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Chapter Text

Jayce stops counting the hours since he descended into the Undercity. The thick smog blots out most natural light the deeper he traverses into its depths, and Jayce remains unsure if he is watching explosions and gunfire in the sky,

Or the stars blinking out of existence.

There is little room for regret in his heart; even less so for pity.

So Jayce trains his gaze to the earth and the rot beneath it, instead of the stars he and his partner had once aimed their dreams.

Creatures scarper out from the corners of the dark; maybe once human, before they traded their skin for a euphoria, a numbness, that could only be manufactured and taken from a bottle.

The possibility of Viktor befalling such a fate flits through his mind. But he tells himself that it couldn’t be. It wouldn’t be.

And even if he did, Jayce would take him home anyways.

The dark bleeds into his vision. Jayce continues onwards, the hammer he grips his means of protection. His means of light. But even the shadows swallow its feeble glow. Amid the lonely gloom and dusk, Jayce feels eyes upon his back. It pricks at the skin behind his neck, pauses his breath and hastens his steps. And as Jayce trains his ear to the vast emptiness before him,

His footsteps either echo in the dark,

Or something has been following his every move.

Jayce swings the Mercury Hammer into the empty space. The glow briefly illuminates a figure in black. Jayce tightens his grip and stands his ground despite the way his heart pulses desperately in his ears.

They step forward into the light, the blue casting an eerie glow. “Turn back.” The mask makes Jayce question if they’re a firelight. “You don’t belong here, Topsider.”

The odd angle they twist their neck to peer at him from the dark makes him question if they’re human at all.

Jayce remains steadfast. “Not until I find my partner.”

A breath ghosts against his heated skin. It drains the warmth almost immediately as a cold shiver runs down his spine. 

A sigh more than a voice echoes in the dark, whispers carried to his ear. “He’s here?”

His hairs stand on end. His muscles lock and tighten to keep him rooted on the ground. There’s an accusation in those words. Or perhaps, a mockery. “That’s what I’ve been told.” A pity.

The Dark greets him with silence. Its weight casts a stone of dread at the pit of Jayce’s stomach. The Words next speaks: “Then it’s too late for him.”

Anger, indignation: they scream louder than his fear. “It’s not. It won’t be.” There is no greater fear in him than losing Viktor. “I’m bringing him home.”

The Masked one fights a laugh. “He is home.” Something like a smile curls in their voice.” You can always join him.”

The Words murmurs low like a buzzing insect. “It’s a little early for that, don’t you think?”

They share a laugh. It settles uneasily beneath the surface of Jayce’s skin,still prickling in gooseflesh. Not from the cold.

“It doesn’t matter.”Jayce grows impatient; his words cut like a hot knife through the tension. “Do you know where I need to go or not?”

The Mask tilts at an impossible angle. Studying him. Surveilling him. “Where you need to go is back around, where you came.” Judging him.

“But if it’s your partner that you want…” The Words lilt like poisoned honey, “Take the bridge.” 

Jayce swivels behind him, the hazy glow of the Mercury Hammer stretching a feeble beam of light that crawls along the dirt,

Until the dirt stops right before him to a dead drop into a chasm.

Jayce swallows around the lump his heart makes lodged in his throat.

“Oh, and Topsider?” The Mask chimes in an off-key song. “You should know: if that partner of yours wants your company, it’s only polite he offers you something to eat.” The words ring eerily, out of tune with the rest of this place. “If he doesn’t offer our…hospitality,” A trill of a laugh runs through Jayce’s spine like spiderlegs. “Then you best be going.”

A warning, then. A needless one.

The Dark watches on, waiting for his response.

“With all due respect,” Jayce calls behind him as his feet find the swaying steps of the bridge, the open maw of the abyss looking to swallow him whole. Foolishly, damningly, he rests the Mercury Hammer on the solid ground. 

He understands he must make the rest of his journey alone to find the other half of his soul.

“I already told you: I’m not leaving here without him.”

The bridge wobbles and waves with every precarious breath Jayce takes. Worse yet, it seems to stretch on for miles and miles. Jayce continues, body aching for rest, but his heart finding no peace until he brings his partner home.

At some point, the hours must have bled into dawn.

At some point, the bridge led him across the chasm to the other side. 

Light pours from a murky sky and Jayce is almost blinded by its tainted radiance. A cavern, a grotto, cradled in the earth and kissed by the sky. And as he walks deeper into its sallow glow,

He finds Viktor the same way slumber finds dreams: a lull of darkness exploding to vivid color. A glimpse of the impossible. A burst of absurdity.

In a glade of iridescent flowers, Viktor holds a basket of fruit and flora in his arms, plucking them from the vine.

He stills the moment Viktor’s name locks behind Jayce’s throat. The basket drops to the ground as Jayce locks eyes with his partner of almost a decade.

Yet almost a decade of friendship and affection is not enough to soften the cruelty as Viktor turns,

And in impossibility,

In absurdity,

Flees from Jayce.

Jayce wants to laugh. Wants to voice his awe. His surprise. His disbelief. What a sight to behold! Jayce still must be dreaming.

(It must be a nightmare)

Because it doesn’t take much more than desperation, heartbreak, and hunger singing in Jayce’s blood to give chase,

To hunt.

Jayce doesn’t realize he’s yelling; doesn’t realize he’s screaming Viktor’s name as the distance between them closes,

Petal by petal—

Viktor stumbles, clumsy and unused to legs that could carry him,

(But never far enough from Jayce,

Never far away from his partner)

And Viktor,

His Viktor, falls to his embrace as easily as a fawn to a bullet. Jayce sobs against his ear as desperation claws at him to sink himself into Viktor’s skin, melt into his bones, become tethered, entangled, inseparable, heart-to-heart, atom-by-atom.

“Jayce…” Viktor says finally. He’s breathless beneath him, crowned in petals and bloodied thorns. His cold hand reaches Jayce’s cheek, the caress leaving a chill in his blood. “How long has it been?”

“I don’t know,” Jayce admits. The words are ripped out of him with an agonized cry. “Being with you and not being with you is the only way I have to tell time.”

He isn’t sure if he’s making sense. He isn’t sure if any of this is making sense. It matters little to Jayce in the end as Viktor remains solid beneath him, his voice, his scent—

(mixed with soil, with iron)

—as proof of his existence.

So Jayce lays there, his head to Viktor’s chest,

And tries not to mind its echoing silence,

Nor the wound at its center that refuses to close,

And refuses to stop bleeding.

The Undercity isn’t meant for Topsiders. Every moment Jayce remains in its depths, the more the toxins seed into his blood, the more of its poison streams into his lungs. And yet, Viktor remains: unbothered. Unfettered. Uncaring.

Unmoved.

(Jayce has tried. Has tried binding him, stealing him when Viktor’s eyes have closed, had remained motionless in Jayce’s arms, exhausted and worn with fucking, with lovemaking—

He got as far as the bridge before Viktor writhed and thrashed and the murky emptiness of the darkness below threatened to swallow them both.

Jayce is forced to retreat back to solid ground)

Viktor continues on with his day like nothing happens. And nothing continues to happen, Jayce observes, as a guest here in the little commune that his partner has cultivated in all their time apart.

(How long has it been?

Days?

Weeks?

Months?

Years—)

In the commune, Viktor spends his days tending to the ill and the ailing, clamoring for his care in sickly, despairing droves.

It’s a role they play well.

Jayce watches as Viktor feeds a broken mannequin a slice of fruit. The bright juices smear across the smooth surface of its mouthless face as Viktor murmurs kindly to it, dotingly, lovingly, as Viktor begins to peel another fruit.

The mannequin remains stationary, satiated, and satisfied to receive the care.

Jayce feels his insides gnawing with hunger. Viktor has not offered him the same courtesy. But Jayce will wait his turn.

“They come to me, wishing to be saved.”

“They never stay long, but there are always more coming. This is but a resting place until their journey comes to an end elsewhere.”

What about you, Jayce wants to ask. Do you wish to be saved? Where does our journey end? But in the end, he says nothing, and sits with a voracious longing settling deep beneath his ribs.

Jayce shivers beneath blankets. The fires here only provide light but never enough heat. Even then, Jayce will not allow anything between them,

Not when he’s with Viktor, not when he feels solid and real beneath him, against everything here. “I cannot go with you,” he says, softly, cruelly. “You must realize this.”

At that bridge, Jayce knows he left something behind. He traded it unknowingly, unwittingly, out of desperation and brittle promises. He’s not sure he can ever get it back.

“I do not belong there, Jayce.” Viktor places his hand over the wound, staining his fingers with warm, warm blood. “There’s nowhere for me to go but here.”

The only part of Viktor that remains warm.

Jayce grows colder every day.

Still,

The basket of fruits remains untouched. Jayce eyes it in warning. In promise.

Jayce has never seen a mannequin bleed before. Patience is limited when hunger drives his senses and arrives him to the brink of insanity.

The mannequin lays broken on the ground. Its stomach is torn open, ruptured with rotting fruit.

The rest of the mannequins watch on with static indifference as Viktor collects him and brings him to their shared quarters. Viktor cleans him of the oil spill stains that splatter his skin, the rough cloth and basin of water a cleansing, anointing him with something that’s almost forgiveness.

Viktor looks at Jayce and studies him. Memorizes him. The look of heartbreak never leaves his eyes these days. “You do not belong here, Jayce,” Viktor murmurs. A cruel thing to say when Viktor curls into him, willfully caged his arms. “I will bring you to the bridge tomorrow.”

Not forgiveness, then. Resignation.

Surrender. “Come with me,” Jayce rasps, his throat dry, raw from dehydration and hunger.

The hunger has never left. Not since Viktor was taken from him. But Viktor still has an inkling of kindness to spare. “I will bring you to the bridge. No further.”

Something in Jayce crumbles, collapses, caves in on itself. He feels hollow and cold, an emptiness that spreads to the core of his soul. “I can’t leave you.”

Jayce has never seen a mannequin bleed before. But he has seen one shed tears.

You can’t leave me, Jayce means. Not again.

At the bridge, Jayce asks for one thing and one thing only. Against etiquette, against custom and decorum, against the law of this land: 

He asks the one thing that Viktor can never deny him.

Viktor looks at him and immediately, wordlessly, understands. After all,

It was something Viktor had freely given, only Jayce had never seen the offering until now.

He takes Jayce by the hand and guides it to where the red never stops running,

At its center,

At its core,

And a little to the left. It flutters beneath Jayce’s touch, warm and withered, having been silent for so long.

“Take it,” Viktor tells him as Jayce’s fingers wrap around its hollow chambers. “It’s yours.”

Jayce twists it from its stem, careful not to bruise its supple flesh. Viktor makes no sound as it’s torn away from him, not even when vessels are ruptured and severed in reverent violence. And Jayce understands the hunger now. The darkness, the obsession,

The magic.

Jayce brings the steadily beating thing to his lips, still warm of Viktor and the unforgivable things that Jayce has done,

All in the name of love.

“Go on, then,” Viktor tells him, anxiety and relief in his voice.

Jayce takes a bite, pomegranate-red staining his mouth, and savors its taste, coating his tongue in iron and useless magics. Beneath its poison, its betrayal, there’s a sweetness there  

That’s entirely Viktor.

(That’s entirely Jayce)

Sweet like rotting fruit as an iridescent, oil spill teardrop leaks from the corner of Viktor’s eye, slipping down his smooth, mouthless face.

Chapter Text

Piltover was not known for their proclivity for magic. In fact, they secluded themselves from the strife of mages and the arcane, a haven and refuge for those whose lands were ravaged by violence and grapples for power. It was only a recent development that the City of Progress marked themselves on the maps of Runeterra for their latest innovation:

The revolutionary (and blasphemous) concept of bringing magic to the commons, to the mundane. Through rudimentary and crude forgery, the Hexgates were hailed as the stepping stone to bridging the gap between mages and mortals.

As they say, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Now the scientist, the creator, the progenitor of Hextech was extending an invitation to mages all over, casting a challenge to their prowess, and an offer for collaboration, for alliance, for protection,

For partnership.

A laughable notion for many.

But the intrigue lurked beneath the disdain. After all,

No mage has ever succeeded Talis’s challenge.

The Councilor could be a charming man when it suited him.

All the fineries of Piltover were laid before Them, served on platters of silver that reflected the shimmering, warped reflection of Their mask. They remained silent, allowing the tension to build,

Allowing the truth to surface after the niceties broke.

“I apologize, I never did get your name.”

They tapped a finger on Their arm rest, facing the play down below from the balcony. Inattentive actions with cautious interest belied the single red iris watched the Councilor closely. “Names are sacred. Powerful.” They turned Their head, the blank mask impassive and reflecting the Councilor’s curiosity. “To know one’s name is to have dominion over another.” 

Ancient words. An occult practice. 

And likely nonsense to the man beside him. 

“Names are powerful here, too, aren’t they?” Their words curled to a smile behind the mask. “Jayce Talis?”

The smile the Councilor wore remained, unperturbed. “They are—but to a lesser extent than what you’re implying.” Below, the play wore on, music echoing a dramatic melody as actors gave mournful cries. Alas,

The First Death.

Jayce Talis crossed his arms, the gold and red of his family sigil reflecting against the low light. “Though, not giving your name and not even showing your face…” The Councilor rubbed his chin, furrowing his brow. “It could make you appear suspicious. Even deceitful.” The corners of his lips quirked to a taunting grin. “Maybe even fearful.”

They remained silent, assessing the words carefully with gestures, with body language.

All the while studying the man before him. Surveilling him.

Judging him. “Appearances have that kind of power too, don’t you agree?” Jayce asked with a shrug.

They nodded. “Perhaps you’re right.” They steepled their fingers together as They leaned back in the plush opera house seats. “Very well, instead of names and appearances doing the talking, why don’t we proceed to what you’re seeking.”

Hesitation. Just a sliver of it. Then a laugh. “And what am I seeking?” Jayce Talis challenged Them.

You reek of the dead.

It was unmistakable. It was unnerving. And no matter what the intentions or reason, that was cause for suspicion.

 For caution. 

“The mask isn’t merely to conceal my identity. It offers a different protection against…other forces.”

“Other forces?” the Councilor asked, voice low.

There was a tremble in his hand. A shiver in his voice. It did not go unnoticed. 

“My magics confer a different method of…interacting with the arcane,” They described, offering a vague gesture; a useless gesture; a redundancy and frivolity of communication. “Others utilize its force as a…language. A command and response.”

The play fell silent. The opera house dimmed. A cold chill descended over the air around them. 

All the while, the mage titled Their head, blank mask reflecting the Councilor’s own morbid fascination. 

A whisper breathed against his ear. Something like a touch ghosted across his shoulder. Fear skittered down his spine, a shiver crawling on all eight of its legs. 

Their voice seemed to echo in the dim, in the penumbra, the space betwixt and between. “I open doors, Councilor. And some doors, if left ajar, invite unwanted guests.”

The Councilor held his breath, feeling an oppressive weight press against his lungs and a chill that froze the blood in his veins. All the while, he kept his gaze trained on his own reflection on the mask, 

A darkness, 

A shadow, 

Approaching,

Falling over his own image—

Smothering the air from his lungs—

Blinding the light from his eyes—

Immediately, the force dissipated.

The music droned.

The crowd’s applause filled the opera house.

The mage clapped alongside them, looking on with empty enthusiasm. 

“Concealing my name, my face, is part of that protection. It’s not just aesthetics, Councilor.” They gave a sardonic chuckle. “It’s protocol.”

The Councilor took in a shuddering breath. “T-That—back there—” It was not fear that shone in the Councilor’s eyes.

It was anticipation.

It was excitement.

It was exhilaration.

“You’re the real deal,” he uttered, the air stolen from him.

“I am many things.” Secrecy, too, was part of the protocol. “But I do make it a point to prove my honesty.”

“Good. Good.” The Councilor hastily stood. An attendant at the door saw to his hurried exit. The Councilor seemed pleased. More than that, he even seemed—“Step into the council room and I’ll administer our challenge.” 

—Impatient.

Though, that did catch Their attention.

Our.

Interesting. The Councilor spoke occasionally in plural. Our Hextech. Our dream. Our work.

Our challenge.

For a man like Jayce Talis, who was rumored to have immediately dismissed his entire engineering and assistive staff, it couldn’t have been from humble intentions. 

Just who was waiting for them?

“Your magic…they open doors, you said?”

The Councilor was rather chatty this evening. “That’s the most adequate and simplest explanation I can offer,” They confirmed. It was difficult to condense the intricacies of an entire magic system, after all. But They should have known there would be a barrage of questions from a man of power with an obsession with magic.

They’d have to be careful in what They can choose to reveal.

Who knows what kind of atrocities a man like Jayce Talis could accomplish. “And where do those doors lead?” the Councilor prodded.

They looked up from the runes They carved onto the floor. The blade clattered to the ground. “That’s a dangerous question, Councilor.”

“I am a scientist, first and foremost,” as if that excused the potential harm he could do. “You can’t separate me from my curiosity.” He approached where the mage laid down their blade, inspecting the runes with much more than mere curiosity. “Can you control which door you open?” His eyes traced over every rune, making an arc as he examined and mapped out the formation.

It was deeply unnerving. “More or less. Some are trickier than others. Some respond better than others.”

Because the Councilor wasn’t just inspecting Them. “Can you…see who’s on the other side?”

He was reading Them. 

“What is your intent here?” The council room echoed the demand. They looked up to find the Councilor looming over Them with a blank face. “If it’s to sate your scientific curiosity, then I could perform another parlor trick like the one at the opera house.” But they both knew that there was something else.

That this location was chosen specifically. 

With meaning. 

With purpose.

“My partner died in this room.”

The silence that followed was a fragile thing.

Easily crumbling under the grief layering every corner. “There was an attack. Months ago. They’d just rebuilt this room and…I can still see him. Sitting there. Next to me. Just a memory.” Jayce Talis—the man, not the Councilor—trailed off. Vulnerable. Desperate. “I just…want to hear him.” He sucked in a breath. “I just need to—” His voice cracked beneath the weight of an old wound. “There’s…so much I have to say. So much I didn’t say. So much I should have done, and—”

“Regret is a powerful force.” The runes were finished. Outlined in chalk. Connected by blood. “It can drive men to…” Terrible things. “Drastic measures.”

The Councilor nodded. “There were a lot of frauds. People promising they could commune with the afterlife, trying to swindle a grieving man.” He gave a bitter laugh. “I figured this challenge would bring—”

“The real deal.”

“Yeah.” He gave a hard swallow, stepping back. “Please…go ahead. Do whatever you need to do.” Quietly, like a wish. 

A spell. 

“And whatever it takes.” 

An oath.

“Name.” They turned to him. “I need a name.”

To communicate.

To have dominion.

“Viktor.” His words choked on the affection, the guilt carried in that one word. “His name is Viktor.”

A halo of sigils bloom beneath the ground, igniting the runes carved onto the floor. The Councilor watched on, brows furrowing with curiosity as The Mage spread the last of the—

“Salt?”

They nodded. “It confers moderate protection as long as the circle remains unbroken.” An age-old tradition; almost redundant given other protective measures. “For that reason, please, keep your distance.” But a vital step nevertheless. “And please. Allow me to concentrate.”

The sun sank across the horizon. The council room, once aglow in a bleeding red, was now submerged in the dying embers of dusk. The dim glow of firelight from candles laid across the tables, onto the floor afforded what little visibility they needed.

And Jayce Talis kept his distance, as instructed—

—And the closer he stood to the flickering lights,

The greater his shadow had become.

The Mage took in a breath, 

Reaching,

Searching,

Wading through echoes, through the mire and mud of memories embedded in every surface. 

A brilliant flare of fire, of calamity and chaos, engulfing the room just as They shut their eyes—

The First Door:

A debate. A victory. An explosion.

Death.

All around. Curiously, there were the traces of a strong magic present; not as a means of attack, but a means of protection.

But it was still too young. Still too primal. Untamed and relying purely on instinct.

It was not enough.

Grief followed. Then desperation. It permeated the air heavily. Shouts, screams, broken and brittle as pillars in the room.

A door burst open. A man and a corpse exited the stage.

A door closed.

They took in a breath, returning to Themselves. “It was an explosion. Right after the vote for the independence of Piltover’s sister city.” They turned to the Councilor. “You carried him out of the room.”

The Councilor’s voice grew tight. “Yes. Viktor…I brought him there. It—it was my fault. I brought him there as a representative of Zaun. I should have never—”

“And…were there others present?”

The Councilor shook his head. “Just Viktor, myself, and the other Councilors.”

“You’re certain?” They pressed.

“Yes.” He furrowed his brows. “Why?”

“Curiouser and curiouser…” They wondered what became of the other mage. The other source of magic here. The traces of the magic that no longer lingered. A dormant power, perhaps? 

Untapped. Sinking back down into the depths. 

There was much to deliberate. “Remain silent,” They instructed as the world went dim once more.

The Second Door:

Darkness.

Suffocating and cold.

A soft voice. A quiet agony. Ended, silenced, not with a blast,

But with a choked, collapsed breath.  

Its sound reverberated in the emptiness. A failing, irregular pulse. 

A strangled connection. 

A weak, fraying tether. 

“You’re here,” They breathed. “No…just a part of you lingers here.”

A tug back towards the door. An incessant ringing in their ear like an insect. “Viktor? Can you see him? Can you hear him?” 

The Councilor proved impatient. They ignored his pleas. 

They descended further into the dark, following the soft lilt of an echo, the wavering presence of a soul,

A thread as thin as spidersilk, a connection running through the inky black.

Deeper and deeper still,

Every step, another shuddering gasp. Every step, a louder heartbeat echoing Their step.

Louder and louder still,

End of the rope; a branch meeting the roots.

When They opened their eyes, 

They swallowed back a scream.

A mangled body. Runes carved onto skin. Bone and flesh and something profane melding the broken parts together.

A web of something unholy pinning the figure like a fly.

“What,” They choked. “What’s become of him—”

“What’s happening? Is it Viktor?!”

They could hardly breathe.  

Its eyes opened, its mouth formed a silent scream. It looked in anguish.

“ANSWER ME!”

It looked in agony.

Its stare—wide-eyed and glassy, found where They had intruded, where They had invaded, infiltrated, and infested—

Go.

Its voice was mournful, ashamed.

Now—

They staggered a breath. The door had shut. Forcibly. 

“GET BACK!”

The Councilor froze.

The circle remained unbroken, his foot barely on the line of salt.

“Do not interrupt me,” They hissed. “I told you before that this is a delicate process. We don’t know what we’re opening these doors to.”

“Did you see him?” the Councilor pleaded, ignoring the heeds, the warnings. “Did you see my partner?”

It seemed that some people never learn.

They nodded. “Yes. Yes, I did.” They searched the Councilor’s awed, elated face, feeling a cold drop of dread settle at the pit of their stomach. “What—”

What—

Their eyes flickered to the Councilor’s frenzied expression. “What sorts of regrets did you have, Councilor?”

What did you do to him?

He looked stricken. Like They’d dug Their fingers into his wound and tore it wide open. “That…I wasn’t able to cherish our time together more. That I realized too late that my place was always at his side.” His voice grew tight. Spidersilk threatening to snap under tension. “Did you see him? Was he okay?” He searched the blank expression on the mask. “Did he say anything?” Only his own face of anguish reflected against the surface.

Go.

 “ANSWER ME!”

Now—

“Yes. I saw him.” They grit their teeth. “He shut the door.” They cast a glance towards the exit. The exit that the Councilor blocked from view as he hovered, loomed over Them. “He does not wish to be disturbed.”

The Councilor’s face crumbled in despair. “I know he’s angry. He has every right to be.” He paced around the room, circling the mage like a vulture. “Please…please, reach back out to him,” he begged. “Tell him I’m sorry. That I miss him. That…

I’ll do whatever it takes.”

It was a risk. A gamble. They felt the danger the moment They stepped into this room of death. 

They nodded. Foolish. Foolish.  “Very well.” Then paused. “Don’t interrupt me again.”

But just like the Councilor, They were a creature of curiosity too.

“Okay.” The Councilor held up his hands in surrender. “I won’t. I’m sorry.”

The room fell still. The candles flickered. The sigils pulsed with the heart of the arcane.

A door, deep within the dark, opened.

The Third Door:

A blue glow, unnatural and grotesque, flooded the room. They blinked the light from their eyes. Everywhere the light touched burned; everywhere the light touched drew Them in further and further, deeper and deeper—

The door slammed shut,

With the Mage inside.

A figure, suspended in webs, slowly stitched together from the inside-out, hung before Them. Its empty eyes looked upon Them with something that was almost sadness; something that was almost regret.

They couldn’t be sure.

It wasn’t human anymore.

“What are you…” Their voice remained even, even as their entire being trembled before it. “What’s happened to you?”

You should have left. 

You must leave.

“I’m not afraid of you,” They assured; to Themselves or to Viktor (or whatever was left of him), They didn’t know. “I want answers.” They stepped closer, watching as the webs opened and reached spindly tendrils towards Them. “Who—who did this?”

Myself.

The shame was evident.

And—

My partner.

“The Councilor—” They breathed. “He did this to you?”

He believes he is saving me.

There was a bitterness that hung in the stale, stale air.

But this is not a fate I would wish upon any being.

Regret is a powerful force, indeed. “You sound so far away…where are you? Where are you tethered?”

The Hexcore.

It was made to save lives. But now…

All it does is take them.

“What—what do you mean, where is this Hexcore?” It must be whatever the apparatus was keeping this fragmented soul tethered to this place. 

But most importantly: 

“What do you mean it’s taking lives?”

We are connected,

And we are dying.

Panic—no, it was colder than that. It ran like ice through their veins. This was fear. “I thought you were already dead…”

“No. He’s not. Not anymore.”

The Third Door closed.

A fourth door opened.

They opened their eyes to the sight of the Councilor, the room’s exit open behind him, and a blue, burning light engulfing the space and everything in it. The circle of salt laid broken between Them. “I’ll make sure of it. I promised him.”

Their eyes widen behind the mask, reflecting the cold, remorseless expression the Councilor wore.

“I’ll do whatever it takes.”

Jayce sighed as he gazed at Viktor’s unresponsive form. “Don’t look at me like that, V.”

Viktor remained silent.

He always did.

“That one was at least the real deal. They should keep you fed for a long while, right?”

Oxygen levels remained at 100%.

Pulse kept a steady cadence in the 70s.

The Hexcore continued to ebb its eerie glow throughout the lab.

Jayce bounced his leg with restlessness before rising from his chair and pacing back towards his partner. “I know you’re upset. That you’re disappointed. This hasn’t been easy for me either, you know?”

He had to clean up the candles. Repair the floor.

Sweep up the ashes.

Right before the next Council meeting.

Fuck. “But trying to warn Them like that?” Jayce ran his hands through his hair in frustration. “We’re lucky They were too curious for their own good.”

Viktor said nothing.

“Self-righteous as always, aren’t you?” Jayce sneered. “We both did terrible things, Viktor. You didn’t think I would find out about the Shimmer? About the self-experimentation?” He sucked in a breath, hating the stationary calm that remained on his partner’s face. “About Sky?” 

He hated fighting with Viktor like this. Especially when Viktor had had nothing left to say. “We would do anything, right? For progress. For legacy.” His eyes softened. “…For love.”

Viktor didn’t respond.

“I mean it, though. Every word.” Jayce pressed a kiss to his partner’s cold, cold lips. “I miss you, V.”

There was a spike in his heartrate. Jayce didn’t know if it was from anger or if his partner was simply being coy with him.

He’d like to think it was the latter. “I’ll get you back one day. And you can spend all the time in the world being mad at me all you want.”

Even if he knew that Viktor was watching him become a monster from the other side.

“As long as you hate me by my side.”

Chapter Text

Sparse light sprawled across the long corridors; even the torches burned with a sallow flame against the dark. Shadows reigned these halls, no matter the hour, as days and nights bled together in a maddening, timeless loop.

The Talis dungeons were created for interrogation for those betraying the Hunters, the Church, and their creed.

Not a glimpse of sunlight penetrated this domain.

It remained an empty state of permanence between holding prisoners and dissenters for information or for the gallows. 

But these days (weeks, months—) the dungeons served a different purpose altogether.

As Jayce drew closer to the end of the hall, he hastened his steps as the scent of iron and rot grew stronger. It wouldn’t be long now. He was late, ashamedly so. Jayce needn’t dawdle further; he’ll offer his apologies after he delivered the captive.

The body in his arms stirred for a moment before the sedatives crested over their fleeting consciousness like a wave. The mask remained impassive as ever, only reflecting Jayce’s own callous expression. 

“Almost there,” he murmured to the dark. The light didn’t reach this place. Where those that had strayed from Teachings and Prayer were left to bear its divine absence in agony. His palm against the hidden panels among the stone wall in a practiced motion.

The heavy entrance, laden with holy metals and lead weights, creaked open with a deafening groan.

The scent of death grew stronger as Jayce stepped into the sunless chamber with only a dim torch staining the walls and floor with its bleak radiance. Despite this, the tension in Jayce’s shoulders loosened.

Soft growls emanated from the dark. Hunter instinct and years of training honed his ability to keep his calm, to suppress fear and bloodlust alike.

Jayce’s eyes softened as footsteps padded closer to him, almost skittish, and always curious. “Hey, V…”

But Hunter instinct and years of training cannot suppress nearly two decades of devotion and affection; nor could it contain his too-human heart.

Jayce took a tentative step forward.

Waiting.

Watching. 

Jayce knew to be polite. His partner never did appreciate him barging in without permission.

It was still an unusual sight for Jayce, seeing his partner standing without the use of his crutch.  The same could be said of his teeth, however, fangs lengthened with hunger as his eyes flashed with animalistic intrigue. 

Jayce gestured to the captive in his arms. “I brought you something to eat.”

Perhaps a cruel thing to say regarding a stirring, half-conscious meal.

But the criminal was in good health, and if they’d ever been caught, they would have suffered a death sentence anyways. Their fate was sealed the moment they took to sacrificing innocents off the street. Jayce was simply plucking what was left before earth, time, and natural decay pilfered the rest.

Might as well make good use of the blood they’ve stained.

Jayce even honored their final wish, allowing them to keep the mask concealing their identity, allowing death to take their true face to the grave.

The mask didn’t get in the way of their pulse, after all.

“Jay…Jayce…” 

Viktor had the loveliest amber eyes. Since his transformation, they’d been tinged a cruel shade of rust. His eyes—kind, intelligent—were tainted wild like a beast’s as they flickered between Jayce’s face and the meal he hunted for his partner.

“I know…I’m late,” he murmured, setting the captive form down at Viktor’s feet. They twitched slightly, before growing still. Jayce used too much of the sedatives. He should have saved more for future hunts. If the infirmary ran out, the others might grow suspicious. “I’m sorry. This one was slippery.”

Excuses did little for a starving stomach. In this state, his Viktor was reduced to nothing more than his instincts to feed.

But even in dire times, when Jayce had offered his own blood, Viktor receded into the darkness and refused to come out.

Fortunately, at this stage of his hunger, Viktor wasn’t as selective.

The death was swift.

The feast was messy.

The masked figure barely bleated out a cry before their voice was silenced with a flash of fangs. All Jayce could do was breathe a sigh of relief. The sickening squelch of flesh as blood drained was gluttonously drained echoed within the expansive cell.

It was a foul comfort. The scent and sound of death now meant Viktor wouldn’t have to suffer another moment longer. 

But satiation came at a cost. Perhaps, there was no escaping the suffering in this ind of existence. The rust of Viktor’s eyes was an ephemeral thing; Jayce only attributed it to a ravenous fledgling’s hunger. After a meal—

Jayce sensed it in his movements before he saw the recognition in Viktor’s eyes. 

The realization. 

The horror.

 He was at Viktor’s side immediately, cradling him and bringing his teeth back to where the blood poured from the severed jugular, staining himself with this criminal’s tainted blood. 

“There, there…” Jayce cooed, stroking his back, relief flooding him when Viktor continued to feed.

Waste not, want not.

Viktor’s shoulders shuddered, finally pulling away, red-tipped tongue lapping away at the droplets running like rivers down the corner of his mouth. The body dropped to the ground, cold and lifeless. Jayce continued to hold Viktor, stroking his back, his hair as Viktor slumped against him, his breath evening out, some warmth, some color returning to his body. 

“That’s it…come back to me, V…”

“Jayce…” There they were; those brilliant firelight eyes. “Please…”

“I’m right here, Viktor.” Jayce swiped a droplet of red running down his chin. “Whatever you need, whatever you want, I—”

“Kill me.”

Jayce felt his own heart stutter and freeze in his chest.

Viktor grappled for the dagger that Jayce kept on his person at all times, tears running down his cheeks. “You promised—!”

Everything had been going according to plan.

They’d spent years perfecting this weapon. A perfect hunting tool with speed, power, and lethal efficiency. With countless hours poured into perfecting the chemical compounds needed to mimic the effects of sunlight, its best and most effective use was against a large number, easily lured, easily trapped in an enclosed area for the detonation. 

Fledglings were agile, but they lacked reason and judgment. Easy prey for their newest experiment.

It had all been routine.

Until it was clear these fledglings were different. 

These were not the wild beasts set upon a small farming village by a careless Lord who wanted to expand their territory and his Legion. These were not the mindless miscreations of aimless destruction and hunger. 

These were of a different breed entirely:

Intelligent. 

Calculating.

Willingly turned,

Not by a Sire,

But by something much more dangerous. 

Viktor had been Jayce’s responsibility. Not only as his best friend, but as his partner. Jayce, a hunter of the highest ranks, with his fragile, frail partner who had insisted on coming, to test their greatest feat yet—

The same fragile, frail partner who’d ushered Jayce to follow the shadow behind the disappearances, the puppeteer of this mad church who transformed willing participants into Godless beings with the promise of eternal life, a panacea of all mortal ailments,

Even death.

Jayce was reassured that Viktor had a plan.

Viktor always had a plan.

He’d never known Viktor to fail—

“Jayce—” Viktor looked almost peaceful as he rested against the ruined pillar of what remained of the chancel. “It worked…our experiment worked.”

Ashes laid all around him. The air was heavy with death and fire. The light in Viktor’s eyes slowly faded as the sun rose from over the horizon. Jayce saw it then.

The blood. The wounds. The way Viktor’s breathing had slowed as he grew limp in Jayce’s arms. Desperation gripped his heart, reaching beneath his ribs and bruising all along its soft flesh. “Viktor…Viktor, no, no—YOU CAN’T—!”

His eyes fluttered open, barely able to focus on his face, his voice barely above a whisper as a trail of blood leaked from the corner of his mouth. “Ja—Jayce…”

“I’m sorry.” Jayce took the vial from his satchel.

It was evidence.

It was damnation.

It was a cure.

“I’m sorry. I know you’ll hate this.” Jayce uncapped the syringe as he pressed a kiss to Viktor’s cold lips. “But I’d rather you be alive to hate me.”

Jayce used to believe them to be vicious monsters. Grotesque and animalistic, only wearing a human corpse as a façade, a shell.

Viktor was different.

Viktor had always been fragile. Frail. Though he would never dare utter a word of it to his most precious partner, Jayce constantly worried, fretted, anxious of every little thing that might break him.

Jayce never would have guessed it would be him.

This next meal had been easier and faster to procure. This also meant Viktor was more methodical with his eating, but only after refusing Jayce for a maddening number of hours.

The sedatives could have worn off at any time.

Viktor was too kind to them. When he could help it, that was. But most times, the stubborn thing starved himself and rejected the meals Jayce brought him. Thankfully, his fledgling status rendered him incapable of rejecting freshly drawn blood in his vicinity. Hunger strikes against Viktor’s already thin frame led Jayce to beg and plead.

Sometimes, threats were necessary.

More than once, Jayce had taken to using his partner’s soft heart against him, though it long stopped beating. Jayce held no fear in his eyes as he took the blade to his own throat.

Viktor’s eyes widened and beneath the rust of the fledgling bloodlust threatening to take over,

Jayce could make out the bright and beautiful amber of his Viktor.

“If you refuse to cooperate, then I suppose I’ll have to take matters into my own hands.”

“No—”

An uneasiness settled in the pit of Jayce’s stomach. He renamed it as guilt as he watched Viktor cradle the young man in his arms.

A murderer. A thief. A rat Jayce dragged from the streets after he’d slaughtered a man for a handful of coins.

But Viktor murmured an apology to him, his movements gentle and sweet,

Almost a kindness,

Almost a flirtation.

Jayce shifted in his position as he crouched on the floor, supporting Viktor as he buried his fangs into the prone body beneath him.

And when Viktor’s lips pressed against the man’s pulse—

The venom made the messy meal beneath Viktor shudder, gasp,

Moan.

The venom affected the central nervous system, rendering victims sluggish and slow with its anesthetizing effects; the second phase of the venom was excitatory, once the muscles have laxed and refused to cooperate,

Cruelly (or, perhaps mercifully), it gave the victim pleasure.

I suppose, there are worse ways to go, Viktor had murmured years ago. It wasn’t unusual for Jayce and Viktor to be summoned to investigate a brothel after clients went missing, only to find the remains drained dry. The body had been found on one of the beds, bereft of clothes and slumped in a provocative position.

Jayce had frowned in response to his partner. It’s an indecent way to die.

Viktor had shrugged. Death is death. The question is whether to die with pleasure, or die with agony.

Jayce had to turn away, heat, anger, roiling at the pit of his stomach.

Breathy, quiet gasps filled the air. Jayce bit his tongue as Viktor’s pleasured sighs bordered on obscenity as blood filled his throat, parching his ever-present thirst.

By the time he’d drunk his fill, Viktor’s lips were painted a deep, rosy red, eyes half-lidded, chest heaving with breath despite the way Jayce knew logically that his heart no longer beat within its cage.

An indecent way to die,

But oh, to die with pleasure—

Jayce sucked in a breath, hand reaching out, fingertips grazing the sharp angle of Viktor’s jaw, marveling at the way he languidly succumbed and arched into his touch.

Viktor had always been beautiful. In more ways than Jayce could comfortably admit to himself.

But Jayce had already violated the creed of Hunters, the will of the Church, blasphemed against the teachings of God the moment he sacrificed his best friend’s soul for his selfish, human need for his partner—

What was one more tumble down the path to hell?

“Jayce…” Viktor’s hunger echoed, mirrored, Jayce’s own, that vile mouth of fangs and venom meeting Jayce’s own ravenous, depraved desires.

As expected, Viktor tasted of blood—iron, warmth, and honeyed with Viktor’s own sweetness.

Viktor was always a brilliant thing. As brilliant as he was tragic. As a child, he was brought to the Hunters after a colony of fledglings were released to hunt by a careless Lord. It was a miracle he was alive, though the attack left him orphaned and without a home.

Singed had been the one to bring Viktor to the Hunters, noting that though the boy’s leg left him physically unserviceable, his mind was sharp, and he was eager to learn and make himself useful.

That was where Jayce first laid eyes on him, as the Council of Hunters gathered in quiet judgment at dusk:

To keep this outsider under Singed’s tutelage, 

Or to cast him aside for someone of worthy talents.

Quiet, his eyes downcast, a scrawny older boy leaned against his cane while holding a familiar contraption in his other hand.

“Go on, boy,” Singed murmured. “Show them what you’ve made.”

Jayce frowned. A crossbow? That was barely worthy of noting. It was a standard weapon used frequently—

Jayce only needed to blink before the training target’s head was shot clean off, a burst of flame and light exploding in the gloom. For a blinding second, it was as if the sky had erupted to the morn.

The older boy lowered the crossbow, his hands steady from where he’d aimed. His bright, amber eyes gazed with vicious apathy at the flickering flames engulfed the wood. 

“It’s not quite sunlight,” Singed elaborated. “But it might confuse and alarm a Legion into surrender.” 

A beat of silence.

Then murmurs. 

“Impressive, I must say,” a Council elder noted. “What’s your name, boy?”

Jayce hadn’t known what to call that feeling at the time. The ache in his jaw from clenching too tight. The tightening in his gut as he watched the older boy shrink, furling into himself like a flower, closing petal by petal under the eyes of everyone watching.

“I-It’s Viktor…”

Looking back at it now,

Jayce was sure it was hunger.

“You let her escape.”

While Jayce’s voice betrayed his disappointment, it concealed his awe and incredulity quite well. His partner was coming to himself more and more these nights.

“She was smart enough to find her way out.” Viktor met his gaze, the burning firelight intensifying the ethereal glow it held in the dim and gloom. “I simply opened the door.” He paused. “And maybe offered some direction.” 

“They’ll find you, Viktor—”

“And they’ll do what, Jayce?” His voice lilted sweetly, his lips almost curling to an innocent smile. “Kill me?”

Jayce’s voice hardened. “I won’t let them.”

“And what do you propose, Jayce?” Viktor’s smile turned knife-sharp. “Would you have me rot away in the Talis dungeons for the rest of your life? Feeding me the warm bodies of the people we swore to protect—”

“I never choose the innocents,” Jayce whispered. “Even that woman, she killed her husband, poisoned him in cold blood—”

“To escape an unsafe life for her—”

“And what of the three children she buried with him?” he demanded. “Did she tell you about that, Viktor?”

Still so expressive. His heart, still too soft. Viktor flinched, as if struck. “…you are not their judge, Jayce,” he hissed. “You are not their arbiter.” Viktor drew his bloodstained cloak closer around himself, wilting under the weight of guilt, of shame, closing, petal by petal. “And I will not be the executioner at your beck and call.”

Jayce wanted to laugh. Wanted to laugh at the sheer madness of it all. Even brilliance had its limitations when Viktor so desperately wanted to deny the truth. “Do you really think it’s about that, Viktor!?” Deny what was right in front of him. “Do you think I’ve broken my vows and my faith to play God?!”

But Viktor had always been smarter than that. His shoulders slumped. Viktor’s golden gaze, tainted by blood drops in a hazy ring, cast its judgment upon him. “No. I don’t believe that is your intent.” Not guilty. “Yet, here we are.”

Not innocent, either.

Viktor didn’t pull away when Jayce collected him in his arms. “I can’t lose you, Viktor.”

Viktor drew him close, bringing Jayce to press his ear against his silent heart. “You already have, Jayce.”

The fledglings were unnatural. Unlike anything they’d seen before.

Fledglings were little more than starved hounds—only knowing their hunger and the scent of blood. They were not creatures of reason. They were incapable of thought, of mercy, of fear.

These were different.

These were not the legion of a Lord,

They were the product of human curiosity, of human ambition, of human desperation.

Jayce would know.

Viktor leafed through the notes. The diagrams. The potions, the vials, the bodies, carcasses tossed into vats of preservation fluids. The longer he stared at the pieces, the formulas, the figures, the handwriting—

All came together.

“It—It’s…Singed.”

“I simply sought to cure her.”

Jayce scoffed. “Of what? The same madness you’ve succumbed to?”

Something that was almost a smile lifted at the corner of his lips. Something that was almost a laugh followed. “No. Something far more curable than that.”

Jayce lowered his warhammer, watching as Viktor’s missing mentor and their former councilman, unveiled an elaborate casket.

“Death.”

“The experiments, the research—” Viktor gasped, a breath torn from his lungs. “The fledglings.”

Jayce reached out to him, rubbing his back, consoling his grieving friend. “Shh…It’s all right, Viktor…”

“Destroy it, Jayce…” His expression crumpled to devastation, blinking the tears away. The betrayal still lingered in the agony on his face. “Go after him. Singed and his findings—they cannot survive this night.”

“Perhaps…” A vial was placed into his hands. “You will one day understand.”

Jayce knew the right thing to do was to destroy it. Destroy it like Viktor had asked. “Do you really believe this could lead to good? That casting souls to Hell through your sorcery would benefit mankind?!”

Singed gave him a smile. A true smile. “Not at all.”

A small hand reached out from the casket, tugging at the man’s sleeve as Jayce’s warhammer dropped to the ground.

“I simply seek to benefit hers and mine.”

An explosion sounded in the distance. For a brief moment, dawn had broken through the endless night.

“Viktor—!”

“Go on, then,” Singed said, carrying a small child with rust-colored eyes in his arms. “Make your choice, Hunter.”

The syringe fell to the floor.

Breath filled Viktor’s lungs. An agony searing through his veins as his limbs contracted, pulsing a forced vitality through every vessel. Fire flooded through his body before it all fell to cold, snuffed out like candlelight.

“Jayce—” he gasped, foreign in his own skin, a hunger driving his desperation that would never be sated again. “What—”

Jayce pressed his forehead against his, relief coming out in sobs and shuddering cries. “I’m sorry, Viktor.”

Jayce sighed. “You still refuse to drink.”

Viktor kept his expression cold, apathetic, despite the haughty tone he gave. “Since you are so keen on continuing my former mentor’s experiments, perhaps you can conduct one of your own.” He feigned a thoughtful look before snapping a finger with a tiny ‘Aha!’ “How long would it take to starve one of the Turned, I wonder?”

Jayce’s expression darkened. “Viktor…”

“Jayce,” he challenged, so reminiscent of their boyhood spats.

A constant reminder that this was still his Viktor. “I will not let you die.” No matter what. “Not after everything.” This would always be where they disagreed.

Viktor begged for death.

For sunlight.

For an honorable end.

“Death is death. What happened to that?”

“It still stands. I would rather die than live with this agony.” 

Viktor remained motionless on his bed. One of the few comforts Jayce could afford him at this time. “Come…” Jayce unbuttoned his shirt, removing the silver cross hanging from his neck. “You haven’t eaten in days.”

Jayce watched those golden eyes darken with want. Viktor shook his head, forever in a state of denial. “I will not, I can’t—”

“Better a willing subject.”

“I can’t.” His fangs lengthened. A late effect of hunger. Soon, his eyes will be bathed in bloodlust. But for now, they were the same amber that Jayce loves. “Not to you. I’m already a monster, Jayce—”

Will always love. 

“I can’t do that to you—”

“I’ll stop you if you take too much.” It wasn’t much of a reassurance. Jayce wasn’t blind to Viktor’s turmoil. His partner was already turned into all they feared; all they fought against. Inflicting harm on one he held so close to his heart would be unforgivable, 

Irredeemable. 

“I’m strong, I can stop you.” Viktor met his gaze with reluctance as Jayce knelt before him. “Please, Viktor…”

Viktor remained frozen, the conflict of his morals against his gnawing hunger so clearly written on his face. 

“Go on…drink,” Jayce begged, watching as sharp claws tore the bedding beneath his grip. “I need you to.”

Months ago, Jayce would have scoffed at the notion of a vampire showing true emotion; of being capable of little more than manipulation and subjection—all intelligence poured into killing instinct and territory disputes.

The tears against Jayce’s skin were cool to the touch. But Jayce was sure there was fire beneath Viktor’s lips as he pressed his mouth to Jayce’s quickening pulse.

Clumsy, shaking, the fear and reluctance, and strangled, suffocated desire of it all—

This is the Viktor he knew. The Viktor with his averted gazes and quiet, careful words, the same Viktor whose longing Jayce was only able to name—to face—as a mirror to his own after Viktor bled out in his arms and wished for death.

I won’t lose you—

I can’t—

The drag of needlepoint teeth against his throat should have been terrifying, should have called every Hunter instinct in him to draw away, draw his weapon,

Not draw him closer. 

But this is Viktor. His Viktor, finding his pulse, making the softest, smallest incision with the press of his fangs,

And if Jayce felt any modicum of pain, of apprehension, of fear, it was swiftly transformed and amplified to feed the undercurrents of lust, of want,

Of love pleasure as Viktor buried his nose into his neck and trembled.

Fangs aroused and begging to bury themselves into his partner, Viktor needed little more than Jayce guiding him by the pull of his hair deeper into the curve of his throat.

At last, Viktor bit down,

And the bloom of pleasure almost bordered on pain. 

Viktor—prim, proper, delicate Viktor—took greedy, messy gulps, keening in ecstasy. All the while, Jayce’s hands moved to support the back of his partner’s neck, letting him continue to feed, breathing ragged and fire burning under his skin at this different, deeper form of intimacy they shared.

Viktor felt delicate in his hands, moaning, panting in his ear as Jayce’s cock stiffened between his legs. 

Fangs grazed over the flesh, coyly and tantalizingly as Jayce shuddered. “Your blood…” The desperation in Viktor’s voice— “Is intoxicating—”

A surge of lust wracked through Jayce’s body as Viktor swiped his tongue over the insulted skin, lapping at the marked flesh, fangs almost teasing Jayce again with a drag of Viktor’s teeth over his neck.

“Take more.” A plea in the guise of a command. Jayce wanted to see it.

Wanted to see the beguiling creature Viktor became when he allowed himself to fall to his desires.

Jayce moved Viktor to the bed, shedding their clothes, and pressing their bodies together as another hunger crested through the frenzied feeding.

This time,

It was Jayce’s turn to feast.

The taste of his partner on his tongue, the smell of him beneath the iron tang of his own blood, trembling under Jayce’s touch, so coy despite the way Viktor moaned and splayed himself over Jayce’s front, arms wrapped around him like a lover not one minute ago. “Keep feeding.” Jayce commanded, his cock dripping and aching to sink into Viktor’s tight heat. Jayce was not ignorant to the effects of venom, the tantalizing spells and seduction imbued with the cost of eternal damnation and the lust for blood. 

But this was still his Viktor in the end, his Viktor taking careful, pleasurable feeds, legs falling open and eyes slipping closed as Jayce sank his cock inside, claws digging into his back as Jayce sheathed himself to the hilt, drawing out a breathy moan from his partner beneath him. Viktor clung to Jayce at the near brutal onslaught of thrusts, rutting him in sloppy, maddening paces while Viktor, in all his hellish gluttony, cried out for more and more.

The grip on Viktor’s hips blossomed violet and nightshade bruises beneath his fingertips as Jayce fucked him deep into their bed, slowing his thrusts to deliberate rhythms to their love-making.

I love you —

Jayce was sure Viktor could taste it in his blood: that same urgency, that same completeness that his partner felt in return as he offered Viktor more of his blood, even as he grew lightheaded and his vision blurred,

All explained away with how Viktor tightened around him, how he rolled his hips to clumsily match Jayce’s rhythm. Viktor was almost intoxicated, addicted, craving for his blood, bite after bite, like nothing else mattered and loved nothing more than to receive it from Jayce in the most intimate of ways.

And this will be how Viktor received his meals from now on,

Jayce would make sure of it.

Jayce moaned at the swipe of a tongue over the wounded area as Viktor drew back, head falling against his pillow, already stained with errant blood drops.

His tears had dried.

The wound had already closed. The effects of vampiric venom was a marvel. But none so bewitching as Viktor with his glowing firelight eyes, lips smeared a beautiful, bloody red. For the first time in months, he felt warm, glowing with a dizzied, radiant satisfaction, satiation, as Jayce cradled him close, laying at Viktor’s side. 

The room spun; darkness started dotting his vision, his fingertips growing numb and his limbs growing cold, and even then, Jayce acknowledged little more than the warmth settling into his chest, knowing that his Viktor was fed, his Viktor was nourished, was pleased at the care and attention provided to him and—

“You needn’t feed from anyone else.”

That’s how Viktor should always be. Jayce could prove it, he could, he’d give Viktor what he needed—

“I could give you this.”

Only I could give you this.

He loved his Viktor after all, and Jayce knew he could take such good care of him, and he’d allow Viktor to take from him so intimately any time he needed—

I could join you,

Something in his mind,

Or perhaps his heart

Whispered.

But before Jayce could dwell on it any further, fatigue, exhaustion, and blood loss overtook him, drifting off right in Viktor’s waiting arms.

But when Jayce had awoken, the bed was empty. The dungeon was silent. The door was open.

And Viktor was gone.

Chapter Text

The three stages of demonic activity: infestation, oppression, and possession.

If this ever got out to the engineering department, Jayce knew he’d be done for.

Well, him and Viktor, anyway, since he dragged his best friend along on these excursions.

It’s not that they were even doing anything bad—okay, maybe trespassing could be considered a major offense—

“It is illegal, Jayce.”

“But no one’s lived here for decades!” Jayce hummed thoughtfully. “Could we claim squatter’s rights?”

“Not in this state.”

“Damn.”

Call it delusion, call it childish, call it plain idiocy with just a hint of madness involved.

Jayce called it a hobby. It was perfectly fine for a man to have them! It got them out of binge-watching the stale comedies and cookie-cutter isekai anime, drove them out of library study rooms, and got them both some fresh air and good ole exercise.

Viktor flicked on the Ovilus.

Infestation.

Jayce just about jumped a foot in the air. “Jesus, Viktor!” he hissed as Viktor held back a snicker.

After all, nothing got Jayce’s heart jackrabbiting like this kind of cardio.

To his credit, Viktor did appear remorseful. “Apologies, I was simply ensuring our equipment remained fully charged and ready for, eh, battle?” Even if the corner of his lips were straining to keep him from bursting into laughter.

Jayce rolled his eyes. 

“What do you think our little message from the great beyond meant by that?” Viktor asked. Sometimes, Jayce wondered if his friend actually bought into all this, or if this was simply some ruse to make sure Viktor kept his oath to his mother on ensuring Jayce didn’t land himself in jail or in the grave. “Infestation?”

Jayce shrugged. “Not sure, really.” Jayce tentatively aimed his flashlight over at a dark corridor of the foyer—or rather, what remained of it. The beam of light trembled slightly in his hands, and Jayce cursed under his breath. He was already shaken and the night barely even began!

“Do you think they meant rats?” Viktor asked, calm, cool, unfazed as always. Jayce wholly pinned his unfettered demeanor on Viktor’s Eastern European upbringing. “I hate rats.”

Jayce chuckled, feeling himself calm as Viktor walked forward, turning on his own flashlight and training it on the ground to ensure his cane didn’t snag on anything. In truth, Jayce was more than grateful that Viktor was here.

He could always count on him to keep his cool. “Don’t worry, I’ll scare off any nasty rats that come your way.”

“Would you, now?” Viktor batted his lashes. “Will your high-pitched shrieking send them scurrying away?”

“I don’t shriek!”  Jayce shrieked.

“What did you gather from this place?” Jayce asked, batting away at a vacant spiderweb. “This was your pick, after all.”

“Hmmm.” Jayce didn’t need to turn around to know Viktor was shooting him a playful grin. “Oh, you know, the same old, same old. A death in the family. An abandoned mansion. Several attempts to restore, renovate, and resell it. But none ever could.” Viktor shrugged. “A waste of real estate, if you ask me.”

“I don’t think the ghosts asked you,” Jayce chuckled as they came upon the end of a hall.

Huh. A library? With all of the shelves pilfered of books, it seemed. Just the bones left lying in this cold tomb.

“They never seem to answer when I do,” Viktor said distantly, swinging his flashlight to the bare shelves.

Hello

Jayce dropped his camera, hearing a resounding crack on the lens. He cursed. “Really, Viktor?”

“I—” Viktor looked bewildered, his concerned, shocked, expression evident in the moonlight filtering through the broken windows. “I didn’t turn it on, Jayce.”

Jayce felt a chill run down his spine. 

Okay, okay, calm down—there’s always gotta be an explanation, right? “Oh, did you forget to turn it off in the foyer?”

“Oh, that’s—” Viktor’s voice sounded small. His laugh sounded fragile. “Yes, I suppose that’s the likely culprit. Silly me, I must have forgotten—”

(But Viktor didn’t forget things like that.)

“And—I’m sorry for the camera.”

“No worries,” Jayce said, internally knowing that this would cost him a pretty penny. But no harm done.

“Here, let me get that—” Viktor recoiled, just as he touched it. “Oh—”

“You okay, V?” Jayce’s eyes widened as a drop of blood beaded from the tip of Viktor’s finger. “Oh shit, you’re bleeding.”

Viktor chuckled. “Astute observation, Jayce.” A drop fell to the floor, a stark crimson against the muted colors bathing the quiet room. “The lens must have cracked. I’ll help pay for it—”

“No, no!” Jayce tutted, unzipping his backpack to fish out the first aid kit Cait had demanded he bring with him. “No worries at all, V. Just as long as you don’t file this as a workplace incident,” he chuckled, wrapping up the deep scratch gently.

“You don’t pay me, Jayce,” Viktor huffed, pulling away and making a face as Jayce made an exaggerated pucker of his lips in an attempt to kiss it better. His eyes softened. “Still, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t sweat it.” Jayce gave him a grin. “You coming out here with me more than makes up for it.”

“Of course.” Viktor’s eyes darted away. “I do enjoy our adventures together.”

Jayce felt his cheeks warm. “Yeah?”

“Naturally,” Viktor said, a flash of his small canines visible in his grin. A pause. “Also, your mother would skin me alive if something happened to you under my watch.”

Jayce rolled his eyes. “I knew it. Look, I had one minor explosion in the lab and—” 

Jayce paused, raising a brow as Viktor kept his eyes trained to the floor. Something like curiosity in his eyes, fixated and heavy,

Muted with eerie detachment. 

“Viktor?” Jayce asked. His voice trembled as Viktor kept his silence.

Kept his gaze on that same spot.

A deep scarlet had stained the floor. “Are…you okay?” Jayce asked.  All from that tiny wound?

“What are…” Viktor murmured, voice growing faint. “These markings…”

Markings? “H-Hey, don’t try and freak me out like that, V!” Jayce whined, an anxious panic surging through him as Viktor refused to drop the act. “What markings? I don’t see—”

Jayce froze,

His blood turned to ice.

He felt it then:

Something in the shadows.

Something behind him.

Something watching them both.

Viktor finally lifted his gaze, eyes widening and mouth falling open to a silent scream. “J-Jayce—” was all he could manage before Viktor’s grip loosened on his cane, the metal clattering to the ground, and Viktor’s limp body following after it.

 “VIKTOR!”

Jayce left the camera there, the tiny red light flickering in the dark as he carried his partner out of that room,

Out of that house,

The front door creaking and swaying in the windless night air.

Now infestation:

That’s the whispering, the footsteps, the feeling of another presence,

Viktor blamed it on the sight of blood.

(But Viktor had never been affected by the sight of blood.)

Maybe it was low blood sugar.

(But they stopped at the drive-thru with Viktor stealing Jayce’s milkshake while Jayce pilfered his fries just an hour before.)

“Maybe I was just coming down with something,” Viktor suggested with a faint smile that never reached his eyes.

Viktor hadn’t been sleeping.

Jayce knew because Jayce hadn’t been sleeping either.

It wasn’t unusual for Jayce to be on edge, to jump at shadows, to keep the lamp on, to fall asleep to some podcast or YouTube video just to drown out the silence.

The best remedies were Viktor’s soft snores beside him, hogging the blankets when Jayce inevitably knocked on his door with self-inflicted insomnia.

But something changed.

Something was different,

Ever since that night,

There was an uneasiness infecting the tiny apartment they shared. The space felt unsettled. Even in its emptiness when Viktor was off to class or was just down the hall, there was a pervading sense of…

“Eyes,” Viktor once said, staring into his cup. It was late. End of the semester. Jayce was going to stay at his childhood home.

Viktor was staying here for the summer.

Alone.

“Eyes?” Jayce asked, staying awake with him, pulled from his mattress and away from the siren-call of his pillow as he felt the bed shift and woke to the bleary vision of Viktor walking out of the room and into the dark of the hall.

Viktor nodded, jaw tight, focusing on a stain on the floor that they could never scrub out. 

“Do you feel them too?”

Viktor never played these sorts of games. Had lightly teased Jayce for jumpiness and his clingy nature and excessive excuses to throw his arm around Viktor and invade his personal space. 

But he never preyed on Jayce’s fears, never feigned noises or claims of apparitions trailing them home.

Viktor had every opportunity. He even confessed that he’d been tempted a few times, but joked that he knew Jayce would believe him entirely and it would be a whole ordeal to go apartment hunting (again) and finding a priest to exorcise the place

(again).

But this was different. Jayce knew it the moment he took Viktor home, the way he watched dark corners of rooms, open doors, and the ends of the hall with apprehension.

Something had shaken him in that house.

His thin frame trembled under the harsh kitchen lights.

Jayce packed Viktor’s suitcase that night. Called his mother and told him Viktor would be staying with them that summer.

In the morning, Jayce’ engine stalled. The parts and repairs would take a week at the very least. If the old parts weren’t on backorder. 

Jayce sighed as he walked back to the direction of the shop, frowning as he spotted someone hovering over Viktor from the window outside.

His attention was drawn away as a mechanic approached him, citing yet another problem with the transmission. Jayce cast another glance at Viktor. At the man silently standing over him. 

The mechanics found another faulty part.

“Who were you buddying up to in the shop?”

“What?”

Jayce forced out a chuckle as their rideshare turned to the lot. “You know—tall, dark, looking to prey on pretty college boys—”

Viktor frowned. “There wasn’t anyone else in the shop with me, Jayce.”

Viktor lost his appetite, pushing his food away and leaving the dishes to pile up. 

Jayce blamed that and the hot summer air for all the flies in their apartment.

Freshmen were moving in early this year. Silence curtailed with thudding, pounding, the slow, deliberate creaks on floorboards throughout all the hours of the night. 

Jayce muttered something under his breath about knocking on their door and giving them a piece of his mind.

Viktor commented that he hadn’t seen any moving trucks all week.

But Jayce only shushed him and urged him to sleep as the movie kept playing, the flickering lights faintly illuminating the darkness at the end of the hall.

Jayce called their local church the next morning when Viktor was in the shower, his hushed voice tripping over his words as anxiety wormed out of his throat.

They scoffed at his tall tales, voices twisting to indignation and righteous fury at his desperation.

“Sir, if this is a prank, I recommend you end the call and repent.”

“I swear, I’m not—I’m being dead serious, I think we’re—” Jayce sighed, casting furtive glances to the end of the hall. The sound of the shower continued to run. 

“Look, can you help or not?!”

An eerie silence strangled the conversation. 

Jayce waited a minute. 

Then two.

He heard it then: a small sound. Faint, at first. Then louder. It took Jayce a second to recognize it:

A low, deep laugh.

Jayce pulled the phone from his ear, finger hovering over the screen to end the call.

All that stared at him was his lockscreen: a photo of Viktor with a wobbly smile when he took him to that cat café for his birthday, covered in cat hair and his nose red from his allergy meds wearing off.

Jayce unlocked his phone. He scrolled to his call log. 

The last call ended two minutes ago.

Jayce was no stranger to Viktor’s taciturn moods. Perfectionism and genius and an unkind upbringing dredged out the worst in Viktor when tensions rose. They’d been project partners, lab partners, and best friends throughout all of university. Jayce was no stranger to Viktor’s cruel tongue when his seemingly endless patience reached its limits, and his self-righteous attitude reared its ugly head.

This was nothing like that.

Bursts of anger.

(Viktor’s anger was a quiet, cold, thing. It was never vindictive. It was never loud.

Viktor never yelled.

Until now.)

Bursts of violence.

(Viktor never resorted to physical violence. Now Jayce had to lock away the kitchen knives.)

Viktor thrashed, sobbed, scratched, hit, and spat in Jayce’s face when he attempted to calm him, restrain him—

Jayce locked away the razors after that.

“I know what you’re doing.”

His mama would kill him for this. Had told him that he was always too curious, too stubborn, for his own good. That he should have never tried chasing after what should be left undisturbed.

He should never have communicated. Should have never dragged his best friend into this.

Should have left that door closed.

A cold spot in that dark corner of the hall flared blue in his infrared.

The EMF meter spiked to a 5.

“You can’t take him from me.”

Jayce switched on the Ovilus and waited.

Claimed

Hot tears pricked at the corner of his eyes, anger warming his core where anxiety and fear left him frozen.

That night, Viktor laid in his arms, asleep,

The movie kept playing.

Jayce kept his eyes at the end of the hall, the flickers of light illuminating something watching them from the dark. 

“I won’t leave him. You can’t have him.”

Which ultimately grows into oppression, the second stage.

Now this is where the victim, and it’s usually the one who’s the most psychologically vulnerable, is targeted specifically by an external force—

Breaks the victim down,

Crushes their will.

Jayce apologized to his mother.

He wouldn’t be coming home that summer.

Viktor was sick and Viktor needed him here.

“Mijo, is he all right? Can he travel? You can always bring him home with us, he’s always welcome—”

Jayce looked at the crucifix his mother nailed to his wall.

The very one Viktor glared at with such intensity when Jayce awoke to him standing at the foot of his bed.

But no closer.

“Viktor,” he breathed out, ice cold fear gripping his heart. “Don’t do this, V, come back—”

Viktor let out a ragged breath—

—or was it a growl?—

Before collapsing to his knees, dry heaving as air struggled to re-enter his lungs.

“I don’t think he can travel right now, mamá.”

Jayce gripped Viktor’s hand as he slept, noting with despair how the bruises on his pale skin have multiplied over the days.

People began to talk.

Heard the screams. The yells. The thuds. The windows (and mirrors and plates—) cracking.

They saw the dark circles beneath Viktor’s eyes. The long sleeves in the midst of summer heat.

The blooms of lilacs and violets against his pale skin.

Strangers cornered Viktor when they were at the grocery store as Jayce stepped away, asking if he was safe. If he needed them to call for help. Jayce hastily returned, glaring them down as he set their freezer meals in the cart, his grip on Viktor’s hand too tight.

“We’re fine, thanks.”

Viktor looked hesitant. Scared. But what use would that be? 

After all, no one would believe them.

Who would believe him when he told them the bruises were when he watched his own best friend get thrown to the floor and dragged under the bed right before his own eyes? 

Or that the cuts he was hiding behind those long sleeves were from the time he caught Viktor scratching, clawing his own skin raw after Jayce hid the knives?

Jayce’s stomach turned. He felt helpless. Sage did fuck-all. Home prayers and cleansings only brought restless nights and shadows in the daylight. He called the church again, begging, sobbing this time. 

They reluctantly informed him that a priest would come by.

Jayce’s relief only lasted until he realized Viktor had been left alone in the bath for far too long.

The sound of the shower had long since stopped. 

(The bathroom was a mess. Water was everywhere. Jayce thought he hid the razors. 

He thought he hid the razors—)

The priest came the next morning.

He took a look at the disheveled state of the apartment. The broken glass. The open drawers and broken cabinets. The broken doors. The bathroom, still wet and stained with pink on the ground. The flies and the stench of death that followed him everywhere.

And then at Viktor.

Prone on the bed.

Pale, bruised, raw scratches and slashes on his arms. His skin carved and gouged in scattered areas over his thin, gaunt frame. Vomit stained the front of his shirt. Dried blood streaked the corner of his mouth.

Jayce cradled Viktor in his arms, brushing the hair from his eyes.

“Please—help us.”

“There’s an anomaly in your bloodwork.” The physician looked up from their clipboard. Between the surgical mask, scrub cap, and thick-rimmed glasses, it was difficult to discern their appearance. “We’ll have to do further evaluation.”

Viktor stayed silent on the hospital bed.

“Mister Novotný, heme/onc—the blood specialists— will meet with you to discuss your case this afternoon.”

They forgot cancer. They were blood and cancer specialists. “What did you find?” Jayce asked, gripping the armchair hard enough to stretch and pull at the fabric.

The physician paused, expression obscured by the mask covering their face. “It’s…hard to say definitively. We should wait to review the findings together with the specialists.”

“What did you find—”

“Jayce,” Viktor called, quiet and fatigued. “It’s fine, Jayce.”

It wasn’t fine. 

Jayce felt the world fall apart around him as he gave deep, heavy breaths. Viktor’s hand shakily reached for his and Jayce gripped his thin, frail fingers like a lifeline.

“I thought you were supposed to help us—”

“And this was supposed to be a house blessing! Son, your friend needs medical attention—”

“They’ll find him there too!”

The physician turned to leave. “I’m sorry. This is a difficult situation you’re in. We’ll have more answers later this afternoon. After that, we’ll discuss the plan.”

Jayce kept quiet, the prior state of relief of getting out of the apartment displaced by the dread at the pit of his belly.

The IV drip hummed. The monitor kept a steady beat. The bustle of the hospital, muted and muffled behind the door, felt almost reassuring in this space—so starkly different from the suffocating silence back at home.

There was an overhead page. An alarm. A call button pressed somewhere in a neighboring room. A cold cacophony filled the empty space between them.

All the while, Viktor kept his eyes trained at the door.

Jayce shifted his gaze, following Viktor’s line of sight.

A shadow, barely visible between the gap between the door frame and the floor. Lurking, just beyond where they could see.

Waiting—

—Waiting.

Stage 3.

High risk.

Jayce wrung his hands, leg bouncing while he stayed seated at Viktor’s side, as they pushed poisons into IVs and shot it straight into his fragile veins.

Jayce was sure he hadn't stopped crying since that afternoon. Even when he was urged to go home, pack a duffel for them both, bring things of comfort to Viktor during his unexpected and…long…hospital stay.

When Jayce entered their apartment,

It felt just like their apartment. No oppressive force. No eyes trailing his every move. He walked by his room and noted how the crucifix affixed to his wall remained quiet, solemn,

Undisturbed.

Jayce packed Viktor’s clothes, his clothes, their laptops, chargers, shampoo, soap—

All while the peace, the stillness in their home did nothing to ease the fear gripping in his heart—

Claimed

Was that what they meant?

Was his Viktor going to be taken from him,

By any means necessary?

The hospital kept the lights low at night. Bright enough to function, but dark enough to scrape together some semblance of a circadian rhythm. His best friend continued to sleep as the hours stretched long into the early hours.

At least, Jayce thought he was asleep. 

“Now…now I know why.”

Jayce startled, but immediately came to sit at the edge of Viktor’s bed, flicking the bedside lamp on to illuminate the room.

The soft lilt of his voice, so broken, so defeated made his heart sink before shattering completely: “It chose me because there’s something wrong with me, Jayce.”

Jayce shook his head, hand carding through his wet hair, brushing the locks from Viktor’s face. “No, no, don’t say that, Viktor…” A sob threatened to tear out of his throat. “You’re perfect.”

Viktor turned to him with a smile.

Jayce squeezed his eyes shut, holding on to Viktor’s hand as he focused on his own breathing instead of the too-wide smile on Viktor’s face and the too-sharp teeth that filled his mouth.

And once in a weakened state, leads them into the third and final stage:

Possession.

Chapter Text

Superstition was for the weak-minded.

All right, that was a tad harsh.

Perhaps a more apt perspective was: superstition was for those who didn’t believe in the basic principles of probability. The law of averages ranked supreme, and no cheap trinket, ritualistic behavior, channeling the names of deceased loved ones on a wooden board, or fairytale horrors in mirrors, could possibly change the roll of the die.

Probability was probability.

Hindsight bias existed to taint empirical data.

Placebo effects were effective for a third of subjects in randomized control trials due to multifactorial confounders.

All of this to say—

Viktor wasn’t superstitious. Not at all. So when Sky dragged him to that house under the mild effects of alcohol and peer pressure to perform a test of courage, Viktor didn’t blink twice. Well, apart from when they pulled up to the property and asked,

“Is this trespassing?”

Sky hauled him inside anyway.

The place was dark, dank, and smelled of dusty wood and mold. It was apparently university property that was just never renovated—funds allocated elsewhere instead of a rotting foundation to salvage back into student housing.

Sky trembled as she gathered the ritual material, alcohol and fraying nerves forming a noxious concoction of poor decisions and a brazenness to move forward. Viktor just hoped she was up to date on her tetanus shot as Sky knelt on the floor.

She gingerly placed the mirror at the center of the candles as Viktor dutifully lit them in a (slightly lopsided) formation of a pentagram. While Viktor was guilty of enabling this sort of behavior after Sky was dared by some of her classmates to partake in this “ritual,” he wasn’t about to allow his best friend to be jailed for second-degree arson.

Viktor finished lighting the ceremonial candles, right at the heart of the basement he braved too many broken steps and potential spider bites to enter through, Sky clutching at his arm as he maneuvered through the decaying floorboards with his cane carefully.

“What’s the last item?” he asked as Sky rifled through her bag. “We just need that last thing to get this over and done with, right?” 

“Yeah, but—but wait, we—” Sky took a second, a pause too long to be comfortable down here in the dark. “We should take a picture!”

“Sky!” Viktor hissed. He didn’t want evidence of this! They could be jailed! Or worse! 

Expelled! 

A sudden sound choked off the tirade Viktor readied himself for. Viktor froze, training an ear to the dark. No, it wasn’t the thought of shadows or phantoms that set Viktor on edge as Sky giggled at him, teasing him for getting all jittery and flustered.

There were worse things than storybook monsters.

“Hey!”

Real people, for example.

Viktor stifled a shriek. Sky nearly dropped the hand-mirror as it clattered to the floor.

“Is anyone in here?”

Viktor made his decision then and there. Because Viktor Novotný did not bust his ass for a full ride scholarship to Piltover University only to blemish his academic performance and pristine CV with a criminal record in his second year. 

“Sky, let’s go!” he hissed, pulling her by the arm.

“B-But the ritual!”

“Is bogus!” Viktor hissed, as Sky fumbled to take a blurry photo (flash off, thankfully) before Viktor snuffed out each light.

Before the last flame was swallowed by darkness, Viktor winced as he heard a distinct crack as he stepped backwards. He paid little mind to it as the sounds of heavy footfalls echoed from the floor above, the wood creaking against the weight .

A warning. 

A distress signal. 

An alarm ready to trip if Viktor and Sky weren’t careful in their next steps.

“Viktor…” Sky whispered, her voice trembling.

“Make a break for it when the footsteps fade,” he instructed. “I’ll be right behind you, I promise.”

Even in the dark, Viktor knew Sky nodded along, placing her full trust in the one person both smart (skeptic) and stupid enough to join her little dare.

They strained their ears for further noise, any indicator to the location of the other presence. They heard it then—faintly. The faint squeak of wood. Steps muffled by distance. If Viktor had to guess, the interloper was likely headed up the stairs leading to the second floor, the groan of years of disuse and overtaking elements sapping away sturdiness and structure of its bones. 

Now was their chance. Viktor whispered, urging Sky to go, go, go!

And his dear Sky, 

In all her wisdom and tipsy anxiety, 

Decided to depart from the confines of the dark with all the elegance and discretion of a banshee. A bat out of hell, shrieking and shattering the eerie silence with blood-curdling screams.

Viktor sighed as he ascended up the steps from the basement, heart sinking though every beat pounded in his ears as he scurried along after her.

It was through sheer luck that they’d both escaped the house (relatively) undetected.

But that was where Viktor’s luck ended.

Viktor hadn’t noticed it at the time, perhaps out of numbing adrenaline surging through his blood, but after about ten minutes of walking, a sharp pain sliced through the bottom of his right foot.

A glass shard had stabbed right through the thinning soles. Viktor sighed as he hobbled along, Sky attempting to steady him and offer support as they made their way back to their respective dorms.

“Oh,” Sky said, voice sounding far away. “That’s…seven years of bad luck, isn’t it?”

Viktor scoffed. The only bad luck to come out of this was an urgent care visit bright and early the next morning to see the doctor to clean the wound.

Surely, that was all…

…Right?

The physician tsk’d. “You’ll need stitches.”

Viktor paled. Superstitions were one thing.

Real needles digging into his flesh was another. “Can’t…I mean…” he floundered. “Can’t I get the glue?”

“The edges of the laceration are too jagged for the Dermabond to be effective.” The physician turned to him, expression obscured by the mask they wore and the thick-rimmed glasses giving little insight to the physician’s scrutiny. “What happened anyways?”

“Oh, I…” Viktor coughed. “I didn’t notice I was walking around with some glass in my shoe.”

“I see,” the physician hummed, choosing to believe the half-truth if the patient refused to divulge further. “Say, when was your last tetanus shot?”

“Ouch…” Sky hissed in sympathy, her brows pinching in concern. “All this from a little glass?”

“Yes,” Viktor sighed. “At least I already have the crutch.”

“Sorry, Viktor…I know how much you hate needles.”

It wasn’t the needles per se. It was the procedure. He knew it didn’t hurt. He logically knew it was for his own good.

He just hated giving the control to someone else while he was expected to sit still with another person handling dangerous objects at him. 

And clinical settings in general.

The one positive to Sky’s absence in that harrowing experience was that she didn’t have to witness Viktor trembling like a leaf as the physician prepped his skin.

She also wasn’t privy to the information that they had to call in a student volunteer to comfort Viktor and essentially hold him like a terrified toddler. 

And of fucking course, said student just happened to be in the engineering department. The freshman engineering student with gorgeous olivine eyes. The football star athlete on both academic and sports scholarship that already won over Professor Heimerdinger’s favor,

Cradling Viktor in his arms, rubbing his back, and reassuring him that he was okay, that this was nothing to be embarrassed about, while Viktor bit his lip hard enough to draw blood. And he would have, were it not for the physician’s (rather callous) warning that they weren’t about to do stitches in his mouth either.

Great.

Great.

But the law of averages must prevail—

Which meant his bad luck ended there, right?

…Right?

The world consisted of patterns

Patterns gave structure and patterns gave order to a world that was succumbing to entropy with every ticking second the closer their universe approached heat death. Viktor liked patterns. They were easy to recognize. Easy to understand. Easy to follow. And if needed, easy to break.

Usually.

Because not all patterns were created equal and this specific pattern was starting to wear out its welcome in Viktor’s soon-to-be-tragically-short life. Because for the past few weeks, objectively terrible things have been happening to Viktor and he was frankly getting sick and tired of it.

And as Sky had painfully and unhelpfully pointed out, ever since that “ritual” had gone wrong, Viktor had been plagued by the worst luck known to mankind.

(Not that his base luck was really any good to begin with).

Sky shot him a sympathetic look as Viktor sat down in front of her, noting the dark(er) circles under his eyes. The coffee break was a much-needed treat. Just this morning, she’d witnessed Viktor’s laptop malfunction with a dramatic sputter, sparks spewing in all directions right before their eyes.

Thankfully, a very helpful (and familiar) first year was there, ready to lend Viktor his laptop before lab started.

“What happened this time?”

Viktor sighed. “Huge dog got loose from another student. Thought my cane was the ultimate stick to play fetch with.”

Sky attempted to keep her composure. Knew that the fast few weeks have been difficult for her friend. “And?”

Viktor held up his cane. Bite marks littered the base. “We got it back. Eventually.”

Sky couldn’t help but let a smile slip. “We meaning…?”

Viktor sent her a tired look. “Who else?”

That remained a strange and baffling constant within the Horrors that befell Viktor: the suspicious appearance of the first-year engineering student after every accident and incident.

When someone spilled their drink all over Viktor,

Who was there to help Viktor wipe away the mess?

Jayce Talis.

When his worksheet was blown by an errant wind into the fountain and fell apart in his hands after fishing it out,

Who was there to witness everything and advocate for Viktor to Professor Heimerdinger for the legitimacy of his excuse?

Jayce Talis.

When Viktor tripped after his shoelaces came untied as he was walking down the stone steps out of the engineering building, 

Who was there to grab him before he became a stain on the concrete?

Jayce Talis.

There have been four incidents so far this week.

It was Monday. 

Jayce joked that “We have to stop meeting like this,” clearly concerned but quite happy to play along with the role as the hero and as Viktor, the role of the hapless and helpless victim as a stormy black cloud hung over him. 

Viktor, on the other hand, had other hypotheses.

"What?" Sky choked. "You think Jayce is somehow connected to all this? The Golden Boy?”

It was an admittedly preposterous thought. There was no reason for Jayce to even target Viktor—not that Viktor was aware of, anyways. They’d met briefly during orientation as Viktor was voluntold by Professor Heimerdinger to offer his guidance during orientation—

Given his excellent grades and his propensity to live in the engineering building until dragged out by Sky. A model engineering student.

Sure, Viktor thought Jayce had the wrong building at first, but it soon became clear that sports scholarship aside, his true passions lay in the sciences, and for that, Viktor was mildly impressed with his enthusiasm.

And less so with his ego.

Even during the labs Viktor TA’d, Jayce was always present, bright and early, ready to ask questions and challenge concepts—sometimes forgetting his peers still needed the conceptual building blocks before delving into more advanced material. Still, it was clear he stole the hearts of everyone in the engineering department.

So Viktor can understand why Sky questioned his sanity at the moment. 

Viktor frowned. "I'm not throwing accusations wildly, Sky. Jayce is simply a common factor in all these incidents. You can’t deny that.”

And so it was. It never failed—no matter how small the incident, Jayce was somehow always in the vicinity, ready to lend a hand. And of course—while some incidents could have been manufactured or manipulated in some way—

There were many more that should have been impossible to be tampered with.

It was a big enough hole in his logic that ensured Viktor’s correlation held neither water, nor causation. Even then, it wasn’t as if Viktor were blaming Jayce for intentionally or outright conspiring against him! It was as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had said!

When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth!

"I mean..." Sky giggled. "You can also argue that all this started after that dumb ghost ritual. You know, the ritual you said was stupid and thus volunteered to come with me to prove it was nothing?"

Viktor snorted. "What of it? Are you seriously implying this has something to do with some candles and mirrors?"

“The mirror that you broke!” Sky frowned. "Also, didn't your alarm clock suddenly malfunction the night we got back? And the morning after, you missed class and a quiz?"

"Professor Heimerdinger allowed me to make up that quiz the following week," Viktor argued. "And, guess who I ran into on my way there?"

Sky rolled her eyes.

"Jayce Talis," they said, half of the pair with an accusatory tone, the other half complementing the vehemence with an eye-rolling drawl.

“You realize how insane that sounds.” Sky stirred her coffee; the contents had already gone cold. Alas. “Blaming another student for fate’s ill designs.”

“About as insane as blaming ghosts for the same thing, no?” Viktor’s sour mood turned downright acrid, enough to curdle the milk in his coffee. He took a sip—

And immediately spat the contents out.

Huh. Spoiled milk. Complete with little milk curds.

Sky peered into her own cup. Nothing strange on her end, even getting identical drinks from the cafe. 

And as if on cue—

“Viktor!”

Sky hid a smile, watching in real time as Jayce bounded up to them, eyes almost sparkling as he caught sight of them. Or rather,

Caught sight of Viktor. “Everything okay?” he asked, looking concerned as Viktor looked rather green in the gills.

“Is it ever—” Viktor gasped, curling over his middle as the room spun and bile quickly rose to his throat.

“He drank something that didn’t agree with him,” Sky quickly explained.

Jayce’s look was one of immediate alarm. “Do you need me to take you to the urgent care?” He rubbed Viktor’s back and Sky had to turn away, lest she start cackling in the face of her best friend’s utter misery and utter denial of whatever is going on between him and the Golden Boy.

But Viktor could be a stubborn thing. Neglectful of his own health if he had a point to prove. And from the way he was withering under Sky’s quiet looks and eyebrow wiggles, he was going to spout something off about not needing the assistance at the moment, not to worry, please, carry on with your day, Jayce—

Only to open his mouth and immediately vomit on Jayce’s shoes.

“It can’t go on like this,” Viktor moaned. “I can’t go on like this.”

Jayce had just dropped off some soup at his dorm, and for the umpteenth time, told Viktor not to worry about the shoes. His hand lingered there, on the small curve of Viktor’s shoulders, opening his mouth to say something before deciding against it.

He left with a smile and a wave and a promise to check up on him tomorrow.

Sky shook her head as she paced within the tiny square footage of his dorm. “Viktor, I wouldn’t even know where to start.”

And that was the most terrifying thing: One day, it’s food poisoning,

What if it was a careless driver on the road?

What if it was a turn of bad weather on a plane?

What if it was a complete freak accident of nature?

What if it was a run-in with someone dangerous?

But if there was anything a prospective engineering PhD was going to excel at,

It was research design. “We have to test the hypothesis.” He turned to Sky, miserable but determined. “Null hypothesis: Jayce Talis’s presence has no effect on my ill fortune. Alternative hypothesis: his presence does have an effect on my ill fortune. Therefore—”

Sky’s eyebrows shot up.  “You’re going to spend more time with Jayce? For your data collection?”

Viktor made a face. An incredibly reluctant face. “I mean…alternatively, I could also avoid him.”

Sky glared at him. “Viktor, I’ll be frank with you: I don’t think you’d survive that type of study design at this point.”

Viktor wanted to argue, but Sky did have a point. A very deadly point.

After all, just last week, Jayce had snatched him up before he inadvertently stepped on an exposed cable after a power line fell from a freak storm just the night before.

Viktor groaned, red scrawling down from his cheeks down to his neck and the tips of his ears. “What do you suppose I tell him? Hello Jayce, I think your presence might provide some crucial insight over the terrible string of bad luck that seems to follow me everywhere. I’ve noticed that you’ve ALSO been following me everywhere. There might be a connection! Can I live in your pocket for the next few weeks to conduct a prospective study?”

“I mean, sure.” Jayce chuckled as he pushed the door open to grab the empty container of soup. “I’m free tomorrow night. I can pick you up and we can grab dinner together.”

"So, did you play hero today?" Caitlyn teased.

Getting to see and annoy the little sprout was perhaps the best part about living away from the main campus. And, well, the fact that the scholarship the Kirammans provided him funded the entire thing.

Jayce chuckled. "If you mean if I saw Viktor again, then—yeah."

"What happened this time?" she asked, interest piqued, a conspiratory gleam in her eyes.

Jayce hummed. "Well, last week, a car nearly swerved into the crosswalk." Jayce luckily pulled him back in time. After that, Jayce walked him to class, poor guy shaking all the while, and for good reason! Jayce just wished he saw a license plate from that careless asshole. "Then during lunch, he lost his wallet, so I paid for his meal and helped him look around campus for it. Turns out he left it at the register? And none of us noticed it."

Viktor turned fairly red at that and sputtered apologies, but Jayce was quick to shut that down. Sympathy aside, it’s not like Jayce really minded spending his lunch that way!

"Wow." Cait winced. "Poor guy... how kind of you to stick around and," she giggled, “be his knight in shining armor.”

Jayce scoffed. "Poor guy is right.” Jayce had never known a more peril-prone, accident-attracting, disaster-disposed person. “If I didn't know any better and saw it with my own eyes, I’d say he was faking it." Of course, there was no way Viktor was faking it. And if he did, then Jayce would have been entirely impressed.

Doe-eyed thing, being treated so cruelly in the world.

"Faking it?" Cait laughed. "What for? All to get your attention?" Hands on her hips, she sent Jayce a scrutinizing, teasing look. “Even you’re not that egotistical, right?” 

"Well," Jayce started, chuckling, confirming the reservation booking on his phone. "It’s not like he needed to. But he certainly has it now."

And as Cait scrambled to get a peek at what had been occupying his attention and immediately teasing him afterwards about taking Viktor out on a romantic date—

“Come on, Jayce, doesn’t he get saddled with enough bad luck?”

—Jayce wondered about tonight and if he should pop in earlier to check up on Viktor before their dinner reservation,

And see just what perils Jayce will save him from then. 

It was embarrassing. Truly.

“So, uh,” Jayce fiddled awkwardly with his napkin. “Tell me about yourself.”

But Viktor can stomach an awkward evening. “A bit vague of a request.” Viktor sipped on his water and congratulated himself for not spilling the glass onto the floor with how his hands shook. “What do you want to know?”

Can even reasonably survive a string of them if he had to.

“Were you always this, ah—”

Viktor scoffed. “Unlucky?”

“Well—I wouldn’t put it like that,” Jayce argued, valiantly trying (and failing) to minimize the cluster of catastrophes that circled Viktor like moons. “Despite it all, you’re still safe, right? Short-term consequences aside.”

Short-term consequences usually referring to minor bumps, bruises, a laceration requiring a stitch (or two) and minor gastrointestinal illnesses. Long-term, Viktor tried imagining what the consequences would eventually lead to: living his life in constant fear? Taking precaution after useless precaution when something much greater than what Viktor could ever understand wanted him mauled,

Or even dead?

“A few weeks ago, I didn’t believe in superstitions.” Viktor took in a breath. He decided then: “I still don’t.” He refused to be ruled by fear. That was why he asked Jayce to do this, after all. To understand. To learn. And hopefully, “I’m waiting for the law of averages to grant me one mercy.” To cure.

Jayce, all boyish charm and unfairly handsome looks, shot him a smile. “Maybe you’re looking at him.”

Gunned down by such brazenness, Viktor dropped his glass, fingers slipping through the thin stem as it crashed to the floor. And started laughing.

“Oh shit—” Jayce scrambled to his side as Viktor attempted to pick up the shards. “Are you okay?” He motioned for a nearby waiter of the mess before any further incidents were invited to their table.

All the while, Viktor kept chuckling to himself, baffled and yet, a spark of understanding. “Yes, yes, I am. All thanks to you.” Viktor casted his gaze onto his napkin. The tiniest cut on his finger bleeding the cloth red. As expected, Jayce came prepared: a bandaid that he was wrapping around the minor wound. “You’ve been very kind. And you’re right. Maybe I did get lucky in that.”

Huh. Even Golden Boys get flustered. “A-any time!

Disaster. Ill-fated. Ill-starred. Something with enough force, gravitational impact, that knocked Viktor off his orbit,

And straight into Jayce’s.

Viktor bit down a smile. Shook the thought from his head!

Do NOT get charmed by this man! He cannot allow feelings to taint cold, hard data! Empirical biases cannot color his perception!

After all, this was all in the name of data collection!

That's all! Like Jayce said, there weren't any real long-term consequences on the line!

Years later

“You shouldn’t hover like that.”

Jayce turned around, sheepish as Cait stared him down with a stern glare. It immediately dissolved into a warm smile. “You know it’s bad luck to see your spouse before the wedding.”

Jayce chuckled. “Does that really apply to me and Viktor?”

“There haven’t been any emergencies yet, have there?”

Jayce shook his head. There hadn’t been for years, really. Not any more than a typical row of (un)fair fortune every now and then.

But the way Viktor and Jayce started dating will forever go down in history.

“Infamy,” Viktor had groused, placated by a kiss from Jayce on the little mole that captured Jayce’s attentions (and heart) the moment they met in orientation week.

“Did you ever figure out what happened? You know, what made Viktor—”

“Fall head over heels for me?” Jayce asked with a dreamy smile.

“No, you pompous thing,” Cait giggled. “About all the bad luck when you two first met.”

And to that, Jayce really didn’t have a clue. Just as things took a natural turn for them in their relationship, the incidents and accidents started appearing less and less. It was strange, but at the time, Jayce hadn’t paid much attention to it.

But then Cait tugged him by the arm and walked him away from Viktor’s door, away from where they could hear Viktor and Sky bantering (or arguing) as Viktor got ready. “Did you ever think it might have to do with you going into that abandoned house at the start of freshman year?”

“What?! No, no—” Jayce shrugged, offering a sheepish smile. “I mean, if it did, I guess I can blame doing that dumb love ritual for snagging my husband then.”

Of course, Jayce had been terrified and although he never spoke a word of it to anyone but Cait, he was certain that place was haunted. A banshee shriek from the basement, the sudden slam of the door wide open—Jayce was ready to bolt out of there. But of course, he had to complete his task! This was a test of courage for a reason!

A love ritual for a shot to get closer to that second-year engineering student he admired!

Chapter Text

Viktor knew it was the right decision.

Knew he should have walked away a long time ago.

From Hextech, from Jayce.

He packed his things, sorting his life’s work—nearly a decade of grueling hours, sweat, tears, some blood (and a few burnt bits of skin after minor explosions)—all fitting neatly into a box or two. 

Meanwhile, Viktor tried not to think about the equipment he left behind, the contracts with his name on them, the patents to the tech he no longer owned the moment he handed in his resignation letter—

Because they’d be gone, all of them, in a single morning.

Well, a single morning, and a multitude of months arguing back and forth with the one man he once trusted above anyone, until that trust was shattered, until he saw the damning evidence with his own eyes, the writing on the wall, at a board meeting, with dozens of others to witness.

A contract? 

With Noxus? 

With the military?

Viktor saw his whole world collapse right before his very eyes as Jayce smiled, made grand, empty speeches, and was lauded for his leadership and effective decision-making.

They called it innovation. They called it investments for peace and protection.

They were contracted to build weapons.

Viktor's heart fell. Shattered.

And all Jayce could do was nod long, shake hands with politicians, signing his signature—the same one at the corner of his and Viktor’s notes—with a calm, steady hand,

All while betraying the man he'd created Hextech with, shared his bed with

(but never his heart, no, there was never room for Viktor there)

And sold years of hard work, late nights, and brutal deadlines poured into innovative, miraculous technology,

Away from the hands that they were meant to help, all to line the pockets of one of the wealthiest corporations of the world, and playing supplier towards warfare.

Viktor stood from his chair and grabbed his cane to leave, knowing there was nothing to look back at the moment he slipped out the door. Jayce was probably too busy selling their dream to even notice he was gone.

His departure from the company was less subtle.

There was a lot of confusion when Viktor turned in his resignation.

Then yelling.

Then begging.

(Threats, too, if Viktor interpreted them correctly)

But Viktor was tired. He fought Jayce every step of the way in every measure he could. He knew Jayce felt pressured. Felt that this was the best (therefore only) way to fund their research so they could make their tech available to all people. Knew that he was adopting the poisoned perspective of realism rather than abiding by their principles.

And Viktor knew Jayce thought he was defending their people, defending Hextech, by making these hard decisions.

Because he was Hextech’s founder. Leader. CEO and recipient of all the accolades, media coverage, and TV interviews, and the Man of Progress on all the billboards and magazine covers.

And Jayce moved forward without consulting Viktor,

Because he knew Viktor would disapprove. And like most things, Viktor's wants and wishes were just an afterthought.

Viktor saw it now.

It took nearly a decade for Viktor to realize what their partnership was to Jayce. All Viktor could do was walk away. There would be blood on his hands, no doubt, but he could at least bury that part of his life for good before it ballooned, crashed, and consumed the entirety of Hextech and his identity.

People all around him begged him to reconsider: that he was making a terrible mistake, that this will haunt him for the rest of his life, that he was letting his bruised ego and his idealistic self-righteousness control his consequences—

That it wasn’t worth building from the ground up all over again.

But Viktor already spent seven years on a dream that died the moment Jayce betrayed his trust.

There was only one way to go when you hit rock bottom:

And that was up.

He left with a last paycheck and his shares of the company. Against the shrieks and pleadings of his accountant, he immediately sold them, and booked a flight out of the country to start over.

For the first time in a long time, a weight had been lifted over his shoulders—

Only to land in the center of his chest.

Viktor knew it was anxiety. Anxiety of starting fresh. Of starting anew. Of course there weren't eyes watching him, keeping track of his every move. That woman over there wasn’t taking videos of him, and the man at the food stall only sort of looked like that intern that started working at Hextech a month ago, 

And plane stalls and delays happen all the time, it took several hours but the flights were eventually set back on schedule as he was sat in the middle of the plane between two Very Official men in suits that seemed too interested in where Viktor was headed to—

He was just being paranoid.

Still, that didn’t stop him from telling the gentlemen that he was headed to Germany, looking at a position for a biomedical lab with a keen interest in genomics.

In reality, Viktor took on a university job in Switzerland.

Jayce used to scoff at wasting talent on a teaching career, but it suited the man Viktor became. It suited the life Viktor chose.

Life was quiet for the next few years.

He had some modest publishings and attended conferences with presentations, but avoided seats in committees and chairs in boards like the plague, despite the growing insistence due to his background as co-creator of Hextech.

Co-creator.

Only in an empty title.

Jayce held all the power in the company where it mattered. And try as Viktor might, attempts at putting Hextech (and Jayce) behind him held variances in success.

Occasionally, Viktor received swathes of pestering requests and letters and floods of emails (that he'd blocked and yet, somehow they keep getting bypassed)—

All from Hextech.

It was an unnecessary burden, but one Viktor had learned to turn a blind eye to.

It was impossible to escape from Hextech, because as Viktor predicted, it was ever-evolving, ever-growing, with talks of their government partnership with the department of defense expanding. Hextech also entered the commercial field, and as promised, its products were now available (with variable degrees of accessibility) to the general public. 

Jayce’s face, the Man of Progress, continued to circulate in news, journals, social media, press conferences—

It was a natural progression.

And Viktor learned to ignore the twinge of pain and the hollowness of years long gone.

Occasionally, his name sparked immediate recognition. It didn’t take long for Viktor to realize that he was still listed as co-creator of Hextech on their official website. It took over a year with Viktor hoping that they’d update the listings, but after 4 website overhauls and a new roster of faces on the interning teams with his old photo and title sitting next to Jayce’s—

Viktor phoned the number for inquiries.

The first time he tried this method, after a (suspiciously brief) game of phone tag with an automated response system, the employee very sweetly offered to direct his call to the right person.

Viktor waited,

“Viktor?” 

Only to have Jayce’s voice answering him, soft, hopeful,

Calling his name in the same way that would have had Viktor buckling and caving years ago.

Things were different now. "Hello." Viktor had gotten better at masking the tremor in his voice. "Please remove my name from the website. It's providing false information. Thank you for your time."

Viktor hung up, hands shaking, heart in his throat, breathing shallow, and angry at himself for feeling the way he did after years—

Just from hearing Jayce's voice again.

But now he kept hearing Jayce's voice. His words, in irritating repeat as the man left several voice messages on his answering machine

Viktor, to complete your request, we need more information—

Viktor, we’ve sent emails to your account—

Viktor…please. Just talk to me.

So…you’re in Europe now?

—How’s the university job?

Viktor called his landline company to cancel his services, to delete his number.

No one used landlines anyways.

Viktor tried to keep a minimal presence from then on. Changed emails. Removed social media (not that he used it much to begin with). Told himself that it was necessary with the amount of spam messages he’d been receiving and the unnecessary attention he’d garnered since his name and photo remained stubbornly on the site’s Founders page.

Even then, he felt eyes on him. He heard whispers down the streets and echoes of his past. A too-friendly new neighbor that knew too much about his past line of work. An unprompted dessert on his unannounced birthday while dining at his favorite restaurant—

(his “favorites” changed frequently for similar reasons)

Old inside-jokes he and Jayce used to make eased into Hextech captions and speeches made his skin crawl, and caused nights to draw out into an endless dusk before sleep took him—

(Did he lock the door?)

(Did he close the blinds?)

(Did he cover his webcam—)

But—

He knew he was just.

Being paranoid.

Being anxious.

(Did he check the guest bedroom—)

(Did he leave that door open—)

(Did he hear someone breathing in the dark—)

(Or was that all in his mind?)

Viktor wasn’t proud enough to ignore the problem.

He sought medical attention for that reason.

Viktor already knew from the neutral, patient tone, that his presenting symptoms, his chief complaint, wasn’t the doctor’s highest priority. Well. Perhaps, that wasn’t exactly true. His symptoms—the suffocating paranoia, the dangerous lack of sleep, the anxiety gnawing on his bones— all pointed to something much greater. 

A “unifying” diagnosis.

His psychiatrist reflected back to him (a mirror, face and eyes neutral like glass) that he'd been under a lot of stress and a lot of trauma. It was only reasonable to surmise that Viktor only thought that a powerful man like Jayce Talis would bother harassing him.

“It's a common delusion. Nothing to be afraid of.”

Reassurance wrapped in fancy trappings of skepticism and slight dismissal.

But it was a logical conclusion to make. It was their first session. Jayce was a renowned genius and leader of the corporate and technological juggernaut of Hextech.

Viktor was just a university professor who used to be in the same field,

That’s all.

“The antipsychotics will help.”

Viktor picked them up from the pharmacy. He brought them home and flushed them down the toilet.

His hands were steady as he turned the pill bottle over. He read his own name, written on the printed label. His name on the paperwork from the psychiatrist. A diagnosis. An accusation. A brand.

Viktor shook his head. The only thing he took with him when he left Hextech was his own mind.

Jayce couldn’t take that from him, too.

It was by happenstance that Viktor crossed paths with Dmitri in the UK.

Viktor was invited to review a panel of presentations and posters for an international research conference. Dmitri had attended to workshop and network, perhaps to climb the ranks through joining a committee or two.

They were seated at the same table and Dmitri hadn’t been shy in striking up conversation. He was younger than Viktor, fresh-faced with brimming enthusiasm and brilliance without the burden of corporate betrayals. Viktor initially dismissed him as starry-eyed, a frenzied energy about him to make a name for himself, highlighted through eagerness to meet and mingle,

Yet there was an earnestness in his boastful voice, a thoughtfulness in his responses to inquiries around him that belied his rather foppish exterior.

And Viktor wasn’t blind. Dmitri was a handsome thing and sought to capture Viktor's attention with a desperation that made Viktor laugh bitterly at the notion, yet all the same, made something in his stomach tighten in knots at the bold, brazen way his touch lingered against Viktor’s skin.

Dmitri joined him in his hotel room that night.

Then Viktor joined Dmitri in his room the next night.

And perhaps they had a little rendezvous in the conference restrooms the morning after that.

(It was fine. The scheduled presentation was a bore and had terrible data collection methods anyways.)

And because Viktor was an expert at poor decisions regarding men and relationships, he only resisted with the flimsiest excuse before phone numbers were exchanged under the premise and promise—

(The pie-crust kind:

Easily made,

Easily broken)

Of a future collaboration together.

Dmitri took the "future collaboration" to mean uprooting himself and finding his way to the job opening in Viktor's university once an esteemed professor retired that year. Viktor’s eyes widened as Dmitri’s confident, charming smile greeted him.

Happenstance,

Serendipity,

“Fate,” Dmitri offered with a sparkle in his blue eyes and a kiss placed on Viktor’s hand.

“Or a job opening,” Viktor scoffed, doing a fairly good job of pretending he wasn’t charmed. Pretending he wasn’t suspicious.

Pretending he wasn’t searching for puppet strings—

“Sometimes, you have to force fate’s hand,” Dmitri said, patient as always. “If you really want it, of course.”

Viktor continued to receive emails. Continued to receive calls. Viktor told Dmitri after their third date that they were simply spam messages that he’s learned to ignore over the years. Dmitri laughed and teased him about being a brilliant scientist who didn’t know how to block persistent callers and remove himself from email lists—

Until Dmitri started receiving calls and emails too.

Life went on.

Viktor blinked and suddenly, it’s been five years since he's left Hextech.

He was turning forty this year.

Dmitri snored soundly in bed next to him. The ring on his finger gleamed with promises that Viktor was too old to believe until he saw them through himself.

With age came wisdom and advised him against telling Dmitri that. After all, Viktor gave Dmitri his loyalty, his body, felt natural to return the man's easy affections. Viktor was happy—happy in a way that he never thought he could be years ago. When he’d hit rock bottom, when there was only one direction to go after starting over and starting from scratch,

The last thing Viktor foresaw in his own future was marriage.

They just had the engagement shoot yesterday. The pair found themselves elbows-deep into wedding planning and had just announced it to mutual friends and Dmitri’s family.

When Dmitri had gotten down on one knee and asked, the answer had been easy for Viktor to give. It was the easiest thing he’d ever done in the past five years.

Dmitri sorted and sifted through photos before carefully selecting and carefully curating the perfect array of photos to his socials the night before. Viktor had fallen asleep to the annoying glare of bright lights from a tiny phone screen and Dmitri’s mutterings—hemming and hawing over the angles and lighting—and that cocktail somehow landed Viktor the best night’s sleep he’s had in years.

It wasn’t quite happiness.

He remembered echoes of it, from another lifetime ago.

What he had now was better.

It is love, it was just love without the foolishness, love with keeping one foot on the ground in case he fell and stumbled, and found himself without that trust to catch him—

It was learning from past mistakes.

Absolute loyalty came with a steep price tag, and Viktor wasn’t keen on paying again.

Viktor eventually succumbed to the call of morning lectures after their short holiday to celebrate, pulling himself out of bed and out of his fiancé’s arms. He frowned, seeing his voicemail completely full again.

Strangely, Dmitri's social media was suspended, the news heralded by the man’s indignant squawk the moment he greeted Viktor with a kiss and checked his phone screen. Viktor remained supportive as the man whined about it all morning.

But it was more than that.

There were suddenly problems with their vendors. There was suddenly a strange barrage of calls and strangely worded messages sent from friends and coworkers, all-too eager to know intricate details regarding their fresh engagement.

Dmitri saw the look in his eyes.

The faraway look where everything moved in slow motion around Viktor, suspended in space, drifting from reality.

Innocuous events like those placed an uneasiness in Viktor's heart that Dmitri often tried to distract with sweet kisses, a quick change in subject, fingers lacing with his own. Dmitri went on to plan and promise for a romantic evening ahead, no cameras involved now that there were no further distractions from spending time with the man who had his entire heart.

"A romantic night out ring shopping and trying to decide if the money for a rock should have been better spent on a downpayment for a bigger place?"

"And that lovely Lebanese restaurant that you've been eyeing!" Dmitri announced proudly. Viktor bit back a smile.

He does love that man. There was no doubt about it. Viktor looked forward to the evening, questionable financial decisions aside, if only for the fine company and the distraction for his anxiety. The calls keep coming, but Viktor paid them no mind. He had a lovely evening with his fiancé to look forward to.

The call came before noon.

There was an accident,

And his name and number was listed as Dmitri Takiapolis’s emergency contact.

Viktor rushed to the hospital, heart in his throat, ice in his veins, and a desperation in his voice as he demanded to know what happened—

And where was Dmitri.

The emergency responders report that there had been an...odd accident on the road. A head-on collision from a malfunctioning self-driving vehicle.

There was no driver. There were no preset coordinates to that route according to the map history. The car was seized and the owner, who initially reported the vehicle missing, was being investigated.

Viktor had to cover his mouth. Had to hide the nervous, hysterical laugh, and the anguished wail that was sure to follow had the seams of his lips ripped open. Frankly, it all sounded incredibly stupid. Like some kind of cosmic joke. Of course, Viktor recognized that exact car brand.

(He helped design the battery, after all.)

The staff took his reaction as grief. As horror. Fear. They reassured him that Dmitri was stable.

That he'd been asking for Viktor.

Viktor followed them, ascending up an elevator and feeling claustrophobic as he was transported with two nurses flanking his sides—

(And don’t they look familiar? Maybe he’d met them somewhere, a face jogging past his apartment, a stranger that sat next to his table at the café he and Dmitri frequented,

Maybe he’d seen their photos before,

Fresh-faced and clean-shaven, professional smiles on a website that updated everything except his name beneath Jayce’s—)

The journey to the trauma bay was silent. They passed through the post-surgical unit, the hospital floors, eerily quiet, devoid of chatter, and the squeaks of orthopedic shoes against mopped floors, and call buttons going off as frequent as IV drips demanding to be changed.  

Splenic rupture, they told him. Not unusual for abdominal trauma. It was caught on ultrasound and he was rushed for emergency surgery. The splenectomy was necessary to stop the internal hemorrhage.

Viktor felt ill.

When they arrived at the hospital room, it took little more than seeing his fiancé's prone body for Viktor to completely fall apart. "D-Dmitri...?" Viktor called, his voice sounding so small, even in his own ears. He took a step forward, legs feeling weak as his cane wobbled in his own hands. A staff member immediately offered him a seat beside his fiancé. Viktor took Dmitri’s hand in his, noting how cold he felt against Viktor’s own trembling, clammy skin as sobs threatened to rip right out of his throat.

It wasn’t often that Viktor spiraled. Pride. Propriety. Fear that he’d truly sunk rock-bottom and that there was no one there to share those tears with. That he’d shoulder it all alone. It wasn’t often that Viktor felt at peace with himself and the people around him that he could cry, sob, openly. Tears streamed quietly down his face as he squeezed Dmitri’s hands tight enough to bruise.

Faintly at first, Dmitri's hand twitched, fingers curling around Viktor’s desperate hold before grasping Viktor’s fingers tightly. "Viktor...?" he called out,

Soft,

Hopeful—

Viktor froze, hearing that tone. He was floating again. A fear response that looked more like playing dead.

"Shh, don't cry, babe..." Dmitri cooed, taking Viktor’s hand and lacing their fingers together in a way that could have been romantic, if not for the grip that threatened to fracture Viktor's whole hand.

Babe? Viktor held his breath, fear gripping him tighter and tighter as anxiety snaked through his bones and squeezed around his ribs,

As Dmitri opened his eyes, giving a loving, adoring smile, Dmitri's baby blues somehow darker, warmer under the bright hospital lights.

"There you are," Dmitri breathed, the curve of his smile looking so familiar but all wrong on Dmitri’s lips. "You kept me waiting."

The physicians warned him that Dmitri had suffered a fairly serious traumatic brain injury, and thus, behavior changes weren’t uncommon. Viktor was even warned of specific concerns such as memory-loss, personality differences, difficulty accessing information and memory retrieval.

Viktor simply nodded along as Dmitri laid quiet in his arms, leaning into his touch and burrowing into his shoulder.

It was strange.

It was new.

Dmitri was never quiet.

And while Dmitri was an affectionate man, he’d never clung to Viktor like this. Of course, Viktor chided himself for even thinking that was odd. His fiancé had nearly died. His fiancé had emergency surgery after a car ran him over. His fiancé was shaken and scared and—

“I missed you,” Dmitri said, voice low, breathy,

His exact voice in an intonation that sounded…off-key.

Viktor stroked his hair and tried not to mind how tightly Dmitri was squeezing his middle, locking him in place as if he’d disappear right in front of him. “I’m right here,” Viktor reassured, his ribs creaking with pressure. “We’ll get you home soon, okay?”

“Don’t leave me again—”

Viktor’s heart stuttered in his chest. “I…of course not.” Viktor forced himself to breathe. A difficult task with how Dmitri tightened his hold. “I’m right here. I’ve been right here,” he reminded his fiancé gently, reaffirming to himself that Dmitri only meant earlier that afternoon, when Viktor left to make a phone call to cancel his lectures for the rest of the week leaving Dmitri to wake up to an empty hospital room.

Viktor eyed the dented chair. The scuff marks on the floor. The replaced IV pole after the old one was flung across the room.

“I know…” Dmitri murmured, laying his head above Viktor’s heart, ear pressed against the fluttering, frantic beats.

When discharge day came with Dmitri ambulating independently, they walked out of the hospital together. Viktor was given an emergency list by a quiet physician, mask and surgical cap perpetually adorned, eyes barely visible behind thick rimmed glasses. Their instructions were clear: to immediately call an ambulance if Dmitri became unresponsive, had severe headaches that progressively got worse, was observed to have abnormal movements, or started vomiting after waking up from sleep; and of course, if Viktor and Dmitri had any other concerns. 

If something felt off. 

If something wasn’t right.

All the while, Dmitri paced restlessly beside him. Funny…he was never much of a pacer. He’d been the calm one between himself and Viktor but now it’s like he can’t sit still.

Viktor was looking for his car when Dmitri placed a hand over Viktor's shoulder and called out his name—

Viktor dropped his keys.

“V?”

Scent has long been lauded as a herald of remembrance, a harbinger of memory. Touch was harder to discern. Sound was too broad. Nevertheless, it brought him back five—ten years ago, and Viktor almost startled out of his skin. “I’m…I’m fine. Just. Jumpy,” Viktor punctuated with a deliberate step from Dmitri, who eyed him with a blank, unreadable stare.

Dmitri bent down, picking up the keys and deposited it in Viktor’s hand, their palms brushing, lingering longer than necessary. Viktor didn’t meet his eyes, holding on to the physician’s explanation like a lifeline.

It doesn’t stop the fear racing down his veins after Dmitri placed a warm hand on the small of Viktor's back.

-

The strangeness continued as Viktor brought Dmitri home to rest.

Viktor offered to order takeout from Dmitri’s favorite mediterranean restaurant, perhaps get his classic order of paella—

But Dmitri waved him off, stating he was craving something on the…meatier side. He asked for a steak, a thick cut and bloody. Viktor gave him a smile, trying not to look too bewildered by the sudden change, but did as was requested. After all, it’s not like Dmitri wasn’t fond of beef, it was just that—

It was different.

One hospital-stay.

One afternoon.

One accident. And everything was different.

And it wasn’t because the way he acted was unfamiliar.

It was...too familiar.

Too familiar in all the wrong ways. The way Dmitri leaned back against his chair with his feet propped up on the desk while he stretched, the way he left a whole container of food out next to his work, the way he called Viktor’s in that specific lilt, the way he shortened his name, the way Dmitri touched and held him, the way he kissed him and left his marks all over Viktor’s peach-bruised skin—

Viktor felt like he was going insane.

Viktor was aware of what the physicians said. Even cursory internet searches yielded similar results. There was no reason for Viktor to believe the man in their home was anyone but his fiancé, his Dmitri.

But every part of Viktor was screaming at him to open his eyes. Was begging him to bolt out the door. Was whispering cruel and impossible insistences that This isn't his Dmitri,

But this was no stranger, either. This was—

"...Jayce..."

The man lying in Viktor's and Dmitri’s bed looked up, but not in confusion.

In recognition. "What was that, V?" he asked, mouth drawn to a placid smile.

A game.

Whoever this was,

Whatever this was,

Was simply toying with him.

Viktor gave a hard swallow.

"My...former work partner. Jayce.” Viktor's face paled, his eyes glassy as his hands trembled since he turned on the television. “Reports say he's gone missing.”

Chapter Text

Viktor could think of better date locations.

He gave a polite smile as the actor leapt out from the shadows with a ghoulish howl. He carried on, cane clicking against the floor as the couple behind him let out shrieks of terror.

To Jayce’s credit, it’s not like he begged Viktor to come see him in his part-time gig. Had some sort of strange reservation about Viktor seeing him dolled up in costume, instructed to scare the piss out of customers who paid for this kind of experience.

But Viktor wanted to be supportive, especially since Vi and Jinx had done their damnest to convince Jayce to do a few shifts at their renovated, reinvented, and reconstructed Harrowing, Haunted, Hallow-Hell.

(The official title was ever in-progress—indicated by the rickety sign that had been boarded over, hammered, and repainted throughout the course of the October month.)

Viktor winced as one of Jinx’s animatronics burst out of its confines, rigged to laugh and shudder unnaturally in a flash of blinding strobe lights. Inventive, but perhaps lacking proper fire safety codes, judging from the sputtering sparks that did not appear to be part of the display. 

Not that Viktor was about to tattle.

Turning another dark corner in the Death Spiral maze, Viktor ducked his head politely at the familiar sight.

Tall, broad-shouldered, and definitely trailing after him with a silent, appreciative look. The Devil mask seemed to be an intentional play, the curl of the plastic smirk giving a playful façade as The Devil rounded towards Viktor as he passed—

(—and shut the hall door behind him.)

“Fancy meeting you here,” Viktor commented, keeping his voice light. He kept his pace steady, tone polite and conversational. Viktor ignored the little throb of pain from his leg after nearly an hour of walking around on a bad pain day. The last thing he wanted was to worry Jayce when he seemed so keen on being coy with him. “Again. Now, where did we last meet?”

The grounds entrance, creeping up behind Viktor in line.

The pumpkin patch, where Viktor had bought hot chocolate to warm his freezing hands.

The graveyard within the Death Spiral, eyeing Viktor from inside a tomb.

And here, nearing the exit.

Always appearing when Viktor least expected it. Always looking for a little jump, a little scream,

Anything other than the placid smile Viktor gave; the amused chuckle that passed his lips at every jumpscare; the little hum he let out at every obscenely rowdy animatronic or animated actor.

The very reactions that Viktor knew drove Jayce mad with disappointment.

Viktor admitted that it was kind of cute. Jayce was never obnoxious with his masculinity, but a part of him withered with how easily Viktor could sit through an entire Conjuring-verse movie marathon without so much a startle,

Whereas Jayce had succumbed to sleeping with lamplights, hallway lights on, and more recently,

Making himself right at home on Viktor’s bed and clinging to his boyfriend in his sleep for dear life.

(Though, the latter transpired with or without trembling in the hands of a B-grade horror movie).

It was also part of the reason why Vi had been so insistent on having Jayce join the other side as one of their actors. The intention was showing Jayce the mundane part of orchestrating scares—a sort of “exposure therapy”  that’ll hopefully keep him from cowering behind Viktor at every little ghost story come the October season.

It seemed that Vi’s plan was working, at least.

Viktor frowned as he saw long stretch ahead of him to the end of the hall,

And found nothing but a wall greeting him at the distance. No exit sign. No opening.

No way out.

His leg gave another pulse of pain, a warning that he’d need to rest soon or he’d come to sorely regret it. Viktor turned, heart leaping out of his throat with a fluttering, shuddering breath as The Devil met his gaze, close—

—Too close—

Behind him.

The Devil cocked his head to the side, as if in question.

Viktor’s eyes darted to the hallway behind him. The flickering lights. The eerie silence as the screams and shrieks of monsters and mayhem grew faint behind the construction.

It occurred to Viktor then:

No one was following them.

They were alone.

And all The Devil did was continue to watch Viktor, head tilted to its side. Still as a grave. Deathly quiet. “Ah—if you don’t mind,” Viktor murmured, shuffling past him. “I believe I took a wrong turn—”

A hand reached out—

A cold grip on his arm.

Viktor frowned. “Really, Jayce? You’re taking this a bit too far.”

Viktor wrenched his arm away, huffing in irritation. 

The Devil continued to loom over him. 

“You know, you’re supposed to save the scares for other paying customers.” Viktor saw it then. Another exit. Towards where The Devil had tried to drag him to.

Another corridor. Lightless. An entry deep into the bones of this place. And definitely not a place that visitors should enter.

The Devil remained silent, moving in step with Viktor as his cane echoed through the lonely corridor as he rounded towards its entrance. “But you never could resist, could you?” He chuckled. “Sorry to disappoint, Jayce,” he drawled, ducking his head to depart into the dark. “But I don’t scare easily.”

“Viktor!”

His heart seized in his chest. Realization like a cold blade sliced between his ribs. 

“There you are!” Jayce sighed, standing before him.

Even with full costume and makeup, it was unmistakably Jayce beneath the pallor and “dirt” caked on his zombie getup. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere! Vi told me that she saw you enter here but you never came out—” Jayce paused, sending him a quizzical look, glancing at the empty corridor. “How did you even get in here? This area’s off-limits.”

“I…” Viktor turned behind him. He saw nothing but the darkness at the corner of the halls glaring back at him. “I…wandered in here by mistake. An actor was trying to guide me back out.”

“Through the electricals?” Jayce’s brows furrowed in confusion. “Where are they?”

Viktor sucked in a breath, ignoring the icy grip in his chest. The space was still empty next to him. “They must have gone through another exit.”

“Who was it?”

Viktor paused. “I’m not sure—”

Jayce frowned. “They didn’t tell you?”

“No.” A beat. “I assumed they were still in-character. It was a man in a Devil mask. He—” —grabbed— “took me by the arm towards this entrance. I’d been seeing him all night—”

Jayce’s eyes widened. “All night?”

“Yes, I first saw him at the gates—”

“Then here?” Jayce asked, suddenly insistent.

Another pause. The air was suffocating around them. Screams and laughter, muffled merriment, was suddenly suffocated by the tension. Viktor nodded.

Jayce pulled him close, gripping his hand tight. “We need to go, V.”

“Jayce?” Viktor attempted to wrench his hand away, surprised by the bruising grip, but Jayce walked swiftly, Viktor nearly stumbling as he struggled to match his pace with his cane, his leg screaming in protest. “W-What’s wrong? What’s gotten into you—”

Viktor watched as Jayce’s jaw tightened. His eyes scanned the spiraling hall, shadows seeming to multiply at every corner under the flickering lights as the space grew narrow in its crooked design. “Every actor has a designated space here. We’re not supposed to be following anyone.” The words registered in Viktor’s mind, but the meaning there had trouble eluded him, refusing to take form, take shape— They sure as hell aren’t supposed to be guiding visitors to restricted areas.”

Fear.

Ice-cold in his veins, snaking their way to the tips of his fingers, numbing his limbs and making him stumble as Jayce flung the door open.

Viktor watched numbly as an animatronic let out a shriek, Jayce barely flinching as actors stopped mid-scare to send them both concerned looks.

“Hey, goin’ somewhere?”

“Everything all right?”

“Bathroom’s that way if you need to puke.”

“Shut down the haunt,” Viktor heard Jayce say.

“What? Don’t tell me someone had an accident—”

“Someone is going around pretending to be one of the actors. Some guy in a Devil mask—” Jayce’s voice trailed off. There were shared looks of quiet anxiety before the other actors shuffled off, closing doors and flipping on the day lights.

“Tell me if you see him,” Jayce murmured as Viktor watched the swirl of colors all around him, bleeding neon and explosions of strobe lights dancing before his vision as nausea cut through the shock in his senses.

It gave him startling clarity.

Someone was following Viktor all night.

Someone had deliberately targeted him.

Someone had gotten Viktor alone.

Someone had almost gotten Viktor to follow them where no one else would look to find him.

And that someone was still around.

Jayce cursed under his breath as he held his phone to his ear. He drew his phone away with a frown. No response. Jinx’s cackling voice echoed as her voicemail message played. “Viktor, we need to find Vi and Jinx. We need to tell them what happened.”

Viktor nodded. His hands trembled as he reached for his pocket. His eyes widened. His pulse pounded in his ears.

“I don’t have my phone.”

“What?!”

“My phone—it’s gone.”

“Shit.” Jayce ran his hand through his hair. “Shit.” He squeezed his eyes shut and turned towards the corridors. “Do you think you dropped it back there?”

Viktor patted down the rest of his clothes. He was sure he had it with him when he entered the haunted house—was sure he delivered a quick message to Jayce alerting him he’d arrived and was going to take a gander at Jinx’s animatronic handiwork. “No, I—eh, maybe? When we were walking out—”

He wasn’t sure; he’d been too focused on trying to keep from tripping over his own two feet (plus cane) as Jayce dragged him out of there. Admittedly, it hadn’t been a good day for his leg. He’d already taken his nighttime meds for the pain, anticipating he’d be on his feet for longer periods to take in the attractions. The dull ache and slowed pace he took when he first entered the haunted house had now bloomed. As time crawled by, the adrenaline rushing down his veins sputtered to a low trickle, and with it, its numbing effects started to wane.

“Fuck.” Jayce ran his hand through his hair, sweat smudging the makeup off his face. “Let me try calling you…”

The both listened, as intently as one could given the shrieking chaos around them.

Nothing. Jayce sucked in a breath, the gears turning in his head as he triaged priorities. “We’ll go look for it later, okay?” He took Viktor’s hand, dragging him out of the attraction to the open grounds. “Vi and Jinx haven’t been responding to messages all night, probably because of how busy it’s gotten—”

Viktor stumbled after him, stifling a yelp as his leg protested. “D-Did you try Mylo? Or Claggor?”

“Good idea, they’ll probably—” His words died in his throat at the sight of Viktor, stifling winces of pain. “Viktor, are you okay? Do you need to sit down?”

“I’m—I’m fine, but Jayce,” Viktor started, tentatively shifting his weight to his other leg. He just needed a moment. A moment to calm his screaming leg. A moment to think rationally. “This could be a—huge misunderstanding. It very well could have been another actor—or maybe multiple actors at different places wearing the same mask—”

“Viktor,” Jayce started, placing both hands on Viktor’s shoulders. Brows furrowed. Lips pulled to a thin line. “Some freaks come out on Halloween, all right? Some people use the masks, the fake gore, the scares and screams to hide some really fucked up shit thinking they can just get away with it and they could have your phone and find all your details, even where you live—”

“Jayce…” Viktor soothed, taking his left hand and squeezing tightly. He watched his boyfriend take in deep, calming breaths with every squeeze of Viktor’s fingers to his own. “I’m fine. I’m right here. We’re not certain if they have it.” Viktor looked over at the chairs at the canteen overlooking the pumpkin patch, selling overpriced candy and confections that turned mouths blue and black. “And I know I’ll slow you down. I just need a moment—just to recover. But if we’re concerned that this person may be dangerous…” He gestured to the near-empty seats. “Then go alert the other staff. I’ll stay right here. At the snack booth where it’s brightly lit. Nice and open. No dark corridors for me to sneak off to.” Viktor attempted a chuckle. It came out strained, forced, a sad-clown smile telling a joke that landed on the ground with a pathetic splat.  

“Viktor, splitting up is the worst thing we could do!” Viktor winced. Jayce was really starting to sound hysterical.

Viktor took a glance at his leg. Brows furrowed together as the pain sliced through with every movement.

It was really not the best time for his pain medicine to wear off.

Jayce sighed, eyes softening. It wasn’t often his boyfriend voiced his discomfort, the need to rest. “Okay. Okay. Take my phone, at least?”

Viktor frowned. “Won’t you need this?”

Jayce shook his head. “Not as much as you do. Keep trying to contact the others, and I’ll call you from Vi’s or Jinx’s phone when I find them. And please—just—stay here. Until I come find you, okay?”

“I’ll be fine, Jayce,” Viktor reassured. “Go, find them.”

“And if you see that Devil guy again—”

Viktor held up his cane. “He won’t know what’s coming.”

That at least startled a laugh out of him. “No, no, babe.” Jayce gently cupped his cheek. “Get to safety. Scream. Call for help. Anything but that.”

“You take your horror movie tropes quite seriously,” Viktor murmured, but nodded all the same.

“I take your safety very seriously, Viktor.” He leaned down, pressing a kiss to his lips. “I’ll be back soon.”

Realistically, Jayce had only been gone for ten minutes.

Within a span of ten minutes, the grounds had begun to close their attractions and swathes of complaining customers began exiting in droves. Claggor and Mylo messaged back to Jayce’s phone, incredulous and rather flippant of the whole situation, but promised to keep an eye out for any Devil-mask wearing wanderers.

Even Jinx messaged him, a concise and heartfelt message of Ur a grown ass man n u almost got got? Did he lure u in with candy ???

Viktor had half a mind on texting her back that The Devil represents all temptations.

After all, Viktor only felt comfortable in his presence because he’d thought it was Jayce under that mask.

But he ultimately decided on sending her a thumbs up to the message. Simply because he knew the lack of an answer would entirely peeve her.

Viktor startled as the lights above him suddenly fizzled out to pure darkness. He turned to find the staff member manning the snack bar began closing the windows and drawing up the curtains.

The blank mask peered at him for a moment, the slits for the eyes almost appearing empty in the dim gloom. They said nothing before closing the shutters.

And suddenly, Viktor felt very alone, the Harrowing, Haunted, Hallow-Hell slowly dwindling to a choking death in the throes of night as the crowds thinned and the voices and shrieks drew further and further away.

Viktor opened Jayce’s lockscreen, briefly blinded by the sudden glare. He stared at a photo of himself, red-eyed and skin an unhealthy shade of tomato-hues with a teeny-tiny smile on his lips as a tiny army of kittens curled up on his lap. Their first date at a cat café. Back when Jayce hadn’t known Viktor was allergic.

Viktor had the best day of his life anyways.

A brief flash.

Viktor startled as the phone buzzed violently in his hand, the sudden blare of a custom ringtone cutting through the growing silence.

Viktor’s own name flashed through the screen.

He felt his stomach drop. Viktor attempted to rise from his seat, wincing as pain shot straight down his leg. He hissed, craning his neck and finding nothing but shadows lurking at every corner. He thought about calling out to the darkness, waiting in bated breath to see what would answer. He thought about letting the phone ring and eventually letting it go to voicemail. He thought about who might be calling him—a good Samarian who found his phone dropped somewhere on the fairgrounds; Jayce, who found his phone after combing through the corridors;

A man in a Devil mask.

Viktor stared at the screen before taking in a breath,

And answered it.

“Hello?” he asked. “Jayce—?”

Silence greeted him.

And with every second that crawled down his skin, Viktor’s apprehension grew.

“Hello? Who is this?” His heart thudded frantically against the cage of his ribs. “You have my phone—who are you?”

Jayce would be thoroughly disappointed if he saw him now, breaking every rule of survival in the book,

“Where are you?”

Arguing with The Devil.

“Turn around.”

Color drained from Viktor’s face. A cold rush submerging his entire body.

The voice hadn’t come from Jayce’s phone, pressed against his ear.

The voice came from directly behind him.

In the dim lighting, the deep red of the mask and horns almost seemed to glow, a dying ember under the October dusk. Viktor gave a hard swallow, past the lump in his throat and past the fear strangling his voice. “What do you want?”

The Devil tilted his head to the side, crooking a finger towards him.

Follow me.

A bad idea. A terrible one. A downright horrendous decision.

Yet Viktor only stopped from stepping forward as he spied something glinting in The Devil’s left hand.

A knife.

Bloodied red.

A prop. Surely, it’s just a prop.

The rusty color splashed on the blade.

Likely just food coloring.

The person behind the mask, standing right before Viktor as he sat frozen, pinned under his gaze—

Had to be an actor. A prankster.

— stalking towards him.

Someone with a sick sense of humor.

“VIKTOR!”  

A second. Just a second as Viktor instinctively turned to Jayce’s voice, finding him, Vi, and Jinx following after him.

He hadn’t even found the words to say, hadn’t had the grip of anxiety ease from his throat when he looked back—

But by the time Viktor turned around, The Devil had vanished.

“And…you’re sure you didn’t see anyone there?”

Jayce frowned, knuckles white as he gripped the steering wheel. “It was hard to tell. It was too dark.”

Viktor nodded. Even with the heater on, he felt cold. Viktor turned his phone over. Not a scratch on it. No strange messages. No unauthorized payments or bank transactions. The only call made had been to Jayce’s phone number.

It sat innocently on the table behind him by the time Jayce reached Viktor, quiet and shaken as he continued to stare at empty space.

“I’m just glad you’re safe,” Jayce whispered, reaching over to hold Viktor’s hand.

Viktor nodded, squeezing back reassuringly, watching the streetlights pass through the passenger window.

Viktor opened his phone. Same old lockscreen: a photo of him and Jayce celebrating after the Distinguished Innovator’s award ceremony.

A flash of light.

Viktor opened his gallery.

The most recent photo:

A blurry shot, overexposed from a too-bright flash.

Viktor, alone at the canteen.

His heart pounded in his ears, dread dropping like a heavy stone at the pit of his stomach.

“Viktor?” Jayce asked, the car crawling to a stop at a traffic light. “Are you okay?”

His mouth opened. His voice refused to cooperate. Just as he was about to give the phone to Jayce, to let it speak for itself, Viktor’s phone buzzed in his hand.

A text.

An unknown number.

A simple message.

“We’re not done playing.” 

Chapter Text

Villains were created, or so they say.

Not that Viktor really categorized what he did as anything but fair game. Viktor wasn’t sure what it was about him that attracted certain type of men:

Protective, at least at first. Saw this frail, brilliant thing with the mind to change the world, but lacking the biting force and power to do so. Protectiveness gave way soon after, devolving to something monstrous, something that believed they could control viktor, use him, take advantage of him—

Break him.

Poor, sweet Viktor, invisible to the world unless wielding a magnifying glass trained at charity-cases with intellect and grit. Lovely in certain aspects, in different lighting, but much more precious than that, he was useful. Viktor, with his disability and background, despite his objective genius and accolades in his field, could so easily fade into the background at any given moment.

It’s these kinds of men that find Viktor:

The kind that can scent a peach-soft heart and squeeze it enough to bruise, find his thin, fragile wrists and hold them together with one hand, with the ego and audacity to take what was his and get away with it.

They made one miscalculation, however:

Viktor was far from helpless.

Viktor took his seat at the front of the procession, dressed in black, a laced veil casting a shadow over his face. Viktor watched with hapless apathy as the body was lowered and laid to rest. Viktor had just given a tearful farewell, bidding his ill-gained fortune to the hands of charities and philanthropic efforts, as the (yet another) love of Viktor's life met his untimely demise.

Viktor forced out a sob. A wretched little sniffle. A shudder to his thin shoulders. 

The investigation was still underway.

Means.

Motive.

Opportunity.

Viktor typically stumped investigators at one of these. Airtight alibis and forensic medicine fell short of experimental technology and chemistry while Viktor played the meek little spouse that served to lose it all when their brilliant husband who handled all the assets and patents kicked the bucket.

What was a hopeless thing like him to do?

Viktor barely kept the smile from his face.

It was justified.

It wasn’t justice.

But it was something that Viktor was owed.

His first husband made Viktor believe in true love. He was charming, sweet, plucked Viktor like a flower and doted on him relentlessly, obsessively—

The first death was to escape a terrible situation. Self-defense, he could argue. Though, Viktor was sure that sort of explanation wouldn’t hold water in court. After all, Viktor spent months designing his demise. He’s fairly sure it would be categorized as premeditated.

His second husband was passionate. A colleague with an interest in his personal research, who believed in him, sung praises of his brilliance, his genius, and who gave him the faith and confidence that Viktor needed to see in himself—

The second death was vengeance. Stealing Viktor’s technology, selling it and passing it off as his own. A crime of passion, perhaps? But a different sort of passion. He loved Viktor for what he could gain from him, and Viktor returned that love tenfold with a project to die for.  

His third husband was a pragmatic man. He, just like Viktor, was tired and wanted to settle down. He wanted stability. He wanted a loyal partner to spend his life with. He wanted trust and companionship and a gentle love that could keep them both grounded.

The third death was neither out of passion, nor violence. It was merely a business transaction that best suited Viktor’s needs at the time. Truly, forging Viktor’s signature to take on his debt? To take his hard-earned fortune he’d bled and killed to claw his useless husband out of this failed business venture? Thankfully, his life insurance claim covered all the costs.

His fourth husband—

Well, he wasn’t really worth mentioning. Vermin often weren’t worth the mental effort outside of extermination.

The fourth death at least yielded Viktor an invaluable test subject for an experiment that had intrigued him for quite some time. It was the least this rat could offer him after all that time wasted.

It was a startling thought, but not one that was entirely unprecedented. After all he’d been through, it was a natural course for Viktor to take: to begin equating love, marriage, to a game. It didn’t mean that Viktor was incapable of feelings of affection, or ardor, feelings of passion—

On the contrary, this was proof of Viktor’s heart! Proof of Viktor’s torn, bleeding, and peach-bruised heart.

Viktor grew up in the slums of his city, a lonely boy with a very visible disability. Being a child of a disadvantaged background and rather tragic circumstance in early orphanhood, Viktor found he was never very good with socializing; he’d been cautious, skittish, but willing to be vulnerable and honest with his feelings—

Only for this sort of honesty to backfire spectacularly at every turn.

Games, however—

Games had a goal. Games had rules. Games had logic. Games had strategy. Games had winners, and games had losers.

And Viktor liked to win.

And why not? The men he married, the men that took him to bed, the men who ruined his body and degraded him, leashed him like a pet, paraded him like a broken thing they fixed and trained—

Why wasn’t Viktor allowed to play his own game when they were so invested in playing theirs?

Viktor dabbed the corner of his dry eyes, mimicking a sniffle, echoing a sob. He felt eyes on him, the moment he took his seat after his grand performance, throwing his arms against the headstone, trembling and shuddering as friends guided him back towards the row of red-eyed guests.

Someone was watching him.

Critiquing his performance, perhaps?

Or looking to swoop in and rescue this distraught, lonely widow in black?

His fifth husband, Jayce—

Jayce was interesting. Different in many ways. Not enough for Viktor to believe in fairytale endings or fifth time’s the charm, but enough that Viktor returned his notebook with his own sticky-notes tacked on, the modifications he recommended (not that Viktor was asked to) as he talked the man down from a ledge a week after they met.

It turned out scientific curiosity was a quick mode of redirection for a hopeless soul, a tortured genius caged in familial expectation, without any way to move forward,

Until Viktor, that was.

Jayce came from old money. Old, old money. He lived modestly, all things considering. He focused his fortune on invention. Creation. And of course, taking care of his sweet mother—

(Always polite. Always kind. Always sweet and doting. Staring at Viktor with knowing eyes. More curious and less sinister as she remained silent in the backdrop.)

He was intelligent. Witty. Handsome. Alluring and with a boyish earnestness in him that made the room light up with his smile and made his enthusiasm absolutely infectious. He was fiery, spirited, had a temper, but folded to an ounce of upset from Viktor’s pout, a minute of stretched, terse silence that had him reaching for him with rounded eyes, beseeching forgiveness.

He fucked like a god and Viktor saw both heaven’s pearly gates and the sulfuric pits of hell through both eyes. All that to say, Viktor’s never had a dick that big ruin him before.

He was a dream, wrapped in trappings of tenderness and exquisite passions.

Jayce talked about forever. About partnership. About making something bigger than themselves.

With their union, Hextech was born.

And with it, the beginning of the end.

Just as Viktor’s other playmates, Jayce proved himself just as susceptible to fame, greed, and all other banal vices.

Late nights. Glittering galas. Contests for power. A courting of investors. A seduction of enterprise. All while Viktor took late nights in the lab and wondered just how many times a man can corner himself in the same position over and over again.

Perhaps it was a force of habit.

Perhaps Viktor saw what loomed in the distance and embraced the outcome. A predetermination. Destiny, if he wanted to be romantic. 

But perhaps it was because Viktor, too, had grown bored—

(Or perhaps that part of him, that part so desperately wanted to believe Jayce’s vows)

—of the same cookie-cutter dalliances of love, marriage, and betrayal. 

But maybe it was time to just nip it in the bud.

The poison revealed itself shortly after exposure to extreme temperatures. It absorbed quickly into the blood stream and in high enough concentrations, caused disruption of the cardiac calcium channel, inhibiting contraction and pumping function. The extremely short half-life afforded great difficulty in determining the cause of foul play.

Viktor sighed. In another life, he could have gone into medicine.

Maybe that would be his next venture.

Viktor shrugged as he removed the cookies from the tray, plating them with care as Jayce entered the room. Viktor smiled, offering his darling husband a treat,

With a love as sweet as sugar itself.

Jayce tilted his head, surprised but pleasantly so. “Got up bright and early just to make me something sweet, baby?”

Viktor watched with a placid smile. “You’ve been working so hard, after all. I thought you deserved a little…”  eyes falling on Jayce’s teeth biting the shortbread in half, “Just desserts.”

Viktor watched as Jayce thoughtlessly devoured,

Giving little care to the time and effort it took to make,

Just taking it all on a silver platter,

As Viktor waited for him to choke on that greed—

Except Jayce didn’t croak.

Viktor’s eyes widened. 

—wait.

Viktor frowned. Watched as Jayce took a swig from his mug, black coffee washing it down as he licked the crumbs off his fingers and the corner of his mouth. “It’s great, V! Should have known you’d be great at baking.”

He didn’t sputter out his swan song at him, choking on vomit, spit, and horror as his heart let out one final fluttering pulse and laid dead in his own chest.

Viktor did nothing but blink owlishly as Jayce leaned down and kissed the corner of his mouth in an affectionate peck. “Gotta run, babe. We have another meeting with the investors, but that should finish around three. If you’ve got time after work, how ‘bout a little date night?”

Viktor blinked. Unusual. They hadn’t been out together for months. Feeling unsure and entirely in disbelief, he gave a nod. Jayce beamed and headed out the door.

Even picked up another cookie and popped it into his mouth for good measure.

The door clicked closed. His footfalls faded away. 

Against better judgment, Viktor licked the corner of his mouth,

And almost immediately vomited from the potent poison laced in the sweet treat Jayce consumed right before his eyes.

Viktor had no explanation for it. The formulations were to the exact specifications he always made. But there could have been other confounders that lead to the…less-than-optimal results.

Jayce sat across from him that night, looking handsome as ever in his suit as he brought Viktor out to the very restaurant where they had their first date. Jayce even ordered that exact bottle of red.

“You seem preoccupied,” Jayce said. Not an accusation. Just an observation. “Is…anything the matter?”

Why didn’t you die?

“Just—overwhelmed with work.” A lie. Viktor was never overwhelmed with work. Work was the only thing that was keeping him going. The internal clock that never needed adjusting. Work was his sanctuary. Work had variables that Viktor could manipulate and control to his exact specifications.

Jayce was different. 

A different beast altogether. His husband’s brows furrowed with concern. “Is it the hours? Have we hit a major roadblock?” He held Viktor’s hand. “Anything I can help you with, Viktor?”

“Ah, I think…” Viktor gave his husband a smile. “I think it’s just been so different without you in the lab.”

Jayce’s eyes softened. “I know. Investors and board meetings— this wasn’t at all what I wanted either.”

“Necessary evils,” Viktor said, nodding primly.

“Still, I miss doing what we did best.” Jayce squeezed his hand. “How ‘bout I swing by tomorrow?”

Viktor’s eyes lit up. 

Means.

Motive.

Opportunity. Viktor squeezed his hand back, all fluttering lashes and demure appreciation. 

“That’d be perfect, Jayce.” 

Let himself be smothered in kisses over the candlelit dinner, taken to bed and taken apart viciously, pleasure wrung from every fraying nerve as Jayce spilled inside him.

Pity, Viktor thought, his thighs spread open as his husband licked along the gaping seam of his cunt, lapping at the mess he made inside him. Toes curling, a whine ripped from his throat as Jayce devoured him in earnest. Jayce was certainly the most generous lover he’d ever had.

It really was too bad his husband had to die tomorrow.

The device was in plain view in the lab. A litany of hazards he’d tacked on denoted the faulty circuitry and wiring, the malfunctioning resistors, all laid out in a slew of warning labels. Viktor made sure not to clock in that day as he sat at home, sipping his sweet milk as he picked up his phone and told Jayce he’d come by the lab a bit later, but that he could start without him.

“All right, baby, I’ll see you soon, okay?”

Viktor bit his lip, unsure if it was a grimace,

Or a smile that threatened to break in his voice. “Yes, I’ll see you very soon, Jayce.”

“Love you—”

Viktor ended the call.

He curled up on the couch, opening his laptop.

Viktor expected to see the news published within the hour. Expected to receive calls from authorities and the fire department within half an hour. Expected phone calls from work within minutes, informing him of the tragedy that had befallen their company, their company head, his husband, after a great big blast engulfed him in fire and debris—

“Hello?” Viktor said, picking up after the third ring as Work flashed on the caller ID.

“V!”

Viktor’s eyes widened.

“V, are you there?”

Viktor swallowed. Forced his heart to slow. Forced his voice to steady. Forced his hands to stop trembling. “Jayce? W-What’s wrong—”

“Oh, thank God you’re still at home!” Viktor made a soft noise of confusion. “There was a massive explosion at the lab—”

“O-Oh…” Viktor felt his stomach plummet to the ground. “Oh no, was—was anyone else hurt—”

“No, no—”

Viktor held his breath—

“I was the only one inside, thankfully.”

—and gently shuddered out an exhale. This wasn’t possible. “A-are you okay, Jayce?” This couldn’t be happening.

“Yeah, it was the craziest thing! I just remembered picking up a soldering iron and—”

The faulty experiment was a decoy. It wasn’t the trigger. It was an innocuous, common tool Viktor had rigged and left out.

“The next thing I knew, the whole place was in flames!”

Viktor opened his mouth, but words refused to come. He was still reeling. He was still in disbelief. In shock. In awe.

In horror.

“I’m…so glad you’re all right,” Viktor said, voice strangled. “I-I’ll be there soon, Jayce—I-I’ll call an ambulance—”

“No, no, I’m fine, Viktor, I’ll head back to you, okay? In case any more surprises happen in this place.”

Viktor felt a cold grip in his chest. “You…All right, all right.” Viktor sank deeper in his seat. “I’ll see you very soon, Jayce.”

Sirens blared in the background. “Oh, emergency services are here. Gotta go, babe, love you, bye!”

Viktor stared at the ceiling. Stared as text messages and work emails flooded his notifications. Watched as news outlets circulated the story in the next ten minutes.

Thirty minutes after that, Jayce walked through the door, apologizing about being held up as authorities and emergency services barraged him with questions.

His clothes were a tattered mess. Ash and debris covered almost every inch of him. Viktor didn’t know what else to do but fall into another role, slipping on the mask of the terrified spouse with practiced tears, and wrapped his arms around his husband.

Jayce let out a hiss. “Ah, sorry, skin’s a little sensitive from the blast,” he said, wiping the soot and cinder from his face before leaning in for a peck in Viktor’s lips. “I should probably wash this all off—”

“Right—right, of course,” Viktor said, watching as his husband appeared at their door, living proof of having escaped an explosion with a blast radius that obliterated their entire laboratory—

With nothing but first degree burns like he'd been out on the beach all day.

Viktor was starting to suspect that his past sins were not only starting to catch up to him,

But were conspiring against him.

Attempt after attempt at Jayce Talis’s life has led to nothing but more and more headaches and headscratches as to how he escaped his plots unscathed.

Well, mostly unscathed.

Viktor had to reapply aloe vera to those burns for a week straight.

He’d attempted reprogramming Jayce’s self-driving car to initiate autopilot while disabling its manual overrides to drive him off the bridge on a highway. In the end, Jayce was left with a totaled car, and Viktor had to make the forty-minute drive to pick him up from the side of the road.

Viktor had half a mind to resort to vehicular manslaughter at that point, but Viktor calmed himself. He’d get rid of Jayce Talis one way or another.

Another opportunity presented itself at the opening of a new dining experience.

A server in a blank, white mask appeared at their side, uncovering an array of sashimi, nigiri, and maki rolls. Viktor nodded, thanking them. The server bowed, murmuring a soft, “Please, enjoy your meal,” before departing.

Jayce watched them leave with a frown. “Not gonna lie, the mask is a little off-putting.”

“It’s all part of their theatrics. This Kabuki troupe is supposed to be world renown—and having a master chef preparing dinner on top of that?” The opportunity itself was too good to pass up—

Even if the setting screamed gimmick. “Okay, but you noticed that everyone else is just in makeup—and that one was an actual mask, right?” Jayce pointed out.

Viktor frowned, appeared thoughtful for a moment, but merely shrugged. “Maybe they have sensitive skin.” He took a pointed glance at Jayce. “Just like a certain—”

“Excuse me, I was caught in an explosion!”

“And we went through ten bottles of aloe vera in a week.”

“Like you didn’t enjoy rubbing me down.”

Viktor immediately flushed. “Jayce!”

“C’mon, V…” Jayce whined, already having broken his chopsticks in uneven lengths. “We couldn’t have at least gotten the katsudon?”

“It’s good to try new things,” Viktor sniffed. “Besides, I hear fugu is quite the delicacy.”

He pushed the plate towards his husband, shooting him a pointed look. Jayce grimaced, picking up the sashimi with all the enthusiasm of a man talked out their favorite steakhouse for their dinner date to appease his spouse’s more adventurous palate. Jayce brought the sashimi to his mouth,

As Viktor watched with mounting intensity—

Only for Jayce to pull away from the fugu, tetrodotoxin Viktor had paid to have the waiter lace after the dish was brought out, looking slightly green before it had even touched his lips. “Viktor, you know I don’t like the texture of raw fish…” 

Viktor paused. Took a breath. One second. Then another. He wondered what would have happened if he snapped right then and there. Demanding his own husband to swallow the poison he’d specifically crafted to get him to croak after he’d failed time after time after time. 

Viktor shook the thought from his head. “You’re right,” he said, sighing. “Apologies, Jayce, I should have been—more considerate. I know this was a last-minute change and you enjoy our regular outings at our preferred restaurants.” 

Jayce actually appeared touched. 

Fine. 

“Your pick next time. Any place you like.” 

It wasn’t like this was going to work anyways. 

Viktor watched this man shake off not just brushes with death, but head-on collisions (sometimes in the literal sense).

From Jayce’s perspective, it likely appeared as though his spouse simply deflated at realizing his carelessness and short-sightedness at booking this restaurant without consulting his husband regarding the last-minute pivot to a dining option of Viktor’s (rare) choice. 

And as Viktor continued to deliberate on next steps and future attempts while maneuvering around his husband’s apparent impermeability to mortal danger, 

Jayce contemplated the piece of fish that stood in front of him.

“Well,” he said, carefully and gingerly picking the fugu sashimi back up with his chopsticks and dunking it generously in soy sauce. “I can still give it a try. Who knows! It’s probably miles better than the supermarket-grade stuff.” 

Viktor smiled at that. “For these prices, I should hope.”

His smile died as the fish disappeared into his husband’s gullet; wiped clean off his face as Jayce began coughing, wheezing, sputtering—

Choking.

Viktor stood frozen as Jayce began slamming his fist on the table, rice and wasabi jostling on artisanal ceramics. Viktor’s nigiri slipped from his chopsticks before anticipation gave rise to hope, 

Anticipation,

Bubbling, bursting joy—

And triumphant revelry—

“JAYCE!” 

Eyes turned to them as Viktor scrambled to his side, steadying himself out of his seat and not bothering to rest on his crutch despite the screaming pain in his leg. Viktor needed to see it. Needed to see Jayce turn blue. Needed to see the light leave the olivine in his eyes. Needed to see him rasp out his last words as his lungs failed to inflate, as he drowned on dry land, as his brain screamed for oxygen and for a rescue that would forever be too late—

Jayce let out an audible swallow. He turned to look at Viktor, pale-faced and looking ready to vomit. “...okay, I tried it. I still really…really don’t like the texture.” 

“You—you were choking—” Viktor stuttered. 

Jayce had the audacity to look sheepish. “Yeah, my body couldn’t decide if I should spit it out or just swallow the whole thing.” 

Viktor sagged against the side of the table. “Jayce, I thought you were dying.” 

Jayce looked like he wanted to argue that, well, he was, but decided against it at the tired look on Viktor’s face. “Nope!” he said instead, all easy charm and infuriating earnestness. “Not today!”

Back at square one. 

Shameful, really. By all accounts, Viktor should have been fascinated with his husband’s apparent penchant for escaping the claws of death and demise. Instead, it fueled a rather wrathful vengeance upon Viktor to call upon forces to bury Jayce 6 feet under. 

Others might call it obsession.

Viktor considered it as a competitive spirit. 

There had to be something. There had to exist some kind of explanation to this anomaly, and with it, a weakness he could exploit, a gap in his armor for Viktor to fatally strike. Viktor began observing his husband more closely. A previously unavailable feat given their positions in Hextech. However, since the lab explosion and the,

Ah,

Unfortunate incidents befalling Jayce, no one batted an eye when the Hextech founder and co-founder took an extended leave together as their company rebuilt, restructured, and reformed, complete with a new lab being constructed in the ashes of their old one. 

And besides, it wasn’t as though Viktor’s sudden attentiveness went unappreciated. Jayce commented here and there how he’d missed spending time together, glad that despite the circumstances, they had the time now.

That was another thing that had been driving Viktor to the brink of madness

(as though he hadn’t already arrived there years before)

Jayce had been more attentive to Viktor. More forward with his affections. Surprised him with little trips and dates, flowers and treats. A part of Viktor wondered if Jayce had caught on to his schemes. If Jayce was secretly terrified for his life. Maybe he (rightly) suspected his husband of the multiple attempts on his life and found that close proximity would allow him to catch Viktor in the act; that closer observation would grant him the evidence he needed to convict him. 

Viktor frowned as that hypothesis entered his mind and refused to leave, even as Jayce laid dozing and snoring into the crook of Viktor’s neck in their marriage bed. Viktor considered the possibilities in front of him, and which ones made for feasible options. 

Jayce Talis was a worthy opponent. Unlike the other playmates he’s had over the years, Jayce had been the only spouse to not only match Viktor’s intellect, but challenge it. Even now, Viktor found himself floundering in his own game, blocked and barricaded, and forced back to the same starting point again and again with every humiliating failure. 

Jayce Talis was a cockroach that refuses to die. Viktor could very well spend the rest of his life attempting to unravel the mystery of Jayce’s transcendence from death itself. He couldn’t very well just ask Jayce without incriminating himself. Without growing too curious, poking and prodding, and wanting to test the heights and limits (if there were any) to Jayce’s indestructibility. 

Viktor was sure to lose that way. 

Besides, Viktor had to re-orient himself to his original goal. By the time dawn had broken and by the time Jayce snorted and gone silent—a sure sign that he’d awoken and merely pretended to sleep to avoid Viktor starting their day far too early—

 There were other ways of getting rid of his husband.

“I want a divorce."

Jayce sat up, no longer feigning sleep as he looked at Viktor, eyes alert and regarding him, not with shock, but with—

Jayce frowned. "What—"

Genuine confusion. 

Viktor shrugged, refusing to meet his eyes. Refusing to entertain even the remotest possibility of showcasing weakness. "I simply think we've grown apart as people—"

Jayce scoffed, sitting up straight, naked beneath the sheets. As naked as Viktor after making love to him deep and slow until Viktor writhed beneath him, clawing at Jayce to fuck him like he meant it. 

Only for Viktor to whine, sob, and tremble when Jayce gave him everything he asked for. 

By all accounts, for Jayce, it shouldn’t make sense. Viktor wasn’t even sure if this was part of his game at all. Wasn’t ever sure he’d ever stopped playing. Until Jayce’s next words: "Viktor, you've tried to kill me five times this month, 

and now you wanna break up with me?"

Viktor froze, 

Pure fear shot into his veins, 

And feeling more vulnerable than he’d ever been—

Not because he was naked in front of the man who’d known of his schemes, 

But because Jayce remained calm the entire time as he spoke, continuing on like this was some kind of domestic dispute over dishes. Jayce heaved a great big sigh, scratching his head with growing frustration. “I get it! I haven't been as attentive these past few months while building Hextech. I know I’ve neglected you and our marriage, and I’m sorry for that, I really am.” 

Viktor’s eyes darted between Jayce and the closed door just over him. The door that Viktor needed his crutch to reach. 

The crutch that was currently on Jayce’s side of the bed. 

Viktor really should have considered his timing better. 

Jayce sighed, placing a large, warm hand over Viktor’s shoulder. The contact made Viktor flinch, suddenly aware of the very real danger in front of him. “But you could have just talked to me instead of feeding me poison, babe.”

Of the man that Viktor didn’t know how to kill. The man he didn’t know how to escape. 

“How?” Viktor asked, fear smothered temporarily with genuine curiosity. “When?” 

Jayce gave him a strange look. Not an unfamiliar one. Fond. Affectionate.

Warm. “Do you remember when we first met?” 

Recognition flickered through Viktor’s eyes as memories resurfaced. 

He had approached Viktor at his fourth husband’s funeral. Jayce introduced himself with a bouquet of lilies, orchids, jasmines, and forget-me-knots. Took a grieving widower’s hand and laid a warm kiss to Viktor’s cold skin and melting his cold demeanor from beneath the black lace casting spiderwebs over his apathetic eyes. 

Jayce chuckled. “I thought you were just another nuisance, to be honest.” Viktor watched as his husband leaned back on their headboard, making himself comfortable as he reminisced with fondness coating his words. “You were making my side job so much harder with all your little plots and schemes.” 

Viktor paled. Jayce knew about the other deaths too. 

“But with every case, you were creative, methodical, brilliant.” Jayce shook his head. “Saw yourself as different from the shitty men you put into those graves while sobbing into dry handkerchiefs.” 

Viktor continued to stare at him, wide-eyed. Every muscle in his body tensed, contracted and coiled, unsure where to go,

Where to run. 

“Did you know the smell of death grows stronger with every life you take?” Jayce noted, as if he were commenting on the weather, or the perfume that Viktor wore at that gala they were in the other night. Jayce continued on, almost fondly. “I used to find the scent disgusting. Like an unholy mix of funeral flowers and rotting earth and worms.” “

“Y-You knew—” 

“Of course I did,” Jayce said, as if it were the simplest thing in the world. “Who do you think was cleaning up after your mess?”

Viktor sucked in a breath. That was impossible—he had airtight everything—

“Who do you think made you untouchable when investigators started sniffing around too close?” Jayce said this matter-of-factly. And it was true. Many of Viktor’s husbands had families that were all-too happy to incriminate the charity-cases their sons had taken in. Jayce leaned in close, his lips just barely brushing against the shell of Viktor’s ear:

“Who do you think dragged those assholes down to burn where they deserved?” 

Viktor’s eyes widened, the truth wrestling with logic, with science and rationality. 

But after all Viktor’s witnessed, 

After months of trying to take this man’s life, 

It became clear. “You’re—” 

“Still Jayce Talis,” his husband said, pressing a warm kiss to his forehead, right between his brows. “The man you married, the man who co-founded Hextech with you—”

Viktor swallowed. “You told me you worked at the funeral home when we met. Said the cemetery was family business.” 

Jayce gave him a wry smile. “The graves are ours, that’s right. All graves are, marked or not.” Viktor considered his words. Registered the sounds, the syllables, the intonation and prosody. Completely normal, like Jayce was making casual conversation. But Viktor couldn’t understand. “But that’s not what I wanted to devote my life to.”

Even when Jayce was laying the truth right in front of him. “What do you mean?”

“I wanted to do something more, not just clean up after what’s left.” Jayce shrugged. “I have pride in our family’s legacy and I understand the importance of my role, but I’ll admit, it wasn’t until after meeting you that I’ve put my real dreams into action.” He chuckled.” I’ve upset my mamá by neglecting the family business and relegating it and automating the process—approvals, departures, assigned destinations, and whatnot—” 

Approvals.

Departures.

Assigned destinations.

Bureaucratic language for a natural process. A much less natural process than Viktor ever anticipated, perhaps. 

“This…this is insane,” Viktor croaked. “You’re telling me that y-you’re—” 

“Death?” Jayce cocked a brow. Tilted his head to the side. Expressive. Human. 

Undying, despite all of Viktor’s earnest attempts. 

“And what—” The words failed to form, no matter what Viktor did. Attempted speech was sputtered out with incredulity, every ounce of sanity in him demanding to re-examine what he knew, to return him back to the realm of reality. 

And yet, sitting with his husband here, in their marriage bed, the morning where Viktor had just announced his intent to divorce him after several attempts of murdering his husband in cold blood,

Nothing made more sense at the moment. 

Viktor remained silent; Jayce remained patient. He was a patient man when he wanted to be. Particularly when there was something he wanted. 

Particularly when he knew just how to wear Viktor down to get it. “What do you want me to do with this information?” 

Jayce sent him a wry smile. He turned, and handed him his crutch. “You can file those papers, Viktor. You can draw up your demands, your terms, walk away with half of everything or just bleed me dry. You can start the cycle over again, with another man who makes you unhappy, another man that triggers that instinct inside you—” 

Indignation flared within him. “No, I—” 

It was justified.

It wasn’t justice.

But it was something that Viktor was owed— 

An inevitability. 

But Jayce saw right through his veiled excuses, the delicately fabricated lies casting a fractured truth like spiderwebs. Even then, Jayce remained patient. Understanding. “No matter what, Viktor. I’ll always be here. And when the road ends and you have nowhere left and the clock runs out,

I’ll be there.”

It wasn’t a threat. 

“No one can escape me, least of all you.” The finality echoed in the air of their bedroom, in the distance between their bodies, where hours before, they’d pressed against one another, skin to skin, the space between them atom-tiny. “And when that day comes, I will take you home where you belong.” 

It was something that Viktor owed. 

An inevitability. 

As certain as death and taxes. 

“Or…you can stay here,” Jayce murmured, his voice an enticing lilt, gently guiding the crutch down on the bed. Loving. Noxious. Cyanide-sweet with arsenic-affection. “With me. Your husband. The man you married—

The monster whose game you tried to play.”

It wasn’t really a choice. Not with the way Jayce presented the options. An obvious bid for surrender. The alternative was temporary. A simple posture for power, a hollow victory, a play for control over a force that Viktor had no chance in winning against. 

So why did the lack of choice seem so freeing and foreign all of a sudden?

“And you’d still want me?” Broken, broken Viktor, whose edges were too sharp to hold, whose peach-bruised heart held teeth and nails inside. “Even after everything?” 

“Oh, Viktor…” Jayce breathed, eyes aglow with love and something else in the darkness of his expression. Something that made Viktor finally believe in the forever Jayce promised him in their wedding vows. “I wouldn’t want you any other way.” 

Chapter Text

Jayce wouldn’t call himself superstitious.

But if he didn’t, Viktor would call him a liar.

His Catholic upbringing certainly didn’t help with regards to certain taboo subjects—

(Notwithstanding his glaring affections for his best friend in university—)

But there was something soothing and familiar when it came to certain rules and rituals. There were structures, patterns, customs, and cultures that were engraved in every child that shuddered at the thought of being reprimanded by a nun during weekly CCD.

“So, you’re saying,” Viktor said, sweet, lilting voice in his delectable (and vaguely Eastern European) accent, “That religious trauma is to blame for your paranoia?”

Cruel words aside, Jayce could listen to him talk forever. He’d really like that opportunity. “It’s not paranoia!”

Sadly, Viktor’s lack of self-preservation proved a hindrance to that dream.

“Viktor,” Jayce tried again, reining in his voice to keep it from trembling with fear and with barely-contained irritation. “Weren’t you just saying that you’ve been receiving phone calls in the dead of night?”

Viktor shifted in his seat, nursing the warm cup of sweet milk in his hands. “Eh, midnight isn’t entirely that late—”

While Jayce’s coffee was left untouched. Avoiding caffeine was probably for the best. “And didn’t you just say that when you picked up, all you could hear was heavy breathing?”

Viktor shrugged. “I had assumed the person calling to talk to me about my car’s extended warranty simply forgot their script.”

“Viktor.” Jayce attempted a firmer approach. Squared shoulders. Furrowed brows. Lips pulled to a frown. Looming over Viktor in his own dining room, having barged in late that night to convince his best friend once and for all to finally take these sinister circumstances into grave consideration!

“Jayce,” Viktor said, bright amber eyes meeting his gaze evenly. Tiny little smile on his smug face.

The face Jayce was unfortunately very weak to. Prior fervor doused to mere embers in seconds. Rendered utterly useless by the whine that came out Jayce in the next breath. “C’mon! That’s creepy! You have to admit that at least!” How embarrassing.

Oh well. A for effort, right?

Viktor nodded, humming as sipped his sweet milk. “Yes, as someone with a phobia of public speaking, answering the phone to a stranger is deeply unnerving.”

Jayce dragged his hand down his face, ready to gouge his own eyes out the longer his best friend played this game. “Viktor, you know that’s not what I meant!”

Viktor hid a grin behind the rim of his cup, drinking primly with practiced ease. After all, they’ve treaded this topic time and time again. “These series of odd occurrences seem to bother you far more than it does the actual person experiencing them,” Viktor observed astutely. “Now, I wonder why that is—”

“Because you’re not seeing the danger!”

“Danger?” Viktor blinked, cocking his head to the side. “From a phone call? Jayce, it’s not as if they told me I had 7 days to live.”

Jayce groaned. The fact of the matter was that Jayce was well aware of how insane he sounded, but he was past the point of posterity! His best friend was living through all the telltale signs of horror movie tropes and Viktor refused to see it! “Well, what about the weird tapping?!”

Viktor frowned. “Tapping?”

“Yeah! In the middle of the night! The last time I slept over!” Jayce admitted it hadn’t been his proudest moment. In fact, he was rather glad Viktor was already fast asleep in his bed when Jayce yelped at the sudden rhythmic tapping from the second story window and practically bolted down the stairs from the guest bedroom, flung Viktor’s door open, and crawled under his sheets in a quivering, trembling mess.

Viktor hadn’t been the least bit perturbed. Only rolling over to his side to amicably give Jayce more room.

“Ah,” Viktor said thoughtfully. “I must have missed it. On account of your generous snoring—”

“I do not snore,” Jayce Talis, chronic snorer, sniffed. “And you’re missing the point!”

“It could have been a tree branch,” Viktor reasoned. “Those have points.”

“The branches don’t even reach that far!” Jayce sighed, reining himself in. “Viktor, you have to admit that there are some weird things that are happening in this old house!”

“It is an old house,” Viktor agreed. “It’s not any weirder than the people that lived here.”

Jayce wanted to argue—

But Viktor was right.

Something weird was living in this house.

From the corner of Jayce’s eye, a shadow danced across the end of the hall. The lights flickered in time with its stilted movements. Jayce tensed, gripping his cup. Jayce sat frozen, knowing if he told Viktor to turn around now, it would dissipate entirely.

Just like it always did. 

“Lots of history. Lots of repairs needing to be done. Many of which could go bump in the night—” Viktor counted off with a finger.

Most of which Viktor wholeheartedly ignored. Or was simply oblivious to.

“It’s not just inside the house,” Jayce insisted. “Out your window, I keep seeing—the same van parked in your neighborhood—”

“Could it be,” Viktor gasped. “That they’re a neighbor?”

“You’re impossible,” Jayce groaned. “And would a neighbor keep changing their plates every time I swing by?”

“Perhaps it’s a different vehicle,” Viktor shrugged.

Somewhere in the house, a door slammed shut. A floorboard creaked. A book was pushed off a desk.

Viktor ignored them. “Someone could own a business and have multiple vehicles as part of their fleet—”

“You’ve got an answer for everything, huh?” Jayce huffed, crossing his arms.

“I try.” Viktor set his mug down. “I’d like to think it helps to see things from a different perspective. But our conversations have become quite cyclical, haven’t they?”

An odd tone. Strained. 

Tired.

Jayce frowned. “Only because you refuse to listen to my side of things.”

It wasn’t easy.

He wasn’t exaggerating when one day, a bolt out of the blue, the universe deposited the most infuriating and most perfect complement person to Jayce in every way,

So of course, the monkey’s paw curled, sticking a fat middle finger right at Jayce the moment he stepped into Viktor’s house and found the most clichéd setting for a horror flick. The subgenres were even beginning to mix and mingle teetering between slashers and thrillers from the forces trying to tear their way inside, to some creature feature film with supernatural horror elements of whatever was trying to escape its walls,

Complete with the most oblivious horror movie protagonist imaginable.

Viktor gave a smile. “Did you believe tonight would be any different?”

A flash of lighting. A roll of thunder. The forecast didn’t predict rain tonight.

Jayce bit his bottom lip. “I believe that maybe this time, I could change your mind.” He straightened in his chair, casting furtive glances from the hall. 

The light at the end had gone out. Only a black maw greeted him from the dining room entrance. Viktor remained oblivious, sitting directly behind it. 

“I came here to tell you that I think I know the reason why your doorbell keeps going off past midnight.” Jayce watched from the corner of his eyes as the shadow hovered closer,

Just the faintest trace of movement, sinking up the corners of the walls,

All while Viktor stared, unimpressed at having his evening interrupted by his best friend barging through his door to restart this tired argument all over again. “I thought we both agreed it was an electrical issue.”

“No, V, I swear, I saw—” Jayce took a deep breath. Despite how every hair at the back of his neck stood on end. “There was someone outside your door. At 2 AM. From the last time I crashed here.”

“Jayce, that’s—” Viktor froze. He frowned. “Hang on—

What did you see?” 

Viktor’s voice was deathly quiet. 

An odd reaction.

An honest reaction. 

It was difficult to describe, truthfully. It was—eerie. Seeing a silhouette in black. Jayce had been frozen in place when he saw it. Unable to move. Unable to speak. Fear crawling up his spine with all eight of its legs. Soon, Jayce understood why Viktor couldn’t sleep. 

The wailing from the other side of the door was deafening.

For a moment, Jayce thought he’d done it. That he’d finally convinced Viktor of his legitimate fears for him inside this house. “Jayce.” Viktor sighed. A soft little hiss that spoke volumes than a simple scream or bellow. And Jayce was well aware of the venom he could carry. “She might have needed help, had gotten lost, or drunk—”

And no poison was worse than the person he lo—the person he admired the most brushing him off, placating his very real concerns with dismissive disapproval. 

Jayce hung his head in defeat, fighting back the urge to groan. What happened to that dramatic reaction earlier?! “I appreciate that you care,” Viktor reassured; a nice consolation prize. “You know I do.”

But it wasn’t enough. Jayce knew what he saw. Knew what he heard. Knew that there was something very real and very dangerous festering in this place. “Then why won’t you let me help? Why won’t you listen to me?”

“Jayce…” Viktor’s eyes flickered to a portrait on the wall. The one whose baleful gaze seemed to follow people. The one of Viktor’s adoptive father, the man with the single silverstrike eye. “All my life, I’ve had similar incidents. It honestly doesn’t bother me anymore.”

Jayce gave a hard swallow.

That had been the first Jayce ever heard of this.  

This revelation somehow made everything worse. “Sometimes they’re explained away by the most mundane happenstance.” Viktor watched as a crow perched itself on the windowsill, tapping its beak against the glass experimentally. “Sometimes it really is just strange timing.”

Intellectualization.

Viktor’s preferred coping mechanism.

Jayce slid down the seat of his chair. Cyclical, indeed. “All right, then humor me: what else could that wailing have been? Other than someone drunk or lost or whatever.”

Viktor gave a thoughtful hum as Jayce dug half-moons into the meat of his palm with the memory of every agonizing scream. “Hm…possibly a very real dangerous person looking for an opportunity to rob me blind.” Viktor looked up, giving a half-hearted smile. “I’m joking.”

Unbelievable.

“Jokes are supposed to be funny,” Jayce hissed. “I called you when I saw—whatever that is, I called you repeatedly. What were you doing during all this?”

“Sleeping?” Viktor laughed. “As most people are wont to do at 2AM?”

Jayce fixed him with a hard stare. “I thought you couldn’t sleep because of the screaming.”

“Exhaustion won out in the end.”

A bone-deep exhaustion wormed its way to Jayce’s marrow. “V, you really need to move somewhere safer—”

“The Lanes are my home,” Viktor started. His eyes didn’t meet Jayce’s gaze. “This house was all that was left to me by Doctor Reveck.”

Jayce’s jaw tensed. The subject of Viktor’s childhood was always touchy. This house and Viktor’s past was one of the few things that Jayce struggled to navigate through when it came to Viktor. “Your adoptive father? Didn’t you say he was an asshole?”

“Not those exact words.” Viktor gave a weak chuckle. His eyes fell on his cup. Half-empty. “But there are certain—” Viktor paused. Searching—

No,

Reframing. Reforming. Restructuring. 

“Legacies, we leave behind.”

Redirecting. “Legacies…” Jayce scoffed. “Worth being haunted by?”

Viktor gave a laugh. It settled hollowly in the space between them. “I think I’ve been haunted by worse, Jayce.”

It wasn’t something that Viktor liked to talk about. His orphanhood. His tumultuous relationship with the man that adopted him. The poverty that he’d lived in, clawing his way out through natural brilliance and bone-breaking hard work. Both things Jayce naturally admired of him.

“I didn’t want to tell you, but…” Viktor leaned in forward, eyes shifting side to side. Jayce swallowed, his gaze flickering to the shadow, hovering in the corner, avoiding Viktor’s line of sight entirely. “Did you know, there’s an old well at the back of the house and some nights, a mysterious VHS plays in one of the old televisions upstairs—”

“You’re such an asshole,” Jayce spat out, trying to keep his lips from breaking into a rueful grin. “I’m here, worried sick about you, and you’re making jokes about Sadako.”

“About who?”

“You know what, never mind.” A travesty, really. The original Ringu had far more substance than the American release.

“It’s all the same, isn’t it? Things that go bump in the night.” Viktor tilted his head, just slightly to the side, the corner of his eyes meeting the creeping tendrils of an inky void, peeking just behind the archway. “Do you know what ghost stories are, Jayce?”

Jayce shifted uneasily in his seat. “Is that a trick question?”

“The oldest ghost stories originated from Mesopotamia. As old as civilization itself. Stories of demons. Death and tragedy befalling the living after enacting improper burial rites.” Viktor stirred his sweet milk, half-empty, entirely lukewarm, sweet sediment settling in the bottom of his cup. “It’s a reflection of what a culture dictated as important to them. Death and disease from an improper burial…nowadays, we can understand what was happening—that an improperly buried corpse brought with it bacteria and vectors like insects that spread disease, alongside rain and rivers dispersing them to water supplies and to the food they ate.”

Jayce hadn’t signed up for a history lesson. Still. “So, an explanation for a natural phenomenon created from a lack of understanding?”

Why did Viktor know all this? 

“No.” The edges of Viktor’s lips lifted to a smile. “It’s a reflection of what people fear. It’s a reflection of culture.” No—  “It’s a reflection of history and what people held important to them.”—a grimace. “You talked about patterns earlier, right? About how comforting they could be.”

Jayce should have known not to open the conversation about his Catholic upbringing. “Why are you asking me this?” Viktor always got a little weird about faith. About belief. 

About possibilities beyond. “Because I wanted to know what you hold dear,” he said, soft, lilting voice sending a shudder down Jayce’s spine. “And if it’s a reflection of what you’re scared of.”

You.

You’re what I hold dear.

And you’re what I’m scared of. “I’m…worried about you, Viktor,” he said carefully. “I’m worried that I don’t have an explanation for what's going on around you.” He swallowed past the lump in his throat, feeling his cheeks burn. “And I’m worried that I won't be able to keep you safe.”

Viktor looked pleased with his answer. “Ah, it hasn’t hurt me yet, right?”

“Yet.” Like Viktor was expecting it. “I don’t want to wait for it to get that far.”  Jayce took in a breath. 

He knew Viktor didn’t like him pointing out these incidents as they were happening. Liked it even less when Jayce entered his home unannounced. 

(The one benefit to an old house:

Failing locks.) 

But Viktor could forgive him just this once, right? “Just now, your cupboard opened by itself. You didn’t even notice.”

Viktor turned behind him. “Oh, there must be a draft—”

“Opening that middle one? Right there? You always keep the windows closed at night, V.” Jayce grew tired. Tired of these excuses. “Said that the cold drags in death.”

“That is true…I learned that from my mother.” Treading the same arguments over and over again. “The windows were open in our old home. Right before she passed away.”

“Viktor…”

“Belief is a powerful thing, Jayce.” His voice was stern. But it was neither a reprimand, nor a warning. “But I’ve learned to be careful in not placing my faith in things that ultimately bear no meaning.” It sounded much more like defeat. “That’s what we do, you know? Shadows in the dark. Strange noises. Pareidolia. Pattern recognition.” Viktor gave him a pointed look. “Assigning meaning to the wrong thing.”

“So, you think I’m crazy?”

“No, Jayce.” Viktor sighed. “I don’t think that at all.” He sounded earnest. Jayce would have to take his word for it. “I think we just have very different…perspectives about what we’re seeing.”

Jayce scoffed. His coffee had long grown cold. Long grown stale, likely. “It all comes back to that, huh?” 

Remaining untouched. “Our conversations have become quite cyclical,” Viktor observed. 

Jayce nodded. He watched the clock. Frozen in place. It was 1:12AM when their conversation started. “We’ve been going in circles about this for ages.” It was 1:12AM when the arms stopped moving. 

“Yes.” Viktor nodded. There was a tiredness in his eyes. “We have.”

Viktor hadn’t known why Doctor Reveck left him the house.

It was a foul legacy to inherit.

Experiments, he said, before slamming the basement door shut. For the sake of progress. For the sake of—

Viktor wasn’t sure. All he knew was to ignore the screams. Ignore the scratching in the walls. Ignore the stains of red and the scent of bleach soaking into the wood of the floors. 

Viktor, in many ways, knew he was complicit with the events that occurred there.

Therefore, he too must be to blame…right?

Echoes. Memories. Something almost tangible in the space between Viktor’s reality and something far beyond he can ever hope to comprehend.

Anguish.

Grief.

Fury.

Fear.

They clung to the walls like grime. They permeated the air like smoke. Their oppressive presence, a constant weight in his chest, a perpetual strangle in his throat.

They were trapped here as much as Viktor was.

Traveling through these halls in perpetual clockwork. If they had legs, they would have worn tread marks through the wooden floors. Frozen in place; frozen in time, winding back in incessant loops. Every passing hour reliving the same day again and again within these walls.

Meanwhile, the outside world shifted.

Investigations were still underway. Viktor was aware his phone was tapped. Knew of the men in suits and innocuous vans and the plainclothes neighbors that surveyed the streets too frequently.

Then there was Jayce.

Wonderful, perfect, golden boy Jayce—

Who took a shine to him in Jayce’s first year of university. Whose presence in Viktor’s life made for a blessing and Jayce’s sole mission to pry open all of Viktor’s secrets a living nightmare.

Caring.

Concerned.

—Curious.

Sitting there, across the table from Viktor, sipping on his coffee as he remarked on the strange events throughout his stay, sleeping over for a joint project due by the end of the week. Jayce, who shuddered and shrieked at the knocks in the dead of night and the shadows that slithered through the corners of rooms,

Accusing Viktor of being blind to it all.

An age-old discussion held over sweet milk and coffee; over takeout and midterm study guides; over endless nights that never saw daybreak.

“I believe that maybe this time, I could change your mind.”

Viktor tried changing his mind too. 

Told him not to visit.

Told him not to come unannounced.

Told him to never enter the house without Viktor present. 

Told him to let the sleeping hounds lie. 

Told him to stop chasing shadows. To ignore the cries. The taps on the window. The scratches in the walls.

“Ignore them, Viktor.” The Doctor placed a heavy hand on his thin shoulder. “Lest they think you one of their own.” 

“Lest they take you for their own.” 

Ximena hasn’t stopped her search. Hasn’t stopped searching from the dead of dawn to the grave of night. Hasn’t stopped patrolling the streets, The Lanes, keeping a cold case warm with her own blood, sweat, and tears. 

Hasn’t stopped coming to wail at the maw of the beast that swallowed her son whole and left not even a crumb for her to bury. 

Meanwhile, Viktor pretended to sleep right through it. Turned over in his bed and ignored the figures huddled in the corner,

Looking upon him with judgment,

Empty eyes,

Wire-thin mouths in a tight line—

While Viktor continued to live on, an empty husk, a shell of man, haunted by more than just the lost souls and demons clawing their way out of the bones of this place. A living ghost among the restless dead. He locked the door behind him without fail every night.

It only took once to make that mistake. 

He wouldn’t make it again.

“You know,” Jayce said, greeting him from the dining room table. Handsome. Bright-eyed. Twenty-four years of stubbornness and headstrong curiosity that proved more destructive than any storybook monster. “Scary-strict nuns aside, I think there’s something kinda comforting about living by a set of rules to follow. It’s the patterns, you know? It’s comforting, knowing what to expect when you’re aware of the signs.” 

“So, you’re saying,” Viktor said, stepping through the archway of the dining room table. He joined Jayce at the table. Suddenly twenty-five, and indulging his sweet tooth with a warm cup of sweet milk that somehow never went stale. 

But in his bones, Viktor was heartsick and carrying more regret than this room could carry, 

“That religious trauma is to blame for your paranoia?

Viktor smiled, treading the same conversations, tracing Jayce’s voice with his own ten-year-tired script, knowing he’d find Jayce in the kitchen later, opening the cupboard for a dusty container of instant coffee, knowing he’d find Jayce wandering the halls and its flickering lights and failing wiring; knowing he’d find Jayce standing at the corner of his room with empty eyes and a wire-thin smile—

Before it started all over again. 

Knowing it was futile. Knowing he was trapped here, as much as Jayce was. 

Knowing he’d keep coming back every night,

Until he joined Jayce to haunt these halls together. 

“Our conversations have become quite cyclical, haven’t they?”

Chapter Text

Viktor dreamt of that night sometimes.

Red mask.

Crooked horns.

A long, winding corridor.

Viktor and his cane, clicking along the uneven ground, his useless legs unable to run.

The sound of merriment, startled screams, the hiss of fog machines, and the whirr of animatronics and special effects muted by the walls closing in,

And his own telltale heart, thudding frantically in his chest, birdbone ribs aching with every knife-sharp breath.

All the while, The Devil kept pace,

Trailing him like a shadow, the gleam in its plastic smile cutting through the darkness, the sheen of something sharp and bloodstained reflecting off the flickering lights,

And Viktor,

Who can’t keep pace,

Who has nowhere to go,

Who was pinned like a fly in a web, fear like spidersilk tightening around his limbs as frail bones finally failed him, could do little more than look behind him, look upon his ill fate, and meet his end with a flash of a blade,

The cold mercy of a slash against the scream locked in his throat—

“V!”

Viktor jolted awake.

For a moment, he laid there, frozen, staring wide-eyed at the darkness that greeted him. He was only vaguely aware of his own breathing, much less the comforting murmurs of his partner next to him. Slowly, Viktor’s muscles relaxed and breath entered his lungs. Jayce pressed a kiss to his temple, rubbing his back and squeezing him tight.

A nightmare.

Of course.

“You’re all right.” The reassurance did little to calm his pounding heart, body still on high-alert for the cut of a blade, the chase of a predator to vulnerable prey.

Viktor never screamed in his nightmares. Never cried, or called out for help. He never sobbed, wailed, not even whimpered—he never made a single noise. He wasn’t the type to toss and turn, wasn’t the type to grow restless unless his leg and back ached. As with most things that worried Jayce about him, Viktor bore it in silence. 

But Jayce knew anyways, because he knew Viktor in and out, like no one else. His signs were subtle. Changes in breathing pattern, twitches of his leg, a grimace on his face—

No one paid attention to Viktor like Jayce did. 

And that was what scared Jayce the most. 

That Viktor would fade in the background. That he would be in danger and there’d be none the wiser. That he’d slip away, unnoticed for even a second,

And he’d be gone forever. A face on a poster. A memory in photographs and memoirs. A lonely funeral without a body to bury in the ground.

Jayce dreamed of that night, too.

“Nightmare again?” Jayce murmured, holding him to his chest. Viktor immediately found his heartbeat. Strong, steady. Grounding.

Viktor squeezed his eyes shut. No words left his mouth. He simply nodded. Jayce pressed a kiss to the crown of his head. Viktor focused on his breathing. On the familiar scent of his partner. Of the familiar shadows casted by the dim daybreak in their bedroom.

Somewhere in their apartment, Rio purred softly in her sleep. There was a distinct lack of snoring, so they’d have to check if Blitz locked himself in the bathroom again.

The tension slowly dissipated, a haze of cautious relief flooding into his senses.

Jayce ran his hands over his back, his own breathing evening out. Frustration slowly mounted as the daze and dread died down beneath a quiet, solemn tide: the constant ebb and flow of anxiety, frustration, and quiet, constant horror.

It’s been almost a year.

“It’s all right, V,” Jayce reassured, his touch warm and soothing. “You’re safe here.”

Viktor settled down, his breaths evening out as eventually, Jayce’s snores filled the room and rumbled deep within his chest. All the while, Viktor kept his eyes open. On the faint silhouettes and outlines in the familiar room.

No Devils. No monsters. No shadows chasing him in the dark. Instead, Viktor continued to stare, eyes trained on the window, curtains fluttering gently as the ceiling fan hummed,

The early morning rays catching on the opened latch.

“We don’t have to do this, you know.”

Viktor shrugged. “We don’t,” he agreed. He took Jayce’s hand and entered the store anyways. “But it’s not every day that Cassandra Kiramman allows her daughter full reign of the Kiramman estate for a party.”

Not that Cassandra Kiramman knew about that last part. Strict households and upholding a legacy no one asked for, Cait had wanted to keep the invitations intimate, guests limited to those Caitlyn knew by name.

Naturally, it ballooned out of proportion.

All the more reason not to miss it. Viktor was sure that Jayce had missed embarrassing his “Sprout.” In fact, Viktor knew Jayce had missed a lot of things this past year, given…conflicting schedules. Bad timing. 

Different priorities.

Jayce wrapped an arm around Viktor’s waist, looking ready to argue. But Viktor merely raised a brow before Jayce sighed out, “I mean, if you’re sure—” All while ducking away to hide a small smile.

“I’m sure,” Viktor affirmed.

“Great!” Jayce started, clearing his throat to control some of his enthusiasm. “I mean that’s good—you know, Vi’s little siblings have been asking about you too, and—” Jayce trailed off. “—I think it’ll be nice to see them again.”

The pleased little purr in Viktor’s mind came to an abrupt silence.

Right.

Things up until that point last year had been going rather swimmingly. Viktor found himself as one of the few souls that genuinely connected with Vi’s little sister. Explosive and unpredictable personality aside, she showed immense skill and talent for engineering. She was also one of the few people that could tolerate Viktor’s rather—

Blunt methods of feedback,

(Even if she’d been driven by sheer spite to improve in order to prove him wrong.) 

BUt that was in the past, however, just a tentative thread between two outcasted Zaunites, now tainted by the stain of the events from last  year,

The events of that night,

At the old camp where Vi and her little siblings poured their time, energy, and efforts into crafting mechanical mastery and mayhem. A passion project forcibly closed, its abandonment left indefinite at the peak of the season as an investigation took place.

An investigation that ran in circles.

The number?

From a burner phone.

The message?

Sent via a prepaid SIM card.

Its location?

Found discarded in the fair grounds.

A dead end.

Halloween came and went. Jayce locked the doors to their apartment after Viktor left a bowl of candy for the trick-or-treaters. Jayce checked the camera aimed at their door at every visit.

No Devils.

Just children in costume and the occasional plainclothes bastard swiping a treat. Viktor curled up against him on the couch, his eyes unfocused and paying no mind to the film playing. 

After the case was dropped, the next few months consisted of Viktor watching doorways and windows, flinching at flashes of red. Jayce didn’t fare much better. There was solace and safety in being together, especially after the lack of evidence and lack of harm befalling a fully grown adult eventually led to the closing of the investigation and lukewarm recommendations from authorities to keep an eye out.

From then on, it became exceedingly rare for Viktor and Jayce to be without each other.

Individual hobbies gave way to shared activities. Outings over an hour was almost immediately followed by Jayce’s frantic texting to insistent, demanding video calls.

“It’s a good thing we like each other,” Jayce chuckled, the joke landing flat after Viktor got home late from the pet store, leading Jayce to panic after Viktor failed to pick up after the first two rings.

Time served little effect as a cure, but every passing day without incident was a balm over the worst of their fears.

But the hypervigilance never truly waned.  

“We should do a couples costume,” Jayce suggested, herding Viktor over towards the aisle down the row from the changing rooms.

Viktor grimaced.

Jayce sent him a pout. “What? C’mon, it’s not that embarrassing, is it?”

Embarrassing? To be seen with Jayce? Who was leagues out of his…well, league? He had to be joking, right? Viktor shook his head. “No, I think that’s fine, I just find the selections…” Viktor gingerly picked up a pair of costumes from the rack. A cheap foam tunic with poorly printed bright imaging smeared on one side. Peanut Butter and Jelly.  “…a bit ridiculous.”

“It’s Halloween, V,” Jayce chuckled. “It’s supposed to be ridiculous.”

Viktor frowned as he combed through the rack. One atrocity at a time. “I thought Halloween was supposed to be frightening?”

“It definitely could.” Jayce shrugged as he started on the displays hanging on the wall. “But that’s not for everyone.” He hummed for a moment before his eyes lit up in mischief. “Hah! Look at this!”

Viktor turned, brows furrowed. He glanced at the packaging and—yes it was just as he feared. “A hotdog and ketchup?” Viktor shook his head. “Really, Jayce?”

“Well, I mean, fitting right?”

Viktor shot him a quizzical look. “Did you just refer to yourself as a weenie—”

“I meant more about the sausage and the ah…squirt bottle.” Viktor sent him a flat look. Jayce sniffed. “Besides, it’s not like you ever complain about my meat—”

“Enough,” Viktor hissed, face flushed a deep, indignant red.

Jayce took that as his cue to rifle through the rest of the Couples Costume section. The costumes were admittedly—as questionable as Viktor posed. But they weren’t without their humor. 

“No. No,” Viktor shook his head. “Absolutely not.”

Not that humor would save them from being atrocities “Aw, but come on! Plug and outlet? That’s gold!” Viktor sent a withering gaze to the polyester mix burning his retinas. Jayce put it back with a chuckle. “Don’t worry, there must be something—        ”

“We really don’t have to come in matching costumes, Jayce—” Viktor started.

“Yeah, but,” Jayce shrugged, giving him a grin. “It’ll be easier right?”

Easier to become Jinx’s and her siblings’ direct targets? Viktor wanted to argue.

“That way if I need to come looking for you—”

Viktor froze.

“—I can just ask where my other half is.”

Viktor turned to him, something like fresh hurt smarting over the bones of his ribs, pressing against his thin sternum, an old wound, a constant pressure just made heavier with the admission.

“Jayce…”

Jayce put down the costume in his hands. He turned to meet his gaze. His eyes were tired. Dark circles made more apparent under the harsh fluorescent lights and the splash of color around them. “…don’t give me that look, V. It’ll be a year to that day tomorrow.” His eyes shifted to the floor. “That was the most frightening night of my life.”

A shared burden. Viktor knew it well.

“I know,” he said, touching Jayce’s arm. Viktor found Jayce’s large hand swallowing his in a tight grip. Warm. Reassuring. “I’m glad you found me.”

Constricting. “We don’t have to go,” Jayce reiterated.

“We don’t,” Viktor agreed. “But I want to.” He squeezed back. “I don’t want that night to haunt us for the rest of our lives, Jayce.”

“Okay…okay.” Jayce gave him a soft smile. Viktor found the corners of his lips lifting in return. “No matching costumes,” he agreed and Viktor breathed out a sigh of relief. “Even though I thought the nun and priest thing was pretty hot—”

Viktor sent him a look. “Your mother will charge through the door herself to drag you back to Catholic school.”

Jayce gave a shudder. “That’s more terrifying than anything here at the store.” He paused. A flicker of emotion flitting in the light of his eyes. “—but we’ll stick together, yeah? During the party, I mean.”

Viktor nodded. “Naturally. I don’t plan on wandering off.”

Jayce chuckled. “You never plan to, but well…even the best laid plans of mice and men oft go awry…” Jayce’s eyes brightened. “Oh, hey, that’s an idea—”

“No,” Viktor interjected flatly.

“I could be the mouse.” Viktor considered it for perhaps a second before ultimately shaking his head. Jayce shrugged, attempting to hide a chuckle. “Fine, fine, we’ll find something else to keep you out of trouble…” Jayce reached into the bin of miscellaneous accessories, only to fish out—

“Handcuffs?” Viktor made an exaggerated gasp. “Not outside the bedroom, Jayce,” Viktor chided, just loud enough for a store worker to hear.

They ducked away, retreating, but not without sending Jayce and Viktor a judging glare.

“You’re such a dick,” Jayce hissed, irritation ruined by a snicker.

Viktor shook his head, heading towards the individual adult costumes, and praying he’d find something at least passably appropriate for the occasion. “Says the man willing to parade himself in a hotdog costume.”

“100% prime beef, baby,” Jayce purred at his side.

Viktor rolled his eyes, valiantly (and hopelessly) trying to keep the affection from his eyes.A fruitless effort, as most things were with Jayce. 

The seasonal store was admittedly large in this location. Even after clearing that section, there was ample stock lining the rows and rows of aisles and shelves despite Halloween drawing so near. Costumes sets, accessories, shoes, hats–

Masks–

Viktor stopped.

Froze, mid-step in the middle of the store. 

Breath caught in his throat, air trapped in a merciless chokehold. 

The color drained from his face and the grip on his cane turned bone-white. Viktor continued to stare across the wall. As if trying to process what he was seeing right in front of him. Unsure how to respond.

The color was a blinding scarlet, so different under the fluorescent light than the shadows of flickering strobes and the gloom of haunting memories.

The crooked horns. The sharp, plastic smile.

The face that haunted shadows in the dark and dreams in the dead of night.

The Devil,

Right on display, its empty eyes never leaving Viktor’s frozen form.

The light and laughter of the moment left them, snuffed out like a flame. Darkness crept from the corner of Viktor’s eyes. He was vaguely aware of Jayce calling his name.

He was vaguely aware of someone screaming.

(But Viktor never screamed—)

“Oh! Jayce, Viktor! Welcome.” Cait greeted them sweetly. The royal indigos of her elaborate witch hat suited her well. She opened the door wider, gesturing for them to come inside. Music and laughter flooded down the halls as the pair entered the majestic maw of the Kiramman manor.

“You really went all out with this, Sprout,” Jayce whistled, turning to admire the décor. “Floating” candles, dark “clouds” obscuring the ceilings as lights flashed to mimic lightning strikes across the faux sky.

Cait shot him a smile. “Well, I had a lot of help—”

“Ya finally made it.” Vi clasped a hand over Viktor’s shoulder. She nudged him, wolf ears and an easy smile flashing her canines complimenting her costume perfectly. “Didn’t think you had it in ya. We took bets to see if Jayce would let you out without a leash tonight.”

Caitlyn’s smile faltered ever-so-slightly.

Jayce frowned. “Vi—”

Vi shrugged. “Relax. Zaunites are made of tougher stuff, right, Viki?” She gave a hearty pat to his back, sending him a conspiratory grin.

Viktor nodded, allowing himself to be drawn into the manor’s foyer. “Yes, I’ve been through worse. Though, that’s not an invitation for things to get worse—” he gave a stuttered chuckle, nervous and strained. “Besides, it’s been a whole year, and I’m still standing.”

“Right! Exactly—” Caitlyn agreed with bright reassurance.

“—I mean, what are the odds that my Devilish stalker would come back an exact year after that horrific parting message?” Viktor forced out a laugh. “Right? Absurd!” 

As usual,

Viktor’s joke didn’t land.

“Right.” Vi shared an awkward look with Caitlyn. She nodded, herding the two further inside. “It’s fine. If they do show that cheap mask around here…” She cracked her knuckles, “Well, we’ve got a bone to pick with ‘em.”

A guest turned, blank mask staring back at them, head tilted in concern.

Vi caught their eyes before—“Not you—you go err…go enjoy yourself.”

Blank Mask nodded, raising a glass, before heading off to the kitchens.

Caitlyn frowned. “Who…was that?”

Violet shook her head. “No clue…”

“Right.” Viktor cleared his throat. He hadn’t really spoken much to Violet and Jinx since the events of last year. They’d seen each other in passing, mostly through Jayce and Caitlyn, but hadn’t really had the proper opportunity to discuss details.

He figured tonight was as good as any.

“Apologies about the…Haunted House shutting down.”

Vi shrugged. “It was a good side-gig while it lasted.” He quietly thanked Violet for the easy grin, the casual shrug. “Besides, that just means even more horror freaks will come flooding in next year when we officially re-open.” The understanding. The immediate forgiveness. And despite her earlier words,

The lack of judgment.

Instead, Viktor was met by her scrutiny. “By the way—what’re you supposed to be?”

In truth, Viktor didn’t have time to get ready. Didn’t have time to pick something out. Jayce had gone out and simply dressed in all black. Got a dollar store set of vampire teeth. Fake blood.

There were two little red dots on Viktor’s neck, but they had already faded by the time they arrived at the party.

He supposed the answer to her question was blood bag or even vampire victim—

But instead, Viktor grinned.

“I’m a homicidal maniac.” His gaze darted to Jayce with a pleased smirk. “They look just like everyone else.”

It was good to see Jayce come to himself again.

Not to say that Viktor didn’t appreciate his protectiveness—

Of course he did.

No one cared for Viktor like Jayce did. No one would have thought to take what happened as seriously as he did.

Jayce wouldn’t let him out of his sight for even a second the first week after the stalking. Words were thrown around their friend group—

Overboard,

Overprotective,

Just an overactive imagination—

But it was a relief to Viktor. He felt safer, knowing Jayce was there, always watching him.

But Viktor knew that Jayce was suffering just as much.

And the last thing Viktor wanted to be was a burden to the person he loves. Viktor smiled, catching Jayce’s eyes from across the room. He’d been animatedly discussing something with Cait, Mel, and Elora, likely catching up after declining regular hangouts and meet-ups over the course of the year, all while Viktor had been yanked into the inescapable gravitational forces of Vi’s younger siblings.

Claggor shook his head. “This year’s Distinguished Innovators Competition was rigged, man.”

Viktor blinked. “Pardon?”

Mylo rolled his eyes, mouth twisting to a grimace. “If you’d stop making cow eyes—”

“Viktor’s more of a deer, yeah?” Claggor chuckled.

“Yeah, yeah,” Mylo waved, ignoring Viktor’s sputtering. “Doe-eyes at loverboy there—then you’d know that Claggor’s been sulking for the past few months after getting snubbed from first.”

Right. Viktor supposed he should be a better mentor to the budding genius. Though different in interests from Viktor and Jinx’s specialties, Claggor showed great promise with strong research design and a compelling hypothesis. “It can take multiple attempts and submissions to get first place,” he offered, humming as he combed his thoughts for a viable solution after Claggor shot him a baleful glare. “Hmm…you know, your project and goals might align with a friend's.”

That seemed to pique his interest. “Yeah?”

Mylo cackled. “You have friends other than your clingy boyfriend?’”

Viktor thoroughly ignored that. He also thoroughly ignored the fact that Sky might be his only friend outside of Jayce. “Yes and unfortunately, she couldn’t make it tonight. She’s also from Zaun.” That seemed to perk their interest. “She didn’t enter this year, feeling like she didn’t have enough data to present, but from what you’ve shown me, perhaps a collaboration could be in order.”

Claggor scratched his chin in contemplation before giving an affirming nod. “Yeah, could you give me her contact?”

Viktor nodded. “Of course—”

Viktor froze. A shiver ran down his spine as Mylo remarked something about getting wingman’d. 

Viktor shifted uncomfortably.

He felt eyes upon him that very moment.

But no, he was safe.

He was in the middle of a party.

He was conversing with other people,

Was starting to feel normal for the first time in weeks—

Months—

Almost a year—

“I’ll…I’ll get right on that,” Viktor said, unlocking his phone and sending a text to Sky with Claggor’s phone number. He ignored the sensation. Nothing would happen. He wasn’t trapped in some dark corridor after stupidly placing himself in danger. 

It was different.

It had to be. 

“I believe you two might make a good team—”

A hand reached over his shoulder,

Clad in black gloves. Forceful, heavy, the grip digging into the thin meat of his shoulder.

Viktor turned,

Coming face-to-face with a red-faced devil. 

“Boo.”

It was the wrong mask. The color was off by several shades, the red almost appearing neon under the party lights. The horns were short, stubby, and asymmetrical. The face was painted with a wide, manic smile, instead of being molded to the plastic.

Instead of the stark darkness that haunted Viktor’s memory,

Jinx’s powder-blue eyes glared back at him through the eye-holes.

But fear was rarely a logical thing.

Her cackle cut through the music, the conversation. “You should have seen the look on your face!” Her voice muffled by the plastic she’d obviously painted herself. “Just frozen like that—like a deer in headlights!”

“Really, Jinx?” Claggor frowned as Mylo gave a snicker. “We were in the middle of something!”

“Told ya, doe-eyes,” Mylo whispered.

Eventually, Vi made her way to the scene, scolding, disapproving. “Jinx.”

“Re-laaax,” she drawled, taking off her mask. “It’s Halloween! Might as well get a good scare in.”

Just in time to witness Jayce running into the room, putting himself between her and Viktor. “You don’t use other people’s trauma for a prank!” he snarled.

Jinx rolled her eyes. “Trauma? What trauma?” She tossed the mask over her shoulder, eyeing Viktor with scathing disinterest. “He’s fine! He got followed by some weirdo in a mask and you blew up over it.” She sidestepped Jayce entirely, whispering towards Viktor, loud enough for everyone gaping at the scene to hear: “And got our Harrowing, Haunted, Hallow-Hell cancelled by the way—” 

Jayce looked ready to throttle her. “Excuse me?! You’re blaming Viktor on that—”

“Hey, hey, calm down all right?” Violet got between them in turn, hissing out, “Jinx, that was real shitty, but you need to back off, Jayce.”

“Did you see what that little brat just did?!”

Jinx gave a cold cackle. “Gave your little boyfriend a scare. Oh no!” she mocked a silent scream. “No better than him crying Devil all this time to send you running, right?” Her words were aimed right where it needed to, and damnit,

Jinx knew that immediately.

“Can’t go out or be left alone! W-w-what i-if t-t-the b-b-b-ig s-scary D-D-Devil comes?” She sent Viktor an exaggerated pout, a ridicule dressed in tattered sympathy. “Poor cookie needs adult supervision at all times—”

Jayce’s eyes narrowed, outrage clear as day. “What did you say?”

“People talk, boys.” Jinx shrugged, all but ready to strut out of the room, out of the mess she left it in,  “And what they’re sayin’ bout you two ain’t pretty,” after adding one last parting shot.

Violet sighed, shaking her head. “Jinx—”

Viktor felt eyes on him. The judgment. The whispers.

He did it for attention.

Bet it wasn’t even real.

Ruined everything because he got paranoid.

Can’t stop playing victim.

Jayce is too nice—

—Why does Jayce even bother?

Viktor let out a shuddering breath. Gripped his cane and stood. “Well, on that note. I should get going.” He gave a self-deprecating smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Bad pain day, you know?” He turned to Claggor, just to avoid looking at Jayce’s pitying looks. “Claggor, I sent Sky your information.”

“Uhm. Thanks, Viktor,” he coughed.

“Viktor—” Jayce started, reaching out towards him—

“Have a pleasant evening, everyone.”

Only for Viktor to keep walking.

It wasn’t unusual for Viktor to feel eyes on him. In fact, it had been a common occurrence for the past year.

The constant surveillance. The constant questioning.

Control dressed in trappings of concern.

A hand landed on his shoulder. Warm, heavy, the grip wrenching his focus from the opened front door to Jayce, standing in the foyer with a pained expression.

A pitying expression. “V—”

Viktor sighed, feeling some of his fight leave him. “I just want to rest. Really, I’m all right, Jayce.”

His face darkened. “Well, that wasn’t all right—Jinx should apologize when she does shit like this—”

Viktor snorted. Good luck. From one megalomaniac scientist to another, Viktor doubted Jinx would apologize for anything she didn’t deem logical. “I’m not one for half-hearted apologies.”

And to her, to many,

What occurred last year and the overblown, ballooned reaction, made very little sense.

Jayce frowned. A fellow megalomaniac unable to surrender to another’s perspective. “Still—”  

Viktor had to do his best anyways. “Jayce,” he started gently, soothingly prying his boyfriend’s fingers from his shoulder to give a reassuring squeeze. “You were having a wonderful time. You should stay.”

The argument was immediate. “What? Viktor, no, that’s crazy—” Jayce stalked forward, intrusive, insistent, “Of course I have to come with you.”

Incessant.

Muscle memory had imprinted the ache into his nerves; the phantom pain striking down his leg at every forceful step while dragged through a maze of corridors, a shard of glass carved right through his flesh. Every bad pain day resurfaced that memory. Jayce knew that well. “I wasn’t joking when I said my leg was acting up.” It usually afforded Viktor some time alone, where he could idle in silence. “I’ll just be home, curling up with Blitz and maybe Rio if she decides to grace me with her presence.” He attempted a reassuring smile. “I’ll be fine, Jayce.” Instead, the smile wobbled on his lips, threatening to slip off his face with a splat onto the floor. 

But even that was preferable to the guilt strangling the tense silence between them. Because Viktor knew he was lucky; knew that Jayce sacrificed for him and continued to do so. Jayce hadn’t afforded a lot of time for his friends over the past year, fretting, vexing, and obsessing over his boyfriend’s whereabouts and his safety.

Because Viktor had to be honest with himself,

No one really cared if Viktor ever bothered to show his face again,

No one,

Except Jayce.

And the last thing Viktor wanted was for Jayce to tire of him. The last thing he wanted was to make Jayce realize he’d sacrificed too much for the likes of him. Make Jayce realize that Viktor craved his desperate affection,

All while giving him nothing in return.

The sentiments were painted in self-loathing and anger, and through the shattered remains of control Viktor once possessed,

“Is it because of what she said?” Jayce demanded. “You should know better than to listen to Jinx—”

It wore the mask of accusation.

Viktor scoffed, removing Jayce’s hand from his own. “I am more than capable of making my own decisions regarding my safety, Jayce.”

Of suspicion.

Jayce rolled his eyes. “You’re obviously not—”

Of spite.

Viktor congratulated himself as he kept his voice steady. Kept his gaze trained on Jayce’s scathing glare instead of flinching and turning away, hurt and ashamed at the truth Jayce threw back in his face. “Is that what it is?” Viktor hissed, a wounded creature baring his fangs as he was backed into a corner. “You think I’m so helpless that you have to infantilize me?”

“Viktor—”

That tone again. That Viktor was being unreasonable. That Jayce was doing this for his own good—

Because Viktor was helpless without him.

Obviously. “I followed that masked man because I thought it was you under there,” Viktor confessed. “But the only person that’s been terrorizing me with fear for the past year—

Is standing right in front of me.”

Viktor regretted his words the moment they left his mouth.

But it inflicted the very effect Viktor intended.

Jayce was hurt. Jayce was pissed. Had all his good intentions thrown back in his face as an unfair accusation,

“I was terrified out of my mind and the only one who took it seriously.”

Just like Viktor had.

“And now you’re saying this? Blaming me? For caring about you?” Jayce crowded him, eyes bright with fury. “Should I have just left you in that corridor!? Should I have just let that guy find you?! Do whatever he wanted with you?!”

Hellfire, and everything Viktor feared.

“Should I just stop caring?!”

Maybe you should. “I…” Viktor certainly didn’t deserve it. “I don’t know anymore, Jayce,” he said, voice barely above a whisper. “Maybe we were wrong about everything. Maybe it really was just a terrible prank—”

“All right.”

The dismissiveness cut deeper than any blade. Cut him loose. “Fine. Go home, Viktor.” Cut himself free. “I’ll stay here.”

“Jayce—”

But Jayce was already walking away.

Hurt collapsed deep inside his chest. “Okay.” Viktor nodded, murmuring to himself and the still night air. “Okay….”

Viktor arrived at their apartment without incident. Muscle memory had imprinted the action into every nerve. He closed the door, locked it, double-locked it, and tested the knobs to ensure they held. He toed off his shoes, put on his slippers, and padded his way to the bedroom to change. Rio watched with apathy while Blitz gave his typical greeting. 

Viktor knew he should have apologized. Knew he should have called when he got home. Knew that he shouldn’t be checking his phone for the third time in ten minutes.

Blitz, sensing his distress, curled up on his lap.

Rio, seeing that her precious dada had yet to return, stalked back towards the bedroom to snooze until Jayce came home.

If he came home.

Viktor thought about doing the same. Sleeping off the rest of this awful night. 

(But then he remembered the open latch,

The dismissal they both received, blame so easily placed on forgetfulness.)

Instead, Viktor turned on the TV and flipped through various movies,

Hauntings, Possessions, Horror-Comedies, Creature Features, Sci-Fi Horror—

Slashers.

Viktor selected a film as background noise, even when his eyes focused on nothing but the bright screen of his phone.

Hours passed.

Even Rio emerged from the bedroom, sniffing around for both food and affection (of which she only preferred to receive from Jayce).

Viktor deliberated on swallowing his pride. Calling. Reaching out to Jayce to let him know that he was sorry. That he knew that Jayce only wanted him safe. That he knew Jayce did all of this,

Out of love.

Inaction was a response too, he supposed. Lack of response was a response. Still, he wanted to give Jayce time. And, after all, didn’t Viktor want to give Jayce a night to himself? Allow Jayce some time away from him? But the growing anxiety had begun to gnaw at his bones, cracking into the vulnerable marrow of his own catastrophizing core. 

Viktor continued to stare at his phone screen, almost willing it to light up with a notification. Buzz with a text. Chime with a call.

Anything at all from Jayce.

What he received instead was a knock at the door.

Viktor startled enough to briefly stir Blitz awake. “Jayce?” he called out, already lifting himself off the couch, grabbing his cane, and making his way to the apartment entrance.

Muscle memory had imprinted the action into every nerve.

It was their standard routine.

It was a rehearsed protocol.

It was the byproduct of living in paranoia for a year,

That even at the way Viktor’s heart leapt to his throat, he hadn’t opened the door immediately.

Instead, Viktor peered through the peep hole,

And found The Devil staring back at him.

Air left his lungs. His pulse thundered in his ears. Viktor staggered backwards, hand clawing at his own chest to keep it from beating right through the cage of his ribs.

A message buzzed.

<It’s me.>

<Open the door.>

Sent from Jayce’s phone.

Viktor watched from the peephole as The Devil procured Jayce’s phone and waved it in his hand.

Viktor felt every hair on his neck stand on end.

Jayce could get angry.

Jayce could be mean.

But Jayce wouldn’t be this cruel.

This wasn’t Jayce.

He wasn’t stupid.

But Viktor was stupid enough to open his mouth. “H-How…How did you get his phone—”

Another text.

<Open the door,>

<And I’ll tell you.>

Viktor saw it then.

The red. Splashed messily against the clean lines of white, red, and gold of Jayce’s phone case.

Viktor felt himself grow nauseous with horror. “What did you do to him—”

“We’re not done playing.”

His voice. Deep. Guttural. Every word etched with long, sharp scratches at the forefront of Viktors’ thoughts. A hum, droning and incessant pierced through the quiet, trailing after those words like a shadow. Maybe it was anxiety. Maybe it was fear. Maybe it was the suffocating strangle of limb-locking panic as Viktor uselessly struggled to move, to run, as a key clicked into place,

As the knob slowly turned,

As the door was pushed open—

Jayce startled, nearly jumping out of his skin as he found Viktor there,

Frozen in front of the doorway.

“Babe?” he asked tentatively.

Silence filled the space between them. Rio mewed from their open bedroom door.

Blitz didn’t even stir.

Viktor continued to stare at his face. As if trying to process what he was seeing right in front of him. Unsure how to respond. How to move. How to breathe. Jayce took tentative steps towards him, arms open with that devastatingly frightened look on his face.

“Viktor…Viktor—” he whispered. Voice urgent, firm, but breaking under pressure as Viktor’s eyes flickered from his mouth back to his eyes.

Fear.

“Put it down, baby…”

Viktor trembled. Tears started streaming down his face.

“Why do you have that?” Jayce asked quietly, inching closer.

Knuckled turned bone-white as he gripped the knife tighter,

“Why—” Jayce gave a dry swallow. “Viktor, why—”

The words refused to form.

The blade was stained a bloodied red, the edge splashed with the color of poisoned apples and thorn-nest roses.

Viscous.

Fresh.

Jayce prayed it was a joke.

A bad joke that didn’t land,

A sick sense of humor.

But all the while, Viktor continued to stare at him, face crumpling as the knife clattered to the ground.

“He left it there,” Viktor said, voice barely above a whisper, as though the weight of his words would shatter his voice. “Left it for me.”

“Who—Viktor, did he—”

“He was here, Jayce.”

The nightmares. The paranoia. The whispers in the dark. The eyes that watched his every move. The shadow that followed his every step.

“What did he want?” he asked, watching Viktor barely hold back sobs. “What did he do?” he demanded, watching Viktor spiral, panic— “VIKTOR!”

“He killed someone tonight, Jayce.”

Jayce held him tightly, his body going numb. The blurred events of the party came crashing down. How the lights had gone out. How someone had pilfered Jayce’s phone from his pocket in the dark. How a blood-curdling scream cut through the darkness. How the lights flickered back on to everyone’s relief, applause deafening at the “orchestrated” scare.

But Jayce, Caitlyn, and Vi shared similar looks.

Anxiety.

Fear.

Jayce wanted to run home immediately, but agreed to search for the source of the scream.

The search came up empty,

But Jinx was nowhere to be found.

Just a suspicious text to Vi’s phone,

Saying she went home,

That she’s fine, 

Sent in proper spelling and punctuation.

Viktor shook his head, knees giving out, his weight surrendered to Jayce’s desperate hold. “This is all just a game to him…

…And he’s not stopping until I play along..”

Chapter Text

“If they catch you, they’re going to take more than just your badge.”

Jayce didn’t meet Caitlyn’s gaze. His jaw tightened, gripping the case folder in his hands like a lifeline.

The disappearance of Viktor Novotný, dating back almost five years.

Five years that Jayce had searched, five years of upending his career trajectory as an electrical engineer and delving into law enforcement after Viktor’s case was declared unsolved when all the leads went dead, and his disappearance went cold.

Caitlyn’s eyes softened. “I know how much he means to you, Jayce.”

Jayce stood tall for a man backed into a corner. “I’m not letting him go, Cait.”

Jayce knew that if the roles were reversed, Viktor would spend the rest of his life trying to find Jayce too. They’d been best friends, near-inseparable in university. They had their whole lives, their whole careers in front of them:

PhD programs, floating around ideas for start-ups, sorting through internships and potential contracts—

The one day,

One fine cloudy Tuesday,

Viktor didn’t show up for their usual coffee run.

He hadn’t been at his apartment.

He hadn’t been at the library.

He hadn’t been at the cat café, working his immune system into overdrive by ignoring his allergies.

He’d simply vanished, as abruptly as the universe deposited the most infuriating and most perfect complement person to Jayce in every way,

He disappeared just as suddenly.

Rent was paid through the month. There were no signs of forced entry. Viktor hadn’t been acting out of sorts over the past few weeks—

Though Jayce sometimes wondered about this. If he’d missed something, anything, that could have given him a clue if he’d only paid attention. Had Viktor missed their Friday hangout the week before because his leg had been acting up like he said? Or was he in trouble or hiding from something—

—Or someone?

Did Viktor avoid social media because he was a private person who didn’t feel the need to catalogue his life for the judgment of strangers like he said—

—Or was he trying to make sure no one found him?

These thoughts spiraled out of control over the first week. Then the first month. By the time the new year rolled around, there was no Viktor trying to jerry-rig a multi-system fireworks show with Jayce for the midnight countdown. Just the quiet whispers and sad shakes of investigators’ heads at Jayce and their friends.

“It’s different this time,” he said, waving the documents. “We haven’t swept through this section of Zaun—”

“Jayce, the case is several years old. What do you expect? That we’ll find Viktor there in the backwoods?” Caitlyn challenged. She’d been sympathetic, once upon a time. Then she’d realized just how far Jayce would go to chase after a ghost.

“No, but the department seems to think they’ll find a disgraced councilor there.”

Caitlyn sighed. “We were instructed to do a thorough sweep everywhere in Zaun since Salo was caught in that bust—”

“That the council let off without consequence.”

“It was a plea deal. He gave us names of dealers—” Caitlyn sucked in a breath, calming herself through yet another argument. “You weren’t assigned to lead an investigation in that area—”

“Vi handed me the case.”

Caitlyn took in a sharp breath.

Vi was careful about who to send to Zaun. Careful about who protected, served, and investigated her people. It had been her case, initially. Just surveillance on a religious group utilizing the land there. They had the permits when asked for the buildings, the infrastructure,

A commune, they said. People coming there to heal from life’s difficulties. A group of supportive individuals looking to uplift and guide those who’ve lost themselves back towards the right path.

In all honesty, it sounded like a cult, but there was nothing illegal about consenting adults living in shared delusion.

Not unless they made it other people’s problem. “I do my job, Cait,” Jayce reasoned. “All I’m asking for is a chance to scope the place out.”

“Viktor was agnostic,” Caitlyn argued.

Jayce grimaced. “His relationship with faith was…tumultuous. But Zaun was his home. And a part of him always considered going back.”

“Yes. I know.” Her voice was clipped. “That had been your excuse about the shimmer raid, remember?”

His face crumbled. “Cait—”

“We’re trying to look out for the safety of everyone, Jayce. I know that Viktor was important to you—”

“Is,” he hissed, eyes glaring. “He is important to me. Don’t talk about him like he’s gone—”

“—but his case doesn’t supersede the needs, lives, and protection of others, do you hear me?” She sighed. Silence ticked by.

Jayce held his breath. Stood his ground. The files in his hand began to crumple in his grip.

“You get one chance. Don’t make me regret it.”

The road ended there. A closed toll stood at the center, ancient, and probably weak enough for Jayce to dismantle to access the bridge.

But he’d promised to Cait that he’d remain on his best behavior.

Plain clothes but with his badge and his gun in his pocket, he got out of the car and took the rest of the journey on foot.

A deep gorge met his eyes, the rickety bridge likely ready to fall away with a modern vehicle’s weight on the wood-rotted thing. Dried up ravines carved up the landscape, making it appear desolate and gray—

Fitting for the scars that spread out from Zaun’s mired history.

But beneath the dilapidation, there were signs of life beginning to appear. Some greenery, poking through the cracked and dried earth. Signs of life in the paths created, whittled away by footsteps; signs of movement; signs of stirring.

And when Jayce came face to face with a field of flowers before him, of a sea of vibrant flora sprawled out against the barren earth, Jayce saw it then:

The commune.

Members milling about in their robes, adults, whole families displaced by poverty, crime, and ruin, 

Finding some semblance of sanctuary beyond where many thought the road ended.

It was a foolish thing to conceptualize…

But then again,

Jayce was the exact same way, wasn’t he?

Seeking answers and wading through the dark, holding fast to whispers and echoes and missed chances and what-ifs that plagued his mind for years. Hoping beyond hope, even when a part of him recognized that if he ever did find Viktor, he’d be burying bones into his family cemetery than bringing home the person he held closest to his heart.

The commune was just another lead. He had an investigation to complete. If these denizens of Zaun heard of, seen, or even just remembered Viktor, then the journey would have been well worth it.

But what greeted him at the commune gates proved far greater than anything Jayce ever expected.

“Welcome, stranger, I—”

Jayce froze. His words locked tight behind his throat. His muscles tensed as higher functioning shut down, leading him to do little more than gape.

Viktor—

Older, healthier, standing straight and tall,

He grew out his hair, Jayce noticed. Tinged the dark chocolates of his locks with kisses of sunshine at the ends,

Where is his leg brace? Where is his usual crutch? Why is he—

Jayce recognized the flicker of surprise. Of shock.

(Of horror)

Before Viktor recovered himself, setting down the basket of fruits to a child that gripped the cloth of his robes with wide, curious eyes.

Just as quickly, it was snuffed out like a light, blanketed by polite indifference. “My deepest apologies.” He gave a deep bow. “Welcome to our commune, dear stranger.”

 -

Five years.

Jayce had spent five years looking for Viktor.

And here he was,

Right as rain in front of him.

The urge to yell, to scream, to demand answers surged through the tumult of his emotions. But it didn’t crest through the immediate instinct to pull Viktor close, the need to feel him in his arms—solid, real—as agony ached and buckled through duty, propriety as Jayce let out a wretched sob.

Viktor’s hand gently soothed his back. A practiced motion. One devoid of warmth. Jayce melted into his touch anyways. “Dearest stranger, I see your troubles have led you to our sanctuary. Rest assured, this is a place of healing. To live, to transcend above the hardships of this life, and find meaning and purpose in peace and aid of others—”

Jayce felt his heart crack in two. An ache in his chest so deep that he thought it would cave in upon itself.

This is his Viktor.

But it couldn’t be.

“V…?” he breathed, not daring to pull back. Not daring to tear himself away. Too desperate after five years of chasing dead ends and phantoms to have it all fall through.

Jayce was acutely aware of the eyes upon them. Some in sympathy. Some in curiosity.

Some in angry, burning stares.

For a moment—the slightest, briefest moment—Jayce felt Viktor lean into his embrace, a shudder in his small frame. And that—

That was enough. Even as Viktor pulled away from him, eyes radiating practiced enthusiasm, turning to take the basket he’d dropped from the small child still clinging to his robes. “Please. Let us congregate with our council. Every new face here is brought before them to learn our way of life, to lay the foundations of peace as you leave your hardships in the past.”

Every word was a slice through his heart. Viktor was right in front of him, but he still felt so far away. The same Viktor he’d always known in a different skin, his familiar voice wrapped around foreign words, the eyes of brilliant amber that had haunted him for every sleepless night for five years—

Dilated, inky dark pools encased in thin rings of amber, even out here in the harsh sunlight.

Viktor wasn’t how he’d left him. But he was still Viktor. Even as he tugged Jayce’s hand towards the cocoon-like structure at the heart of the commune, eyes following them, whispers dancing down the makeshift alleys and streets—

Curiosity,

Gladness,

Sympathy,

Disdain,

Envy—

“And how may I introduce you, dearest stranger?” Viktor asked, casting him a glance.

Perhaps it was just wishful thinking, even as Viktor called him stranger, his best friend of several years, his best friend who Jayce memorized his favorite sweet milk recipe for, his best friend whose mother thought of him as a second son, his best friend who Jayce dreams of losing again and again on every wretched anniversary and milestone Jayce hadn’t heard his voice—

While Viktor was here, playing some kind of door greeter to a goddamn cult—

But Jayce knew Viktor.

Knew that Viktor would never forget him. 

Alejandro.

That was the name assigned to him on this investigation. It’s what’s written on the fake ID he carried. It was the story, the script he’d memorized as a means of assimilation,

Of infiltration,

Into this community.

“Jayce,” he said, quietly.

Viktor turned to him. An unnamed, unknown emotion in his eyes as they stood before the open doors of the commune’s heart. “Jayce,” Viktor said, in the exact way Viktor used to, down to the lilt of his voice, and it wouldn’t be the first time Jayce put everything on the line just so he could hear Viktor’s voice again. Just so he could hear Viktor say his name again.

He just hoped this time would be the last.

“Welcome, Jayce.” Viktor gave a deep bow, supporting himself on the staff that carried his weight as he walked. “I do hope you find everything you’ve been seeking.”

Jayce was shown his room. Outskirts of the commune. Modest. Small. No storage.

No secrets.

Our rules here are very simple.

Come as you are, but leave all that burdens you behind.

Live simply.

Help your fellow man.

Do your part as a member of this home.

Violence of any kind is strictly prohibited.

Stay as long as you’d like,

But many find that they much prefer staying.

Jayce sat at the edge of his bed. Viktor stayed by his side throughout the entire initiation process, a placid smile on his face as Jayce was dissected beside him. Not through interrogation. Not through stripping him down and leaving him bleeding and bare as he was stripped of freedom of thought and personality.

No, simply with their eyes. Gauging his every move. Every word. Every breath.

And with every calculated observation,

They turned to Viktor, who stood beside him with his empty eyes and hollow smile. It seemed like Viktor was left in charge of him. Like Viktor was presenting him like a stray before strict caretakers to say He’s my responsibility,

I will care for him.

Jayce wondered just how many had been led here by Viktor himself. Had they been beguiled by his calm? Herded here by the softness of his voice, the warm amber in his eyes, and the same gilded faith Viktor presented him with?

Or had Jayce simply gotten lucky for the first time in five years?

Jayce saw the robes draped over the bed. The garment was made to his size. Jayce sat on the bed, the thin mattress dipping slightly as he considered Cait’s words, the promise he made to her on his assignment, and the missing councilor.

And of course,

Viktor.

He’d tried to talk to him, get a single word out, something, anything but Viktor only regarded him with faux pleasantries. The same faux pleasantries that Viktor exchanged with other commune residents as they passed, too reminiscent of the way he greeted arrogant academic rivals and obstinate professors that couldn’t teach a student how to pour water out of a boot if the instructions were taped to the bottom. 

He could have confronted Viktor.

But he wasn’t stupid, despite Jayce’s rash track record. “Here is your room, Jayce.” He didn’t even flinch when Jayce grabbed him by the wrist as he turned to go. Jayce’s thinning patience and the growing tension between them made abundantly clear, Viktor turned to him, a sharpness in his gaze. “Apologies, I am needed elsewhere—”

“Viktor—”

“I will return soon. I will make good on this promise to you.” He gave Jayce a pleasant smile and turned away—

“They’re always watching. Always listening.”

Jayce froze. His grip on Viktor’s wrist loosened, desperation blooming violets across Viktor’s delicate skin. Even then, Viktor only nodded and walked past.

Viktor lingered for a second longer, eyes catching Jayce’s in the dying sunlight. Wary. Anxious.

Afraid.

Jayce glared at the robes in front of him. He wanted to call off the assignment. Bring Viktor home. None of this nonsense. Nothing else really mattered.

But Viktor wanted him to stay. Wanted him to lay low.

Viktor was being coerced. Stuck here, for the past five years, rotting away in this commune without contact from the outside world, barring desperate souls that had their individuality and wills leeched out of their bodies through indoctrination.

This also meant Viktor was in danger.

Jayce stood up, paced all four corners of his room as his heart thundered in the cage of his ribs like a wild animal.

Viktor said he’d be there. Viktor warned him that there were others keeping tabs on them. Jayce reached into his pocket for his phone, his radio—

Jayce felt a stir of panic in his heart.

It was gone. His radio. His cell phone. His badge.

His gun.

Viktor served as a guide for the next few days, but despite Jayce’s efforts, there was little to glean from Viktor’s rehearsed script.

“How did you find this place?”

Viktor turned to him, a placid smile on his mouth. “Why…this place found me. I was at a dark point in my life and it was through healing here in the commune that I was able to be reborn—”

Jayce bit his tongue until beads of blood trickled to the back of his throat. We were graduating. We were both top of our class. We were summa cum laude and had gotten accepted to internships to the most prestigious tech companies in Piltover—”

“What about your old life?”

Viktor paused, the knife’s blade hovering over the soft flesh of the fruit he was cutting for the midday meal. Jayce watched him from across the kitchen where he’d been assigned that day to clear the clutter and to clean the halls.

His smile grew tight. “Jayce, as you know, we leave our old life behind once we enter this place—”

“I know what they said.” Jayce watched as a shadow shifted from beneath the door adjacent to them. “I’m just…curious, that’s all.”

“Curiosity is a fine thing,” Viktor said, resuming his diligent duties. The same hands that scribbled away at formulas, tightening bolts and screws, wiring and rewiring their senior project for optimal efficiency after blowing through circuits of over-ambition—

Now gingerly slicing fruit in the kitchens while preaching to Jayce about the joys of living simply.

“But everything has a time and place, you see.”

It was so surreal, Jayce almost wanted to laugh. To cry.

“Viktor—”

Viktor pressed a finger to his lips, keeping his eyes on him. Not the plastered poise and professional polish he held himself to when there were others nearby,

But with desperate warning. Viktor looked ready to curse him for all his impatience before his voice fell back to its lackadaisical cadence. “Perhaps another time, Jayce. We all have our own healing journeys to focus on.”

Jayce knew. He knew that better than anyone.

But his only cure was looking straight at him, close enough to touch but unable to twist and snap free from the tendrils that held him here.

Days started to blend together. The monotony was enough to drive anyone insane. Jayce still had no leads to where Salo could be, if he was even in this damn place to begin with. Apparently, asking for a specific person was of poor etiquette because all brothers and sisters should be treated in equal measure.

Which was utter bullshit, if you asked him.

Hypocrisy at its finest.

But Jayce admitted that the tedium was best remedied by Viktor’s presence at his side. Even for brief periods at a time. It was never for too long. Not too long to be suspicious. Viktor regarded him with the same careful consideration he did with anyone else.

It didn’t take long for Jayce to realize why.

Viktor was—

Special. 

The words made Jayce’s skin crawl. The looks he received when Viktor delivered him to the commune’s council, the disdain and whispers that floated through the commune at Jayce’s abrupt arrival, touching Viktor with such familiarity,

It made Jayce uneasy. Suddenly aware of how closely guarded Viktor actually was. There were the same commune members trailing after him, never straying too far, especially when Viktor sat down with Jayce on a daily basis. And Jayce had to endure it all. Watch with biting his tongue at how the other members revered him. Leered at him. Worshipped him. 

Debauched him.

For a cult, they were incredibly exclusionist as to who got to watch the performance. 

It happened every night, according to a rather chatty child that approached Jayce with wide-eyed curiosity to the newcomer. Had prattled on about how his new home was nice. They had food every day, a bed for each of his siblings, and his parents no longer fought like they used to.

But every child had questions. Curiosity was a hallmark of a healthy, growing mind.

And so was inappropriately blabbing secrets to the first adult that feigned interest.

“Looking at Mister Viktor again?”

Jayce nodded. He slipped the child another slice of fruit onto his plate to keep mum of the whole thing.

His round face turned to Jayce, a taunt in his voice now that he'd found their exchange incredibly lucrative. “Hey mister…if you give me the rest of your cake, I’ll tell you something secret!”

Secret.

One loose lip among the hushed murmurs and scattered whispers whenever Jayce approached, fleeing like roaches as Jayce sifted through the fog.  

Jayce nodded, handing the child a sliver of his slice in pre-payment. "All right, deal." He briefly met eyes with the silent commune member from across the way; the mask glaring blankly at him as he negotiated intel with a child. “But are you sure your parents are okay with this?”

“Yeah, yeah, it’s fine!” The child eyed the rest, salivating. “They told me about it anyways,” he whispered. “They saw it with their own eyes. Said it’s why Mister Viktor is real special to everyone! And because he’s so nice.”

“Right,” Jayce muttered, forcing his stare away from the stranger, feeling spiders scurrying along the hairs of his arms as the mask across from him began to turn away in slow, deliberate movements. Seconds crawled by on all eight of its legs before Jayce found his voice again. “And what secret does special Mister Viktor have?”

“You keep looking for him after dinner. Everyone sees it.” He said the words with such innocence, earnest sincerity. There was almost something cruel and sinister in the pure honesty. “But Mister Viktor leaves dinner so early so he can get ready for the party tonight.”

Jayce raised a brow, cutting another slice of his cake. “There’s a party tonight?”

The boy nodded enthusiastically, eyes searching around to ensure he didn't appear too greedy. Conforming against the will of the commune. He leaned in, a loud whisper coming from his cupped hands that none seemed to notice.

All eyes were on Viktor. 

“There’s a party every night. Only different people are invited each time. But Mister Viktor is always there.” He laughed, innocent and teasing. “If you wanna talk to Mister Viktor, you’ll find him wherever the party is.”

The commune residents were expected to sleep early, rise early.

Every member had assigned tasks in the morning, while a few were tasked with night rounds to ensure against any unsanctioned merrymaking in the dead of night.

Jayce slipped past them after the nightly roll call, tracking sounds and ducking behind shacks and supply containers whenever footfalls trudged too close.

He moved quickly through the night, something afire in his blood, as he sought to find Viktor and delve deeper into this madness with the hopes of dragging his best friend out of the abyss he’d found himself in:

Suffocating, oppressive, rules that were made to stifle freedom instead of nurturing healing.

The heart of the commune was left unguarded, but the flickering lights signaled activity within. The eerie silence that followed—wardens no longer rounding on him from corners, Jayce no longer hearing the shifting and creaking wood and the hushed voices of uncertainty within the newer members of the commune—

It only served to further unease him as the front of the building held its doors wide open—a false maw that only opened to shadows. Jayce searched along for a side entrance, even a window to observe and witness the activities within.

The closer he approached the commune’s heart, Jayce realized the slow, rhythmic drone hadn’t been his own paranoia, hadn’t been the rise and pulse of his own blood against his ears—

They were voices.

A sea of them, rising together like a dark tide threatening to swallow Jayce whole as he crept along the shadows for a singular opening, a sinking feeling grabbing hold of him the closer he approached. His vision blurred, nausea settled like a heavy stone in his gut, the droning voices almost deafening—

A light flickered, casting off a shade, a deceit.

A sliver of an opening framed in stained, warped glass—

Had that always been there?

—showing what must have been a distortion, a delusion,

Because none of this could be real—

Right?

And that impossible sight, the one that made Jayce’s blood run cold, the one that made him question the it all, the whispers of doubt between cracks in his reality form—

Was of Viktor,

Sat at the center of the commune’s heart, laying near-motionless as his robes were torn off his thin frame, breathing ragged, displayed for all their greedy eyes to rake over his bruise-scattered body. Fury ignited in Jayce’s veins at the sight of him, the fresh lilacs against his skin contrasting against the sickly shades of sage snaking around his ribs.

Inflictions of various stages.

A piercing echo reverberated through Jayce’s thoughts, the exquisite pain drilling incessantly through his ears, through flesh, sinew, fingers digging half-moon scars into the palm of his hands to keep Jayce from ripping a scream from his own throat, leaving him locked and helpless,

Witnessing all that was before him as tortured tears gathered at the corner of his eyes:

Viktor shuddered, a lovely, trapped little dove with pinned feathers, cruel hands with unseen faces mapping his body, groping at his flesh, oppressive and violent in their reverence—all the while Viktor thrashed in their hold, movements mounting to desperation, frenzy—

Jayce caught sight of it then:

Vials and syringes, the bite of needles and poisoned-pinks digging beneath Viktor’s flesh, pumped into his veins, defiling his body with a warbled gasp, a swan-song dying in strangled holds, and soothing circles rubbing into his skin as Viktor’s head fell back, mouth opened into a silent scream.

All the while, eyes gazed upon him, his violation a spectacle, his body slumping to the floor falling into rhythm as the chorus sang hymns, gave their praises in indecipherable litanies as Viktor writhed and moaned,

Agony and ecstasy intertwining as an enthralled audience devoured the sight of him.

Jayce knew he needed to move. He needed to get in there, consequences be damned, and put a stop to this—

Take Viktor,

Take him from this place,

Take him home, far, far away from those hands, those faces, those voices who drowned out Viktor’s own bleating cries—

A familiar mask turned to him in a sea of blurred faces. The stark white against the shadows twisting into gaping eyes and mouths in the caricature of reverence and devotion as Jayce could do nothing but remain in the shadows, only glimpsing at the depravity of this practice.

Slowly, the mask turned away from the lone window at the corner. A single head of quiet apathy among the perverse, compliant, complicit as Viktor laid in wretched torment—

—in utter rapture.

A man stood before the crowd of faceless voices, selected with a dizzied, blind finger from the fray. He approached with an arrogant stride, eyes with brimming confidence,

With excitement.

The recognition was immediate. Light hair. Pale complexion. The face plastered on police reports following an obvious departure from the public eye after an exhibition of a scandal.

Salo sat between the altar of Viktor's legs, arrogance rounding and softening to something that could have been worship with all the reverence laid in his touch,

Had it not been for the greed in his intentions as his fingers inched higher and higher up Viktor’s quivering thighs.

A clear voice rang out, cresting above the droning, the sickening hums of choral monotones. Welcoming another soul. Offering a reward for piety, a taste of divinity bequeathed unto the wretched that pulled themselves from the mire and mud of this physical world,

That a worthy being has presented itself before their Herald,

For transcendence. 

Viktor stilled. Muscles locked in place, constricted, contorted. His body quivered, trembled, shuddered, twisting in an anguish so thorough, it must have stolen his soul out of every knife-sharp breath. Salo, the bastard, continued to lay his head against the curve of Viktor’s knee.

The voices stopped.

Dead silence as suffocating as smoke filled the space between where Jayce stood, a sickly pale light bathing his unrepentant form. Motion returned in slow, languid strokes, Viktor unbound, unshackled as euphoria awakened through the excruciating moments of a little death.

In eerie calm, he motioned for the man—for Salo—to lay beside him, touch as gentle and warm as a lover.

Jayce’s vision spun. Blurred in bright lights and shadows, lines growing hazy and colors and voices growing distorted.

Silence continued to stretch through every agonizing second.

Jayce couldn’t stand to watch the rest. Not when the sensation of needlepoints dug into the back of his eyes, a flood of pain and panic throttled his lungs and reached deep into his chest to twist his heart right at the stem.

He felt like vomiting. Retching at the sight. Horror and disgust curdling sourly in his stomach as cold sweat beaded at his brow.

Jayce ignored his cock, hard and throbbing between his legs.

He knew what they were doing to his best friend there. He wasn’t going to stand for it.

He had to get Viktor out of here.

“You were there last night.”

Jayce froze.

Viktor sat at the edge of the bed. His robes were pulled tight over his body.

Dawn had barely broken through the sky, sun bleeding out red and ablaze in fiery golds over the horizon.

Jayce sat next to him. This close, Jayce could see tense anxiety written all over Viktor’s tired face. “How long until they come for me, then?”

“They won’t.” Silence. “No one else knows.”

Jayce thought of the commune member in the mask. Thought of the whispers. The eyes. The ears that never stopped listening. The missing radio. The missing cell phone. The missing badge. 

The missing gun. “You are safe here, Jayce—”

What did you promise them—

“But you aren’t.” He wrapped an arm around Viktor. His thin frame trembled under Jayce’s touch. “I’ve looked for you for five years—every day since you vanished, every waking hour of every day—” Five years. Five years of people telling him to move on. To leave Viktor and his memories of them behind. Five years of walking past his old apartment, of drinking himself to ruin at every birthday, holiday—“Even in my dreams. I couldn’t stop dreaming of you.” The dreams had been the worst for years. Dreaming that Viktor had come through the door that Tuesday afternoon, Jayce’s black coffee in hand and his own syrup-sweet monstrosity already half-empty and his disappearance had only been the faint murmurs of a cruel nightmare. “I had to see you again.” Only to wake up with half his heart and soul missing.

Viktor’s eyes softened. Dark, inky pools surrounded by thin rings of amber. “Jayce…”

“I don’t care how you got into this mess. I don’t care, V.” Jayce turned to face him, thumb gently brushing the quiet stream of tears from the corner of Viktor’s eyes. “I just wanna get you out.”

A knife-sharp breath. A tremble of his lip. “It’s not so simple…”

“I’ll make it simple.” Jayce held him close. Viktor laid his head on his shoulder, arms wrapping around Jayce’s back. “I’ll save you. I’ll keep you safe.” Pressed against Viktor’s heartbeat, it was the easiest promise Jayce could have made. “I’m right here Viktor. I won’t let you go.”

The sobs were muffled. Muted by the press of Viktor’s mouth against Jayce’s shoulder. Every breath gouged a new wound through Jayce’s chest. But it was proof. Proof that Viktor was here. That this was real. That last night had been real.

That Viktor was in danger.

“Tonight,” Viktor murmured, breath warm against Jayce’s ear. “I’ll meet you here.”

Jayce shut his eyes. Flashes of hours before,

Of Viktor, naked, drugged, and whored out to a depraved, degenerate congregation, lining up so eagerly to tear him apart. “Before or…”

Viktor stiffened. “After.” Jayce tightened his hold, protective, fearful— “It has to be after,” Viktor said gently. “They’ll look for me if I don’t.”

“They’re always looking for you, V—”

Viktor shushed him. Pressed a finger to his lips. “Not after I give them what they want.”

The words made Jayce’s heart sink to the ground. The reality that Viktor had endured this torment for years, unable to leave, unable to deviate from whatever script they’d drilled, nailed to Viktor’s head. His brilliant Viktor, wings clipped and thrown in a cage for their entertainment. 

“I’d been searching for so long…” Jayce whispered, knowing they’d part ways soon. Knowing that he’d have to unclench his jaw, toil mindlessly over the next few hours, and pretend like he wasn’t envisioning this entire place going up in flames.

“We’ll get you out of here,” he vowed. “Then we’ll burn this place to the ground.”

It was no surprise that Viktor had taken the gun from him. From the time Jayce had stumbled on his feet to embrace him when they met again after years,

Viktor made sure to disarm him, removing his radio, cell phone, gun—

And car keys as Jayce staggered in and out of reality as Viktor barely kept him together.

Hidden in the basket and held in a child’s hands that Viktor then kept for safekeeping to make sure their dear stranger was safe for everyone in the commune.

Jayce could imagine the scene,

The commune council commending Viktor like a trained dog, disarming this danger to their way of life. Reiterating some kind of indoctrination. To show Jayce kindness. To accept Jayce into their fold as a brother. A reborn member, learning to walk out of the mud and become clean in their waters.

And Viktor, nodding along, reciting practiced words, empty oaths and prayers.

All the while, Jayce’s keys remained hidden within an inner lining of Viktor’s robes.

Jayce watched as Viktor deposited the keys into Jayce’s hands. He was still wobbly, weak from their ritual. Fresh bruises painted across the visible skin, Viktor’s hands trembled as he met Jayce’s gaze with tired, empty eyes.

Jayce didn’t hesitate.

He took Viktor’s hand, pressed a kiss to his mouth, and disappeared into the night.

Jayce wanted to keep driving. Wanted to see the familiar lights in Piltover before he could finally stop. Before he could finally rest.

Viktor placed a hand over his shoulder, murmuring that they both needed rest. That it was over.

They’d escaped before dawn’s first rays. Before the nightwatch came to round at Viktor’s door. To ensure their most loyal and most faithful and most special member rested to enact normalcy, a paragon of holy righteousness and submissive faith.

Before they found nothing but an empty bed and a loosened floorboard where Viktor had kept Jayce’s keys and every hope of escape he had left.

The road in front of them stretched endlessly. Driving with their lights off to avoid detection also came at the risk of not being able to detect what was right in front of them. Even then, Jayce drove like a madman, racing down the straight lines and startling at every bump and gripping the steering wheel with white knuckles at every precarious bend.

Beside him, Viktor kept his eyes on Jayce, worry surfacing through the trembling fear and paralyzing paranoia.

“Pull over, Jayce…” Viktor murmured. “We’re far enough. We can make the rest of the trip in the morning.”

Jayce shook his head. He’d come this far. He finally had Viktor back. He couldn’t—

Voices droned, rising together like a dark tide threatening to swallow Jayce whole

The road blurred in front of him. An enveloping shadow. The low rumble of a straining engine. And Viktor, calming, quiet lilt of his voice, sounding far away despite the hand gently gripping his.

A practiced motion. One devoid of warmth.

Jayce found himself melting into his touch anyways.

“—Jayce?”

Jayce shot up straight, confusion and nausea warring with the headache beating a dent into his skull. The room was dark—no—

Dim.

Jayce squinted his eyes, adjusting to the faint light as he groped around the expanse of stiff sheets, panic surging as he couldn’t— “What happened,” he gasped, twisting out of the bed.

Viktor was at his side, laying Jayce down next to him. “You pulled over to the side of the road and vomited.” Viktor rubbed his back. “I took over. Then you fell asleep.”

Jayce had no memory of it. He sent Viktor a questioning look and Viktor laughed. “Five years off the road doesn’t mean I automatically forget how to steer a car in a straight line.”

“The motel?”

“You left your real wallet in the glove compartment.”

Jayce panted. Thoughts raced, trailing off and getting tangled as he focused on the faint glow of the moon through the thin curtains. Viktor laid against him, arms wrapped around Jayce from behind. “…I thought you’d never find me. I thought I was trapped there.”

“Viktor…”

“I’ve waited so long…”

Jayce didn’t keep him waiting this time.

He thought of those disgusting hands on Viktor, the ones leaving bruises, marking his skin as a spectacle, a show, debauching such kindness, such frailty, with their violence—

Jayce would show Viktor he was nothing like that. He pressed adoring, insistent kisses against Viktor’s skin, covered his gasps with the warmth of his own mouth, a bruising, loving touch that made Viktor feel grounded, anchoring him to Jayce when his thoughts wandered too close to echoes of the past. Even like this, Viktor’s body— scarred, marred with years of abuse, of yellowing and blooming bruises— Jayce could understand.

He could understand laying Viktor down on an altar and worshipping every inch of him.

Viktor squirmed against his hold, his belly tensing, thighs lifting, and toes curling as Jayce trailed his mouth downwards.

Viktor wanted this, he reminded himself. Viktor had chosen him. Not from a pulpit of blind devotees,

But his best friend.

The man that never stopped looking for him.

The man that never surrendered the hope and love for him in his heart.

Viktor panted, shuddered, moaned as Jayce devoured him, drank from his nectar and worshipped at the altar between his legs. Spread Viktor’s lips open, rosy and sweet with arousal, soft and velvet on his tongue as Viktor’s precious anguish splattered across the muted wallpaper of their hotel room,

Their house of worship.

It wasn’t quite a marriage bed, but it would do. There was nothing short of euphoria ringing through Jayce at the first press of his cock inside his partner. Tight, velvety heat, temptation wrapped in tendrils of desperation and desire. No fleeting phantoms. No ghosts of Viktor’s lingering presence as Jayce struggled to maintain his hold on the reality in front of him—

“Jayce,” Viktor whined in his ear, the warmth of his flesh, the scent of his sweat, the taste of cunt so fresh on Jayce’s tongue—

Viktor was here. In front of him. Beneath him. Heat wrapped around his cock and begging for more. Legs wrapping around him and meeting his frenzied thrusts with equal desperation to feel him, to lose himself in pleasure. Rapture and greed anointed in the aftermaths of lovemaking, dripping from where they were connected, to the soiled sheets beneath.

Viktor shuddered out a sigh as Jayce pulled out of him, the gape of his cunt fluttering around the space where his cock had pleasured him to sobs.

No ritual. No drugs. Just Viktor surrendering himself to what he wanted, clinging to Jayce and knowing he was safe. Time stood still for him when Viktor disappeared. His entire life, not simply uprooted, but pruned of growth, the other half of him stolen and leaving what was left to rot in painful, prolonged spectacle.

Now Viktor was here. Now Jayce wanted to plan a life together. Healing. Love. Marriage. Children. Jayce waited so long to find him.

“Did you find everything you wanted?” Viktor asked, his touch gentle and warm. His Viktor. His lover.

“Yes,” Jayce said, closing his eyes as the walls flickered around him and a droning hum filled the space between them. “Everything and more.” 

Viktor gingerly removed his fingers from where they’d pressed onto Jayce’s skin. The pearlescent marks crowned him beautifully.

Against himself and knowing he shouldn’t be showing such favoritism,

Viktor placed a chaste kiss on Jayce’s lips as the light finally faded from his eyes.

Commune members surrounded the pair, draping Viktor and their dearest new initiate as Viktor cradled Jayce’s limp body close.

Hymns filled the commune’s heart, as Viktor’s words washed over the still hall.

Preachings of another successful transcendence.

That through their efforts, the rest of the world may know hope.

May know happiness.

Just as this lost soul found his.

The mannequins guarded the pair, masks of flawed flesh shedding to reveal their perfected forms, standing tall, proud, mouthless faces continuing to sing and hum, beholding their Herald with forged reverie and empty joy.