Archive of Our Own

Viktor is an angel in white.

Jayce is so glad he’s wearing it. He’d had no say, at all, in what Viktor wore to the actual wedding. Neither of them like it when Viktor has to put his foot down. But sometimes Jayce gets carried away, he can admit that much. He could admit to just about anything right now, if it meant getting to stare at Viktor longer.

But he’s already walked too far down the narrow, twisting street for Jayce to see, swallowed into the dusky twilight and the thinning crowd. Jayce stands up. Counts to thirty, generous, prolonging Viktor’s headstart.

He hunts.

The first time Jayce ever sees Viktor, he’s running late for class.

It’s Jayce’s fault he’s running late. At the time, he doesn’t think so. He’s busy blaming his roommate, a visceral mental fantasy of gutting the man, delivering divine punishment for the imagined slight. More than a little overboard, but then Jayce always is, when he’s angry. 

They collide.

Viktor barely brushes his shoulder. Just Jayce’s insertion in his orbit is enough to spin him out, cartoonishly, as if he should have been wearing kitten heels and a fucking Betty Boop dress. Paper goes flying.

Viktor catches himself before he can truly take a tumble, harsh scrape of his cane against the pavement, his leg twisting in a way that doesn’t look quite natural. “Sorry,” he mumbles, even though if anything it had been Jayce’s fault. Jayce had been the distracted one. Jayce is the one who hadn’t been looking where he was going.

He’s looking now.

The thing about Jayce is he is often, and with ever-increasing severity, bored. His baseline is boredom; he is used to it, has been bored since birth. Congenital boredom. Jayce is sometimes bored enough that suicide begins to seem like a tempting option again, something to peruse from a menu, an addict’s urge to conjure up a taste of something. Jayce has a love-hate relationship with imagining his own death. It lost its sparkle, it seems, sometime around puberty. Often now he tends to think about death only in terms of extremes, a violent means to Jayce’s emotional ends. Drama, when he needs it. 

Mentally, he is bored, but emotionally Jayce is the equivalent of an overflowing cup; glass cracked under the pressure of infinite running water. He is no stranger to being called all manner of things that correctly identify the fact that there is something wrong with him but fail to extrapolate exactly what, an enduring source of Jayce’s frustration. It’s not as if he knows.

Intense. Off-putting. Obsessive.

I just worry he’s not quite right, the school counsellor had said to Jayce’s mother, while Jayce was in earshot, less than a year after his father died. I worry your son doesn’t know himself. I worry he never will. I worry what else he might do to compensate.

Jayce had been taken out of class that week for breaking into a girl’s locker. The girl had cried, even though Jayce only broke in to leave her a birthday present. He got taken out again for drawing a picture of the counsellor’s face beaten in with a hammer.

He’s still staring. Viktor is picking up his scattered papers. There’s a mole above his lip. His eyelashes are very dark. He walks away without sparing Jayce a second glance, as if Jayce is no longer on his radar. Sorry and then nothing, acknowledgement melting into ash. And Jayce feels—

Not bored. Huh. That’s new.

Jayce tends to feel in extremes, but it is rare he thinks in anything close to colour. Viktor is a spark of rich crimson red; trickle of technicolour down the back of Jayce’s brain, sinking into the spongy cracks. He looks familiar. He looks like that—pretty, arresting. He said sorry.

Like it’s his fault he walked too close to Jayce without meaning to. Without knowing.

The predator inside Jayce cocks its head.

He asks Heimerdinger about Viktor later, on a hunch. His suspicions are confirmed: Viktor was his full-time assistant last semester. Jayce remembers seeing him a few times, glimpses of him between classes. Nothing interesting enough to stick. He wonders what was so different this time, whether it was the proximity or if Jayce was simply paying attention; if something in Viktor has changed, if something in Jayce has. Anything to account for this sudden—fixation.

Jayce has never met a problem he couldn’t solve. He just needs to burn this out of his system.

It doesn’t take long to figure out Viktor’s deal. Jayce is good at this part. Research is a useful tool for scientists and sociopaths alike. He files away as much information about Viktor as he can, crucial puzzle pieces. He’s writing his second PhD on criminal sciences. He has one already, an eighty-thousand-word thesis on the relationship between PMI estimation and novel psychoactives. On page five, he boldly declares that all Piltovan forensic methodology is prejudiced and archaic, then proceeds to absolutely eviscerate its pioneers.

The so-called founding fathers of modern toxicology boast an arsenal of knowledge pertaining to the unique physical effects of designer drugs like Shimmer on the human body, but one must be skeptical of the modern forensic “scientist” who has never seen a relevant cadaver up close, let alone inspected one freshly deceased from the drug. Had it ever occurred to them to expand their studies beyond the cushioned cage of cultural homogeneity, or to spare a shred of empathy for the common addict, they may have found a wealth of practical knowledge more beneficial to their research than the biased, outdated studies still being referenced which fail to consider the humanity of either victim or perpetrator.

Jayce stays up all night reading it. The next day, he follows Viktor home. 

Viktor’s place is further downtown than Jayce lives. First floor apartment, street-facing. Kind of a shit-hole, but even from across the road Jayce sees how his shoulders relax when he makes it inside. A warm light flicking on; lingering by the door to feed his cats. He keeps the curtains drawn.

It’s a passing fascination, he thinks. Nothing more. The urge to pick a scab, skin-deep itch, sliver of fingernail sliding under dermis. He only wants to understand it, this strange nagging pull in his belly. The impulse to read everything Viktor has ever written and look at every photo of him that has ever been taken. To follow him around campus and watch him shed his coat like a second skin when he steps inside his apartment at night. To keep track of what he eats and reads and wears and listens to. To understand what it is about him that has Jayce’s brain so stuck.

He doesn’t understand it. Not at all.

Not until the night Viktor takes home a backpack full of chemicals.

Jayce knows he’s not supposed to have them. The fact that Viktor closes his curtains and keeps them that way confirms his suspicions. It is so unexpected, so uncharacteristic of the architecture of Viktor he has built up in his head, that he has no choice but to cancel all his plans and book a room in the motel across the street. Jayce waits, and waits. He is not bored, even while waiting.

When Viktor’s life crumbles apart, Jayce is there. Silent witness, guardian angel. He watches the police escort guide Viktor into the back of the ambulance down the street. Viktor’s features are shrouded by the distance, but it feels no less holy than staring at his face from underneath a wedding veil. Jayce’s heart thunders. Viktor looks…

It’s indescribable. He looks like Jayce’s ruin and salvation. Like an omen. Fresh snowfall, pending blood; beautiful dead boy swallowed by a hungry mouth, the van doors closing, his stricken face and the keen silver glimmer of the handcuffs.

He looks like Viktor. 

He is perfect, even when he believes he’s broken.

And that is the beginning of the end for Jayce Talis.

Jayce takes his time.

He thinks about their wedding night as he stalks Venetian alleyways in search of his bride. Technically, he thinks, with no small amount of relief, it wasn’t their real wedding night. This is. Although that’s not to say that Jayce failed to enjoy the first one. Viktor, too drunk to stand: adorable. He’s a nervous drinker. It’s a habit Jayce has been aware of since the very start, the early days of their relationship, before Viktor knew about him. Jayce knew it was going to be bad when between the two of them—mostly Viktor—they’d already emptied the mini fridge an hour before the ceremony. Viktor, fussing about his suit in the mirror, the little waistcoat, your mother will be there, I want to look less—

Jayce doesn’t want him to be less of anything. Less self-destructive, maybe, but even that is just an additional opportunity for Jayce to take care of him, and Jayce loves taking care of him. He’s so good at it.

He liked Viktor a lot better after the wedding. Dressed down, a peak of white lace from the underwear he’d worn for Jayce. He got so nervous after the ceremony that he continued drinking, enough to piss himself on the walk back to their room, a little shack the venue overconfidently declared Heaven’s Own Honeymooners Cottage. Insects buzzing in the thick sweet air and distant hum of music from the dinner reception they’d left an hour early. Jayce didn’t mind in the slightest. He’d much rather undress an unconscious Viktor than sit around all night with his People Face on.

But he’s glad they’re doing this. It feels far more authentic; far more them. Unlike the forty-person ceremony, unlike the extravagant honeymoon, Viktor asked for this. Not that Viktor asking for things tends to factor much into their relationship. It never has. He much prefers for Jayce to simply figure out his wants and needs and deliver them, silver-plattered, each time he decides he’s done tormenting himself for discovering a new one, as if desire is a finite burden and not an endless opportunity for pleasure. Jayce intends to teach him eventually. 

The fact that he asked for this outright is a very promising start.

Jayce likes Venice. Not as much as some of the other places he’s planning on taking Viktor before their long service leave runs out, but the island has a certain charm in the winter, frigid blue lagoon water and fog and deserted streets, everything vague and crooked and salt-hewn in the growing dark. The room he rented them is in the Cannaregio district, a walkable distance from Piazza San Marco even for someone like Viktor, who Jayce is pretty sure stole the itinerary from his phone even though Jayce asked him not to. Whether he actually knows where he’s going is a different story. Jayce has his phone. He’d put money on Viktor having looked it up and chosen a route ahead of time, but he knows from experience how easy it is to get lost here. 

And Viktor won’t be thinking clearly. Jayce knows him. He’ll be too distracted by the way Jayce has dressed him, by the hunt, by what Jayce is going to do when he catches him. Their real wedding night, he thinks again, warm all over. 

He pauses at a crossroads. Sniffs the air like a hunting dog, breathing in damp air and salt and boat exhaust. The path to his right is well lit, spills into the evening air the noise and clatter of souvenir shops closing and restaurants opening for the dinner service. To his left is darker, scattered streetlamp and uneven stone; in the distance, a bridge. He follows his instincts.

Viktor went this way.

Jayce has been following him for a year when he gets the idea to send the heart.

It’s almost Valentine’s Day. He and Viktor have been talking since January. Well, Jayce considers it talking. He sent a letter, back in November, that went ignored, after Viktor’s first attempt to come back to work. Jayce thought it was unfair that he lost his research grant and said as much, along with an earnest appraisal of Viktor’s character and all the things Jayce admired about him. It was very frank. He’s still not sure if it was this that put Viktor back into hibernation, but by the time he was ready to show his face again, Jayce was ready to be more cautious about the way that he communicated. He’d had plenty of time to reflect and was certain he had failed to account for Viktor’s emotional sensitivity. He needed to reserve bluntness for shock value only, for the purpose of catching him off guard, if he wanted to coax a response. He was just like Jayce. Heart of a poet, mind of a scientist.

Finally, in the first week of January, after twenty-nine unanswered text messages from a variety of fake numbers: Who is this?

So cute, like Jayce would just give up the game that easily. Though he had been tempted to tell him, if not only because the idea of hearing his name spoken in Viktor’s accent makes his mouth flood with saliva even now. He’d been tempted to write back: your future husband.

Call me J, he’d written instead, and attached a photo of Viktor’s favourite coffee shop. They were having a sale on gift cards and Viktor struck him as the type of person to want to be frugal about his daily habits.

Viktor stopped responding.

Jayce sent him a gift card in the mail a week later, along with a five-page love letter, much more passionate than the first; as well, an annotated copy of Viktor’s first dissertation, and a cashmere cardigan because it gets cold in the basement labs in the winter. Jayce would know, feels like he nearly froze to death the night he installed the cameras. 

The only downside to graduating is that Jayce can’t follow him around campus in person anymore. He’d briefly considered applying for a job, but he doesn’t want Viktor to meet him as a coworker. He’s had enough time to crunch the numbers, process the data, and Jayce is certain: they’re soulmates. When he introduces himself to Viktor, he wants it to be perfect.

Anyway, Jayce isn’t sure he possesses the willpower necessary not to jump him in the halls if he had to be in such close proximity. His desire has only gotten worse with time. The distance is better, for now, for Viktor’s sake.

One year. Their first Valentine’s Day.

Truth be told, Jayce is a little nervous. He’s not entirely sure he’s prepared to handle the possibility of Viktor ending up with a date, which is likely with as much trawling of dating apps as he’s been doing. Jayce thinks they’re beneath him, but he understands the lonely impulse. Viktor hasn’t slept with anyone since Jayce started following him. Jayce was able to find all his ex-boyfriends on Facebook easily enough, knows Viktor has gotten around in the past. He’s not judging. Viktor is a prime catch—elegant, beautiful, intelligent—so of course he elicits interest. Jayce can’t blame him for indulging in that interest from time to time; for seeking attention before Jayce was there to give it. Of course, he’s here now. He simply needs to make sure Viktor understands.

Jayce purchases the heart from a butcher in Zaun. Cash, no security cams, and he’s supporting a local business just down the road from where Viktor grew up—all wins. He wraps it and leaves it on Viktor’s porch in the early hours of Valentine’s Day morning, then settles in to watch through Viktor’s webcam. 

Jayce is familiar with his routine, but sometimes he likes to check in a little earlier to watch him wake up. Viktor is a beauty in the mornings: fabric-creased and bleary, a softness about him only visible before he becomes sharp enough to put his defenses in place. He finds Jayce’s gift when he shuffles into the hall, arms loaded with trash, and brings it back inside with him. The cameras in his building were more complicated than the ones in the lab and Viktor’s bedroom. He intends to add more when he can. The gift stays on the kitchen bench for fifteen minutes before Viktor carries it to his bed. 

Jayce makes himself comfortable and settles in to watch him open it.

His reaction is… surprising, to say the least. Though maybe not, in retrospect, once Jayce begins to rapidly reflect. He knows Viktor is a vegetarian and probably should have anticipated a strong reaction to gifting him, well, meat. But Jayce had been certain Viktor would understand the romantic intention behind the gift. It’s symbolic. He’s not asking Viktor to eat it. And it’s a beautiful heart: marbled off-white like mother of pearl, thick aorta, a deep red. The perfect shade, exactly how Jayce feels about Viktor, and he has the audacity to look disgusted. He sets the box aside, picks up his phone and starts to furiously type.

He’s… he’s texting Jayce.

He’s texting back one of Jayce’s fake numbers, anyway. His second phone vibrates on cue. Jayce’s hands are shaking as he unlocks it, as he reads through the glaring wall of evisceration via text. More messages are still incoming. Links to articles, now, peer-reviewed research backing up Viktor’s impassioned rant about animal cruelty and the meat industry. If Jayce truly cared about him, he declares, he’d have understood why Viktor feels this way in the first place.

Jayce is so stupid.

It is a quick and vicious spiral. By the time he’s in his bathroom rifling manically through the medicine cabinet, his brain catches up, and he regains enough control to stagger back into his bedroom and sit, trembling, on the edge of the mattress. He presses both hands to his face, stifles a laugh, something that sounds suspiciously sob-shaped. It’s not all despair. Part of Jayce is just so fucking relieved.

It’s the most he’s felt in years. Mood swings are infinitely better than yawning, gaping, endless nothing. Jayce could weep.

He does, but later, on the tail-end of another unexpected fit of emotion in the shower. Viktor’s face, in his memory, is more twisted with rage than it had been in reality, than it is probably capable of morphing into. Jayce sobs himself hoarse and writes him twelve texts apologising in the steam of the bathroom, drenched, hair dripping onto the screen of his phone. He makes a large donation to an animal welfare group in Viktor’s name. He doesn’t sleep for days, dedicated as he is to fixing it.

Because he loves Viktor so much. That Viktor could inspire this in him is only further proof that they are meant to be together. Jayce needs to repay him somehow, needs to make a real gesture, a declaration of devotion. I see you and I want you and I love you. And: someday, you will be mine. Just wait.

Something bigger than a piece of meat bought at the butcher's. Something as serious as them.

And Jayce’s mind begins to turn.

The first thing he’s going to do when he catches him is kiss him senseless.

Well, Jayce thinks. Realistically, the first thing he’s going to do is manhandle him. Between the prosthetic and the cane, Viktor doesn’t move very fast, but he’s a slippery motherfucker and unlikely to make it easy on Jayce. Not to mention that he likes it when Jayce fights him. Arms restrained, legs kicked open, big hand pinning him by the throat: all Viktor’s favourites. But Jayce wants to kiss him. He tastes sweeter when he’s frightened, all excess spit and diluted blood. He comes apart under Jayce’s hands like meat beneath the cleaver.

He’s not sure why he’s thinking of the slaughterhouse worker. Jayce thinks about him surprisingly little considering the man was for all intents and purposes Jayce’s first kill. Only on a technicality; an incident, in Jayce’s childhood, involving a boy and some train tracks and some muddied details, the fact that it took him weeks to die of his injuries, the fact that Jayce doesn’t remember clearly and therefore can’t be certain if he pushed him. It doesn’t matter. The slaughterhouse worker is the first person Jayce can remember killing with intention. 

It was artful, in Jayce’s opinion, and therefore perfectly acceptable. Not to mention the guy was a dick; three DV charges, starving greyhound tied up in his yard, the proud owner of a noisy, hideous, pollution-spewing vintage car he gave more attention to than the dog. Once, he’d outed Viktor in the comments of a Reddit post after losing an argument on an entirely different subject. This, in truth, had been what made the decision for Jayce, but the fact that he worked at the slaughterhouse was a bonus. Poetic justice, or something.

The fact that he’d managed not to get sick at the scene was a miracle. Jayce had made it back to his car, spitting and heaving, guts twisting violently, just in time to lose his dinner all over the passenger seat. It had stunk of sour fear for the entirety of the two hours’ drive home. Emptying his stomach had given him the courage to go back inside and take apart the body, though. Thank god, or else he’s certain he would have never forgiven himself for the waste. This was meant to be for Viktor, after all.

A human body smells more or less like a pig when it’s being taken apart. Same raw meat stink, sharp metallic tinge of blood, the kind that fills the mouth with saliva. Something overly sweet and festering. It’s a distinctly animal smell, not unfamiliar. The act itself is a different story. Jayce was a med student before he switched majors, and as a result has been around plenty of bodies, alive and dead. He tries to draw from this well of experiences a sufficient comparison, but not a single memory suffices. No amount of scalpels pressed into soft tissue or writhing sweat-drenched torsos is adequate preparation for the sense of tearing flesh apart by hand. Of mashing musculature to pulp, heavy weight of axe on bone, the rapidly cooling temperature of blood dulled through the gloves, a second skin. Of hearing his own heavy breathing, the shutter of his camera as he does what he really came here for, and takes a picture for Viktor.

To unmake someone, then form them again by hand. Like meat, like clay. For you, he thinks, sick to his stomach with love, sick down to his fucking toes. Everything, for you. In any universe, timeline, or possibility. My heart, my love, my Viktor.

It is the most romantic thing he had ever done at the time. Now, he thinks—turning a sharp corner, stepping faster at a flash of white up ahead—now, he has a bigger library to draw from. Everything he does is romantic, if you think about it, and Jayce has a notorious tendency of one-upping himself. He thinks this will do nicely—perhaps a touch less extreme, but he could fix that if Viktor asked for it, and even if he never does Jayce is more than content just to spend the rest of their lives fucking. It would certainly enable him to expel some of the violence that lives in his chest, the base need to chomp and render. But fucking Viktor tends to do that anyway. 

Jayce would love to be fucking him already. Fucking Viktor is like putting his hand on a hot stove. Always the urge to howl like something with its foot caught in a trap. Viktor is sweltering inside. The few times he let Jayce fuck him while he had a fever, Jayce thought he might genuinely die before it was over. Viktor is, generally speaking, comically unequipped to take him—given his size, given Jayce’s—but he does it every time, opens up and melts like butter: the narrow space of his insides that has to be carved out and reshapen turning unforgivably soft, splitting open like fruit. Slick pouring and sucking Jayce even deeper and harder, Jayce, please. 

That’s Jayce’s favourite part. When his body gives in and devotes itself to accommodating Jayce’s. The shift from choking to squeezing, eye-popping to velvet-soft pressure, Viktor Viktor Viktor all around him like a wedding ring. Pleasure like a muscle forced to untwinge, like sinking into a hot bath. Jayce could die happy inside of Viktor. 

At the pace he’s walking, it doesn’t take long to catch up, but he waits until Viktor has crossed over the canal to purposely scrape his foot against the side of the path and let him know he’s there. Viktor’s reaction gives him cuteness aggression: skittish, deer-legged pivot, a wobble on his heels like it takes him a moment to decide whether he wants to be chased. He opts for running, or more accurately moving as fast as he can, and deliberately steps out of Jayce’s path when Jayce tries to grab him. He’s a touch faster than Jayce is expecting and breaks into a joyful cackle when he gets away, breath coming fast and high. Jayce allows him to put a bit of distance between them.

Viktor’s laugh is still ringing out clear in the fast-falling night when he finally gives chase.

The fact that Viktor allows Jayce to continue after the first picture is all the evidence Jayce needs to cement his suspicions that they’re perfect for each other. The fact that he goes to the police is inconsequential; he has no reason to trust Jayce, not yet. Jayce finds out through Caitlyn, four martinis and her notorious habit for work gossip. He is unsurprised, and his disappointment only lasts as long as it takes Viktor to pick up the phone, which admittedly is not long. Not long at all. He comes well-scripted, when Jayce calls him that night, leave me alone and this is now a police matter, but all Jayce can hear is the breathy quality of his voice and the fact that, through the cameras, he can see that Viktor is flushed to the tips of his ears. How cute.

Weirdly enough, it gets easier after that. If anything, Viktor becomes more accommodating of Jayce’s behaviour. He hardly needs more evidence that they’re perfect for each other, but Viktor coughs up data in drones these days: from his search history to the kind of art he likes to look at, his questionable taste in old Hollywood movies, his habit of chewing down his nails and playing with his hair if Jayce hasn’t called him yet that week. Jayce becomes a devotee to Viktorisms. 

His relationship with Viktor is evolving in a way he finds satisfying. Jayce has always preferred to navigate relationships at a pace that other people find odd. He needs time to acclimate to Viktor; how else will he ensure that he is Viktor’s ideal husband, and justify all this? But he is relatively confident Viktor will forgive him in the future, if he hasn’t already. The fact that he’s taped over his webcam is heavily undermined by the fact that he picks up every single time Jayce calls him. Not that Jayce ever says anything; he leaves that for Viktor. He’s far more responsive if he’s smoked a little weed beforehand. Less guarded, rambly, sometimes borderline flirty. 

The webcam thing is a non-issue. Jayce was already planning on breaking in and setting up more cameras. The mic he mounts behind Viktor’s bedframe—the whole installation takes him under an hour, he even has time to feed Viktor’s cats. He pets them wrist-first, wanting them to get used to his smell. He can’t believe he’d been so nonchalant at the time, that he hadn’t been shaking with excitement.

The cameras are the best thing he’s ever done, second only to cameras with the addition of a microphone: now Jayce gets to listen to Viktor, too. Viktor abstained from masturbating altogether for a while when Jayce first started following him—depression, Jayce assumes. He’s glad to see evidence of Viktor’s mental health improving, a steady increase in libido that takes almost three years to settle into a routine consistent enough for Jayce to consider it Viktor’s baseline. He wonders now if he isn’t at least partially responsible. He affords Viktor a sense of routine by contacting him at predictable hours, and he certainly fulfills Viktor’s desperate need for attention. He’d like to fulfil his need for physical attention too, someday; watching now, Jayce can’t believe he went a year without this.

Even under the covers, just the suggestion of movement, the sight never fails to devastate. Viktor, perfect austere Viktor, touching his pussy. Jayce can’t believe he hasn’t been devoting twelve hours daily of brainspace to the concept at minimum before now. Viktor has a perfect pussy. Jayce is a little obsessed with it, admittedly—installs better cameras, the first time Viktor gets himself off above the covers. Demure as a fucking lamb that night; taking an age just to undress down to his panties. He’s pink all over by the time he finally shucks those, too, and sweating—the air-conditioner in his apartment is still broken—but the brief unobstructed look Jayce gets of his body is almost immediately eclipsed by the ensuing tunnel vision upon watching him part his legs.

He shaves in the heat. A new fact to add to the Viktor Bible Jayce keeps in his head. The spycams are high-quality enough to pick up on the faint shadow of prickle growing back in over Viktor’s mound from all the way across the room on Viktor’s desk. He’s so pink. Jayce’s skin prickles, a feverish itch. He wants to get his mouth on Viktor badly. He feels like a maniac, enough saliva to pool and drip as he savagely fucks his fist to the visual, caveman brain empty of all but fat and wet and shiny, Viktor’s plush lips and blood-swollen little cock, the split where he opens up in the middle, the place where all the mess is coming from. He’s so wet, Jayce thinks. Does he always get this wet?

The next day: better cameras. He is going to be prepared from now on. Viktor’s cats appear pleased to see him, though Jayce isn’t convinced he hasn’t just taught them that he’s a reliable source of treats. The installation takes a little longer, since he has to uninstall the old cameras first. He decides to push his luck even further by digging through Viktor’s laundry after; worth it when he comes upon the pair of cotton underwear Viktor had gotten himself all worked up in last night before stripping. Jayce pockets them, and leaves with just enough time to encounter Viktor in the lobby, which has his heart beating in his fucking throat for the next hour.

Jayce can’t remember the last time he was this unhinged about someone. He needs to fuck Viktor. He’d do it perfectly, he knows he would. He thinks, often, of Viktor letting him—of that low-lidded amber gaze, slender thighs parting. Sometimes he thinks about just waiting for him to get home, pushing him down and—

Jayce is not unfamiliar with cnc; as far as fetishes go he considers rape to be relatively tame, although the search history on Viktor’s phone suggests he hasn’t quite gotten there yet. Jayce still thinks he’d like it. Getting fucked in a way that takes all his choices away. Viktor doesn’t like choices. He doesn’t do well with options, as a general rule, operates best under a firm schedule and comforting sameness. He would operate even better under Jayce’s guidance, in Jayce’s opinion. Jayce would take such good care of him. He really would. He could make all of Viktor’s decisions if Viktor wanted him to.

Sometimes Jayce’s fantasies turn ugly. His brain has a habit of doing that. He thinks of cornering Viktor, of kissing him, of pulling back only to see his face and realise that—ah, he’s known the whole time, he simply isn’t interested. Something inherent to Jayce deemed inadequate: his whole body stings from the resulting shot of fear and dread.

It’s difficult not to fall into the ever-present trap of self-hatred that tends to accompany his Viktor-themed thought spirals. Jayce is managing, for the most part. He hasn’t killed at all since the slaughterhouse and that was forever ago. He’s surprised the urge hasn’t come up again, to be honest. He’d figured it would, after the first time—Jayce tends to have an addictive personality. But though he has the occasional brief blinding flash of murderous rage, usually when people are rude to Viktor or, god forbid, interested in him, he has no real desire to follow through on his fantasies most of the time. Detailing them to Viktor is satisfying enough. He squirms, sometimes, when Jayce is descriptive.

He’s working on a theory, sort of, concerning Viktor. A couple of things he finds fascinating. Like the fact that he still has Jayce’s photograph. Cait let him keep the original; he keeps it in an unsealed envelope stashed in his bedside drawer, rarely looked at, but Jayce knows it’s there. It’s been almost a year since the last time he took it out, by Jayce’s estimation, when his phone lights up to notify him that Viktor’s on his way home from work earlier than usual. It’s the middle of the day. Jayce tunes into the live feed just in time to catch him stumbling through the front door and already winding himself up to a panic attack. This is within his existing routine, so not entirely unexpected. The panic attack, but not coming home in the middle of the day. Jayce zooms in, irritated when Viktor steps out of view before he can finish scrutinising his expression. He looks worn out, like he’s struggling to take care of himself. Perhaps a touch more wired than usual. He’s been biting his nails.

Jayce gets his answer when Viktor marches, freshly shaken from the panic attack, and wrenches open his bedside drawer. Jayce groans out loud at the face Viktor makes when he sees the photo again. It’s there and gone in a flash, replaced by a well-rehearsed blank stare he ordinarily reserves for public masking. Jayce wonders if Viktor is thinking about him. If he feels watched or seen.

He puts the photograph away, back into its envelope, and Jayce thinks that’s that. Viktor showers, makes himself cosy in his matching pajama set, fucking precious. He curls up on the bed with a glass of red wine half-filled on the bedside table, and puts on a true crime documentary. They’re oversensationalised garbage that most people in his and Viktor’s field tend to scoff at, but Viktor loves them. He looks relaxed for the first time all day as he settles back into his mountain of pillows and starts nursing the wine. Jayce wonders if he’s aware he toes the line with alcohol, sometimes, given his past issues. It’s the only thing Viktor really indulges in anymore, save for the medical weed he oscillates between dry herb vaping and baking awkwardly into pulpy cakes and lumpy cookie doughs—Jayce’s baby can’t bake at all, it’s so endearing. Jayce dreams often of taking care of him this way: cooking for him every night, watching Viktor swallow his food. Jayce would love nothing more than to ensure that Viktor never lifts a finger again. 

Jayce loves seeing him without the prosthetic. He sits with his knee drawn up, the light of the tv making his face and the blunt end of the severed limb both look oddly softer. He starts fidgeting with something on the first ad break, angled so that Jayce can’t quite see on account of the current camera angle. Maybe he needs to install something that swivels. Something that doesn’t make a lot of noise, perhaps? He switches between the other cameras, stomach bottoming out when he sees it. It’s the photograph again. Jayce didn’t even see him open the drawer. 

He realises what’s going to happen seconds before Viktor sets his glass aside and settles back into the pillows. His eyes are locked on Jayce’s photo as he forgoes feigning interest in his show altogether in favour of sliding a shaky hand into his underwear. Jayce unbuckles with such speed that he tears a hangnail in the process; sharp pain, hot streak of blood in a hairline pin from his cuticle to the first divot in his knuckle. Read smears along the head of his cock when he frees himself, already leaking, and starts to fuck his fist at a near-violent pace.

Viktor moans. It’s feather-soft, all air, an octave shy of a whine. His eyes slam shut; flash back open, still staring at the picture as he starts to touch himself properly. Jayce is devastated he’s chosen to hide his perfect pussy for this. The only upside is how erotic it is to see Viktor turn so red, an even brighter red than usual, everywhere else: flushed all over from the shame of what he’s getting off to, from fear or embarrassment or both. He’s so wet, Jayce can tell from the sounds the mic is picking up. Already he’s drenched through both his underwear and his pajama bottoms, baby blue turned thin and pearlescent where his fingers move over himself.

Jesus Christ, Jayce thinks, fumbling with his free hand for the prize he keeps in his bedside drawer. Viktor’s underwear, still unwashed and crumpled from the day he pilfered them from Viktor’s laundry hamper. Jayce sticks them into his mouth without hesitation, groaning at the taste. His nostrils flare as he takes in deep, huffing breaths, like there’s a chance he can absorb Viktor’s scent into his permanent consciousness. It’s not until Viktor starts thrashing around again on screen that he takes them out, tries to focus. Wrapping them around the head of his cock helps. Jayce grunts as he fucks into the cool wetness of the ruined fabric.

Viktor is making noise again. Jayce can tell he’s about to come. He’s gotten good at telling, thinks he’d be even better at making it happen. Viktor opens his mouth when it starts, whole body trembling, and Jayce doesn’t even realise he’s saying anything at first. Heat slams into him like a bullet when he hears it. He’s speaking so softly, but—

“Jay…”

Unmistakable. Jayce comes so hard his vision whites out.

It feels like he’s lying right next to Viktor, afterwards, a strange buzzing intimacy as he watches Viktor come down. The heavy flutter of his lashes, ribs contracting under shadowed light. He stares up at the ceiling, panting, expression blank, control restored now that he’s no longer chasing something. But Jayce has irrefutable proof now. Viktor wants him. Nothing else can matter when Viktor wants him.

Viktor withdraws for a little while after that. Picks up less, takes longer to check his messages. Jayce doesn’t take it well. It happens to coincide with one of his worse self-esteem days, has him feeling more than a little unstable. Sometimes Viktor feels like a drug, a little. Maybe this is part of the reason why Jayce is so dedicated to justifying the long wait—they could have met by now, Jayce is crafty enough to make it happen, he doesn’t know how he’s managed to stay so patient. He doesn’t want to admit that it has anything to do with the fact that he can’t quite meet his own eye in the mirror at the moment. That happens sometimes. He tries to approach any evidence of mental health issues with neutral, clinical interest, so as to not inspire a panic attack.

Jayce has decided that it has to do with the fact that Viktor is dating again. The dates are frequent enough to interrupt Jayce’s usual monitoring schedule, outside the scope of his cameras, limiting him to only Viktor’s location. He’s forced to cancel plans last-minute and travel to ridiculous parts of the city to keep an eye on him. None of the men he entertains are any interesting. Only about half are decently attractive. Jayce makes sure to learn the full names of each so that they can be easily stalked online later, mainly so that he has more material to pick them apart with Viktor. Viktor would likely sooner die than admit it, but Jayce can tell he enjoys these messages. He finds Jayce’s criticisms entertaining; at the very least, he likes Jayce telling him that he’s too good for people.

The fact that he rarely sees anyone for a second date helps Jayce cope, as does the fact that he doesn’t appear to be fucking any of them. At least, not until he’s asked out by the bartender. 

Jayce hates the guy on sight, and the fact that he’s overly handsy with Viktor practically seals his fate. Jayce has no idea what Viktor sees in him. Jayce observes nothing but blatant disrespect; later, through the spycams, incredulous that Viktor has actually brought him home, more of the same. And then he pushes Viktor face-down on the bed.

Jayce barely survives the nausea, even though Viktor moans like he likes it the entire time. Jayce can tell he doesn’t come. Bartender doesn’t offer to eat him out or anything, just tucks his softening cock away and buttons up his fly and asks if Viktor wants something to drink. A wave of heat so intense that it briefly blacks out his vision flushes through Jayce’s system, scalp to toes fire, and then he’s standing outside on the street across from Viktor’s apartment.

The fact that Jayce doesn’t remember driving over is… not good. He arrives just in time to catch Bartender leaving. Jayce follows him, decides to catch up when he tries to duck down a conveniently isolated alley, barely a gap between two buildings. A shortcut, maybe.

It’s the first time Jayce has killed since the slaughterhouse worker—the rush of power and lurch of nausea are both the same. He manages not to get sick this time, although the ensuing panic attack is almost worse. Jayce manages to control it in under five minutes. He’s wearing his gloves. That’s good. That’s a start. Strangulation was idiotic; he’s going to have to completely destroy the body now. Had he picked a less personal method, he wouldn’t have to worry about stray hairs or residual DNA, could have just left the body for public discovery and not even been a suspect. Jayce doesn’t know this guy.

The idea of taking him apart seems more laborious than it does exciting, the way it had the first time. He supposes it’s because the first time, he’d been anticipating getting to show it off. He’s not particularly proud of this murder; it isn’t artistic, he doubts Viktor has any respect for thoughtless jealousy. But maybe he can take a couple of pictures anyway. Nothing identifiable, physical media only, something to pad a few love letters. The thought brightens his mood enough to offer a distraction as he hauls Bartender’s corpse to the end of the alleyway, propped inelegantly behind a dumpster while Jayce brings the car around.

Thirty-six hours later, he mails Viktor the photograph.

He’s lucky enough to already be watching when Viktor opens it. His reaction is beautiful: caught breath, pink cheeks, bushy eyebrows tilting up. He looks otherworldly when he’s scared. Lovely and frightened and trembling, disgusted and overwhelmed at the sight of what Jayce has done for him. Of what Jayce has done for him again.

The message Jayce sends receives an even more visceral reaction: You shouldn’t let lowlives push you around. I took care of this one. Please, look after yourself.

Viktor claps a hand over his mouth when he reads it. He cries. Jayce doesn’t understand why he’s crying. His best guess is it’s the shame thing, again, when not even an hour later Viktor is riding the biggest toy he owns. Riding is a generous term. He lacks the leverage to lift himself without the prosthetic, uses one hand to steady the base of the toy while he grinds his hips down in impatient circles. Viktor is brutal with himself. He pitches forward face-first into the sheets, uses his arm to piston the toy into himself; back arching, sharp gasps muffled by the comforter. He likes it hard—fast, deep, too violent for his body to keep up with. A tendon in his wrist is visibly cramping.

He whines, frustrated, loud enough to be picked up by the mic. Jayce’s cock throbs. His entire body throbs. His baby. Jayce wants to be there, needs to help his angel—needs to gently extract Viktor’s fingers, kiss them all before laying them flat, pin Viktor by his lower belly and scramble his insides properly. Forget the toy, Jayce could just hold him down and go for it, fuck him as hard as he wants, until he either passes out or breaks down bawling, whichever comes first. Maybe until he pisses himself, god, the thought of that, of Viktor somehow getting wetter—that perfect cunt can probably squirt, or Jayce could train it to. It doesn’t look like it’d be hard, the way Viktor likes it.

Such a glutton for pleasure, Jayce’s baby. Jayce can’t wait to make him come for the first time. He can’t wait to marry him. He will, one day. He’s serious about it. He pictures Viktor, lovely in white, locked away safe in a big house—the perfect house, a place to build their home and start their family, an attic and a basement, a backyard where their kids can play…

He’s lived where he lives for long enough. He can book an appointment with his broker tomorrow. It’s all the more reason to wait on the Viktor stuff. 

He needs time to build the perfect life for his soulmate, after all.

Jayce lets him make it as far as the bridge.

He catches Viktor by the back of the neck and steers him into a brick wall before he can cross. Viktor nearly goes into the water; feet scrambling and one wild swinging arm which Jayce has no trouble at all immobilising. He kicks Viktor’s feet apart like an afterthought, using the whole rigid line of his body to keep him in place. Both their hearts are beating hard. Jayce can feel the reverberation of Viktor’s pulse like a thrumming insect, a constant buzz from his carotid artery. 

The urge to sink his teeth in is powerful. Viktor gasps when he does it, locks up, but is otherwise completely silent, even when Jayce’s jaw grinds into fragile muscle and clamps down hard. His feet skid wider apart on their own. His sneakers are damp.

“Please,” he mumbles, thready and barely louder than a whisper. “P-please don’t.”

He doesn’t want to raise his voice. Cute. He’s so cute. Even though there’s no one around, even though he’s led them somewhere secluded on purpose. Jayce detaches his jaw, the sound of bone unsticking from flesh, sucks a bruise to the surface and snaps Viktor’s earlobe between his teeth. “Hi, baby.”

Viktor whimpers. Jayce has his left arm pinned at the small of his back, but his right is crushed between their bodies and the wall. Jayce feels him twist again in an effort to free it. The fact that he knows he’s genuinely trying only makes it harder to focus. He’s practically panting in Viktor’s ear, salivating like a hungry dog, has half a mind to forgo the plan and force him to take Jayce’s cock out here instead.

“Did you know this was close to the room?” Jayce bites his ear again. It’s too dark to see now—a shame, he loves how red Viktor gets—but he can feel it, sizzle of blood-heavy flesh. Jayce eases the coat off his shoulders and drags his mouth over the goosebumps that form over Viktor’s bare shoulders. “So considerate. I wouldn’t have minded carrying you.”

“I can—walk.”

Jayce hums. “For now.”

Viktor turns his head, stares back at him over his shoulder in a way that sends heat lancing through Jayce’s stomach. Fuck, he’s convincing. Teary-eyed, lip already torn where he’s bitten it. He looks genuinely terrified. But his pupils are a dead giveaway—blown like he’s high and out of his head already, dark and fat as twin eclipses in the dark. He hasn’t taken anything, Jayce is certain. But he’s about to.

Jayce is expecting him to bite; he’s already prepared with his thumb, digging into the hinge of Viktor’s jaw until Viktor’s mouth drops open with a pained gasp. It allows Jayce to shove the pills right to the back of his mouth, sliding along his tongue until he gags. One over his nose and the other clamped down hard over his mouth. Viktor fights it, squirms and slaps at Jayce with his freed hand, but he doesn’t try to spit the pills back up.

A sharp kick widens his stance again and Jayce leans as much of his weight onto Viktor’s upper body as he can manage without crushing him. Viktor’s eyes roll back—he looks like he wouldn’t mind being crushed in the slightest. Jayce doubts he can breathe like this, but if the lack of oxygen is bothering him he’s not making it any easier on himself by refusing to swallow. 

“You know what to do if you want air,” says Jayce, pointedly tightening his hand over Viktor’s mouth. Viktor shivers hard, but a second later Jayce hears him swallow. Sharp click of a dry throat working and the otherworldly sensation of warm skin bobbing underneath the heel of Jayce’s hand. He’s so small that Jayce could probably choke him to death one-handed without even breaking a sweat.

Viktor goes limp in under a minute. It’s too soon for the sedatives to have realistically kicked in, but Jayce doesn’t say anything. The sudden docility makes it impossible not to touch Viktor, to hold him and croon lovingly in his ear as he feels up his chest through the gossamer-thin fabric. He’s not even sure about half of what comes out of his mouth, true stream-of-consciousness horny bullshit; Jayce tunes back in to hear his own fevered muttering about what he’ll do if Viktor ever runs away. Viktor’s hips are rocking back in a way Jayce doubts is intentional. The more gruesome Jayce’s descriptions, the more noise he makes, reedy whimpers caught in the snarl of his teeth, liquid gasp when Jayce tweaks his nipple. He’s crying, Jayce realises.

Jayce shushes him, lips dragged clumsily over the creeping heat on Viktor’s face, a smear of salt and wet where he’s got his eyes squeezed shut. “Shh, shhh, honey. I’m here, it’s okay. I know it’s scary. Everything I just said is so scary, isn’t it? Poor thing. My brave, silly boy.”

Viktor sobs. He tilts his head back, rolling against Jayce’s shoulder like something with its strings cut. Jayce drags his hand up from Viktor’s chest to the white of his throat. Prey animal pale, cadaver in the moonlight. Viktor starts crying harder when Jayce wraps his fingers around his throat, the heat of more pooling blood dulled through the glove. 

Jayce coos. “What are you so worried about, sweetheart? I’ll only hurt you if you try to run away. And you’re not going to run away. You’re going to be my perfect little bride, aren’t you?”

By the time Viktor’s legs give out, Jayce is anticipating the fall and catches him easily. He lifts him into a bridal carry and breathes in deep. Viktor’s scent, as rich the earth after rain: paper and sweetmilk and home. Jayce’s, Jayce’s, Jayce’s.

His prey is warm and perfect in his arms and the room is just down the road. Jayce starts walking.

Jayce has been stalking Viktor for over six years when he has the worst mental break of his life.

It ends up being one of the best things that has ever happened to him. At the time, he doesn’t think so. It starts with his abuelita dying. Jayce is hardly a stranger to death. Between losing his father young and the four people he’s killed for Viktor, he actually considers himself something of an expert. Four people. He guesses that kind of makes him a serial killer. Between his degree and his friends at the station, Jayce is rarely if ever worried about the possibility of being caught. He tends not to worry about the messy, complicated moral side of things either—much simpler only to focus on the things he actually cares about, not the things he thinks he should. It has been a long time since death affected him.

Jayce doesn’t take the news well. Abuelita is—was—his last living grandparent; his last relative, other than mama, not counting the family they left behind when they moved to Piltover, dad’s side, Jayce doesn’t even know how he’d contact any of them now, doesn’t even remember their names. Jayce wanted them to meet Viktor. All of them, but abuelita especially. Had assumed she would, eventually, until the possibility is abruptly ripped out from under him, tablecloth to the guts, everything Jayce keeps close spilling and shattering all over the place. Jayce will outlive every single person who ever witnessed his childhood by a significant margin. It is a nauseating thought. Existential dread opens up in his chest, a freezing cool void. It shuts just as quickly, replaced by Jayce’s artificial numb. He cries himself to sleep for the first time in years.

Three days off work turns into a week turns into an involuntary psychiatric hold when Jayce winds up at the same bridge he considered jumping from only a little over six years ago. The shrink they assign him tells him it’s been this long. All he wants to do is go home; shower, hide from the world, check on Viktor the way he’s been too afraid to for days now. 

How can he look at Viktor now and know that he has failed? Failed to keep his shit together. Failed to give him the big family he’s never had but always wanted, the kind of family he deserves. Worst of all, Jayce is terrified he’ll check in only to find a smooth cool stone in the place his feelings for Viktor live; this, too, ossified and dead. 

By the time they drag him into a therapist’s office it has been almost a week since he last checked in. Jayce tends to be hostile to most therapists. He hides it well, the way he hides most major evidence of his otherness, but apparently not well enough for this particular therapist. Within the hour she’s pivoting to ask Jayce about his history with assessments for personality disorders. He considers lying, but it feels a little futile at this point. He’s so, so tired. So he talks.

And talking… helps.

A novel concept. Jayce is even mostly honest, inasmuch as he can be honest without incriminating himself. He tells her about abuelita. He tells her about his childhood. He tells her about the life-long boredom, the extreme ups and downs, the preoccupation with death and dying. He even tells her about Viktor, with only a few details altered—like Viktor being a friend Jayce has a crush on instead of the fated soulmate he stalks—but it helps an extraordinary amount to have someone listen. “It sounds like you really care about this person,” she comments. “What’s holding you back?”

Jayce starts to answer—ready to self-censor, to edit out the parts about needing to build the perfect life for the perfect person—when it occurs to him that he doesn’t need to. “I… he deserves the best.”

“The best version of you, as a partner?”

Jayce hadn’t really thought about it that way. “Yeah. He doesn’t… I don’t want him having to deal with any instability or uncertainty. Not when it comes to us.”

“But he doesn’t know that there is an ‘us’,” she says, neutral but managing to raise Jayce’s hackles anyway. “Correct?”

“He knows how I feel about him.”

“Ah. Is it unrequited, then?”

“No!” Perhaps a touch too defensive; Jayce dials it back. “It’s not like that. He knows how I feel, and he’s… the same. But I—it’s complicated, he needs me to make the first move. I can’t really explain it.”

“That’s alright,” she says, still cautiously neutral as she sets down her pen. “Might you be open to trying anyway?”

Jayce tries. It helps. There’s no looking back after that.

He has regular sessions booked with her by the time he checks himself out of the hospital. He feels lighter in a way he can’t quite quantify as he picks up his personals and goes to wait for the bus outside. It’s the middle of the day, sun glaring, too bright to see anything without squinting, and Jayce feels like he’s been in a dark hole for weeks. But it’s nice. To be outside again. To have a brain that’s willing to be quiet.

His phone is dead. The first thing he does when he gets home is plug it into a charger. He takes a shower while he waits, inspects his face in the fogged-over mirror. He passed the point of needing to shave a few days ago. It doesn’t look too bad, the facial hair; maybe Jayce could leave it. He’s long overdue for a haircut, but maybe he could leave that, too. It’s been a long time since he’s looked in the mirror and not hated what he sees. 

His phone fully charged, he checks on Viktor for the first time in over a week. It’s the longest he’s gone without talking to him since before he started following him, six—Jesus, almost seven years ago now. 

His heart doesn’t stop its sickly fast pulsing in his chest until he sees that Viktor is okay. But of course he’s okay. The real question is whether Jayce is—and he finds, in this moment of clarity, that he is. Better than okay, perhaps.

His feelings are still there. The boredom is not.

Jayce is so relieved he could cry, so he does: happy tears like rain to bless the soil of the new him, cleansing downpour that aches at the very core. Love, endless and abundant. This is real.

He wants to tell Viktor everything. Everything he worked out in therapy, everything he’s ever felt from the start. So much of it comes down to shame. He’s ashamed of how long it has taken him to build up the confidence necessary to be the man Viktor deserves, ashamed of all the excuses he’s made along the years when really, he’s just been terrified all along that he won’t be enough for Viktor. That he might be too much. He is ashamed about killing, ashamed that he’s not as ashamed about killing as he should be. Four men. Jayce feels almost nothing for them. He knows he isn’t a sociopath, wouldn’t feel in such awful extremes otherwise, but how else does he explain that? And there’s the shame again.

Jayce is done being ashamed. Life is not long enough to waste on such an ugly thing. 

On screen, Viktor scratches his nose, adorably unaware that he’s going to be where he belongs so soon.

You know, Jayce writes, this is gonna sound ridiculous, but I think I’ve been doing this for so long because I’m scared. I’ve always been terrified of anything real. This, you, the way I feel about you—it’s the realest thing I know. I want you to know that I’m not scared of you rejecting me anymore. I don’t fear abandonment or failure or being wrong about us. I’m only afraid of it working. Because I know it will work. I’m tired of being afraid of my own happiness. You make me so happy, V. 

“Leave me alone,” Viktor says out loud in the lab to no one. Jayce smiles. He wonders, not for the first time, whether Viktor suspects there are cameras. Jayce’s smart, smart boy. He’s never checked, but why would he, if he likes being watched?

Jayce is on cloud nine. He laughs, out loud, deliriously happy, because he’s going to be with Viktor. He’s going to make it happen. No more stalking, no more killing—he is going to bring Viktor home.

Just a few crucial things to plan first.

On screen, Viktor stands up, wincing at the pull in his spine. Jayce should buy him a higher-quality back brace. He makes a mental note to order one tonight.

Viktor’s phone chimes. Cloning it was one of the first things Jayce ever did, so he has no trouble pulling up the app that logs all of Viktor’s notifications for him. He’s irritated to learn that he has a date in a few hours. His conversation with the man goes back at least a week—Jayce has a lot of reading to catch up on. Hm. He doesn’t like this guy’s attitude, but then, he never does. What he likes even less is the fact that Viktor has been flirting back. Is Jayce crazy, or does he seem flirtier than usual? Poor baby. Jayce hasn’t been here to give him any attention this week.

Well. He was going to refrain from following Viktor around in person for a little while—too much to plan, too much to do—but now he thinks he might check in. Just while he’s on his date with this loser, just to make sure he’s safe. 

And hell… if Jayce still doesn’t like the guy, one more little murder won’t hurt. 

All in the name of love.

The room is located on a quiet street at the edge of Cannaregio. Its private entrance is accessible via the code that Jayce received from the AirBnB host. He gets it open one-handed, carrying Viktor up a narrow set of steps. Everything in Europe is narrow, maybe that’s why Viktor’s bones grew that way even in Zaun. Jayce wonders if he’ll be surprised by the stopover in Plzeň—if not, Jayce can make it up to him in Prague, at least there he knows where all the impressive restaurants are. But it is far easier to impress Viktor with other things.

He bounces twice when Jayce throws him onto the bed. Jayce is already on him and removing the prosthetic. Viktor doesn’t fight him as he leans over and sets it gingerly by the nightstand. He doesn’t even fight Jayce when he starts to ruck the dress up, even though he does it slowly enough to start him faintly squirming, aware enough of Jayce’s unrelenting stare on his body to reflexively protest. It stops after a minute, Jayce’s big hands dragged over his torso; cupping the flare of his ribcage, the dip of his waist, over the mound of his naked pussy. Even with his thighs pressed together Jayce can see he’s wet. It glimmers in the low light like a diamond, up over the puffy slit of Viktor’s cunt. Jayce is surprised to see he’s shaved—he loves Viktor with hair, the taste and smell of him, and he usually grows it out when it’s colder—but maybe he thought tonight was special.

“I’ll be right back,” Jayce murmurs. True to his word he is only gone for about fifteen seconds; just enough time to dig around in the bag he’d had dropped off here earlier for Viktor’s veil. He kneels carefully over him on the bed to fasten it.

The veil completes Viktor’s look. His white satin dress is stained black along the hemline where it’s been dragging, scraped along dirty stone or caught beneath Viktor’s unsteady gait. One big smudge along the belly where Jayce had him up against the wall. The veil is small, fingertip-length, but arranged on the crown of Viktor’s head and over the line of his trembling torso, it swallows him—spider’s silk, diaphanous haze over the most beautiful boy Jayce has ever seen. The boy Jayce married. 

Like this, the sedatives working through his system, Viktor is completely pliant; doesn’t need to be tied up or held down, simply lets Jayce move him. “Thighs open for me, baby,” and he just does, smooth glide of bare skin over bedsheets, his dark trembling gaze locked on Jayce’s. On his back, the first two orgasms wrung out by skilful hand; inside he’s dripping, battered soft by three blunt fingers, twisting and searching and reaching as deep as they’ll go. Jayce thinks about forcing them deeper, about putting his whole hand inside of Viktor—reaching in and finding his heart. His thumb rubbing and rubbing and rubbing the side of his pert little cock. He’s soaked, dripping down Jayce’s fingers, a sloppy clapping sound every time his palm makes contact. The way it jolts him up the bed, doll-like and unresisting, runs like barbed wire through Jayce’s nervous system, Viktor too out of it to do anything but whimper and sniffle and come on Jayce’s fingers, forced through one after the other like water squeezed from cloth.

Jayce makes him come a third time with his mouth. He’s messy with it, sloppy, drool and slick down his chin like a wild beast. He wouldn’t mind making Viktor come a few more times like this, might consider it if not for the way his cock is throbbing red-hot and painful every time he rocks his hips down into the mattress. Everything tastes of Viktor, beard soaked through, fingers pruned where they’re currently digging gnarly bruises into Viktor’s thighs.

Jayce can’t wait anymore. It’s a wonder he waited at all in the first place.

The first push inside of Viktor’s body is, as always, divine torture. Fire licks up Jayce’s spine. He makes a pained noise, inhuman-sounding, and bullies the rest in as though his entire body isn’t screaming at him not to. It works even better than usual, with Viktor already so out of it. His eyes roll, a shaky sigh; his cunt clenching and clenching around Jayce so tightly it borders on unbearably painful. Then, like always, he just opens up and takes it. 

Jayce groans. Draws out, the slide back inside warm and wet and perfect. Viktor’s hips are easily tilted up onto his lap for better leverage. The veil has fallen off, or maybe been pushed aside; Viktor has one arm thrown up beside his head, fisted in the fabric. The other flops limply at his side to the frantic rhythm of Jayce railing him. He’s not even tensing anymore; ragdoll lethargy, soundless other than the blunt breaths Jayce keeps forcing out.

It doesn’t help that his eyes are closed. Jayce is pretty sure he’s meant to have ‘come to’ by now, should be at the very least making an attempt to fight back. It is highly unlikely he’ll have enough leverage to do any damage under the fog of both the pills and subspace, which is precisely why he’d wanted to work it into the scene in the first place. But he’s still just taking it, eyes closed and body lax and hair splayed wildly from how hard he’s being bounced in Jayce’s lap.

Jayce thumbs at his mouth, expecting the wet warm heat of an eager tongue: nothing. He thumbs open Viktor’s eyelid, instead, only to find that both his eyes are still rolled back, all sclera, lashes fluttering when Jayce lets go. He makes a dreamy, drawn-out sigh of a noise—holy shit, Jayce thinks, because he’s not playing it up, he’s actually passed out—

Jayce pauses with his cock drawn halfway out, only to drive straight back in when it throbs, suddenly so hot all over that he’s dizzy. He should stop. But the thought of tearing his eyes away from Viktor for even a moment threatens to drive him insane, never mind trying to take his cock out. Viktor, his sleeping beauty—Jayce remembers watching him through the cameras, greedy for every pixel of early morning sincerity, every soft vulnerable sound at night. All his, forever. 

The urge to go even harder now that Jayce knows he’s unconscious is tempting, but equally so is the urge to fuck him with all the sweet slow tenderness Viktor reviles; to make love to him, face kissed all over, cuntdrunk sweet nothings rambled feverishly against his slack mouth. Jayce is unerringly gentle with him, like this, addicted to the way that even the most leisured thrusts have him flopping around, no control of his motor functions at all, god. Too warm to be a dead body but all the same he’s Jayce’s to do quite literally anything he wants with—

Viktor comes awake with a violent gasp. His spine arches and he clenches around Jayce’s cock; snare-tight, Jayce’s vision flashing white, a brutish snap of his hips that has Viktor bleating out in genuine terror. Jayce doesn’t mean to, intends to stop for at least a second and make sure he’s okay, but his hips are already fucking helplessly forwards again, spearing in hard, Viktor’s thighs forced almost to his shoulders.

“Oh fuck,” he slurs. Breaking character. “Jayce?”

The little questioning lilt at the end has Jayce’s cock pulsing dangerously, a fraying groan he desperately tries to choke down. “I’m here, baby, I’ve got you. Fuck—you feel so good, V, you’re taking me so well.” There’s sweat in his eyes. How quickly he loses the plot when Viktor is involved. “‘m sorry, fuck. I don’t know how much longer I can—”

“Jaaayce.” Fuck. He sounds… he’s clenching again, voice thick with residual terror, whining softly every time Jayce pulls out, air bullied flat from his lungs every time he slams back in. “Oh—h-hurts.”

“Yeah? Want it harder?”

“Ye—es. I want it harder. Please. Want you to break me, please.”

God. Jayce doesn’t hesitate. He never does, not when it comes to giving his baby what he wants, lacks the defenses necessary to survive any exposure at all to Viktor begging. Jayce fucks him hard and violent, unerring, like he has no regard for Viktor at all. Just the way Viktor likes it. In under a minute he’s crying, breath hitching and tears forced from his eyes, tension building and building and building over the whole of his bird-boned frame until he’s shaking so much Jayce is surprised his teeth aren’t chattering. All it takes is a well-positioned mashing of his knuckles to Viktor’s belly, slow-mo punch and deep grinding pressure, and Viktor is coming, babbling mindless thank yous while Jayce fucks him through it, dopey and cockdrunk and sweet—Jayce is going to come, he can’t, he has to, he’s not going to last. Viktor is still thanking him.

“—thank you, th-thank you, feelsgoodpleasedon’tstop—”

“Oh, baby.” There are spots in Jayce’s vision like he’s been staring at the sun. There is so much blood in his cock that it’s painful, balls tight up against his body. But he can’t, Viktor is so—and now he’s babbling, crying again, too many vowels for his mouth to turn into legible speech. Jayce is deep up against his cervix where it has to hurt. Probably hurts bad, with all of Jayce’s weight bearing down on him like this, good leg up by his ear now, Jayce’s fingers digging into the hinge of the amputated one. Jayce can’t understand what he’s saying. Maybe he’s pleading for it harder, maybe he’s asking Jayce to stop—either way his body is begging for it, so Jayce keeps going, determined to fuck another one out of him before he goes off. “Come on, that’s it. Such a good boy, coming on my cock while I tear you apart. Tell me how it feels, angel, tell me who you belong to.”

“I’m—I’m—” He’s really struggling. His head is arched back at a painful-looking angle, both hands fisted in the veil; pulled taut enough to make the material look opaque, he’s going to tear it like that.

“That’s right. Tell me who owns you, tell me who gets to make you feel like this.”

Viktor sobs. “You own me, I—Jayce. I, oh my god, please. I belong to you, I am yours, you can do—do wh-whatever you want to, to me, to—ah! Please, no more, I can’t take it, it hurts—”

“Keep going, baby.”

“I can’t!”

Jayce snarls. One big paw around his throat and squeezing, Viktor’s overstimulated shriek abruptly smothered into a wheeze. “You can. I’m not done using my wife’s little pussy. You just said I own you, so act like it by being good and fucking taking it.”

Viktor is gone. Eyes rolled back in their sockets, body drawn tight, he is visibly ascending. He’s back to babbling as Jayce’s thrusts grow erratic, as he turns his head to press an open-mouth overwhelmed kiss to the underside of Viktor’s foot. Most of it is incomprehensible. The fact that Jayce is still choking him doesn’t help. He releases his grip, fist sliding to pin Viktor by the hair instead, and the babbling is no longer incomprehensible. 

“—could do anything, you could—could knock me up, could—anything,” a brief pause for gulping air, gasping like he can’t believe what has come out of his own mouth, like he already can’t stop from saying it again, “please. Get me pregnant. Jayce—you can—you—you can, please get me pregnant please do whatever you want to me I’m yours I’m yours I’m—”

Jayce already has him in a mating press. He comes deep.

It’s not until he’s already in the teeth-gritting stage of oversensitivity that he realises he made Viktor come, too. Whether it happened before Jayce lost his shit or not probably comes down to a technicality—whether it was from the feeling of being filled up is far more interesting, and even though he’s starting to go soft Jayce grinds in deep and mean again, and then he’s laughing—because of all the love and the endorphins, because of the joy, but mostly because being laughed at has colour flooding to Viktor’s face. And then he’s coming again, unbelievably, he’s coming again—that or the first one is still going, so full-bodied it has to be painful, a hiccuping cry like he’s being electrocuted. He soaks Jayce’s lap; it pours out of him, a never-ending torrent of wet, his cunt fluttering and milking Jayce’s cock as if there is any possibility of wringing more come from it. Jayce hisses when he pulls out, but already he misses the warmth and the unforgiving grasp.

Viktor is still experiencing aftershocks by the time Jayce is face-level with his pussy. Carefully, he pins his swollen labia back to watch his hole twitch. He’s hot pink where Jayce has stretched him out, hole still clenching and contracting. Jayce mouths gently at his puffy clit until it stops. He waits until Viktor is relaxed enough for Jayce’s come to finally start sliding out so that he can catch it, dutifully scooped back into place by Jayce’s thumb.

Viktor trembles. He must be starting to work the drugs out of his system by now. Not ideal to have done this with chemicals in his body, but they can do it again tomorrow. And the next day. And the next. It’s only the start of their honeymoon.

More come slides out of Viktor’s body, a lazy drip, fresh honey. Jayce collects it on two fingers, pushing it back deep inside of Viktor on one long, deep slide.

Viktor shivers hard, pushes a hand into his hair. Not to stop him. Just to touch.

The train departs Santa Lucia station at noon, a noisy rattle and flood of blue and green through the window; an American tourist crows Ciao, Venezia with abysmal pronunciation. It makes Viktor smile. 

Jayce presses a kiss to the hinge of his jaw. It is the most Viktor will allow in public. For now. Today Jayce pushes his luck by pressing a second, featherlight kiss to his neck. There’s a mark he left last night that isn’t covered by Viktor’s t-shirt. Jayce drags the fabric down so that he can see. Viktor allows it, blinking sleepy cat eyes at the golden light coming in through the second-storey train window.

“You look beautiful in the light,” Jayce murmurs, pushing his luck again.

Viktor hums noncommittally. “I am a little sore, actually.”

“Still beautiful.”

“Yes, well, perhaps my beauty would be better appreciated by exercising a little restraint next time.” Like Jayce is the one with the habit of going too hard.

Jayce presses another kiss to the soft, sun-warmed skin of his jaw. “I’ll keep that in mind when you’re begging for it,” he whispers, low enough that there’s no chance anyone else has heard them, though Viktor still turns pink.

Jayce wishes he could keep him like this forever. He envisions a future full of days like this: Viktor, silly and carefree, with Jayce’s diamond on his finger. Jayce’s bruises on his skin, Jayce’s come in his womb. Viktor, swollen with Jayce’s babies; barefoot and smiling in the afternoon light, he’ll let Jayce give them that eventually. Maybe even soon. He’s learning. 

And anyway—they have the rest of their lives to get there.