Chapter Text
“Do I make it hard on you?”
Viktor glances up, his face softening as he takes in Jayce’s posture, his expression: slumped, bent, his eyes shining.
Carefully he puts his hand on Jayce’s knee.
“No, lásko,” he says. “What makes you think that?”
“We were talking about—” Jayce breaks off, gives him a quick helpless look. Viktor nods, he knows what it means—we, talking, that shorthand for Jayce’s therapist—and Jayce looks at him gratefully, wetting his lips. It’s still hard for him to talk about these things. Sometimes Viktor thinks it only gets harder for Jayce, his tender Jayce.
“How not getting… help,” he says hesitantly, “makes other people do it for you. If you don’t do the work, everybody else has to…” he smiles, quick and nervous, like a flinch. “To take it on.”
“Ah,” Viktor says.
“I didn’t mean to make it hard on you,” he says, rubbing his wrist.
And again Viktor knows what he means, because he has to; because all their life is like this, the shadowy parts, this anxious shorthand, inability to touch the darkness because Jayce is afraid of touching something that touches back. And he thinks about the self-destruction, the awful nights Jayce didn’t come home, the worse nights he came home wrecked and inconsolable, caught in loops, repeating terrible things about himself, all misrepresentations and pain.
Coaxing him shaky into the shower, holding him close as he howled, face wrenched up.
Waking up to find him on the floor, because he thought he belonged there.
“You haven’t made it hard on me,” Viktor says. “You’re getting help, no?”
“But before,” he says, almost swallowing his words. The guilt in his face is terrible. Such a delicate face for such a strong man. Viktor tilts it towards him and kisses it.
“And you don’t think it was better than the alternatives?” Viktor says. “Never knowing you, never helping you? Watching you suffer?”
“You still watched me suffer,” Jayce says, averting his eyes. His thumb, rubbing the same spot on his wrist, the skin already turning pink.
“I did,” he agrees. He stills Jayce’s hand, his coolness over so much heat. Jayce’s eyes tracing the shape of his fingers, his palm finally turning to hold Viktor’s in his.
“And it was… hard,” Jayce says. The pad of his thumb touches Viktor’s.
“It was terrible,” he agrees, brushing a soft curl from Jayce’s forehead. “And I loved you, and I love you. And I would do it again.”
Jayce winces.
“I don’t want to do it to you again.”
“You won’t,” Viktor says easily. “Not in that way. And not to me, you understand? But if you’re struggling again, I hope you know I wouldn’t hesitate to carry you again. Even if you think you can, eh. Take it. Perhaps especially then.”
The soft curl falling into his eyes again, Viktor tucking it back.
“Don’t hide from me, lásko,” he says. “If you need me, never hide.” He brings Jayce’s wrist to his lips, worried pink, and kisses the marks. “I want to find you every time.”