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Viktor hesitated for a moment, drawing in a deep breath before taking the brass knocker in his hand and tapping it against the door of Mel’s apartment twice in quick succession. He put a little more weight on his cane and shut his eyes as he let himself imagine what version of Mel might greet him when she opened it.
He never knew quite what to expect when she asked him to come to her. That day, it had been nothing more than a lingering gaze and a pointed tug at her ear during the council meeting.
Sometimes, he found her rough and impatient and demanding, digging her sharp nails into his skin as she pinned him down to her bed. Others, she was gentle, bordering on patronizing, stern more than strict. Most often, though, she was exactly as she was in public: careful, meticulous, guarded.
When he finally heard her speak up from the other side of the wall, though, he knew that she wasn’t going to be any of the three.
“Viktor, is that you?” Her voice was slurred and so loud it genuinely took him aback. The door in front of him swung open with the unregulated force of someone who’d had far too much to drink, and he felt his pulse quicken. “It’s so late, I didn’t know if you were still going to make it. Come in!”
She stumbled backwards and he stepped inside, shutting the door carefully behind him as he took in the state of Mel’s sitting room. It was a veritable wreck, with empty wine bottles littering nearly every empty surface and every cushion and pillow having been at some point knocked askew. His eyes fell on the corner, where the wall was wet and dripping down onto the broken bottle below it.
Mel herself was no more composed– her hair was hanging down loose and disheveled around her shoulders, the makeup around her eyes was smudged like she’d been rubbing at it, and there was a deep red splotch of wine starting to stain the front of her dress.
He watched her slump down onto one of the sofas with a dramatic flourish, laying there still for a moment as she took in measured, shaky breaths. She shut her eyes tight before straightening her back and patting the cushion next to her. He made his way over to her with slow, cautious steps, and looked at her for a second before he sat. Her cheeks were flushed, her lips were red where she’d been biting at them, and her eyes were glassy and unfocused; whether that was from crying or drink, he couldn’t confidently say.
“Mel, are you alright?” Viktor asked quietly, once he’d gathered up the courage. “You seem upset.”
“It’s nothing,” she replied. It wouldn’t have been convincing even if she weren’t so apparently drunk. “I had a horrible day, and I don’t want to think about it. I need you.”
She made a soft, almost desperate sound and leaned into him, sliding her hand up his thigh. Viktor’s stomach clenched, and he froze in place, overwhelmed and unsure. They gave each other relief, release, physical pleasure– that was their arrangement, and they shared in very little else. But she’d never needed anything other than that, never seemed like she could need anything else from him.
And now she was drunk, and vulnerable, and he had a feeling that pegging him wasn’t going to make her feel better.
Mel’s hand grew more insistent, palming at him through the fabric of his pants, and she parted her lips like she was expecting a kiss. He hesitated for a second, his hand hovering over hers as his mind twisted itself into knots, but temptation got the better of him and he indulged her. He pulled back before she could turn it into anything else, though, and rested a steady hand on her knee.
“Maybe we should talk,” he suggested. “I don’t think this is what you need.”
But she was well beyond listening to him. She pushed him back against the cushions and fumbled with the buttons on his shirt, pressing kisses up his jaw. She leaned in to brush her lips against his ear, the smell of stale wine getting stronger with every breath she took.
“No, Viktor,” she mumbled. “I don’t want to talk.”
She stared at him for a second before moving to straddle him, mindful even in her state to keep most of her weight off his lap. He set his cane on the sofa next to him and frowned, but she spoke before he got the chance.
“I want you to make me feel better,” she said, words muddled with a mix of arousal and something like desperation. “Please. Help me forget.”
“You’re drunk,” he said, doing his best to keep his voice firm. He wasn’t used to talking to Mel like that, and he didn’t sound like he was, even to his own ears. It was a tempting offer, and he wanted to take it, but he couldn’t, and he knew that he couldn’t. “We should wait, I think. Perhaps tomorrow night, when you’ve had a chance to sober up–”
She cut him off when she finally unhooked the last fastening on her dress, grinning triumphantly as the fabric fell down around her waist and left her bare from the hips up.
“Don’t you want me?” Despite the smile on her face, there was a vague sadness behind her words that he couldn’t ignore. She bucked her hips forward and seemed to regain some amount of confidence when she felt how hard he was, leaning in to kiss him again. It was hungry, claiming, almost violent, and he wanted desperately to lean into it, take the brunt of whatever had made her so upset.
But Viktor pulled away with a grunt, taking her by the shoulders as gently as he could and pushing her back.
“Mel,” he said, straining under the effort of keeping his resolve, “not tonight.”
Viktor was terrible with this sort of thing: emotions, deep conversations, anything that couldn’t be distilled down to predictable, logical sequences. He knew that about himself, and had come to accept it. Somehow, though, that knowledge hadn’t prepared him to deal with the reality of the pained, furious look that took over Mel’s face all at once.
“Fine,” she spat, jerking away from him and stumbling to her feet. “If you don’t want me, I’ll find someone who does.”
The fabric of her dress pooled at her ankles and she took a step without thinking, losing her footing and swaying dangerously for a second before she caught herself. Viktor’s hand shot out, a desperate bid to help, but she smacked it away.
“Just go,” she said. “I don’t need your pity.”
“I care about you.” He stood, outstretched hand still lingering in the air. “I don’t want to see you like this.”
“You don’t get it,” Mel whispered, turning away and finally stepping out of the fabric. “Please. Go.”
“Mel,” he repeated, doing his best to sound soothing. “I want to help you. If I can.”
“How can you help me? You can’t possibly understand.” She still wouldn’t look at him, and crossed her arms with a loud scoff.
“You’re right,” he conceded, pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and his forefinger and doing his best to bite back an exasperated sigh. “I can’t understand, because you won’t tell me anything.”
She finally met his eyes again, her own filled with trepidation.
“It’s my mother,” she said, her voice heavy with the weight of holding back a sob. He saw it, then: a letter torn to pieces, laying in a puddle of spilled wine on the table in front of them. “She’s horrible. She exiled me here because I won’t be like her. I can’t. She’s cruel, and she kills innocent people and it’s all for nothing , and she wants me to be the same way. Taking whatever I want, no matter who it hurts, and I won’t. I promised myself, a long, long time ago. I can’t.”
They were both silent and still for a moment until Viktor reached out again, this time with a renewed sense of determination, and pulled her towards him. It seemed like the right thing, at least in the heat of the moment, and it was the only thing that he had to offer him. His thoughts wandered to the doctor, to Rio, but he shook them from his mind. That was over. Behind him.
Every time he opened his mouth to speak, tried to come up with something to comfort her, the words got stuck in his throat. He didn’t know what to say, and so he didn’t say anything at all. Mel’s body went rigid for a fleeting half-second before she started to relax into him, and the floodgates reopened. Her sobs came in great, heaving gasps, and he stood there, feeling the tension in her starting to ease a bit at a time as she clung to him.
He held her a little tighter, and she let out a soft whine. His hands were clumsy as the worked in small circles up and down her back, her bare skin somehow unfamiliar under his fingertips.
“I’m here,” he whispered, cringing the second the words passed his lips. Even still, it seemed to relax her a bit. Her sobs slowly started to quiet, until they were reduced to the odd sniffle or choked gasp.
“I just want to make it stop,” Mel said, shaking her head with her face still pressed into his shirt. She left a smear of dark makeup on the white fabric, and any other time, he would have made a face, or rolled his eyes, or jerked away. Instead, found his own discomfort momentarily forgotten, and held her still. “Everything hurts. All of the time. And I don’t know how to make it stop.”
He wasn’t used to the sort of intimacy that didn’t end in tangled sheets and ragged breaths, but for a second, he dared to imagine what it might be like if he grew to be.
Mel leaned into him a little more heavily, and his hand shot out again, this time so that he could steady himself. She pulled away, understanding dawning behind her eyes, and he found himself missing the feeling of her pressed against him.
“I’m sorry– I feel so stupid.” She wiped at her eyes a final time and offered him a brittle smile. “Here I am, carrying on, and you don’t even– Would you like to lay in bed with me?”
A protest rose in his throat but he swallowed it down, managing a single, hesitant nod before he picked up his cane and followed her to the bedroom. It was a path they’d followed so many times before, but it felt ten times the distance that night.
None of the chaos of the sitting room had breached the bedroom. The sheets were still neatly turned down, the pitcher of water she kept by the bed was still full, and the only sign that her maids hadn’t just come through was her shoes, discarded haphazardly by her side of the bed.
“Will you hold me?” There was a bashfulness, a meekness in her tone he’d never heard from her as she slipped between the sheets.
Viktor didn’t bother answering her with words, his heart pounding away against his ribcage as rested his cane precariously on the bedside table before joining her under the covers. He wrapped his arms around her, guided her head to rest on his chest, and felt a strange rush of pride at the contented sigh that she let out.
They lay there for what could have been an hour or a lifetime, the only sounds their mingled breathing and the occasional sniffle from Mel. She was the one who broke the relative silence between them first, and they had been sitting in it for so long he was almost sad to see it go.
“What do you do?” Her question was quiet and cautious, the closest to her normal self he’d heard her sound the entire night. “When you’re… sad. Overwhelmed.”
He paused, his hands stilling and his mind going blank. Physical contact was one thing. He was unsure about it, but proficient. Putting his feelings to words was another matter entirely. He would try, though. For her.
“I focus on my work, I suppose,” he said. “It helps me feel in control.”
“And when that doesn’t help? Or you can’t?” She looked up at him, her eyes puffy and red and searching his very soul for something he wasn’t sure he could give her. She seemed to have the same doubt, because a flicker of something like disappointment passed over her own. “You don’t have anything else?”
“I channel it into experiments. Or what we have,” he admitted, slowly. “I don’t have… sitting around and worrying isn’t productive. I don’t have time for that sort of thing.”
Mel didn’t press it any further, opting instead to press her face back into his chest. He was grateful for it, found himself earnestly enjoying it. The closeness, the feeling that she needed him for something other than a tongue between her thighs.
“You’re being very kind,” she said when she spoke up again, still clinging to his chest. “I can’t thank you enough. Or apologize enough, for that matter.”
“Anything you need.” He shifted against the pillows and did his best to blink the sleep from his eyes. Apparently, Mel had noticed him getting tired, and her question came as such a shock it could have kept him up until dawn.
“Would you like to spend the night?”
His pulse started racing, his mouth went dry, and he squeezed his eyes shut, unwilling and unable to meet her gaze. They’d had their share of late nights, even some that had lasted into the early morning, but he’d always been careful to leave before sleep took him.
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t have to,” she added quickly, almost frantically, before she gained her composure. “But I’d like you to.”
“Alright,” he said with a finality mostly meant to convince himself. “I’ll stay.”
“Only if you want to.” Her voice was wary, and his arms tightened around her without his input.
“I want to. You’re my friend.”
The word hung in the air between them, unfamiliar and untested. He’d never bothered thinking to label their relationship, if that was even what they had. The day before, just a few hours before, he’d have called her his colleague, or an acquaintance, and it would have been with his tongue only halfway in his cheek.
But there was something gnawing at him, growing in him, much deeper than that. The longer he let himself sit with it, the more he realized how long ago the seeds had been planted, before he’d ever even thought to notice.
He cared for her, and he wasn’t going to leave. Not if the one thing she needed was the one thing he could give.
“Okay,” Mel said, nodding, the hint of a smile playing at her lips. She pressed a quick kiss to his still-clothed shoulder, and reached down to fumble with the first buckle on his leg brace.
“You don’t have to–” he began, but she cut him off with the same stern look she’d used so many times before, and his stomach flipped.
“Let me,” she said, half request and half command, her voice nearly as slurred as it was determined. Her touch was gentle as she worked, and her fingers were surprisingly efficient for someone in her state. When the last fastening was undone, she lifted it away and set it down gingerly beside the bed.
“Thank you,” he murmured.
Mel let out a soft hum as she settled back into his arms, planting a chaste kiss on his lips before moving to rest her head on his chest.
That increasingly comfortable, steady quiet filled the room again, and Viktor stared up at the ceiling. His mind was a scattered mess of thoughts and feelings he didn’t dare voice, bleeding into one another at the edges and making it near-impossible to parse where a concern ended and a neurosis began. He wanted nothing more than to leave, to push her away and never look her in the eye again, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t hurt her.
Mel’s breathing began to deepen, and he shut his eyes, doing his best to invite the sleep that so often eluded him. He had to be up early: there were specimen to measure and the previous day’s figures that needed double and triple checked. Dull, boring work, that he’d spent so much time resenting.
He peeked his eyes open and looked quickly down at Mel. Perhaps it had been worth something, after all. He reached up to take one of her curls between his fingers, pulling it taut and watching it snap back into place.
Things were going to change between them, he knew. Not all at once, in all likelihood, but they would change. It was a frightening prospect, the sort of unplanned, unpredictable fork in his path that he typically would have worked so hard to avoid. But he’d staked his life on the thrill of the unknown, and that moment seemed like an unfortunate place to stop.