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His head feels like it is going to explode.
Skull threatening to split down the middle, crack open. Temples about to blow wide and spill everything inside- out.
Each step he takes sends agony through his left leg, a searing pain where the bone has fused wrong, and the infected wound in his calve- aching, throbbing like it's got a heartbeat of its own. The corrupted scar on his back fairs no better, pulling at his skin with every motion, a constant itch between his shoulderblades that reaches deep down into his spinal column, into his nervous system, the base of his brain, impossible to scratch. The weight of the Mercury Hammer in his arms is the only thing grounding him, a reminder of what he's here for, his mission, keeping him conscious and in the moment- even if only barely so.
There's foliage lush and wild all around him. The flowers across the earth a colorful carpet of blossoms. Birds whistling their unique melodies in the distance.
It is peaceful, beautiful- even.
But he knows it is an illusion. A mirage. A lie of a dream of perfection, portent of things to come. Of the nightmare Jayce has spent months living through. The one he is here to prevent from becoming a reality at all costs necessary.
Things suddenly take on an Impressionist bent, all blurred and blended together. Just smears of oil paint on a three dimensional canvas suggesting the forms of real things. Unreal ones- too.
His heart races when a shadow on the edge of his sight seems like more than just a shadow, and Jayce tumbles, stumbling, tripping himself up and crashing into things and people alike as he staggers almost unseeing. Blinded by kaleidoscopic visions of non-Euclidean geometry, of fractal mandalas in colors beyond the visual spectrum. Flashes of the faceless, mindless drones Viktor had created in his misguided attempt to heal, to evolve people beyond humanity. Past their flaws, their perceived imperfections.
There are hands reaching for him, gentle, aiding, and still human. Not yet porcelain cold, but already altered, infected with the metal that's runnning through flesh- like a parasyte in their skin.
He tears himself free of their hold, bats them away when they try to reach for him again. The muffled 'please' and 'let us help you's, insects buzzing in his ears, a droning hum of chitin wings slowly welling into a crescendo, a wall of sound that drowns out everything else around him. An unbearable pressure that builds behind his eyes and threatens to blow his skull apart.
Jayce grabs the hammer in his hands tighter, lashes out with it in a blind attempt to break through, and swings.
Yet manages to stop himself just before releasing a blast. Brain still sloshing about in his head, but his vision is coming back slowly.
Jayce stares down at the child on the ground he has the weapon aimed at, who stares back at him, wide eyed and startled, yes. But unafraid.
Like everyone else here- the boy is scorched by iridescent fingerprints, unnatural, uncanny in his stillness, breaths measured and calm. His prismatic, pale gaze pins Jayce in place, a bug to a collector's board, not with judgement nor reproval, but something far worse, far more devastating.
Understanding.
Compassion.
Before eventually reaching out to Jayce, offering him a helping hand.
He takes it,
and lets the child lead him.
-
Jayce slowly steps into the cell structure composed of intricate swirling wave-like patterns, a wasps nest mosaic fashioned from the scrap metals in the fissures, to find himself rooted where he's standing, awestruck and horrified by the mysterium tremendum of Viktor, ten feet in the air above, suspended on glowing wires; Tethered to something beyond his comprehension.
The luminescent cables extend from his body and across the room in a spun net, interwoven, like a butterfly caught in a web of his own making.. their making. Already too deeply entangled to be set free without devastating consequence. Already long dead- but unawares of it. Merely an empty husk of what he's once been, before the Hexcore consumed it.
Before Jayce had so foolishly let it..
His body moves unconsciously, operating on instinct now. Or- maybe not instinct, but something else, something that pushes and pulls at him as if his limbs are tied to strings, moves throughout him, invisible hands directing his actions.
Jayce widens his stance and tries to steel himself. Swallows the rage, the hate he feels for him, for what he will make Jayce do to him. To save what's left of him. To save them all.
The world on a sudden spins and spins and spins, shifting and sliding beneath his feet, making him struggle to keep upright. He is no longer able to hear anything through the blood rushing in his ears, his own ragged wheezing, the thrumming of the weapon in his hands as it crackles to life, aimed and ready to fire.
Tears well up in his eyes, everything swimming and twisting- and no matter how Jayce tries blinking the haze from his vision, everything is out of focus, the only thing he can see is the harsh, cold glow of Hextech blue, that cursed color.
Brain a chaos of static, buzzing. He can hardly breathe, the discord between his body and mind and heart- pulling him apart in all directions, stretching him into infinitum, tearing him across realities.
His fingers trembling as he desperately tries to bring himself to pull the trigger.
He's right there. His mind screams. You can end this. Kill him. You've killed before. Just. Shoot!
But Jayce feels himself falter when his vision promptly clears, only to see Viktor blink his eyes open. To see the moment as he catches sight of Jayce- and.. and smiles.
Says something- that Jayce can't hear through the infernal hum of his hammer, the white noise in his head. Maybe Viktor hasn't said anything at all, merely mouthed the word, but he knows all the same. Has seen Viktor's lips shape around it a million times over since they've first met.
Jayce
It disarms him in an instant. His resolve coming crumbling down like a house of cards, and an unbidden ragged sob bursts free from Jayce's heaving chest. The grip he has on the Mercury Hammer- loosens, and the heavy head of it crashes to the ground, its jagged metal edge cracking the floor beneath with the force with which he lets it drop.
The stone in his wrist burns, a live coal raging. Jayce feels it down to the bone, like potent acid eating away at him, corroding.
He pays it no mind.
It does not matter anyway, not anymore. He had promised- so determinately, so confidently, so foolishly, that he wouldn't fail, but in the end he simply can't bring himself to do it.
He never could, no? It is the reason why they are here in the first place, isn't it?
How many times has he failed? How many worlds has he doomed- again and again?
Jayce lets go of the hammer entirely, the hilt of it clattering with a dull metal clunk that echoes in the circular structure, reverberating in his hollow head, shoulders slumping in defeat. Feeling so helpless, so useless..
So- so unbelievably tired. The muscles that carried him this far- finally giving up. His arms numb, leaden. So wrung out he has to fight the urge to collapse in on himself.
And all is quiet now. The noise in his head- silenced. The only sound around the echo of his shuffling steps as his feet carry him forward with a limping gait, a pull stronger than any vortex, more damaging, more dizzying, beckoning him closer. He allows himself to get drawn in, until he comes to stand right beneath Viktor.
Jayce feels as though an abject worm before the godhead slowly lowering itself from their perch above, a deity descending from the heavens- to grace Jayce's wretched mortal self with its presence.
Despite his face seeming so tired, so gaunt and worn down, the shadows under his eyes darker than ever against the sallow, waxen skin, the death mask, mold cast of a person long departed; Viktor looks ethereal. Older and younger all at once, ageless, timeless. Newly born yet ancient. Astral and elemental. Nearly blinding in his radiance. A bright ember burning through the haze that surrounds him.
Platinum curls frame his face like an aureole, their shine catching the evening light of the setting sun, making them shimmer a molten gold. The strands of them dance in a stray breeze that finds its way here from outside, and brings with it the scent of verdant growth, of honeyed blossoms and fertile earth. A tinge of metal too, like iron, the stink of blood, of viscera.. of the little critters Jayce tore apart and crushed between his teeth, swallowed whole, sometimes raw, gristle and bone and skin and all.
The suffocating pong of acrid smoke, of fire, the only source of light, of warmth- that Jayce has had for months. Slowly driven insane by the shadowed visions its dancing flames cast onto the cave walls gradually closing in on him, but unable to let it snuff out, unwilling to lose his only company, the ghosts haunting him in that too cold grave Jayce's actions had dug and buried him alive in.
The sweven glow of a dancing errand wire in his peripheral snaps him out of his mental spiral, and like a moth to a flame- he reaches out to it, wrapping a fist around a handful of the cables, effervescent, blistering against the palm of his hand, and yanks at them with a harsh tug. Pulling Viktor down by them, a fisherman reeling in a net, a spider- their prey. Closer and closer still- until he finally has him in his arms, where he was always meant to be.
His frame is just as slight as he remembers, but so much heavier than it used to be. A nigh to unbearable weight as he clutches Viktor tightly against himself- in an embrace too violent and too desperate to be called a hug.
Running his hands along Viktor's back, he lets his fingertips trace over the gilded edges of the back brace that Jayce had fitted to him- what now feels like a lifetime ago, spent weeks adjusting and readjusting until it was as perfect as he could possibly get it.
Metal bolts in pallid flesh, steel against bone.. cruel but necessary. The first prototype had hurt Jayce worse than it did Viktor, who bore the discomfort with sarcastic quips hissed through clenched teeth, while Jayce was at the verge of tears throughout the whole process..
His hand stops at one of the tethers at the ridge of Viktor's spine, the axles along the middle in place of vertebrae, where the cables attached to him connect, and begins tearing them out one by one.
It earns him a hitched breath, a cold metal hand clutching at the lapels of his tattered jacket, but no protests. No pleas for him to stop.
Viktor's face- usually so expressive, now subdued, nothing but minute twitches upon his features, barely enough for Jayce to get a read on his emotions, on his thoughts.
If this is hurting him- Viktor doesn't let it show. If he can still feel pain at all anymore, Jayce isn't sure he wants to know.
Jayce doesn't think he would have, could have- stopped, even if Viktor did beg him to..
He shoves Viktor off of him and onto the ground, before crowding him down against the floor, crawling over him on hands and knees, splint leg protesting, but Jayce barely feels the pain anymore.
Viktor is still as bare as when he first emerged out of the Hexcore's cocoon. Bare except for his shroud, the blanket Jayce had given him- just before Viktor left him.. Walked away from him.. Abandoned him.
Digging his fingers into the fabric of it, threads catching on his jagged, splintered finger nails, Jayce strips it off him with rancor, with almost puerile vindictiveness. Less of an undressing- and more like a child tearing the wings off a bug, a hunter skinning their catch, quick and unrelenting. And forces himself to look at the body underneath, so eerily human, yet completely not so.
This terrible mutilation, this living nightmare which is the animated corpse of his partner whom he had brought back from the dead by force, saved and damned in the same breath, mindless and desperate.
But even as disfigured, as grotesque as it is, it is still shocking in its beauty. Macabre and marvelous. Every line designed to perfection, a machine unequaled in its elegance, its complexity, its potential.
Polished, pristine, the prismatic rainbow gleam of oil-spill iridescence dancing across its cold metal surface. The hypnotizing, pulsing purple glow of the energy in its core, like the rush of life blood in veins.
A facsimile of humanity, a perversion of it.
Not a person, not really, just what's left.
Do you hate me for what i've done to you? For what i made you into?
What if this isn't even Viktor? What if it just looks like him? What if it is the Hexcore, inhabiting him, having stolen his face and his shape? A sophisticated automaton moved by the Arcane in a puppet dance, forcing him to do its bidding.
Is it still you? Are you still in there, somewhere?
Or are you a machine now, an object with no soul or heart to speak of?
Putting his hand on Viktor's chest, that doesn't heave with breaths as his own does, no heartbeat either, but where instead a slow rhythmic pulse thrumms beneath his palm.
Jayce scratches his nails against it, illiciting a pleasant metallic clinking that sends tingling shivers down his spine. Runs his hands up, taking hold of Viktor's throat, fingers tracing over the sweeping, graven lines of the near black ligaments and folds of carbon steel that flex like organic muscle and tendon shifting- as Viktor tilts his head back for him, exposing his throat. An offering.
The display makes Jayce's head swell as if his brain is slowly cooking with fever. Like it is about to liquify, melt right out of his nose. He bites the inside of his cheek until he can taste blood on his tongue, the metal sting of iron, like heating steel. A bright bloom of fresh pain- to keep his mind focused.
Digging his fingers in, maybe harder than he should. Burying them into every groove, to see how far he can push before he meets resistence, and then- further still, scratching, gouging. A touch that should draw blood - but doesn't.
Can Viktor even still bleed?
Jayce explores him further, mapping Viktor's body and taking mental note of every nook and crevice, until his hand comes to a halt against the sharp blade-like corner of a hip, the filigree metal edge that separates it from the thigh. He traces the delicate swirling design on it, the material smooth as glass against his calloused skin, before he grabs it, tightly curling his fingers around its shape.
The sound that claws itself out of Jayce's too dry throat might have been considered laughter if it wasn't so unhinged- even to his own ears.
Like handlebars, he thinks to himself, half-crazed, mind reeling, vision swimming, and seizes him by the hips hard enough to make Viktor gasp, not hurt- but surprised. Manhandling him whichever way he wants him.
Curling a hand round his knee Jayce draws him open, and blinks, surprised at what he sees, confused.
At the apex of Viktor's slender pelvis sits a cleft, a gash, like a wound. A chink in the metal casing.
Jayce is overcome with the all too familiar urge to dig his fingers into the seam, pop the flap open- and get to the cogs inside. To rend apart, disembowel, rip the gadget to pieces and see what it's made out of, how it works.
Trailing a finger through the plush lips framing the crease, so startlingly soft to the touch it makes his breath catch in his throat. The give of it- so much like flesh beneath his fingers, as warm as his own feverish skin, maybe- even hotter. All molten heat. It almost seems to invite him in, to touch deeper. He explores it with his fingers, skimming, dipping inside - gingerly at first, but quickly becoming bolder, cruder. Letting his nails scrape against the pulpy insides.
Fascinated, mesmerized, at the sight of the valve, like a mouth, suckling at his fingers with zeal. The pressure around his digits- thinning the air around near to suffocating, making Jayce feel slow and stupid.
Was it there before? He wonders.
What would it have looked like back when Viktor had still been himself?
Pale skin, a rose blush- maybe? A thatch of chestnut locks- curling just as charmingly as the ones on Viktor's head..
An abrupt surge of incandescent rage rises in the pit of his stomach, but it is just as quickly doused by a deep cutting melancholy, a painful feeling of regret, of not knowing. Of not having bothered to get to know back when he still had the chance. Of never getting to know- now.
Jayce pries the lips apart between two thumbs, like splitting ripe fruit into halves that pull apart stickily; bearing him open, exposing Viktor's innermost place to his hungry gaze. He is greeted by the deep violet of it- which almost seems to glow against the slate luster of the rest of Viktor's body.
It glistens wetly. The juice of fruit, or- a suppurating cut, weeping, dripping.
Nectar and pus are likely both just as sweet on a starving man's tongue..
His mouth waters, drool bubbling at the corners of Jayce's lips, an animal- frothing at the maw. He spits on it, rubbing his saliva in with a calloused thumb. Polishing it to a shine.
With his other hand he makes a grab for Viktor's head, forcing him to tip it back with a harsh yank on his hair, the strands soft as silk ribbons between his fingers. Viktor's face is entirely serene, placid, beatific. Nothing but soft affection in his expression.
Jayce can't bear the sight of it and averts his eyes, before lowering himself to his elbows, every bone in his tired body aching, and buries his face into Viktor, tongue-first.
Mouth dripping and teeth skimming and tongue lapping at the excess. Drinking from him like the man dying of thirst that he is, trying to suck him dry. Tongue skulking into the tender flesh, tasting of sweet pollen and the tang of metal, both dulcet and sharp. Silky flower petals and the cutting edge of a knife. Succulent. Addicting. Jayce finds himself kissing and sucking and biting into this horrid fruit loudly, lewdly; feasting on it like a carnivorous beast, famished for too long.
When he pulls himself away again- Viktor is all over his beard, dripping from his lips and chin in viscous strings, as sweet and clinging as syrup.
Jayce's slacks literally peel off of him with how dirty they are, making a vile, crackling sound as he struggles out of them- like a reptile shedding its skin, kicking them down as far as the brace on his leg would allow, before reaching down to pull himself free.
He can smell his own cock from here. The vulgar animal musk of it.
It should give him pause. Should fill him with embarrassment, with shame.
He is filthy. Grimy and rank, reeking like a damned beast. Jayce shouldn't get his prick anywhere near anyone right now, but he can't bring himself to care about that. Not with the way it aches. The way it pulses, throbs, insistent, begging for touch. Burning, red hot, incandescent with arousal. Near purpling at the tip, angry veins running along the length of it. Pounding- in accord with his thundering heartbeat, the pressure in his skull.
And Viktor doesn't seem to mind much- either. Shifting slightly where he lies prone beneath him, thighs splayed wide, presenting himself to Jayce. Wordlessly giving him permission to take what he wants.
What he needs.
Jayce presses his aching hardness up against him, bucking his hips, but only succeeds in mashing them together lewdly, obscenely, an artless squelching glide. It makes him moan, briefly lost in the friction, before he ruts up against Viktor anew with another hard push, trying to force entry - but failing to do so.
Viktor takes hold of him then, wrapping a careful hand around Jayce's aching erection, guiding it.
It has been so long since Jayce had been touched by another person, that the gentle grip around his member has him near sobbing, and he bites his lip to keep himself from crying out.
Viktor shushes him softly, notching the head of Jayce's cock up against the divot in his crotch, glans of it catching against the groove- like a screwdriver on the drive in the head of a screw, and Jayce's hips instantly surge forward, pushing his way in, harsh and uncoordinated.
A sharp inhale, a hiss of air sucked through clenched teeth. Victor is vice-tight, painfully so. The nut too small for the bolt. It draws a shiver up to the surface of Jayce even as he pours sweat.
A carnal desire he cannot control and the violent urges he cannot explain. A primal need, a primordial urge.
He feels feral, starved. This clawing, writhing, insatiable creature of hunger, of rage, of desire. The gnawing ache, a beast lurking beneath the surface. The long supressed things inside of him- such as desire and dependance and obsession and need- all roiling. This wild, desperate creature he has become, how vile it is- and hating himself for it. How unbearably good this feels, fucking without tenderness or rhythm- just animal drive.
Shame and fury spread like an infection in his chest. Making it swell as if it is about to burst, spill all the putrescence out.
Jayce huffs and pants, sweat on his brow matting his fringe, dripping into his eyes, and he squeezes them close against the salt sting of it.
Blinks them open again- just in time to see Viktor reaching a hand out for him, fingers outstretched to touch his forehead.
Jayce snatches it out of midair before it can make contact, his thumb digging into the sinewy, flexible fiber of the artificial muscles on that steel wrist hard enough it would surely bruise if Viktor was still able to. And grapples to take hold of both of Viktor's wrists in his hand, holding them still, pinned to the side and out of the way- before thrusting in.
He slides inside rough and hard, forcing Viktor open, stretching him wide around his cock. His pace frenzied, rough, agitated, severe as he snaps his hips in. Plunges inside again. Again-- and again, and again and againandagain..
Viktor, so tight around his shaft. Clinging to him, a caoutchouc lip seal, tight enough to trip up his rhythm.
But Jayce is used to this, well versed in the arduous process of heating metal until it is nigh melting, of hammering into it over and over- to bend it into his desired shape.
It makes him throw his head back and laugh, the sound rusty, sputtering, an old motor revving to life after going unused for too long.
He feels insane, the baking heat of the forge scorching his skin, his body afire, burning from the inside out, cooking him alive, a roast on a spit.
Absentmindedly he takes notice of the clank of steel on steel, of rumbling animal roars, the crackle and zap of Hextech. A thunderstorm in the distance.
A battle is being fought outside.
Let it. Let the whole damn world end, what does it matter?
He's delirious, he thinks; knows. His thoughts more and more scattered, his mind- splintering, his thoughts molasses slow and agonized. Near hysteric, Jayce only laughs louder and louder - until he's silenced by a pair of lips on his, a butterfly's kiss, slow and sweet, a barely there touch. Impossibly soft, smooth as silk against his own- so chapped and cracked and scarred.
He grabs Viktor's face frantically, checking if he's cut him, stained him. But he's immaculate. Like Jayce's foulness can't defile him.
Jayce laughs again, then leans in and kisses Viktor once more, deeper now, open mouthed, hands cupping his slim jaw. And he kisses Viktor as though to suffocate him, or- as if to breathe life back into him, tongue laving over the texture of the roof of his mouth, the shape of his molars, the silky flesh on the inside of his cheeks.
Their kiss eventually breaks, and Viktor leans their foreheads together, brow to brow, noses touching.
Jayce holds him in place, hands wrapping around his small, tight waist completely. The sight of it briefly takes Jayce's breath away.
Thrusting down into him with all his body weight, forcing Viktor into the ground, legs flat to his shoulders with it- until Jayce is comfortably squatted over him to fuck into at the right angle to get as deep as possible, etching himself into him, and watching how his cock reaches so far- that a small bump appears below Viktor's navel on every push in. Pushing up against the back of him, and then deeper, until he has Viktor make those soft, high noises; the seam of him pressed flush to the unkempt mess of Jayce's groin every time he bottoms out, as hot on him as a searing iron, branding him.
Their corrugated edges fitting together like interlocking gears, forming one uniform moving part. Jayce is convinced he could conjoin them if he puts his mind to it. Weld them together, to the point where you cannot have one without the other.
It's too good, so good it's almost frightening, mind altering, maddening. He feels like an exposed nerve, like his skin is being flayed from the muscle, raw and bleeding. His body being ripped apart by sensations. Pain indistinguishable from pleasure.
Viktor's desperate chanting of- ''Jayce, Jayce, Jayce..'' spurring him on to drill deeper, to piston faster, harder, unrelenting, unceasing, pulling Viktor into every coring thrust.
Reduced to a savage, Jayce raves above him like a rutting beast, huffing and snarling. drool hanging from his clenched teeth in strings- as he fucks Viktor into the floor with a ferocity he never would have dared to dream of doing before, back when Viktor was still fragile, still human.
..If they had actually intertwined like this, rather than just orbiting one another like a binary star.
It's this thought that makes Jayce fray at the edges, slowly unraveling him.
His breath constricts, a strangulating tourniquet around his throat, tight enough to choke a sob out of him.
He hurts. A pain so soul deep, worse than the rune stone gnawing on the marrow of the bones in his wrist.
A sadness so all encompassing it threatens to drown him. Drag him down into a cold abyss.
He looks down into Viktor's eyes, taking in the curve of his eyelids, the sweep of his lashes, so familiar yet- not. Shimmering patterns- mixing and swirling, dying stars. Ultraviolet radiation. A whole nebula inside those eyes, an endless cosmos.
Jayce searches for a hint or a trace of sunset gold - but ultimately finds none.
I'm sorry. I miss you. I love you. Is what he wants to say- but can't. Because the one he loves is already gone.
He's gone...
The realization leaves him hollow and aching, a gaping wound where his heart should be.
Feels tears sting in his eyes. And before he knows it he's sobbing, uncontrollably, so hard he feels like he might make himself retch with the force of it.
He truly must make a dreadful sight. Tears and snot and drool and grime, filthy. Pathetic. Pitiful.
Disgusting.
And yet- Viktor touches him like he isn't. As though he's something precious. Something to be treasured, held dear. Watches him like he is something worth being looked at.
Like Jayce hadn't doomed him.
Like- Jayce didn't doom them all.
''Shhh, it's alright..'' Viktor coos at him, as a mother would- trying to soothe a sniveling child. Thumbing away the tears, before working his hands through Jayce's tangled, greasy hair. Viktor's metallic fingertips cool against his scalp, sending pleasant shivers down Jayce's spine, and soothing the ache in the corrupted scar on his back.
Viktor kisses him softly, tenderly, like he might break. His hands, so gentle, as they cup Jayce's face, caressing the unkept scruff on his jaw, leaning in to kiss away the tears rolling down his cruddy cheeks, planting kisses over his eyes. Cradling his skull, palm flat on the crown of Jayce's head - fingertips splaying across his forehead.
It's what pushes him over the edge.
Jayce peaks. His vision whiting out.
He can feel the blood flow through his veins, every inch and capillary- as his orgasm crashes into him, a tidal wave- carrying him away, dragging him out to sea.
The tension releases, euphoria flooding him, and all the pain in his body ebbing away. The eddies and currents slowly pulling him apart, tearing him asunder. Consumed, devoured
Everything in the world whittled down to this rage of white-hotness, this pain and this bliss, the pulsing grip- so tight around him. This strangling clench and ripple. Electric ecstasy, short-circuits his brain. Blood rushes to his ears as he shudders through what feels like an eternity, sight filled with exploding stars. He feels as if he is being disintegrated, molecule by molecule, broken down into atoms, into the smallest, basest parts of himself.
Relieve.
Release.
A low, broken groan rips free from his throat, before he eventually slumps, boneless and exhausted. Carried on the tide, body loose and limp. He twitches, tries to move, but his body feels like it's no longer his own. Feeling so light and far away.
Distantly he can feel Viktor wrap the blanket around them both, swathing, cocooning them into it. Safely bundled up, a shroud of protection. His metal chest warm beneath Jayce's cheek, the thump in it's core- slow but strong. It grounds him, and coherence resurges,
like a waterlogged corpse floating to the surface.
''I'm sorry.. i'm sorry- i'msorry-m'sorry please, please don't leave me. Don't leave me again..'' Jayce yammers, his own voice barely comprehensible to himself, words squeezing past all the grief and guilt- competing to fill his throat. Desperately, he winds his arms tightly around Viktor's metal frame and crushes it against himself. Clutches, and clings, and holds onto Viktor as if his lifeline, a tether. It's all he can do. Breathe and cry and grasp and try to never let go. Pushing all his weight onto the body beneath him to keep it trapped there, to keep it from abandoning him- again.
Viktor doesn't protest, instead combing his hands through Jayce's hair, holding him close, cradled. His fingers inside the sand of Jayce's skull, sifting through the gravel of his mind as though it is something worthy- and not a ruin. Cupping what's left of it tight, keeping it together.
Viktor's voice is pure honey when he speaks, soothing, sweet and sticky, dripping into his ears like sap, filling them up and drowning out the noise in his head, the sound of the battle outside, until there is only serene tranquility left.
He pulls Jayce into a kiss, and it feels like a blessing.. like forgiveness. Absolution.
And Jayce feels the deep fissure, the vacuous ache of the open wound inside him, the one that had been festering, rotting its way into his core- ever since Viktor, reborn, transmutated, walked away from him, slowly begin to knit shut. Viktor filling it in with liquid metal, suturing the cracks with molten gold.
Jayce looks at him, his placid smile and soft countenance, his eyes, softly crinkled at the corners with quiet joy, and catches sight of a brief reflection in Viktor's eyes, a blink of sunset gold, a brown so warm it seems to glow.
Ah, Jayce thinks. There you are.
The setting sun without a promise of its morning rise, but Jayce is determined to hold onto it for as long as he can.
Leaning into the hand smoothing the hair from his brow, Jayce startles at the soft bell-like tinkle of metal on metal when Viktor's thumb strokes across his forehead.
Reaching up, Jayce carefully feels for himself along the cold kiss of metal now adorning his hair line, Viktor's fingerprints soldered into his skin, like glittering ornaments on a diadem.
It makes a smile tug at the corners of his mouth.
It's just another way Viktor has left his mark on Jayce, changed him irrevocably.
Just as much as Jayce did to him.