Hello @iinkymushroom I Was Your Assigned Writer For Your @arcanefans4gaza Prompt!! Here It Is :3

hello @iinkymushroom i was your assigned writer for your @arcanefans4gaza prompt!! here it is :3

came down here for answers, but all i found was you - jayvik

wc: 2045

prompt: viktor takes jayce to a place from his childhood

The house had long since been abandoned. Broken shutters hung from window frames; webs of cracks stretched across the foggy glass of the windows. When Viktor set his crutch experimentally on the steps that led to the door, the wood groaned under the weight, but didn’t give out. He held his breath for a moment. They’d come this far. His old home couldn’t reject him now.

“I can only hope that my study remains as untouched as the rest of this place,” he muttered, trying to keep the emotions making his chest clench from finding their way into his voice. Jayce was perceptive, though, at least when it came to him, so it might have been a long shot.

He made his way to the door, swatting a few cobwebs away from the doorknob. The thick reek of mold and dust hit him the moment he swung it open, and he bit back a cough. “Welcome home,” he managed to say thinly. How unpleasant. He’d been so focused on improving his limbs that he hadn’t even considered trying to get rid of his lungs.

The steady weight of Jayce’s hand fell onto Viktor’s back as he cleared his throat. “Breathe, V. You’re alright.”

Breathe? Now why didn’t I think of that earlier? Viktor knew Jayce meant well, though, so he kept the comment to himself. Swallowing the last of his misgivings, he shouldered his way inside, ushering Jayce in after him. “Try not to break anything. I don’t know how much was left behind, if anything could be… valuable.” He wouldn’t take anything, at least anything that wasn’t his; he couldn’t afford to bask in that much nostalgia, but it would comfort him to know that there was at least something left of his family.

“You lived here?” Jayce breathed. Viktor turned back just in time to see him duck under the doorframe, staring into the darkened house like he’d stepped through a Hexgate onto the other side of the planet.

“No. I broke into a stranger’s house at the ripe age of seven and built myself a secret lab in their basement, where I proceeded to spend most of my formative years.” Jayce blinked at him a few times, and he sighed. “I’m kidding, Jayce.”

“Oh,” was all Jayce said. “Okay.”

Viktor rolled his eyes and continued deeper into the bowels of his old home. Visions wavered in front of his eyes as he went, of a family that was now long gone. They didn’t have much. But they’d had each other, and when Viktor thought of his childhood he remembered laughter more than he remembered destitution or disillusion.

They’d slipped away during his time at the Academy, when he hadn’t even been there to say goodbye. All succumbing to the various illnesses a life in the Fissures could force upon a person.

He couldn’t save them, not now. But he could save everyone that came after them.

And maybe, just maybe, he could even save himself.

“Hey. You alright?”

Viktor stopped. He didn’t realize how hard he was clenching the handle of his crutch until Jayce’s voice returned him to the present. “Fine,” he muttered. “Let’s move on. I’m going to need your help carrying things, if as much of it is salvageable as I hope.”

“Is that why you brought me with you? I mean, the only reason?”

Not the only reason. Far from the only reason. “Yes.”

He heard the teasing disbelief in Jayce’s voice. “Look, if you wanted company, you could have just said so.”

“Mm.” Viktor tried wholeheartedly to ignore Jayce, which he was usually very good at doing when the situation called for it. He fumbled around in the dark living room for a moment more, nearly tripping over a dust-laden couch in the process. When he found the door he was looking for and swung it open, he hissed under his breath. “Sakra.” Would it really have been so hard to remember a flashlight? He felt along the walls—just as he’d remembered. No handrails. “Jayce,” he said begrudgingly, extending his free hand out behind him. “Hold onto me, please, or only my ghost will make it all the way down.”

Jayce did not hold anyone’s hand halfway. He didn’t just grasp Viktor’s, he fully intertwined their fingers and even squeezed, just to make sure Viktor was as miserable as possible, apparently. “I’ve got you. I’ll be right behind you, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Your hand’s cold.”

“Yes, it… it does that.” And Jayce’s hand was so warm, and so much bigger than his. Would a full-body embrace from him feel just as safe, just as comforting? For all Jayce’s inclinations toward physical affection, Viktor had never had the chance to find out.

Now was not the time to change that, he scolded himself. He continued down the stairs as quickly as he could muster while still dragging Jayce along with him.

“I always had a knack for the mechanical, even at a young age, and my family grew tired of me strewing my creations all over the kitchen, so they moved me to the basement. ‘You’re a regular little mad scientist, Viki,’ they’d say. Always so supportive. And when they found a way to trick Heimerdinger into admitting me into the Academy…” I hadn’t known that would be the last time I ever saw them, he thought. His feet landed on solid ground, and he focused on fumbling around for a light. He didn’t let go of Jayce’s hand.

Jayce’s voice was light. Viktor could hear the smile in it. “Viki?”

“That’s what my parents called me, yes. We were very close.”

“It suits you.”

Viktor stopped. When he realized his hand had grown clammy, he tugged it away. “Ah… thank you.”

It only took a few minutes of fumbling to find an old lamp, one that thankfully flickered faintly enough to illuminate the space. With the room almost fully visible, yearning settled on Viktor’s chest like a weight. He hadn’t seen this place in years. His very first laboratory. The room where his lifelong ambitions had been born. His rickety little makeshift lab table stood tall and proud as it always had on one side of the room, still cluttered with various half-finished mechanical trinkets. “It’s all here,” he murmured. “It’s all still here.”

“And you think this stuff is the key to your next big breakthrough?”

“It could be. I had a lot of good ideas back then. I was more creative, less concerned with the rigidness of Academy safety protocols. Much like you when we first met.”

“Yeah.” A soft brush of a hand on Viktor’s shoulder. “I remember that.”

He wanted to give in, wanted to melt into the touch. His old home felt so lonely, so loveless, and Jayce’s presence was the only thing combating the grief he kept so skillfully buried under the surface. If he took a moment to rest against Jayce’s side, would his partner hold him there and dust the cobwebs off his heart?

He couldn’t find out. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s see how much of this is worth dragging topside.”

“V,” Jayce said.

Viktor hummed a noncommittal response. Gods, he’d been disorganized as a kid. Would it have killed him to put any of these things away? He hardly knew what any of these silly baubles could be used for, let alone whether they still worked, let alone whether they’d aid him in his augmentations or not. Maybe his memory was betraying him. Maybe his younger self hadn’t been nearly as clever as he’d thought, and these were nothing more than dust-covered, useless toys.

“You’ve been… look, I just want to make sure you’re alright, but…”

“Spit it out.” Viktor picked up a particularly intricate-looking contraption and turned it around in his hands. He wondered what it was until he realized he was holding it upside-down—it was a dust-covered toy. A little mechanical man, with three arms—all articulated, of course—and slanted eyes that glowed faintly orange. How interesting. It was disproportionate and crudely soldered together; it must have been one of the first things he’d ever made.

“I’m sorry.”

He set the figure back down. It stared back up at him with those strange eyes, arms bent forward like claws. “I can’t forgive you if I don’t know what you’re apologizing for.”

“What I said on the bridge,” Jayce confessed in a rush, like a dam breaking. “I should have apologized earlier. I wasn’t thinking. I know there’s no excuse, I don’t—I don’t think of you any less because of where you came from. I was stressed, and I was worried, because I thought I was about to lose you. That suddenly we were fighting, and if I didn’t lose you to that, I’d lose you because of…” He trailed off. Viktor filled in the rest of the blanks on his own. “Point is, I was barely hanging onto you, and I wasn’t thinking. I’m sorry. I was just so caught up in the worry of… the possibility that you’d never know how important you are to me. I lashed out. It was unkind, and you didn’t deserve it.”

Viktor sighed. “Jayce, I stopped being mad about that the second the missile hit the Council’s chamber. Right now, I’m just glad you’re alive.”

He turned back to glance at Jayce in the low light. Jayce looked dumbfounded. “You are?”

“What? You think I’d rather you died?”

Jayce’s voice turned meek. It was a strange sound on him. “Well, not quite…”

“You’re a mess,” he grumbled, hoping Jayce would pick up on the mote of affection in his voice.

“I was so scared. After everything we’d done, all the discoveries we made… we got so close to finding a way to cure you, and I almost lost you. Viktor, you don’t get it. I don’t know how I would have gone on.”

“You’d have found another lab partner, obviously.”

“This isn’t about lab partners, I—V, if you’re not mad at me, why have you been so…”

“Prickly?” he offered. “Aloof?”

“Yeah. That.”

“Because I’m scared too, Jayce.” He gave up on scouring the table. He’d never be able to focus with Jayce talking to him like that, with a sweetness that almost rotted his chest. “If I hold you too tightly, I… it will hurt so terribly to let go.”

And then Jayce appeared next to him in one quick stride, and Viktor finally stopped wondering what Jayce’s arms would feel like around him.

He held Viktor close, as if he was too delicate to let go of; fragile not like broken glass or tarnished metal, but like a promise between lovers. Something cherished, not just protected. Jayce’s arms were every bit as strong and warm and safe as Viktor had hoped they would be, and he couldn’t help but wonder why, in all their near decade of knowing each other, he’d never had the chance to realize how much an embrace could feel like home. He swallowed the desperate little noise that rose in his throat, not wanting to embarrass Jayce, and instead choked out a whisper: “Don’t stop doing that.”

“I won’t.” Jayce’s embrace tightened just slightly. “I’ve got you. I’m not letting go.”

Viktor buried his face in Jayce’s neck. He smelled faintly of fire. Safe and warm and smoky. Home. He was home. Why had it taken Viktor so long to see it? “It’s been so long since anyone has…”

“Hey. Hey, it’s alright, Viki. Just breathe. Breathe.”

Viktor gave a breathless laugh. “You are such a tryhard, zlato. Golden boy.”

“That sounded like an insult.”

“Perhaps, and yet you don’t seem to mind.”

Something soft brushed against Viktor’s hair. It may have been a kiss. He didn’t want to waste his time with wishful thinking. He did register the weight of Jayce’s chin settling on top of his head, and the gentle press of his partner’s hands against his back. “It’ll be okay. We’re gonna be okay.”

It would be more than okay, Viktor thought, letting himself fully relax for what must have been the first time in months.

He opened his eyes and peered over Jayce’s shoulder at the trinkets on the table.

Not just okay. With any luck… it would be glorious.