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[Oracle]:: NeuralDive located.

BEGIN –

USER: V.

OPEN [ TRACE RE-LOG || 10D27D25. ]

 

The [Oracle] flickers to life with a shock of pulsing symbols, focusing and blurring in vibrant throbs until Viktor’s vision sharpens into a perspective that isn’t his own. It hurts for a moment, the clashing of neural receptacles as contradictory inputs sort from a crescendo of SoundColorShapeNoise into information he can parse.

“Go left,” Viktor intones, tilting his jaw until the base of his skull unravels in a series of pops.

Jayce’s voice crackles to life in his ear, heaving with breath as each footfall collides with the earth below him. “Can’t.”

He sounds distracted. Unsatisfactory.

“You can. Go left, past Six, and steal during your build-up,” Viktor hums, sliding metal fingers through the air in front of him. His view shifts to the public viewfinder broadcasting the game in time with his movements, “you’re trying to play safe and falling behind. Do what I say.”

Jayce is small on the field from here, weaving through bodies like a dart, but even on the overheard cam Viktor can see the flash of his smile.

He pivots to the left, the helve of his hammer catching in Six’s shoulder with enough force to make the man bend. For a moment Jayce stumbles as if the weight of his weapon will take him with it, and then his grip loosens in time with his body. The weight pulls him forward and he uses it to pull the Crown into his arms. A moment later and his free hand snags at the end of his hammer, pulling it to his side as he runs.

Light flickers across Jayce’s body, his usual orange surging green for a momentary breath.

A steal. He’s still up.

“Good one,” Viktor says, his breath slipping between his teeth in a quiet rush.

“You could, at least,” Jayce’s voice sparks with laughter he’s too winded to voice, “sound happy for me, V.”

Again Viktor switches to Jayce’s optics. He’s in a bad position now, flanked by two players and stunted entirely by a wall.

“That would require me to be happy for you,” Viktor’s smile falls beneath his mask, forced into submission as he forces Jayce’s gaze towards the sky, “and to achieve that you’ll need to win.”

OPEN [ TRACE RE-LOG || 09D27DD98. ]

 

“You know you’re being a fucking moron, right?”

Jayce’s responding laugh is so bright that it makes Viktor want to punch him. It makes a flare of burning, brilliant fury light inside of him so quickly that he has to grit his teeth to keep from snapping something worse.

“Answer me,” Viktor says, deft fingers ripping the [Oracle] Lens from his face so he can see both of Jayce’s eyes in brilliant chestnut.

It tumbles beneath them, below them, somewhere on the floor, in a clatter of glass and steel.

Jayce is smiling in the way that means he’s in pain. It fails to reach his eyes, charming but overly saccharine, which means he’s giving Viktor his Paparazzi-Smile instead of just admitting he’s a fucking moron.

“V, we needed the extra push. You know next round is going to be a bloodbath, so I was just– forcing their hand a bit. We’ll have starting gear,” Jayce says, smooth and reasonable as if he didn’t just break his wrist in an attempt to have a better vantage point.

“You’re an idiot. They haven’t invented a word to describe how illogically and irrefutably stupid you are, Giopara–“

“Not a Giopara, sweetheart.”

“Might as well be with whatever decision that was. You could have broken my tech. You’re allowed to wear my work because I,” and here Viktor shuts his mouth with a frown and a hard clack of teeth, his eyes flashing beneath his mask as he talks himself into a lie even he can’t sell.

Fuck.

Instead of continuing, they dart a hand out to grab at Jayce’s gloveless fingers, wrenching the purpling skin of his connecting wrist like they can peel the color away along with his sleeve.

Finally Jayce’s smile drops. His teeth stay on display, grit for all to see as he hisses out a sharp jut of pain.

“Don’t whine,” Viktor breathes, closer and quieter than he was before, “this is your fault.”

He does as they say. He doesn’t even disagree.

Jayce bridges the remaining gap between them. His expression softens as soon as his skin meets the curve of Viktor’s mask, his cheek pressed firm against them, and Viktor doesn’t pull away even when they know they should.

“You can just say you were worried, V.”

Viktor stiffens minutely, horrified.

“I wasn’t,” he says, like a liar.

“Yeah?” Jayce whispers, but his voice is laden with mirth.

“Yes, Jayce,” Viktor’s fingers pull cold lines across the bruising of Jayce’s skin,  “you could die on that field and I would cry for the great loss of my equipment forged to your nerves. Nothing more.”

Viktor is familiar with the sound, the shape, the very contour of the line that makes up Jayce’s smile. He knows it blind, from the feel of it beneath his fingertips, from the scrape of Jayce’s teeth against steel and stained red with blood. It is the sharpest aspect of Jayce’s being. The sole distraction that Viktor has never been able to justify even with a decade of exposure therapy under his belt.

Meaning, when Jayce breathes the words, “Don’t be stupid, sweetheart. You know I would never leave you,” Viktor knows the shape of Jayce’s mouth through each syllable and press of teeth.

His smile is a thing unchained and Viktor is nothing but a willing victim bleeding out for another chance.

“I know. I wouldn’t let you.”

REPAIR [ TRACE RE-LOG || 05D03Y01. ]

 

He isn’t watching the field when it happens.

Viktor is turned away from the green, turned away from the multitude of great and fantastical screens that display Jayce in sickening clarity as his skull hits steel and bursts in an unfurling bouquet of crimson.

This alone is some sort of wicked miracle, the will of whatever god has condemned them to ruin, because Viktor’s attention is always on Jayce. It borders on obsession. It edges addiction. It crawls towards the idea of codependency and shies away only when the definition proves too pale.

(Three years ago Viktor had cut into Jayce’s skull while perched precariously on his lap, one hand holding his partner’s head in place while the other wielded a wire saw barely long enough to hold in place. The surgery had been short and succinct. The sort of efficiency that Viktor longed for, where the patient was as adept as the surgeon, and after Viktor had stapled Jayce shut, he pressed his jaw onto Jayce’s collarbones to sturdy himself as he drilled a matching hole into himself.

Viktor had perfect artificial nerves years ago, and synthetic synapses were just a step further.

Installing the implants was the easy part.

It was harder to activate them, covered in blood that could belong to either of them, that had belonged to both of them, that had once been warm across their hands and now sat cooling in the chill of Viktor’s makeshift lab. He’d managed, pressing his hand to the fresh wound until skin slipped beneath his finger and suddenly his vision merged with SoundColorShapeNoise that did not belong to his own senses.

Viktor was aware of pain, of the press of skin against skin, the burst of light drilling into Jayce’s eyeline. Whatever sight belonged to him was pushed aside in favor of recognizing Jayce’s own vision. Jayce’s own thoughts. One consciousness became shared. Jayce’s pain became Viktor’s, and in this combined mesh of thought, function, fear, there came nothing but relief.)

The sound is loud enough for him to cut himself off mid sentence, head snapping towards the field on instinct.

The camera blinks off of Jayce a breath later, his blood pouring across his face in striking detail, his jaw fit to his head in a way that lets bone press beneath skin like a thing trying to escape, so Viktor can’t even see what’s happened to him.

They move on instinct.

A single, faceless stranger puts out a palm to stop them, and Viktor’s third arm unravels from its clutched fist in a whirl of power that stings the air. No one stops him after that.

He’s on the field in seconds, somehow dragged to his knees between the time he had seen Jayce and the time he had touched him. Viktor’s fingers feel like paper against Jayce’s skin. They leave marks of dredged pressure, pulling blood to skin that turns his cheeks pink, and yet nothing is firm enough to elicit a proper reaction. They twist Jayce to face them, pulling his head onto their lap.

There is enough blood untangling itself to slather them both in it.

A bloodbath, he had said.

The next round was going to be a bloodbath, so Jayce was forcing their hand.

Viktor knows with a quiet, willful fury, that he is going to break Jayce’s face a second time when this is all said and done.

With one hand wrapped around the slant of Jayce’s chin and the other bracing his temple, Viktor presses Jayce’s jaw back into place over a series of slow seconds. It sounds like oil and skin and cartilage rubbing against itself. It sounds like pain.

From his throat comes an animal call of misery. Behind shut eyelids, Jayce’s eyes whirl, the movement beneath his skin jittering like his pupils mean to escape. After a moment he fails to move further.

Viktor’s breath feels rabbit-like. His heart feels hot like molten steel.

He recites, “Don’t whine. This is your fault,” and it sounds flat even by his standards.

In the silence, Jayce does what they say. He doesn’t even disagree.

CLOSE [ TRACE RE-LOG || 05D03Y01. ]

START — NEW.

[Oracle]:: NeuralDive located.

BEGIN –

USER: J.

OPEN [ TRACE RE-LOG || 01110011 01101111 01110010 01110010 01111001 00001010. ]

 

He wakes up to find Viktor already digging through his thoughts.

The pressure in his skull is heavy enough that it sinks, pouring down his throat with hands too thick to swallow. Jayce thinks he might gag if he had more strength. Instead he can do nothing but heave in a breath through his nose, teeth clenched tight enough to break.

Viktor doesn’t speak.

Jayce can’t manage to peel his eyes open yet, so he can’t see them. He can’t see if they have the mask or if their eyes are wet with tears they would rather die than shed or if they’ve decided to give up on him once and for all.

He reaches out and even his fingers feel leaden with exhaustion. His wrist shrieks at the movement, bones grinding beneath too-tight dressings no doubt meant to keep them in place and wrapped with a panicked fierceness. Everything in his body wants to fall back beneath that ocean of sleep-worn oblivion. Pain keeps him present. Pain, and his need to see Viktor.

From his left: “Stop moving.”

Jayce pushes his arm an inch further, fingers shifting so his palm is outstretched and upright.

In the recesses of his agony there is a scraping noise. Chair legs pulling against the floor. Viktor’s fingers meet Jayce’s own, metal beneath and warm skin atop, until he is holding Jayce’s hand aloft. Saved from the will of gravity, the pain recedes almost immediately.

His next exhale is a flutter of insect wings.

“What happened?” Jayce says, voice dragging against his throat. He feels like a corpse, a thing unused in many years that has been dragged out to perform a mockery of life.

He hurts.

For a moment longer, Viktor is quiet. The only sign of his presence is the tracing of numbers upon Jayce’s palm. A mindless worry so familiar that Jayce smiles without thinking. 

“You got hurt,” Viktor replies, and the words are sharp enough to draw blood.

Jayce isn’t sure if the hurt is meant for himself or for Viktor.

He’s not sure if the hurt is not a side effect of whatever sickly disgust Viktor has harbored for him since the beginning. If he could soothe it he would in a second, in a pulse of blood, in a blinking moment of effort.

Jayce tilts his chin in the direction of Viktor’s voice, hoping for all the world that they might bring themself closer. “I thought you liked it when I got hurt.”

Again, Viktor fails to answer. Silence rots between them.

“I should have been watching,” is all he manages after the quiet ebbs. Each word sounds hollow with fact.

Jayce pulls himself from the taste of bile, from the lull of sleep, to drag his gaze towards Viktor. Each blink itches. His eyelids are heavy as the sky. His need is strong as Atlas. The light feels bright and burning, a searing whiteness of day, and yet the shock of it is nothing compared to seeing the one he loves.

“Don’t be stupid,” Jayce says, using whatever is left of him to pull Viktor nearer, “you saved me. Didn’t you? You always save me, V.”

There is more tucked into the words than just a history of bloodsport. It’s not enough.

Viktor’s body is sharp in the scorch of morning, all fickle lines and soft edges, a sort of ghostly apparition that Jayce thinks he might reach for and find intangible if he didn't pay close enough attention. Beneath the jagged peaks of his hair he sits bare-faced, though the gold of his eyes glints with an uncanny light even without the aid of machinery.

Jayce thinks that Viktor might be beautiful.

Jayce says, “Come here,” with the confidence of a dead man, sure of himself as well as he is sure of anything.

Viktor does as he says. They don’t even disagree.

The bed is wide enough to share, and yet they arrange themselves in a heady affection, pressed together like they might split skin itself to get closer. Jayce’s body feels like an open wound. Dull and aching. The bright throb of life making itself known. He knows Viktor can feel it in turn, pressed close to his side and clutched deep in his thoughts, and yet Viktor keeps himself still. The pain is a shared thing, a confession of love, an admittance of need.

It is the same as the first time, through their shared blood and their shared touch. A familiar sort of agony.

Viktor’s words are a whisper between them. “Never do that again.”

“Why not? Were you worried?”

“No.”

Jayce smiles against Viktor’s cheek, his hands shaking as he holds them to the metal webbing of Viktor’s back.

He’s too afraid to speak. The words will be bloodied with happiness, torn apart to find a gross delight within their gore.

For a moment there is nothing but shared breath puffing between them like a heartbeat.

Then, “You can’t leave me again.”

And Jayce sighs.

“Of course not, V. You wouldn’t let me and I would never want to.”

CLOSE [ TRACE RE-LOG || 01110011 01101111 01110010 01110010 01111001 00001010. ]

[Oracle]:: NeuralDive severed.