes that cut clean through bullshit. Caitlyn Kiramman had been his advocate, his blunt instrument, and sometimes his anchor ever since the day his ex-wife had reappeared on the doorstep, demanding their daughter back.

She had seen him at his worst, from rage-drunk and hollowed out to his knees bloody from stumbling over his own failures. She had taken Elara without a second thought when he needed to breathe or break or both. She had opened her door at 4:12 AM on a Tuesday, still in a robe, no questions asked.

If Viktor had to name the strongest woman he knew, the answer had a name and a degree in law.

“You look tired,” she observed, placing the drinks down with a muted thump, the words half-swallowed by the rising steam. He could smell it from her, a black coffee and a latte more sugar than espresso, begging for forgiveness for ever calling itself a caffeinated beverage.

Viktor didn’t look up. His fingers were already hovering over the signature line of page three, not even having read any of the insides. The pen suddenly felt heavier than the weight of plastic and ink. “I always do,” he muttered, low enough that it barely counted as conversation.

Caitlyn hummed in return. She didn’t argue; no use. Instead, she nudged a paper bag across the table and towards a smaller copy of the hunched man next to her.

Elara peeked over the rim of her fantasy book just as the corner gave way to reveal the sugared sheen of a pink donut. Her eyes lit up like it was Christmas morning. She reached for it immediately, as if her father might not see if she’s fast enough. “I’m trying to be a good father here,” Viktor muttered at the tall woman, not looking up from the endless wave of black on white. She only ruffled his hair as if he wasn’t older by a decade, her accent softening at the corners. “And I’m trying to stay her favorite aunt.”

Then Caitlyn’s gaze shifted. Drifted.

The flier caught her attention; with its bright colors it wasn’t hard to miss anyway. It peeked out from beneath the clutter, still defiantly pink despite the dull light, the words “Family Science Night” sagging slightly with wear. She pulled it free, flattening the crease with her thumb. Tapped its edge against the counter in a soft, slow rhythm, trying to draw Viktor’s attention.

“You should go.”

The words weren’t a suggestion, he knew that. Viktor finally looked up, and arched a brow, reflexive and tired. “That is...debatable.”

“She wants you there, Viktor,” Caitlyn said simply, her voice like steel – there was that professional cut in her tone again that earned her the title of Piltover’s most feared lawyer. She folded the flier once, then again, as if making it smaller might make it easier to shove down Viktor’s throat.

“That doesn’t mean I should be.”

Caitlyn didn’t flinch, but he couldn’t help overhear her flabbergasted huff. She leaned just a little closer, bracing one hand on the table, and dropped her voice to something dangerously close to a threat.

“Viktor,” she muttered so that Elara wouldn’t hear the words about to leave her lips. “You left a lot behind once. Don’t let her grow up thinking you’ll do it again.”

Silence bloomed. It wasn’t an attack. Never would be. But it stung like one, anyway.

He felt it in his lungs, in the marrow of his ribcage, in the echo of Elara’s laughter from the hallway as she skipped away with her prized donut. He thought of the look she gave him; hopeful, young, so easily crushed. He thought of how often he told himself he was doing enough by staying. And how easily that could turn into another kind of leaving.

His hands curled into fists against the table, not from anger, but from the need to feel something solid, something he could control. His knuckles pressed white against his skin.

Caitlyn didn’t say more. She didn’t need to. She just crossed her arms, knowing that she won another case.

Viktor nodded. He would go.

Now, he sat behind the wheel and cursed Caitlyn for her remarkable talent of convincing without more than three deep breaths. The engine murmured beneath him, a low pulse that seemed to be an opposite of the quick, uneven rhythm inside his brain. Beyond the windshield, the elementary school stood in brick and windows catching the late afternoon light in golden shards. There was laughter in the distance. A scatter of tiny footsteps. Shouts muffled by playground fences.

And yet, all he could feel was static. The radio crackled softly, releasing a dizzying melody like incense.

“And somewhere, somewhere the atoms stopped fusing…”

Sleep Token’s “Blood Sport” slipped into the car’s air, threading itself between the leather seats, the air vents, the cracks in Viktor’s very organs. It wasn’t even loud, the volume itself being at eleven, but it didn’t need to be. That deep voice, mournful, raw, wove straight through him every time.

It was his favorite band.

No one really knew that. Not even Elara, who listened to all his playlists with him. He kept them tucked away inside the most special mixtapes, only to himself. Hidden beneath the white noise of lectures and appointments and fatherhood.

Except… Jayce had known.

God, he remembered it too clearly. The way Jayce had burst in one rainy October afternoon, eyes alight with that unbeatable pride, holding two tickets with a grin so bright, it made the sun feel optional.

“They sold out in six minutes,” Jayce had said breathlessly, practically vibrating with triumph. “But I got us in.”

It had been years ago. But it hadn’t faded.

“I’m still your–”

Viktor’s grip on the steering wheel tightened until the leather groaned beneath his fingers. With a sudden, almost brutal motion, he twisted the key, killing the engine. The music died mid-note.

And silence rushed in like a tsunami.

He sat there a moment longer, listening to the ghost of that melody still flowing in his blood. It never really left. No matter the years, that look in Jayce’s eyes when they practically screamed it together – that song – still lived somewhere between them.

Viktor exhaled slowly. Then, he dragged a hand through his umber hair, streaked through now with stubborn grey, and pushed the door open, greeting the crisp air.

The gymnasium reeked of a hive mind of children.

That unmistakable cocktail of various paints spilled, old laminate floors, and an amount of sugar these kids were allowed maybe every few months – different home-baked cakes, muffins, and other sweets littered every second table. Glitter drifted like pollen, stuck to construction paper, to the sheen of overhead lights, to the chaos of small hands and huge dreams. And now, also Viktor’s hair.

Through it all, his gaze found them instantly.

Jayce stood beside a tri-fold display, sleeves shoved up past his forearms like he always did when he got serious about something. The crisp lines of his shirt were slightly crumpled. His tie hung loose around his neck, no longer performing the role it was tugged for, order forgotten somewhere between glitter glue disasters and last-minute assembly. He was bent slightly, hands moving with that same focused care Viktor remembered too well, taping down a grey paper, smoothing the corners, nodding encouragement when Mae adjusted a label.

And then he laughed.

A bright, full-bodied sound that cracked clean through the noise like a siren calling Viktor’s name. It was the kind of laugh that didn't belong in this life. It belonged to the boy who built engines out of scrap parts and dared Viktor to race him. The boy who kissed like the world would end if he didn’t. Who said he loved him.

For one suspended breath, Viktor thought about leaving. About turning around, walking out, closing a door he never meant to reopen.

But then–

“Papa!”

Her pure voice rang through the hall; Viktor could recognize her tone among the loudest of sounds.

His tiny moon, his Elara.

She stood at the center of it all, arms thrown into the air like fireworks, waving with all the frantic joy her little body could summon. Her smile was wide enough to split the sky. Her mandarine eyes sparkled with something purer than anything he deserved. Like he was the only thing that mattered in her oh so tiny world.

Right beside her stood Mae, grinning so wide it looked like it hurt. She bounced on her heels and yelled, “We saved you a muffin! Ms. Medarda made them special!” Her voice cracked a little from excitement, like her chest couldn’t hold it all.

And finally, Jayce looked up.

Their eyes met across the gym, cutting through the clutter, through the years, through their own personal mess. It was like two stars aligning on accident, a brief moment of gravitational pull threatening to form a black hole and swallow them both.

Jayce straightened slowly, his features shifting with the weight of recognition. Surprise, maybe. Regret. Something human flickered behind his eyes. His mouth parted, a breath caught behind it. Words hovered – but never came.

Viktor only gave a curt nod. A thread offered. Not a rope. Nothing they could tether each other to.

Jayce lifted a hand in return. A half-wave, like the motion itself was balancing a dozen apologies and none of them would survive the drop if he moved too fast.

“Damn. You look like someone ran you through a thesis defense and didn’t even buy you dinner after.”

Viktor startles, the sound slicing through his momentary daze. He turns toward it on almost offended, and his eyes go wide once they met with sparkly powder blue.

“Vi?”

She’s lounging like she plans to die in that deep blue security uniform. One shoulder leans against a row of papier-mâché planets – Jupiter dented, Saturn listing to one side – while her arms rest in a loose cross, some pink strands falling in front of her eyes. One boot scuffs the tile, ankle lazily slung over the other like she owns every square inch of the floor. A crooked “SCIENCE FAIR SECURITY” badge dangles from her belt loop, half-obscured by a rhinestone carabiner.

“In the flesh,” Vi replies, smirking like she was born with it on her face. She hooks a thumb at her badge. “They pay me to make sure the baking soda stays where it belongs. Real high-stakes shit. I’m livin’ the dream.”

Viktor lets out a breath that’s halfway to a laugh. Something in his spine uncoils.

She tilts her head, and her smirk softens, just barely. There’s an old loyalty tucked behind the sarcasm, like a note folded into the lining of her shirt. Her eyes study him in that Vi way, knowing. The kind of look that says: I see the time on you. And I’m still glad you’re standing here.

“Heard you were back,” she says, voice gentler now, like it’s just for him. “Didn’t think it was true.”

Viktor breathes through his nose. The air still carries the gluey sweetness of construction paper dreams and the sugary aftermath of a thousand muffins too many. “Well, it is,” he says simply.

“Finally.”

She looks past him now, to the chaos orbiting the volcano display. Mae and Elara buzz around their baking-soda-and-food-dye masterpiece like tiny charged atoms. Jayce is kneeling between them, elbows splayed, steadying a tiny plastic tube with absurdly large hands. That damn grin is on his face again, crooked, open, heartbreakingly familiar. It flashes like an old photograph pulled from a drawer, edges yellowed but still intact.

“Jayce’s been less of a walking headache since Mae met your kid,” Vi says casually, like it’s a throwaway line, but her gaze lingers longer than the joke needs to land. There’s a fondness in it. Or maybe a warning. “He can be a real helicopter parent. Safety is good, but even he gets in the way of my job; a security guard!”

Viktor looks back toward the display. Jayce is laughing again, head tipped just so, the lines at the corners of his mouth folding deeper than they used to. He’s changed. Not the magazine-cover polish he used to be. No – he’s older now. Weathered. Like someone who’s been dropped, maybe more than once, and learned how to fit his pieces back together without flinching in pain when the edges sandpapered each other down.

“Keep it in your pants,” Vi snickers, nudging him with an elbow and an even sharper grin. “You’re staring like a stray cat stares at a rotisserie chicken.”

Viktor arches a brow, unimpressed. “Is that your version of a compliment?”

She grins wider, canines catching the light. “I’m rusty, alright? It’s been a while since this place had a Zaunite who could dress.”

He snorts, breath caught in the cusp of a reply, when a voice cuts through the air behind them.

“Don’t you have work to do, Violet?”

Vi jumps, and Viktor watches with malicious joy as all her cocky bravado evaporates like fog on hot glass. Caitlyn has materialized beside them, poised and just slightly bothered, wrapped in a beige coat so sharply pressed it could double as weaponry. Her long strands are pinned back in a long, flowing ponytail, a single silver pin gleaming like a medal.

With a knowing smile, she plants a light kiss on Vi’s cheek. It’s the kind of kiss that says I know exactly what you’re doing and I’m indulging you anyway. Then she pulls back, raising one brow with command, a look that lands somewhere between amusement and interrogation.

Vi turns pink like a slapped sunrise, color blooming in uneven blotches across her cheeks and creeps down her throat.

“Y–yes, ma’am.”

Viktor watches, openly entertained now, as Vi straightens like a recruit at roll call. If she had a clipboard, she’d be saluting it. He tries to stifle the laugh, but it escapes anyway, mostly air.

Caitlyn’s gaze shifts to him, and her expression undergoes that subtle alchemy she’s always been so good at, professionalism melting into a kind flame. Still composed, but warmer, like a teacup held between gloved hands.

“Viktor,” she says delighted, his name a weight placed gently on a table, but also a warning that the interrogation might move onto him. “It’s good to see you here.”

He inclines his head slightly. “I wasn’t sure I would be.”

“You made the right choice.”

As if the consequence of his choices heard its cue, the same sweet voice filled his senses.

“Dad, dad!”

Viktor turns toward his daughter like a string has been pulled, connected in sprit. She’s jumping up and down like an earthquake was happening, and he already makes a note of giving her no more candy until Halloween. Despite being only four feet tall and dressed in a stained lab coat far too big for her size, she looks so grown up.

“It’s almost time to explode the volcano!”

Viktor startles, the realization of time passing haunting him. Caitlyn smiles, nodding her head at the older man, taking her sign to leave. “Alright, zlatíčko,” he calls back, voice softened by years he never thought he’d earn. “I’ll be right there, okay?”

Then, mostly to himself, he murmurs while rubbing a hand down his face, “Before Mae tries to light it with a sparkler.”

“You’re enjoying this way too much.”

The voice comes dry, amused, and unmistakably Medarda. But it wasn’t directed at him.

She steps into view like a scene change, draped in a pure white coat and graceful black dress that would look out of place at any science fair – except that it doesn’t. Not on her. Even beneath the sterile wash of gymnasium fluorescents, she looks like she’s stepped off a fashion spread titled Elegance in Unexpected Places.

Her eyes drift toward Vi, who’s moved on to loitering by the snack table like she’s waiting for an excuse to throw a punch or a cupcake. Vi doesn’t look at Mel. Just scoffs, a few crumbs around her mouth.

“You professors get tenure. I get one day a year to enjoy the chaos of awkward reunions. Let me have this.”

Mel arches a brow, though her smile never falters – a very effective mixture that peels back the layers of someone’s excuse before they can even finish making it.

“And your patrol just happens to be conveniently stationed near the punch bowl?”

Vi flashes a grin, all teeth and no remorse. “Can’t confirm or deny. But somebody’s gotta make sure no one spikes it.” She taps the table with the back of her knuckle. The bowl trembles ominously, its surface an artificially red shimmer that looks just enough like blood to be concerning. What should probably be more concerning, though, is the amount of Red 40 inside that concoction.

Mel exhales an indulgent sigh, not quite defeat, but not any bite either. The corner of her mouth quirks nonetheless.

The banter ricochets between them. Viktor watches, the tightness in his chest unraveling thread by thread. There’s comfort in it. In the background noise of student shrieks and folding chairs and the hiss of vinegar meeting baking soda somewhere in the distance. Hopefully not anywhere near Mae and Elara.

For a moment, he lets himself forget the impulse to brace.

Only for a moment though, because Mel turns her attention to him, and all her elegance suddenly softens. Something in her expression shifts, sharp angles melting into warmth, bright intelligence giving way to something startlingly gentle.

“Viktor?”

The amount of time he heard his voice in that confused tone – that’d make two pennies, but still.

He blinks. Opens his mouth, completely having forgotten that she’s unaware of his return – but she’s already moving, the space between them folding in like it was always meant to collapse. Her hug is careful; they’ve always been the kindest. Gentle arms wrap loosely around his shoulders, offering room to tense, to escape. He doesn’t. Or maybe he does, for half a second – then melts, slowly sinking into the space she makes for him.

“You’re really back,” she murmurs, her voice so delicate that it threatened to turn into liquid and flow with the wind.

“I am,” he mutters into her shoulder, breathing in that comforting scent of roses, strawberry cake and lip tint.

Mel pulls back just enough to study him. Her eyes scan his face like she’s searching for some matching lines against memory. Then she glances past him; drawn, inevitably, to the tiny whirlwind at the edge of the gym, his shadow. The same brown hair that turns a shade of dark blond at the tips when the light hits just right, a mole right on her chin and one above her left brow.

Elara has moved on to a craft table, her pigtails crooked, her hands covered in glue and blue chalk. She’s muttering to herself as she attempts to wrestle a googly eye onto a lopsided pyramid, tongue poking from the corner of her mouth in deep concentration. Mae seemingly left her side for a moment that neared world peace.

Mel’s breath catches, barely audible. “And you have a daughter,” she coos, the words touched with awe. “She’s… stunning.” Viktor follows her foresty gaze, and for a moment he forgets the ache in his bones, the press of years, his back brace that he definitely should’ve made less tight this morning.

Elara squints at her craft, then blows on it as if that will make it dry faster. The unknowing innocence of every fresh flame. His heart swells. And then twists, like it always does. “She is,” he says softly. “Far better than I deserve.”

Mel doesn’t disagree. She just smiles, quietly, the way someone does when they're watching a miracle walk for the first time. She hooks her arm through his, like she’s done a thousand times during college. As always, she’s able to read him like a book, as if she has a magical sense for the emotions of others.

“Come,” Mel chirps, a glint of mischief in her eye. “I want to introduce you to my favorite chaos assistant.”

She tugs Viktor’s arm, guiding him through the sea of shrieking children and overambitious science projects. They pass tables bristling with popsicle-stick skyscrapers, volcanoes that have already seen too much, and circuits wired so poorly even the copper looks offended. The air smells like glue, popcorn, and melting crayon.

They reach a corner table that looks less like a school project and more like a warzone. Plastic paint cups are sweating onto the paper tablecloth. Feathers stick out of a lump of papier-mâché like the aftermath of an unfortunate bird strike. Stray buttons scatter the surface like shrapnel.

At the epicenter of it all: a short, blue-haired girl with the brightest pink eyes that Viktor has ever seen, as if someone took Vi’s color palette and inverted it. The snickering figure was wielding a paintbrush like it’s Excalibur. She lunges across the table with menace, eyes wide with manic glee.

“Hold still!” she crows. “Your face needs more glitter!”

The PTA volunteer stumbles backward with the reflexes of a veteran war medic. “I am not a canvas!–”

“Art is everywhere!” she shouts after him, long braids dangling behind her, brandishing the brush like she’s just declared war on everything beige. Good luck, Caitlyn.

Mel shakes her head, smiling to herself. “This,” she gestures towards the short girl, “is Jinx. Vi’s sister.” And now his previous thought made sense. “She has worked on some ink paintings for me recently. An incredible talent, truly.” There’s something almost bordering on pride as she watches Jinx help the children. Viktor, on the other hand, feels his parental efforts crack under every bad encouragement she gave his daughter. “She’s currently working on a traineeship at our university – under my wing, of course.”

Elara stands just to the side, clutching a shaker of black glitter in one tiny, uncertain hand. She looks up at Jinx, brow furrowed. “Why can’t I use this one?”

Jinx gasps, loud and scandalized, like she’s just heard someone insult the fabric of her very existence. She drops into a crouch, eyes level with Elara’s. “Because the PTA,” she whispers, eyes darting suspiciously, “fears its power.” Her voice lowers further. “But fear’s boring. And boring’s for cowards.” She snatches the shaker with a wink, pops the lid with her teeth like a champagne bottle, and dumps its contents into the nearest glue tray with wild abandon.

Black glitter falls like volcanic ash, coating the mess in something simultaneously beautiful and deeply ominous. Elara lets out a squeal, equal parts delighted and scandalized. Her mouth forms a perfect little “O” as the sparkles descend, her awe tangible.

“Art’s not about being good,” Jinx intones, as if quoting the holy art scripture. “It’s about making people feel things. Chaos counts.”

Elara blinks up at her. “Even with science?” Jinx grins, a spark catching behind her eyes. “Especially with science.”

Viktor can’t move. His eyes stay fixed on her, and something in his chest, something locked away and forgotten, cracks. The sound of her joy is too much and not enough. It’s everything. His lungs pull tight. There’s a weightlessness, a vertigo, like he’s standing at the edge of something impossibly vast.

Mel stays close. Her hand finds his elbow again, her thumb brushing slow, tender circles through the soft wool of his jacket.

“She’s brilliant,” she says quietly, her voice a tether, a balm. “And you’re doing okay.”

He wants to answer. To say thank you, or no I’m not, or please don’t let her grow up and see how cruel this world is. But the words stick. The ache behind his ribs swells too fast, too full. So he just nods, lips parted around all the things he can’t bring himself to say.

Later, when the gym turns way too humid with body heat, and the sugar-fueled chaos of twenty-something children begins to teeter on the edge of civil collapse, Viktor slips out through a side door to retreat. The handle is sticky – cotton candy fingers, no doubt – but the outside beyond is mercifully cooler.

Twilight has begun its slow, theatrical exit. The sky is brushed in lavender and ash, that gentle bleeding of day into night. A few crickets dare to chirp beneath the chatter still leaking from the gym, as if unsure whether the performance is over and they can finally go to sleep too.

Viktor breathes in deep. The air bites at his lungs, cold and clean. His spine gives a creak of protest, and his knee murmurs a familiar ache. Even with his cane, this much walking and standing and trying to keep his daughter from bringing home more glitter than necessary, a flare up was already waving at him from afar. But he doesn't mind for once. The quiet settles over him like a blanket laid across brittle shoulders.

Then – footsteps.

He doesn't need to look. He knows. Of course he knows. He memorized that heavy sound many years ago.

Jayce.

He steps up beside him, silent as the first snowfall. No greeting. No clearing of the throat. Just exists there, solid and warm and slightly too close, hands buried deep in the pockets of a coat Viktor doesn’t recognize. Their shoulders almost touch, close enough for heat to pass between them, not close enough to burn.

“I heard,” Jayce speaks after a moment, voice slightly roughened, maybe from the chill or maybe just from life, “that you’re joining the university staff.”

Viktor’s lips twitch, almost gracing him with a smile. “Starting next month,” he murmurs, watching the horizon instead of him. Jayce nods. It’s not accompanied by his usual hum, another mannerism that Viktor remembers. It’s just quiet. His gaze stays forward, trained on the empty lawn like it might offer him protection. Or forgiveness.

“We’re lucky,” Jayce says softly. And then, after a pause that seems to tug something vulnerable out of him. “I’ve missed seeing you around.” The words fall between them unpolished. As if they’ve waited in his chest for years, too fragile to be spoken until now.

Viktor lowers his eyes, breath caught somewhere in his throat. A small smile finds its way to the corner of his mouth, as much as he tried to will it down. “I’ve missed…” he starts, voice catching like a thread snagged on a nail. He steadies. “A lot of things.”

Jayce shifts beside him. A subtle lean closer. He draws one hand from his pocket and fumbles, briefly, with his phone. There’s a tiny, blue gemstone dangling from it. His thumb taps against the screen with a kind of nervous urgency, all false confidence. “Here,” he mutters, holding it out without quite looking at him. “We should… you know, stay in touch. For work reasons.”

It’s a laughable excuse, really. Transparent. Childishly thin. But Viktor doesn’t call him out. Doesn’t tease or deflect because he knows what he’s doing. He just takes the phone, slowly, their fingers brushing, accidental, maybe. Or maybe not. The contact is fleeting, but it clings to his skin like honey.

He types in his number breath by breath, like each digit might unlock something long buried. Like this isn't just a contact. A string. A please, call me.

When he finishes, he doesn’t hand it back right away.

Their eyes meet.

And the air between them snaps electric. I’m sorry. I was scared. I shouldn’t have let you leave. I waited for you. I did too.

Spoken through the flutter of the eyelashes.

The phone sits between them like an offering. Or maybe a test. A white flag.

Neither of them lets go first.

The girls are tired in that sugar-sick, overstimulated way. Jayce carries Mae inside their house piggyback-style, her glitter-smeared arms looped lazily around his neck.

Viktor walks beside Elara up the narrow stairwell of their apartment building, her hand clutching his sleeve, a new notebook hugged to her chest. It’s leather with golden, delicate details. An expensive gift from Mel, that she slipped Elara when she thought Viktor wasn’t looking.

Two homes. Two routines. Two men haunted by the same history.

At Jayce’s house, Mae wiggles out of her jeans like they’re trying to bite her and hops into pajamas that don’t quite match; galaxies on the top, dinosaurs on the bottom. She talks through a yawn, voice bouncing as if her body doesn’t realize it’s exhausted yet.

“There was a glitter rebellion,” she declares as she climbs into bed, kicking her blankets like a feral cat making a nest. “Someone made a slime volcano that fell off the table and attacked the art corner. And there was this weird, cool paint lady who let us draw with real brushes instead of those boring, safe pencils.”

Jayce perches on the edge of the bed, smoothing curls away from her damp forehead. Despite her bath, she smells like glue sticks and apple juice and that particular brand of chaos unique to elementary school events.

“And Elara,” Mae adds, lowering her voice like it’s a secret. “She said she wants to be a scientist who paints bugs. Isn’t that so cool? Like… bug magic.”

Jayce grins at the sparkle in her sleepy eyes. “I assume you had fun, then?”

Mae nods fiercely, her last bit of energy slipping out in that motion. “Elara’s really smart. And she’s quiet in the way that feels like… books.”

Her father blinks, huffing a laugh. That reminds him of someone. “Books?”

“She thinks before she talks,” Mae explains, curling onto her side with her cheek half-squished into her pillow. Her voice is already slurring with sleep. “You don’t do that.”

Jayce snorts. “Go to sleep, you gremlin.” Though, something aches just beneath his heart. You don’t do that.

But his little girl is halfway under already, thumb tucked under her chin like a seal on standby.

He waits until her breathing evens out before pressing a kiss to her wild curls, and turning off the lamp, leaving the room bathed in the faint glow of a unicorn-shaped nightlight that projects constellations on the ceiling.

Downstairs, the kitchen is quiet, eerily so. He pours a glass of water and leans against the counter, back to the fridge, staring into the dark beyond the window. The moon is low and pale, “a cheese wheel for the mice tonight,” as his daughter would say.

His phone sits on the counter. He picks it up, taps the screen. There it is, having left open his contacts: Viktor (for work reasons).

A name and a parentheses. Viktor put it like that himself and Jayce still can’t figure out if he’s mad at him or teasing him.

Still, he doesn’t press it. He just stares at it like it might blink back, like Viktor might somehow feel the weight of his thumb hovering, somewhere across the city. The glass sweats in his other hand. A drop hits the floor.

He sighs and sets it down. Lets the silence wrap around him.

Maybe Viktor’s doing the same. Maybe he’s standing in his own kitchen, lights low, phone unread, feeling the same ache just beneath the skin.

Across town, in Viktor’s apartment, Elara is seated cross-legged on the floor like a little monk, her tongue poking out in concentration as she fills in a messy drawing of a skeleton with a tutu. Her new sketchbook lies open across her lap, corners already curled from love.

A warm lamp buzzes beside her, casting everything in gold. It’s late, but she’s riding the last wisps of sugar and adrenaline, still wearing a paper “scientist crown” with her name scribbled in glitter glue.

Viktor moves in the narrow kitchen, unwinding his tie like it’s a noose he hadn’t realized he was still wearing. He spoons soup from yesterday into a chipped bowl, every movement tired, but unhurried.

“Did you have fun?” he asks, voice soft and gravel-worn.

Elara doesn’t look up, still shading a femur with care. “Mae said if I learn how to make volcanoes explode, we can put one in the bathtub.”

Viktor closes the microwave door and sighs. “Wonderful. I’ll alert the landlord.”

His daughter giggles, scribbling harder. “He’ll love it. It’s for science.”

Later, she’s bundled in her alcove bed beneath a mismatched quilt, her body curled around a stuffed rabbit with one ear nearly torn off. Jinx had gifted it to her as an “artist’s ceremony” and told her to name it something that strikes fear into the hearts of men. Men being Viktor, standing just a few feet away.

Elara had chosen Revenge.

Now, she breathes evenly in her sleep, one hand fisted in the rabbit’s neck, glitter still clinging stubbornly to her temple like stardust refusing to fade. She’s a star, inside and outside.

Viktor watches her from the doorway, one hand braced on the frame. The apartment is quiet except for the occasional clink of pipes behind the walls. His soup sits forgotten on the counter, going tepid. His tie lies in a heap. His shoulders sag.

He walks back into the kitchen, retrieves his phone from where it waits near the untouched soup. The screen flares to life and washes his face in pale blue, makes the hollows of his eyes darker, the bones of his cheeks starker. He looks haunting.

Viktor doesn’t eat. Just sits at the wooden table with his back to the room, one hand wrapped around the cold bowl for something to anchor him. The light above him flickers once, then steadies.

His phone buzzes with nothing. No new messages. No missed calls.

Still, he stares at it like it might blink first.

Then, on impulse, maybe out of sheer restlessness, he unlocks it. Scrolls down to the contact that was saved only a few hours ago. A stupid little name that shouldn't make his chest twist.

Jayce :)

Of course he put a smiley face. Of course he did.

Viktor’s thumb hovers over the screen. Don’t be a coward, he tells himself, jaw clenched. Not again. You let too many things rot in silence.

He types slowly, stares – then deletes it all again. They’ve literally explored each other’s bodies, why is it so hard to write one message? After pacing a bit and rubbing his hand down his face multiple times, he settles on the most basic message.

Are you still awake?

The moment he hits send, his stomach knots. Regret is immediate and reflexive, like he’s waiting for the sound of a door slamming that never comes.

But then, the screen lights again. Only a second later.

Told myself I wouldn’t text you first. Glad you finally did. :) – Jayce

Viktor frowns, mouth twitching. That… definitely sounds a little passive aggressive.

And – who signs their own texts?

Before he can respond, his phone buzzes again.

Sorry that sounded passive aggressive!!!!

Called it. Viktor squints. The four exclamation marks feel like they’re screaming at him.

Yeah, I can’t sleep either. :) – Jayce

Viktor lets out a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding and leans back into his chair. His spine aches, his knees click, and yet, his lips curl up, unbidden. He smiles, even though no one sees it. Even though it hurts.

For a second, just a second, he’s seventeen again. Hunched beneath his blanket in a bed too short for his legs, screen brightness at one percent, whisper-laughing into his sleeve while Jayce texted him the world’s worst theories about moonlight and sandwich physics. Sleep always forgotten. Time always warped. Heart always too close to naming itself love.

Jayce had once asked if it was possible to drown in your own thoughts. Viktor had said yes.

He was still right

Viktor types, slow and careful:

You still overuse punctuation, I see.

And the reply doesn’t allow itself to make him wait any longer than he had to.

Hey, I’m emotionally expressive!!!! – Jayce

Viktor scoffs softly, phone pressed to his chest for a moment before he answers.

Go to sleep, Talis.

He can almost hear Jayce’s laugh through the pixels. Almost feels him across the city. Viktor’s phone glows in his palm like a stubborn ember. Something still burning.

Chapter Text

The texting starts small. It was merely functional, you know – “for work reasons.”

Jayce tells himself that each message is just about the girls, that they were barely worth noting. It’s just easier this way. It helps, really. Keeps things clean. Keeps his voice from shaking if he ever had to say any of this out loud. And besides, co-parenting-adjacent communication is perfectly normal when your daughter’s newest best friend happens to be the child of the man you used to–

Well. That’s beside the point.

The first message is plain.

Just in case you ever cook for them or something – Mae’s allergic to strawberries. Mild sensitivity to dairy. But the real enemy is mushrooms. Not allergic. Just emotionally opposed. Texture makes her go nuclear. – Jayce

Jayce even adds a mushroom and bomb emoji. They glare at the bottom of the screen like they were telling him to grow up. His ex-wife had always said the same.

An hour passes. Then another. He distracts himself by washing dishes, doing the laundry, and even cleaning the bathroom, flicking stray soap bubbles off his fingers, pretending he’s not checking the screen every five minutes like a middle schooler with a crush.

The long-awaited reply is tidy, as short as possible.

Noted. Elara: no artificial dyes (Red 40 is the devil). Bedtime is non-negotiable – 8:30 PM sharp. And don’t let her con you into a second dessert. She will try. She’s very convincing.

No emoji. Of course not. Jayce wouldn’t have expected Viktor to even know where to find them. Still, something about the message feels clipped. Jayce sighs, running a hand through his hair, wincing as the soapy damp on his fingers mixed with the small amount of gel he still uses; just enough to tame his curls.

Then another text, a little softer in tone – but enough to cause just the gentlest spark of joy in the clearing of his brain, and lighting the path for a forest fire. Jayce’s throat shouldn’t feel this tight at three little words.

Also, thank you.

They increase the volume of storage their conversations take slowly. Just a few neutral exchanges here and there. Coordinating some playdates; but only when the other is at work or not home, negotiating drop-off windows with all the diplomacy of UN delegates. There are a few days their eyes catch across the parking lot of the elementary school, and instead of letting out all the haunting ghosts behind their irises, they give a stilted nod. One-motion reminders. They receive name tags at school events, written in blocky letters. Viktor’s is ocean blue, Jayce’s is a crimson red. Elara forgets her lunchbox; Mae forgets her art project and Jayce drives across town in sweatpants to switch the two things out, startling an exhausted Viktor in the doorway of his apartment wearing mismatched socks and a pen behind his ear. At least they both looked like a mess.

It’s civil. Almost annoyingly adult.

But like all big waves began forming once, it begins to shift, ripple after ripple.

One morning, Jayce’s phone vibrates across the marble kitchen counter just as Mae lets loose a sneeze of cataclysmic proportions. A flurry of oatmeal flings through the air like a food war with the spirits of this house. 

There’s a moment of stunned silence. A single glob slides down the fridge.

He hides a tired groan behind the hand over his mouth, pulling down his face. Forest floor eyes – those tired things that haven’t known a full night’s sleep since Mae turned two – flicker between the clock and the mess. His class starts in twenty minutes and he’s still in pajama pants, praying to whatever higher power there is that the cleaning staff will forgive him.

Mae wails dramatically, eyes tearing up.

“Dad! It’s looking at me weird!”

Jayce, just blinking blearily and dangerously un-caffeinated, wipes oat-shrapnel off his flannel sleeve. He knows exactly who to text for help, his tired brain unable to stop him in time.

Is it normal for a child to cry because the oatmeal is ‘looking at her weird’? – Jayce

The person in question – Viktor – sends back a single period.

Jayce squints at the screen, confused until another message arrives.

Yep. Switched Elara to whole grain cereal after she had nightmares about the oatmeal man.

That has him burst out laughing, fully. It feels like rust being scrapped off some place forgotten inside his chest. He barely muffles it into his sleeve, catching himself before Mae thinks he’s laughing at her meltdown. But God. He can see it. Viktor, deadpan, cradling a wide-eyed toddler convinced the Quaker Oats guy is stalking her dreams. He thumbs out a reply one more time before he seriously needs to get going.

I’m gonna form a support group – oatmeal survivors of Piltover. For just the two of us.

He’s left on read after that.

That afternoon, Viktor sends a photo; unprompted.

It pings a soft chime against the clatter of Jayce moving around some tools and metal, rummaging through his workbench for that specific type of screw he’s looking for. He wipes his hands on an old rag, freeing it from grease in the creases and soot under his nails, thumbs a little damp, and unlocks his phone without a second thought.

Usually, he dreads messages more than a nuclear war announcement. Invites to a schooling, student complaints, new semester rules, another professor leaving their already slim staff; Jayce doesn’t know how he’s surviving in this onslaught of paperwork recently. The subject lines of his recent mails may as well read: hope you weren’t planning on sleeping today! Much Love, your boss

Sent from my iPhone

But Viktor’s messages – Viktor’s are a break, a gust of wind that blows all those pieces of white wood away.

The image he received nearly knocks the air from his chest.

Elara stands triumphant in a gleaming pink raincoat, sleeves slightly too long, water droplets glinting off her boots. Her hood is thrown back to reveal her wild pretzel-colored hair and a wide, gap-toothed grin that somehow manages to look both childish and presidential, like she’s about to deliver a public address on the joys of sidewalk puddle hopping. Her orange eyes – those glowing, gold-flecked gems – shine like mango slices held up to sunlight. There’s a stubborn, star-bright joy in them. The kind you can’t teach, the one you’re only born with if the most blinding nebula chose your heart to reincarnate in.

Jayce zooms in automatically.

His daughter’s green wool scarf is looped haphazardly around Elara’s neck like a flag captured in battle. The ends trail behind her dramatically, soaked and swinging in the picture-frozen wind. In the background, Mae – off to the left in a blur of movement – is mid-lunge, one small hand planted directly on Elara’s cheek in an utterly ineffective attempt to reclaim her stolen belonging.

The scarf war is clearly ongoing.

They’ve decided they’re starting a nature club. I was not consulted.

Jayce huffs a laugh before he can stop himself. His smile feels involuntary, branded into the corners of his mouth from many years ago. His thumbs hover, already moving before his brain catches up.

Sounds like someone I used to know. They’re on the right path. – Jayce

He sends it. Instantly second-guesses it. Wonders if it’s too much, or too soon, or–

The typing bubble appears. Disappears. Appears again.

Stops.

Jayce stares at it like it might offer him a window. Like he could see Viktor pacing with his phone in one hand, squinting down at it – he wondered what he might be feeling. Disgust? Hatred? Annoyance? Or that same stubborn want of just one more minute alone?

But nothing. Four full minutes pass.

You are still not funny.

Jayce snorts into his tea that he made in the meantime, something called “Greek Apple and Vanilla Cake.” Unsurprisingly, it just tastes like hot water with a superiority complex. A lie in a teacup. The box had promised cozy orchards and buttery undertones in every sip; what it delivered was an aftertaste that tasted vaguely of artificial grape flavor. Nonetheless, he needed to get rid of the twenty differently labelled boxes of deceptive marketing that he stored inside the lab’s cupboards.

His shoulders started curling forward around the sound leaving his nose. It bursts out warm and unfiltered. It warms him much better than the beverage in his hands.

Still, huh?

That means he was funny once. Just a little.

Jayce doesn’t reply just yet. He’s still too enamored by the photo. The grin. The image of childhood, kind and golden and fleeting, capturing the meaning of life that many philosophers longed to find all their lives. Well, Aristotle, Jayce found the core, in 1080 by 1920 pixels. It’s the kind of moments you fold into the archive of your heart. The press of small fingers reaching for yours, seeking you – only you. It’s the trust you vow to protect until you finish your final breath, when your body gives out before theirs. One day, they'll both be older, he knows that, and this photo will feel like a time capsule. A secret door to little giggles.

There’s a warmth behind Jayce’s ribs now. The good kind. The slow-growing kind that rises like steam off pavement after rain.

He taps the back of his phone against his palm, once. Twice.

Despite himself, Jayce is still grinning down at the screen, thumb hovering over the keyboard as if weighing the gravity of his next move – which, knowing him, is absolutely none. He taps the camera icon. The front-cam blinks to life, greeting him, and he poked the middle of the screen to make it focus on his form instead of the mess he created in the college lab. He turns on portrait mode just in case.

It was the same lab where they once felt the burn of their youth in their blood to the fullest between lectures, where Jayce charged through the room like he was late to spinning in circles, and Viktor standing near the blackboard, writing down whatever theory his partner was currently sputtering about – with a few corrections here and there.

The warm fluorescents cast a halo around Jayce and the half-drained beaker in his hand. The old countertops have been replaced by fine steel, the metal reflecting the ashen pastels of the sunset. The surface looks cold. But Jayce? He looks anything but cold. He looks like laying in the first warmth of May, of finally walking outside without a jacket on.

His safety goggles are askew on his forehead, comically oversized and fogged near the edges, pushing back his outgrown locks. Grease-streaked fingers must’ve raked through it at least a dozen times, leaving it rebellious. His beauty is burning. Small dimples and some collarbone peeking out. There’s a streak of ink on his cheek, cutting across the constellation of freckles scattered over his tan skin like sunlight peeking through lace, dotting the ground below in a beautiful pattern, unique to it.

science dad activated – Jayce

Viktor doesn’t see it until much later. Mae is dropped off, having so much as launched herself into the backseat. The living room has finally, finally quieted.

He still can’t get the image of Jayce’s house – if one could even call it a house – and its incredibly symmetrical front porch out of his head. Mansion feels more accurate, though, with its swing, tasteful shutters, and grass so even that he suspected that Jayce had a contract with it. Viktor, with his third-floor walk-up and crying faucet, had blinked up at it, stunned, one hand braced against his cane like he was preparing to physically process the square footage. The door had been answered by a nanny. A nanny. One that referred to Jayce as Mr. Talis.

What the hell.

Just how much money does this man have?

Now, standing in his own kitchen back home, the stovetop still emitting heat from boiling pasta, he retrieves his phone and opens the message. Elara is humming from the living room, legs swinging off the couch as she pages through a book about the identification of moss. A plate of spaghetti, already half-eaten, rests beside her in a way that suggests ketchup may have been involved. He allowed her to eat on the couch – just this once, he reminded her at least thrice – with the promise that not a word gets to Caitlyn.

The photo fills the screen like a wave breaking on the shore. Viktor’s thumb lingers against the side of the phone, unmoving, eyes tracing the soft gradient of Jayce’s cheek; freckles into beard. He still has that sparkle, the one that could kickstart the impossible with one hypothesis. Like someone who – God help him – might be a good man. Viktor’s lips twitch before he can stop them.

He snorts.

Actually snorts. In his kitchen. The sound surprises even him. It echoes off the second-hand fridge and makes him cringe at the reverb inside his ears.

Movement catches his periphery. He lowers the phone instinctively, his dad senses immediately catching onto inevitable destruction. Elara has migrated to the kitchen table and assumed the position of a secret agent on a mission. Sleeves meticulously rolled, spaghetti bowl pulled directly under her chin, the one she’s fork-deep in. Her tongue peeks out at the corner of her mouth, brow furrowed with almost scientific intensity as she stacks strands of pasta on her empty plate.

Each noodle is draped, coiled, arranged in impressive layers – impressive if these layers weren’t threatening the table cloth and the floor. Damp and glistening, the whole construction leans at an angle that would make any civil engineer weep.

It’s a carb-based Leaning Tower of Pisa.

Viktor moves on muscle memory, cane clicking once against the tile as he crosses the kitchen with a limp that holds the remaining amount of parental urgency he can still muster after the amount of minor natural disasters today.

“Elara,” he warns, voice low, like the herald of doom.

Too late.

The noodle tower slams downward – at least towards the pot and not in the direction of the carpet – in a wet slap, marinara splashing upward like confetti. The sauce flies across the table, speckling his daughter’s chin and already stained shirt.

Elara squeals with laughter. “Did you see that?!” she exclaimed while wiping her hands on herself – not like it mattered now anyway. Viktor was going to have to use at least a liter of stain cleaner. “I almost made it taller than my princess cup!”

Viktor sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose before reaching for the plate. “You almost made a structural hazard.”

“That’s not against the codebook,” she argues, eyes gleaming. 

“We talked about this,” Viktor shoots back sternly, lifting the plate just out of reach as she stretches upward on her toes. “No edible skyscrapers. I will not be held liable for pasta-based injuries, Elli.”

“If I want seconds, I should just ask,” Elara recites the words he once drilled into her brain, collapsing back into her chair with the exhausted sigh of a tiny construction worker at the end of her shift. It reminds him of dog owners filming their companions let out a huff, and title it ‘You don’t even pay rent, why are you tired.’

“I know.”

Viktor quirks a brow, not quite satisfied just yet. “Do you also know how to say ‘thank you’?”

“Thank you for saving me from the big pasta monster,” she sing-songs sweetly, already reaching for her juice box like negotiations have concluded.

Someone save me, he mutters fast in Czech as he turns to the sink, starting an attempt at cleaning all the affected pots and cutlery by Elara’s incredible architecture.

From behind him sound a slurp, a giggle, the soft thud of juice hitting the table.

He lets the moment linger.

“No domes, either.”

“Awww.”

After a beat, she grins up at him. Her round cheeks were flushed from laughter, her eyes crinkle with mischief, and there's a lone spaghetti noodle clinging to her face like a caterpillar, stuck just below her left cheekbone. She doesn’t seem to notice, and the scientist he is, Viktor takes it as an experiment to see when she will.

“Who were you texting?” she inquires, voice lilting with innocent curiosity, and just enough cunning to betray how not innocent the question really is.

Viktor follows her glance toward the counter. The phone is still where he left it, screen aglow with the last remnants of Jayce’s message. The photo remains open, blatantly. That ridiculous millennial selfie, all wild hair and golden skin, that smile barely restrained behind a grease-smudged pout. A person trying so hard to be serious and failing so gloriously at it.

And entirely endearing.

He clears his throat and returns to her side, setting a fresh plate down in front of her. The earlier disaster has been salvaged – he’s transferred a generous mound of pasta from the ruined plate back into the pot, now neatly re-served. A second chance at dinner. Less building. Hopefully.

“A friend,” he answers her interest evenly.

Elara narrows her eyes at him. Suspicious. Unnerving in the way only seven-year-olds with too much emotional intelligence can be. She wouldn’t be his daughter if she wasn’t able sniff out a weak spot like a surgeon.

“Is it the tall one?” she asks, poking her still dirty fork at the noodles. “The one who talks too much?”

Viktor hesitates a moment too long. “…Perchance,” he admits, though his voice betrays him. There’s a flicker of care behind the word. “And be nice, that’s still Mae’s dad.”

Elara gasps, absolutely scandalized, ignoring his last comment. “Papa! You can’t just say perchance! The Codebook explicitly says no medieval vocabulary unless you're casting a spell!”

Viktor barks a laugh, caught off guard. It erupts from him, shaking loose some of the dust that's gathered in his chest lately.

“I knew it,” she announces smugly, stabbing her fork into her dinner like she’s sealing a deal. “You smiled at your phone. Your eyebrows did that thing.”

He exhales, amused and quietly doomed by creating a carbon copy of his quirks and habits. Without looking into her eyes, he trades out her crime-scene fork for a cleaner one and takes her sauce-slicked hands in his, wiping them gently with a warm cloth.

“Eat your dinner, myška,” he murmurs, voice gone tender. The nickname drapes itself over her, part soft reminder to behave, part desperate distraction, and maybe the closest he’s come to admitting anything out loud.

“Okay,” she groans simply. “But he makes you smile.”

She says it in the way that any child utters the most earth-shaking truths, as if it wasn’t an off-hand comment. As matter-of-fact as pointing out the sky is blue.

And there’s no arguing with that.

So Viktor doesn’t argue.

He just turns back toward the counter, fingers brushing the phone as he picks it up again. The blue light glow of the screen highlights his face as the room settles into silence around him again, his daughter busy with scarfing down her new meal. He doesn’t type anything yet. Just stares for a little longer than necessary.

science dad activated – Jayce

That damn dash. With the signature. Like he’s closing off a love letter instead of sending a text about… whatever this is.

It’s not even the first time.

With a sigh through his nose, Viktor and lets his thumb drag up slowly. Blue on grey bubbles stack on top of each other, the numbers decreasing the further he goes up. He scrolls lazily, like how someone draws back a curtain just enough to peek through, telling themselves it’s just habit. Not interest. Definitely not longing.

See you at drop-off. – Jayce

Elara left her math workbook in Mae’s bag, FYI. – Jayce

Do six-year-olds usually love watching Top Gear or is this a phase? – Jayce

Viktor’s eyes narrow slightly, but not against the glare of the screen. Does he look like Quora? A parenting oracle? He’s the new IT guy, sure, but not a full help desk. He huffs, lips twitching at the corners despite himself. The audacity.

Why the hell do you sign all your texts. Quite egotistical, don’t you think?

The screen responds almost immediately. A “typing…” bubble flickers into existence – disappears. Returns again. As if Jayce is arguing with himself. Typical.

It’s called branding. You wouldn’t get it. – Jayce

Viktor raises a brow, amused. Really? Although, he still let out a laugh before he can stop it. You got to hand it to him, the man is committed.

He casts a glance at Elara; happily focused on dinner, spaghetti sauce now streaked across her cheek in a new form of abstract art à la tiny human. She hums something content, and his heart softens at the sight.

You’re an egotist.

Jayce, wonderfully infuriating, doesn’t miss a beat.

Takes one to know one. – Jayce

Viktor exhales in return, not quite a laugh, not quite a sigh. It’s some tired sound lodged between his ribs. He just soaks in the moment for a while, the glow of the conversation inside his heart like a fire he didn’t know he was cold without.

Stop that.

The reply comes instantly.

Fine. – J.T.

Viktor actually has to scoff. He rubs his temples, muttering at the ceiling like it’s responsible for his suffering. “Unbelievable.”

That’s even more formal. What are you, a senator?

And what did he except; he receives an answer that couldn’t be more Jayce.

Senator Talis to you, V.

Bold of you to assume I don’t already have campaign posters.

Viktor snorts again – this time it bubbles deeper in his chest, a sound he doesn't bother suppressing anymore. The kind of laugh that tastes the cheap drinks they shared on a park bench. Another buzz stops him from dwelling on the past too long.

Okay okay. I’m done. Happy now?

No dash. No signature. Just Jayce, taking off the suit and rolling up his sleeves.

He stares at it for a long moment, as if the absence of punctuation carries more weight than it should. He lets the cursor blink, unsure if he liked it more or less. Another message follows without him even answering the first one. One that pauses him.

Okay but real talk? I sign my texts because I want you to know it’s me. Not just my phone. Not just a message. It’s… me. Every time. Even when it’s dumb. Especially then.

Viktor’s fingers still against the screen like he’s been cornered by a horde of hungry hyenas. The little warmth in his chest flares into a full-blown flame, flickering sharp movements, like acci

dentally lighting a clipper too close to your own skin in the wind.

Idiot that he is, Jayce adds one final message:

– Jayce :)

And now the dash feels different. Not ego. Not branding. It’s a whole presence. Like Jayce is trying to leave a thumbprint behind, even in pixels. Proof that he’s here, reaching out.

Viktor sets the phone down carefully, clicking on the personalized “Do Not Disturb” mode that Caitlyn had helped him make once. His thumb brushes the edge like it’s something precious, not just a device he has to keep up with the flow of time.

He moves to the table again, sitting down this time, and elbows braced beside Elara, who is mid-rant, animated and highly explosive, about a playground betrayal involving sidewalk chalk, three raisins, and someone named Lucas who is henceforth banished. Viktor doesn’t catch every detail.

He’s still smiling.

They weren’t supposed to cross paths.

Jayce Talis was everything too bright and breakable about high school popularity. He existed like a movie stereotype, varsity jacket slung over one shoulder, some book he probably didn’t even read stuffed under his arm like a prop, with white smiles and idiot charm. His laugh carried down hallways like the opening riff of a pop-punk song. Everyone knew him. Most people liked him. Some loved him, especially noticeable during Valentine’s day. A few seethed about it in bathroom stalls, scribbling TALIS IS A TOOL in Sharpie that got scrubbed off weekly.

Viktor, meanwhile, moved through those same halls like an afterthought. Like the credits at the end of a film no one stayed to watch. He was angular, quiet, and had the kind of resting bitchface that made freshmen fear they'd been hexed. His band shirts changed daily – Bring Me the Horizon, My Chemical Romance, Black Veil Brides – always two sizes too big and washed until the fabric curled at the hem. His eyeliner was never applied neatly, but it didn’t matter. It had become something permanent. Like his scowl. Or his limp.

He carried a cane that didn’t match his outfits and a dog-eared copy of The Soulbreaker that definitely did. His locker was filled with books, tools, and pictures he probably downloaded from MySpace and printed at the corner store. Teachers gave him space. Students gave him weird nicknames. No one sat beside him on purpose. He seemed to like it that way.

But Jayce noticed him.

The way his shirt clung tightly to his narrow shoulders – Pierce the Veil, bold across the chest, some of the white lettering cracked. The cover of Selfish Machines was just below. He looked exhausted and ethereal all at once, like he might vanish if someone looked at him too long.

So Jayce looked.

Then came the realization that Viktor always walked the same hall after sixth period. That he always paused at the vending machine but never bought anything. That the songs he listened to on his ancient, sticker-covered iPod were sad and loud and just his taste. 

And one day – with just some minor planning – he followed. “Hey!” he had called out, jogging to catch up. Just one simple word.

Viktor paused at the side door of the school, the one that led out to the overgrown hill behind campus. His expression was unreadable behind the curtain of his dyed hair, nothing short of suspicious, like he was calculating exactly how likely it was that Jayce had mistaken him for someone else.

Jayce caught up, panting slightly because he hadn’t thought to pace himself. “Uh– You, uh– dropped this.” He held out a pen. That was not Viktor’s pen. Jayce knew it. Viktor knew it. It was a Bic. Viktor only used pencils with nihilistic jokes on them.

There was a moment of silence so still it could’ve been preserved in amber.

Viktor stared at the outstretched pen with the most unimpressed face that the other had ever been met with. Then up at Jayce. Then back to the pen. His expression didn’t change, just a slow blink, that of a bored jungle cat knowing that its prey was cornered. “…That is not mine.”

Jayce grinned anyway, wide, nervous, like he hadn’t thought this far ahead and now had to commit. “Yeah. I figured. Just, uh– needed an excuse to say hi?” It came out as more of a question than the easy confidence he wanted to portray.

The look Viktor gave him could’ve soured cream. It was so utterly annoyed in a way that felt perfected, practiced even, like he’d spent years using it to keep people exactly this far away. “You’re terrible at excuses.”

Jayce only laughed, pushing a breath out of his lungs like he’d run here. He kind of had. “But it worked, didn’t it?” He gestured vaguely toward Viktor’s chest, like this had all been part of some brilliant plan. “Anyway, that’s my favorite album.”

Viktor blinked, visibly recalibrating. That took him off guard. “Sorry?”

Jayce jabbed a finger toward his shirt again. “Selfish Machines. Track eleven: Million Dollar Houses. Gets me every time.”

And for the first time, Viktor actually looked… surprised. Not annoyed. Not suspicious. It softened him, but only a little. The shorter boy gave him a one-over. “You don’t look like someone who listens to emo.”

Jayce shrugged awkwardly, huffing a laugh while rubbing the back of his neck. “Well, technically, they describe their music as post-hardcore with a mix of emo and pop-punk. But, uh. Yeah.”

There was something disarmingly earnest about the way he said it; shoulders drooped, voice quieter now. Like he expected to be laughed at for nerding.

Viktor blinked again. Oh my god. He should’ve walked away. Should’ve rolled his eyes, muttered something scathing, and disappeared down the hall like always. That’s what he usually did. Especially with guys like this; guys who smiled too fast, who touched your arm when they talked to you like it wasn’t a loaded gesture. Who only noticed people like Viktor when they’d been dared to.

But there was no laughter in Jayce’s face. No mockery, no pity. Just a nervous, almost hopeful twitch. He genuinely wanted this conversation to keep going.

Viktor’s grip tightened slightly on the cane in his hand, thumb brushing the worn brass handle.

“…Fine,” he finally relented. “You get one conversation.”

Jayce blinked, surprise striking his features now. “Seriously?” Viktor could’ve thought that be just granted his dearest wish.

“One. Singular. Don’t waste it.”

A slow grin spread across Jayce’s face – smaller this time, no canines. The softest curl of his lips that Viktor had ever seen.

“Challenge accepted.”

They ended up at the abandoned lookout behind the school, an old fire escape platform perched on rusted scaffolding, overlooking the fields where nothing grew but wind and dry grass.

Jayce climbed up first, surprisingly nimble with his stupidly heavy backpack thumping against his back. “C’mon,” he called down, grinning over the edge. “It’s not technically trespassing if no one cares anymore.”

Viktor raised an eyebrow but followed anyway, praying for his brace and joints aching with each metal rung. When he reached the top, he took one look around and immediately let ouy a shaky breath, “This is wildly unsafe.”

Jayce just beamed and plopped down on the metal grate, pulling a scuffed Bluetooth speaker from his bag. The corner was cracked. Something inside rattled when he shook it. “Hope you don’t mind.”

He hit play without waiting for permission, the sentence complete unnecessary.

The familiar high-pitched voice cried into the dusky air: Million Dollar Houses bleeding into the twilight. Viktor wondered if the autotune was on purpose o a genuine producing mistake.

‘So what if I was just a painter…’

He stared straight ahead. The horizon was soaked in amber, the last light of the day smearing gold across his high cheekbones. His lashes caught it, too. Jayce noticed.

“God,” the brunette whispered, voice barely a breath. “This song ruins me.”

Jayce nodded in agreement, pulling his knees up to his chest, making himself surprisingly small. “Same. It’s like…” He struggled for a second, lips twitching with unfinished thoughts. “It understands something I haven’t figured out yet.”

‘Painting houses on the rich blue coast…’

The wind sighed around them. And for a while, they just sat, knees not quite touching, shadows stretching two long silhouettes cradled by the light and the sky. The music did the talking. A truce.

Then Jayce, with a hesitation so small it might’ve gone unnoticed, rummaged through his backpack once more and flipped open a small A5 sketchbook.

‘Would you ever try to leave me…’

Viktor glanced sideways, drawn by curiosity against his better judgment – and froze.

Soft graphite swept across each page, pencil strokes shaded with patience, smudged faintly where a thumb had passed or an eraser had touched for than once. The dust of grey trailed in both directions.

Was Jayce ambidextrous?

Architectural sketches filled the left-hand spread, buildings that could exist, ideas so well structured that they maybe even should. The next page displayed figures. Not idealized. Not perfect. Eyes, mouths, the curve of someone’s spine. There was a stunning side profile of a girl from his chemistry class. Bodies were portrayed in all their mass – flesh, fat, skin, softness of life.

One sketch in particular made him still – a pair of hands at the bottom right corner. Slender wrists, knuckles dusted pink, fingers outstretched like they were reaching for something just out of frame. He knew that hand. Every line of it.

There, on the inside of the middle finger; a mole. Barely noticeable unless you looked hard enough. But Viktor had seen it a thousand times before, peaking beside the pencil he held, the hand he wrote with. His hand.

“…You drew these?” Viktor whispered, voice in full awe.

Jayce, on the other hand, looked like he wanted to disappear. He scratched the back of his neck, sheepish. “Yeah. Just… stuff I see. Stuff I don’t want to forget.”

‘For somebody who deserves you most…’

Viktor’s gaze lingered on the hands.

“You’re incredibly talented,” he finally muttered, his chest aching. He had been noticed – and he wasn’t yet sure if this was something he wanted to run from or hold close.

Jayce turned slightly toward him, eyes catching what was left of the sun, revealing a few golden freckles in the hazel vastness. His voice was so small in comparison to his size. “Can I draw you?”

‘Cause darling, I am just a painter…’

Viktor recoiled half an inch, startled. “Me? Why?” As if Jayce hadn’t already.

But he was already looking at him differently – like the boy was halfway done with the outline of his soul. His gaze wasn’t invasive. Just… interested. Genuine in a way Viktor wasn’t used to. “You’ve got a good face.”

The older boy scoffed, narrowed his eyes. “What does that even mean?”

Jayce shrugged, angling the sketchbook against his bent knees, his pencil already twitching in his fingers. “It means…” He squinted, then smiled, almost to himself. “The mole by your right eye. The way your hair lightens at the ends, like the sun’s been trying to keep a piece of you. And your expression’s kind of… tragic. But not tragic-tragic. It’s like… you’re thinking too much all the time. Like you feel everything and just haven’t figured out how to say it.”

‘I’m painting houses for the rich old folks…’

Viktor didn’t move. Just stared at him, expression unreadable – then promptly flushed red, a slow-creeping blush high on his cheeks and trickling across his nose like a water drop on paper. It contrasted stark against the black box dye strands falling in his eyes.

“No one’s ever said anything like that before,” he murmured, his voice nearly lost in the wind. He couldn’t meet Jayce’s eyes anymore.

Jayce’s smile turned soft with the cadence of his voice. “Keep that face. Looks good on you.”

He bent to the page, pencil already sweeping strokes across the scratchy paper, like Viktor had given him his new favorite subject.

‘I’m gonna make a million dollars…’

Viktor sat still, which wasn’t easy when he was literally being studied. He’d been drawn before, once, by a bored art student who’d asked if she could “practice anatomy.” That sketch had made him look hollow and mean, bones too angled, eyes like pits.

This was already different. Jayce wasn’t drawing like he wanted to dissect Viktor; he was drawing like he wanted to keep him in his pocket like a war veteran kept a picture of his home in his coat.

Viktor opened his mouth to protest. Closed it. Opened it again, then sighed and looked away, lips twitching at the corners like he wasn’t quite sure how to smile, if he should.

The sun had dipped low by now, carving more purple along the edges of his face, catching in the lower half of his neck and cheeks. For once, he didn’t feel like the school’s token cryptid in eyeliner. He felt – fuck – he felt seen. Like someone seen through, brushed the strings of his heart and not flinched away from the pained sounds it made.

Like someone wanted to remember him.

Jayce drew Viktor like a muse. He traced the edge of his cheekbones like following the stars, trying to see where the constellations ended and the boy began. He captured the auburn roots beginning to peak again. He shaded the glow in his eyes with pencil, as if light could be coaxed from paper. And then, so gently, he marked the mole beneath his right eye, and the other above his lip, punctuation in a story only Jayce knew how to read.

‘Cause nobody’s gonna steal you, no…’

They didn’t speak again, not because the silence was awkward, but because their bodies were enough. The sky melted into indigo behind them, that post-sunset blue. The speaker still held onto life, lyrics floating between them like a dizzying perfume.

‘For diamonds and gold…’

And neither of them said anything about the fact that they came back to that same spot the next day.

Or the one after that.

‘I’ve broken bones for you…’

Back in the present, Jayce still thinks about that lookout sometimes. Even before Viktor, he had quite the history with the view, the groaning beams, the height.

His mind wandered to rusted scaffolding and peeling paint and a boy with honey-colored eyes rimmed by messy eyeliner. To graphite-smudged fingers and lyrics that mixed into the wind’s melody. To the moment Viktor had said me? like the idea of being wanted – of being seen – was too absurd to be true. And then, bravely, had let himself be turned into art.

Now, Viktor wore lighter button-ups instead of edgy band tees. The combat boots had been replaced by dress shoes that clicked sharply against the floor. His hair, once dyed pitch-black to match the mood, had grown out in soft, yet still messy spikes, chestnut streaked with silver, like the years had brushed their fingers through him and left a kiss behind.

He still used a cane. But it gleamed now, polished steel and dark mahogany, functional, beautiful. Just one more part of him. Sometimes, he even saw him walk a few steps without it.

Jayce had chuckled the first time he’d seen him like that; collared shirt ironed, thermal mug in hand, the picture of academic elegance. “From emo to espresso adult,” he’d murmured to himself, more amused than he had any right to be.

But the laugh had caught in his throat. Because beneath it, there was something else. A pain he couldn’t quite place.

He hadn’t expected Viktor to grow up.

When Viktor left Piltover all those years ago, when the calls dropped off and Jayce’s texts started going to an unavailable number, he’d told himself not to hope. Not to expect. He’d read the prognosis many months ago. He’d stayed up countless nights, alone in the blue glow of his laptop, scrolling through medical articles with a fluttering heart, imagining a future statistics and cut endings.

The diagnosis was rare. A degenerative lung disease with a name he could never quite pronounce. The kind of thing that made doctors sigh and medical students ask to examine. Back when it reached its peak once, Viktor could barely cross a room without doubling over, breath sawing out of his lungs like it hurt to live. Jayce remembered sitting outside hospital rooms, fists clenched, trying not to cry loud enough for nurses to hear. He’d sit for hours until the security found him and kicked him out.

He hadn’t thought he’d get this.

This version of Viktor. The thirty-eight years on his back with a daughter and a doctorate and smile lines around his mouth. The man who still spoke softly when he was thinking and still furrowed his brow like the weight of the world was just another equation he hadn’t cracked yet. The man who had survived long enough for his hair to grey, for his body to grow into itself, even if a part of him would always belong to the past.

Maybe it was luck. Maybe it was grit. Maybe it was some Zaunite clinical trial Viktor had agreed to at the last second, teeth clenched, hating every moment of it. Maybe the world had been merciful, the grim reaper just a split second too late in breaking him.

But whatever it was; it had worked.

These days, Viktor didn’t cough when he laughed. He stood taller, shoulders pushed back more. Smiled with his whole face, not just his mouth. Even his eyes joined in, creased at the corners, warm and alive, like they’d stopped keeping tally of how many years he’d borrowed and started living like they were his to claim.

I almost lost this. I almost lost you before I ever got to know what we could become.

One afternoon, Jayce caught sight of him outside Mae’s school.

He hadn’t been looking for him, had just shown up ten minutes early with his coffee still warm and the vague intention of checking emails in his car. But there he was, a light in the distance that always caught Jayce’s eyes, even in the dark clothes he was wearing today – a black turtleneck that made Jayce stare at the milky skin underneath more than was appropriate for colleague-friends-acquaintances. Or something in between.

He was parked across the lot in that same dented sedan that looked like it had survived more than one rough decade. The side mirror was still taped on with duct tape from a stupid accident. The passenger window was rolled halfway down, and the air seemed to glint with spring sun, thick with pollen and the scent of cut grass.

Elara burst out of the school doors like a firework, backpack bouncing, arms flailing, joy uncontained. She scrambled into the front seat like it was a rocketship primed for takeoff, and Viktor leaned over, unbothered by the chaos, huffing as she dejected a kiss on the forehead by shoving something under his nose: a piece of paper, maybe a sketch, probably filled with wild swirls and borderless imagination.

Jayce froze mid-sip. The coffee started to burn his hand through the thin cup, but he didn’t notice. His gaze glued helplessly on the scene across the lot, caught like a sleeve on a doorknob, hurt like snagged skin around the cuticle.

Elara was talking fast, her whole body helping. Hands gesturing so big they tip-toed on interpretive dance. Her eyes were glowing with whatever story she was spilling, and Viktor – god, Viktor – was bent toward her like she was telling him the secret to the stars. His expression was grave in the most loving way, brows knit in exaggerated focus, nodding along as if her every word carried an indescribable amount of weight.

Elara burst into delighted laughter, and swatted his arm like they’d found each other in a hundred lifetimes. Her giggles lifted into the air, light and bouncing like dandelion seeds caught in wind.

It hit Jayce with a heavy force. That vision, domestic and golden and already slipping away like a dream he forgot upon waking. His heart clenched so tightly it almost felt like he was losing his breath, the oxygen having no room to flow anymore.

That honest, deep trust of a relationship that had been built slowly, honestly. The way Elara laughed, from the back of her throat, warm, like it had never occurred to her that the world could be anything but safe when her father was around.

She looks like him, Jayce thought, fingers tightening a little around his paper cup. But she laughs like someone else.

Viktor always laughed with a hand in front of his mouth, covering his crooked canine teeth, making sure not to smile too wide. Not that it mattered to Jayce – he had already captured them in his sketchbook.

He’d never asked about Viktor’s ex. Not once. Not out of bitterness. Just out of… fear. The fear that shakes against your ribcage and makes you skip a song you used to love because it reminds you of someone else's hands.

There had been someone else.

Someone who’d stayed through the worst of it, who hadn’t just seen Viktor sick, but held him through it. Who knew just what to do when he couldn’t breathe, who kissed his temple in the hospital beds and stayed until dawn, even when dawn hurt.

Someone who Jayce couldn’t be.

He looked at Elara again; all gangly limbs and wide eyes and a sort of headlong joy that made her seem older than she was, wiser in ways that didn’t come from the books she read. She had Viktor’s intelligent gaze, that observational skill that took everything in before she spoke. But her laugh – that was something else. It didn’t carry the caution that Viktor wore like a second skin. It was so bright. Luminous.

Jayce didn’t know who gave her that, who planted that firefly in her vocal cords. But the thought of it settled slowly in his chest, like the poison of a black widow’s bite he never realized had crawled under his skin.

The engine across the lot sputtered to life. Jayce blinked out of it. Elara was still talking – Viktor was still listening, like nothing in the world mattered more than what she had to say. The car pulled out and turned onto the main road.

Jayce stood there, coffee cooling in his hand, heart beating a little too loud for how quiet everything was.

There was no ring on Viktor’s finger.

And Jayce hated that he noticed.

The drive home in Jayce’s BMW X4 was like the tires were swimming on golden light, one of those late afternoons where the sky looked like it had been brushed over with oil paint; orange bleeding into rose, into blue dust. The sky looked impossibly wide, like it had been stretched just for them. Jayce had the windows cracked, letting in a breeze that smelled of grapefruit and warm asphalt. The air tugged gently at Mae’s curls, teasing one pink-streaked strand that Jayce didn’t dare ask about, because he was sure whatever dyed it wasn’t FDA-approved.

She leaned against the seatbelt like it was a hammock, elbow cocked up, yawning in between rambles. A tube of yogurt was crumpled halfway up in one hand, forgotten between slurps and stories. The other hand fluttered in the air as she spoke, painting the scenes in front of her face like they were being projected from her eyes onto the windshield.

“And then Mark said the rocket was his idea even though it totally wasn’t, but Destiny said it was okay ‘cause he’s ‘trying his best,’ and then Elara said maybe we should build a new rocket – but with legs, like the bug from her dream, remember? The one with the trumpet legs?”

Jayce grinned at the road, one hand resting easy on the wheel, the other resting on his cheek, elbow propped up at the bottom of the driver’s window. “Right. Her nightmare-bug band.”

“Exactly,” Mae said, satisfied that her father remembered. She slurped her yogurt like she was pulling in oxygen and sugar at the same time, then flicked her eyes sideways as his phone lit up in the BluKar holder. She went quiet – eerily quiet for such a booming voice.

“Is the guy you text a lot…” she started, licking a streak of strawberry from the corner of her mouth, smacking her lips. “…Mr. Viktor?”

Jayce blinked, almost swerving to look at her. “What? What do you mean a lot?” He completely ignored what else she was implying.

Mae gave him a long-suffering look, all rosy, fat cheek and raised brow. She was six-and-three-quarters and carried herself like she’d seen it all. “You smile at your phone.”

Jayce made a noise somewhere between a scoff and a laugh. “I smile at memes. Don’t start rumors, corazón.”

“You only smile at some memes. The others you make that face, like…” Mae flung her hands in the air as if she was grasping for the words. “…like a hawk trying to do a crossword puzzle. And then you sigh and go, ‘God, I’m so old.’” At that last part, she dropped her voice, pretending to mimic her dad.

Jayce groaned, unable to fight back against that one. “Wow. Brutal.”

His daughter only grinned like she’d just won a presidential election. “Sooo... is it him?”

He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, the pads tapping an even rhythm against the leather. The sun shifted behind a low cloud, casting everything in an amber-grey multiply layer. He didn’t answer right away.

“Maybe,” he muttered finally, the word soft. Uncertain. He wasn’t really sure if they were really texting or still walking that line of we’re doing this for the girls.

Mae swung her legs again, a ticking pendulum of motion, tiny limbs not quite reaching the ground just yet. “You look happy when you talk to him,” she said simply. “I’m definitely happy when I get to talk to Elara.”

Jayce went quiet at that. The road suddenly seemed like a sea of tar that’s sucking in his car. He almost missed a turn.

A stretch of silence passed between them, full of wind and Mae’s humming and that ache that didn’t hurt but still pressed somewhere deep in the chest.

“Yeah,” he murmured. “I think I am.”

She didn’t answer. Just leaned her head back against the window, a small figure silhouetted by passing headlights. New to waning to a first quarter; gibbous until fully enveloped by light for one split second before the phases repeat.

His little moonshine. For a brief flicker, he caught her eyes in the reflection of the glass – hazel, just like his. That same warm shade, all honey, earth and dusk, quietly watching the world from behind the safety glass.

She looked like she'd finally used up her million daily words.

At the next red light, Jayce reached over without thinking, brushing her curls back from her cheek and tucking the pink-tinted lock behind her ear. His fingers lingered for half a second. A wordless thank-you, maybe. Or a promise.

He didn’t say anything else.

The apartment smelled like basil and paprika by the time Mel arrived.

The scent hung heavy in the warm air; spiced paprika and homey pepper, curling from the stovetop. Viktor had opened the windows just a crack to let the evening breeze carry it down the hallway, and even then, it clung stubbornly to his sleeves and the front of his shirt. Goulash was simmering in the wide enamel pot – his mother’s recipe, revised a dozen times to account for spice preference with just enough bay leaf to feel like a memory.

He’d just finished plating the last of the meal – Elara’s favorite, the meat carefully cut into tender halves to spare her the trouble – when the familiar knock sounded at the door. The same pattern as she has always done: three crisp taps followed by the soft scuff of a heel on tile. She let herself in before Viktor could reach the handle, something they’ve always done, a presence that just breezed in like good fortune. My home is yours.

“Your neighbor downstairs seemingly adores me,” Mel chuckles, stepping over the threshold like she lived here. She raised a bottle of wine, the sweet, crimson liquid swaying at the throat of it. “Noxian red. Dry. Better than the Piltovian battery acid they serve at those stifling galas.”

Viktor helped her out of her coat with a smile, reaching for the bottle. “Careful. That’s two nations in one sentence. You’ll start a war before dinner.”

She leaned in to greet him with a kiss on each cheek, smelling of a nutty, feminine perfume and raspberry shampoo. “Please. If there were a war, it would be over wine labels and my mother would be leading the charge.”

Viktor chuckled under his breath. Mel Medarda, peacemaker with cutting eyes and fire in her heart. He tucked the bottle under one arm and made his way back to the kitchen, leading her to it.

From the dinner table, Elara peeked up from behind a half-devoured bread dumpling. Her cheeks were puffed full and her fingers were dusted with flour residue. “Hi, Miss Medarda,” she spoke gleefully around a mouthful, crumbs tumbling.

“Hi, sweetheart,” Mel cooed, crouching to kiss the crown of Elara’s head. “Did you show your dad the art you made?”

“She did,” Viktor said, already working the corkscrew into the wine, twisting it carefully to not spook his daughter, the small girl still beaming from Mel’s greeting: “A portrait of beetles fishing for worms. A curious interpretation.”

He’d had to drop Elara off at Mel’s place earlier that week, when Caitlyn had shown up at his door holding the thickest manila folder he’d ever seen, and a face that put death to shame. Whatever had been inside had taken hours to unravel, and Jayce had been trapped in lecture halls all day so a play date with Mae was out of the question. That left Mel – bless her scheduling skills – stepping in without hesitation.

And thank god for it.

When Viktor came to pick Elara up, he’d noticed it instantly. She’d been glowing. Mel had always had that effect. She encouraged creativity in ways that still were playful without destroying half the house. And for a child who sometimes carried the weight of other people’s silences, it had been a good place to land.

Viktor glanced at Elara, who was slipped a new marker from Mel with a wink and a shared giggle. He made a mental note to send her flowers sometime.

His daughter nodded solemnly at his previous comment, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “Ms. Medarda said it was modernist!”

“Of course she did,” Viktor murmured, pouring the wine into two expensive glasses – one etched with stars, the other a gift from Heimerdinger at his graduation. “She’s encouraging you to enter your avant-garde era.”

Mel sat with a low laugh, resting her elbows against the table’s edge, already looking like she belonged here too. “I see she’s entering her genius phase. All great artists start with a little bang.”

Viktor raised an eyebrow over the rim of his glass, a chuckle escaping as his breath fogged the crystal. The first sip of the Noxian wine traced a slow-burning path down his throat. It first tasted of scorched cedar or smoke, but it melted into something softer. Hints of overripe plum and blackcurrant, a touch of clove, a sugary sweetness lingered at the edges of his tongue. “And what would you classify as a bang, exactly? Cannibalistic metaphors?”

Mel grinned. “If it unsettles you, it’s working.”

He moved around the table with the wine, setting a glass before Mel. She met his eyes, and for a moment, they spoke. But not in words; in that grateful look of having endured years of the most unusual friendship imaginable – Piltover’s most powerful art teacher and the first Zaunite to become Heimerdinger’s prime student.

“Dinner smells divine,” she said eventually.

Viktor leaned against the counter, crossing one ankle over the other. “It tastes even better.”

Minutes quickly became hours of catching up. Mel sipped her wine in slow intervals while Elara had slipped away halfway through, cradling the last bread roll like a treasure as she retreated to her room to finish construction on her yarn and paperclip castle.

Viktor let himself sink into the cadence of Mel’s voice, soothing as a lullaby. She didn’t speak loudly. She never had to. Mel knew how to occupy a space with her presence alone, how to weave grace through every word, every sideways glance.

And she was one of the few people who never asked him if he was okay. She always saw straight into him.

“So.” Mel set her glass down with a gentle clink, then leaned into her palm, elbow propped against the table. Her gaze had sharpened like a scalpel that just found soft tissue. “You and Jayce, hm?”

Viktor didn’t look up. He busied himself with slicing his bread into mathematically perfect quarters, like he was completely unbothered by that name. “What about us?”

Mel’s grin unfolded slowly. “He’s… different. Has a way of kindness that isn’t performative. And his daughter is just like him. Teeth and sunlight. Honestly, it’s unsettling. They’ve managed to fit in here alarmingly well.”

Viktor hummed without answering, but the corners of his mouth threatened a smile. He grabbed his knife just a little tighter.

Mel watched him, eyes sparkling. “Are you suggesting something?” he murmured at last, his voice low and toneless.

“I’m observing,” she corrected, though the word was obviously sugarcoated. “I’ve seen the way you look when they’re near. You keep multiple stacks of juice boxes in the fridge now, Viktor. I counted at least twelve. No grown man needs that many, not even with that sugar demon. Unless he’s preparing for the apocalypse or… attached.”

Finally, he looked up. One brow arched in, but the amusement in his eyes betrayed him. “You sound like a detective.”

Mel raised her glass again, this time in triumph. “Please. I’m Noxian. We’re born nosy and impossible to deter.”

Their conversation wandered after that. They moved like river stones, skipping from topic to topic. Mel updated him on Jinx: her progress at the traineeship, her art installations that made the engineering professors sweat, her attempts to install LED lights in the psychology department’s therapy rooms. “They blink. She says it’s for ambiance. The patients are unconvinced.”

Viktor laughed so hard he had to cover his mouth with the back of his hand. His shoulders trembled, the wine warm and pleasant in his throat.

By the time Mel rose to leave, the sky beyond the windows had turned a deep violet. Stars pricked through the dark like shy little dancers. Elara had fallen asleep on the couch, curled beside a half-finished drawing of a dragon-rabbit hybrid with huge wings. A yellow crayon was still clutched in her fingers like it fell asleep with her.

Viktor walked slowly, cursing his knee under his breath as he scooped her into his arms – while he still could. He held her as if she were made of glass and stardust, mindful of her elbow where she tender to bruise, and of the braid Mel had neatly woven into her hair earlier.

She stirred just enough to mumble something about lava bunnies and burrow deeper into the crook of his neck.

He carried her to bed like he always did, like it might be the last time he could. Tucked her in. Smoothed a strand of hair from her cheek. Turned off the little nightlight, but not all the way. It still glowed dimly, just enough to keep the monsters away.

When he returned, the apartment quiet. Not empty, not cold and abandoned. Just a silence after the storm, when ozone scent lingered and the rain began to drip from your eyelashes.

The ghost of Mel’s laughter still lingered in the corners of the room. He let it stay.

The light in the living room buzzed and flickered, just once, as he moved to turn it off. Viktor made a mental note to fix it sometime this week. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe when Elara wasn’t watching cartoons that made fixing anything impossible.

He moved to the kitchen and poured the last of the Noxian wine into his glass, sitting back at the table. Viktor’s slim fingers cradled the stem with one hand, thumb brushing the curve like it might tell him something.

For a moment, he just sat there. The hum of the fridge. The soft tick of the clock on the far right wall. The faint scuffle of Elara turning over in her sleep.

Eventually, he finished the final sip and turned off the lights.

He locked the door with a same click as every night, making sure he hears it twice. Rinsed the wine glass in slow, circular swipes, the warm water turning cold before he set it on the drying rack. Brushed his teeth in a haze, too occupied with staring at his reflection with that same tired expression he swore he needed to make disappear.

Then, he switched off the bathroom light, made his way to the bedroom, and slid beneath the covers with all the dead weight of an exhausted father.

The sheets were cold on one side, cold after a body had given up waiting. Viktor reached for the pillow beside him, hand curling into empty linen. The space was pristine. Undisturbed. As if it had never been claimed at all.

He stared at the ceiling. The shadows cut across it like cracks in porcelain. Actually, maybe those were cracks– Another mental note.

The stillness had begun to sing a lullaby, the heater and the creak of old pipes joining in on the familiar tune he hears every night. The bed warmed slowly with his own body heat, the silence no longer feeling like a scream held underwater.

Then his phone lit up.

Great.

The glow against his nightstand nearly blinded him. Blocked Number.

But he didn’t need the name to know.

His breath caught, held. One beat. Another.

He answered.

The voice on the other end was already a shot to the stomach, as if she’d been spiralling for hours and had only now decided to force the knife into him.

“You think I don’t know what you’re doing?” the woman on the other end slurred, venom already bubbling beneath the words; hot, cold, with spikes. “Parading her around like some kind of trophy, like I didn’t make her in my body. Like I’m not allowed to exist in her world.”

Viktor closed his eyes. He remembered the beeathing technique the therapist taught him. In through the nose; out through the mouth. His chest rose and fell once.

“Lilya,” he murmured, voice trained from this almost routinely scenario. “It’s late.”

Lilya. His ex-wife. The one who once kissed the pulse in his throat and called it sacred. Who used to trace the seams of his suits with fingers that trembled. Who once told him he was the only person she had ever trusted.

And then tore it all apart. Not slowly, all in one motion. With the same hands that once held him like glass, now turned claws.

“You think you’re better than me?” she spat, her voice hitching and cracking like she’s about to hyperventilate. “Just because you have your stuck up friends and play house in your Piltie apartment like you’ve won something? Like you’re the fucking hero?”

“You’re drunk,” he hisses quietly. A worn-out line in a script he knew too well. He always kept his voice level; had learned, painfully, that anything louder might be mistaken for an invitation to war. And he knew the consequences of war.

“You took everything from me.” Her words cracked mid-sentence, the sob curling at the end. “You took her.”

He didn’t speak. There was nothing left to say that wouldn’t feed her delusions.

On the other end, he could hear her erratic breathing like she’d been running from something only she could see.

“Don’t you fucking give me the cokd shoulder, Viktor,” Lilya practically growled. “Put her on. I want to talk to her.”

His jaw clenched painfully, teeth crunching. She can throw everything at him, blame him for everything, but he will not let her near his daughter again.

“No,” Viktor said, finally. All previous restraint slipped, his voice bordering on the same level of raw as hers. “You don’t get to hurt her anymore.”

And with that, he hung up. Viktor sat frozen at the edge of the bed, phone still in hand. The screen dimmed slowly to a cold black, but his fingers felt like they were on fire. His terrified reflection greeted him.

He was trembling.

He exhaled through his nose – inhale through the nose, exhale through the mouth – as if that alone might push the weight back down where it wouldn’t shatter him.

Outside the bedroom, a light flickered on. The heater clicked to life again with a muted thunk. Somewhere down the street, a dog barked.

A muffled sound.

Hiccups. Trembling. Small.

“...Elara?” The soft pitter-patter of bare footsteps ghosted down the hallway. He hadn’t even noticed the door creak open. Hadn’t heard the small hand push it ajar.

Before he could think, Viktor was already moving fast. Faster than his joints should allow, the ache in his knee swallowed by adrenaline. The bedroom was behind him in seconds. The silence in the apartment was absolute.

Except–

In the living room.

And there, just beyond the edge of the table, half-swallowed in shadow, was a shaking silhouette, a little leaf in a dark forest.

The pale pink hem of Elara’s nightgown peeked from beneath a dining chair, crumpled like wilting flower petals. Her fists were balled tightly at her knees. Her shoulders shook with the soft, syncopated rhythm of held-back sobs; she was trying not to make any noise.

Viktor’s breath caught, then left him in a rush.

“Sweetheart,” he whispered, already lowering to his knees. His heart pounded so loud he was afraid she might hear it and think it meant danger. “Oh, zlatíčko…”

She didn’t speak.

But when he ducked beneath the table, crossed the wooden threshold into that tiny, makeshift sanctuary she formed, her body folded into his without hesitation. She pressed into him like she was made for that shape. The tears began, already soaking through his shirt.

Viktor gathered her gently, arms around her small frame, his palm cupping the back of her head as he curled around her protectively. The table legs boxed them in, and underneath, it was dim. It smelled faintly of wood, pencil shavings, and spilled juice.

Once the sobs calmed into uneven breaths, he began stroking her hair gently. “Were you scared, Elli?” he murmured.

She nodded against his chest, her little face hidden in the fold of his shirt.  “She was yelling again,” the small girl whispered. Her voice cracked on the last word, like she hadn’t meant to say it aloud. Or didn’t want to believe it.

Viktor closed his eyes.

The pain was immediate – the spear between your ribs that lives in your lungs and has become one with your bones.

“I’m so sorry,,” he whispered, rocking her slightly. One hand smoothed down her back, as if he could press calm into her spine, press love into all the places that had been startled.

A breath passed. With her pressed into him like she wanted to hide inside his skin, she looked even more fragile than before. She took a steadying breath – his strong girl. “Why does she sound like that?”

Viktor swallowed hard. His throat ached. There were a thousand things he could have said. A thousand lies he could’ve painted soft.

Instead, he tucked her closer. Let his voice go thin.

“Because she’s hurting, angel,” he said, voice nearly lost in her hair. “And sometimes when people hurt, they forget how to be kind.”

Because she drinks to forget. Because she never healed. Because she can’t love the way you deserve. Because I tried to fix it for too long and failed.

But he didn’t say any of that. The words were too big, too grown-up, for her small ears.

Instead, Viktor pressed a kiss to her forehead, breathed in the soft cotton and sugar scent of her hair, and whispered against it, “Do you want to hear a story?”

Elara gave a watery sniffle. “Will it have monsters?”

“Would that be a bad thing?” he asked, tilting his head, teasing just enough to earn a hiccup of a giggle.

“But only good ones, please,” she asked, rubbing her eyes with the back of her hand.

“Only the best kind,” Viktor promised, settling further into the shadows beneath the table, the warmth of her small frame curled into his chest like a heartbeat.

And so, in a voice low and careful, he told her a Zaunite tale. Not one from books, but one his mother used to tell him, long ago, during blackout nights when the smog made it impossible to open the window, even when the heat was unbearable and the walls sweat.

“There was once a sculptor,” he began, slowly, “a woman who lived far above the factories, where the smog only brushed the rooftops. She made things from clay. Birds – parrots, hawks, hummingbirds – with wings stretched wide like they were always about to fly.”

He felt Elara’s breathing slow, the soft rhythm of it brushing against his collarbone, her eyelashes fluttering gently.

“She made hundreds,” Viktor went on. “All perfect. All beautiful. But the sculptor... she didn’t love any of them. Not really. She’d place them on shelves and forget their names.”

“Why?” Elara mumbled, nuzzling further into her father’s warmth.

“Because her hands had forgotten how to make something just for love,” Viktor answered her softly. “Until one day, she shaped a little pigeon, smaller than the rest. A bit uneven. One wing tilted a little wrong. The clay cracked at the belly. But when she looked at it, something in her heart aches. She’d never seen anything like it.”

He paused, brushing a curl from Elara’s forehead.

“She didn’t place that one on a shelf. No. She tucked it close to her chest, kept it safe.”

“And then what?” Elara asked, eyelids heavy but still listening so intently.

“Well,” Viktor murmured, “the world noticed. Because when something is beautiful and rare, people want to steal it. So the sculptor hid the little pigeon in the woods. And there, a fox found it – clever and thin, with scars on its legs and a limp in its step.”

Elara blinked up at him, more alert now. “Was it a bad fox?”

“No,” he chuckled at her, pressing his forehead against hers. “He was a good fox. A tired one. He had once guarded other treasures, but they’d all been broken. So when he saw the pigeon trembling, he curled around it. Every night. For weeks. For months. He kept the rain off her feathers and taught her how to sing the language of her peers.”

“Did she fly away?” Elara asked, voice hushed, as if the fox were here and needed silence to teach the pigeon.

“Not yet,” Viktor whispered. “She’s still learning. But one day, she’ll stretch those crooked wings and rise above the tallest rooftop. And the fox…” He hesitated. Smiled. “The fox will watch her go. And he’ll stay behind. But he won’t be sad. Because she’ll know how to find her way back to him.”

Elara was quiet for a good minute.

Viktor grew worried, placing a finger under her chin to make her look up at him. Her eyes were still puffy, cheeks rosy with tear streaks – but they were luckily all dry.

In a startling movement, she pressed her back into him, tucking her face against his chest again and breathed there for a long moment, small, safe, secure.

“Am I the pigeon?” she asked finally, so soft he almost missed it.

Viktor kissed her hair. “You are the one no one else could make. And no one else will ever be.”

She was silent again. “Then, are you the fox, dad?”

He huffed under his breath, quietly. “Who else would I be?”

“I think the fox should stay,” she murmured sleepily. There was a warm slur to her voice now. “Even when she flies.”

“He will,” Viktor promised. “Always.”

They stayed there a while longer, curled beneath the kitchen table. Viktor’s hand traced slow, patient circles into her back, each motion of his fingertips composing a new melody just for her. Her breathing eventually softened, growing deep and even; the storm had emptied the child’s chest.

When he lifted her at last, she stirred only slightly, her fingers tangled in the fabric of his shirt, refusing to let go even as her body leaned fully into his. She didn’t fight sleep. But she didn’t release him either. Not until he laid her gently in bed, tucked Revenge into her arms, and whispered a soft promise against her forehead.

”I’ll never leave you, Elara.”

The apartment sank into stillness once more, comfortable, domestic and beautiful this time. Viktor eased the bedroom door shut with a careful hand, pausing just beyond it. He listened. Elara shifted in her sleep, the covers rustling faintly as she curled inward, but she did not wake.

Satisfied, he turned down the hallway, barefoot on the cool stretch of wood. When he reached his own room, he didn’t bother with the lights. The dark felt earned tonight.

He cracked the window open with ease and reached for the box tucked high on the bookshelf; plain cardboard, taped once, label scratched. It was the same box he hid in the sink drawer and then pulled back out, reasoning to himself that Elara is less likely to stumble upon them here. Yet, he was most afraid that he’d find them again.

His fingers found the last cigarette, then his lighter. The flame flared, casting orange-tinted shadows across his face, cheekbones hollowed by stress, eyes bruised with sleeplessness.

He inhaled.

The first drag scalded down his throat.

Smoke trailed from his lips, curling out the open window like an apology. He remembers when his mother first caught him, back when he wore eyeliner like it was his only personality trait. Viktor flicked some ash off the stem, watching it fall down three stories. “Sorry, mom,” fell a mumble from his dirt and salt-tasting lips. A star just a little more west twinkled.

His hand trembled faintly, but he didn’t look at it. He leaned on the edge of the windowsill instead, shoulders bent beneath the weight of everything he couldn’t say aloud.

He hadn’t smoked in months.

Not since the move. Not since the court hearings and long nights and new keys and the image of Elara asleep against his chest when they took a break from driving to Piltover.

Tonight had been too much.

The phone call. The panic. The way his own flesb and blood’s tiny frame had collapsed beneath the table, shaking so violently, as if she were trying to wiggle into the floorboards.

That wasn’t just fear. That was residue.

He drew in another breath, slow and shallow, but the smoke caught in his lungs. He exhaled with a shudder that felt older than he was.

And his mind – traitorous thing – wandered. To the second worst day of his life.

She’d been lying on the bathroom floor. His wife. His ex-wife.

The tiles had been cold, slick with sweat and wine and something else sour. The sink stained red, not with blood, but Merlot. A bottle shattered. Pills scattered like teeth across the floor. Her lips were blue around the edges. Her pupils different sizes. Her pulse thready.

He had screamed her name. Dropped to his knees. Lifted her head with a shaking hand and begged her to stay awake. Called emergency services with the other. Told her lies just to keep her tethered to the world a little longer.

Elara had watched from the doorway.

She didn’t cry until the sirens came.

And Viktor had shielded her, told her Mommy was just sick, that she was going to get help, that everything would be okay. Lies, again. Words meant for a child who had already seen too much.

That was the day he packed a bag. Filed the papers. Took Elara and never looked back.

He hadn’t taken much.

Just her bear plush.

His wallet. And every mistake he hadn’t stopped soon enough.

Now, the cigarette burned low, ash clinging to the edge like the regret he can never scrub off in the shower. Viktor dragged a hand through his hair, staring at nothing, at the skyline, at the past that was looking right back. He didn’t realize he was crying until a tear landed warm on the back of his hand.

“I should’ve left sooner,” he croaked, voice hoarse, swallowed by the darkness of the night. “I should’ve seen it coming.”

He had told himself love was supposed to survive the ugly parts. That loyalty meant staying, even when it hurt. He had told himself she would get better. That he could fix it.

But he couldn’t.

He couldn’t.

And it was Elara who had paid the price.

Viktor pressed the heel of his hand to his eyes, trying to wipe away the ache, the failure, the memory. The cigarette burned to the filter.

He crushed it into the chipped ceramic ashtray beside the window. Then closed it, sealing the night back outside.

Life, happening elsewhere.

He laid down.

Faced the wall.

Evening settles over the house’s wooden floorboards like warm syrup, clinging to the corners of the windows. The sun’s last light filters through the kitchen curtains, casting long, honeyed bars across the scratched tile floor. A plastic container of grapes sweats on the counter, half-eaten and sticky-fingered. Smoke curls near the sink where toast has once again died a shameful death. The air hums with the scent of char and orange-scented cleaner.

Somewhere in the background, Bing Crosby croons from the tiny Bluetooth speaker perched on the windowsill, his voice fuzzy like pulled from the attic.

“Don’t fence me in…”

Jayce sits at the kitchen island in yesterday’s sweatpants and a hoodie Mae spilled apple juice on two mornings ago. Professor out of duty. His laptop glows blue beneath his fingers; three tabs open, two documents untouched, one work group chat blinking red like a warning light. He’s halfway through typing a sentence when a small voice tugs him back to earth.

“Dad!”

He startles only, flinching into his skin for a second. “Yeah, baby?”

“My hair’s doing the thing again!” Mae whines, tugging hard at his sleeve now, a surprising strength for a barely four feet girl.

He peers down, past the lid of his laptop, squinting. “What thing?”

“The pokey thing! In the back!”

Jayce sighs, closing the laptop with a soft click, the whirring noises falling asleep as it enters standy. Work can wait. It always can, if he’s honest. But Mae never can.

“Alright, c’mere, bug.”

She clambers up onto the counter stool with all the grace of a newborn squirrel, her knees knocking into the wooden legs, her curls bouncing like they've been charged with static. The back of her head looks like she slept on a thundercloud.

Jayce winces. “Oh yeah. That’s definitely a situation.”

He rummages under the sink until he finds the detangler; half-empty and taped shut with a Band-Aid where the cap broke off. The brush follows his discovery. He gently gathers her into the circle of his arm, combing fingers through her curls before attempting the real work. Mae hums under her breath, swaying slightly, as if the brush is a conductor’s baton and she’s scoring the moment.

Behind them, the toaster gives one final wheeze, surrendering with a twist of smoke. Jayce ignores it. The apartment smells like childhood discoveries and lived-in love. All the best homes do.

In the haze of it, he catches the music again. That voice, that song, so old his mother probably knows it and still so strangely comforting.

“Send me off forever, but I ask you please…”

It pulls at something.

The first time Jayce had heard this song, he’d been eighteen, sweating bullets in his mom’s hand-me-down Corolla, barely holding it together during his driving exam. Hands on the wheel, knuckles bloodless. Breath locked tight in his chest.

Viktor had been at his place that morning, as always. He slouched against the porch fence in a Motionless In White hoodie with a cigarette behind one ear and Halloween socks. His hair had been longer then, having had an ongoing bet with Jayce that he wouldn’t cut his hair until prom.

He’d handed Jayce a beat-up iPod with tangled headphones and no explanation.

“Hum something,” Viktor had said, tone flat but eyes so serious.

Jayce had blinked. “Beg your pardon?” Shall he give the examiner a whole orchestra while he’s at it?

“From the playlist. Helps with spiraling.”

He’d muttered something like you’re ridiculous but slipped the headphone in anyway. Static fuzz. Bing Crosby. The same damn song.

Jayce had hummed it, shaky, off-key, but it worked. His hands stopped shaking halfway through the parallel parking.

Now here he was, eighteen more years later. Still driving the same BMW his mother gave him at his college’s graduation. Still brushing tangles out of his daughter’s hair with a detangler that smelled like fake strawberries. Still humming a stupid song from an even stupider iPod.

Still not over him.

Mae wiggles in place, jostling his train of thought. “Ow,” she yelps mildly, though she doesn’t sound hurt. Just opinionated.

“Oh, mier– Perdón, mi amor,” he murmurs, easing the brush back with more care. He kisses the top of her head. “Almost done.”

She grins. Her curls gleam like copper thread in the sunset.

Bing Crosby croons on. Jayce begins to hum along – still off-key.

“Don’t fence me in…”

“Hey, Dad?”

Jayce didn’t look at her right away. He was halfway through a stubborn knot in Mae’s curls, his fingers sticky from the detangler and whatever unholy substance she’d gotten into at recess.

“Yeah, baby?”

Mae tilted her head just slightly, enough that he caught the question brewing before she even asked it.

“Why doesn’t Mr. Viktor smile a lot?”

The brush froze mid-stroke.

Jayce’s gaze drifted to the window. The fading light outside had turned the glass into a mirror, casting their reflections back at them; outlines of a father and daughter suspended in the warmth of a too-big kitchen. Her perched like a bird on the stool, him bent slightly, staring at himself.

He swallowed around a knot, this time one in his throat.

“He used to,” Jayce murmured. “A bunch, actually.”

Mae blinked up at him, curious, her eyes wide as the moon she insisted was following their car at night.

Jayce’s thoughts slipped like thread through the eye of a needle. It went back to rooftops and city air, chalk drawings on concrete and the speakers crackling out homemade playlists. Viktor had never been the kind of person who smiled for crowds. But when he did, when it was just them, it was breathtaking. A tug of the mouth, a glint in the eye, the kind of smile that felt like a secret meant for only Jayce. A smile that was just that. A smile.

“I think…” Jayce started, brushing gently again, “I think the world got too loud. And it made it harder for him to hear the happy things.”

Mae was quiet for a long moment, her little brows furrowed like she was trying to solve an equation made of feelings. “Can I make him something? Like… maybe a smile sandwich?”

Jayce barked a laugh before he could help it, nearly dropping the brush. The sound bounced around the kitchen, surprised.

“Oh, sweetheart…” He tugged the last knot free, smoothing a curl behind her ear with a gentle thumb. “I think you already did.”

She beamed, pleased with herself, and Jayce didn’t bother answering her suggestion directly – mostly because the last time Mae had “made something” for someone, it had involved his insurance.

God help Viktor if she ever sets foot in the kitchen again. He doesn’t want to talk about the last incident.

Chapter Text

It’s time.

Viktor stood at the base of the university steps, one hand wrapped around the curved rail of steel. Although the sun crept up behind the tall buildings of Piltover, the metal held last night’s chill, biting through his skin. The wind dragged the scent of sun-warmed concrete and late-spring florals past him, mingled faintly with chalk dust and empty lecture halls. He lingered a moment longer, watching as the light fractured across the high glass facade above him, breaking into colorful prisms that danced along the stone.

The laughter of students rang out nearby. The sound bounced from wall to wall, full of excitement and overloaded bags and cheap coffee cups. Someone shouted a name. A skateboard hit pavement. Somewhere, a bell chimed.

It all felt familiar and not, as though someone had taken the memory and run it through a wash cycle. It was cleaner now, sanitized and sunlit as it moved on to new owners.

He’d stood on these steps before.

Years ago, younger, weighed down by a backpack full of textbooks and a notebook filled with questions no one else seemed to be asking. Jayce had been beside him then, grinning too wide and making some offhand comment about Viktor’s backpack being heavier than a neutron star. Viktor had rolled his eyes. Jayce had nudged him with his shoulder anyway. The memory glimmered like a bitter splinter in his grasp.

Now, his bag was lighter. But something else weighed heavier still.

His phone buzzed softly in his back pocket, and Viktor withdrew it absently. A message from Sky, timestamped just a second ago. Go impress those nerds!

There was a glitter emoji attached. And a croissant.

He smiled, despite himself. They were long-distance friends now. She’d stayed in Zaun, anchored by an iron will of someone who believed in her dreams through and through. Her bakery was small, but thriving. She always said that flour and sugar were revolutionary when in the right hands. That even the scent of warm bread could undo a little grief.

A kid named Ekko helped out these days; smart, fast, attentive, always five steps ahead of the world and yet somehow already tired of it. She adored him. Said he reminded her of Viktor at that age, only louder. Even if he still mixed up the sugar with the salt.

Viktor began up the steps at last, hand still curled lightly around the rail. His cane clicked faithfully beside him. One-two. One-two. Not as much a hindrance as it used to be – now just another part of his rhythm. It calmed him.

The doors opened before he could reach for them. A familiar mop of white-blond fluff appeared, eyes wide and twinkling behind tiny round glasses. Professor Heimerdinger beamed at him like the sun had risen specifically for this moment.

“Ah! Viktor, my boy!” he exclaimed, voice as bright as ever. “You’re early! Unless I’m late – which wouldn’t surprise me, given the alarming state of my chronometer. Did you get my last email with all the bureaucratic forms? Of course you did. I hope it didn’t bore you half to death, ha!”

He barely gave Viktor time to answer before latching onto his elbow like an excited relative and gently, but insistently, guiding him through the grand atrium.

The building swallowed them up in a wash of cool marble and polished banisters, all high archways and echoing sounds that reverberated in Viktor’s bones. Viktor blinked against the bright reflection of the sunlight on the ground below, pupils barely adjusting as he’s dragged along. The air still carried the same tang of graphite and that distinct smell of future that all schools hold.

“Everyone’s terribly excited you’ve joined the faculty, of course,” Heimerdinger chattered on. “You’ve always had a... how shall I put this... tenacity of thought. Quite unmatched. And a certain flair for dismantling syllabi entirely.”

Viktor let the words wash over him like rain on mossy stone. Heimerdinger, for all his wild tangents and endearing eccentricities, had always seen something in him. Even back when Viktor had been little more than a wiry, steel-tongued student with too many questions and not enough breath to ask them all. Heimerdinger had never tried to quiet him.

They passed a group of undergraduates scribbling into tablets, two students sketching out a schematic on the atrium floor in dry-erase marker, and someone practicing an entire presentation in the reflection of a vending machine. It was a bit absurd.

And somehow... it felt like coming home to a house he hadn’t realized he missed.

Heimerdinger stopped just outside the faculty lounge, keys jangling as he dug through his pockets. “Ah – and your office, yes! I’ve put your name on the door already. Hopefully spelled correctly. If not, it’s an easy fix. Though you’d be amazed how many people insist your name is spelled with a c.”

Viktor smiled, finally able to speak the first words since Heimerdinger dragged him inside. “I would not be surprised, actually.”

The hallway smells like fresh polish and memory. Viktor barely has time to register the new coat of paint or the posters advertising various research symposiums before Professor Heimerdinger places a small hand on his lower back, unable to meet his shoulder blades, and steers him away from the direction he was drifting; toward the archives, he realizes with some surprise. Muscle memory, maybe. The halls may be updated, but his feet still remember where they once wanted to go.

“None of that yet, dear boy!” Heimerdinger chirps, clearly energized by Viktor’s return. “We’ve got introductions to make! Oh, they’ll be thrilled. You’ll meet the whole team – and of course, you’ll be delighted to hear about the new Noxus Corp project. Very prestigious. Tremendous funding.”

Viktor opens his mouth to ask about it, but Heimerdinger is already ten paces ahead, talking as if the words are dragging behind him and not the other way around.

“You’ll be in IT, as you saw in the forms. Data management, analytics, infrastructure. But!” He wags a finger with dramatic flair, “due to your expertise, and given our history of spectacularly promising collaboration, I’ve arranged for you to partner with one of our lead engineers on the model itself. A fascinating energy efficiency recalibration, very cutting edge. They’ll want your eyes on the framework.”

The lounge door swings open with a pneumatic sigh.

Warmth immediately greets Viktor, probably stemming from an overworked printer and bodies pressed into a small space. Laptops glowed in patches and glasses smudged, sliding down some noses. The scent of espresso did its best to bury the unmistakable scent of printer toner, stress-sweat, and something toasted. Probably whatever pastry had been abandoned open on the table near the window.

Heads turned. A dozen pairs of eyes, some curious, some bleary. Faculty, interns, postdocs. All strewn in the room of prototype sketches, tangled chargers, and the fossilized crumbs of someone's long-forgotten breakfast on the middle table.

“And here he is!” Heimerdinger beams, pushing Viktor with a firm nudge into the threshold like a proud parent at a talent show to flaunt their prodigy. “Everyone, this is Viktor – yes, the Viktor, top of Zaun’s graduating class a few years back, some of you may have read his paper on neural cloud configurations – brilliant, absolutely brilliant. Viktor will be joining the IT department full-time, and!” He bounces once on his toes for emphasis. “He’ll be collaborating with Jayce Talis on the Noxus project.”

For a moment, there is complete stillness. Even Viktor can’t help his lips from parting in shock. His eyes flick down to the short man beside him, who’s just smiling like a kid in the candy store.

Then, there’s a sharp choke from the far corner.

Jayce.

He'd been mid-sentence with someone, a dark-haired woman with a stylus tucked behind her ear, and he just… stops. His mouth hangs open like he forgot the word. No – like the word turned into smoke halfway up his throat. His eyes dart to Viktor, dart down, dart back, and for a beat too long he simply stares.

“Jayce?” the woman prompts, puzzled.

He blinks. Smiles. It's too wide, a little brittle around the eyes where his glasses rest. Viktor didn’t even know that he needed glasses. Another thing hidden, apparently. “Right. Sorry. Just– bit of a surprise. I was not informed of this... sudden change,” Jayce says, his voice growing muffled towards the end, as if he had to bite his tongue. “Good to see you again, Viktor.”

His tone is perfectly polite.

His tone is too polite.

Viktor only nods. “Jayce.”

He doesn’t linger. Doesn’t look. Doesn’t touch the gravity of what’s hovering unspoken between them. Instead, Viktor turns to the rest of the room and offers a small incline of his head.

“Pleasure to meet you all,” he says. His voice is calm, clipped, and just warm enough to keep suspicion off him. “I look forward to working together.”

It’s not a lie. Only half.

A short woman with a septum ring smiles back and introduces herself as Janna, data security lead. Another man waves from where he’s programming on two screens at once. Several more follow, names that blend slightly in his ears, but he tries to catalog them anyway. One by one, they speak to him, and he listens with practiced attentiveness, falling into the routine of polite academia.

He doesn’t look at Jayce.

But he feels him. The weight of his gaze like a bruise forming beneath fabric.

Viktor looks different.

It should be awkward.

It is awkward.

But Viktor is smiling so softly at Janna, eyes crinkling as he comments on her customized firewall model, and she’s blushing. Of course she’s blushing. Jayce’s throat tightens. His hands are still in his pockets. He doesn’t remember putting them there.

It’s been twelve years.

Twelve years of pretending he didn’t still think about that night. The lookout. The sketches. The way Viktor had whispered his name like being wanted was a foreign tongue, and then let Jayce answer with a kiss that never really ended.

And now?

Now Viktor was back. Wearing button-ups. Making small talk, leaning over to look at Janna’s work while she tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. Ignoring him like they’d only ever been colleagues.

Jayce swallows down the ache in his chest and forces himself to turn away again.

A voice slips in beside Viktor like the sudden warmth of sunlight through clouds.

“Well, well. Look who’s finally crawling out of the shadows.”

Viktor startles, visibly so, his shoulder twitching before he can school his reaction, and turns to see Mel, poised and radiant as ever, arm already slipping through the crook of his as if they’d never missed a day.

She smells of some subtle, citrus-laced perfume, like orange blossom with extravagant spice, and the sound of her heels tapping against the marble floor is softened by the plush carpet beneath their feet.

Viktor blinks at her, disbelief tightening the corners of his mouth. “Mel?”

She gives a little half-bow of acknowledgment, her smile just wide enough to reveal amusement. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“I didn’t realize you worked here,” Viktor says, and the way he says here – with a gesture at the polished floors, the glass that gleams like ice, the halls full of the bright, bubbling laughter of overconfident students – is almost comically pointed.

Mel arches an eyebrow, mock-wounded. “Why does everyone say that to me?”

“I assumed,” he starts, then falters for a moment, “that you taught at the elementary school.”

Mel gasps, hand pressed dramatically to her chest, the fabric of her blouse folding under the pressure she puts on her heart. “Don’t insult my intelligence like that, Viktor.”

He exhales through his nose, deadpan. “You know that’s not what I meant. Besides, all teachers are required to be educated on the same level.”

She laughs, throwing her head back with genuine delight, golden earrings dangling and making a chiming sound. “Okay, okay, nerd. I was teasing. God, has parenthood turned you more uptight?”

“Still as dramatic as ever,” he replies, unable to keep the smile from tugging at the corner of his mouth.

They fall into step as the noise of the room quiets behind them. There’s a soft bustle in the air, faculty and assistants moving between lectures and meetings, the espresso machine grinding beans in the corner despite its protests. Someone’s left a trail of tiny footprints on the tile near the kitchenette – likely the only professor which such small feet. The scent of printer toner, burnt coffee, and something floral from a vase of fresh-cut, university-funded roses, as if beauty can offset burnout, drifts through the space.

Mel gestures toward the high-backed chairs lining the window. “Come, sit. You’ll get mobbed if you don’t get used to the chaos.”

Viktor eyes the seats but doesn’t move. “I haven’t been mobbed by academics since grad school.”

“You’re in IT now,” she says sweetly. “And on Jayce’s project. That’s practically painting a target on your back.”

He stiffens, almost imperceptibly, but Mel doesn’t miss it, attentive as ever:

“Oh?” he counters lightly, tilting his head an inch. “And how did you manage to wedge yourself into this tower?”

She rolls her eyes, smiling. “Wedge? I own half the damn wing.”

Viktor chuckles in response. “I should’ve guessed.”

“I run the talent acquisition and mentorship program,” Mel explains, tipping her chin toward the long glass corridor that leads to the research floors. “A few trainees. Some interns. You’ll see them hovering like fledglings waiting to be fed.”

“Let me guess,” Viktor starts. “You’ve got Jinx.”

Mel smirks like a proud, exasperated older sister. “I do. And she’s only set off two fire alarms this semester, so we’re calling it a win.”

“She hasn’t changed a bit,” Viktor snickers, thinking back to the Powder she once was – soft and pure as the material itself. When he first saw her at the science fair, he barely recognized her, having taken a full minute to see those wide-hearted orbs behind her manic expression.

“She has,” Mel mutters, with sudden sincerity. “But only in ways that make her more herself.”

That draws silence from Viktor. His mind briefly flickers to the echo of laughter in abandoned warehouses. He exhales, slow, and lets the memory drift back into its box.

“How’s Elara?” Mel coaxes gently, changing the subject.

He hums, softer this time. “Good. Growing fast. She’s convinced she’s half-rabbit, half-dragon.”

Mel snorts. “That... honestly checks out.”

“She keeps writing letters to the moon,” Viktor adds, rubbing one of his temples with a smile, thinking back to all the folded papers he picked off each night so that Elara believes that the “moon man” is actually reading them.

Mel leans on the back of one of the chairs, resting her elbow. “About what?”

“Wishes. Recipes. Apologies for eating the last cookie I told her not to.”

She lets out a breath that turns into a laugh, and for a moment, they share a smile of mutual fondness; for dreams, for children, for second lives forged after the first ones collapsed.

But the warmth doesn’t last.

Mel’s gaze shifts, subtly, to something over Viktor’s shoulder. Her expression changes slightly, enough that Viktor knows without turning that Jayce is nearby.

“You know,” she mutters, voice quieter now, “fate has some funny plans for you two.”

Viktor tenses, but masks it with a well-worn, polite smile. “Does it now?”

Her hand brushes against his wrist, her fingertips tapping once, the feeling of her manicured nails grounding him. “Don’t let history write the ending for you.”

Viktor doesn’t move.

But he feels it before he sees it – the weight of a stare, heavy and hot. He turns his head just slightly.

Jayce stands across the room, half-turned away, but his hand is motionless on a stack of papers. A man beside him nudges him gently with an elbow. “Talis?”

He jerks upright, like surfacing from deep water. “What? Sorry– got distracted.”

Viktor turns away before the memory of how Jayce used to say his name can claw to the surface.

Viktor sinks into one of the lounge chairs at last, the sun in the motion of dipping downwards, thumb flicking across the new tablet he was given. He pulls up the briefing files already saved and narrows his eyes as he scrolls.

Noxus Corp. A new energy efficiency model. Large-scale. Civil applications. Industrial implications. All stamped with Ambessa Medarda’s name near the bottom in gold-embossed digital ink.

He doesn’t hide his frown when Mel returns a few minutes later, holding two steaming mugs of drinks that smell like chicory and cinnamon.

“You’re not surprised,” she states calmly, handing him one. The cup is warm, but not enough to warm the dread that has began filling Viktor’s spine bone by bone.

“No,” he murmurs, eyes flicking up to meet with her ever-neutral ones. “But I am curious.”

“About?”

Viktor studies her. “Why us?”

She crosses her arms, moving her weight onto one leg. “Because they want prestige. Innovation. Your names carry weight, Viktor. And Noxus is trying to make itself look cleaner than it is.”

That earns a squint from him. “And this model?”

“A partial grid overhaul,” she explains, sighing. “They want a sustainable, scalable energy interface to offset their industrial expansion. Jayce designed the prototype. But they need your algorithmic brain to make it real.”

He nods slowly, as if weighing the shape of her words against the weight of what they asked of him. He was satisfied with the explanation, perhaps, but not much with its meaning. “They need me to fix the math.”

She doesn’t deny it, no sugarcoating. “They need you. Period.”

“And if I ask questions?” he asks, almost too carefully. There’s a flicker in his eyes; wary, forged by years of being told that curiosity was a dangerous weapon when worn by people like him.

Mel meets his gaze directly. “Then I’ll help you find the answers.”

He watches her for a long, measured beat. His expression was blank, save for the subtle clench of his jaw. “Why?”

“Because I’m tired,” she responds almost immediately, “of watching brilliant people destroy themselves trying to outlive their own ghosts.”

There’s a crack in her voice, and for a moment Viktor wonders how many names she carries in her chest like gravestones.

But before he can ask, she adds with a smirk, “Also because if Jinx catches wind of any corporate secrets being hidden from her, she’ll stage an explosion.”

Viktor lets out a reluctant huff. “Of course she will.”

Mel’s expression softens again. “You don’t have to trust them,” she affirms. “Just… maybe start by trusting that I’m in your corner.”

His eyes drift, not toward the hallway, not toward the project files she’s laid at his elbows, but back toward the place Jayce once stood, now empty. It feels louder than the words they just exchanged.

He doesn’t answer.

But he picks up the coffee, cradles it in his palm like something alive, and takes a sip.

The first week, Viktor doesn’t set a single foot in the lab.

It’s not because he can’t. His badge for all doors prohibited to enter by students works perfectly fine, tested by Heimerdinger himself. But there’s too much silence waiting to congeal inside him, too many ghosts hiding beneath the tile.

Jayce texts twice. Once on Monday, painfully polite: “You doing okay? No rush on the prototype. Just checking in.”

Viktor reads it over dinner, elbow-deep in dish soap and chicken nuggets Elara refused to eat. He doesn’t answer.

Then again, Friday afternoon, a shorter message: “Missing my lab partner.”

Viktor stares at the screen longer than he means to, the blue light washing his features cold. He types, deletes, types again, before settling on a simple lie.

“Elara’s feeling sick.”

Which isn’t true. Elara is in her room, perfectly healthy, mid-crisis about the doll horses overtaking the mermaid court while the council of stuffed animals does nothing in her cardboard kingdom.

“I told them not to build the tower so close to the glitter mountains!” she screams, flinging a plastic dragon with righteous fury. “But nooo. They don’t listen! They just want power!”

Viktor closes the door softly. The sound of toy warfare fades, and he presses his forehead against the wood. Exhales. Lets it linger there a moment, like maybe he can siphon off whatever strength he used to fake today’s smile.

Every day is another excuse. The car wouldn’t start. Elara’s school called. A doctor’s appointment. Headache. Backache. Paperwork. Rain. Not enough rain.

Paperwork, groceries, laundry.

Everything except the real reason: he can’t walk into that lab without seeing Jayce there, not until he figures out how to look without coming undone.

And then, somehow, the second week unfolds differently. Tired and limping, curling into the corners like an apology. It doesn’t feel like a fresh start. It feels like a sugar cube left in lukewarm coffee, dissolving slowly, leaving only a faint trace of sweetness behind.

It’s Thursday when he drops Elara off at Caitlyn and Vi’s place. She barrels into their apartment with a little shriek of joy, Vi scooping her up mid-run like a seasoned rugby player while Caitlyn offers Viktor a knowing smile.

“You sure you’re not just scared to come back?” Caitlyn teases.

Viktor doesn’t deny it. Just shrugs, hands deep in his coat pockets, fingers playing absentmindedly with a coin he must’ve forgotten in there. “Something like that.”

He drives toward the university on autopilot, the old turns kneaded into his muscle. It's still bizarre – entirely bizarre – that he’s working where he once studied, where his heart bled out and his throat turned hoarse from arguing over lab policies at three in the morning.

He parks in the staff-only lot and just... sits. The engine clicks into silence.

He doesn’t get out.

He doesn’t check the time.

He doesn’t know what he’s waiting for.

Maybe a sign. Maybe for the nerves to twist themselves into something less paralyzing. Maybe for the part of him that used to want this to wake up and remember how to move.

His phone rests useless in the cup holder.

The stereo sings softly, and in the thrum of tires on distant roads, the chords of Adrianne Lenker’s “half return” drifts in like a memory not his own.

“Standing in the yard...”

The world outside the windshield is silver-grey, the sky swollen with the promise of rain yet unwilling to keep it. Trees stand suspended in stillness, not sparing as much as a shiver. A lone pigeon struts across the concrete, pecking at twigs shaped uncannily like forgotten fries.

Viktor opens the door.

The air greets him with open arms, cool, smelling of damp leaves, threaded with the scent of cigarettes and the lingering oil of cafeteria fryers. Spring clings to the edges of everything, soft and tentative. His coat settles on his shoulders like an old friend, its weight grounding him. Gravel crunches beneath his boots as he starts down the path toward the main building.

“Dressed like a kid...”

His eyes scan the looming structure before him. The glass is newer. The stone has been sandblasted and softened. But the foundation, the bones of the place, are the same. That crack on the third step. That awkward curve of the east wall. That rust-stained plaque with the school motto that still makes no sense.

He touches the metal railing. It’s still bites, bares its teeth.

“The house is white...”

The front lobby has been redone. Sleek now, sterile, painted in clean, forgettable tones that reek of corporate neutrality. The walls are crowded with neatly framed student projects and awards, glossy photos of fresh-faced students smiling wide under the fluorescent lights. Viktor lingers for a moment, eyes tracing one of the displays. 

The air smells like new carpet glue, floor polish, ink, and someone’s aggressively floral perfume, masking death with roses on the casket.

Heimerdinger was never one for change. The old professor had clung to his chalkboard lectures and overstuffed filing cabinets long after digital interfaces became the norm. For the lobby to look like this now, like a corporate pamphlet come to life, someone must have coaxed him. Or pressured him.

Viktor’s jaw clenches. His thoughts drift, uninvited, to Heimerdinger’s earlier mention of tremendous funding. Noxus Corp. No doubt with a tight smile and a thick checkbook. Progress, they’d call it. Investment. Opportunity.

“And the lawn is dead...”

He presses on, cane tapping rhythmically beside him, trying not to let the scent of erasure follow him down the hall. Every step feels like it might be a mistake. His reflection passes in glass doors and turns away too quickly.

He walks the halls without needing to think. Muscle memory. Burned-in paths. He could navigate this place blind, even with some rooms having changed places.

“The lawn is dead...”

He stops in front of the door. His name is on the plaque now.

His.

Not as a student. Not as an assistant. But as faculty. A lead. Co-researcher.

Partner.

The metal handle is impeccably clean beneath Viktor’s fingers. Without another breath, he opens it.

The lab feels like old times.

Not the new gloss of it – no, that part still stings against the eyes – but the energy that prickles beneath your skin. The way machines murmur under their breath like obedient familiars. How the glass screens are basically alive with data, real-time graphs pulsing in soft greens and blues. The undercurrent of old coffee lingering faintly in the air, like the heartbeat of the room.

Jayce is already mid-setup when Viktor steps through the door. There's a half-assembled prototype on the worktable and loose papers scattered like fallen leaves. At the sound of the door, Jayce pivots sharply, eyes bright and sharp, like a switch flipped on, lighting the room with his presence.

He freezes.

A beat passes.

“Viktor.”

It’s breathless. Not a question. Not a greeting. A gasp of disbelief.

Jayce steps forward fast, too fast. There’s a twitch in his arms like he wants to grab him, to pull him into something unprofessional. But he stops short, hands curling into fists instead. His smile strains against an aching they both most likely share.

“You came,” Jayce’s voice wavers, cracking softly at the end like he’s surprised to hear it, even from himself. He quickly clears his throat, glancing away toward his abandoned work as if to hide the tremor in his tone. “I thought you were still… I don’t know. Avoiding me. The lab.”

“I wasn’t avoiding you,” Viktor replies coolly, unbuttoning his coat with a casual motion. He hopes it masks his own fractures. “But unfortunately for both of us, the project won’t finish itself.”

Jayce exhales something between a laugh and a sigh, like that line hurt more than he expected it to. His eyes flick down as Viktor crosses the room, as he shrugs off the coat and drapes it over the back of the same stool he claimed all those years ago. His cane rests against it.

Jayce’s nose wrinkles suddenly, brow lifting. “You smell like cigarettes.”

Viktor doesn’t even blink. “Sharp as ever,” he huffs dryly, settling into the chair. The stool squeaks, just like it used to. The desk before him is the one he sat at through all his sleepless hazes, unchanged save for the new polish. But as his fingers brush the underside of the table, something catches.

Scratched shallow into the woodgrain. Barely visible unless you were looking for it. Viktor was.

V + J

A ridiculous thing. Dumb. Childish. Something Jayce carved during a late night when energy drinks replaced food and Viktor’s lectures turned into background noise. He stares at the table, swallowing hard.

His hand lingers there.

Jayce watches him with something unreadable on his face. He takes a careful step forward, hand reaching out without his brain giving permission. “You shouldn’t–”

“It’s none of your business if I smoke, Talis,” Viktor cuts in, sharper now. Deflecting. The heat behind his tone is only barely holding itself together.

Jayce’s mouth snaps shut. He nods once.

Silence blooms between them, awkward at the corners, unbearably loud in the middle.

Then, almost too quiet to catch, Jayce murmurs, “I assumed you had died.”

The words are a match. Viktor stiffens like struck flint. He doesn’t look up. Instead, he taps something on the display to life, artificial light cutting harsh shadows over the lines of his face.

“Well,” he spits, tone clipped, “congratulations on finding out ghosts are real.”

Jayce opens his mouth. Hesitates. Wants to say something, clearly; don’t you ever do that again, or I missed you more than I deserve, or I waited, or maybe you bastard, I would’ve burned down the city if you didn’t come back.

But Viktor stops him before any of it can surface.

“We have work to do, don’t we?” he hisses in that same cold tone, gesturing toward the schematic on the glass. “I'd prefer to finish this iteration before Elara graduates college.”

Jayce takes the hint. Swallows whatever was about to bubble up and seals it behind his teeth like a good soldier. “Right,” he hums softly. Then again, louder, masking the bruise of it, “Right. Let’s, uh– let’s start with the power junction.”

He gathers himself like a storm retreating into clouds. His movements are contained, professional. He moves around the lab like it’s a choreography he memorized, his fingers twitching toward tools. Jayce’s voice is even as he begins explaining what he’s updated; how the modified energy core now stabilizes in response to kinetic feedback, how he thinks the waveform resonance needs to be adjusted.

Viktor listens. He always listens.

But he doesn’t look up. Unspoken things crawl over the walls, through the wires, under the table Jayce marked and into their skin.

Don’t let history write the ending for you.

The lab feels like old times.

But nothing’s the same.

Now, Jayce leans over Viktor’s shoulder again like nothing ever happened. Like a decade didn’t pass. Like they aren’t still torn.

He does it absentmindedly, that same closeness that used to make Viktor snap at him back in undergrad. But now he just goes still, very still, while Jayce’s warmth ghosts over his back. He smells like aftershave and expensive cologne and the almond-sweet soap they keep in the staff washroom. He’s talking – probably about interface lag or calibration latency – but Viktor barely hears it over the proximity.

Sometimes, their hands brush when they reach for the same stylus or component.

Sometimes, Viktor looks away too fast.

But Jayce never comments. Just keeps talking, like he hasn’t noticed the way Viktor flinches when skin touches skin. Or maybe he has. Maybe he’s giving him the dignity of silence.

Late into the night, a butterfly lands on the windowsill, quiet as dust, vivid as a fresh bruise. A blue morpho, its wings pulsing like breath against the glass. Strange, for this hour. Stranger still for the city.

Jayce notices first, cutting himself off mid-sentence. “Look,” he whispers, awe curling in his voice. He lifts a hand, not to touch, just to point. “Morpho menelaus.”

Viktor turns from the monitor, raising a skeptical brow. “Since when are you into lepidoptera?”

Jayce flushes, that helpless little grin tugging at his mouth as he rubs the back of his neck. “Well… Elara really likes them. And I…”

The rest dissipates.

Viktor’s heart lurches, as if gently nudged by that name. He hadn’t expected that. Not the casual affection in Jayce’s voice. Not the way he says her name like she matters to him.

Jayce cared about insects just because of... her?

That’s when Viktor stops hearing the rest of the sentence entirely. Jayce is still talking, gesturing lightly with his hands, explaining something about how Elara made a drawing or maybe chased one on a trip – Viktor’s not sure. It all moves slow, like he’s underwater, caught in the warm pressure of realization.

This man. This man is already tethered to her.

And Viktor doesn’t know what to do with that.

He looks at Jayce differently, then.

The same eyes, same messy hair, same boyish grin that used to get him out of academic trouble and into Viktor’s nightmares. But now, Jayce is older. Shaped by guilt, probably, but also by age. By his daughter.

Viktor blinks back to the present just in time to hear “...that action had consequences, I guess.”

Jayce grins at his own joke. A Life Is Strange reference. One of their old favorites, played on long nights in their shared dorm room, side by side on Jayce’s bed, arguing about choices and morality and alternate timelines.

Viktor sighs, despite himself. And then smiles.

Jayce catches it. His own grin goes gentle, quiet, as if scared too much joy will scare the moment off.

“God,” Viktor murmurs, shaking his head and turning back to the screen, fingers tracing the “V” on his keyboard, “you’re such a nerd.”

Jayce shrugs, still watching him. “Takes one to know one.”

And the butterfly flutters off the sill.

Its wings beat once, twice, then vanish in a shimmer of iridescent blue, like a glitch in the fabric of the night.

Jayce doesn’t move back to his side of the lab right away. He lingers, just a breath behind Viktor. Close enough that Viktor can feel him watching. But he doesn’t say anything else. Doesn’t push.

Viktor pretends to focus on the schematic, eyes tracing the same three lines of code over and over. His hand rests idle on the desk, fingers curled slightly inward.

It twitches, once.

Jayce doesn’t take it.

Back in college, the dorm was barely bigger than a closet; cramped, overstuffed, and uniquely theirs.

The ceiling tiles were stained from an ancient pipe leak no one ever fixed. The window overlooked nothing but more bricks. The air smelled like ramen packets, shared deodorant, and the ghost of a failed electromagnet experiment that was definitely against their college’s rules.

Physics and band posters competed for wall space, one half covered in theoretical diagrams and research articles, the other in creased gig flyers and a Muse poster hanging crooked with old tape.

There was a corner where all the energy drinks they'd ever consumed stood in a looming tower, labelled with a sticky note that read, “Defying Gravity” – one of Jayce’s more questionable puns. Every time it didn’t topple, Viktor scribbled a fresh data point in their shared notebook.

A crackling can hissed open somewhere between them. Jayce had blindly reached for another energy drink without looking, cracking it open one-handed like a feral teenager. It joined the rest of the leaning aluminum monument in the corner, teetering under its own ambition.

Their clothes clung from the residual heat of their radiator cranked all the way up and shared space. The windows refused to open in the winter, frosting at the corners and casting smeared reflections of the game’s glow onto the glass.

Onscreen, Max and Chloe balanced on train tracks, arms outstretched like tightrope walkers. The daylight sky behind them was painted in brushstroke hues of ocean blues.

Jayce’s laugh broke through it like a stone tossed into still water. He leaned in without thinking, chin coming to rest on Viktor’s shoulder, grinning like he’d made a brilliant discovery. “We’re just like them!”

Viktor blinked, pulled sharply from the screen, startled by both the contact and the declaration. He turned just enough to catch the boyish glimmer in Jayce’s eyes. “Excuse me? Elaborate.”

Jayce didn’t even blink. “You’re Chloe.”

Viktor raised both brows, incredulous. “Are you serious?”

Jayce nodded enthusiastically, his whole face bright with amusement. “Yeah! Totally. You’re the edgy one. Cynical. Smokes. And you went through that ‘I hate my parents so I’m dyeing my hair black’ phase.”

“I was sixteen,” Viktor replied flatly. “And it was a semi-permanent box dye.”

Jayce leaned back just enough to beam at him, entirely unbothered. “Still counts.”

“You’re impossible.”

“Chloe.”

Viktor rolled his eyes and nudged him, but Jayce didn’t budge, just leaned his weight right back in, the kind of casual intimacy that set Viktor’s heart ticking a little too loudly for his comfort. “I will shove you off this bed.”

“And I’m Max,” Jayce added.

“Oh no,” Viktor muttered under his breath, pinching his nose with exasperation.

“I wear flannel,” Jayce counted, ticking it off like a credential. “I make art. I’m very emotionally repressed and haunted by guilt.”

“You are not repressed, Jay,” Viktor deadpanned. “You cry at coffee commercials.”

Jayce gave a wounded sound. “That dog was really lonely, Viktor.”

“Mm-hm.”

“And I’m your partner in time,” Jayce said, tone shifting, as though offering it up for real. “You’re always with me. You’ve always been with me.”

Viktor looked at him then. Really looked. The cast of the monitor cast strange shadows over Jayce’s face, but his expression was open. He felt the dangerous, burning swell of something he didn’t have words for.

“…Except you cause all the crime,” he murmured, too soft, betraying the affection he was trying to cover up with his teasing. “You caused that moral crisis by trespassing on private property and getting us both detained for two hours.”

Jayce gasped, grabbing his chest like he’d been shot. “That was one time! And I didn’t know the area was off-limits!”

“You scaled a twelve-foot fence.”

“I thought it was metaphorical!” he cried.

Viktor chuckled, real and warm, and leaned back against Jayce’s shoulder. Jayce softened, stilling for once, like he knew moments like this were rare. Their laughter died into melancholy, save for the music from the game and the occasional mechanical click of the keys as Jayce made a choice.

“I’d still break into anywhere with you,” Jayce murmured eventually, eyes half-lidded and wistful. Not looking for a reaction, just... talking.

Viktor’s heart stuttered.

He didn’t answer.

Instead, he watched the screen as Max and Chloe walked hand in hand down the tracks, so unaware of what waited at the end.

Together, for now.

The two reached the end of the game weeks later.

Jayce sat slouched forward, face in his hands. The laptop was balanced on his knees, playing the final scene. Spanish Sahara flooded the room, mourning vocals, a rising tide of grief. On the screen, Max stood over Chloe’s casket, watching a blue morpho land on it.

Jayce sniffled once. Then again. And then crumpled fully into Viktor’s chest, hiding his face like it physically hurt him to look.

“Forget the horror here…”

Chloe’s funeral.

Max alone.

Jayce was full-on crying. Not cute sniffles – real ugly crying. Face pressed into Viktor’s neck, hoodie sleeve uselessly dabbing at red eyes. He sobbed like it was someone he actually lost.

“Leave it all down here…”

“I take it back,” he whimpered. “We are not like them.”

Viktor didn’t move. Just patted Jayce’s back like a very awkward dad. But the sting behind his ribs was sharp. He stared at the screen, at Chloe’s casket, at Max’s empty face. And something in him twitched.

“It’s future rust and it’s future dust…”

Jayce had saved Arcadia Bay.

Of course he had. The golden boy. The RA. The poster child for ‘Most Likely to Marry His High School Sweetheart and Start a Tech Company.’ The one who knew all his neighbors’ names. The one who rescued spiders instead of killing them.

Jayce, with his thousand suns of empathy. And he believed in sacrifice. That doing the “right thing” was always right.

But Viktor…

“I’m the fury in your head…”

Viktor would’ve chosen Chloe.

He understood what it was like to find someone who made you feel like the world was worth saving just because they were in it. Even if it meant leaving the world burning behind you. He understood what it meant to believe, if only for a second, that one life could be everything.

His fingers curled in the blanket. He didn’t speak.

”I’m the fury in your bed…”

Jayce sniffed beside him, and Viktor found himself reaching out to smooth back the mess of hair from his temple. It was a gesture without thought.

Jayce didn’t even react, he just leaned in closer.

Viktor didn’t need to save the world.

Just one person.

And maybe that person would’ve been enough.

He watched the screen go black. Jayce was still crying, nose red, hiccuping and mumbling about wanting to start over and do it differently. Viktor didn’t tell him he wouldn’t. That deep down, Jayce was always going to save everyone else.

But Viktor knew; if it were him–

He would’ve chosen differently.

”I’m the ghost in the back of your head.”

A week passes like that – with uncalled for proximity, cold looks that melted the moment they touched the sun inside Jayce’s heart. It drags unbearably long, like watching paint dry but someone just keeps on adding a new layer.

Caitlyn comes by one afternoon with a box of cupcakes balanced in one hand and a bottle of non-alcoholic rosé in the other. Elara squeals and hugs her with the force of a small meteor. Viktor hovers awkwardly at the door, trying to remember if his shirt has food on it and deciding it probably does.

Caitlyn is all class and thunder, her presence as tidy as her ponytail. She doesn’t stay long, just visiting to ask Elara how her schoolwork is, compliment the crayon mural on the wall, and give Viktor a long, unreadable look as he tries to scrub frosting off her chin.

They linger near the doorway longer than they should; Viktor’s hand already on the knob, Caitlyn’s coat draped neatly over her arm. Outside, the sky had fallen into its softer hues, all melting amber and violet edges. The quiet between them was companionable, like the tail-end of a conversation that didn’t need words anymore.

Caitlyn adjusts her sleeve, eyes flicking to Viktor’s face, noting the drawn lines around his mouth, the way his shoulders sagged not from the cane.

“I’m glad you came back,” she says finally, with a soft, warm smile. “Even if you ghosted the rest of us for twelve years.”

Viktor huffs faintly, nearly a laugh. “I was busy.”

She arches a brow. “So was I. Still managed to text.”

That earns her a sideways glance, but it’s lighthearted, grudging. A peace offering.

When she steps closer to wrap him in a hug, it’s not tight, but firm. Like a post to hold onto in rough current. Viktor lets himself sink into it just for a second, chin tucked near her shoulder. She smells like wool and lavender, something stable.

When they part, Caitlyn doesn’t move for the door just yet. Instead, she holds his shoulders, both hands resting there. “I see it, you know,” she murmurs. “In your eyes.”

Viktor blinks. “See what?”

“You’re tired.” Her gaze softens, but it doesn’t shy away. “And every time I visit Jayce, he looks like he’s halfway between finishing a sentence and forgetting how it started. That man paces like a ghost lives inside his ass. Especially when your name comes up.”

Viktor’s breath catches, shallow. She notices. “He forgets who broke whose heart,” she says, carefully. “But he remembers who made his beat too fast the first time.”

The silence afterward is heavy, dense.

Viktor doesn’t answer.

Caitlyn steps away, hand brushing his arm before she turns for the door. He watches her descend the hallway, heels clicking on marble in finality. Her figure is tall, slim, framed by the flickering lights.

She doesn’t turn back when she speaks again.

“Don’t let him drown chasing old fire.”

The words dig deep. Rattle loose something in his ribs that he thought was sealed shut. He spends the rest of the day distracted, burning onions and overcooking the dumplings. Elara doesn’t notice; she’s too busy telling him about her adventure with Mae, reenacting a very dramatic moment where they “almost fell into the gutter but didn’t because Mae is basically Spider-Man.”

She’s glowing, cheeks sun-pink from playing outside. There’s dirt under her nails and a grass stain on her tights, and Viktor can’t bring himself to scold her.

“There was this really pretty caterpillar,” she adds, between bites of his barely passable svíčková. “It had blue spots and tiny orange horns and I think it’s royalty.”

Viktor lowers his fork, narrowing his eyes. “There’s not a caterpillar living in the Tupperware I’ve been missing in your room, right?”

Elara freezes. With the eyes of a very bad liar, she shovels a bite into her mouth, chews quickly, and darts off. “Nope! Goodnight, love you!”

Her door slams. A second of silence. “No one is ever gonna find you, Sir Wigglebottom the Third…”

Viktor drags a hand down his face and exhales through his nose. He tells himself he’ll deal with it tomorrow. Maybe Sir Wigglebottom will emerge a butterfly. Maybe he’ll eat Viktor’s socks. Either way.

He tries not to look at his phone.

But when the dishes are drying and Elara’s soft snores sound from behind her cracked door, he gives in and sends the message. To Jayce.

Who else?

“I hope you’re okay.”

He doesn’t expect a reply. And he doesn’t get one.

Instead, he steps out onto the balcony and lights a cigarette. It’s one of the expensive ones, the kind Heimerdinger always scolded him for wasting money on. The cherry glows faintly in the dusk as he inhales.

Next to him, the non-alcoholic rosé bottle uncorks with a soft pop. He doesn’t pour it. Just stares at the way the glass catches the city lights and bends them into a distorted shape, his reflection curved inwards.

Like he’s already swallowed.

The doorbell rings close to midnight.

Viktor blinks, pulled out of the meditative hum of the fridge and the rhythm of his rag gliding over the stovetop. He wipes his hands slowly, walking down the hallway before reaching for the voice button.

And that voice hits him, slurred, raw, but unmistakably that same boyish lilt that used to make his chest tighten.

“Viktor…”

His stomach flips. He closes his eyes. Deep inhale.

“Open the door please…”

“No, Jayce,” Viktor grits through teeth, trying to keep his tone neutral while a storm is ready to rage inside him. “I’m coming down. Stay. Where. You. Are.”

He cuts the feed before Jayce can launch into whatever argument is coming, because of course he will. Always did. The stubbornness like a challenge. And Viktor? He’s too tired to fight it tonight.

He just sighs, grabs the jacket from the back of the chair – faded olive green, the zipper missing – and throws it over his old Gorillaz tee. His sweatpants have something suspiciously like flour on the thigh, and he doesn’t even try to find matching shoes. His foot slips into one croc and one old sandal. Good enough.

He limps to Elara’s room. She’s curled like a little fox, arms around a stuffed frog, hair tangled and haloed around her pillow. Peaceful. And at the end of the bed, nestled in a plastic Tupperware with precisely five air holes and a leaf inside–

Sir Wigglebottom the Third.

Viktor blinks. He bites his lower lip to resist the urge to laugh. “We’ll discuss this later, young lady,” he mutters to no one in particular.

The hallway stairs click under his weight. His cane taps unevenly, each step tugging at the ache in his bad leg. It’s worse tonight – weather maybe, or just the universe being cruel. And Jayce, of course. Jayce had to show up now, didn’t he?

The streetlight outside flickers gently, casting uneven shadows over the pavement. The wind smells like rain and smoke and city grime; a cocktail he thought he could leave behind in Zaun.

By the curb, Jayce sways slightly, unsteady on his feet. Very visibly drunk, his jacket left half-zipped, the world bleeding into his glassy, red-rimmed eyes.

He looks up when he hears Viktor’s cane announcing his steps.

And then he smiles. It’s a crooked, broken thing – but God, does it make Viktor want to wipe it off Jayce’s face with his own.

“Hey,” he breathes out, like he’d been holding it in all week, just waiting to set that one word free.

Viktor stops on the last step. He doesn’t say anything yet. Just studies him. This version of Jayce, undone at the seams, wrinkles around the eyes, like maybe he’s been thinking about their choices again.

And that maybe this time he’d try choosing differently.

Jayce reeks of gin and fancy cologne, one clearly trying to mask the other. It doesn’t work.

Viktor pulls out of the parking space too fast, irritated at how easily Jayce had leaned on him, how easily he still fit. The old sedan rattles like it’s holding back a cough, headlights dragging shadows across sleeping houses. Jayce rests his forehead against the window, breath misting the glass, eyes shut like the world is just too much. Dear God, don’t let him throw up now.

“Why were you drinking?” Viktor asks eventually. Calm. Pretending to be, at least.

Jayce shifts, his voice slurred and sleepy. “Went out with colleagues. Just for fun.”

Just for fun. Like that isn’t a foreign concept now. Like he wasn’t on Viktor’s doorstep swaying in the dark, his voice cracking just on his name.

Viktor clenches the wheel, flexes his jaw. He doesn’t say what he wants to. “You’re a father, Jayce.”

That silences him. Not even a breath.

The rest of the ride is quiet. It makes Viktor’s shoulder blades itch. Jayce doesn’t say another word. He just slumps further down in the seat, hand splayed over his stomach, thumb twitching like he’s trying to reach for something in a dream.

When they finally pull into Jayce’s driveway, Jayce doesn’t even bother to lift himself fully from the seat, he just folds toward Viktor’s side like a tower finally collapsing. Viktor sighs through his nose. “You’re heavy.”

Jayce blinks blearily at him, as if the weight of his body is a surprise. “I’m dense,” he retorts with a pout, like that’s better. Like he isn’t a six-foot-something monument of muscle and charm.

“You’re impossible,” Viktor mutters, but still – still – he offers his hand.

Jayce takes it instantly. And his palm is warm, of course it is. Soft, of course it fucking is. His skin is sun-warmed bronze even in the cold moonlight, freckled perfectly, and there’s a sheen of sweat along his temple that glints like saltwater under the streetlamp. His dark hair is tousled with that effortless messiness, not quite black but deep coffee-brown, with stray amber threads curling at the tips. Viktor hates that he notices this. Hates how his fingers twitch around the keys in his hands that he snatched off Jayce, itching to brush it away from his forehead.

He doesn’t. He gets the door open.

“Where’s Mae?” Viktor asks once they’re inside.

Jayce hums, eyes half-lidded. “At her mom’s.”

So they’re still in touch. An unexpected turn in the new file Viktor had made for Jayce inside his mind. But yet... Jayce came to him.

The house smells like linen and some cologne Viktor vaguely remembers from before. That night. He pushes it away. The space is clean, modern. Not at all like Jayce used to be – maybe not even like who Jayce really is. It’s hard to say nowadays.

“Where’s your bedroom?” Viktor mutters, scanning the multiple doors.

Jayce tugs him by the hand, apparently having found some form of strength in the alcohol drowning his shame. “Upstairs.”

There’s something about the way he says it. Like a whisper he doesn't want Viktor to hear all the way. A little vulnerable. A little sweet. His eyes are glossy and a shade between brown and green; hazel that looks like whiskey in the sun. Viktor can’t look too long.

He slept with you and then pretended it didn’t happen. You left, remember?

The stairs groan under their combined weight. Viktor’s leg is already aching, but Jayce leans into him again, heavy and too close and not close enough. His skin radiates heat.

Viktor gets the door open to the bedroom, dim and just as neat as the rest of the sterile inside of the house, and nudges Jayce inside.

Jayce crashes back onto the bed with a grunt, dragging Viktor’s hand with him. Viktor yelps, stumbling forward, cane barely keeping him upright.

The taller just giggles.

Then, suddenly, Jayce nuzzles into Viktor’s palm, the one Viktor had pulled up to his cheek instinctively to brace himself, pressing his face there like it’s the safest place in the world.

Viktor freezes, shock blooming sharp and sudden in his chest. His fingers twitch, caught between wanting to pull away and not wanting to break the connection he longed for.

“Planning on staying, I see,” Jayce drunkenly chuckles, eyes half-lidded, that damn smile curling at the corners of his mouth.

“You’re wasted,” Viktor snaps, flustered now, too painfully aware of the lingering warmth, the subtle pull of Jayce’s weight, the way his body is splayed out like he’s waiting – waiting for something Viktor isn’t sure he’s ready to give.

Jayce blinks up at him, frowns softly like a kicked puppy. “Sorry, V.”

It’s said so gently, so sincerely, like a memory from years ago wrapped in cotton candy, making Viktor’s brain feel fuzzy. Viktor swallows and finally wrenches his hand free. Jayce looks wounded in that dopey way drunks do. But he doesn’t stop him.

“Go to sleep,” Viktor mutters.

Jayce is already halfway there, shoes still on, arms splayed wide like he’s trying to catch the night itself. His shirt’s ridden up a bit. There’s a scar on his side Viktor doesn’t remember, old and pale. Another thing he never got to ask about. Another thing he wasn’t around for.

Jayce mumbles something, half-swallowed by the pillow he smushed his face into.

“What?” Viktor asks, despite every nerve screaming at him to just leave.

Jayce’s eyes don’t open, but his mouth moves, thick with sleep and the endless shots still dripping in his blood. “I’m wasted…” A hiccup. Viktor can’t tell if he’s crying or the liquor is coming up. “And I still can’t drown the way I love you…”

Something much worse came up.

Viktor’s heart stops. Dead silence.

Then, Jayce exhales–

–and goes under cold.

He shouldn’t still care. He shouldn’t still ache.

Instead of undressing him – or touching him again, God forbid – Viktor grabs a sticky note from the desk and scribbles:

Water. Two painkillers, not just one. Tell Mae’s mom to keep her until sundown.

– Viktor

He leaves it by the lamp, right where Jayce will see it.

Then he lets himself out. The door clicks softly behind him, but the sound is swallowed by the pounding of his heart.

The air outside is cooler now. The street is still. He walks down the steps, cane tapping, chest hollow.

His hand still burns from the warmth of another.

Chapter Text

“Ni te gustan los pencil cases with this pattern, Elli!” 

“Well– You– Your pera jsou škaredá!”

The war began, as all great wars do, over a meaningless, inanimate object of very little importance other than the satisfaction of ownership.

Specifically, over a glittery pencil case. Mauve with iridescent – albeit peeling and slight crusty – stars, and a unicorn that screamed that “the power of friendship can solve anything.” The kind of thing you’d find in a bargain bin at a gas station or the bottom of a second-grade backpack next to stale gummy bears and forgotten homework.

Mae swore on her grandmother Ximena that it was hers. Elara denied that with some sort of “divine right”. And then they both started swearing. The room dissolved into a babel of Spanish, Czech, and something that could only be described as banshee-infused elementary English. Both were loud enough to summon the wrath of gods – or at least, a very tired adult in the next room.

Words melted together in a storm of syllables and spit. Tears welled, then fell in dramatic waterfalls. Emotional stakes skyrocketed over a barely five-dollar piece of cheap plastic that was definitely fitted to grow fungus.

“¡Estás mintiendo, mentirosa!” Mae howled, clutching the offending pencil case to her chest like it was the last loaf of bread during the apocalypse.

Elara’s cheeks were flushed with pink splotches, her curls disheveled from the sheer velocity of her anger. Her hands, trembling and balled into fists, looked ready to duel. “Já jsem to měla první, ty… tuleň!”

Jayce didn’t know what tuleň meant, but judging by the venom in Elara’s tone and the way Mae gasped like she’d been slapped with a fish, it wasn’t complimentary.

“She just called me a seal,” Mae hiccupped, scandalized. “Like an actual, blubbery, flippery seal!”

Elara, not even blinking, growled, “A dramatic seal.”

Jayce, on the other hand, stood frozen in the kitchen, spatula hovering mid-air like a useless sword in the hands of a weary, underqualified knight. Before him, the grilled cheese had begun its slow descent into culinary disaster, transforming into a blackened, cheese-lava catastrophe. Smoke began to curl up the sides of the pan, an ominous grey plume.

Jayce muttered under his breath, hope fading fast. “Por el amor de Dios–”

He hadn’t spoken much Spanish since marrying his ex-wife, raising Mae to be bilingual, and even then it was mostly to impress his aunt who now only texted him once a year with a “Happy birthday, Jayce!” and a row of various emojis she definitely sent to everyone.

A scream echoed off the wall with enough force to rattle through his bones. Jayce flinched so hard the spatula leapt from his hand and clattered to the counter. One of them was sobbing now. Wet and gasping, the kind of sob that said this will be brought up for years to come. The other voice? Pure war cry. There was a distinct sound of markers being uncapped with a purpose he feared.

Jayce swore again, his voice cracking like a teenager’s. “Shit– shit– okay, okay–” The grilled cheese hissed like it, too, was angry, spitting some hot dairy at him. And then – because life is never done punishing you when you’re already behind – a colored pencil flew past his ear with a velocity that suggested someone had spent a lot of time watching “The Little Mermaid” and mistook the fork scenes for battle training.

He ducked just in time.

Jayce sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, whispering the universal prayer of all overworked caretakers: Why did I think two kids would be easy to watch over? Why did I say yes? Why didn’t I fake a work emergency like Viktor does?

Out in the war-torn wasteland of the living room, a pair of rival blanket forts had risen like opposing kingdoms. They loomed from either sides of the couch table. Mae’s was a pastel fortress: lavender sheets draped over chairs, pillows that shimmered with sequins and knock-off movie protagonists, a toy tiara hanging precariously from the top like a flag. It radiated passive aggression and sparkles.

Elara’s looked like it had been constructed for a courtroom of a defense attorney raised by wolves. Crime-scene red blankets were tucked over the couch, dramatic shadows, a single flashlight illuminating her scowl like she was testifying to a tragic betrayal. Which, in her mind, she absolutely was.

They refused to look at each other. They communicated only through the psychological warfare of weaponized silence and occasional passive-aggressive sniffling.

He tiptoed toward the living room like a man trying not to trip a mine. "Girls?" he called carefully, voice an octave too high, forced calm painted over his panic. "Anyone want… grilled cheese?”

No reply.

This, he thought, was how his sanity ended. Not with a midlife crisis. With two tiny dictators of moral superiority.

Jayce ran a hand through his hair and muttered, "I'm not paid enough for this," before remembering he wasn’t paid at all. This was his volunteered day off.

Viktor had an important medical appointment that would take up most of his day. Parent prodigy that Jayce is, he signed up for a day off that the college grants for community service and confidently told Viktor “Go. I’ve got her.” This was supposed to be community engagement. He thought he’d maybe teach the girls about liquid nitrogen and marshmallows. Bond. Instead, he was presiding over Cold War II.

He gave it five more minutes. Five. They were now loudly mediating through sock puppets and throwing goldfish crackers across the demilitarized zone between the forts.

Then – his last hope of mercy – he reached for his phone and called Viktor.

He almost didn’t answer.

He’d just returned from the clinic, stripped of blood and patience, weighed down by words like “progressing nicely” yet “monitor closely.” His coat was still half-on. The stinging scent of disinfection that had to be applied after basically every touched door handle clung to him like second skin. When his phone buzzed at 2:56 PM, he assumed it would be another appointment reminder. Or worse – Jayce, finally bringing up that night.

The one where he’d been bare, drunk in Viktor’s arms like he was his safe space. Where Jayce had looked at him like he was an angel sent to protect him. Like Viktor’s cracks were constellations instead of flaws. And Viktor – predictably, shamefully – had looked away.

Days passed. Jayce hadn’t brought it up. Not once. Not in the lab. Not over text. Not even at the last faculty meeting, where they’d sat two chairs apart, separated by a void thick with something pressing against the backs of their throats.

Jayce's name lit up the screen. Simple. Yet Viktor’s pulse tripped over itself. His thumb hovered above the screen like it had forgotten that there were muscles inside it.

His first thought was not annoyance or curiosity.

It was: finally.

The line crackles once, then–

“Viktor?!” Jayce’s voice exploded out of the speaker, frantic and so loud that there was no speaker needed. Viktor moved the phone away an inch. Somewhere in the background, a child was screaming like she’s being mauled by wolves.

Viktor straightens in his chair, spine snapping upright. Confusion flits across his features. “Jayce?”

“Oh thank God.” Jayce exhales so forcefully it’s almost a laugh. But it isn’t. “I– listen– I need backup.”

Viktor blinks. His fingers twitch near the keys on his desk. “Backup,” he repeats, flatly.

“They’re at war,” Jayce hisses, and there was crack in the background on cue. Ceramic, maybe. A mug, a bowl, the last shred of Jayce’s dignity. “Mae just called Elara a ‘megalomaniac with abandonment issues,’ and said she’s going to build a rocket and leave Earth specifically to get away from her.” Jayce was out of breath, panting like a news reporter documenting a horrifying accident. “Elara then called Mae a dictator-slash-thief-slash– what was it? Oh right – ‘emotionally manipulative.’”

Viktor doesn’t even pause. “Are they bleeding?” he inquires, already reaching for his coat where it hangs folded over the chair he just put it on, having hoped for a sliver of rest.

“Only emotionally.”

There’s a beat.

One that’s too long to ignore but too short to be labelled silence.

Viktor’s hand stills, halfway to his collar he’d been adjusting out of habit. His lips part, then close again. He knows he shouldn’t ask. Knows the timing’s wrong, the space between them stained, clinging like smoke on the coat you’re trying to hide from your parents.

But it slips out anyway.

“Jayce…” he murmurs carefully, “is that really why you’re calling me?”

Prickling silence answers him.

A chair screeches violently across a hardwood floor. There’s a scuffle, a thud, the slapping sound of something wet being flung against a surface. Jayce whisper-yells into the phone like he’s in the heart of a civil war. “Oh my God, Viktor, please– I just stepped on a LEGO, I think I’m bleeding out. I haven’t eaten. I probably drank glitter by accident. They’ve divided the living room into rival nations. I think Mae’s annexing the hallway. I’m not strong enough to negotiate a treaty– I’m not built for this.”

That does it. Viktor exhales sharply through his nose. It’s almost a laugh, if one ignores the disbelief in it. Maybe slight affection, too. He coughs into his sleeve, barely audible, but his voice is steadier afterwards. Not disappointed. Something neighboring it, though. “I’ll be there in ten.”

“You’re a saint,” Jayce groans with dramatic fervor. “An actual– Ow! Elara! Stop biting! Yojr dad’s coming, okay?! Jesús Cristo–”

Click.

Just like that, the line dies.

Viktor stares at the phone for a moment longer than necessary, thumb still pressed near the end call button, as if expecting the silence to say something else. His reflection in the screen stares back, eyes dull, mouth set tight.

He looks tired.

Of course he forgot, Viktor thinks, sliding the phone back into his pocket. Of course he did.

Still.

He grabs his scarf from the hook by the door, just in case. It’s not even cold today. But Jayce’s house is always drafty.

And Viktor – Viktor is many things. But heartless is not one of them.

He arrived just in time to witness Jayce slam bodily into the door as it opened, like he was the one trying to escape.

The sound that escaped Jayce’s throat wasn’t entirely human; it was more something between a strangled gasp and a man’s soul leaving his body under extreme domestic trauma.

The door flung wide open, and Jayce stood there, wide-eyed, hair an electric storm of static and stress, shirt stained with something unidentifiable to the human eye – maybe juice, possibly glue, at this point even more possible: blood. Hopefully not all three.

He looked like he had aged five years in the span of one day.

“Thank God,” he croaked, gripping the doorframe for balance. “One more minute and I was going to evaporate. Spontaneous combustion. Dust in the wind, Viktor.”

Viktor blinked.

Then, wordlessly, he leaned to peer past Jayce into the battlefield beyond.

The house – if it could still be called that – looked like a pastel war zone. Two opposing blanket forts loomed from either end of the living room like fabric bunkers. Pillow ramparts. Crayon-drawn propaganda on printer paper. Someone had constructed a makeshift flag from a sock and a chopstick. Viktor was almost impressed.

There was crayon on the ceiling.

Jayce followed Viktor’s gaze with the hollow eyes of a man who had seen too much. He made a pitiful noise and sagged sideways against the doorframe like a houseplant giving up. That made Viktor wince internally at the reminder of Commander Leafy, whose welting carcass he wanted to throw out two weeks ago. “I need a nap. Or a priest.”

Viktor’s eyebrows inched upward. “...What the hell happened?” he asked, amazed and also a little terrified.

Jayce turned and gestured broadly at the inside of the house like a man recounting a horrendous haunting. “They broke the Geneva Convention.”

There was a pause.

Viktor didn’t laugh. But the edge of his mouth twitched, just once, quick and reluctant, before he smothered it beneath the usual veil of practiced apathy.

“I see,” he muttered, still biting down a snort, stepping inside unhurried. “Shall I negotiate their surrender, then?”

Jayce exhaled like someone who had just been handed a life preserver after twenty minutes of struggling in the water. “You’re on diplomacy,” he declared, voice cracking somewhere between exhausted gratitude and mild hysteria. “I’ll be manning the stove. Or– God, screw it– I’m ordering pizza. Something I can’t burn. Elara’s starting to look at me like I’m the weakest link.”

Viktor shed his coat with a shake of his shoulders, eyes flicking between the girls like he was assessing enemy territory. He wasn’t sure which one had the higher kill count – but obviously, his money was on his daughter, gripping a juice box tighter than a hyena protecting the last piece of flesh in a savanna.

As he moved past Jayce, their shoulders brushed, a blink-and-miss, and Viktor pretended he didn’t notice the way Jayce leaned in like someone who’d been waiting for a center of gravity all day.

By the time Viktor negotiates the glittery pencil case truce, the girls, thoroughly outmaneuvered, begrudgingly agree to a ceasefire. Temporary disarmament in exchange for ice cream and open skies. Peace has finally returned.

They don’t know they lost the moment he stepped in. Not when he zipped up Elara’s jacket, not when Mae puffed out her cheeks in protest, only to deflate under Viktor’s narrowed stare. Even revolutionaries bow to the authority of exhausted adults.

The park is a living watercolor page of spring’s climax, sunlight pooling through the branches, wind brushing through leaves in gentle waves. The air is full of a restless warmth that makes everything feel on the verge of nostalgia; laughter, a breeze, the thud of a soccer ball hitting dirt. Childhood seeps into the ground like dandelion wine, sticky-sweet and bitter in the aftertaste.

A round pug barks somewhere near the sandbox, digging a hole while a child cheers it on from the side. The echo bounces off the sun-bleached slide. Its focus is abruptly interrupted as it begins to chase a squirrel down the hill. “Ugh, come on, Spreadsheet, we almost made it to the Earth’s core this time!”

Overhead, a plane draws a white scar across the blue, cutting the sky in two like a fingertip smearing chalk across a blackboard.

Jayce sits hunched forward on a bench that desperately needs a new paint job, tapping the edge of his plastic spoon against his knee in an irregular rhythm. Tik. Tik. Tik. It sounds like he’s trying to tether himself to the noise, like silence might make the thoughts creep in too loud. In his other hand, a paper cup of ice cream leans dangerously towards its ruin, a soup of chocolate and vanilla marbling together. He hasn’t touched it in minutes.

Beside him, Viktor reclines with one elbow hooked lazily over the back of the bench. His coat is wrinkled at the hem, a smudge of grass near one elbow, and fine puffs of dandelion fluff clinging to the collar. He doesn’t bother brushing them off. They suit him somehow, like details in a painting that make the whole thing feel more alive. He’s squinting against the sun, eyes focused ahead on the two tiny figures running through the grass, where Mae and Elara orbit each other once more.

Their earlier war has dissolved into giggles and petal crowns. Mae has taken to braiding dandelions into Elara’s long curls with surprising gentleness, almost like she’s spinning glass. Meanwhile Elara reclines like royalty, issuing directions with a serious tone, a little snort cracking through the façade here and there.

Viktor watches them with a stillness Jayce envies. Not disengaged or distant. Just there. Present in that calm way that feels harder to access the older they get.

A breeze kicks up, sun-warmed. It carries the green breath of clover and the plastic tang of sunscreen melting off toddler shoulders into their pores. It lifts the dandelion fluff up into a shared dance, tiny parachutes spun from nature’s joy, sending it drifting. One lands on Viktor’s shoulder, another on Jayce’s lashes, and the rest flies across the grass like blessings from some soft, laughing god.

For a long moment, neither of them speak. 

Jayce glances sideways, just enough to catch Viktor in profile – and forgets himself.

Viktor’s face is bathed in the radiant sun. Warm light pools across his cheekbones, gilding the angles, rounding them just slightly, like someone had pressed thumb to clay and smoothed the edge. The sharpness of him, the constant thinking, the maddeningly neutral expression, seems dulled now. The lines near his mouth, so often tight, have relaxed into a sweet smile. Open, as if the sun herself convinced him to lay down his sword for a minute.

Jayce swallows. The spoon tinks once more against his knee one final time.

And for a breath, he feels it.

That thing. That hope of maybe. The shape of a life they could’ve had. Or almost had. Or still could, if time were kinder, and pride less bruised. If they both knew how to reach without flinching.

Viktor’s fingers twitch on the bench, like there’s something he wants to say. But it never makes it past his throat. He keeps it, whatever it is, locked away again.

Jayce watches Mae finish her masterpiece. The braid is a messy triumph: half-falling apart, wild with uneven loops, one dandelion already wilting sideways like it’s drunk on sunshine. But she ties it off with a decisive little nod, clearly pleased with her work. Elara rises like royalty; arms out, caramel curls crowned in yellow, eyes as bright as the sky above them. She twirls once, gauging the reaction like it’s her coronation day. And when Mae claps, she giggles and throws herself into the grass, fully trusting the earth to catch her.

They collapse together, tangled limbs and tangled hair, laughing until it becomes a soundless wheeze. Just two kids in a world too big to understand, but somehow still good.

And Jayce – Jayce forgets to breathe for a second.

Because just like that, he’s not in the park anymore. He’s back in his too-small room at his mom’s house, light carving onto the floor through the slats of the blinds in slices, catching the motes in the air like golden dust. The windows are cracked in the heat of summer. Outside, someone is mowing their lawn.

Graduation morning. Nerves like static under his skin, crawling in electric shocks under his collar. His palms were damp from gripping the bathroom sink, where he’d rehearsed his speech six times to his own reflection and hated it more with every pass. His tie hung around his neck, a tangle of effort and frustration.

And Viktor was too damn close. He always had been.

“Hold still,” he murmured, and reached for the knot with fingers steadier in intention than execution. His hands trembled anyway. Jayce still remembers how featherlight Viktor’s knuckles grazed his throat, how his brows furrowed, trying to concentrate on the mechanisms of a Windsor knot instead their shared body heat.

Jayce felt every point of contact like it was burning him at the stake.

The brush of fingertips against skin.

The way Viktor exhaled slowly through his nose.

The moment he smoothed the collar down, his hand lingering an extra beat too long, fingers grazing the hollow of Jayce’s collarbone.

His gaze dipped – once, twice – toward Jayce’s mouth. Guilty glances. Like he was studying the form, the color, trying to calculate the taste like an unsolved variable.

The tie was too high. Then too loose. Then perfect. But Viktor didn’t pull away.

Instead, his hand ghosted lower, over Jayce’s lapel, not adjusting, not fixing. Just... hovering. Touching without touching. Like there was something left to say in the shape of a crease.

Jayce’s throat bobbed. “Do I look ridiculous?” he asked, trying to make it light, to cover the way his grin felt too hungry.

“You always do,” Viktor had joked in reply. Dry. But he hadn’t looked away – not even a blink.

And they stood there, caught between the past they never acknowledged and the future they never promised.

Jayce wanted to lean in. God, he wanted to.

But neither of them moved.

And when Viktor finally dropped his hand, it felt like the end of something that had never really started.

They hadn’t said what they meant back then.

And now, either.

Jayce exhales like the memory has teeth. In some way, it does. It’s still gnawing at his ribs, hungry for his bones like a starving dog – waiting for a different ending, begging for a different taste.

Beside him, Viktor shifts. He lifts his wrist to inspect the smear that still ghosted along the inside of his arm, the pale blushing pink of ice cream. His fingers move to wipe it away but miss, too distracted.

Jayce hesitates for only a second – then reaches.

His hand closes around Viktor’s wrist. He brushes his thumb across the inside of it, right over the bone where his skin is thinnest, where the veins run like pressed blue flower petals under glass. It’s a correction, not a declaration.

Viktor startles slightly, hand twitching, shoulder stiffening. There a flicker of tension in his eyes, like instinct tells him to retreat. But he doesn’t move. He doesn’t pull away.

A dandelion seed floats between them in slow spirals. One piece lands in Viktor’s hair and stays there, glowing white against the dark, like snow made of wishes in a muddy sea.

Jayce doesn’t let go. And Viktor doesn’t ask him to.

It had started as a joke. Or at least that used to be Jayce’s favorite mask.

They were walking home under the smudged velvet of a summer night, where the stars glittered on charcoal, and porch lights flickered in hazy yellows like sleepy fireflies. Their suits were creased from hours of motion and the heat of at least fifty bodies in one small gymnasium. Both were damp at the collar, shoes muddy from where they'd cut across someone’s yard earlier to beat the sprinklers, laughing like they were twelve again. Jayce still smelled like grass and cheap cologne. Viktor’s tie was gone entirely.

Jayce’s date had left hours ago, after one last photo and a tight-lipped smile that probably meant he wasn’t getting a text back. Whatever. He’d played the part, at least. He’d laughed when he was supposed to. Even dipped his date in a waltz that wasn’t really a waltz, sure. But all of it had felt… off. Like there was a song lodged in his throat that never made it out.

Viktor walked beside him, silent for most of the journey, his cane tapping rhythmically against the sidewalk. Their shoulders brushed now and then, and neither of them really pulled away. Each pass lasted just a second longer than the last, like gravity kept correcting them.

Jayce had spoken too casually. Masked it with a grin that was all teeth and charm, the kind he wore when his heart was swinging too close to the edge.

“Hey,” he spoke up, elbow nudging Viktor’s arm in mock offense. “Wanna dance?”

He meant it to be light. Tossed-off. A joke, just a joke.

But then Viktor looked at him.

Not at him. Into him. With that stare he sometimes wore like a scalpel, dissecting the question down to its bones, peeling back pretense. Like Jayce had just said something far more dangerous than he realized.

Suddenly it wasn’t a joke.

Maybe it never had been.

The stars were in Viktor’s eyes. No, really – they were in them. Reflected in that burnished gold like sparks about to catch and flare into a wildfire. And suddenly the air felt too dense, too hot, like the night had leaned in close, cupping the world in its hands just to listen to them.

Viktor huffed something between sigh and scoff, and glanced down the street. It was late. The whole neighborhood was sleeping, the silence being reduced to dust. “Well?” he insisted softly. But something in it trembled like a page before it was turned. He leaned his cane against a low, perfectly white fence – a gesture of trust, of laying something down. Like a knight setting aside his shield. And then he just held out his hand.

Open. Waiting.

Jayce stared at it.

Then at Viktor.

Then back again.

Like a man offered the sun and asked to decide if he was brave enough to burn.

His throat felt tight. His chest, caved in. His pulse tripped. But his fingers moved anyway, drawn forward like the gravity of the stars in Viktor’s eyes were pulling him in.

Viktor stepped closer, just a fraction, letting Jayce guide him. Enough for Jayce to watch his lashes flutter, notice the sheen on sweat on his temple, feel his breath hitch. Jayce flushed at the proximity, fumbling a little, and gently moved them into position. One hand found Viktor’s waist. The other clung to his palm, thumb brushing along the knuckles like an apology. He tilted his foot just enough for Viktor to step onto his shoes, careful to take the weight off his bad leg.

Yeah, this was never a joke.

It definitely never had been.

It was awkward at first.

A hesitant sway. An elbow bumped. A nervous laugh. Jayce’s thumb brushed the back of Viktor’s hand – and Viktor’s fingers curled slightly tighter around his. The distance between them collapsed in on itself, like it had always been waiting to.

Their feet shuffled across the sidewalk in a rhythm that was more feeling than form. Sneakers scuffed against cracks and seams, stumbling here and there, but neither let go. The air smelled of freshly cut grass and sun-warmed asphalt. Somewhere nearby, someone was baking – vanilla, maybe almond.

Jayce’s arm brushed Viktor’s again. Then again. Not quite by accident.

Viktor was muttering under his breath about how this was ‘absolutely absurd,’ a doomed exercise in balance and juvenile sentiment, but his voice was soft. And his smile was softer. The kind he always tried to swallow quickly. It didn’t quite stay down tonight.

Jayce caught it, of course, and grinned brighter than the porch lights haloing around them.

Unexpectedly, he hummed. At first, a breath. Then a murmur.

Slowly, it began to build a melody upon itself, like it had slipped from his ribs before he could repair the leak.

Words.

He sang them softly. So shy it almost didn’t count.

“Estás tan dentro de mí...”

The syllables wrapped themselves around the night like silky thread. Jayce’s accent wavered here and there, clumsy, but the sentiment held. He sang like no one was listening. Like maybe he wanted someone to be.

And Viktor, God.

He laughed.

It was neither loud nor full. It came out muffled, like it startled him, cracking through his insides like something buried finally gasping for air. Then, wordlessly, he tipped forward and let his forehead fall against Jayce’s shoulder.

Jayce leaned back without thinking. Without flinching. Like he’d been waiting for this weight forever.

“Te sigo pensando...”

Their steps slowed into something less like movement and more borrowing temporary time, swaying while they can still do it without consequences. They were orbiting. Letting the moment pull them just far enough from the rest of the world to pretend it didn’t exist.

Two dumb boys.

The whole goddamn universe stretched above them.

“Te sigo esperando...”

The past lays itself over the present like sunlight through leaves, dappling ghosts across skin with a sizzling touch. It seeps in uninvited, straight to your blood and burning the oxygen inside it so that your lungs restrict into pitiful gasps.

Jayce’s gaze drifts. To Viktor, inevitably.

To the curve of his wrist where his sleeve is slightly crumpled, knuckles pale against the grip of a plastic spoon. To the way his fingers flex absently, moving idly as though caught mid-thought. Viktor always thinks in movement. In flicks and flourishes. In the language of gestures too intimate to translate.

Jayce stays watching, unblinking. Watches the corners of his mouth twitch with one more thought he’ll never share.

The same mouth that had laughed that night.

The same wrist he’d held when they danced.

The same Viktor who’d softened, just barely, before hiding in the crook of Jayce’s shoulder.

But now, he sits inches away, an echo made flesh that refuses to touch Jayce again.

He drags a hand over his face like weariness is something he can wipe clean, like it isn’t etched into the bags beneath his eyes, or caught in the downturned corners of his mouth. The gesture is automatic, and when his hand falls back to his lap, his fingers curl in loosely on themselves, thumb tracing the inside of his palm.

He was always awful at finding the right time to talk.

“I’m sorry I...” The words stammer out, yet his gaze never shifts. “I’m sorry I didn’t say anything...” His voice is unbelievably quiet. Worn thin like an old shirt stretched too many times. He watches Mae out of the corner of his eye, smiling so radiantly up at Elara as she perches a dandelion crown atop her head like she’s knighting her. The brave soldier to her flower kingdom. Jayce smiles, barely. It doesn’t reach far, vanishing as quickly as it came.

“She’s always like that,” he murmurs. “Everything’s a story. A quest. A kingdom made out of weeds and sidewalk chalk.” He exhales slowly, as if each word is a stone lifted from the dirt in his heart, bugs skittering out from underneath them. “She still thinks knights save the world.” A breath pauses him.

“I don’t know how to tell her they don’t.”

His eyes fall to his hands, thumb moving to his nail again, catching at the edge and worrying it, a nervous habit he never managed to grow out of.

“I don’t remember what happened that night,” he admits eventually, like it hurts to say those words. “After I left the bar, it’s just... blank. Gone. Like someone taped over it. I woke up with a raging headache. I thought I was alone.” Jayce draws in a deep breath. His ribs don’t seem to expand all the way. “Then I saw the note you left on my lamp. And I–” He swallows. “I was too afraid to ask.”

His shoulders hitch inward, subtly. Like some instinctual part of him is bracing for punishment. Or worse – pity. 

“I didn’t want to know if I’d ruined something.” Again. “I thought maybe if I stayed quiet, it’d… go away. Or undo itself. Or maybe you’d act like it never happened, and I wouldn’t have to see it in your face when you looked at me.”

Shame isn’t there. Not even self-pity or regret. It’s gentler, something much deeper that had taken root all those years ago, and now grew into an unshakeable tree; one that fills his bronchioles with thick leaves and tangles its branches inside his organs. His voice doesn’t rise, doesn’t tremble. But it wears him down. A deep weariness, smooth like a worry stone turned over in his hands for too many years.

Jayce glances toward Viktor then, like whatever he’s about to say might undo him. His mouth parts. But it stays like that – parted. Never fully closed, never fully open. There’s a breath caught somewhere behind his teeth, stinging with the venom of guilt, pressing at the roof of his mouth like it’s been waiting a decade to be spoken.

“I shouldn’t have–”

He doesn’t finish it.

One breath too far and everything might snap.

He doesn’t say I shouldn’t have ignored you.

Doesn’t say I should’ve said something that morning.

Doesn’t say I wanted to.

I tried. I froze.

I failed you, like I swore I never would.

Instead, he just shuts his mouth again, jaw tightening like it might hold back more than words, sew shut the hole that had begun to tear open. His gaze falls to the inch of bench between them, to the seam where chipped paint gives way to rusted metal, like it might collapse under the weight of all the things he’s never had the nerve to say.

Viktor doesn’t answer right away. Doesn’t even spare him a glance.

He just scrapes his spoon along the rim of his ice cream cup. It’s not about the ice cream; it never was. It’s about not letting silence swallow him whole.

And when he does finally speak, it’s not cruel. Just... defeated in the way truth can be when it’s left too long to dull.

“You always used to say you’d never be like your father.” The words drop into the space between them like stones into water: shallow impact, deep consequences. They don’t echo, but they ripple. You can feel them moving even after the sound is gone. “But you left that, too.”

He says it simply. Not like a knife thrown, but like a cut already made, one he’s been tracing with his fingers for weeks. Years.

It isn’t an accusation. It is a wound unable to scar. And Jayce feels it bruise deeper. All the way through. His shoulders don’t move. He doesn’t turn his head. He doesn’t scramble for defense or deflect with humor. He just sits there, perfectly still, letting the weight of it press into him. A truth he can’t run from because it came from someone who knows where to aim.

For a moment, even the wind seems to hesitate. The warmth around them cools, despite the afternoon sun blaring down. The bench creaks beneath them, a reminder that they’re still sitting next to each other. And still not touching.

Jayce’s mouth parts slightly. He looks like he might try for a rebuttal, like a word is trembling behind his teeth, but nothing makes it out. And maybe that’s the most honest he’s been in a long time. He never did know how to answer Viktor. He could give speeches. Could rally an entire room behind him with a smile and a promise. But when it came to moments like this, moments that didn’t ask for brilliance or bravado, he always fell short.

Viktor doesn’t offer comfort. He doesn’t take the words back or fill the silence with anything gentler. There’s no cushion for the blow, no second chance handed over neatly. He simply reaches into the pocket of his coat and produces a napkin, passing it across. A gesture so ordinary it almost feels cruel.

But their fingers brush in the exchange.

And it’s nothing.

And it’s everything.

Like they’ve done this before. Like they’ll do it again.

Then, just like that, Viktor looks away. His gaze finds the girls again, anchored to them like he needs something to hold onto. Elara is now threading a dandelion stem carefully through Mae’s short, dark hair, brows furrowed in concentration. The wind lifts their laughter into the sun’s light like an offering, and for a second, it almost sounds like forgiveness.

Bees weave through the clover, looking for sweet nectar but always buzzing away empty-handed.

“They won’t forget this day,” Viktor says at last, his voice distant, like a message being delivered across a great distance, as though he's not entirely in the same moment anymore.

Jayce watches him. Watches the slow breath Viktor takes before speaking. The way his lashes dip when he blinks, the firm set of his jaw, the way his hands settle in his lap like they’re tired of holding on and finally learning how to let go.

And in the breath between heartbeats, it’s hard to tell who he means.

The girls, full of wildflowers and joy, who will carry this moment like a beautiful flower tucked into the pages of their memory.

Or them.

Jayce shifts slowly, like the weight of everything is suddenly too much for his spine. He leans forward, elbows on his knees, shoulders curled inward, as if the shape of confession is something his body remembers better than his voice.

In his hands, the napkin has all but disintegrated, softened by melted ice cream and the nervous pull of his fingers, now twisted into a crumpled little knot. Useless. Just something to do with his hands.

“My marriage,” he starts, and it sounds like he’s talking to the wind, not to Viktor. His voice is completely flat, carved for the light to carry it away. “It fell apart without even a fight.”

He doesn’t look up. His eyes stay on the field. On Mae, who is now tugging loose Elara’s braid with the mischievous grin of someone who knows they’ll be forgiven before they’re even done misbehaving. The petals flutter down like a soft summer rain, white and yellow against the grass. The girls laugh like the moment is endless. Like it isn’t built on bones.

Jayce exhales; it scrapes on the way out through all the parts still tender inside him.

“It was... quiet,” he continues. “No yelling. No doors slamming. Just–” his lips twist, wry, “Just two people mistaking loneliness for a future.”

He rubs a thumb along the edge of his knee, like he’s polishing a thought down to something he can survive.

“We called it love. We told ourselves it was stability. A family. But mostly we were tired. Tired of trying. Tired of starting from nothing. Tired of waiting for someone who never walked through the door.”

A pause. Jayce glances at Viktor for one half-second. No reaction.

“We built this life on polite silences and distance. And we told ourselves the cracks were just... character.”

He huffs a breath that so desperately wants to be a laugh but never could muster up the same brightness. “We still talk,” he murmurs. “But only about Mae. Always about Mae. Her school lunches. Her new shoes. Her dentist appointments. It’s like she’s the only language we still know how to speak.”

Jayce doesn’t say how often he’d search for something – someone – in the curve of his ex-wife’s neck. In the way she frowned in thought or tilted her head when unsure. In the absences between them that were shaped too much like someone else entirely.

He doesn’t mention that she had golden eyes and a mole below her right eye.

Viktor doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t fill the space with reassurance or judgment. He just listens. His gaze is fixed somewhere beyond the dandelions, like the wind might whisper answers he doesn’t have in his grasp yet

And Jayce doesn’t press him. Doesn’t look over. Doesn’t ask if Viktor’s ever known that kind of erosion, like tide pulling sand from under your feet. If someone once touched his face like a promise, then left him like a phase of the moon, waxing into someone else’s sky.

Because maybe he already knows.

Jayce shifts, barely. Just the slight motion of his fingers as they loosen their grip on the mangled napkin, like he could coax it back into form if he’s careful. If he’s gentle enough. But the damage is already done. It doesn’t unfold. It only sags in his hands, ruined. 

“I used to wonder,” he mutters, after the quiet has nearly settled for good, “what would’ve happened if you hadn’t left.”

The words aren’t angry. They’re not accusing. They sit in the air between them, tugged by the ghosts of every version of them that never made it past almost.

Viktor doesn’t respond. Not out loud.

But Jayce sees the smallest shift in his jaw. A single clench.

Because there hadn’t been a grand goodbye. No explosive rupture. No final line. Just absence. Viktor had left the way a shoreline recedes in the dark, unseen, until your feet are cold and you’re suddenly alone.

There was no true leaving. Only surviving in separate solar systems. Only pretending it hadn’t mattered as much as it did.

Jayce doesn’t ask for a reason anymore. He stopped needing one the day he realized how many explanations could coexist with heartbreak and still not make it any less real.

But he wonders. God, he still wonders.

Wonders if he also feels the ache that never stops asking what if, even when you’ve built a whole life around pretending you don’t hear it anymore.

After the ice cream is long gone and the sun has softened into an amber afternoon glow, the girls take off down the gravel path like wild storms, shrieking with delight. Flower crowns wobble askew atop their heads, petals scattering like confetti, caught by spring’s breath. Grass stains bloom proudly across their knees. Mae’s braid is halfway unraveled again, and Elara has a smear of chocolate trailing from the corner of her mouth to her chin, stolen ice cream from Jayce.

They are unapologetic joy.

Viktor follows slowly behind them. His cane clicks gently against the path, tapping out a rhythm that doesn't match the sprint of youth ahead, but it’s a counterpoint to their laughter. He’s memorizing the moment, every flicker of movement and sound, cataloguing joy before it slips through his fingers.

Ahead of him, Jayce jogs to keep pace with the girls, pausing every so often to call out a gentle “Not too far!” even as they speed ahead with no intention of stopping. Every so often, he bends to rescue a dropped flower crown or a stray sandal, sleeves rolled up past his elbows, collar open just slightly, sweat glinting at his temples. There’s something loose in his posture that wasn’t there before, like the air itself has been let out of the pressure he usually carries. He looks… content. And maybe even a little in love with the moment.

They round a bend where the trees lean close, old giants draped in dappled gold, their shadows providing occasional coolness. And almost comically, the entire scene screeches to a halt.

They nearly collide with another pair on an afternoon stroll.

Caitlyn is dressed as if the day itself should feel honored she’s attending it, shiny white button-up tucked into pressed linen slacks, sleek black sunglasses perched upon midnight blue hair, fully open in the flowing wind today. She’s nursing an iced coffee, condensation slipping down the sides like sweat. The clink of melting cubes catches the sunlight as she steps out of the way.

Vi walks beside her, a beat-up skateboard tucked under one arm, the other hand disappearing now and then into a crinkling bag of dried mango. Her boots crunch softly on the path. She looks totally relaxed until her eyes flick from the girls to Jayce, then Viktor, and then back again.

“Jesus,” she mutters through a full mouth of mango, catching a rogue crown before it hits the dirt. “Did we interrupt a fairytale?”

Caitlyn’s lips quirk, one brow lifting as her gaze drops to the two shrieking girls. Then, as if guided by instinct, her eyes slide to Viktor. She takes him in all at once: the soft flush behind his ears, the leftover strawberry stain on his shirt cuff, the way his shoulders aren't quite as tight as they used to be.

She tilts her coffee in his direction, voice dry as desert sand as condensation trails down her fingers in delicate streaks. “Well. You’ve gone... domestic.”

Viktor exhales through his nose softly. “It’s, eh... temporary,” he retorts, though his tone doesn’t quite commit to the lie.

Vi doesn’t miss a beat. As the girls thunder past, she dips into a quick crouch, palm out. “High five or no balls,” she tells them with a wicked grin, like she’s been waiting her whole life for this exact moment.

Elara slaps her hand with a delighted squeal. Mae skids to a stop, circling back, determined not to be left out. Vi grins wider and obliges.

Caitlyn looks from the exchange back to Viktor. She sips her coffee like it owes her money, gaze lingering just long enough to register the difference in him. The way he’s standing a little closer to Jayce. The wrinkle between his brows smoothed by the warmth of the day. The weight of someone who hasn’t been this full in a very long time.

She doesn’t say any of it aloud. Instead, she arches a single brow in parting – I’m proud, it says, without words. Then she reaches out, intertwines her fingers with Vi’s, and pulls her forward down the path like it’s just another day.

Vi pops a final piece of mango into her mouth and gives Jayce a nod that’s half salute, half “good luck.”

“Domesticated,” she teases over her shoulder, as if confirming Caitlyn’s theory.

Viktor watches them go. Watches the waves of dark blue hair sway, Vi’s toothy snicker as Caitlyn whispers something to her before they’re both swallowed by the trees. Something inside his chest stirs.

Because it doesn’t take a declaration to feel seen.

And for the first time in years, he doesn’t feel like a silhouette watching someone else’s life through glass.

He feels... present. Counted. Real.

Jayce insists on driving.

“It’s late,” he argues, already tugging open the passenger door before Viktor can reach for the handle on the BMW. “You walked a lot today.”

He doesn’t say you looked tired. Doesn’t say I was watching you too closely, or I hated the way your knee started to give out on that last hill. But it’s there anyway, woven into the fabric of his voice, thick with concern he still hasn’t figured out how to hide.

Viktor doesn’t argue. He could. Some worn-out protest about pride or independence, about how he doesn’t need help. But his bones are heavy with sun and too many hours on uneven ground, and his body has long since stopped accepting lies. So, he slides into the passenger seat without a word.

The drive is quiet – finally – swimming with that sweet and drowsy feeling of a last exhale before sleep. Mae and Elara are fast asleep in the back, heads tilted toward each other, cheeks sun-pinked and peaceful, with their flower crowns still nestled in their hair. One of Mae’s shoes has fallen off. Elara’s fingers are tangled in the fabric of Viktor’s coat that he draped over her, like even in sleep, she knows where safety is.

The radio play something mainstream and unimportant, some old song neither of them registers. City lights smear against the windows like distant stars smudged across a dirty canvas, headlights blurring them into distant angels in the sky. The air smells like melted sugar and pollen and the warmth of a day well spent.

When they finally pull up in front of Viktor’s building, Jayce kills the engine with a soft click. He doesn’t move right away, just sits for a beat like he doesn’t want to disturb the stillness they’ve stumbled into. Then he climbs out, circling to the passenger side without pause, opening Viktor’s door before he can try to manage it himself.

Viktor blinks at him, brows lifting slightly, but Jayce just shrugs, a little sheepish. A little stubborn. It’s muscle memory, almost. It’s something he’s done before. Something he wants to keep doing. Like holding the door for him might open a new one for the two.

Viktor gives Jayce a curt nod, not having the energy to speak much anymore. He moves to the backseat doors, the tightness in his shoulders now bone-deep. Mae is slumped against the window now, cheek smearing against the fogged glass, and a thin line of drool tracing down the curve of her face. Elara, though – God – Elara still held tightly onto Viktor’s jacket.

“I’ll carry her up,” Jayce whispered softly behind him, one hand already opening the door. “If that’s okay.”

Viktor doesn’t answer right away. His fingers delicately brush Elara’s hair back from her face, like he’s afraid even sleep might be disturbed by clumsy hands. Her cheek is pressed against the wool of his coat, breath shallow and warm through parted lips.

Then, he nods.

Jayce moves gently: he learned how to hold the things he loves the moment he was first handed a piece of his heart in human form. He eases her into his arms with care, cradling her back with one hand, tucking her legs beneath the other. She doesn’t stir, just sighs, melting into him like trust is the most natural thing in her world.

The stairwell is dim, lights still flickering, just the sound of footfalls and Viktor’s cane tapping against the worn stone filling the air. Every few steps, Viktor’s leg seizes, sharp bursts of heat crawling from knee to hip, each one worse than the last. He keeps his breath even, jaw clenched against the pain, unwilling to let the struggle show. But Jayce notices. He learned the signs by heart. His gaze flickers back, a question held just behind his eyes, but he doesn’t voice it.

A look into Viktor’s defiant eyes says enough. I’m okay.

They reach the door at last. Viktor unlocks it with trembling fingers, the motion slower than it should be. He leans more heavily on his cane now, shoulders hunched in a way that wasn’t there an hour ago. The girls had made him laugh. The sun had been soft. He’d forgotten, briefly, what he couldn’t do.

Jayce steps inside first, lowering Elara to the hallway rug softly. She stirs a little as her feet meet the floor again, eyelids fluttering.

“Hey, bug,” Jayce murmurs, brushing a curl from her cheek, resting his large hand on it. “We’re home.”

Her eyes blink open, dazed and heavy with sleep. She turns instinctively toward the familiar shape of her father, not one word, arms stretching out as if guided by memory alone.

Viktor reaches for her, but his balance wavers as she leans into him too heavily. His cane skids an inch to the side, and he stumbles with a curse under his breath. Jayce’s hand shoots out, steadying him by the elbow just in time.

Elara nestles into Viktor’s side a moment later, unaware of her impact causing the near-fall, her tiny hand curling into his shirt. Her weight presses fully into him, small and safe. He sinks slowly to one knee beside her, teeth clenched against the throb burning through his leg.

Jayce’s expression immediately shifts. He crouches in front of Viktor, hands hovering mid-air like he wants to touch him but is unsure where the line is crossed. “Hey, Vik– easy,” he mutters, instinctively moving a little closer. “Do you want me to–”

“No,” Viktor cuts in, sharper than intended, though his voice is breathless. He doesn’t look up, just waves a hand dismissively as he settles beside Elara. “I’m fine. I just… need a second.”

Jayce doesn’t argue when Viktor brushes him off, but he doesn’t back away either. He watches the way Viktor winces when he shifts his weight, how the lines around his eyes tighten. The way he’s still catching his breath, as though holding himself together through the sheer power of will.

So, in usual Talis fashion, Jayce doesn’t ask. Without a word, he slips an arm beneath Viktor’s, resting a hand on his side, like he’s done this a hundred times before. Because he has.

So many times, back in college, when Viktor’s flare-ups would leave him curled up on his bed, as if hiding this moment of weakness from the world in a wall of pain and pride. Jayce remembers the way Viktor would grot his teeth, breathing shakily as he helped him lay more comfortably, all soft touches and gentle hands. Viktor had never asked for this – providing for others wasn’t a favor to Jayce, it was a third language.

Now, he slips an arms beneath Viktor, hand resting at Viktor’s side like it always had. In the other, he grabs Elara’s softer one who just clings to him like a little monkey finding the perfect liana.

Viktor doesn’t fight it. He’s too tired. Ever so slowly, he lets himself lean into Jayce. The walk to the couch is halting, his leg dragging once. Jayce lets Viktor adjust, allowing him to set the pace to his capability. The old couch sighs under his weight with him, as if the cushions know the weight of him already.

Jayce crouches for a moment to untangle Elara’s fingers from Viktor’s shirt, her small body pliant with sleep. “I’ve got you, conejita.” Her body sinks into him immediately. Jayce lifts her gently, holding her against his chest like she’s a porcelain doll. Her flower crown falls off and he catches it, balancing it in one hand as he carries her down the hallway to her room. The door moves shut with a soft click.

Viktor leans his head back, eyes half-lidded. He listens to the shuffle of Jayce’s footsteps on hardwood, the rustle of blankets being pulled up, the familiar tick of the bedroom light turning off. There’s also a baffled whisper – “What the hell?” – the source probably being the makeshift caterpillar enclosure that is his old Tupperware.

Jayce reappears a minute later in the living room hallway, the light catching a tired slump in his shoulders. He doesn’t say anything right away. Just stands there, watching Viktor like he’s afraid he might vanish between blinks.

“I said I’m fine,” Viktor murmurs, not even bothering to open his eyes. It’s the kind of line that could hold a thousand cracks, but he says it like he means it. Or like he needs to.

Jayce doesn’t answer. He just frowns and steps closer, before dropping to one knee between Viktor’s legs. Gently, his hand comes to rest on his shoulder, warm and solid, thumb brushing in slow arcs.

Viktor finally looks at him. Jayce’s gaze is open and unreadable, caught between wanting to stay and knowing he shouldn’t.

“Alright,” Jayce mutters quietly. “But... thank you, for today. For everything.” His eyes flick over Viktor’s face and he can feel Jayce’s fingers twitch against his shoulder like there’s more to this, hiding just beneath the grassy tones of his eyes, buried deep within the dirt-brown flecks. “You always did make things quieter.”

He stands after just a second longer, lingering long enough for Viktor to feel the absence of his hand when it’s gone. The door doesn’t slam when it closes. It closes as softly as it first opened, like the final word in a sentence that didn’t need to be finished.

And Viktor leans back into the couch, head tipped toward the ceiling, feeling the pulse of his heartbeat in his leg, in his ribs, in the place where Jayce touched him.

You always made everything swarm so much louder.

He was twenty then. Jayce had passed his driving exam that morning – barely – swaggering into Viktor’s apartment with the triumphant glow of a golden retriever who’d managed to catch the tennis ball mid-air and wanted everyone to know it.

“I’m your personal chauffeur now,” he declared, keys jingling in his fist like a trophy. “No arguments.”

Naturally, Viktor had argued.

Pointed out Jayce’s tragic history of clipping curbs and ignoring red lights. Muttered something about the Trailblazer’s brakes sounding like a haunted church organ. Cited the statistical superiority of trains over cars, and how relying on combustion engines in this day and age was borderline criminal.

Jayce had only grinned wider, like he was being serenaded.

And yet – an hour later, Viktor found himself buckled into the passenger seat of Jayce’s dad’s rust-patched 2005 Chevrolet, windows down, salt wind in his face as they headed for the shoreline. The sky was deepening into a smoky twilight, the air still golden with the leftover heat of the day. Viktor sat like a cat on the way to the vet in his seat.

He had no idea where they were going. He doubted Jayce did either.

The plan – if it could be called that – was absurd. A sleepover in the car, parked in some gravel lot usually meant for caravans and tourists too cheap for beachfront hotels. There was no tent, no pillows, no real reason for it other than because they could.

The ocean was somewhere nearby, murmuring beneath the dark like it had secrets to keep. The sky above them was deep-black, star-pierced. They had nothing but a tangled heap of Jayce’s mismatched blankets, a deck of cards missing the Queen of Hearts, and Viktor’s ancient iPod playing his – their – music through a crackling aux cable that cut out every time Jayce hit a bump.

They’d flattened the back seats and stretched out in the makeshift nest, shoulder to shoulder, legs folding awkwardly into the limited space. One of Jayce’s socks was halfway off. Viktor’s knees ached but he didn’t complain. Every so often, their feet would nudge under the covers – accidental, and then not. Elbows grazed. Fingers shifted closer but never touched. Neither of them pulled away.

The light of Jayce’s old laptop flickered against the ceiling, playing some over-loud comedy Jayce had insisted on “for the vibes,” he said. Neither of them were watching it. It was noise, really. An excuse for the silence that neither of them minded.

At some point, Jayce rolled onto his side, head propped in his palm, eyes flickering between Viktor’s face and the shadowed sky above the back window.

“You comfortable?” he asked, low and warm.

Viktor didn’t open his eyes, but his mouth quirked faintly. “Yep,” he replied, popping the ‘p’.

Jayce chuckled. “Liar.” He shifted again, closer. His knee bumped Viktor’s. “Next time,” Jayce murmured, like it was a promise he hadn’t meant to say aloud, “we bring an air mattress.”

Viktor smiled at the ceiling. “Next time,” he echoed, barely louder than the sea gossiping with the stones at the beach.

I’d do this again. Even with the cramped space. Even with you hogging the blanket. Even if it means waking up with your knee in my ribs.

Phoebe Bridgers’ “Moon Song” crept in through the speakers, her ghostlight sadness filling the fog between them.

“You asked to walk me home…”

Outside, the stars above Piltover were faint and grainy, blurred by the city’s light pollution, scattered like crumbs on blackberry jam. But Jayce looked up at them through the rear windshield like he was reading some private scripture.

“But I had to carry you...”

“V, you think stars get lonely?” he asked suddenly, his breath fogging the glass softly.

“And you pushed me in...”

Viktor turned his head, studying Jayce in the dim blue light of the laptop screen. Jayce’s mouth was tilted in that familiar half-smile, tired but dangerously thoughtful. His brow drawn just slightly, the way it always did when he forgot to pretend he wasn’t afraid of his own heart.

“They’ve got the whole sky,” Viktor huffed, voice absent.

“And now my feet can’t touch the bottom of you...”

Jayce reached out, fogging the glass with a long breath before tapping it gently, fingertip smudging a constellation into the condensation. Two stars. Close together.

“Yeah, but…” he murmured, “what if I were way out there… and you were still here. Would you still love me? Like, as a star?”

He said it with the boyish grin of someone who didn’t know what those words meant. A tease. A bit of stargazing nonsense meant to fill the space between songs and silence.

“You couldn’t have...”

But Viktor didn’t laugh.

He went very still, breath caught mid-rise. The question lodged in his chest like a sliver of glass, a thing he knew he shouldn’t touch, yet couldn’t help but reach for it.

Jayce didn’t mean it. Of course he didn’t. It wasn’t a real question.

But Viktor turned away before he could see what it had done. Looked out the opposite window instead, as if the answer might be hiding there in the darkness, in the soft heartbeat of the ocean just beyond the gravel lot.

Jayce kept staring up at the stars, or what passed for them. Blurred smudges behind a gauze of cloud and light pollution. Like maybe the sky would give him an answer if he waited long enough. If he asked just right. 

“Yes, Jayce,” Viktor muttered, voice dripping with exaggerated disdain. “I would… appreciate you. As a star.”

“You couldn’t have...”

Jayce let out a bark of laughter, bubbling up so loud and so honest that it rivaled the North Star itself. “That’s not what I asked, Vik.”

Viktor turned back, slowly, just enough to fix him with a glare that lacked any real conviction. “Would you like me to compose a Shakespearean sonnet, too? Perhaps a tragic monologue? ‘Oh star of mine, distant and dead—’” 

“Stuck your tongue down the throat of somebody...”

Jayce cut him off with a grin so soft it almost didn’t register. His gaze drifted skyward again, searching for shapes in the blur of half-lit clouds. “Would you buy a telescope just to watch me?”

The air stilled. The kind of pause that made the hairs on Viktor’s arms lift. A pause that felt too long for a joke, too short for the answer that followed. Viktor stared ahead, gaze fixed on the faint ring of condensation blooming along the window’s edge. His fingers twitched slightly against the blanket, thinking. Deciding.

When he spoke, it was like he’d been waiting to say it for longer than he’d known.

“I’d build a whole planetarium.”

“Who loves you more...”

Not sarcastic. Not even close to a playful joke. Earnest. As if the blueprint for it was already finished, somewhere deep inside him, ready to surface the moment someone thought to ask.

Jayce didn’t say anything.

The music kept playing, Phoebe’s voice wound between ghostly strings. The ocean outside their little bubble kept kissing the rocks on the shore. A lover it would forever only momentarily touch, never to be held infintely.

Then Jayce laughed again. Not to brush it off. Just a little, kind laugh, almost shy. “God,” he muttered, “you’re such a nerd.”

“So I will wait for the next time you want me...”

But there was no real teasing in it. Just a comforting warmth, like a hand pressed flat to a heartbeat and left there to sketch out each thud.

After that, their knees touched a little more deliberately. Neither pulled away. The deck of cards stayed forgotten at the bottom of Jayce’s bag. The movie had long since ended, the laptop screen dimmed to black.

They didn’t fall asleep until the sky began to lighten, brushing pale gold against the edges of the clouds, like the stars were turning themselves inside out.

“Like a dog with a bird at your door...”

Viktor leans against the doorframe, one hand braced on the wood, the other curled loosely around his cane. The hallway light pools behind him, dim and yellow, just enough to silhouette the edges of his statue-like posture.

Elara’s small form is bundled into three blankets, hair splayed across the pillow in tangled spirals, lashes twitching in the shadows of some dream. One arm dangles off the bed, fingers twitching once, then curling into a loose fist.

He wishes he could be the one to carry her.

Hoist her up like a storybook father would. Let her fall asleep with her chin on his shoulder, arms wrapped around his neck, legs hooked over his arms. The way he used to imagine, back before he knew her name. Before he knew the weight of small hands clutching his sleeve. Before he understood what it meant to be the only safe place someone knew.

But his cane presses into his palm like a cruell reminder. His leg throbs from the knee down, nerves stretched like a bowstring and trembling beneath skin that never fully mended. There’s a knot forming at the base of his spine, forcing him to suck in a deep breath. He adjusts his stance slowly, biting down on the noise it tries to drag out of him.

I’m fine. A lie worn so thin it barely passes for cloth anymore. I’m fine. I’m fine. I’m fine, he tells himself. Over and over, like repetition can smooth over the ragged surface of truth. His lungs may be under control but despite countless surgeries, the chronic pain stayed.

Pride is a fragile thing. And tonight, his feels itself unraveling in his fingertips, in all the places he thought he’d managed to patch up. He knows it shouldn’t matter. That she doesn’t care how he carries her, only that he’s there.

But still, Viktor aches for it. For the version of himself that could’ve done this. He exhales, slow, as if letting the breath out will make space for the pain to settle.

She shifts slightly in her sleep, murmuring something incoherent. He leans forward, instinct overriding exhaustion, until his fingertips brush the edge of the blanket and tug it higher around her shoulders. Even with his back screaming, he’ll always kiss her temple good night.

It’s not lifting her – but it’s raising her. 

The bedroom is dim, the only light spilling from Viktor’s phone, propped precariously against a stack of old books on his nightstand. Its screen glows like a campfire in the dark, casting long shadows against the walls. The moving colors catch in Viktor’s fringe, his eyes fixated on the two figures on the other side of the call.

Sky’s face is bathed in warm kitchen light, the soft lights above casting a honeyed sheen over everything as if inside a bee’s nest. Her curly hair is bundled into a bun, and her apron is dusted with flour. There’s a perfect smear of it smudged across her cheek, like someone pressed a snowfall against her cheek and left it there to melt. She leans in slightly, trying not to miss a thing.

Next to her, Isha peeks into frame, front teeth missing, wild curls escaping her braid. She waves so enthusiastically it jostles the camera, her little hands flapping like bird wings. Her grin is infectious, cheeks dimpled.

“She’s been baking since noon,” Sky sighs, nudging Isha’s shoulder playfully, full of long-standing sisterhood. “Some unholy orange-cardamom thing she invented. Definitely not marketable. Definitely her magnum opus.”

Viktor chuckles, chin resting against the heel of his palm, eyes soft with something you might almost call awe. “That does sound like her.”

Sky tilts her head, studying him through the screen. “You sound happy,” she muses, a small smile playing at her lips. “Different. Lighter.”

“I am merely well-lit.”

Isha immediately signs something rapid beside her sister, fingers nimble and sure, like she’s racing the thought before it escapes her. Sky watches without missing a beat, her gaze tracking each gesture with, like music she’s always known by heart. “She says your hair looks fluffier than usual,” Sky translates, her mouth twitching at the corners.

Viktor pauses, caught off guard. One brow lifts, skeptical, and then, almost despite himself, he straightens slightly and lifts a hand to his head. His fingers ruffle through the tousled curls automatically, as though they might confirm or deny the claim.

He exhales through his nose, eyes narrowing. “I will choose to take that as a compliment.”

Isha giggles silently, her shoulders bouncing, nose scrunching, joy radiating like heat off pavement after rain. Sky laughs, too. And for a moment, Viktor doesn’t feel like an outsider. Doesn’t feel like a patchwork holding everything together with stitches.

“It is a compliment,” Sky grins as she nudges Isha with a wink. “She thinks it means you’ve been getting more sun. Says you look healthier.” She pauses, gaze flicking gently back to him. “Happier.”

Then she reaches out and tucks a stray curl behind Isha’s ear, motion so natural like she’s done it a hundred times and will do it a hundred more. Isha happily leans into it, wide golden eyes closing for moment. “She’s observant, this one.”

Isha signs something with a seriousness that makes her tiny hands look impossibly grown. Sky watches her fingers move, then looks back to the camera with a softened expression.

“She says she’s proud of you, too.”

The words land like a breath caught sideways.

Viktor’s throat works once around the swell in his chest. He blinks, gaze tilting downward for the briefest moment, like he needs the ground to steady himself. When he looks back up, his eyes are brighter. Not wet – he won’t give himself that – but bright enough to sting. 

“That makes two of us,” he murmurs. His gaze flickers back to Sky, to the freckles littered with sprinkles of flour, the creases in her smile. “I saw the article last month. The feature on your bakery. You’re… doing it. You made it real.”

Sky looks down, shy under the weight of praise from someone who’s always seen through her with unnerving clarity. “I just wanted a place that felt like home,” she chuckles abashedly, brushing a bit of flour from her cheek like she’s not quite ready to meet his eyes.

“Then you did it,” Viktor replies, simply. “You built one.”

A short silence follows. It’s full of years, of history, of hard-won pride. A shared understanding between people who crawled out of the same burning wreck, and still managed to make something warm from the ashes.

Then, as if nudging the moment forward, Sky leans back and says casually, “We saw Jinx the other week.”

That name always strikes like flint against stone. Viktor’s expression shifts, like an old bruise pressing back to the surface. He exhales, slow, hand curling slightly at the edge of his blanket.

“She still signs everything with Powder, by the way,” Sky adds, lips twitching faintly. “Sent Isha a drawing. It was of her and some weird little metal chicken she found. Says it talks back. Like a wind-up toy that grew a soul.”

A breath of sound leaves Viktor, fond and haunted at the same time. “Some things,” he murmurs, “are easier to keep pretending. Like if you hold onto the version of yourself from before… it can still be true.”

Sky watches him for a moment with an impossibly sweet gaze, like she’s seeing more than what he says.

Then, lighter, with a cheshire grin, she brings up that topic. “And what about you?” Viktor had hoped that she’d forget about it if they just kept talking about other things. “Still letting Tall, Dark, Handsome, and Chronically Stressed hang around?”

That gets him, though. He huffs out a laugh, unexpected, folding a hand over his mouth like it snuck out. “It’s… different now,” he sighs, after a beat. His thumb traces the edge of a book on the nightstand. “He’s different.”

“Or maybe you are,” she replies softly, and it doesn’t sound like a challenge. Just a mirror held up by someone who knows your reflection better than you do. “That’s not a bad thing.”

He doesn’t reply. But the absence of protest says enough.

Sky stretches then, arms overhead, groaning dramatically as she tosses her flour-dusted apron onto the back of a chair. “Well. We’re baking again tomorrow,” she announces, tone brightening like a lantern relit. “You two should come by sometime. Isha wants to test cinnamon-honey shortbread. She says she’s perfecting the ratio of crispy to melt-in-your-mouth.”

Viktor’s smile is slow to form, but it’s been the realest one he’s managed in a good while. “We might someday,” he says softly.

Sky is mid-sentence – something about next week’s test batch, Isha insisting they try pepper in the shortbread again – when a knock sounds.

Soft. A short tapping of hesitant hands against his bedroom door. But Viktor hears it like a shift in the fabric of time itself.

He goes still. The breath in his chest stalls as his eyes flick instinctively toward the sound. He doesn’t need to ask who it is. He knows.

“Sorry,” he whispers quickly, already reaching for the phone. “She’s up.”

Sky pauses mid-word. She understands immediately, no questions asked. “Go,” she huffs softly, smile audible in her voice. “Love you both.”

He ends the call with a swipe. The screen dims to black, and with it, the room sinks into a dense quiet, like held breath.

“Elli?” he calls, voice gentled to something almost musical. He’s already moving, pushing himself up as he tries to ignore the pull in his back flaring like a raging bull.

The door creaks open a breath.

And there she is.

Backlit by the hallway nightlight, curls tousled and stuck to her cheeks with sleep-sweat. Her flower crown was now forgotten, resting who-knows-where, a small casualty of the evening’s adventures. Her fists bunch at her sides, her lip trembling the way it always does when she holds in her words. God, no child should feel the need to bite their tongue so hard it bleeds.

“I had a bad dream,” she whimpers, voice barely more than a a candle’s flame. Small enough to cradle.

Viktor doesn’t hesitate. His entire body aches and instinctively, his arms open for her. “Come here, miláčku.”

Elara doesn’t need to be told twice. Shuffles forward in socked feet, legs longer than they used to be during her nightmares in Zaun, but still small enough to tuck herself neatly against him as she climbs into the bed. She wriggles into the blanket nest and finds his side like how a lyric finds its melody, how the moon finds Earth’s orbit and how gravity will forever pull two masses together.

Her tiny hand finds the fabric of his shirt, curls into it, grips tight. Viktor can feel her shaking ever so slightly as he wraps his arms around her protectively. For many long moments, there’s nothing but the soft rustle of sheets, the distant drip of the heater, the sound of her breathing beginning to even out against him.

And just when he thinks she’s slipped back into sleep, her voice slices through the quiet.

“Are you ever scared too, Papa?”

His heart stutters.

For a moment, he just stares at the ceiling, the weight of her question settling heavy across his lungs, pressing down like a thousand pounds. He could lie. Could soothe. Could pretend to be the unshakable, unbreakable version of fatherhood he thinks she needs.

But he doesn’t.

“Every day,” he whispered slowly, like he was pulling the words through molasses.

His daughter nods against his chest, like that’s the answer she was hoping for. “Good,” she murmurs, already half-dreaming again. “Then we’re both brave.”

And just like that, she’s still.

Her breathing deepens, small chest rising and falling in time with his own. Her fingers loosen, but don’t let go. The warmth of her curled into his side seeps through layers of cotton and bone. Viktor doesn’t drift off right away; he just lies there. Feels the weight of her presence, a gravity all on its own, pressed into the curve of his arm. He listens to her breaths. The little sighs she makes. Feels the softness of being needed.

And for once, he doesn’t reach back for ghosts. Doesn’t replay the failures. Doesn’t ache for what slipped through the cracks or wonder if he was enough.

She asked for him.

And he came.

He stayed.

And she noticed.

Chapter Text

The building is near-silent at this hour, a ghost town of dimly lit halls and locked office doors. If you stand still long enough, hold your breath and listen past the humming vents, you can almost hear the ghosts – fragments of urban legends birthed from boring lectures. By nightfall most of the campus has long since gone home, locked up, powered down, safe in their comfortable beds and warm apartments. This building remains forgotten until sunrise. But not the last two breaths in this structure.

Jayce is still hunched over at the lab bench, shoulders tense beneath his shirt, the curve of his back spelling out exhaustion through the braille of his vertebrae. He leans further into the copper innards of their prototype like it will confess its secrets if he just listens harder. His hand, rough and flecked with grease, hover over it aimlessly, eyes blinking just slightly out of sync. The two orbs are glassy from fatigue, like mist over a deep forest. He’s not really seeing what he’s doing anymore, just begging himself to tether his hands to a habit more than hope.

Viktor hasn’t moved in hours. He’s perched at his corner of the shared desk, folding like a bookmark someone forgot to pull free. His legs are curled awkwardly beneath him, twisted around each other in such an abstract way that it must hurt – but, according to Viktor himself, it “eases the pain.”

A clean blanket is draped over the back of his chair that he hasn’t touched, a gesture never accepted. The light from his screen paints his face in pale hues, haloing his skin into parchment and eye to ashy gold. His fingers dance over the keys in mumbled thoughts tumbling downwards, code cascading the screen like digital rain.

Speaking of which–

It’s started again outside. A soft pattering, a few tentative taps at the windowpanes, as though testing the waters. Then harder. Rain sluicing down the glass in silver trails, skimming the edges like it’s trying to find a way in. Every few seconds, thunder rolls distantly, still half-asleep, like the storm is just waking up from its slumber.

Inside, it's warm. It should be comfortable. But it’s quiet. Unbearably quiet.

A silence that knows exactly what’s missing.

Jayce shifts unconsciously, not even letting out a sigh in the motion, but Viktor feels that tiny tilt in gravity. That barely-there thread pulling a little tighter between them that neither of them has touched in weeks.

It’s been two weeks since the park. Two weeks since Elara clung to Viktor’s coat like it was stitched to her skin. Two weeks since Viktor looked at his daughter’s bedroom door, tracing the shape of Jayce’s warmth behind the walls as he tucked her in. Two weeks since Jayce watched them disappear behind that apartment door and wondered if it would ever open again – for him.

It was a period in their lives. Not a space, not a comma, or a semicolon. A full stop.

They’ve worked together since, sure. But only like this.

Professionally. Efficiently. Like two strangers who used to know each other in another life, now forced into proximity with no map of their inner world. The words are clean, wiped and filtered through the etiquette of partnership and invention.

Viktor passes Jayce a note about voltage stability. Jayce returns a chart of component failures. They don’t touch. They don’t ask. They don’t meet each other’s eyes unless absolutely necessary.

Jayce leans back now in his chair, legs sprawled like he's trying to take up more space than he actually has. The lab has grown cold with the hours, the lights dimmed to their lowest setting. Jayce remembered how Viktor preferred low lights, especially when wearing his glasses, and judging by the way he almost seems to purr contently, it’s still a fact. The table in front of Jayce is scattered with half-assembled components like bones waiting for their gods make them into a skeleton and give them flesh.

Jayce scrubs a hand down his face, rough against his beard, then waves vaguely toward the prototype in front of him, voice having grown thicker with the crawl of night. “Y’know,” he mutters, eyes barely open, “if this thing explodes, I just want you to know it’s your code that did it, not my wiring.”

An off-hand joke.

But he waits.

A sound. A soft, breath-out kind of huff.

Viktor exhales through his nose and lips curve, brief and involuntary. It was gone almost as soon as it appeared.

Jayce catches it like it’s sunlight through a cracked window. And god, he wants to throw himself through it.

Wants to say, I miss you.

Wants to say, I saw you holding her and I understood – finally – why you left me behind.

Wants to say, I’ve never stopped hoping the door will open.

But he doesn’t.

He just watches Viktor, mirroring his smile, the way he always has, like Viktor is a star on the verge of collapsing in on himself. Too bright to look at directly. Too important to turn away from.

Longing curls behind Jayce’s ribs like a second heartbeat. Familiar nowadays. Persistent. Every version of I love you he never said taking up residence in his chest.

“There it is,” he murmurs, achingly tender. He doesn’t even try to hide the unarmored vulnerability in his voice, unable to soften the fall it takes on his lungs. “I missed that.”

The moment those words leave his mouth, the temperature in the room drops.

Viktor stills. His fingers suddenly pause mid-stroke, hand hovering over the Enter button. The screen’s blue-light glow catches the way his jaw tightens, the slow draw of breath before he speaks. His voice is louder than the rumble of nature outside; it’s the lightning to the thunder that has yet to make its entrance. It was scraped clean and peeled to the nerves. “You don’t get to say that.”

Jayce looks up slowly like he’s about to face a dangerous animal that might bolt at him for breathing wrong.

Viktor’s eyes don’t leave the monitor, but his posture has gone rigid, spine drawn tight like every inch of him is screaming don’t push it.

Jayce watches him. Watches the small, human signs, the ones that most people wouldn’t catch. The pulse fluttering beneath Viktor’s neck. The tension in his throat when he swallows. The way his hand curls over the edge of the desk, holding onto it like it’s the only thing that’s real.

Jayce swallows, too, but his mouth is unbearably dry. His voice stays behind his teeth.

Because how is he supposed to say I didn’t mean to hurt you when he did it anyway?

How is he supposed to say I missed you every day when Viktor has learned how to survive without him?

The whir of the computer fan fills the space. Somewhere down the hall, a pipe groans in the wall. The rain picks up.

“Do you want me to stop?”

It’s not a challenge. It’s not a plea.

It’s a question heavy with everything he’s afraid to say out loud: Should I stop hoping? Should I stop showing up? Should I stop loving you in every way I still do?

Viktor exhales, next breath shakier than the last. “Focus on the project, Talis,” he mutters, eyes flicking from the screen just for one hopeful second. “We have a deadline.”

Jayce could actually say a dozen more things. That he’s sorry. That he’s trying. That he was scared. A pathetic excuse.

Yet, he utters none of them.

Instead, Jayce painfully forces the ache down and lowers his gaze again. “Right,” he replies softly. “I know.”

Viktor finally looks over fully. His eyes lock onto Jayce’s for the first in what felt like hours. The alchemy between their irises clashes like honey on the sharp splinters of mossy wood. His expression is hard to read, as though he built a wall around his eyes and deliberately chose to leave a window open. They’re tired, hurt. It doesn’t bleed, doesn’t burn or bite. It weaves into your veins and makes itself a home in the deepest chambers of your still beating heart.

Jayce meets his gaze gently, knowing that one wrong move might send Viktor folding in on himself again, lost behind the armor Jayce still wishes he’d never cracked.

There’s longing between them now. It’s not cinematic, with dramatic goodbyes or hurtful declarations. It’s like pain that keeps you up at three in the morning, wondering how life would be without the choices that led you here. It’s two coffee mugs left side by side, a coat hung too close to another, the warmth of a voice you haven’t heard in days.

Viktor’s hands return to the keyboard, but slower now. His fingers hover before they press. Pause more often than they type, like the code is just a cover for thoughts thick as floodwater behind the cracking dam of his churning emotions.

Some grief doesn’t speak – but neither does some love.

Jayce clears his throat, the sound dragging awkwardly like a shoe squeaking on the smooth ground of a gym. “So,” he speaks – tries, really – but the word falls flat in the quiet room. He gestures around blindly, barely registering it anymore. His hand moves because it needs to do something, anything, other than just sit there limp in his lap. “You, uh… fixed that feedback loop in the capacitor module?”

He’s just asking about tech.

Viktor doesn’t look up. “Three days ago.”

“Oh. Right.” Jayce shifts. “Yeah. Just… checking.”

A beat.

Jayce adjusts in his seat, the chair groaning under the change in weight like it resents being part of this conversation. The cushion lets out an embarrassing squeak that sounds ten times louder in the awkward air. He winces. “Cool,” he mutters, as if that might patch the silence. “Cool.”

Viktor breathes slowly through his nose like he’s at the edge of patience. When something is amusing you and annoying you at the same time. “You always talk this much when you’re nervous?”

Jayce blinks, caught mid-fidget. He freezes like a deer in headlights, as if Viktor’s words were a spotlight he wasn’t prepared to stand under. “What? I’m not–” He waves a hand in the air. “I mean, I’m not nervous.”

Viktor tilts his head, raising a brow, and Jayce knows he’s doomed. “You are.”

He stares at Viktor. Then scoffs with mock offense, crossing his arms like armor across his chest as he leans back, feigning a wounded pride that doesn’t quite mask the grin threatening at the edge of his mouth. “Okay. Rude,” he declares, as if they’re still nineteen and teasing each other during study sessions.

Viktor’s lips twitch. Barely. Jayce feels it deep in his blood circulation. And something in his chest warms in response, drawn like a moth to the last flame in the dark.

Before either of them can say something else, the lab door bursts open like someone planted a firework behind it.

“Knock-knock, losers!” The voice is unmistakable. High, chipper, and about one gleeful word away from utter pandemonium.

Jinx barrels into the room like she owns the place or is planning to blow it up just for fun. Her courier bag swings wildly at her hip, slapping against her thigh with each skipping step. Twin braids flick from side to side, the pink strands woven into the turquoise ocean catching the dim light like cotton candy. She’s chewing gum, loudly. Smacking it, completely unbothered by the heavy air she just tore through. Everyone – including herself – knows she’s an interruption and that she revels in it.

Jayce nearly jumps out of his seat. “Jinx–? What are you doing here?”

Jinx pirouettes mid-step and lands in a theatrical bow, brandishing a thin envelope like it’s a ceremonial dagger.

“Delivery!” she announces, sing-song sweet and insufferable to the eardrums. “One very boring research packet addressed to Miss Mel Medarda herself. But she’s most likely at home right now with a face mask, a glass of terrifyingly expensive wine, and zero intention of reading it before sunrise.” She tosses the envelope toward Jayce with a flick of her wrist. “So – lucky you!”

Jayce catches it on reflex, fingers fumbling slightly, and lets out a long-suffering sigh. “You could’ve just dropped it off at reception like a normal person.”

Jinx places a hand over her heart, offended. “Normal? How dare you?”

Then, with a mischievous glint in her eye, she takes a dramatic inhale through her nose, theatric, like she’s trying to taste the mood hanging in the air. “Y’know,” she drawls, spinning in a slow circle. “Mmm. Smells like…” She tilts her head, tapping a finger on her chin as if she’s actually thinking. “Desperation. Repressed feelings.” Her grin widens. “Delicious.”

Jayce groans, dragging a hand down his face like that might ward off the inevitable. “Jinx,” he hisses a weary warning.

“What?” she chirps, hands raised in faux innocence. “I’m just saying what we’re all thinking. It’s so thick in here, I could cut it with a dull knife.”

She turns her attention to Viktor now, leaning an elbow on the back of his chair like a nosy younger sibling. “You doing okay there, new guy? Blinking twice for help? Or are you just pretending to code so you don’t have to talk to loverboy?”

Viktor, for his part, does not rise to the bait. His eyes stay on the screen, though his mouth twitches again, something faintly sardonic now. “I am deeply regretting not locking the door,” he mutters under his breath.

Jinx stops short, like she’s just short-circuited. Her gum stills between her teeth. For a second, she stares – really stares.

Something snaps in place behind her eyes. A click, a blink, a calibration. She tilts her head, canine-like, like she’s catching some frequency only she seems tuned to. “Hold on a sec,” she murmurs slowly, pointing at Viktor like he’s a riddle she’s just solved. “You’re… the Zaunite.”

Viktor blinks, caught somewhere between amused and confused.

She snaps her fingers. “The one. The new one. The genius Mel’s been talking about in all her top-secret meetings – ‘sensitive asset,’ ‘intellectual miracle,’ blah blah blah. I thought you were, like… a code name or something.”

Jayce raises a brow, interested now. “Mel’s been calling him that?”

Jinx ignores him entirely, zeroed in. She closes the little space between them, now just a few inches from him, shaking his chair by the arms in unfiltered excitement. “You’re like… a real Zaunite,” she breathes with some kind of strange reverence, as if he’s a new invention. “A really real one!”

“I wasn’t aware I’d become a myth,” Viktor replies evenly. His accent holds a cool lilt, but it doesn’t quite mask the pink flush at the top of his cheekbones. The screen light makes it glow like a new bruise blooming under his skin.

Jinx makes a noise that’s half-scoff, half-laugh. “Well, you’re not exactly visible, are you? I’ve seen more of Mel’s furniture than you. But now…” She reaches out like she might poke him, then thinks better of it. “Look at you. Flesh and brain cells and everything.”

Jayce leans back in his chair, arms crossed. “That’s a weird metric to be impressed by.”

“You’re just mad I didn’t call you a genius,” she fires back without missing a beat. Then, she immediately turns to Viktor again, the light in her eyes catching fire. “You’re the kind of Zaunite that Silco used to talk about, y’know? Before he turned paranoid and weird. People who could crack stars open with their minds. Change everything. Not just blow it up.”

Viktor’s smile falters, only for a second. But Jayce sees it. Hears the fracture in the lines of his face.

“I don’t intend to change the world,” Viktor huffs, more distant now, eyes falling back to the computer. “Only to understand it before it leaves me behind.”

Jayce sits forward slightly, the weight of those words pressing into his chest like damp cloth. He opens his mouth, then closes it again.

Jinx doesn’t let the silence grow, rolling her eyes with a grin. “Well, that’s tragic,” she groans bluntly, then shrugs. “But kind of poetic. I dig it.”

She flops backward into a nearby swivel chair, arms flung dramatically over the armrests like a dethroned queen. A few strands of electric blue hair slip down over one eye.

And still watching him.

Head tilted. The pink lenses of her eyes catch the light as they scan Viktor, almost comically, but she doesn’t seem to notice. Her stare is unblinking now, like she’s attempting a shadow puzzle through her squinted eyes, trying to match the man in front of her with some long-forgotten phantom from her memory. “You look… familiar.”

Viktor gives a small, tired smile, lifting only half his mouth. “You were much smaller the last time I saw you. Still had a penchant for chewing on shoelaces.”

Jinx’s face contorts in shock. “Wh– what?”

Viktor shrugs one shoulder in return. “You were a baby. A loud one. But charming. Vander used to ask us for help watching you, when he was busy managing The Last Drop.”

The name hits like a dropped glass.

Jinx just stares, something like vertigo in her wide eyes. “You knew… Vander?” she asks cautiously, but it’s not really a question. Her voice is soft now, stripped of all the noise she usually drapes herself in. There’s a tremor in it. The same shock of suddenly being pulled out of deep water and into cold, arctic air.

Viktor nods slowly, like he’s sifting through dust-covered memories, retelling one by one. “Yes. And Vi, of course. Though she kept trying to pawn diaper duty on anyone who passed by.” He glances back at his screen, fingers returning to the keys. “She wasn’t very subtle.”

Jinx is motionless. Silent, for once.

You can almost see it behind her eyes: the mental reach, fingers groping through fog. Reaching for something buried in the silt at the bottom of her past.

“I… I don’t remember any of that,” Jinx breathes at last, voice stripped of its usual color. Bare, like raw skin beneath a scab. “Guess that’s what trauma’ll do, huh?” She huffs a dry, tasteless laugh, one that cracks in the middle. “Scrubs your childhood like a kitchen floor. Leaves everything squeaky and sterile. No handprints. No crumbs. Just… blank.”

Viktor doesn’t look up. He shakes his head gently.

Jinx mistakes it. “Don’t apologize,” she says quickly, a defensive edge sharpening her voice, as if the idea of pity makes her skin crawl.

But he finally glances over again, his gaze laced with a warmth that could melt steel. “I’m not. Just happy to see you on your feet, Jinx.”

Jinx stands still in it, shoulders drawn in like she’s bracing for a blow that never comes. Something in her expression flickers, and then–

She smiles.

It’s… small. There’s a crumble to it, like old paint on a childhood wall, flaking gently but still clinging. She shifts her weight from one foot to the other, a motion so small it aches. Like she doesn’t quite know what to do with the tenderness she’s just been handed, trying to shake off the vulnerability.

“Anyway,” she announces brightly, clapping her hands once like she’s sealing a pact. “But I am calling you Uncle Vik now.”

Viktor groans, mirroring Jayce’s earlier exasperation. “Absolutely not.”

“Too late,” she chirps happily. “Family reunion unlocked. You’re old and wise and tragic – just like every great uncle figure should be.”

Jayce snorts into his sleeve. Old.

Viktor turns his chair toward the door pointedly. “Out,” he says flatly, gesturing toward the exit with the image of a disgruntled librarian. “Go disturb someone else’s workplace.”

Jinx is already skipping backward toward the door, steps light, but flashes them a toothy grin over her shoulder, eyes gleaming.

“Later, Unc!” she calls. “Try not to pine each other to death while I’m gone!”

The door swings shut behind her with a harsh slam, and the silence that follows is… different. As if her whirlwind presence cracked open the heavy glass and walls surrounding them, finally letting in air again. It feels easier to breathe, suddenly.

Jayce leans back in his chair, head tilting toward the ceiling. He scrubs a hand over his mouth, half to hide the grin that refuses to leave. “She’s definitely an enigma,” he mutters, fondly baffled.

“She’s home,” Viktor murmurs, mostly to himself.

Jayce turns his head toward him slowly, brows drawing together.

Viktor still doesn’t meet his eyes. But his mouth, the set of it, has changed. For the shortest moment, the idea of home wasn’t something lost to memory or myth. A cruel spark made him believe it could still be made – reclaimed – in rooms like this, with people who stayed.

“Do you think I look old?”

Jayce pauses, caught off guard by the question. More specifically the… insecurity tucked into it.

He opens his mouth. Closes it. Bites back the first answer that claws its way up his throat. You’re perfect, Viktor. You’ve always been perfect.

“You’re… not bad for thirty-eight.”

Viktor turns slowly, one brow arched in offense. “Oh, fuck you, Talis.”

Jayce grins, and Viktor’s already muttering under his breath in Czech, the kind of dramatic cursing that means he’s not really mad. Jayce watches him, sees the small smile tug at Viktor’s lips, and thinks: God, I’d take every year with you. Grey hair, cane and all.

They clean in silence. The clink of ceramic mugs that sounds more like they’re being smashed together in the uncomfortable silence, the last sigh of the machines winding down, the sound of tools being put in place, adjusted for longer than necessary just to have something to do.

It’s all methodical. Like if they move slowly enough, neither will have to say anything; neither will cut the wrong cable and set off a bomb. Silence is safer than all the things that might slip out if they look at each other too long.

Jayce rinses out the mugs, fingers curled around the porcelain tightly to stop the shaking. He’s unsure whether it’s the caffeine overdose or the ten pounds of stones inside his stomach that are scratching through his blood vessels. Water runs hot across his knuckles, yet it can’t ease the cold running down his spine.

Viktor shuts down the computer with one last tap of the keys, the click sounding like that of a closing door. The screen fades to black, one last glow fading from his face. He exhales a breath so deep from his lungs that it might as well have dusted the cigarette residue off his bronchioles. Then, he gathers his old notebook, stuffs it into his messenger bag, and reaches for his cane. The lab is almost as dark as the outside now, cast in the blue-green haze of emergency lights and the blink of standby monitors, almost painting the room like an aquarium.

“I’ll lock up,” Jayce says quietly, putting the mugs back in their respective cabinets.

Viktor nods. He just nods. No glance, no words. He tugs his coat on, shoulders sagging slightly lower than age can explain. The fabric rustles with each shift, every motion heavier than the last. It’s painfully obvious that his fatigue is peeking through in the way he leans harder on the cane, in the wince he doesn’t bother hiding when he lifts his bag onto his shoulder. He’s too tired tonight.

Jayce watches the light pool around Viktor’s silhouette and fade in the back, hoping he might look back.

He doesn’t.

Tick–

There’s exactly four ticks of the clock on the left wall. The sinks drips twice, settling down.

Tick–

Jayce follows.

Tick–

Because silence might be safer, but a part of him is starving.

Tick–

He tried to talk himself out of it, truly. He counts the various reasons not to, like hitting the final nails into a coffin – it’s stupid, it’s childish, we’ve both found new lives. But the moment Viktor stepped through that door, it felt like a string hooked into him and pulled. His legs move before his thoughts catch up, like his body knows the one thing his brain is too afraid to admit: he can’t let it end like this.

The hallway is colder than the lab. Harsh fluorescent lighting stretches bright stripes across the floor, making it feel more like a government office or a hospital. It makes the space feel sterile. Like every moment here is held under a microscope and put on record.

Their footsteps echo against each other; first Viktor’s, measured and slow, cane tapping in a steady rhythm alongside the click of his shoes. Then Jayce’s, rushed, uneven, heart-first. The sounds wrap around each other, creating a symphony.

And it builds until the chorus–

“Viktor,” Jayce calls. Soft. A white-flag word.

Viktor stops walking. He doesn’t turn around yet. Doesn’t breathe.

This was the yellow light. The moment the street light shifts from lime to lemon but you can’t hit the brakes anymore, going too fast. The point of no return.

Jayce swallows. It feels like glass dragging down his throat, every unsaid thing having stacked up on his tongue and now he’s choking on the backlog of it. “I’m tired of this.”

A pause. Viktor doesn’t move. It’s like the words have formed their own gravity, holding him in place.

“Do you ever think about–”

“Don’t,” Viktor cuts in. The word is sharper than he means it to be. He doesn’t know how to seal the fractures in the dam so he just builds another wall. Defense, not a blade. But Jayce flinches anyway.

Viktor turns then. Slowly. The bright lights bleach his face of any color, shadows carved under his eyes. But they can’t wash away the tight draw of his lips, the twitching of his furrowed brows, the way his teeth grind together in restraint. What kind – Jayce cannot tell.

But he also can’t stop. Because he never stopped wanting this man. Wanting Viktor was as natural as breathing, and just as involuntary.

He takes a step forward. Only one.

“–what we lost?”

And that’s when Viktor truly looks at him. His mouth parts, but no answer comes. Maybe there isn’t one. Maybe there are too many. All the fight drains out of his expression. What’s left is the devastation of someone who’s already done this math a thousand times, who knows exactly what it cost them. And still he’s standing here, holding himself together by fraying threads.

His pupils dilate once, then shrink again. They move over Jayce’s move like he’s everything. Like he’s a fire that Viktor has been keeping in a hidden pocket, always too close, even when it burns.

Jayce steps forward once more before he can stop himself. His hand reaches out and finds Viktor’s wrist, fingers curling around bone beneath the fabric of his sleeve. It’s warm. God, warm. It nearly undoes him, the fact that Viktor is still alive, alive, warm.

And trembling, just slightly. Maybe it’s him. Maybe it’s both of them. “I’ve thought about kissing you every day since you left,” Jayce admits, voice thick, the sounds having to claw their way out of his vocal chords and up his throat, desperately trying to hook themselves into his tongue. “And I don’t even know who I am without wanting that.”

Viktor’s breath catches. Visibly, audibly. His eyes flicker down to where they touch, to their joined hands. He doesn’t pull away. There’s a storm brewing just under his sclera, one that doesn’t make landfall but still changes the sky.

So Jayce does it.

He leans in slowly, like he’s afraid of waking something too delicate to survive just yet, the air between them a newborn. Their foreheads nearly touch. The space between them is infinitesimal. Holy. 

Viktor’s eyes are wide, storm-stunned, like he’s looking at a ghost he thought he lost forever and doesn’t believe is real again. His mouth opens, just a little – Don’t, maybe, or You don’t mean that, or please.

But Jayce just… rests there. A breath away. A breath too close, one too far.

“You don’t get to do this,” Viktor whispers, the words so silent that they almost get lost in translation. “Not after–”

Jayce’s doesn’t flinch. “After how much I hurt you?” he finishes for him, shame braiding through ever syllable.

Viktor closes his eyes like he can’t bear to look.

Jayce’s breath stutters. He’s shaking again. This time, it’s definitely him. “I’m not trying to fix everything in one night. I’m not even sure I can fix it at all. But I never stopped–” He isn’t able to complete his sentence, voice faltering.

Because Viktor shifts, just slightly. He tilts his head almost subconsciously, their skin pressing together gently. And in that space where breath becomes touch, where almost becomes close, their lips brush.

Not a kiss. A trembling maybe, a secret passed from mouth to mouth. Then Viktor pulls back, as if he’s fighting with some kind of restraint. “Don’t do this unless you mean it,” he says, voice bruised with everything he’s fought so hard to bury. “Because I can’t survive another almost, Jayce. Not from you.”

Jayce nods, whispering against the screams in his head. “I do.” He’s not crying, but he’s close. “I mean it.”

And Viktor… nods.

Jayce cracks open from the inside, all his breath spilling out like an oil leak. When he leans in this time, Viktor meets him halfway.

Their mouths find each other like a bad habit. Like relapse. Like falling back into smoke and salt and everything that never stopped tasting like home. It’s not a repeat of what had been, it’s a taste of sunrise.

Jayce’s hand rises, uncertain. Pauses near Viktor’s cheek, hovering, asking, like Viktor’s cheek is something angelic that no mere mortal should just touch. He waits, patient. Never rushing.

And Viktor leans into it.

Jayce’s palm cups the sharp line of his face, thumb grazing a cheekbone like he’s afraid to break it. Like he’s remembering the soft give of Viktor asleep in his bed, curled toward him, trusting. A sigh passes between them, the air tasting like the warmth of summer. Viktor leans in just enough for the kiss to deepen, a low hum escaping him that could be mistaken for relief.

And then–

He flinches.

Like the thought finally catches up to the touch. Like the salt water finally seeped into the open wound. Like a match being pulled away from flame before it can burn too much.

He jerks a half step back, breath catching sharp in his chest, a gasp and a sob trying to be neither. His eyes are blown wide, storming with too many thoughts at once. Shame. Fury. Longing.

“Stop,” he whispers. It’s not loud. But it lands like a slap.

Jayce freezes.

Viktor shakes his head, retreating – not just physically. And then he does it again, backing up like he’s trying to shake the moment off his skin. But it clings. Burns. His whole body folds in on itself like his arms are holding something vital he’s trying to desperately protect. “We have daughters,” Viktor hisses, voice choking. “You– We’re happy now.”

Jayce looks like he’s been hit. He doesn’t speak for a second. His hand is still suspended in the air like a prayer that no god has answered. Slowly, he lowers it to his side. To guilt. “I’m not,” he says, and it sounds like a confession dragged from deep within his ribs. “I haven’t been. Not since you.”

And that’s the thing that shatters something in the space between them. Because it’s true. And they both know it.

But Viktor is already shaking his head. Already retreating, even as he just stands there. Already pulling every emotion back into the fortress he’s locked himself in for so long. “No,” he grits. “It’s too late.” It’s muscle memory to him now.

Jayce steps forward. Just half this time.

Viktor’s eyes flicker up, hard and rimmed in glassy foil. His voice sharpens, not in cruelty, but in survival. “Don’t.”

And this time, Jayce obeys. He goes completely still.

Viktor turns. Walks down the hall with his cane clicking dull against the floor, posture tighter than ever, fists clenched, like of he stops walking, he might fall. And if he falls, he won’t catch himself again.

Jayce watches him go, hollowed out and shaking. He doesn’t know whether to cry or scream. So he does neither.

He just stays there, under the cold light of the fluorescents, staring at the space Viktor left behind. The silence is a carnivore.

He breathes the kiss like smoke.

The apartment is full with stifling silence, thick like ash from a fire.

Not the kind of quiet that soothes after a long day, but the kind that builds in your ears like pressure underwater. The one that you lock the windows for and yet, it seeps through the walls, settling in your lungs. It rots through your pores, leaving a tattooed taste of absence in your mouth.

Viktor stumbles inside and doesn’t make it past the kitchen. The moment his rain-slick coat slides off his shoulders, dropping to some corner in the hallway, his knees give out. His cane clatters as it falls next to him. Viktor doesn’t even try to catch him, spine colliding against the cabinet. His legs tremble. His chest won’t rise properly around the breath that won’t come. Air catches in his throat like there were nails attached to it, scraping open his windpipe and being unable to form anything useful other than sobs.

Tears trail down his cheeks like lava from a volcano. Not like the desperate gasps of a child, not anything close to mendable. He feels broken down to the marrow. It’s a leak, a painful loss of control. He presses the heels of his palms to his eyes furiously like they’ve betrayed him, like feeling is something shameful now. But it has taken root. The seeds of the dandelions have settled deep in his heart and bloomed into an ugly weed.

His mouth twists, and still, he cannot make a sound. It’s all internal, pressure with no way of release. He tries to keep it together, but his heart has caved in, his legs are trembling beneath him, his muscles are screaming with effort.

He feels gutted.

Burned out.

Like something has its hands inside his chest and won’t stop tearing until it tore out the part that still wanted.

He curls tighter into himself, forehead pressing to his knees like how warmth pressed to his lips just half an hour ago. Tears pool on the tile below him – a sacrifice to nothing. The child of something he can’t explain. A longing he can’t shake, no matter how much he tries to kill it.

Suddenly, a noise snaps him out of his thoughts. The bluetooth speaker jolts to life where it sat forgotten on one of the kitchen counters, set there while he had made dinner earlier.

Viktor blinks up at it, disoriented. He must’ve left it on after tucking Elara in, a rare lapse in routine. At least the battery of the JBL Tuner held the promises it was marketed with. Maybe it was mechanical mercy, or a cruel fucking kick from the universe.

”And God I’ve tried…”

His breath stalls. He knows that voice from one too many crying sessions when he was still in high school. “Sun Bleached Flies” by Ethel Cain bleeds out through the speaker, a holy contradiction.

Viktor laughs. At least he tries to, but it comes out broken, cracking once into a heavy sob. “This has to be some sick joke.” He slams a fist tightly into his knee, frustrated with himself, the world, everything – but mostly the part of him that still wanted to stay when Jayce kissed him. The part that leaned in. That always leans in. It wasn’t enough to bruise, but it was enough to hurt. To punish.

Of course this is the soundtrack to his own self-inflicted disaster.

“But I think it’s about time I put up a fight…”

He squeezes his eyes shut like that can drown out the song. As if that’ll stop the sound of Jayce’s warm voice from echoing inside every cell of his body. That voice. Those hands. The way he touched him like he still knew him.

And worst of all?

Viktor wanted to be known.

There’s a bloody war inside his head, equal parts of shame and craving fighting. It’s that steel-trap logic of this can’t happen and god, what if it already has? It’s never black and white, and yet somehow, it’s always with Jayce. There’s no middle ground. Only distance that’ll freeze them to death or closeness that threatens to ruin each other.

No.

Jayce could beg. Could cry. Could throw his heart on the floor. And Viktor wouldn’t look twice.

What a lie.

“But I don’t mind, ‘cause that’s how my daddy raised me…”

His mouth tingles. He can still feel the warmth on his lips and despite the acidic taste crawling up his throat, it almost makes him want to press them together so it never leaves. Preserve it in the cracks of his skin.

The absurdity of it makes him shake. A sound, half sob, half delirious laughter, tumbles out of him like it had to fight to break free. His knuckles turn white from where he’s gripping around his knees, breath having turned sharp.

How can something feel like sin and salvation at the same time?

They’re thirty-eight and thirty-six, for fuck’s sake. They should be filing taxes or yelling at a contractor for overcharging, not drowning in a fallout of a decade-old love that never figured out how to die.

He shouldn’t be breaking apart on the kitchen floor like some melodramatic undergrad who thought heartbreak is more poetic with some Halsey in the background and about to change his Discord profile to a black layout.

“If they strike once, then you just hit ‘em twice as hard…”

He doesn’t even have the dignity to move to his bedroom or the couch. Or even just the shower – just anywhere private, a place that didn’t smell like Elara’s strawberry yoghurt and wet wool. No – he had to fucking collapse here, knees angled awkwardly and hands trembling where he leaned against the cabinet. Still thinking about a damn kiss.

God, the kiss.

It wasn’t even good. It was messy, and uncoordinated and fucking hell, it tasted just like Jayce.

It was humiliating. Utterly pathetic that he leaned in, pathetic that he cried still, pathetic that he was too prideful to just talk to Jayce back then. He drags a hand down his face, palms catching on tight skin from dried tears.

“But I always knew that in the end, no one was coming to save me…”

Viktor stares at the speaker, blinking hard. That tiny blue light. That stupid plastic frame. All of it. His jaw tightens.

He really wants to throw this bluetooth speaker in the sink filled with soap water right about now. Drown it, smash it. The sink should still be full with water he forgot to drain when Elara insisted on “washing like a grown-up.” It’s barely even suds anymore, just lukewarm grime.

It would take so little effort. One flick of the wrist.

But God, his body aches so.

He’s still wiping angrily at his face when he hears it.

“Papa?”

A familiar, soft sound, like a leaf tapping glass in a storm.

His head snaps up. His hands freeze mid-motion, eyes blood-shot, breath caught, like he’s been caught in a horrible crime. Like he’s guilty for feeling too much where she might see it. His face is wiped raw, tear-streaked – a face he never hoped to show her.

“So I just prayed, and I kept praying…”

Elara stands in the doorway, feet bare against the cold tile. Her newest stuffed dinosaur is clutched tightly to her chest, the one she made a pink ribbon for last week. Her hair is mussed and frizzy from sleep, one strand sticking to her cheek. There’s a pillow crease on her jaw. But her eyes are wide, concerned – and not scared.

Way too aware for someone so young.

Viktor blinks fast, swallows faster. He tries to speak, but his voice breaks on the first syllable. So he just shakes his head quickly, brushing away the tears with the back of his hand like it might undo the evidence, wipe him clean and capable again.

“I–” His voice cracks. He clears his throat, starting another attempt. Quieter. “I’m sorry, little moth. I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“…and praying, and praying…”

Elara just walks toward him. She doesn’t ask why he’s crying. She doesn’t question what happened. She just lowers herself into his lap with the love of a child that’s only given to the people they love the most in the world. She tucks her legs beneath her, like she belongs there. Because she does.

Viktor braces for the impact of her curiosity but… nothing. She hugs him like it’s the most natural thing, as if he’s not curled on the tiles like a broken doll. Like the broken state of him doesn’t scare her.

Her little hands find the edges of his cardigan, tugging them around herself until she’s cocooned herself in it. Her cheek presses to his chest. The weight settles over Viktor like a heartbeat returning again.

And it wrecks something all over again.

He exhales, long and regretful, forcing the last of the wetness from his eyes away. His arms rise gently until they wrap around her small frame, one hand finding the back of her head. His fingers tangle in the long strands, brushing them to calm down. Elara or himself – he doesn’t know.

“If it’s meant to be, then it will be…”

Viktor presses a kiss to the crown of her head, lips trembling slightly. Somehow, in a world that never allowed him softness, he made something good.

They sit like that for a long time. Long enough for the salt lines on Viktor’s face to finally dry completely, for his shaking to go still. His hands slowly card through Elara’s hair, the scent of that mango shampoo she insisted they buy – because “Papa, it smells like sunshine!” – clinging to her. His chest hiccups one final time with the last remnants of his grief. She doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t move.

“I found a picture.”

Viktor stills, even the fingers in her hair.

“So I met him there and told him I believe…”

She isn’t looking at him. Just speaking into the fabric of his shirt, like she’s hoping not to startle him.

“The one in your drawer.”

Viktor’s heart kicks against his ribs like it wants to escape, like it’s warning him before he opens this hatch. He wets his dry lips and tries for levity. “Who allowed you to go through other people’s things, miláčko?” It just comes out tired.

Elara pulls back enough to frown at him. Like she’s giving him a chance to be honest before she calls him out. Her expression practically says don’t do that.

How is this girl only seven and yet more mature than he will ever be?

“Singing, ‘If it’s meant to be, then it wil be’…”

He swallows. He doesn’t mean to look away, but he does.

“…Was that him?” she eventually asks the question he wanted to avoid. Her voice is soft. Curious. Just trying to understand, like kids always do.

Viktor closes his eyes, hands flinching slightly around her like he’s trying to remember how to hold without breaking it. A beat passes. Then another. “Yes.”

Elara shifts, snuggling in closer, so impossibly warm. Her hand curls in the fabric right at his side. “You looked happy,” she murmurs into the cotton and grief. Because if he mattered to Papa, he must be worth loving.

“I forgive it all as it comes back to me…”

Viktor exhales sharply, a sound so wounded as his throat tightens again before it can properly leave him. When it finally does, it escapes more as a whimper than a breath. “I was.”

She leans back into him, head rising and falling with each of his uneven breaths. Her forehead presses gently against his chest, like she’s listening for something deeper than his heartbeat. She gives him space inside her stillness. Small fingers toy with the corner of the photograh, careful not to tear or wrinkle it. Just… keeping it comapny.

The rain deepens outside.

“Are you not happy anymore?”

He looks down at her, her fluttering eyes, the edge of the photo still clutched between her fingers, the worry she’s trying not to show, and something inside him cracks a little further.

He tucks a strand of her hair behind her ear, smoothing it tenderly. “Milá Elli,” he murmurs, voice hoarse, “you’re what made me happy again.”

“And I’m still praying for that house in Nebraska…”

There’s a peace in her silence. The kind that says: I don’t need all the answers. I just need you.

After a few, somehow unbelievably long seconds, she speaks again. “Do you still feel happy around him?”

“By the highway, out on the edge of town…”

Viktor doesn’t reply for a minute himself, contemplating his answer. Because there’s no simple answer to give.

Jayce made him happy. Jayce made him miserable. Jayce made him feel alive. Jayce made him feel like he could build the world from nothing. Jayce made him fall apart. Jayce was the only person who ever really saw him and didn’t look away.

Jayce still makes him feel.

And that’s the whole problem.

He draws in a slow breath, his voice barely above a whisper when he finally answers. “He makes me feel… everything.”

“Well, I think he’s happy around you…” She yawns quietly, her body going heavy against his, limbs sagging with the weight of trust and sleep. Viktor feels it like gravity. The way she gives herself over to him without fear. The way her small hands settle against the ache in his chest.

He shifts slightly, letting himself lean back against the kitchen cabinet. His arm curves around her like instinct, like a fortress.

A breath. A heartbeat. A promise.

“Dancing with the windows open…”

His lips brush the top of her head again. He closes his eyes. And for a moment, he just holds her.

Just lets himself be held.

“And we’ll have a serious talk about you stealing things tomorrow, broučku.”

“I can’t let go when something’s broken…”

Viktor tucks Elara into bed like he’s made of better things. He smoothes the comforter around her, careful not to wake another dream. One of her cheeks are flushed from pressing against him, her lashes dark against her pale skin. A tiny crease marks her brow, even now, like she’s still holding onto worry on his behalf.

Viktor brushes one last kiss to her temple.

His gaze drifts to the plastic container sitting on the nightstand, where Sir Wigglebottoms the Third slumbers in a freshly made cocoon, surrounded by lettuce bits, damp paper towel, and a few sticks.

Perfect. Now he gets to plan a gender reveal for a caterpillar. Because the universe isn’t already cruel enough.

He stares at the little Tupperware for a beat too long, the absurdity making his throat itch. The tiniest huff of a laugh leaves him, and then he turns off the lamp.

As the door clicks shut behind him, the silence rolls back in heavy waves, pressing at the rims of his ribs like it’s trying to crawl inside. It wraps around him like water in his lungs.

His knees almost buckle right there in the hallway. He doesn't want to cry again. He can’t.

Instead, Viktor pulls his phone from the pocket of his cardigan with trembling hands, blinking tears away hard, and hits the third number on his favorites list.

The line rings once. Then clicks. No greeting.

All Viktor can manage is breath, shallow, uneven. A sharp inhale. A static exhale. Then silence again, and a barely audible sound; a sob, choked out like it’s something poisonous.

Caitlyn doesn’t speak.

There’s only an alarmed shuffle on her end.

“He did something, didn’t he?”

Her voice is low. Unforgiving. It cuts through the line like glass dropped in a still room.

Viktor’s whole body shudders. He coughs on the inhale, tries to form a reply, but the shape of it lodges in his throat. The words dissolve before they ever leave. All he can manage is a broken sound that isn’t quite speech.

He tries again. “…Can you just–” His voice splits mid-sentence. A small, gasping crack of pain. “–Come over, Cait?”

No goodbye, only the click of the line disconnecting.

Of course not.

She’s probably already in the car.

They’re a weather pattern you could chart on a calendar. A storm that shows up when you’ve already run out of candles but still somehow brings the light with it.

One knock. No waiting. The deadbolt turns with a flick, Caitlyn using the spare key Viktor swore to take back but secretly never wished to.

She’s in first, coat soaked from the drizzle outside, eyes taking in the living room like she’s mentally cataloguing every detail for later. As if she’ll file it all in a report and eventually declare: Jayce Talis, guilty on all counts. Vi trails behind, arms cradling a plastic container wrapped in a towel to keep the warmth in. Something steamy. Something spiced.

Zaunite stew, if Viktor’s nose is right. Felicia’s recipe. Red pepper oil, cumin, a hit of ginger. Nothing fancy. Just filling.

He’s on the couch now. He doesn’t even remember moving, mind completely fogged by now. After he’d laid Elara in her bed with care he didn’t know he had left, he collapsed here. His body a tangle of worn-out angles, good leg pulled to his chest like a shield. His cane is discarded nearby, not from anger this time, just exhaustion.

He doesn't look up when they enter. 

Caitlyn’s boots are already lined up neatly by the door, water pooling around their soles in an apology to the hardwood. Her sleeves are shoved up to her elbows like she means business – which, in the language of old friends, she does.

She sets down her umbrella, shrugs off her jacket, and starts tidying the kitchen like it’s her house too. She doesn’t ask where anything is. Just opens the very left cupboard, finds the kettle, fills it. It’s muscle memory. She reaches for the tin of green tea Viktor always claims to dislike and still keeps stocked anyway. Puts it on to steep. Straightens the crooked dish towel on the counter. Closes the drawer all the way. I know how to take care of you, even when you won’t let me.

Vi moves slower.

She places the stew on the table with care – this will help later. Then she crosses to the couch, lowering herself onto the floor next to Viktor’s legs like she’s settling in for a long night. Her elbows rest against the edge of the cushion, arms folded, chin propped there. She doesn’t reach for him, just sits close enough to feel him breathe.

“Viktor…” Her voice is softened, but not pitiful. The kind of softness that understands pain and doesn't try to wrap it in anything fake. It lands like a diagnosis.

Viktor lets out something between a laugh and a sob, his chest twitching as he drags a palm over his wet face. The tears haven’t stopped. They’ve just slowed, like his body has finally accepted they’re not going anywhere else. “He kissed me.”

Caitlyn doesn’t blink from where she moves in the kitchen. Just scoffs. "Of course he did." There’s no surprise in her voice. No judgment. Just the inevitable weight of something everyone already saw coming.

“And I…” Viktor swallows hard, his voice hitching. “I kissed him back.”

There’s so much shame laced into the words it nearly undoes him. Like a guilt-soaked confession dragged to a cathedral, unworthy of absolution.

His face crumples, hands trembling now as they cover his eyes. “I should’ve been stronger,” he whispers.

Vi doesn’t hesitate. Her hand lands on his forearm, warm and steady. “No,” she replies firmly. “You should’ve been held.” She leans in, forehead almost touching his knee. “You’re allowed to love people who hurt you. That’s not weakness. That’s just… being alive.”

Viktor closes his eyes, because he has no words for that. Not ones that would do it justice.

The kettle clicks behind them.

Caitlyn joins them a moment later, crouching beside Vi. She holds out a mug of steaming water, no tea bag yet. Just the warmth. The offer.

Her voice is gentle, aquamarine eyes a sea to float in. “And you’re allowed to need time,” she says, gaze locking on Viktor’s averted one. “You don’t owe him healing.”

Viktor stares at the mug for a moment before taking it. His hands close around the ceramic like it’s a life preserver. His breath hitches again.

There’s no fixing this. They know that. That’s not why they came.

Viktor presses his eyes shut until stars bloom behind his eyelids, those phantom constellations that flare under pressure, like they’re trying to distract him from the pain clawing up his throat. His breath stutters again, jaw tight with restraint. When he finally speaks, his voice scrapes raw, low and hoarse.

“I hate him.”

The words fall like stones in a well, too meaningless to echo. Too heavy not to sink.

Vi doesn’t flinch. She lets his thumb brush over the fabric on his forearm, sighing. “Yeah,” she mutters. “That makes sense.”

Viktor’s lip trembles. He bites it to stop the shake, but it only worsens. His eyes remain shut, like if he opens them, it’ll all spill out again; memories, touches, the press of Jayce’s mouth against his, the taste of what they never got to be.

“I hate him so much,” he says again, rougher this time. Barely audible. A surrender, not a scream.

Caitlyn shifts to sit beside him, calm and careful as always. Her arm comes to rest along the back of the couch; not touching, just there, a perimeter of safety. A space where he can fall apart and still feel held. Her voice, when it comes, is soft but precise, like a thread weaving straight through him.

“But you don’t, really.”

There’s no judgment in it.

“You miss him,” she continues. “And that hurts worse than hating him ever could.”

Sometimes, he hates that she studied law. Viktor’s throat closes around a breath that never makes it out. His spine bows slightly, like the words cracked something loose in his chest.

The rain outside taps softly against the windows like a rhythm he can’t escape, ticking down the seconds since everything changed. Measuring the silence like a clock that refuses to run out.

He doesn't know how to stop missing Jayce.

He doesn’t know if he even wants to.

Caitlyn leans in, resting her head lightly against his shoulder. Vi tugs the stew container closer and begins unwrapping it. The smell of red pepper and ginger slowly warms the room. Comfort in the shape of steam and spice. No one rushes him to talk. No one asks for details.

Later, when the door shuts behind Caitlyn and Vi, when their voices have faded down the hall and the kettle’s been emptied, when the lights are all turned off and Elara’s safely asleep in the next room – Viktor stays seated. Still.

The house feels hollow in their absence. A shell that echoes. He picks up the photo.

“You looked happy.”

Jayce is laughing in it. A lopsided, summer-warm grin caught mid-motion, curls a little too long for school rules, having grown it out towards their finals. Sunlight is striking his cheek like it had a personal vendetta. Eighteen and golden and his.

Viktor brushes his thumb along the edge.

It was finals week. They were both running on three hours of sleep and two cheap coffees.

Jayce was groaning into his hands, hunched over their desk in the library, textbooks strewn like battlefield debris. “This is so unfair!” he whined. “If they just let me take Spanish, I’d be done already. I speak it! Fluently!” He waves his hands in the air, flopping against the back of the chair. “I could get an easy A.”

Viktor didn’t look up from his notes. Just raised a brow, a small smile dancing on his mouth. “And that wouldn’t be unfair?”

Jayce sputtered, caught. “Well– whatever…” He scoffs, crossing his arms like a child that was just denied a dessert. “Can’t believe you’re on their side, V.”

“I’m morally grey,” Viktor retorted, placing down his pen. “I don’t pick sides. Now, let’s get back to practicing. You want that A, don’t you?”

Jayce flopped dramatically in his seat once more, and he almost reminded Viktor of Powder throwing a tantrum when Vi didn’t allow her to come with them to their hangout spot. “I want to burn the entire language department.”

Viktor clicked a few keys on his laptop, ignoring him. “I have just the idea for your listening comprehension.”

Jayce squinted. “Oh no.”

Viktor pressed play. The beginning of the track sounded through the speakers – distorted, almost eerie, a looping voice whispering Je t’aime. Je te hais. Je t’aime. Je te hais.

Hazel eyes blinked, brows pulling together in suspicion. “What the hell is this?”

Viktor didn’t answer right away. He leaned back in his chair, arms folding across his chest, the corner of his mouth curling. He was already pleased with himself. “Ma meilleure ennemie, Stromae,” he replied smoothly, gesturing toward Jayce’s headphones with a flick of his pen. “Go on. Tell me what they’re saying.”

Jayce looked at him like he’d been slapped with a pop quiz and betrayal at the same time. “You’re actually evil.”

“Non.” Viktor’s grin widened. “I’m realistic. The distractions in the listening exam will be worse. This is mercy.”

Jayce groaned, dragging his palm down his face like a condemned man. “Ugh, fine, fine.” He jammed the earbuds in, muttering something under his breath, probably a curse or twelve, and clicked play again.

Jayce’s brows furrowed in deep concentration, his foot tapping in uneven rhythm. He squinted at the middle distance, the way he always did when he was trying to parse something complicated.

“Je t’aime.”

Viktor didn’t breathe.

Jayce translated it. “I love you.”

Viktor’s heart did something traitorous; kicked once against his ribs, then stilled. He covered the lapse expertly, leaning back farther in his seat with a shrug. “Correct,” he said, voice only an attempt at being controlled. “Go on.”

Jayce frowned, like that answer had called him something insulting. He nodded to himself, listened again, then repeated what was said in the somg. “Je te hais. I hate you.”

Viktor’s eyes didn’t leave his face.

It went on like that. A strange call and response, thrown back and forth across the desk. French declarations spoken like confessions. I love you. I hate you. I love you.

And when that last je t’aime came, Jayce translated it once more, eyes distant. “Still ‘I love you.’ But I think a little clearer.”

Viktor didn’t hear the start of the song. Didn’t notice the beat drop or the words.

“Ce jour où je t'ai rencontrée, j'aurais peut-être préféré…”

He was still watching Jayce. Watching the curve of his mouth, the crease between his brows, the tilt of his head. Watching the way the boy he couldn’t stop thinking about sat there so obliviously, saying I love you over and over and not realizing it was a blade.

“Did I pass?” Jayce asked suddenly, slumping back in his chair with a grin that didn’t know what it did to people. “Professor Viktor, sir?”

Viktor blinked. His pen hovered uselessly above the page, the lines of notes untouched since Jayce first opened his mouth.

“Que ce jour ne soit jamais arrivé…”

He rubbed the back of his neck, startled to find his skin warm. He hadn’t noticed when the heat crept in.

“Uh, yeah,” he said, voice shakier than he meant. “You did.”

Jayce beamed.

Viktor’s heart ached.

Now, years later, alone in the aftershock of everything, Viktor presses his thumb harder against the photograph until his hand trembles.

How stupid.

How small.

How desperately his nineteen-year-old heart had wanted to believe that saying je t’aime out loud might mean something.

He puts the photo face-down.

But the sound of it – the I love you – still lives in the dark cavern of his soul.

He sits there for a long time. The photo still face-down on the table, but his gaze clings to the outline of it.

In that silence, it returns.

Not the photo. Not Jayce.

Je t’aime. Je te hais.

I love you. I hate you.

A stupid listening exercise from years ago. A test he never meant to make poetic. A moment Viktor now sees for what it really was.

Their whole story, tucked inside those two goddamn lines.

Je t’aime. I love you.

Je te hais. I hate you.

Back and forth. Back and forth. Like a heartbeat out of rhythm. Like a relationship doomed to stagger instead of stride.

That was always them, wasn’t it?

Jayce, eyes soft and full of warmth one second, then vanishing when Viktor needed him most.

Viktor, holding out his heart on a plate, only to snatch it back the moment he gets too close to the things he wants.

They were contradiction made flesh. Fire and flood.

I love you. I hate you.

Chapter Text

The door opens with an oil-deficient creaaak, just enough for a sliver of hallway light to shoo away the blurry shadows of the dim office. Mae stands there barefooted, her silhouette small against the doorframe. One hand grips the edge of the wood, fingertips flexing, making keratin scratch against alder. Her other arm hangs by her side, the hem of her too-long sleeve bunched in her palm, twisted and damp where she’s been chewing it – mindless habit that Jayce has yet to get her to let go off.

Her toes knead circles into the thick carpet, little dents blooming beneath them. Her nails are unevenly painted, blotches of chipped pink and sky blue catching in the low light like confetti. Her lips part. She’s already halfway into the question – Did you see my glitter pens? – the good ones, with the tiny silver stars trapped in the caps like they could grant wishes if you clicked them just right. She’d left them on the table, next to the cereal box. She was sure of it.

But her question dies against her teeth when she sees her dad at his desk.

The room is steeped in a gentle gloom. Only the desk lamp cuts through it, its golden light soft and syrupy, pooling like overripe fig flesh across scattered papers, a still steaming mug of tea, and Jayce. Or at least the shell of him. He looks almost like a statue the way he’s sitting; frozen in time, slouched over his desk, one hand limp on the stylus, the other resting near his temple like he forgot to finish a thought and got lost somewhere along the way.

The familiar scent of old tea leaves and pencil shavings mixed with Burberry’s Hero clings to the air like chloroform on a cloth.

“When was the last time I felt like this?”

“Dangerous” by Sleep Token plays through the speaker of the laptop beside him, so reverent it almost blends into the shadows. As if the song was less playing and more haunting the room, like it's been looping for hours. It nestles into the bones of the room, into the folds of paper, into the cup rings on the wood.

A secondary light paints his face from the blue glow of the screen, the standby wallpaper proudly showing off two bright smiles; a candid. Both grins are crooked – tooth-gap and extruding canines – but nowhere near ashamed of it.

Mae steps inside quietly, steps muffled by the fibers of the plush rug. She doesn’t say anything. I mean, her Papa is working – but who is he kidding. Maybe he’s trying to convince the shadows that he’s still the man they once knew.

The screen in front of him glows dimly, a digital canvas suspended mid-process. It was beautiful. Some of the pixelated lines have tilted downward, as if gravity tugged them loose. Like maybe the artist's hand had trembled, or paused too long in thought, or maybe just couldn’t bear to risk what finishing might mean. But the subject?

Unmistakable.

A slim man leaning against a rail, head tipped sideways to show off a long, clean profile – the kind you’d expect in a romantic film from the 70s. His hair is uncombed and growing to his shoulders. Shaggy in a cultivated way that suggested a difficult relationship with kitchen scissors. A daring hairstyle, if you were being kind. A mullet with a thesis, if you weren’t.

It screamed, “I refuse to accept I’m over thirty, but I do still have to look like I pay taxes.”

Only a few strokes indicate it, but Mae’s seen that look before in real life. When the wind sneaks through his coat. When he scowls at jaywalkers like it’s personal. When he smiles – not often – but when he does, her Papa always looks away like he’s afraid to be caught watching.

“Dark desire and tainted bliss…”

There’s a cane drawn in beside him. A boot, oddly detailed with crosshatched laces and scuff marks on the toe tip. And though his face is only hinted at – light shadows beneath the cheekbones, no iris in the eyes yet, and a line for a mouth – Mae knows exactly who it’s supposed to be.

Knows him the way kids know which cupboard has the good snacks. Knows him the way she knows which shirts in her drawer still smell like Mama’s laundry soap. The same way she knew, the first time she caught Papa smiling at his phone when he thought she wasn’t looking, that the man on the other end of that conversation wasn’t just a friend.

It’s in the line work. In the attention. In the space that man takes up on the canvas. The same way he takes up space in her father’s chest.

Jayce doesn’t see her. He’s somewhere else entirely, gone how all grownups sometimes were: present in body, but drifting somewhere deep inside themselves. His jaw was slack, pencil moving in distracted little loops. His lips are parted, like maybe he was humming along to the music or mouthing words, afraid to hear his own voice.

“It’s like you’re dangerous to me…”

Mae takes a few more steps closer, slow as a cat on the prowl. Then, without asking, she squeezes knees-first into the desk chair space beside his frame. Her elbows hit the armrest with a thump, and she props her chin forward, nose wrinkling in concentration as she squints up at the glowing screen.

Jayce jolts like he’s been shot.

“Mae–!” he blurts, heart in his throat, the stylus nearly flying from his hand and skittering across the desk.

She doesn’t even flinch.

“You were drawing Elara’s dad,” she points out the obvious, as if reciting an entry from a very obvious encyclopedia. Her voice is flat in that funny, little-kid way, like she’s just identified a cloud formation or found a rare bug. “You gave him your jacket.”

Jayce groaned, raking a hand down his face, half-laughing, half-mortified. “You scared the hell out of me, Maybug.”

She just beamed at him like she just outwitted a trap. Her legs dangled off the edge of the chair as if on a throne, and her cheeks sparkled faintly in the light, like she’d been kissed by fairies. “You left the door open.”

“I notice every time we meet...”

The next lyric unspooled like a thread from the laptop speaker. Jayce winced, visibly. Of course the song would choose now to twist the knife. 

“I didn’t–” He cut himself off – what was the point? She’d already won. He exhaled instead a long sigh that smelled faintly of caramel rooibos tea. His fingers found the keyboard, tapping a few keys to minimize the sketch on the screen. The window shrank to a small, pulsing icon in the corner like it could be buried.

“What do you need, cariño?” he asked wearily, glancing sideways at her. His voice was softer now. Gentle, trying for playful.

“My glitter pens,” she replied promptly, ever the diplomat in pink pajamas. “But also…” Mae leaned forward a little, peering up at him with that uncanny gaze of hers. Eyebrows drawn tight, nose crinkled: the expression of a tiny scientist piecing together a groundbreaking hypothesis.

“…You really miss him,” she said.

Jayce stilled.

For a second, he didn’t respond. He just blinked down at her – at this tiny human who’d once fit in the crook of his arm, who still liked her sandwiches cut into stars and couldn’t fall asleep without the mushroom-shaped nightlight, and yet now looked at him with wisdom that felt too old for her years. And somehow, she’d seen right through him anyway.

Then he looked away, eyes dropping to his lap. His pupils traced the scattered papers and ripples in the tea, like water after a storm. His mouth twisted into something that might’ve been a smile – or tried to be, but couldn’t quite carry the weight.

“I told you,” he murmured, voice scratchy as old vinyl. “He’s hard to draw.”

“I feel the ground beneath my feet…”

Mae shrugs and climbs into his lap like it’s the most natural thing in the world. She fits herself into the cradle of his arms the way your favorite book falls open to the most-read page: by memory, by love. She’s getting too big for it now, her limbs stretched, heavier than they used to be, but Jayce folds his arms around her easily, as if muscle memory could fold back time and pretend she’s still three years old and always in his arms.

Or maybe he has noticed the change. Maybe he feels it in the way her weight settles differently across his lap now, in how her head no longer tucks perfectly beneath his chin. Maybe that’s exactly why he holds her tighter.

Because she’s growing. And he can’t stop it. And it breaks his heart just a little.

She tucks herself against him, small hands curling in the fabric of his shirt, her head resting over his heart like it’s her favorite pillow. “You were listening to his music too,” she murmurs, voice hushed. 

“Giving way…”

Jayce closes his eyes. Leans in.

He presses his cheek into the top of her head, breathes deep. She smells like strawberry shampoo and the lavender wash of her bedsheets, and for some reason that undoes him more than anything. That proof she’s still his, still here, still small enough to be held even when everything else feels so far gone.

Something in his chest stirs. Cracks.

“Yeah,” he whispers, voice barely above the music. “I know.”

Mae shifts again, squirming until she finds the perfect nook – her rightful spot – and then goes still, content. Her body rests heavy with trust, like she’s planted her little flag in the fortress of his arms and dares the universe to try and move her. One of her socks has slipped down around her ankle, exposing the tan skin above her heel. Jayce notices without looking. His hand moves automatically, gently tugging the sock back up in an absent motion. Tender, habitual.

“You′ve got me talking in my sleep…”

“He used to hum this,” Jayce murmurs, voice frayed like vintage denim. “When he was writing. Always under his breath. He’d never admit it, acted like he didn’t even hear the music.”

Mae tips her head back to look up at him. Her cheek is squished flat where it rests against his chest, but her expression is as clear as glass. Big, hazel eyes. Thick brows faintly furrowed like she’s solving a puzzle no one else can see. She stares at him for a long moment. “Jeez, you miss him a lot,” she huffs muffled against his shirt. Not a guess. 

Jayce lets out a defeated breath. There’s no point in lying. Not to his lantern held up to the fog. And right now, she’s the only person in the world who could get away with asking. 

“Yeah,” he says finally. Just that. One syllable; stripped bare.

Mae reaches up, and without saying a word, rests her little hand over his heart. Jayce covers it with his own broader one. Her small fingers find the hem of his shirt and begin to fidget, picking, twisting, smoothing the fabric over and over like it helps her think. Jayce can feel the tiny movements against his ribs, and knows that look on her face: she’s winding up to say something big. 

“I think he misses us too.”

Jayce’s breath catches – not enough to make a sound, but just enough that he feels it. A little hitch in his lungs, those useless things that so often forgot their task.

“Elara told me,” Mae continues, confidential, like passing along the world’s best-kept secret from the back corner of a playground, “he still has that snow globe you gave him. From when you were in school.”

Jayce lets out a laugh that’s barely more than a breath. It slips from him, warm and surprised. “That old thing?” he murmurs, lips twitching as the memory breaks over him like fresh ice. The snow globe had been a joke gift; a glittery trinket clutched in his younger hands while he was giggling his ass off. Jayce can still feel the ridiculous pride he’d felt buying it from the tourist shop near his parents’ cabin: a plastic dome encasing a miniature house, tiny green pines dotting the scene, white flakes falling slowly until the next shake sent them spinning. The paint job was horrible.

It had been a stupid, offhanded gift meant to make Viktor roll his eyes.

He never thought Viktor would actually keep it.

Mae nods. “She said he keeps it on the shelf with the robotics books.”

Jayce’s smile falters.

He swallows, suddenly aware of the burning tightness in his throat. “The robotics books,” he echoes, as if saying it aloud might dilute the intimacy of it. As if repetition could protect him from what it means.

But it doesn’t.

He knows those books. He remembers helping stack them, remembers how Viktor always refused to let anyone borrow them, not even professors. They were filled with his scribbles, his frustrations, his entire adolescent brain spread across annotations and sticky notes. And now, years later, the snow globe sits among them. A piece of Jayce there.

Mae hums. “She said he doesn’t let her dust them.”

That pulls the faintest smile from him, one side of his mouth lifting sunlight cracking through thick cloud cover. “Yeah,” he murmurs. “Sounds like him.”

“As if you’re conquering my dreams…”

Mae tilts her head, big eyes blinking up at him like she’s peering directly into the parts of him he tries to leave behind closed doors. Her expression is thoughtful, lower lip poking out just so. She looks like a tiny owl. An old soul in soft feathers.

“Maybe,” she treads carefully, like testing the weight of the idea on her tongue, “if you write him a letter, you won’t have to draw him all the time.”

Jayce opens his mouth. A breath gathers. A protest readies itself: that’s not how it works, it’s not that simple, you don’t understand. But nothing comes out. The words die somewhere in his chest.

He hadn’t even realized how many sketches there were. His folders are full, overflowing, if he’s honest. Little glimpses of a man he can’t stop seeing: Viktor paused at a crosswalk, scarf in the wind. Viktor leaning over a desk, a smile playing at his mouth before he fires back some sarcastic remark. Viktor asleep with a book covering his chest, long lashes casting shadows over high cheekbones. They’re always unfinished.

“I don’t know what I’d write,” Jayce admits, voice slipping out like steam under a kettle. His fingers drift idle against the back of Mae’s small hand, tracing nothing in particular.

Mae hums like she’s chewing on his words. Then she lifts one shoulder in a shrug. “Maybe just start with ‘I still like your weird music.’”

Jayce snorts before he can help it, the laugh similar to hitting the wrong key on an out-of-tune piano. “Dangerous isn’t weird,” he protests, almost too offended, straightening slightly under her weight as if to scold her. “It’s haunting. It’s–”

“Papá,” Mae interrupts with utmost gravity, “he listens to a band that wears masks and sings about gods. It’s a little weird.”

And that does it. Jayce breaks into a real laugh, full-bodied, unheard by anyone seeing him in polished attire during meetings; the kind that spills out of him, that rumbles through his chest and shakes the tight places loose. Mae giggles too, even if she doesn’t understand why it’s funny, and her laughter folds into his like they’ve always belonged in the same breath. She laughs because he does. Because their joy is symbiotic. Her head bobs against his chest as she squeals and squishes closer, as if proximity to his laughter makes it better.

It feels good.

It eclipses everything else.

Like surfacing after too long underwater, oxygen rushing back into your airways. Like remembering that even in the middle of missing someone so hard your bones ache, it’s still possible to laugh. Like leaning into a sunbeam after days of rain, still not fully trusting the warmth. It startles him how good it feels. How simple. How undeserved.

And Mae, bless her heart, doesn’t even realize what she’s done. What kind of magic she’s cast, just by being born.

He leans back in his chair, eyes warm, arms still wrapped around her like without her steady heartbeat against his chest he might forget where, who or when he is. The sketch is still on the screen in the minimized window – he hadn’t really hidden it.

Jayce tips his head forward and presses a kiss to Mae’s temple, so soft it barely stirs the wisps of her curls. They tickle his lips like spun sugar, like fog over a freshly cut yard, warm from her skin, soft and saccharine.

“Alright, princess,” he murmurs, tender enough to bruise. “Off to bed with you.”

But Mae, ever defiant, turns her face up to him. Mischief glimmers like candlelight in her tired eyes, flickering through the haze of exhaustion in the dark pools of her pupils. She smiles, milk teeth and all. “Only if you come too.”

Jayce is truly unsure who she got this royal authority from.

He lets out a fond sigh, like incense smoke curling toward the ceiling and entirely laced with affection so deep it aches a little. That ache, the sweet kind, that one of holding something precious you know you can’t keep forever. “I’ll be right there.”

Mae is a professional at deciphering grown-up delays. She squints at him with that squashed, suspicious look, evermore strengthening the image of a baby owl inside Jayce’s head. Her little brow furrows like she’s folding him into origami with her heavy eyes. “You promise?” she whispers.

Jayce meets her gaze solemnly, his hand smoothing down her back. Her wool pajama top is warm from her body, cotton and comfort. He nods. “Cross my heart,” he says, and drags the fingertip of one pointer finger lightly across his chest in the shape of an invisible ‘X’ – a gesture sacred between them, binding as a blood oath, as permanent as a pinky swear.

“Again…”

Mae wraps her arms around him one last time, squeezing tightly like she’s laminating love into place, and slides off his lap with a little grunt. Her socked feet make a muted thump as she lands. She wobbles just a little, half-drowsy, half-performing for added flair – definitely his daughter. Then, she beelines for the doorway. Straight down the hallway like it’s a battlefield. Chin high, shoulders squared, her pace righteous like she’s been knighted by a council of stuffed animals and tasked with retrieving a grail (a glass of water) before sunrise.

Halfway down, she pauses.

“Papa?”

Jayce looks up, already smiling. “Yeah?”

Mae turns just enough to flash a grin over her shoulder, eyes sparkling. “You did make his hair too short.”

Jayce lets out a noise somewhere between a laugh and a cry for mercy. He slumps back into his chair like he’s been wounded in battle, one arm flung dramatically across his forehead. “Brutal.”

Mae giggles, quick, like a bird’s wings In flight, and vanishes around the corner. He’s still smiling as she disappears down the hall, her footsteps retreating in a pitter-patter-patter-pat. Jayce watches her go, chest too full. Like someone poured honey through his ribcage and left it there to crystallize.

“Well, I thought I could resist you...”

Jayce stares at the screen, where the sketch still waits in lines, unfinished corners, truth caught somewhere between pencil and pulse. The window stays minimized. He doesn’t open it.

Instead, he reaches for his stylus again.

His fingers move slower this time, not chasing Viktor’s face like he needs to capture it, but like he wants to understand it. Remembering instead of recreating.

He opens a new canvas.

“But something in me just can’t help but insist...”

The blanket fort is a marvel of engineering. Couch cushions lean like ancient pillars, blankets stretch from coffee table to couch like ship sails, held by a well-placed book or two, and string lights loop overhead like captive stars. It glows like a lantern in a cabin, warm and secretive, lit from within by two flashlights shaped like ladybugs. The floor is padded with an army of pillows and plush animals standing guard at the corners.

Mae and Elara lie belly-down, elbows planted, socks tangled where their legs sprawl across the bean bag that has definitely seen better days. One of Mae’s socks droops off her heel, a small hole exposing her pinky toe to the chilly air. Elara’s hair has been braided messily down one side, the other left loose where Mae had lost interest halfway through and switched topics to whether or not a velociraptor could beat a grizzly bear in a fight.

Now, the wild laughter has been tamed by the climbing moon. The air tasted like too many yawns, the stars are quiet at last.

“Our dads don’t talk anymore,” Elara murmurs, watching the way her flashlight paints the ceiling in loops. “Do you think they’re not… friends anymore?”

Mae chews her bottom lip. She traces the line of her own arm with the beam of her flashlight, watching how her fingers glow red as her blood cells absorb the light. She wiggles them once, contemplative. “Well… they’re not not friends.”

Elara frowns, nose wrinkling, like she’s trying to squint at something far away. “My daddy misses yours,” she whispers. Her fingers pluck idly at a loose thread in the blanket, winding it around and around her pinky. “He doesn’t say it. But he does.” The flashlight beside her flickers slightly, catching the sparkle in her eyes and throwing it like stardust across the ceiling.

Mae shifts, pulling the edge of the blanket higher over her shoulders until it’s tucked beneath her chin like armor. The warmth of it smells like vanilla dryer sheets and Crayola markers. She sinks into it, curling a little tighter against the soft ground of their fortress like a creature burrowing in for winter. “Mine listens to your daddy’s playlist in the car,” she murmurs, muffled against the collar of her sweater and the thick blanket. “Only when he thinks I’m asleep.”

The popcorn bowl sits between them, forgotten. Its buttery scent still clings to their sleeves, to the fuzz of the carpet. It rests like the hearts dropped from too high of a place, caught by tiny hands. Mae taps one finger against the rim of it. “Maybe we could do something,” she offers, gaze distant.

“Let’s write them letters,” Elara exclaims suddenly, like it should come with thunder and lightning, or maybe trumpets. She sits up so fast the blanket fort shudders in protest, the ceiling sagging for a second before settling again. Her face is so serious as if she’s saving peace one dad at a time.

Mae blinks, slow. Processes. She tilts her head like a bird listening to rain, then nods once. “Okay. Yeah. But no glitter this time. Papa said it got in his coffee and made all the dishes sparkle for a whole week.”

Elara snorts. “Deal.” She’s already crawling to the edge of the fort, half her body disappearing into the darkness outside. There’s a crash and a muffled “Ow,” followed by triumphant rustling. She re-emerges dragging her pink backpack behind her like it’s full of state secrets. One zipper is broken, the pull tab replaced with a rubber band. The bag wheezes when she opens it, as if it too knows this is serious business.

A unicorn pencil case jingles softly with every shake, the bell on the zipper chiming like an alarm. Once unzipped it reveals half-chewed pencil stubs, a rainbow of felt-tips with their caps covered in black marker strokes from boredom, one suspiciously damp eraser, and exactly three glitter pens that are definitely staying out of this mission.

They huddle back beneath their blanket roof, the string lights overhead flickering now and then as if telling their stories in morse code.

They write like spies behind enemy lines, soldiers in a foxhole, heads bent so low that it’s making their hair fall across their rosy cheeks. Elara’s tongue pokes out at the corner of her mouth in concentration. Mae chews the cap of her pen like it holds answers. Between them, the popcorn bowl has been pushed aside, forgotten, its contents slowly going stale.

Every so often, one of them pauses. Glances up. Meets the other’s eyes like they’re trading codes without speaking. Elara’s brows furrow as she tries to remember how to spell definitely, then crosses it out and decides on define etly. Mae presses hard when she writes the word miss, the letters wobbling slightly. Neither shows the other what they’ve written. Neither of them signs their real name. Mae tries to write in Elara’s handwriting as if that would somehow disguise her. Elara signs off Mae’s Best Friend, Probably Forever.

When they finish, the letters are folded imperfectly, tucking their hearts into paper, hoping it’ll be enough.

Elara waits until later that night, when the house has gone completely silent. Her father is in his usual spot on the couch, glasses slipping low on his nose, a book balanced in his lap that he keeps rereading the same page of. She slips her letter into the inner pocket of his coat hanging in the hallway, just beneath the fold where his hand always lands when he reaches for his keys. It crinkles a little as she stuffs it in and she has to suppress a wince. After a minute of nothing – thank the heavens – Elara realizes that Viktor was too absorbed in the last paragraph of his current chapter. It’s gone. Planted like a seed she hopes will bloom in secret.

Mae waits until morning, when Jayce’s coffee is brewing and the house smells like cinnamon toast. The coffee pot gurgles its last few drops. Jayce hums under his breath, barefoot in the kitchen, still in his dreams. She finds his journal left open on the kitchen table, covered in calculations and coffee stains, and tucks her letter inside. Right between the pages about kinetic circuits and the one sketch that always looks like Viktor’s hands. Mae knows that sketch. It’s her favorite. Always makes her remember how gently those hands put a band aid on her scraped knee, how softly they held her face when he kissed her forehead in condolences – just like how her dad always does.

They don’t talk about it again. Don’t mention it. Don’t giggle or whisper or ask did he say anything?

But both men find them.

Jayce discovers his on a Stay-In-Sunday while reaching for an old note he scribbled to himself about acceleration curves, something that had struck him while doing laundry and never made it into his digital files. His fingers hesitate when they brush the folded paper. He reads it standing there in the kitchen, barefoot, standing in the puddle of sun spilling through the blinds. The tile is cold under his feet. His heart beats like it’s trying to be heard through layers of muscle and bone.

Viktor finds his late on a Tuesday. It’s well past midnight, and the apartment is quiet, almost feeling underwater when the city has finally run out of noise. He’s locking up after Elara’s gone to bed, reaching absently into the inner pocket of his coat to make sure his keys are still there. Instead, paper. Crinkled, thin wood. A foreign texture in a familiar place. He reads it in silence, still standing by the door. The shadows on the floor stretch long across the hallway tiles, like they’re leaning in to see too.

Neither one throws them away.

Jayce slips his letter between the pages of an old, dog-eared book he hasn’t read in years, annotated by Viktor. An old birthday gift – it was by Jayce’s favorite author. Viktor had bought it and annotated it for him so that they can “read it together.”

Viktor folds his once more and tucks it beside the old photograph he keeps hidden in his bedroom drawer. The one of him and Jayce, sunny and golden. Smiling.

A place where no one else can see.

They’ve been at this for hours. The lab is a complete mess.

Jayce leans on the flat surface of the table, one palm braced against the cool aluminum. You could almost hear the steam curling from the flat of his sweat-damp hand. His other hand rakes through his hair, the nape of his neck slightly wet from the sheer heat inside the room. His shirt sleeves are rolled to the elbow, collar tugged open in a moment of frustration. A streak of ink smears his forearm, bisecting the scar he got back in undergrad from a capacitor that “wasn’t supposed to be live.”

“You sure this voltage regulator's going to hold?” he asks, voice hoarse, somewhere between curious and running out of damn patience.

Viktor doesn’t answer right away. He’s seated, safety goggles on tight and sleeves still neatly buttoned but Jayce notices a pearl of sweat running along the edge of his cheekbone. His cane rests nearby, just within reach, though he hasn’t moved from this spot in almost forty minutes. His fingers moving with that uncanny precision Jayce has never been able to replicate. The prototype glints under his wrist like something made by aliens.

“It will,” Viktor murmurs at last, voice more an exhale to steady his hands. “Assuming you don’t fry it again by brute-forcing the converter.”

Jayce huffs a laugh, mostly air. “It was a calculated risk.”

“It was a guess, and it almost melted the housing.”

“Still counts,” Jayce mutters, folding his arms.

Viktor finally glances up, just briefly, the corner of his mouth twitching with slight amusement. “Only in the world of fools and pyromaniacs.”

Jayce shrugs, smiling despite himself. He could never suppress it in the proximity of those creasing smile lines. “And progress.”

But his hand doesn’t move. Jayce stays where he is, braced against the table, the metal cool beneath his palm, watching Viktor re-solder a joint on the copper path they’ve spent two weeks designing. It’s nothing revolutionary yet, scalable if they can manage stability at full output. If they get this right, it could become a power regulation unit for clean microgrids. A pitchable product. Something that would make Noxus Inc. stop and listen. Neither of them are happy to have to work on such a commission but… this might finally mean something.

Except it’s delicate. Temperamental. And tonight, the math has been unkind. Jayce is no fool, no imposter in this room. His credentials alone would bury a lesser man, and yet he’s been off lately. Pulled in, distracted, busy with meetings more than math.

He chews the inside of his cheek, like it’ll solve something. His eyes flick to Viktor’s hands again: long, clever hands with knuckles permanently swollen from old strain, joints that have long forgotten what rest feels like. The soldering iron trembles once – genuinely, only slightly – and Jayce instinctively reaches to steady the board without thinking. Their hands brush.

Neither of them move away.

Viktor doesn’t say anything. He exhales through his nose, a breath that might be a thank-you or might be nothing at all.

“I forgot how late it was,” Jayce says, softer now.

Viktor doesn’t look up, but his hum of agreement is warm enough. He nods toward the tall windows, where the night hangs dark and blinding beyond the glass. “The sun gave up hours ago,” he murmurs.

“Are we about to?”

“We can’t afford to, Talis.”

Last-named again.

Jayce lets his fingers drift lightly along the edge of the board, a grounding gesture. His knuckles brush copper. “You think they’ll actually fund us when we succeed?” he asks, eyes flicking to Viktor like the question could mean more than just a paycheck. “Noxus?” 

“They’ll fund something,” Viktor replies. “Whether or not they will depends on if it works tonight.”

Jayce huffs. “No pressure.”

He adjusts the circuit with a deft flick of his wrist, the movement instinctive. “But then, we’ve always done our best work when everything’s on fire.”

Jayce glances at him – just a glance, but it lingers. There’s something in his expression that wasn’t there before. Or maybe it was, and neither of them had the courage to look at it directly.

No clocks tick. Then Viktor finishes the connection and sits back slowly, flexes his fingers and rotates his wrist with a small grimace. The joint clicks. Pain. Familiar, ignored. He gestures toward the power switch with a tilt of his chin.

Jayce looks at him.

“Are you sure–?”

“It’s ready,” Viktor says. Then, after a beat, his voice goes softer, just a breath shy of vulnerable. “All yours.”

Jayce hesitates, thumb hovering over the switch like it might bite. His other hand still rests lightly on the table, close enough to Viktor’s he can feel the phantom warmth. The building's generators pulse through the walls, a low vibration he barely notices anymore. He swallows.

Saliva and his heartbeat. The one he spent years trying to drown out with work. Flips the switch.

The swelling whirr of circuits spooling up begins. The circuit board ticks faintly as the components come alive. The copper coils shiver. Heat begins to rise in slow gradients.

Then, like a breath caught in the chest finally let go, the small LED array blinks to life.

Jayce watches, hardly daring to move. The current doesn’t surge. Nothing stutters or collapses. The numbers on the reader remain stable, feedback regulating itself with near-perfect precision. It holds.

It works.

Jayce stares at it, wide-eyed, like he’s waiting for it to vanish. “It’s… it’s actually working?” His voice breaks down in the middle. He always fended well in the practical part of science – welding, forging, designing. Viktor had been his opposite, a genius in code, binary numbers and pixels. But together, they could create real magic.

Viktor leans forward without a word, posture tight with habit, eyes scanning the readouts with the precision of someone who’s learned to look for disappointment first. The flick of data confirms it. Stable. Balanced.

He nods slowly. A corner of his mouth lifts, the rarest of smiles. Beautiful.

“It is.”

Jayce laughs – breathless, amazed – and grabs Viktor’s forearm in a quick, startled joy. Viktor startles too, but only for a second. His fingers close around Jayce’s wrist briefly, grounding him. They don’t let go right away.

Jayce’s voice goes quiet. “How the hell did you pull this off?”

“You stopped hitting it with a wrench,” Viktor replies, bone-dry, but his tone is so gentle it borders on affectionate.

Jayce huffs a laugh, sheepish. But he doesn’t pull back. His thumb, almost absently, brushes against the inside of Viktor’s wrist. A gentle stroke, like he’s making sure he’s really there.

Viktor doesn’t move. His gaze lifts slowly to meet Jayce’s.

For a heartbeat, everything goes still.

His smile changes. It’s smaller now. Sad, but no less kind.

He doesn’t let go. And neither does Jayce.

A desaturated, grey light filters through the living room curtains, pooling beneath the coffee table and catching on the glass of dusty picture frames that no one has dusted in days. Outside, the clouds hang swollen and heavy with rain. Time seems sluggish like syrup, like molasses in winter, almost sweet in nature. Every creak of the old building, every groan in the pipes or slam of a neighbor’s door closing two floors down feels louder than it should. 

In the kitchen, Viktor stands like he’s been glued there. One hand rests lightly on the counter; the other cradles his phone, the blue light screen illuminating the deep furrow between his brows. He’s been reading the message for several minutes now, though he could have recited it by heart from the second he saw it.

Jayce: Can we reschedule? Busy week.

That’s it. Five words. There’s nothing overtly cruel about it. The words are even polite. Neutral. Safe. A dull weight presses behind Viktor’s sternum, spreading thickly over his bone marrow.

He lets the hand on the counter curl in, nails scraping against the marble. His eyes flick toward the living room, where the end table is cluttered with the domesticity: a thriller he forgot to put away last night, a cold tea cup, and a drawing that… wasn’t there this morning.

A page, clearly torn from one of Mae’s checkered school notebooks – Elara insists on only using striped paper. The name Mae is spelled out in glitter pen, surrounded by hearts that his daughter clearly spent time on, judging by the sheer amount. One of them is outlined with tiny sticker gems, silver, and teal, and one singular purple one.

On the windowsill, a spider threads its way between the frame of an old picture from Elara’s enrollment in primary school and a withering leaf of the indoor ivy. Viktor breathes in slowly through his nose. And holds it. Just long enough to feel the ache at the top of his lungs.

Viktor: Maybe next week then.

His thumb hovers again.

For a second, it feels like not sending the message would matter. The thought wedges itself deep into his mind: If I don’t send it, maybe he’ll notice. Maybe he’ll call.

But in the end, he presses send. The delivery sound chimes instantaneously, final as a shut door.

A few doors down the hallway, something rustles. The thud of a closet door closing, the quick zip of a backpack, fabric sliding off a hanger, maybe. Elara, preparing for the day she thought they were going to have.

She’s humming. Off-key, a little tuneless – melody doesn’t matter as long as the heart is in it. It winds through the apartment and soaks into the walls, wrapping around Viktor like both a lullaby and a wound.

He exhales heavily. His body follows the breath, sagging just slightly before he pushes himself upright and makes his way to Elara’s room. He walks slowly, not just because he must, but because he doesn't want to reach the end. There’s always something terrible about arriving. The wooden floorboards creak beneath his weight and the cane.

The door is cracked just enough to frame her like a scene in a play. She’s kneeling by her bed, elbows braced on the mattress as she packs the side pocket of her backpack with her small, overeager hands, as if preparing for something important.

Her coat is half-buttoned, one boot on the wrong foot, the other untied. She’s too excited to notice. On the bed sits the stuffed rabbit that Jinx gifted her, perched like a guest of honor, a matching scarf looped around its neck. She’s talking to it.

Just under her breath, the way children do when they think adults aren’t listening. Telling it something about their battle plans. About school. About Mae’s new eraser that smells like strawberries.

“Almost ready,” she says brightly, not turning around. Attentive as ever, she’d sensed him the moment he paused in the doorway, how kids always seem to do, picking up on silences the way animals sense storms. “Do you think they’ll have apple juice today?” she adds, chipper.

Viktor leans against the doorway, watching her. Something in his chest aches but he forces himself to swallow past it. His hand tightens around the cane’s handle. “Elli…” The morning light pools around her like a spotlight, catching the golden baby hairs on her head. The room smells of apples and detergent and something sweet baking one floor below.

She looks up, buttoning herself up, eyes wide and flushed slightlz from the burning excitement in her veins. Lifts toward him like a sunflower seeking the sun. Expectant. Open. She lights up just seeing him there.

His mouth opens – then promptly falls shut again. The words stick. His throat feels like someone covered it in chalk. So instead, he gestures toward the backpack, pockets bulging with adventure equipment. “You can leave it packed,” he murmurs. “We’ll try again… soon.”

Her expression falters. Just for a second. But she catches it quickly, too quickly for someone her age, and pastes a nod on top of it. “Okay,” she mouths, quiet and brave, like she’s already ten years older.

She zips the bag with a firm tug, and sets it beside the nightstand, as though even if the day won’t happen the way she wanted, she can still make it good. She picks up the rabbit instead. Her small hands fuss with its ears, adjusting the scarf like this was always part of the plan.

“I’ll just have tea with her,” she announces, climbing onto the bed and crosses her legs beneath her, settling into the covers like they’re a café booth. She sets the rabbit in front of her like a teacup made of porcelain and pulls over the drawing of Mae like it’s an adventure diary. “She likes when I tell her stories. Especially the ones with dragons.”

Viktor stays a moment longer, watching her from the doorway. His chest feels unbearably tight. There’s a lump in his throat that just won’t budge. His eyes linger on her, on the way she smooths the blanket beneath her knees, on the smile she gives the rabbit, on the way she holds the drawing like it’s made of gold.

She doesn’t complain. She just adapts.

He says nothing else. He just closes the door behind him, leaving her to the world she’s built for herself; a world of tea parties and hearts and make-believe, where canceled plans don’t feel quite so heavy when you pretend they were never promised in the first place.

Please, don‘t let them fall apart too.

The campus courtyard dozes beneath the weight of the setting sun. Long shadows spill across the flagstones, stretching between ivy and graffitied benches. The sky above is smeared with fleeting light that only happens once a day: lavender bleeding into molten gold, as if the day’s end had left a bruise. Most of the students are gone, scattered like birds startled from a wire. The only sound now are the cooing pigeons and cicadas.

Mel leans against a brick column, one heel kicked up behind her. The ember of her cigarette flickers as she inhales, the smoke curling into the air before dissolving into the amber light like a lone spirit ascending. Her blazer’s unbuttoned, her collarbone framed by the undone top button of her pearly-white blouse. She doesn’t look like Piltover’s most promising talent manager. She looks like someone who’s watched too many prodigies devour themselves. Like someone who’s learned brilliance doesn’t mean permanence. Just velocity. Just how fast someone burns before they vanish.

The tip of her cigarette glows brighter as she takes another drag, then dims. Her gaze drifts, listless, idling toward the courtyard’s center – and stops.

There, on a bench beside the old sundial, is Viktor.

A cigarette hangs forgotten between his fingers. His coat is draped across his shoulders like he couldn't decide whether to wear it or not. Papers are spread around him, from blueprints to schematics and notebook pages, but none of them are touched. His tablet sits black and lifeless in his lap, reflecting the thinning clouds above. He isn’t moving. Isn’t writing. Isn’t muttering equations under his breath or thinking without break when his mind is five steps ahead of his body. He’s just… there. Staring ahead like his thoughts are too loud to focus, yet not loud enough to silence.

He wanted to look like he was working. That much is obvious. The papers, the coat, the posture – it’s a disguise. Not a good one in the eyes of a Medarda.

She watches him, letting her cigarette burn itself down between two fingers, wondering how long he’s been sitting there trying to fool no one but himself.

Mel walks over without a word and sits beside him. She crosses one leg over the other, sits with poise. She leans an elbow to her knee, the wrist holding her cigarette dangling over it as she flicks the ash off with a quick flick. The embers scatter on the stone and vanish.

She glances at him from the corner of her eye, a wry smile curling. It crinkles the corner of her eyes like it used to when she still believed everyone could be saved, if you just said the right thing. “You look like shit.”

Viktor doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t smile either. He takes the first inhale of nicotine. “Thanks, Em.”

Mel studies him – longer than she should. His tone is flat as paper left in the rain. She watches like she’s flipping through pages, like she’s not seeing the man beside her but all the places he’s trying to hide behind cigarettes and stubborn pride. 

“Jayce left about twenty minutes ago,” she speaks, smooth, ignoring his sour face. “He looked worse.”

Viktor’s body doesn’t jolt. Doesn’t show much at all. But, like a piano wire drawn taut inside his chest, pulled just to the point before it snaps, his posture tightens. His fingers curl almost imperceptibly around the cigarette, and it wobbles between them, just a little.

“We’re not–” he starts, voice scratchy like it’s been gathering dust.

“On, don’t bother,” Mel interrupts gently, cutting across his denial before it can find legs. She leans back against the bench, exhaling through her nose, her head tipping slightly toward the far end of the courtyard. Toward the double doors of the entrance.  “You always look at that door after he leaves. Like you’re hoping he’ll come back.”

Viktor says nothing. But the cigarette trembles again. It tilts dangerously before he catches it, steadies it.

Mel shifts forward, resting her elbows on her knees. The weight of the moment pulls her inward, voice dropping to something quieter. Something closer to the heart.

Mel doesn’t press him. Doesn’t follow the wound with salt. She simply flicks the rest of her cigarette to the stone path, grinds the ember under her heel with an elegant twist of her shoe, and lets the silence stretch between them.

She knows Viktor’s version of grief doesn’t weep. Instead, she shifts forward, resting her elbows on her knees. The weight of the moment pulls her inward, voice dropping to something sifted from the heart.

“You know,” she begins, her eyes fixed on the horizon, not him, “I used to envy you two.”

That draws Viktor’s attention. He turns slowly. His brow furrows, head tilting slightly as if the words don’t quite land where he expects them to. He searches her face for context. For irony. Finds none.

“Back in school,” Mel goes on, her tone deceptively calm, “you had that kind of connection people ruin their lives trying to write about. The kind that makes playwrights obsessive and violinists break their sanities. You know what I mean? It was young. Something you both pretended wasn’t there because pulling it closer to the flame might’ve lit it on fire.”

She slips the filter into a little silver tin she summons from her coat pocket. No mess. No trace. Mel breathes out through her nose, no smile now. Just the barest softening at the corner of her mouth. “I used to wish Sevika would look at me like that,” she adds after a moment. It slips out like a secret she doesn’t mind someone hearing, now that the sting has dulled. “Even once.”

Viktor lowers his gaze again, the sidewalk blurring slightly beneath his stare. His eyes scan the concrete at his feet, where a dried leaf skitters past like it’s looking for somewhere to land.

Mel rises with a one smooth motion, brushing down the front of her jacket as if she’s preparing to step back into the world that expects her polished and impenetrable. But for once, she doesn’t seem to care if the lines are slightly uneven. Her fingers hesitate at the hem. She glances down at Viktor; not from above, not from a pedestal, but like someone watching a house that used to be hers.

“And then,” she says quietly into the space, “one of you blinked.”

It’s not judgement nor an accusation. She knows him, knows both of their stubborn minds. It’s her truth that she laid flat on the table, her final playing card.

“I don’t even care who.”

Viktor doesn’t answer – just pulls his bottom lip in with his top teeth, trying to draw blood. The halves of his face are carved in shadow and gold, half and half, like the sun is unsure how to touch him today. The papers on the table twitch slightly in the breeze like they have come alive, like they wish to speak too. The corner lifts and flutters, then folds down again.

Mel watches it for a moment. They just keep on fluttering, slowly growing tired of waiting to learn how to fly.

She exhales slowly. Not a sigh of frustration, but one that cleans the smog from the busy city of her alveoli – one that wipes clean all the past versions of herself.

“You don’t have to explain,” she says at last, and her voice is lower now. “Just… don’t waste it.” Because Mel knows someone who’s been where he is, staring down a wreckage, knowing exactly how easy it is to leave it all behind out of pride, or fear, or silence. She knows the ache of letting something rot in your hands because you’re too afraid to say: I still want this. I still want you.

“There’s only so many people,” she murmurs, gaze fixed on the university’s windows across the quad, the ones of the engineering wing, “who’ll stay on the line when you don’t say a word.”

Viktor’s cigarette has burned almost to the filter. The last bit of tobacco curls inward at the tip like a closing eyelid before dissolving to ash. He lets it fall. The filter lands against the edge of the bench below, and he presses it out with his thumb, needing to feel something burning to remember he’s still here. He leaves his hand there for a second longer.

His eyes drop to his hands.

His joints ache today, knuckles stiff. He can still feel the fine grit of graphite in the creases of his fingers, the black crescent moons of ink beneath his nails. But there’s something else. A memory worn into the skin; another hand brushing his, warm on the side of his hand. A pinky hooked through his in the dark. A pulse pressed to his palm.

Mel watches him from a slight distance, her arms crossed loosely, like she’s holding her own memories just as gently. Her expression doesn’t ask anything of him. Doesn’t push, or pry, or wait for him to say something profound. Just loving the people who don’t always know how to be loved back.

She lifts a hand briefly, brushing away a thread that isn’t there from her coat sleeve. Maybe just to give him one second longer. Maybe because she needs it too.

Then, she turns, heels clicking lightly against the stone. Just before she rounds the corner to the gold-soaked parking lot, she lets her hand brush on the wall beside her, pausing momentarily.

“Tell him,” she says, not looking back yet, “the next time he calls…”

Her silhouette slips into the shadow of the brick. Her voice floats behind like the tail end of a melody. 

“…not to hang up.”

It was the first snow of the season. No wind. No heavy clouds. Just pretty flakes, soft as moth wings, drifting down like ash over the university quad – each one unique in its pattern. Beautiful, never flawed or imperfect as there was no “poster snowflake.” There was no standard for their fall or their form, only the joyful faces of the people that watched them dance.

Jayce stood at the edge of the fountain in the dark, its waters long since shut off for the winter. The cold pressed close, but his coat collar was turned up against it, a half-hearted defense. One earbud dangled from his collar, the other still nestled in his ear. Every breath he exhaled rose in shaky puffs, little clouds that blew into the dark, then vanished. The statue in the fountain’s center, some bronze-bathed scholar with a torch raised towards the sky, was already rimmed in white, his face obscured beneath frost. Beneath Jayce’s boots, the marble lip of the basin had gone slick with ice.

He didn’t know why he’d come out here. Only that his hands had been trembling again and his dork had felt too small. That he’d needed air. Space. Or maybe he’d hoped–

The dormitory door creaked open behind him.

He didn’t turn – because he heard it. The even sound of uneven steps. The click of a cane over stone. And finally, his favorite sound: “You’ll get sick out here,” came Viktor’s voice, dry and dipped and oddly tender, like he didn’t want to scare the snowfall itself away.

Jayce’s lips twitched, utterly helpless despite the weight on his muscles. He reached up and tugged the earbud loose, his music still playing on from it. We’ll Never Have Sex, Leith Ross, 43 seconds in.

“You look perfect, you look different…”

He let the snow settle into his hair, decorate his eyelashes like small gems, melt into thin rivers down the curve of his cheek. The cold stung a little, but it felt good. “I couldn't sleep,” Jayce replied eventually.

“I gathered.”

Viktor stepped closer, coming to stand beside him. Not touching. Not looking at him. But close enough their sleeves brushed when the wind shifted.

His fingers were bare, wrapped around the curved handle of his cane. They were red from the cold, knuckles stiff.

Jayce glanced down and frowned. “You forgot your gloves again.”

“They get in the way,” Viktor murmured, like that explained everything.

“I don’t wonder about your indifference…”

Jayce didn’t answer. Instead, slowly, he slipped his hands from the warmth of his sleeves and held them out, palms open to the night. An invitation. A bridge. The cold nipped at his skin, but he didn’t pull away. Didn’t play it off as a joke when he noticed Viktor’s hesitation. Just stood there, breath puffing in front of him, each a ghost of words that died on his tongue.

Viktor blinked, visibly caught off guard by the sudden gentleness of it. He didn’t move at first. His cane shifted slightly in his grip, the tip balanced on an icy cobblestone, his other hand clenched loosely in his coat pocket like it didn’t trust what it might do if it was let free.

“If I said you could never touch me…”

Then, like muscle memory over logic, he slid his chilled fingers into Jayce’s.

Jayce’s hands closed around Viktor’s like a hearth sparking to life, enveloping the smaller hand, rubbing warmth back into it in instinctive movements. Their fingers didn’t quite fit. Jayce’s were broad and calloused. Viktor’s were long, fine-boned, almost too cold to feel. His grip was resistant at first.

But Jayce didn’t let go.

“You’d come over and say I looked lovely...”

Snow gathered in Viktor’s dark chestnut hair, the black box dye still fighting at the tips. Soft flakes settle in the uneven strands near his temples. It kissed the arc of his lashes, caught on the his cheekbone before melting into rivers of warmth that soaked into his skin. He didn’t blink it away. He stared ahead, but his fingers held fast.

“Oh, you kissed me just to kiss me…”

He wanted to say something, anything. That the world felt wrong when they weren’t like this. That he remembered last week, when Viktor had fallen asleep in the library and Jayce had carried him back to their dorm, heart in his throat. That he kept catching himself looking for Viktor in every room before he realized he wasn’t there.

That he wished they didn’t keep making almosts out of everything.

Instead, he said nothing. Just held Viktor’s hand in the cold.

The snow kept falling.

“Not to make me cry…”

Eventually, Viktor’s head tipped slightly toward him. Just enough to lean their shoulders together, warm through the layers of clothes.

Jayce didn’t move, like it was as forbidden as when a cat chooses you as it napping spot. All he could register was the weight of Viktor’s presence beside him.

“I don’t come for the snow,” Viktor muttered quietly.

Jayce’s breath caught.

He turned to look – and Viktor was already watching him.

Their faces were inches apart, lit only by the flickering lamplight above the quad – closer than Jayce’s heart can take. Viktor’s eyes were unreadable, but his mouth was set tightly. His lashes were wet. His nose was pink from the cold.

Jayce’s mouth parted, but no words came. His pulse filled the space where sound should’ve been.

Viktor’s gaze dropped to their joined hands. “I come,” he continued, voice thin, “because this is the only place I feel like you’re waiting for me.” He spoke so softly Jayce wasn’t sure he’d heard it right, leaning in closer to catch every sound.

And then he looked away.

“It was simple, you are sweetness…”

The moment passed, like fleeting snow melting on skin, like breath in the dark. Something they would never speak of again.

They stood there like that. Snow falling steady around them like sifted flour, a cascade of dust that gathered on their shoulders and coated the world until everything felt dreamlike. Like they had stepped outside of it all for a little while.

Jayce’s breath fogged the air. His fingers, still wrapped around Viktor’s, had started to ache with the cold, but he didn’t move. Didn’t want to break the moment by shifting. Didn’t want to let go.

“You know,” he said after a long while, voice sounding strange to him now, “I used to come out here alone. First year.”

Viktor didn’t answer, but he didn’t need to. Jayce could feel him listening. That made room for more.

“I wanted it to hurt. The cold, I mean.” Jayce huffed, almost a laugh but didn’t have the strength to tug that much out of his chest. “I thought… maybe if it hurt enough, I’d finally stop feeling everything else.”

Still, Viktor said nothing. He shifted slightly, so that their joined hands fit better together, his thumb brushing absently along Jayce’s knuckle.

“Let’s just sit a while…”

Jayce’s jaw flexed, then slackened, like he was chewing on something bitter that refused to go down. “One night,” he murmured, his teeth tingling in the cold, “I almost didn’t go back in.”

His voice didn’t shake right away. It held steady for a second, like a dam before cracking. “I just… lay down on the grass. Right there. The snow had just started. I remember thinking, maybe if I stayed still long enough, it would cover me. Just… wrap around me until I disappeared.”

His voice finally cracked at the end. A gust of wind rustled past them, shaking frost from the branches overhead.

And though Viktor didn’t speak, his hand tightened in Jayce’s, like he wanted to keep him here.

Jayce blinked hard, gaze fixed somewhere in the distance. He squeezed back. “You texted me. About the lab schedule.”

The corner of his mouth twitched just an inch. “Said I was late. You were so– God, you were so annoyed.”

“Depollute me, gentle angel…”

“I remember,” Viktor chuckled, finally. His voice was different now, thinner, like it had to squeeze its way past something in his throat.

Jayce turned slightly, just enough to see him. Viktor wasn’t looking at him, though; his gaze was fixed downward, toward their joined hands, snow gathering in the creases of his coat, in the valley between their thumbs.

“You saved me,” Jayce whispered.

“And I’ll feel the sickness less and less…”

And it came out too easy. Like a shrug. Like something that had been waiting for years to be spoken aloud.

Viktor flinched. Visibly.

Jayce felt it, the way his breath faltered, the minute give in his posture. A tremor, like the moment had brushed a tender bruise beneath the surface of his skin.

“No,” he replied after a beat. “I just didn’t want to rewire the circuits alone.”

Jayce smiled. It was crooked. Trembling a little. Maybe it was the cold.

Viktor’s mouth curved too – barely – like he was trying to pretend it didn’t mean anything. Like he was trying not to cry.

And their hands stayed warm.

Jayce didn’t let go of Viktor’s hand.

Instead, he stepped in closer, slow, like he was afraid the moment itself would spook, until his shoulder brushed against Viktor’s coat sleeve. He lingered there, leaning just enough for their arms to press against each other.

Viktor didn’t pull away.

If anything, he leaned back.

“Come and kiss me, pretty baby…”

The space between them dissolved to nothing. Viktor’s cheek nearly touched Jayce’s shoulder, not quite skin to skin, but close enough that Jayce could feel the shape of Viktor’s breath fan against his jaw. Warm.

Jayce closed his eyes. Just to breathe him in.

This wasn’t a hug. This wasn’t a kiss. It was something fragile and feral that lived in the quiet between the two. It wasn’t anything he could explain to anyone else without ruining it.

The air was sharp enough to bite, but Jayce didn’t feel the cold anymore. Not in his fingers. Not in his lungs. Not even in the pressure behind his ribs that had become so familiar it almost felt like home.

“I could’ve died that night,” he said, almost apologetic – as if it had taken years to admit, and now that it was out, he regretted offering it.

Viktor’s reply was gentler than the winter breeze. “I’m glad you didn’t.”

Something in Jayce went hot and hollow at the same time.

He tilted his head just a fraction, enough that if he leaned one inch further he could press his mouth to Viktor’s temple; a kiss that wouldn’t be a kiss. A thank you. A please.

They stood like that. Breathing each other in for as long as both are still breathing. Holding something between them they couldn’t carry and couldn’t let go of.

And then – Viktor’s cane slipped on the ice with a sudden scrape, skidding just enough to startle them both. Viktor jerked slightly, and Jayce’s arm instinctively came up to catch him, but the spell had already cracked. Like glass cooling too fast in winter air; you don’t hear the splintering until it’s already there.

They jolted apart. Only by a step.

But it felt like more.

Jayce blinked, dazed, like someone had just woke him up by rattling his shoulders. Across from him, Viktor’s face was flushed, the cherry pink bloom across his cheekbones catching what little lamplight the quad still offered. It could’ve been the cold.

Could’ve been.

“Like we’ll never have sex…”

“Come inside,” Viktor cleared his throat. “You’ll catch your death.”

Jayce gave him a crooked smile, giving a sarcastic side eye. “Wouldn’t want that.”

Viktor’s gaze flicked toward him, sharp. The earnest glimmering in his pupils was almost haunting. “Don’t you dare leave without me.”

Jayce could never imagine such a thing. He followed Viktor, their hands finding each other again like magnets. Fingers lacing back together like they hadn’t slipped at all.

The phone rang once. Then twice.

Viktor was already halfway to declining it when he saw the name.

Jayce :)

His hand froze over the screen. His pulse, quick. Then slow. Then somewhere in between again, stuttering back and forth.

He let it ring once more before answering – not out of spite, but to keep from sounding too eager. Because he was eager.

The call connected.

And there was nothing. No greeting. No explanation.

Just an open line. Breathing. Soft, more in than out. But there was also no speakerphone hiss, no accidental pocket call. Jayce had meant to dial. He just… hadn’t meant to speak.

Viktor didn’t speak right away. He leaned back against the headboard, one hand wrapped loosely around his phone, the other resting on his chest. His skin felt cold. The dark room folded around him, almost watchful. The glow from his screen lit up the sharp plane of his jaw, the dip beneath his eye, the twitch of a muscle beneath his ivory skin.

He drew in a breath, then let it out slow.

“You don’t have to talk,” he murmured quietly. “I’ll… stay on the line.”

There was still no reply. But the silence shifted, like someone finally let out a breath they’ve been holding for minutes. Maybe Jayce has. The call had become a shared space: one line, two hearts, a thousand unsaid things suspended between them like blind butterflies.

Viktor could hear him breathing. Could almost picture him lying back somewhere, maybe on that nice couch in his living room, or buried in blankets on his too-big bed, phone balanced on his chest as well. Maybe they’re heart-to-heart right now. He closed his eyes and tried not to imagine too much. Failed. The worry line of Jayce’s brows, the tight set of his jaw when he was trying not to cry.

A minute passed. Then two. Viktor’s throat tightened, but he didn’t swallow. Didn’t even move. He just stayed there, the phone warming up on his chest

And then, finally, Jayce’s voice, rough, like he’d scraped it from the bottom of a mossy well.

“I thought I was fixing us.”

Viktor’s eyes stayed on the ceiling, unfocused. His lashes fluttered against the dust particles catching in the barest moonlight from the cloudy sky outside. He swallowed, then again, because the first time didn’t work. That time didn’t either. When he answered, his voice was softer than it had been in months.

“There was never anything broken.”

The quiet returned, but not uncomfortable. It was one that pulls a blanket over two separate beds and calls it closeness, swollen with the weight of what they couldn’t untangle. They sat with it anyway.

Ten minutes.

Then twenty.

At some point, Viktor shifted under his blanket and placed the phone beside his head. Jayce still hadn’t hung up. Viktor could hear the breath on the other end, the speaker turned up just enough to catch every sound. Inhale. Pause. Exhale. Again.

It should’ve felt strange. It didn’t.

It reminded him of college, of those long nights calling from opposite ends of the country when Viktor went back to Zaun during semester breaks. Viktor, holed up in the attic bedroom of his childhood house, voice quiet beneath blankets due to the thin walls. Jayce, always bustling in that sunny Piltover apartment of his aunt, pacing as he talked about nonsense: new projects, reality TV shows, what he’d cook when Viktor came back. Sometimes Jayce would read aloud from whatever book was on his desk for Viktor. They’d fall asleep like that. Phone laying between face and pillow, breath syncing up across miles.

Back then, it had made Viktor feel like he was tethered to warmth. Something to return to.

Now, he didn’t know what it made him feel. Only that the same longing was still there.

Another half hour passed.

Then Jayce’s voice, nothing like the man everyone else saw: “…Can you stay on the phone? Tonight?”

Viktor let out a breath – not a sigh. It wasn’t surprise. It wasn’t even hesitation. Just recognition, like rereading a sentence you know by heart.

Of course. Of course Jayce would ask that now. Of course Viktor would say yes.

He tilted his head towards the window, watching the moonlight slice long shapes across his floorboards, silvering the walls and pooling like a foggy lake near his dresser. The blanket had slipped down to his waist, summer heat slowly approaching. His fingers curled slightly where they rested on the pillow.

“This is just like before,” he murmured, mostly to himself.

Jayce didn’t speak, but Viktor could feel the way he listened; intent, hungry.

“…Sure,” he whispered. There was a traitorous tug in his chest. He didn’t fight it. “I’ll stay.”

No response. But there didn’t need to be.

So Viktor closed his eyes. He adjusted the phone, his cheek pressed gently to the warmth of his pillow, and listened. Listened to Jayce’s breath. The movement of fabric. The creak of something shifting – a couch cushion, maybe, or a mattress. And then, eventually, the stillness of sleep settling in.

He wasn’t sure who drifted off first.

But when Viktor finally surrendered to it, phone lingering near his hand, it wasn’t silence that filled the dark. It was the comfort of someone still on the other end.

Chapter Text

Jayce ignored the phone the first time it rang, too occupied by the song playing from the radio – Mountains by Message to Bears. The sound tugged him backward in time, to a very specific era he’d never quite lived down. His Life is Strange phase.

“And we could run away…”

Back then, he’d decided the game’s entire aesthetic was a personality trait, and Viktor – long-suffering and far too patient – had been unwillingly drafted into it. They’d roam Piltover’s outskirts, hopping fences into junkyards or weaving through abandoned lots. Jayce swore the stench of rust, the broken glass, and wild weeds were all “part of the vibe.” In reality, it was nothing like the moody, sunlit scenes from the game. Navigating the uneven terrain with Viktor’s cane was a constant challenge, and the air usually rank of oil and metal.

Still, Viktor never said no when Jayce asked to go.

Now, years later, those opening chords still made Jayce smile… though he’d never admit it was less about the song and more about the person who’d stood beside him through all of it.

“Before the light of day…”

The house was full of background noises, the picture perfect image of an ordinary afternoon – only mundane, repetitive things. The rumble of the dishwasher cycling through rinse, the clink of a stray spoon inside matching its rhythm just a little off-beat. The hallway ceiling light made an almost imperceptible noise that Mae somehow always hears twice as loud. A damp towel hung over the back of a kitchen chair, still carrying the warmth of his post-shower skin.

Jayce had one arm stuck, sweater bunched in his hands, when the phone screen flared to life again from the counter.

Vi.

He didn’t think much of it, the woman loving to call when their favourite football team is playing and commentate on it for an hour because Caitlyn cannot be bothered. “Hey,” he spoke, voice casual, one foot balancing awkwardly in a poorly laced sneaker, getting ready for an afternoon run.

But there was no fun in her tone.  

“You know we always could…”

“Jayce,” she said with such weight that it almost developed its own gravitational pull and glued Jayce’s phone to his ear. “Mae didn’t show up to afternoon activities.”

“The mountains say…”

The world stopped. Jayce went completely still, sweater slipping from his hands like it had turned to ash. “What?” he muttered, barely managing that single word.

“No one’s seen her,” Vi continued, all business now. She was shifting gears, going from friend to security guard to sister figure all in one breath. “We checked the usual spots. The library nook. The back garden. The old slide she likes to hide under.”

“The mountains say…”

Jayce’s mouth had gone dry. He realized his foot was still wedged awkwardly in his sneaker, quickly pushing it down with a force that could break his ankle. He didn’t even blink.  

“The staff thought maybe you picked her up early,” Vi added, but her voice didn’t hold much hope, especially when noticing the horror in his response.  

“I didn’t.” The words forced their way out of his throat, dry and cracking, like someone had lined his insides with sandpaper and dragged every grain against his voice. His mouth tasted of iron. “I– I didn’t pick her up. I didn’t even check my phone since clocking out. I–”

He immediately turned off the swelling music and the silence that followed made his ears ring.

“She never signed in after lunch,” Vi explained. Her voice was clipped, almost a whisper, like she was trying not to make her worst fears real by speaking them too loud. Jayce heard all in her tone anyway. “Her teacher said she was quiet today. Said she just kept… picking at her nails.”

Jayce’s hand found the edge of the kitchen counter, gripped it like an anchor. The world tilted beneath him, enough to make his stomach lurch, like the earth itself had started to roll off its axis – and soon, the whole planet would capsize.

It had to have started this morning.

Mae, still in her socks, had shuffled into the kitchen with her backpack slung over one shoulder and a little wrinkle between her straight brows. Her hair wasn’t brushed, given the time, her favorite sweater with the sequined fox looking more dull today. Maybe it was the many wash cycles it had experienced. She’d tugged at his coat sleeve twice while he poured coffee into his travel mug, the radio informing about some traffic update behind him.

“Papá,” she’d said, incredibly serious. “Can I talk to you about something?”

And he’d just smiled, distracted, already three minutes behind schedule. Smiled like he didn’t even register her words. He’d kissed the crown of her head and grabbed his keys. “Later, bug,” Jayce had brushed her off. “Just tell me tonight, ok?”

But there was no tonight now. Instead, there Vi’s voice cutting in and out through the speaker like a heartbeat over the white noise in his brain. “We’re sweeping the building again,” she explained. “Classrooms, storage, everything. But– Jayce… she might’ve left campus.”

Something cold and hollow cracked open in his chest.

She tried to tell me something. And I didn’t listen.

Jayce’s jaw clenched, the sound of his teeth grinding filling the silence between them. He didn’t even realize he was still holding onto the counter until the edge bit into his palm. His throat burned, like his saliva turned into hot lava.

“Check the school,” he spoke low, trying to keep his voice flat. Every word was outlined by guilt and fear, forced through grit. “Check the whole damn school.”

He didn’t have time to wait for a reply. Jayce ended the call abruptly with one sharp press, so forcefully it could’ve cracked his screen. The space around him roared, filled every corner of the kitchen with a noise only he could hear: cold, harsh panic.

Jayce shoved his phone into his pocket with hands that no longer felt attached to him. His body moved before his mind could catch up , parental instinct overriding logical thought. He grabbed his coat from the back of a chair, knocking the damp towel to the floor. He could really care less about the laminate right now.

His keys were in the bowl by the door, and just in case, he grabbed the flashlight from the drawer near the sink – the one he hadn’t touched in years, because why would you need one unless you’re fixing something?

His hands were shaking.

In his mind, she was frozen in that damning image, standing in the hallway just hours ago – hair clumsily done by herself, her fingers constantly fumbling with her sleeve. Her backpack slung too low because she refused to tighten the straps. All while looking up at him with those big, wide eyes.

He hadn’t looked down.  

Hadn’t stopped pouring his coffee. Hadn’t muted the radio. Hadn’t seen her.  

He should’ve listened.

The shame came fast and brutal, slamming into his ribcage like a dropped weight.

What if – what if she thought she didn’t matter enough?

Jayce burst through the front doors of the elementary school like something wild breaking loose. The slam echoed behind him, swallowed up by walls that usually knew silence at this hour. The air inside was entirely still and cold.  

The corridors stretched out before him like a maze he’d never seen before, even though he’d walked them a hundred times – during  parent-teacher conferences. On drop-offs when Mae forgot her water bottle. That one time she insisted he come help with her and Elara’s volcano before the science fair.

But now?

Now the hallway felt like it was closing in and hoping to bury him.

The motion-sensor lights flicked on one by one as he stormed forward, casting long shadows that jumped across the floor like ghosts. They caught up t oo slow. Too late. His footsteps echoed disjointed. His breath came in shallow, erratic gasps ; no matter how hard he tried, his lungs just couldn’t seem to fill.

He turned down the main hall, where the first grade classrooms were, and was suddenly hit by a wave of too much. Too much cheer.

Red and yellow painted walls with smiling suns, talking dinosaurs, rainbows with childish handwriting in the clouds. Stars dangled from the ceiling on fishing line, twirling back and forth in the stale air. Valentine hearts and glitter-glued snowflakes from months ago still clung to the bulletin boards.

It should’ve been comforting, should’ve brought a smile to passersby.

But all Jayce saw – all he could see – was the cubby. Third from the left.

Mae’s.

His feet stumbled to a halt like his body couldn’t handle getting any closer. His heart was a hammer against his ribs.There was the sun-faded sticker of the pink owl still clinging to the wood with all its might. She’d picked it out at the dentist’s office a year ago and insisted it made her cubby “extra smart.”

And there, sitting right beneath the tiny shelf where she kept her jacket and gloves for winter–

Her lunchbox.

The glittery hot pink one she’d chosen two summers ago. The one with the peeling seahorse decal, worn thin from too many wash cycles. The latch that always caught on the first try, then let go with a little click.

Tears stung the back of his eyes, hot and sudden. Jayce squeezed his eyes shut. The pressure in his chest was unbearable now, as if grief and guilt had crawled inside his lungs and made a home there.

It was full.  

Inside, packed just the way she liked it, was everything he’d made her that morning. The sandwich, wrapped in eco-friendly wax paper, a little smushed from the way she always tossed her bag onto the floor. Crusts cut off, because she didn’t like how they scratched her gums. A corner of the wax paper was crinkled, folded back like maybe she’d thought about eating it, but didn’t. A bottle of apple juice nestled next to it, beads of condensation still clinging to the plastic.

Not a single thing had been touched. Not one bite. Not a sip.

“She didn’t even eat,” Jayce murmured, the words coming out as if an earthquake had rattled through his lungs. But then he said it again, because his brain couldn’t catch up, couldn’t understand. “She didn’t even eat.”

He stared down at the untouched food like it might tell him a reason. Why didn’t you eat, bug? Where did you go? Why didn’t you wait for me to come back?

His hand tightened around the handle of the lunchbox, the thin pink plastic creaking under the strain. His knuckles turned white. The world narrowed to the weight of that tiny container, to the unbearable heaviness of what it meant.

She wasn’t okay. And maybe she hadn’t been for a while.

It hit him all at once – how quiet she’d been lately. Not literally in volume, but in how she faded from him. The way she’d stopped humming her favourite TV show intros in the passenger seat. The way she stared out the car window now like she wasn’t really seeing anything at all. How she’d started walking a little slower behind him every morning, just enough that her hand didn’t reach his anymore.

And he hadn’t even asked what was going on .

He told himself she was just tired , adjusting to the creeping summer heat. Just a kid being moody, or quiet, or growing.

But kids don’t just vanish. And they don’t leave behind their favorite snack. Or their glittery pink lunchbox. Or the sandwich with the crusts cut off – unless something is wrong.

Really, really wrong.

Jayce stood slowly. His knees ached from crouching too long on the hard tile, but the stiffness didn’t matter to him. Nothing did, except the eerie stillness swallowing the hallway around him. The air felt wrong. Every sound echoed too far in the hollowness. Even his own breath felt like a stranger’s, loud and out of body in the silence. He turned in place, scanning the corridor.

None of it made sense. Mae had been here. She laughed here, her shoes tapped against the linoleum. Her things were here.

But she wasn’t.

His eyes found her cubby again. Just above it, pinned crooked to a bulletin board alongside everyone else’s paper, was her “All About Me!” sheet from the start of the school year. I love unicorns. I love Daddy. I love math, it read. She’d dotted every i with a heart.

Jayce’s throat closed. He turned away before the tears could fully fall, swiping at his eyes with the heel of his hand like it would erase the guilt clawing its way up his spine.

Footsteps echoed behind him – fast. He turned sharply, pulse spiking, hope flaring hard in his chest –

Vi.

She jogged into view, breathless, hair a mess from the restless search. She held a flashlight in one hand, her phone glowing in the other. Her badge clipped to her belt, twisted slightly. She looked like she hadn’t stopped moving since their call. “Still nothing,” Vi panted. “We checked the gym again. The nurse’s office. Storage closets even. She’s not there.”

Jayce couldn’t speak. He held out the lunchbox wordlessly.

Vi’s expression shifted immediately the moment she saw it, her brows pulling together, lips pressing into a thin line. “Fuck.”

Jayce nodded slowly. His voice came out shredded, like someone had put him through a meat grinder. “She didn’t eat.” It seemed like that was the only sentence left in his body. The only thing he could say without breaking apart entirely. “She must’ve been upset. She must’ve– God, she tried to tell me something this morning, Vi, and I didn’t even–” His words cracked open at the end, voice catching like a splinter in his throat. He pressed his fist against his mouth to keep it together, but it barely helped. The grief was right there, rising like floodwater behind his ribs.

Vi stepped in and placed a firm hand on his shoulder, squeezing hard. “We’re gonna find her, Jayce.”

The weight of the lunchbox in his hand felt disproportionate, cruel, as if something so small, so childish and bright, could contain the full weight of his failure. The glitter on it caught the overhead light, shimmering mockingly, and for a moment he wanted to drop it. Hurl it. Smash it. Anything to stop it from meaning what it did.

Then something clicked in his chest, like a stuck drawer finally sliding open. “She wouldn’t leave without her sketchbook,” he exclaimed suddenly, eyes widened. The words came in a blurt, so fast that it took Vi several seconds to even register a syllable he had said. She looked over, puzzled as what this has to do with the search. “What?”

Jayce just turned sharply, hope slamming into his chest like a defibrillator. “She draws when she’s overwhelmed. It’s her way of feeling – got it from her mother.” He was already moving, shoving past the low tables and miniature chairs into the classroom. It was dim inside, the chalkboard still streaked with writing from the day’s lessons, the windows casting long amber beams across the floor. “ She brings it everywhere . Every day. I–”

They checked her desk first – nothing.

Jayce moved out again and crouched down at her cubby, more frantic this time. He pushed aside a stray mitten, a plastic star hair clip, a crumpled math worksheet with “Great work!” scribbled across the top in red pen.

Still nothing.

And then –

There.  

Tucked into the very back corner, where the cubby’s wood panel met the wall, was a thin A5 booklet. Jayce froze. He reached for it slowly, like it might break apart and crumble in his fingers. His thumb brushed the upper right worn corner before he opened it.

A drawing.

His heart caught in his throat.

It was Mae’s, unmistakably; her expressive style, yet impressive for such a young girl, little hearts drawn inside thehair as highlights, eyes too big for heads. It showed a picture of two girls, smiling. One of them had a curly bob and sparkles drawn into her sweater. The other had a long hairwith short, contradicting bangs and a big grin on her face.

Elara. Viktor’s daughter.

The two of them were holding hands.

But what hit Jayce hardest wasn’t them. It was the background.

Behind them stood a tall tree with knotted, gnarled limbs, drawn with thick brown pencil lines that pressed hard enough to indent the paper and move onto the next page. An X had been scratched across its center in heavy strokes. “Our secret place!”

Jayce blinked, breath snagging in his chest. He knew that tree. It stood just behind the school, at the edge of the overgrown lot near the old garden shed. Mae had pointed it out once, long ago, during a walk home with him. She’d tugged on his hand and whispered, “That one. That’s our favorite.”

And he’d smiled, distracted – again . Told her that was nice. Forgot about it.

Until now.

“She didn’t run away, ” Jayce said aloud, more to himself than to Vi. The realization struck hot and sudden, like lightning rushing  through every nerve ending . His voice trembled with the reverb of the thunder that followed it . “She hid somewhere. Somewhere she thought was safe.”

Vi stepped in beside him, peering over his shoulder at the paper still cradled in his hand. Her brows furrowed , probably cemented in this position by now. “ You know where that is?”

But Jayce was already moving. The drawing rustled as heripped it out and shoved it into his pocket, heart racing in time with his steps. “I think so,” he said, his voice anchored by the sudden clarity threading through the fear. “She has to be there.” His whole body moved on instinct, a kind of electric focus that finally cut through the haze of helplessness that had wrapped around him all day.

Mae’s glittery lunchbox hit the bench with a dull thunk, forgotten, and then he was sprinting, shoes thudding hard against tile as he took off down the hallway.

Nothing mattered except the tree. That old, crooked tree she’d shown him once, so meaningless back then. He saw it in his mind now as clearly as the paper sketch, bark flaking like scales off a shedding snake, the long shadow it cast in the late afternoon light.

She told him it was special. And he hadn’t listened.

His fists clenched as he ran. He didn’t say it aloud, but the words burned behind his teeth.

I at least hope she’s there.

The wheel trembled beneath Viktor’s hands. No, his hands were trembling. The wheel was reliable, fixed in its track like it knew where it was going, even when he didn’t. His grip was too tight and his palms slick. Every turn felt like trying to steer underwater; loose, delayed, slippery. The leather glid slightly under his fingertips, damp with sweat. His right leg burned with strain, not even the brace being able to soothe the tension in every pull of his muscles.

It had rained earlier, and the world still held onto it, the tires squelshing on the wet pavement. Headlights sliced through the early dusk in narrow beams, catching on damp street signs and puddles that shimmered like oil. Outside the windshield, the world looked unreal, rain droplets and fog blurring everything into mush.

Viktor blinked hard, willing himself not to drift. He kept his eyes pinned to the road. White line, yellow line, red brake light. White line. Yellow. Anything to keep from looking in the mirror. Anything to keep his mind from spiraling.

There was nothing else to hold onto.

Until –

“Is Mae gonna be okay?”

Elara.  

Viktor’s chest tightened. He glanced at the mirror.

She sat curled up in the back seat, arms wrapped tight around her backpack like it could protect her from anything – she was smaller than usual, he noted, folded in on herself. Her braid was slightly uneven. She’d done it herself today – insisted on it. Her eyes were wide and distant, trained on the window but not really looking at anything.

Viktor’s throat ached. His fingers clenched tighter on the wheel. His foot pressed a little heavier on the gas. The streetlights blinked overhead in quick succession, little bursts of white that flickered through the car like strobe lights. “Yes.”

Because she needed to hear it. Because there was nothing else he could give her right now. Because silence was a kind of cruelty.

But the lie caught in his mouth like a stone. It tasted like metal.

The moment he heard Jayce’s voice, everything had frozen. The living room, with the luke-warm cup of darjeeling on the side table. The hum of the laptop fan behind him. Elara’s pencil rolling across the table just before it dropped off the edge and hit the floor with a muted tap. It all stopped, like time refused to move forward until Viktor understood what he was hearing. He hadn’t waited for the rest.

Gone.

No. No, not gone.

Missing.

But even that word had teeth.

ˈmɪsɪŋ.

He hated how final it sounded, already visualizing what font the police would use.

From the rearview mirror, he saw Elara watching him again. Her gaze was fixed, far too solemn for a seven-year-old. Her lips were pressed together, shoulders hunched beneath the large sweater with a sequinned dolphin she insisted on wearing every time Mae wore her matching fox one. She didn’t ask anything else. Not why, not what happened, not where are we going. She just held her silence like a balloon she was afraid might pop if she dared open her mouth.

Viktor reached up and adjusted the mirror slightly to avoid meeting her eyes. Then, after a breath, he softened his voice, pulled something warm out of the cold wreckage inside him. “She’s smart, zlatíčko.”

He didn’t say Mae. He couldn’t bear it.  

“She’ll know what to do.”

Elara didn’t nod in acknowledgement. She just slowly turned her head and pressed her forehead to the window. Her breath fogged the glass, little clouds forming and fading as the car sped forward through the dusk.

She kept looking out, as if she could see her friend out there, somewhere in the blur of street signs and passing headlights. As if watching hard enough might call Mae back to them.

Viktor kept his eyes on the road.

He pressed harder on the gas. Faster. Farther. As if he could outrun the dread clawing up his spine. As if distance might smother the image of Jayce's voice breaking apart. As if the wind through the AC might tear that sound from his ears.

Vi stood just beyond the front entrance, her boots rooted on the concrete steps, hand resting on the cool weight of her holster. Her breath came in bursts, fogging the air in front of her mouth. The moment she stepped outside, it all broke down.

She snapped into officer mode like muscle memory, shaped from years of being the first one people looked to when things went to hell. “Lock it down,” she barked, eyes scanning the chaos. Her voice cut through the rising murmur like a blade. She turned to the nearest staff member – a young teacher with panicked eyes and a clipboard clutched tightly in both hands. “I want camera footage from the last two hours. Every hallway, every side door, and every damn field gate.”

Her fingers were already reaching for her comm as she spoke, tone clipped. Control the variables. Take the perimeter. Subside the panic before it spreads.

“Staff calls,” Vi continued, voice ever sharpened now. “Start them. Anyone who signed a student out early gets a check-in. Everyone else is accounted for by name. I want eyes on every corner of this place.” The command in her tone left no room for debate. “We will find her.”

And beside her, like always, Caitlyn stood solid as stone. Her presence wasn’t loud, but it was authorative. Where Vi burned, Caitlyn cooled her off. She moved through the chaos like she could see the logic inside the mess. Her dress shirt was wrinkled at the sleeves, the collar uneven from where she’d torn off her blazer in the car, and her fingers danced rapidly over her phone screen, scrolling through recent news reports and contacts without looking up.

“We’ll need traffic cams along the west side,” she murmured, already texting someone. “And check the delivery entrance near the cafeteria – there’s no motion-activated alert set there.”

Vi gave a grim nod.

This was just work – what they did, what they were trained for.  

But it was different when the name on the missing person report belonged to someone you knew. Someone you’d watched grow up. Someone who brought your girlfriend hand-drawn pictures of her and you standing back-to-back, with little stars around them and the word “guardians”  spelled wrong.

“Jayce!” Caitlyn’s voice cut clean through the static in his ears. He turned toward it instinctively, stumbling slightly on the school’s front steps as he emerged, his hair a mess from the increasing wind – how cold she must be – his shirt untucked and clinging damp to his back. Mae’s drawing was crushed in his grip, his knuckles white around it.

He looked like he was dying. Like he’d sprinted straight through every hell possible and kept going. His eyes were bloodshot. His chest rose and fell too quickly, like he couldn’t get enough air.

“Stay with Viktor,” Caitlyn advised gently, but her voice held no question mark – it exclaimed. “Let us handle the grid. If you chase shadows, you’ll waste what time we have.”

Jayce opened his mouth – maybe to argue, maybe to beg to help – but nothing came out. He knew his found sister better than himself; she wasn’t going to rest until he did. His jaw clenched like he was physically holding back the scream that wanted to tear through his chest.

Then – warmth.

Viktor. More specifically, Viktor’s hand on his arm.

He didn’t say anything, just stood close enough that their shoulders brushed, calming Jayce with presence alone. His eyes found Jayce’s and stayed unwavering. That one look said what no one else could: Breathe. I’ve got you.

“We’ll do anything to find her,” Caitlyn added, her voice gentler now. She pulled out her phone, pressed a contact, and held it to her ear, eyes flicking to Jayce with that sharp, knowing smile that always carried a hint of reassurance. “I wouldn’t be a Kiramann otherwise.”

Before Jayce could answer, the squeal of tires tore through the lot. A car came to a sudden stop along the curb, headlights flaring as the front end dipped. The door flung open, nearly slamming back against the frame.

Mel stepped out, heels stabbing against the concrete, braids twisted in a bun that had some falling out on one side. Her long coat flared open around her, flapping in the breez e, and her phone was still clutched in her hand, half a dozen unread messages lighting the screen.

Jayce hadn’t even realized he’d sent her that many.

Mel help.  

She’s gone.

Please.

We can’t find her.

Mel’s eyes found him instantly.

She read the hurt in the slump of his shoulders, in the bruised purple color beneath his eyes, in the way his fingers were still curled around a child's drawing like it was all he had left to hold. She reached him in a few strides, her coat catching around her thighs, and her voice was like disinfectant spray on a wound – it hurts at first but protects longterm. “How long?”

His mouth opened, but the words didn’t come.

Vi answered the question for him, stepping closer, arms crossed, tension locked into every line of her frame. “Since the end of school,” she spoke tightly. “She didn’t check in for afternoon activities. Didn’t sign out. No staff saw her leave. Cameras are still pulling.”

Mel’s expression tightened. She nodded once, already absorbing every detail like bullets into armor. Her grip on the phone relaxed just slightly. “I canceled the rest of my classes,” Mel said, already swiping rapidly through her screen. The glow of her phone lit the apple of her cheek, flickering like a signal tower in the dark. “I’ll canvas the university grounds in case she wandered toward somewhere familiar. Jayce said she likes the clock tower. I can start there.”

Jayce opened his mouth to thank her but the sound didn’t make it out. It hitched, caught halfway between breath and speech, and died in the back of his throat. The pain of it showed in the twist of his features, in the way his lips stayed parted like the apology was trying to claw its way free.

Mel didn’t need to hear it. She stepped in, close enough to brush his arm with her fingertips, Jayce feeling a magical wave of calm wash over him. “We’ll find her,” she said.

That made three people now.

He nodded numbly, but his fingers curled tighter around the drawing in his hand, crinkling the edges. Everyone kept fucking saying it like if they said it enough, it would come true. Like they could speak her back into the world. But the sky kept dimming, and the hours kept stretching.

Jayce turned slightly, the sketch quivering in his grasp. Viktor stood at his side still. His brow was furrowed not just with worry, but concentration. Memory. Distance. Tracking time through details.

“The tree,” Jayce rasped, his voice almost too ragged to be comprehensible. “Do you know where it is?”

Viktor’s eyes moved to the drawing briefly , tracing the lines. Then he looked toward the edge of the field, where the light dipped lower and the school’s fences surrendered to the beginnings of the nature path Mae and Elara always begged to explore.

“I think so,” he murmured. His voice had changed, softer now, like he wasn’t speaking to just anyone. Like he was speaking to exclusively Jayce. And when he turned back, there was no room for anger between them. No rift parting their bodies. Just two fathers wrapped up in the same anxiety.

Viktor reached out, letting his hand cover Jayce’s, resting over the sketch without forcing stillness. He let the paper – and the trembling – remain.

“She loves Elara,” Viktor said, eyes locked with Jayce’s.  “She’d never go far. Not on purpose.”

Jayce’s throat constricted . That voice – that calm – it was a signature of Viktor, but it was also home. It was safe.  

The tree stood like a sentinel at the very edge of the school grounds, just past the rusted break in the chain-link fence where the world shifted from playground mulch to untamed woods. It towered above the clearing, its crooked limbs reaching skyward like old, wrinkly fingers, bark warped into deep grooves by time and weather. The last bleeding remnants of daylight filtered through the branches, catching on the damp underbrush like threads of silk. Twilight clung to the leaves.

Jayce and Viktor reached it together – Jayce mindful of Viktor’s limp and lungs , shoes caked in mud, pant legs wet from brushing through thorn and grass. Their flashlights cut white arcs across the base of the trunk, illuminating the scene in fragments. The beam bounced off roots, thorns, pieces of old glass. Somewhere in the branches, something creaked in the wind.

But the clearing beneath the branches was empty.

Jayce’s flashlight dropped slightly. His chest rose and fell in jagged motions, breath catching hard against the tight ache crawling up his throat again. His stomach turned cold.

She was supposed to be here.

He spun in a slow, stumbling circle, flashlight beam trembling as it swept through the shadows, across bushes and branches, across nothing. “Mae?” he called out, voice the definition of panic. “Mae– baby, it’s okay! You’re not in trouble, just– just come out, sweetheart, please–” His voice cracked down the middle, splintering on her name like it couldn’t hold the weight of repeating it over and over anymore.

“ Please. ”

Only the wind answered him, rustling through the leaves above. There were no small footsteps. No little sniffles. No guilty voice hiding behind roots or rock. The big tire swing creaked, like it remembered someone who’d been here and gone.

“She’s not here,” he whispered, but he wasn’t talking to Viktor or even to himself. He was talking to the awful space left behind.

Jayce took a single step back. Two. And then – he broke. He folded inward like something hollow giving in to pressure. A worn down building too tired to hold its own weight. One breath too much. One hope too few.

His knees hit the ground with a jarring thud. The cold dirt bit into his palms as he caught himself, fingers digging uselessly into the earth like he could pull himself in to it and disappear. His flashlight dropped and rolled, the beam tumbling sideways into the roots, casting wild shadows across the tree bark.

He stayed there. Shoulders shaking. Head bowed low. Breath stuttering out of him like it hurt to keep breathing at all. “I didn’t listen to her,” he whispered and it seemed like his vocal cords finally split in half. “She needed me, and I didn’t– I just shoved her out the door like she was a goddamn calendar alert. Something I could circle back to later.”

His voice cracked on the last word. It was like listening to someone choke on guilt. Above him, the wind stirred the leaves.

Viktor stood just a few feet away,  watching.

So much unsaid stretched between them, months of silence, avoidance, words swallowed and left to rust. Things they never had the courage to dig up. But none of that mattered now. Not when Jayce was on the ground like this. Not when the weight of what he feared he’d lost was too much for one person to carry.

Viktor stepped forward, laid his cane down and sat beside himcarefully, the fabric of his slacks dampening in the cold soil. He didn’t speak right away, didn’t try to fix what couldn’t be fixed. His hand hovered for a moment, just a breath’s worth of hesitation, before he placed it gently on Jayce’s back. The touch was warm. So warm on the icy skin of his damp back.

“You didn’t know,” Viktor reassured, hand moving up and down slowly. He had always been resistant to Jayce’s physical affection when they were young. Now, Jayce almost couldn’t believe that despite the sweat and the trembling – he touched him. “You thought you had more time.”

Jayce flinched a little at the truth of it. He didn’t lift his head. But he also didn’t pull away. “She was trying to tell me,” he murmured, more to the dirt at his feet than to Viktor. “This morning. I remember now. She said she wanted to talk, and I just… I kissed her forehead and told her ‘later.’”

A pause.

“I always think there’ll be a later.”

Viktor didn’t reply right away. His hand rubbed small circles between Jayce’s shoulder blades. “I did the same thing,” he murmured. “The day Elara got really sick, back in Zaun. She told me her stomach hurt and I was in the middle of rebooting a server. I said it could wait. That she could wait.” He drew in a slow breath, eyes following two ants scittering into their hill as a raindrop fell from a leaf. “It was appendicitis. If I’d waited another hour…”

Jayce turned his head slightly. Their eyes met under the boughs of the old tree, both of them sitting in the dirt, two men who loved their daughters more than anything and still somehow believed they weren’t doing enough.

“You are not a bad father,” Viktor said, barely above a whisper.

Jayce shook his head like the words physically hurt. “You don’t know that.”

“I do.”

And this time, there wasn’t a single fracture in his voice. “Because you’re here, on your hands and knees, willing to claw through the fucking earth if it meant she was beneath it.”

Jayce’s shoulders stuttered with breath. A borderline pathetic, helpless sound broke in the back of his throat. His hands were still buried in the dirt, fingers curling like he could grip the ground and make it give her back.

“I’ve seen men run from less,” Viktor murmured. “I’ve seen men walk away from love that scared them. From responsibility. From grief.”

Jayce didn’t say I used to be one of them. He turned slowly, like his body was waterlogged, exhausted from too much sinking. His head bowed, and then leaned, resting heavily against Viktor’s shoulder like he couldn’t keep himself upright anymore. “What if she’s scared?” he choked out. “What if she’s alone and she thinks I didn’t come for her?”

Viktor’s breath hitched. “She doesn’t,” he whispered.

“You don’t know that,” Jayce sobbed back, raw. “You can’t.”

“I know you,” Viktor replied simply. “And I know her. That’s enough.”

Jayce didn’t argue this time. His forehead stayed pressed to Viktor’s shoulder, his fingers curling slightly in the fabric of Viktor’s shirt like he needed something – someone – to tether him and stop him from falling through the despair.  

Viktor’s fingers moved, almost unconsciously, and rested at the back of Jayce’s coat.

In return, Jayce let out a single, shuddering breath yet Viktor didn’t let go. He just leaned into him slowly, and rested his head gently on Jayce’s. A shared breath. A touch like gravity. Their skin pressed together, grounding each other in the silence.

Jinx wasn’t supposed to be here – hell, she wasn’t even on the official roster for any of the search parties.

But when Mel’s panicked voice had cracked over the phone – something genuinely panicked, stripping away that lacquered calm she wore – Jinx had grabbed her coat, her bolt cutters, and was out the door before Mel could finish packing her things. She didn’t wait for details. Mel always claimed she had a nose for trouble, and this? This was the kind of beautiful mess Jinx would chase straight into the dark.

Her boots clapped against the beige tile, each step reverberating down the school’s back corridors; the ones the others had already combed through twice and written off. But Jinx knew better. Empty halls had a way of talking if you walked slow enough to listen.

She hummed under her breath, a little tune her mother used to sing when Jinx was small; a so-called “protection song,” meant for nights when the quiet felt like it might swallow you whole. Her fingertips skimmed locker doors, smudging circles through layers of chalk dust and grime.

There .

A single tiny footprint, pressed into the powdered remains of a spilled chalk box near a classroom threshold. Most people would’ve overlooked it or dismissed it as nothing. It just looked like a careless accident. Some kid earlier in the day probably panicked and tried to hide the mess from their teacher – but that’s exactly who Jinx was looking for. A panicked, scared child running away from trouble.

Jinx crouched slowly, grinning, the tip of her braid brushing the floor. “Well, well… sneaky little mouse,” she murmured, propping her chin on her fist. “You’re not missing. You’re just hiding.”

She tilted her head, letting her eyes trace the scatter of dust, the way it was disturbed – it had been purposefully smudged. Clever girl. But it wasn’t wiped away well enough for the eyes of a hunter.

Jinx rose and started walking again, slower now. The hum was gone. Around the bend. Down the back stairwell. Through the narrow path most people forgot existed.

And then she stopped.

The grin slipped from her face and was replaced by… recognition. That spine-prickling moment when the puzzle pieces click into place and the ending writes itself in your head.

Jinx turned down the last stretch, eyes narrowing on the glass-panelled silhouette at the end of the pathway – the abandoned greenhouse. Her hand closed around the door handle.

“Found you. ”

The old greenhouse groaned as the door opened, hinges yawning, weary from years of rain and rust. The air shifted as Jinx stepped inside, and the scent hit her immediately – earthy and dry, with the hint of something sweeter clinging to it. Peonies. Old soil. A trace of mildew.

Above her, the glass panes were split with hairline cracks , some milky with dust, others missing entirely, letting the wind breathe through the skeleton of the building. Still, the sun poured through in golden streaks.

And illuminated by it, tucked into a bench beneath a crooked row of succulents and trailing ivy, was Mae.

She looked so small.

A little knot of fear and heartbreak. Her legs were pulled up to her chest, Jayce’s big jacket swallow ing her frame, the sleeves hanging over her knuckles. Elara’s scarf was wrapped around her neck, crooked and slipping down one shoulder like a fortress made of borrowed love.

Her nose was red. Her cheeks blotchy with old tears. Her fists clenched tight around the jacket sleeves, like if she let go, the world might fall apart again.

Jinx stepped forward carefully, like approaching a spooked animal. She eased down into a crouch beside the bench, boots crunching against the grit-strewn floor. “Hey, little mouse,” she spoke gently.

Mae didn’t look up.

Jinx shifted onto one elbow, lowering herself until she was looking at the same patch of ground Mae’s eyes were fixed on. “You know,” she murmured, “that’s a pretty bad hiding spot.”

Silence hung in the air between them.

Jinx let it. She didn’t push, didn’t crowd the girl with questions or coaxing, didn’t try to fill the silence like so many adults did. She just sat beside the bench, arms resting loosely on her knees, eyes tracing the way the cracked light refracted across broken pots and dirt-smeared planters. Time seemed to move differently here.

Mae’s hands trembled in the sleeves of her father’s coat. So small, clenching her fists like she was holding herself together one stitch at a time.

Jinx glanced at her, then forward again. “You know,” she continued slow, as if she had all the time to sit and talk to her here, “sometimes when I got really sad, I used to hide too.”

Mae didn’t answer, but her chin jumped a twitch.

Jinx kept her voice gentle, like every word was a stone she was setting down between them that could crack the ice they were treading on. “But the thing about hiding is…” she paused, glanced down at her boots, then back at Mae, “…someone has to come find you. Otherwise it’s not hiding anymore.” She leaned in just a little, her voice barely above a whisper now.

“It’s just being gone.”

…

That did it.

Mae’s breath hitched sharp in her chest. A quiet, crumbling sob broke free, the small child gasping, like the pain had been trying to claw its way free all day and finally found a crack to escape through. She turned her face toward the wall of tangled vines and let the hot tears roll free. She tried to rub them away with the sleeve, but Jayce’s jacket was too big, and the scarf kept catching at her cheek, and after a few seconds she gave up and just cried.

Jinx shifted forward onto her knees and gently reached out, resting a hand on Mae’s back. A touch. That was all. And when Mae didn’t flinch away, Jinx pulled her in – enough to let Mae feel it was safe to be held.

Mae folded into the contact, burying her face into the crook of Jinx’s shoulder. The tears didn’t stop, but her hands unclenched from the jacket sleeves, one of them clutching at the lapel of Jinx’s coat now like it was a lifeline.

Jinx wrapped both arms around her, resting her chin lightly on Mae’s head. “You’re hurting. That’s allowed.”

The light in the greenhouse shifted. The sun nearly gone now.

You’re safe now.

The frantic echo of footsteps broke the greenhouse’s fragile peace. Both Jinx and Mae lifted their heads.

Jayce stumbled through the doorway like he’d torn the whole world apart trying to get here. His chest heaved. His hair was a mess, sweat and worry sticking to his forehead. His eyes – God, his eyes were wild with fear, glinting wet even before he spoke. And when he saw his lost daughter, he didn’t hesitate. He dropped to his knees so hard the floor thudded beneath him, and in the next breath, Mae was in his arms.

He pulled her against him like he might never get the chance again,  a rms tight around her. It didn’t fee l enough to him. “You scared me,” he choked out, his voice already shattering. “Mae– baby, you scared me.”

His hand cradled the back of her head, shaking. He pressed her tight against his chest, like he needed to feel her heartbeat with his own just to believe she was real. Mae curled into him instantly, arms winding around his neck, face buried in his coat. Her small sobs cracked open against his skin, wetting his shirt. Her entire body shook in his arms.

“I thought– ” she hiccupped, voice muffled against Jayce, “you’d stop letting us see each other. If you and Mr. Viktor stayed mad at each other.”

Jayce stilled. His breath hitched before it broke entirely. The sound that left him was grief and love and guilt wrapped in a single, trembling breath. His face crumpled into her hair, lips brushing her temple as he held her closer than he ever had.

“Oh, bug…” he whimpered, h is voice wrecked. “No, no – never. That’s never going to happen. I promise, I promise you.”

She clung tighter.

Jayce began to cry. His shoulders shook as the tears came, soaking into her chustnut curls. All of it – every second of searching, every mistake, every moment of “later” – poured out of him in the safety of that embrace.

From the doorway, Viktor stood still. His silhouette was backlit by the soft golden rays from the setting sun slipping through the cracked greenhouse windows, one hand wrapped tightly around the handle of his cane. He hadn’t rushed – couldn’t, but every step he’d taken to get here had been unshakable.

Now, he watched. Watched Jayce, crumpled on the floor, holding Mae like she was the last piece of a world that made sense. Watch Mae cling back like her life depended on the rhythm of her father’s heart.

Viktor didn’t interrupt. But his dark eyes, rimmed with worry, ringed by exhaustion, never left them. There was something vulnerable that he kept just behind the surface. Something only Jayce might’ve recognized, if he’d looked up.

The cane tapped softly against the wooden threshold as hefinally stepped inside. Viktor’s limp was more pronounced after the long walk and the adrenaline crash, but he didn’t pause. Just kept moving closer, one step at a time until he stood near enough that his presence could be felt. And that was enough to shift something in the air, like the room exhaled, like the ache in Jayce’s spine eased just a little, like Mae breathed deeper with him near.

Later, the heat of panic began to ebb, but the aftermath clung to everything like humidity before a summer storm.

Jayce’s car sat parked near the curb, engine off, interior lights aglow in the darkness that had settled in the sky now. Mae sat curled in the backseat, still wrapped in her father’s jacket, her small body folded sideways against the seat like she needed a wall to press into. Her cheeks were pink from dried tears, lashes sticky, mouth tucked into a trembling line.

Caitlyn knelt beside the open car door, her blazer draped around Mae’s legs, smoothing the scarf against her shoulders. Nearby, Mel crouched with a small bottle of water, her voice like a gentle spring, asking simple questions, nothing that would add weight to the girl’s already overburdened chest. Her gold earrings caught the overhead light like fireflies. Every so often, she glanced toward Jayce and nodded.

A few paces away, Vi stood near the chain-link fence with Jinx beside her, both silhouetted by a streetlight overhead. Vi’s arms were crossed tight against her chest, and though her voice was hushed, her gestures were loud. Jinx just nodded, eyes sharper than they looked, hands twitching at her sides. Her hair glowed electric blue in the light, too bright for the dark she carried inside.

Jayce stood apart from them all.

At the edge of the sidewalk, shoes scuffed, hands dug into the pockets of his coat like if he didn’t hold something, he might come undone again. The dim orange of the streetlamps carved harsh shadows under his eyes, a contrast against the blue and purple eyebags beneath.  

Beside him, Viktor shifted slightly, leaning just enough weight onto his cane to ease the strain in his hip, though he didn’t say a word. The sleeves of his coat were dusted in dirt from the forest floor. His posture was tight. He hadn’t spoken since the greenhouse.

Jayce broke the silence first. “Maybe this wouldn’t have happened if we’d just… kept them apart.” The words left him before he could stop them, like they’d been building pressure all evening. And once they escaped, they felt– awful.

Viktor’ s whole body stiffened.

Slowly, he turned his head, eyes narrowed, not in anger, but pain. Burning, disappointed pain that cut deeper than yelling ever could. “You still think this is a mistake?” The question landed like broken glass on their insides.

Jayce’s breath caught. His head snapped around, guilt washing his face pale. “No– no, I didn’t mean–” he started, his words stumbling over each other. “Viktor, that’s not what I meant. I was just– God– I’m tired. I’m scared.” But the damage was already done and the words stayed there, like fog on a window neither of them wiped away.

An ambulance siren howled somewhere far away. A moth danced near the car’s dome light. Mae blinked slowly through the window at her father’s shape, and Viktor’s beside him, unmoving.

Healing isn’t linear. Not for them. Not for Mae. Not for the years that never stopped bleeding.

Jayce clenched his hand, jaw tight as another wince slipped through his teeth. It was only when he pulled his fist out of his coat pocket that the damage became visible; knuckles scraped raw, a thin line of blood trailing down the side even though it felt like this day had already bled him dry.

Mae’s little voice cut through the air before anyone else could react. “Daddy, you’re hurt!”

She was sitting up straighter now in the backseat, alarm painting her face in fresh worry. Mel and Caitlyn turned at the same moment, but Jayce just gave her that exhausted smile, the kind that never quite reached his eyes.

“It’s nothing, bug,” he reassured her, trying to wave it off. “Just a scratch.”

But before he could shove his hand back into hiding, Viktor stepped closer. His eyes stayed narrowed, mouth in a thin line, as they dropped to the injury, his body tilting in closer on instinct.

He reached for Jayce’s hand – and Jayce didn’t pull away.

Viktor’s fingers were icy but surprisingly soft , cradling his. With one motion, he tugged the hand closer to his chest and reached into the satchel he still wore slung across one shoulder. From a side pocket, he pulled a travel pack of antiseptic wipes and a crumpled strip of bandages – he always carried some, especially since Elara liked climbing places that she shouldn’t.

Viktor’s brows furrowed in concentration, but there was something private behind that golden shine. He dabbed at the scrape with the wipe, careful not to sting too harshly, his other hand wrapping around Jayce’s palm to steady it.

Jayce watched him in silence. His breath caught when the cold cloth brushed too close to the split skin, but he didn’t flinch.He knew how annoyed Viktor would get. If anything, he leaned in slightly – into the warmth of Viktor’s presence. Jayce’s fingers twitched in his hold and a soft sigh broke out of him, almost like relief.

And Viktor, eyes never leaving the task, let his thumb trace gently over the back of Jayce’s hand before placing a bandage over the cut.