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The fluorescent lights in the university tech lab were a cruel kind of bright. The sterile, humming kind that made Viktor squint against a migraine he hadn’t yet admitted he was having. His left hand was trembling faintly from the effort of holding his cane. The metal creaked when he leaned too hard.
Across the room, Jayce was failing at pretending his back wasn’t killing him.
He’d been hunched over a test bench for hours. Working in furious, silent bursts, like if he paused, the pain might flood in through the cracks. But Viktor saw it in the wince when Jayce tried to stand. In the way he dropped the wrench too hard and hissed through his teeth. In the fact that Jayce hadn’t spoken in thirty-seven minutes — an unheard-of stretch.
And when Jayce finally did speak, it was through gritted teeth: “If I ever say ‘just one more upgrade’ again, shoot me.”
Viktor, curled in on himself on the second stool with a heating pad awkwardly strapped to his side, didn't look up.
“You said that two upgrades ago.”
Jayce snorted a laugh, sharp and humorless. “Yeah, and now my spine’s staging a mutiny. I think my vertebrae are sending kill orders.”
Viktor finally turned toward him — pale, drawn, his eyes heavy-lidded with exhaustion. “And yet you continue. Like an idiot.”
Jayce blinked at him. “You’re literally held together by caffeine and suffering.”
“And spite,” Viktor added.
Jayce winced as he stretched. “You forget I’m a co-author on your grant proposals. The spite is heavily documented.”
There was silence after that. A familiar one. Comfortable, almost — except for the pulsing ache in Viktor’s hip, the sharpness threading his ribs when he breathed too deep, the way Jayce was now clutching the edge of the table like it could keep him upright.
“I think we need to go home,” Viktor said finally, voice hoarse.
It was a rare day where Viktor acknowledged their pain before Jayce could.
Usually, he held out longer. Out of habit, pride, or some deeply embedded refusal to let weakness show in a body that had failed him too early, too often. But today had worn him down to something sharp and aching. He’d stopped adjusting his posture fifteen minutes ago. His hands were curled in his lap like he couldn’t trust them to hold anything else. And his eyes — always so piercing, so alight with fire even when his body was failing him — were dull with exhaustion.
Jayce looked at him, eyes softening. “You can’t even sit upright anymore.”
“And you’re walking like someone tried to fold you in half.”
A ghost of a smile. “Yeah. So — stalemate?”
“No,” Viktor said. “We’re pathetic. You win.”
Jayce grunted as he pushed to his feet, then let out a quiet curse. “Cool, cool. Can’t stand up. This is going great.”
His knee popped: loud, awful, wretched. Like something small snapping in half. It locked halfway through the motion, and he had to brace a hand hard against his thigh, breathing shallowly through clenched teeth until the tremor faded. For a second, he just stood there, hunched, like a puppet someone had abandoned mid-pose.
“God,” he muttered, “is this what forty feels like?”
He held out a hand to Viktor.
Viktor just looked at him. “You’re thirty-eight.”
Jayce didn’t dignify that with a response. His knee was still buzzing, but he locked it anyway. Pride was a hell of a drug.
He extended a hand toward Viktor, his face expectant — not smiling, not joking, just open in that infuriatingly earnest way he hadn’t grown out of. His fingers trembled slightly from the effort of standing, his knuckles paler than usual. It would’ve been easier if he looked smug about it. If he’d made some over-the-top, saccharine gesture like dropping to one knee or offering a dramatic bow. But instead, he just stood there, quiet and waiting. As if offering his body like scaffolding was the most natural thing in the world.
Viktor stared at the outstretched hand like it had personally insulted him.
“You offering to carry me?” he asked, dry.
Jayce’s brows furrowed, all sincerity and concern and somehow no self-preservation. The kind of face Viktor had seen him make in front of malfunctioning prototypes and angry councilors and, once, a wild raccoon outside their building. Steady. A little bit of a dumbass despite the multiple PhDs. Heart forward.
“If you need me to.”
Viktor wanted to punch him in the throat. Or kiss him. It was difficult to tell the difference, especially while his hip was screaming and Jayce was standing there like a heat lamp he hadn’t asked for but suddenly couldn’t walk away from.
“You’ll drop me halfway down the stairs,” Viktor said, voice rough. “And then you’ll fall trying to help me up, so we’ll both die. Very dignified.”
Jayce’s mouth curved into a lopsided grin. “I seem to recall someone saying, once upon a time, that they found the idea of dying together romantic.”
“Fuck off,” Viktor laughed, reaching up to take Jayce’s hand. “I told you that in confidence. I was fifteen, reading Shakespeare for the first time. And unwell.”
“You’ve always been unwell,” Jayce said, voice warm. He winced in sympathy as Viktor heaved himself upright, but the fondness in his eyes never wavered.
It was awkward. Painful. Jayce yelped when Viktor’s elbow clipped his shoulder, and Viktor bit back a hiss when Jayce’s arm wrapped too tightly around his back. They moved like two marionettes with tangled strings, each step a fragile negotiation between gravity, pride, and whatever painkillers they were pretending were still working.
“Easy, easy,” Jayce murmured, adjusting his grip.
His hands settled low on Viktor’s waist, palms bracketing the curve of his back. His thumbs pressed in gently, massaging at the tension there with practiced care — not enough to fix it, but enough to say I see you. I’ve got you.
“You can’t fix my spine with optimism and thumb pressure,” Viktor muttered, but he didn’t pull away.
Jayce’s grin softened into something quieter, more settled. “You love me,” he said, not teasing — just stating another fact, one of those everyday truths he never quite got tired of hearing out loud.
“I do,” Viktor said, and the way he said it made Jayce’s chest ache. Not because it was dramatic, but because it wasn’t. It was steady. Unbothered. The same tone he’d used when he’d said those same words years ago, standing on shaking legs at the top of some windy courthouse roof, fingers stiff in Jayce’s too-warm hands.
Same words. Same weight. Still true.
Jayce exhaled softly and his hand found Viktor’s waist again, thumb rubbing slow, grounding circles through fabric.
“I’d carry you,” Jayce murmured after a pause, almost to himself. “Even if I couldn’t stand up, I’d find a way.”
The words weren’t dramatic. They landed soft, low, like something he’d carried in his chest for years without needing to say aloud. Until now. Something true enough that it hurt a little.
Viktor turned his head just slightly, slow with pain, and glanced at him sidelong. One brow arched — dry, familiar.
“I know,” he said. “That’s the problem.”
But that didn’t stop him.
Didn’t stop him from shifting forward, joints protesting and balance precarious, to lean up on aching bones and press a kiss to Jayce’s lips. Chaste and brief and a little shaky, but no less solid for it.
Jayce stilled, eyes fluttering shut, and for that moment the lab fell away: the pain, the fluorescent buzz, the weight of everything they carried.
Then Viktor leaned back with a quiet breath, and without a word, they resumed their slow, clumsy journey toward the door.
Somewhere in the mess of coats and backpacks, Jayce mumbled, “I think I left the prototype running.”
Viktor didn’t even look at him. Just closed his eyes, leaned harder against the wall. “Let it burn. I don’t care anymore.”
Jayce hesitated, half-turning like he might actually go back.
“That’s six weeks of work,” he said, voice strained. Like the pain had started wrapping itself around his words now too.
“I will bury you with your precious battery cell if you even look at that lab door,” Viktor said flatly.
Jayce sighed, defeated. “Fine. Mutual destruction can wait.”
They finally made it to the parking garage, shuffling like ghosts, and collapsed into Jayce’s too-small electric car. The doors shut with a hollow thunk. The silence that followed was immediate and strangely thick, like the air itself had exhaled.
Jayce tilted his head back against the headrest, eyes closed, jaw clenched. Viktor sat curled in on himself in the passenger seat, hands trembling faintly in his lap.
The pain didn’t go away.
But at least it was quieter, here. At least it stopped screaming long enough to let them breathe.
Jayce cracked one eye open. “You know, if we die in a car crash on the way home, I want it on the record that this was your idea.”
“Noted,” Viktor muttered. “Also, I’m stealing your heating pad.”
Jayce snorted and reached for the center console, fumbling with the controls. “It’s mine. You bought it for me.”
“I am your domestic partner,” Viktor replied, voice scratchy, “which means it is legally mine too.”
“Only if I die.”
“Well,” Viktor murmured, letting his head tip against the window, “we’ll see how the drive goes.”
Jayce didn’t answer. But his hand drifted over the console, fingers brushing blindly until they found Viktor’s. No grand gesture. Just contact. A thread in the dark.
Viktor didn’t hesitate. His hand fell into Jayce’s, fingers hooking like a habit. Like something old and worn and stitched into them. His thumb ran over the band on Jayce’s ring finger.
It wasn’t comfort, exactly. It didn’t stop the pain. But it was enough to get them home.