Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Jayce froze in front of the mirror. The tie lay flat — perfect knot, tight like a noose.

Crisp, ironed collar. Everything in its place. Familiar. Routine.

And yet his fingers suddenly started trembling. Subtle, but real.

His breath hitched, like someone had just sucked the oxygen out of the air.

Pulse spiked. Throat went dry.

Fuck. Not now.

That old, familiar panic started spinning up, merciless and sharp.

A heavy, muffled ringing filled his ears.

His heart thrashed against his ribs like a trapped animal.

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

Now — like we practiced.

Five things you can see.

Mirror.

Silver tie clip.

Burgundy ring box on the vanity.

Chrome door handle.

Bouquet on the stand — lilies. White. Almost sterile.

Four sounds you can hear.

Murmur of voices in the hallway.

Distant laughter from the terrace.

Creak of the floorboards.

Low hum of a draft.

Three things you can feel.

A bead of sweat between his shoulder blades.

Smooth fabric of his trousers under his fingertips.

Dryness on his lips.

Two scents.

Fresh linens.

Faint sweetness of lilies.

One taste.

Mint gum tucked in his cheek. Slight sting.

His breathing steadied — barely, but enough.

The panic didn’t leave; it only receded, leaving behind an empty, trembling readiness to flare up again.

He adjusted his tie once more, eyes fixed on his reflection.

“It’s fine,” he whispered on the exhale. “It’s fine.”

. . .

The green lawn, perfectly trimmed and velvet underfoot, basked in the soft golden light slowly fading beyond the horizon. Everything looked flawless: neat white chairs lined up in perfect rows, ribbons tied around the arch, the muted laughter of guests barely rising above the background music.

The whole space drowned in pale lavender chrysanthemums.

Jayce stood a little off to the side, swirling lukewarm champagne in his glass. Minimal movement to avoid standing there like a statue — all that was left was to put on the familiar smile and play the role of guardian of serenity. Today was far too important for him to have any right to ruin it with his own clumsy grief. And he knew how to keep a straight face.

But he still couldn’t shake the feeling that his very presence here was a stain on a perfectly ironed tablecloth. Out of place. Out of time.

Being among friends and familiar faces felt unbearably difficult right now, because all he wanted was one thing — to hold a funeral for himself, right there, exactly where he stood, nailed to the spot. But no, today all the flowers belonged elsewhere, not to his dreary headstone and shattered self. The mourning would have to wait.

“Talıs, you didn’t forget the rings, did you? We’re starting in five.”

The sudden poke in his shoulder made him jerk so hard he nearly spilled his champagne. Jayce barely managed to steady the glass, cool drops sliding down his fingers. For a fleeting second, panic flashed through his head — the ruined suit, the guests’ disapproving stares, the spoiled celebration.

“Jesus, Vi! You scared the shit out of me.”

He ran an unsteady hand through his hair, silently cursing himself for being so jumpy, already imagining his perfectly fixed hairstyle knocked into chaos. Almost absently, he slid his hand into his jacket pocket, fingertips brushing the sharp edges of the small box resting there, the weight of it grounding him back into reality.

“Got them,” he exhaled, relief softening his voice. “How’s Cait?”

“No idea,” Vi snorted, shrugging exaggeratedly and rolling her eyes. “She won’t let me anywhere near her. Some wedding superstition about ‘not seeing the bride until she walks down the aisle.’ As if I haven’t seen everything before.”

Jayce was pretty sure this had nothing to do with superstition.

He knew Cait well enough to picture it perfectly: right now, she was probably lying on the hotel bed in her perfectly pressed suit, music playing in her headphones, while everyone else assumed she was having a meltdown over every last speck of lint.

Her method of meditation since high school: pretend you’re on the brink of hysteria so everyone finally leaves you the hell alone.

“Give her a minute, she’s nervous too.” A soft smile flickered across his clean-shaven face. Cait wasn’t nervous, but the legend had to be maintained. “Need me to help with anything? The caterers don’t seem to be moving much; I can talk to the coordin—”

“Jayce.” Vi patted him on the back. Not her usual bruising smack — this one was almost… soothing. “Do me a favor and unclench your ass. You’ve got one job today: pull the rings out of your pocket on cue and get shitfaced with me after.”

“That’s two jobs.”

“Un. Clench.” Another firm slap landed on his forearm. “You paid enough for this wedding. The staff can handle it.”

Jayce nodded, took a sip of his now-flat champagne, and glanced around the lawn again. There weren’t many guests — the girls had clearly kept it to close friends and a handful of coworkers.

Jayce had secretly hoped Cait would make up with her parents before the wedding, but the closer the date came, the less likely it seemed. He’d even considered reaching out to Cassandra himself once or twice, but that would’ve been too much, even for him — diving headfirst into a years-long family feud was above his pay grade.

At least the venue really was stunning: you didn’t often find a wedding space like this anymore, with a centuries-old tree spreading its branches right at the heart of the ceremony. No wonder the rental cost bordered on “highway robbery” and had to be booked nearly a year in advance.

Luckily, Mel had enough connections to make it happen — an incredible wedding gift, and considering the price tag, an absurdly generous one.

Jayce couldn’t help but think he’d want his own wedding somewhere like this someday.Not that he cared much about the color of the flowers, the dress code, or the shade of the napkins — not really. What mattered to him, more than anything, was the moment he’d exchange rings.

And as he looked around at the scene, he could almost see it: his mom sitting in the front row, tears streaming freely as he stood at the altar, trading vows with the person he wanted to spend the rest of his life with. Vi and Cait snapping a million photos just to give him an album on his first anniversary.

He’d been close to that reality — closer than he’d ever been. And now he didn’t even know how to tell his mother that he and Mel had broken up.

Not like before, when all the accusations had been yelled mid-fight and their loudest arguments usually ended in sex instead of solutions. This time, they’d just… talked. Quietly. Calmly. Without smashing plates, they’d come to the same conclusion: there was nothing left to glue back together.

Four years of their relationship had become a cooling corpse on an operating table. We did everything we could. Time of death recorded. Take a tissue on your way out.

The suitcases and half-packed boxes of Jayce’s things had been the clearest proof yet of how serious they were this time — they’d never gotten that far before.

His thoughts drifted, unbidden, to the slim figure standing among the guests.

Mel, as always, was stunning — flawless, poised, untouchable. She embodied everything Jayce had been chasing since his university days — status, recognition, influence.

Only, where Mel had been born into it, he’d had to keep remaking himself, over and over, just to keep up.

The result was a personality shredded into scraps and stitched back together from other people’s expectations, hollow ambitions, and the constant fear of getting four out of five stars on the app called “Jayce Talis: People Pleaser Deluxe.”

Jayce is twenty-two.

He wanders Piltover’s central stream with friends, eyeing the cars where men in suits sit behind tinted windows — suits worth more than he could earn in a couple of years.

He tells himself he’ll tear himself apart if he has to, claw his way to the top, change the world someday — all it takes is trying hard enough.

All those outrageously expensive things and that shiny status will be nothing more than proof of his success.

Jayce is thirty-two.

He did tear himself apart.

But somewhere along the way, he seems to have traded in his skin, his dreams, and that whole “change the world” thing for scrap — keeping only a decent bank account balance.

Practically a living will.

They’d agreed not to tell anyone about the breakup. At the very least, out of politeness — crying over the sudden death of your own love at a ceremony dedicated to someone else’s was… a little inappropriate.So they’d arrived together but drifted apart almost immediately, orbiting each other carefully, just close enough not to invite questions.

Before leaving, Vi shot him a look — somewhere between confused and concerned.

“You okay? You look like shit.” She squinted at him like the answer might be hiding somewhere deep in his pupils. “Since when do ridiculously successful startup bros have reasons to stress, huh? You’ve got bags under your eyes, Jayce. Damn near full suitcases.”

“I’m fine, don’t worry about it.” Jayce forced a stiff nod, trying to look at least vaguely functional. “Gonna grab a smoke and I’ll be good as new. I’ve got time, right?”

“You’ve got time. They’ll call everyone to gather a couple minutes before it starts, so you won’t miss it.”

He nodded again, tossed back the last of his completely flat champagne, and set the glass down on the nearest table. It tasted exactly the way he felt — sour, empty, with a faint aftertaste of nausea.

The improvised smoking spot was tucked away at the far end of the venue. Technically, smoking was forbidden, but somehow he and Mel had managed to charm the owner — a woman in her sixties who, judging by the lingering smell on her clothes, probably only let go of her own cigarette when she was asleep.

They’d been granted permission as a one-time exception.

Later, they found out why: she’d apparently assumed they were the ones getting married and thought they made a lovely couple. Neither of them bothered correcting her — why ruin someone’s romantic misconceptions if they work in your favor?

The spot itself was small, hidden behind tall lilac hedges — a quiet little alcove with old but pretty benches made of dark wood and, delightfully, ashtray-bins thoughtfully provided by the same generous owner.

Jayce stepped inside — and immediately grimaced.

Of course. Exactly who I was missing.

He was met by a pair of large, almost feline amber eyes glinting through the thinning smoke of a heavy cigarette. For a moment, Jayce was tempted to turn around and leave before it was too late, but then his gaze caught on the half-burnt stub in the other man’s pale hand.

Judging by that, this encounter wouldn’t last long.

He just had to pray today’s companion in the race to lung cancer wouldn’t decide to open his mouth too much.

Without a word, Talis sat down on the bench next to him, almost ignoring the presence of the other man, and pulled a slim cigarette case from the inside pocket of his dark blazer.

It clicked open with a satisfying snap, and Jayce slipped a cigarette between his lips. His hand went back into the same pocket, reaching for his lighter — and of course, of course there was nothing there except the heavy little box with the rings.

He exhaled sharply through his nose.

Looked like he’d have to speak first — and hope a light was the only thing he’d get out of it.

He glanced up at Viktor, who was finishing his last drag and looked about ready to leave. But when he caught Jayce’s gaze, he turned lazily toward him.

“Forgot my lighter,” Jayce said. No “hi,” no “how are you,” just throwing his lack of foresight out there and silently hoping it would be enough.

“Of course.”

The other man took one last slow drag before flicking the butt neatly into the ashtray. Then, picking up the cane propped against the bench, he rose — unhurriedly, deliberately.

Jayce started to stand, too, more out of politeness than necessity, so Viktor wouldn’t have to move more than he had to. But before he could even get halfway up, the lighter snapped to life right in front of his face.

He inhaled deeply, the first curl of smoke sliding smoothly over his tongue and tickling the roof of his mouth.

“Thanks,” Jayce breathed out, closing his eyes briefly and leaning back against the bench. He allowed himself a fleeting second of silence, almost relaxation. “Guess I should take this as a sign it’s time to quit. Been trying for three years — no luck.”

Viktor let out a quiet, derisive huff.

“People usually say that when they’re just looking for excuses not to change anything.”

Jayce instantly regretted saying more than necessary. Or, really, saying anything at all. He nodded faintly, forcing something like a half-smile onto his face.

Didn’t matter that it landed like a slap.

“Guess you’re right. Though, on the other hand — how valid are lectures from a fellow smoker?”

Not that he had any right to argue. Just another lazy idiot who couldn’t kick a bad habit — thanks for the reminder. He took another drag. Deeper than he needed to.

“No lectures about smoking,” came the dry reply.

Then what the hell about?

“I smoke because I enjoy it,” Viktor went on. “The taste. The smell. And I find it strange hearing apologies from people who run for a cigarette every chance they get, while constantly excusing themselves to people who couldn’t care less about their lungs.”

Jayce frowned faintly.

“What’s your point?”

Viktor shrugged. Thin lips curved just slightly — whether into a faint smirk or an expression of tired, condescending indifference, it was impossible to tell. As if the entire conversation was nothing more than background noise to him, unworthy of emotion.

“Not everyone cares about being socially acceptable, Jayce.”

And there it was. Again.

Jayce clenched his jaw, holding back the sharp retort sitting on his tongue.

Just let him leave already.

He only had to tolerate this asshole today — and only for the girls’ sake.

Viktor seemed amused by that struggle; the smirk lingered faintly in the very corner of his spoiled lips while the rest of his face stayed almost blank. Like throwing casual rudeness at near-strangers was as routine for him as brushing his teeth in the morning.

“Good to know,” was all Jayce managed before taking another drag, trying to drown the taste of Viktor’s bile in the bitterness of smoke. “Thanks for… whatever that was.”

Viktor raised an eyebrow, and the slight shift in his expression pleased Jayce more than he wanted to admit — like Viktor was slightly disappointed. Wanted to get a rise out of him and didn’t.

He’d count that as a win.

The steady tap of Viktor’s cane against the cobblestones faded with his retreating steps, and Jayce finally exhaled. Loudly. Almost with relief, as though pushing the irritation out of his lungs along with the smoke.

“…What the fuck is your problem, asshole,” he muttered under his breath.

Their strange little acquaintance had started about a month ago, when Caitlyn decided it was time to run a rehearsal for the upcoming wedding. Calling it dramatic would’ve been generous — the whole thing was more of an excuse to introduce everyone involved.

Get a sense of timing, show people where to stand to avoid awkward pauses. Give instructions to the staff, too. The venue had kindly given them a couple of hours.

The wedding promised to be unusual even by the standards of having two brides. First of all, both had rejected the usual traditional roles — Caitlyn hadn’t invited her parents at all.

According to Vi, she’d kept the invitations sitting on her coffee table for two months before finally tossing them in the trash, along with yet another message from her mother.

Something about responsibility, family duty, disappointment, and helpful advice to “find yourself a husband.”

Since Caitlyn had decided she would be the one walking down the aisle, someone close had to walk her there. Well… close enough, given her father wouldn’t be at the ceremony.

They’d chosen Vander.

At first, he thought it was a joke. Then he got misty-eyed and pulled both girls into a hug so tight Jayce thought he might crush them. Vander was Vi’s stepfather but treated Caitlyn with such warmth it always felt like she’d been his daughter, too. He hadn’t been able to make the rehearsal, though — the bar wouldn’t run itself, and there was no one else to cover for him.

But Viktor had been there.

Vi’s friend, apparently. He’d arrived later than everyone else but had sent a heads-up well in advance.

When Jayce first saw him, one thought shot through his mind: we’ve met before. He even made a mental note to ask later — just in case.

And then Jayce froze, caught staring at the stranger.

He was beautiful. Not conventionally so (a term Mel had once explained to him, using Jayce himself as an example), but more like one of those runway models from high-fashion houses.

Lean, composed of sharp lines and angles. The kind of person who’d be snatched up instantly if he cared the slightest bit about being noticed. There was something… otherworldly about him.

Like he’d been pieced together from parts of different puzzles that somehow fit perfectly: thin lips, sable-dark brows almost always drawn together at the bridge, high cheekbones.

And his eyes.

Absolutely feline — sharp, attentive, catching everything around him, set in a pale, unreadable face.

Jayce only noticed the cane and the slight unevenness in his walk much later. And with it came a twinge of awkwardness — especially after his earlier thoughts about runways.

And yeah, he’d been staring. Blatantly. He realized it only when Vi snapped her fingers in front of his face.

“Hello, Earth to Talis,” Vi snorted, jerking her chin toward Viktor, who had apparently been standing there for god knows how long, holding out a thin hand in greeting.

Jayce hurriedly extended his own.

“Jayce Talis. Nice to meet you…”

Viktor shook his hand and nodded. He didn’t bother smiling.

“Viktor. Don’t get too excited,” he said with a faint smirk. “You could say we’re already acquainted through Vi and Cait. They’ve mentioned you more than once.”

Oh. That accent.

Jayce froze for half a second, then forced a stiff smile — probably wider than it should have been. Behind him came a quiet, barely stifled laugh, and he rolled his eyes.

Second mental note: find out exactly what the girls had been saying about him — and in exactly how awkward a light they’d managed to put him.

“Well, uh…”

He didn’t have time to string together enough syllables to make it sound like an actual coherent sentence before that cool, slim hand had already slipped from his grip.

Weird introduction — but Jayce was used to that kind of thing; work had long since trained him to deal with eccentrics of every possible kind.

While Caitlyn enthusiastically ran the show, talking about timing, location changes, and music inserts, Jayce caught himself thinking something that felt strangely out of place for the situation: why hadn’t he and Viktor met earlier?

If he was close enough to Vi to be standing beside her at the altar on the most important day of her life, it was strange they’d never crossed paths before. Second mental note confirmed.

The next hour went by in a mix of active discussion about the ceremony, rehearsing placements, and spontaneous conversations.

Mostly conversations, if Jayce was honest.

The girls eagerly shared their honeymoon plans, complained about bureaucracy, and told stories from the precinct — mostly about which otherworldly visitor had caused a scene this week by setting off fireballs in the lobby.

Vi, as always, didn’t hold back her laughter, and every booming burst of it echoed through the room, making even the most stone-faced attendees crack a smile.

“By the way, why isn’t Powder at the rehearsal?” Jayce asked, leaning slightly toward Cait and lowering his voice.

She clicked her tongue and rolled her eyes.

“She said she couldn’t stand up there at the altar. ‘Too long, too boring, and I’ll definitely cry.’” Cait gave a soft huff of laughter. “She’d rather sit in the front row and ruin Ekko’s vest instead.”

Jayce chuckled, and then, almost automatically, glanced toward Viktor.

He was standing a little off to the side, leaning lightly against the windowsill, and didn’t seem to be taking much part in the conversation.

A faint, polite smile rested on his face — the kind of expression that suggested he knew exactly when and where he was supposed to smile, but didn’t actually share the general amusement.

And even though his eyes seemed to skim lazily across the room, Jayce couldn’t shake the impression that Viktor was somewhere very far away — either deep within himself or completely outside everything happening here.

Too calm. Too composed. Too… apart. Third mental note.

Jayce had always thought of himself as something like a connecting thread — the invisible tie holding people together. Group projects, surprise parties, rehearsals like this one — they worked because of people like him. Not because he was brilliant at organizing things, but because he tried.

To make sure everyone was comfortable. To make sure no one felt left out. To make sure everyone had a chair, water, enough attention, and that no one went home thinking, I shouldn’t have bothered coming.

Which was why, when he glanced toward Viktor again — still standing off to the side, still with that faint, polite half-smile, still separate — Jayce immediately started forming a plan.

He had to try to interact with him somehow.

Just on a human level.

Find neutral ground.

Loop him into the process, make him feel like part of the overall chaos.

He even moved a little closer — casually, as if there were a reason for it. And just as the second part of the rehearsal started, Caitlyn called them over and asked them to take their places. Jayce turned toward Viktor, meaning to clarify who stood where — and that’s when it began:

“You do know where you’re supposed to stand, right?”

“Yes, Cait showed me,” Jayce answered, slightly thrown by his tone.

“She showed you before or after she said you’ve got terrible spatial awareness?”

Jayce blinked.

It took him a moment to realize it had been a joke — Viktor’s delivery was so flat it was impossible to tell.

“…Wait, are you… joking?” Jayce raised an eyebrow.

“Does it sound like a compliment?”

Viktor stood there with the exact same expression, as though the whole conversation wasn’t even worth acknowledging, like he’d been dragged here against his will. Jayce felt something tighten inside him — caught somewhere between “try again, maybe that’s just how he talks” and “you know what, fuck this guy.”

Mental note number three burst into blue flames, crumbling into ash at his feet.  Jayce exhaled sharply through his nose and looked away, fixing his eyes on an empty spot across the room like it had suddenly become very interesting.

“Just trying to be helpful,” he said finally. “Not everyone’s comfortable standing off in a corner pretending this isn’t their rehearsal.”

“Corners are safer,” Viktor replied evenly. “Less chance someone steps on your foot. Or your ego.”

“Oh, my bad for barging into your comfort zone,” Jayce said lightly — or tried to. The effort showed.

This time, Viktor’s smirk widened just slightly — brief, soundless, like he’d gotten exactly the reaction he’d wanted.

Perfect.

Jayce clenched his jaw but nodded anyway, as if everything was going perfectly according to plan, and turned back toward Cait, pretending to be entirely focused on her instructions.
Mental note three-and-a-half: if someone seems like an asshole, odds are they are one.

The rest of the rehearsal, Jayce tried his best to disengage. He’d already been shown clearly enough that his nerves didn’t matter here — politeness didn’t count, effort wasn’t noticed. But inside, it still boiled.

He wasn’t used to this. People usually liked his way of connecting, his tendency to make everyone comfortable. His charm, his thoughtfulness, his knack for setting the mood — it always worked.

But not here.

Here, there was a stranger who’d apparently decided that basic courtesy just didn’t apply to him.

When everyone had finally convinced themselves they understood their roles and the order of things, the rehearsal came to an end. The group slowly drifted out beyond the edge of the banquet area while the staff clustered around Caitlyn, taking her final notes.

Viktor gave the girls a short nod — brisk, businesslike, without unnecessary words — and disappeared around the nearest corner, the steady tap of his cane syncing with his retreating steps. He didn’t even glance at Jayce. No hint of a goodbye. No offered hand.

Jayce pulled a cigarette from the pack and let the first drag take his nervous edge with it. Vi appeared beside him almost instantly, glanced around conspiratorially, and silently held out her hand. Jayce passed her the pack without a word.

“I thought you quit. Cait’s gonna bite your head off.”

The lighter snapped cheerfully to life right in front of her face.

“We agreed I quit after the wedding,” Vi said, exhaling smoke. “But she still looks at me like we’ve been married twenty years already and I’m cheating on her weekly.”

Both of them laughed quietly.

“That’s marriage for you: you get the woman of your dreams, and the bonus gift is a lifetime of having your metaphorical balls twisted off,” Vi said, stretching before rolling one shoulder out with a hand. “Don’t regret a damn thing though. So when are you and Mel planning to lock yourselves up in metaphorical chains?”

And there it was. The kind of question that had become inevitable. He and Mel had been together long enough that everyone around them had started to watch, to ask — first as a joke, then more and more seriously.

Jayce, of course, tried to dodge the topic. He’d even half-jokingly begged Jimena not to bring it up — though, really, there’d been more hint than humor in his tone. Didn’t work. The questions didn’t get less frequent, they just came with more knowing smiles and sympathetic pats on the shoulder.

What he’d never tell anyone was that for the last six months, a ring box had been sitting heavy in his nightstand drawer. An expensive ring. Very expensive. Too late to return it now — the deadline had long passed. But the doubts he hadn’t managed to untangle back then? Those weren’t going anywhere. They’d grown. Gathered weight. Now, they lay beside him every night, pulsing somewhere between his ribcage and his throat.

Vi squinted at him for a moment, studying his profile. The cigarette between her fingers was almost down to the filter, but she didn’t put it out — just looked at him. Like she wanted to ask something else, but thought better of it.

“All right, Talis, I’ll leave it,” Vi said finally, stubbing the cigarette out against the edge of the ashtray and giving his shoulder a solid slap. “You’ve got that squeezed-lemon face whenever something’s wrong.”

“By the way, Vi… why didn’t I know about Viktor before?”

Vi snorted and shoved her hands into the pockets of her wide-cut jeans.

“Try showing up to something other than your glamorous events with Mel and actually making time for your old friends when they invite you to a bar once in a while.”

Touché.

The past couple of years, Jayce had been buried up to his neck in the startup — and on top of that, the endless dance for potential investors under Mel’s sharp, always-appraising gaze. Weekends meant brushing his teeth longer than usual and pretending to sleep. But Vi was, damn it, right. And he knew it. None of them had ever truly held it against him — they all understood he was building a career — but the joke still landed exactly where it hurt.

“Yeah, I… sorry. I know I should see you guys more often, and—”

“Oh my god, stop, Jayce,” Vi laughed, watching him drown in the sudden flood of guilt. “Save the excuses for Cait, not me. Viktor’s from Zaun — we literally grew up a few streets apart. Lost touch for a while, met up again at The Drop, and now here we are. He’s busy too, but he tries to make time when he can. Couple weeks ago we got together to celebrate him moving back to Piltover.”

Jayce nodded, sliding another cigarette from the pack.

“Where’d he go?”

“For work. I think it was another country — he spent, like, six months at some university out west, can’t remember exactly. Oh! He’s a scientist too, so you’ll have plenty to talk about. Just don’t ask me his field; I don’t keep track of you nerds and your stuff.”

Talk? Yeah, no chance, Jayce thought, lighting up.

Vi held out her hand again — not for a fresh cigarette, though. Caitlyn was about to come out, and she wouldn’t have time to finish one anyway. Jayce generously handed over his. Vi took a couple of deep drags before passing the “gift” back.

“Is he always like that?” Jayce waved his broad hand vaguely in the air, somewhere between “melancholy” and “offensively condescending.” “He’s got the entire suffering of Zaun written across his face, and apparently I’m the class enemy. I’ve known him for, like, two minutes.”

Vi exhaled loudly, half-snorting in something like a laugh.

“Maybe he actually likes you and he’s just pulling your pigtails,” she said, waggling her eyebrows up and down suggestively.

Jayce grimaced.

“He’s a good guy,” she added, softer now. “Complicated. Stubborn as hell sometimes — but that’s, like, a professional hazard for you people. And… he’s got his reasons for hating these kinds of events.”

“Oh, but bars are fine?” Jayce snorted, taking a drag.

“People don’t get married in bars, Talis,” Vi said flatly. “They drown their problems in booze.”

Jayce was pulled from his thoughts by the soft voice coming through the speakers, announcing the start of the ceremony.

The second cigarette in his hand had long since burned to ash and crumbled at his feet. He tossed the filter into the bin, straightened his jacket, and headed toward the altar.

The main part of the event went according to plan. The guests sat in their places, some already pulling out tissues and napkins. Jayce stood at his spot, ready at any second to pull out the rings. To his left was Vi, dressed in a white suit with a chrysanthemum pinned to her lapel. Behind her, with an expression of calm and a light, almost weightless smile, stood Viktor. He was looking toward the end of the aisle — where Cait would soon appear.

And then everything happened so quickly Jayce mentally thanked the photographer — at least they’d capture the details he’d want later to refresh his memory. Vander leading Cait to the altar. The white suit, matching Vi’s, but with a train cascading down her back. The neat bun. The quiet flutter of nerves in every step. Somewhere in the front rows, Powder had already started crying loudly, and Ekko was rubbing her forearm apologetically.

Jayce’s gaze caught on Mel for the briefest moment, and he tried to smile at her — though he had no idea if she was even looking his way. She was carefully dabbing tears from the corners of her eyes with the edge of a white silk handkerchief, careful not to ruin her expensive makeup.

The exchange of rings came with a slight stumble that drew laughter from the guests. The vows were tender, honest — “You’re not getting rid of me now, cupcake.” The mutual “I do.” Jayce didn’t even realize at first that he was barely holding back tears himself, watching one of the people dearest to him step into a new stage of life. Vi and Cait had long since felt like a married couple anyway.

He quickly wiped the dampness from the corners of his eyes — and his gaze, by accident, fell past Vi’s shoulder. She was leaning in to catch Cait, to seal their marriage with their first kiss.

Jayce glanced at Viktor without meaning to. The man was smiling — brightly, almost dazzlingly, his gaze turned toward the girls, filled with a fragile, piercing tenderness. And in that moment, as if time slowed just slightly, amber eyes met his.

Jayce realized he was staring at Viktor for too long and yet only for a heartbeat, and suddenly he felt heat crawling treacherously up his face. Not that anyone would notice — the air around them erupted with applause, laughter, camera flashes. And still, he’d been caught.

God, let this not end up in the photos.

He tore his gaze away instantly, forcing his attention back on Cait, who was already turning toward him for her hug.

“Come here, crybaby,” she laughed breathlessly as Jayce stepped forward.

He hugged her the only way he knew how — tight, sincere. Then, without letting go, he reached for Vi and pulled her into the embrace too. Both girls were laughing, smelling of flowers and something layered and complicated — happiness itself, maybe. His chest tightened with tenderness.

“You’re both incredible,” he whispered. “Just… goddamn incredible. You did it, sprout.”

“Of course we did,” Cait replied, still smiling through tears. “With what we paid, we’d better have.”

The hug broke when Powder crashed into them, sobbing loudly — her mascara trailing down her cheeks for the third time that day. Jayce stepped aside, giving space to the other guests. He needed to make his way to Mel anyway — the decorations had to stay in place until the curtain finally fell.

“Beautiful ceremony,” she said, her voice that same thing it always was — something soft and rounded, the kind you could drown in or shatter against. It sounded like there was no bitterness in it at all.

As if she truly wasn’t sorry it wasn’t the two of them standing under the arch. Though who knew. Mel was always good at keeping her tone even.

“They went through a lot to get here,” Jayce answered, his voice instinctively steady. “You know — everyday homophobia, gossip, the whole bureaucratic-firing circus. All just to be able to live and work together without asking permission.”

“Good to know not everyone’s roads lead nowhere.” Mel’s shoulder lifted in a light, elegant shrug.

A pause. Perfectly timed, perfectly sharp, so her words echoed in his head like an epitaph.

“Sorry,” she said, tilting her head slightly. “Didn’t mean to be harsh. It’s hard for me too, Jayce. Guess it’s just a defense mechanism.”

Of course she didn’t. Just dropped it casually, there between the live music and the goat cheese canapés. Like slipping you a funeral card: “Wishing you a bright journey. P.S. shame about your detour.”

“It’s fine,” he said. “Love the car crash metaphor. Adds charm.”

Mel’s lips curved into a faint smile, and Jayce’s mirrored it. Everything stayed within bounds. She was elegance, he was irony. Both of them quietly wrecked, but flawless on the surface. Each with their own private grief: hers made of silk, his scribbled in crumpled notes about what exactly to take from her apartment so he wouldn’t have to come back.

“You look good,” she added, as if remembering they still had a part to play, and every performance needed its lines.

“Still remember how to use an iron and sarcasm. Perfect combo.”

Another pair of polite smiles. Another sip to fill the silence. Another glance off to the side to avoid looking at each other too long. All around them — flowers, candles, soft music, smiling guests. And the smell of someone else’s happiness, so sweet it almost made him sick.

No ring. No returns. No drafts. Just the final version, printed clean on the first page.

By the time the sun finally said goodbye to the horizon, the wedding had kicked off its heels and unbuttoned its collars. Ties had migrated to wrists, cuffs were rolled up, and dancing had become the only acceptable form of moving between tables. The guests had spread out across the venue, the music was louder, the light warmer, and everything around them seemed to exhale.

Cait’s glass held far from her first champagne by now, Vi had unapologetically switched to something stronger, and the evening had stopped pretending it was a formal affair. It wasn’t about decor anymore, or solemnity — it was about relaxed conversation and smudged mascara.

Jayce sat with the girls at a table off in the back — the one they’d marked during rehearsal as “for extreme exhaustion and escape from everyone else.” Cait, laughing brightly, eventually gave in, slipped away from their little group, and went off to fulfill her wifely duties: chatting with out-of-town guests and delivering perfect, charming thank-yous for the gifts.

Left alone together, Jayce and Vi finished their drinks, and Vi leaned back against the table with her eyes closed.

“So how’d it go? And don’t give me any of that ‘magical’ and ‘you both looked gorgeous’ crap. I’m not hearing that for the tenth time.”

“Well, you looked like a rock star, Cait was the grand prize, the food was edible, and I barely whined at all. Solid performance.”

Vi gave a satisfied little hum, and Jayce used the lull to glance across the venue. He’d done it a dozen times already, but this time he didn’t even pretend to be interested in the sunset or the string lights. His eyes were searching for a familiar figure.

Viktor stood slightly apart from the rest, leaning on his cane like a punctuation mark between himself and everyone else. He was talking to an older woman he clearly knew well, if the warmth in her expression was anything to go by. Occasionally he responded to a pair of younger guests who clapped him on the shoulder — polite, brief. Not a single gesture wasted, every movement deliberate down to the millimeter. He was here, but only physically. Like a tick mark on a guest list.

Jayce caught himself staring again — and immediately looked away, like a kid caught with his phone under the desk. The napkin in front of him suddenly became the most fascinating thing in the world.

. . .

He’d lost track of which glass he was on — somewhere between the fifth and the seventh, not counting the champagne at the entrance and whatever Vi had poured him while they’d been sitting together. At some point, the taste stopped mattering; all that was left was the heaviness crawling upward from inside and the tightness in his chest that, with every glance at Viktor, turned into a sharp, almost physical ache under his ribs. Jayce hated it when anger built up. He never knew what to do with it — couldn’t scatter it into jokes, couldn’t apologize in advance. He just knew something was going to break soon.

Viktor was sitting at a table, barely engaging with a couple of guests who hadn’t yet migrated to the dance floor or other groups. And the longer Jayce watched him, the tighter everything coiled inside him, like a knot pulled taut. He wanted to walk up and shake him: what the hell are you even doing here if you hate it this much? Who asked you, who dragged you by the ear? Why sit here like it’s a funeral instead of your friend’s wedding — the friend you supposedly came here for?

And then he was moving. No plan, no purpose. Just walking, because the anger in him wasn’t just pricking anymore — it was buzzing, crawling under his skin, and if he didn’t let it out now, it would start leaking through his smile, his eyes, his voice — through the polished tone he’d been forcing all damn evening.

Jayce dropped into the conveniently empty chair beside him. No apology, no smile, not even a proper look — just a glance past him and words spoken lower than usual, with the kind of tone that usually came right before an explosion:

“If you hate it here that much, honestly, no one’s keeping you. You can leave. No drama, no hard feelings. Just… please, stop acting like being here is some kind of favor.”

Viktor turned his face toward him calmly, without irritation, without even trying to argue — and looked straight at him, with the faintest trace of amusement in the corners of his eyes. He set his glass down on the table, tilted his head slightly, and spoke so softly that the sting of it landed late, like an echo:

“Seriously? With that twenty-eight-tooth fake smile of yours, you might not have the moral high ground to lecture anyone about pretending.”

Click.

That was exactly how it sounded in Jayce’s head.

Like the safety being pulled off.

He clenched his jaw, stood, and grabbed Viktor’s arm just below the elbow — not roughly, but firmly, leaving no room for argument. The look on his face was that of someone a second away from smashing a glass over someone’s head unless he got out of there right now. He leaned in, close enough to make it look like he was whispering, and with a stone-carved expression, he steered him away from the table, away from the guests, away from the music and the fairy-light garlands swaying gently in the breeze.

“Let’s go. Now.” Through his teeth, like forcing words past nails. “Before I say something that ruins the entire evening.”

They walked into the bathroom, which barely resembled a place intended for anything as mundane as bodily functions. It was more like a diva’s dressing room: muted lighting, golden sconces on the walls, spotless matte-glass sinks, fresh flowers in vases — probably swapped out every fifteen minutes. Everything matched the rental price of the venue: a kind of pretend luxury teetering right on the edge of bad taste. Vi would’ve said it felt like a set from a TV show about rich idiots. And she wouldn’t have been wrong.

Jayce shut the door harder than he’d meant to and flicked the lock into place.

Viktor turned toward him, unbothered, as if none of this were happening, but didn’t even have time to straighten fully before Jayce stepped forward and stopped close enough to make his point unmistakable: personal space was over. He didn’t touch him, didn’t so much as brush his sleeve — just loomed, like a bad idea standing on two legs.

The wall behind Viktor suddenly felt a lot closer than before.

“You have something to say to me?” Viktor’s voice was almost lazy, his accent a touch heavier thanks to the champagne. “You could have done it back there.”

Viktor was noticeably shorter, his build nowhere near enough to match Jayce’s, but somehow, with that unshakable confidence in his gaze, he managed to look him straight in the eye — and for a split second, Jayce felt like a schoolboy. Clumsy, stupid, and caught red-handed.

“Yeah. I wanted to say you’re an asshole, Viktor.” Jayce shot it out without hesitation, sharp and direct, not even blinking. He huffed, and as if deciding to double down, he stepped in closer, obliterating what little remained of the invisible boundary between them. “You were invited to stand at the altar on an important day, welcomed into this circle, and you can’t even bother to play along. No respect. Not for the people, not for the moment. I don’t know what your problem is, but from where I’m standing, it looks bad. You keep sneering, snapping, making digs — and somehow, every single one of them’s aimed at me. What, I looked like the easiest target to you?”

Viktor didn’t move. He only let the back of his head knock lightly against the wall, as if testing its sound, and his mouth twisted into a mocking smile. Crooked, tired — but no less cutting.

“Oh. So that’s what this is about.” His voice was annoyingly calm, but underneath it scraped something sharp. “Does my face irritate you… or is it that someone dared not to fall for your stage persona? Honesty, Jayce — it’s not always pretty. And it’s rarely convenient.”

Shut up.

The pause hung thick in the air. Jayce suddenly felt hot. Or maybe cold — he couldn’t tell which. Viktor went on:

“Might be good for you to figure out what exactly’s bothering you before you start dragging people to walls for a little show.” He tilted his head slightly, like he was listening closely, but believing him? Not so much. “Because right now you just look like a hypocrite. It’s not my detachment that’s pissing you off, Jayce — it’s that I’m not smiling back, not nodding along, not stroking your ego the way you’re used to. You’re just upset not everyone likes you. What a tragedy.”

Shut. Up.

Jayce stared straight into those infuriatingly calm, painfully attentive eyes — the kind that didn’t just look, they searched. Crawled under your skin, sifted through you, pressed on everything that hurt. He tried not to hear Viktor’s lips forming another string of words, light and effortless, as though he didn’t even notice how much venom they carried.

He’s right. He’s fucking right.

Jayce had already lost the second he got up from the table. The moment he decided he could just walk over and settle this. Even the handful of short conversations had been enough to make one thing painfully clear: there would always be another “but have you considered…”, another sardonic smirk, another look sharp enough to peel skin raw.

“Shut up, Viktor.” It came out hoarse, low, weighted, the last vowel scraping out of his throat. He didn’t even know if what burned hotter inside him was the anger or the exhaustion.

But Viktor didn’t stop.

“Since we’re being honest, do you want to know why?” His tongue brushed lazily over his lower lip, like a blade smeared with poison. The only question left was whether he’d press it into the wound or straight through the throat.

I want you to shut up.

Of course he wouldn’t. Of course he had an explanation. Precise, flawless, cutting like a scalpel. And of course it would be right — so right Jayce would want to punch a hole in the wall, or sink straight through the floor just to escape standing here like this, stripped bare down to the bone under those fucking eyes.

“I’ve read all your papers, Jayce.” Viktor’s voice was quiet, almost coaxing, but it felt like a knife slowly twisting between his ribs. “I know your dissertation topic. I know who supervised it. I’ve watched your conference talks. Four years ago. Back then, I thought we’d meet one day. Maybe even work together. There was something… alive in you.” He paused, sharp and deliberate. “But I guess the spotlight proved blinding, didn’t it?”

Stop.

“Fancy car. Sterile socials. ‘Man of Progress’ in the banner, the captions, everywhere.” Each word landed like spit. “I despise you, Jayce. I despise people like you. Polished. Convenient. Bought and sold. Chasing approval and handshakes, betraying yourselves for praise from people who don’t give a damn about your citation count — or about how many neurons you’ve fried chasing another round of overpriced champagne.”

“Stop.”

“Why? I thought that’s why you dragged me in here — to figure out what’s wrong. Or are you just so used to people patting your head and telling you how wonderful you are?” Viktor leaned in, as though there was still space between them, though Jayce could already feel his breath on his skin. Hot. Slow. Intentional.

It was as if he hadn’t been the one who invaded, but the hunted thing — trapped, cornered, pulled straight into the line of fire.

Shut your mouth.

“You’re a shadow of the man you could’ve been, Jayce Talis.”

Jayce snapped. The rage was everywhere — in his throat, his fist, his fingers fisting the fabric at Viktor’s collar. He yanked him forward, shoving him back against the wall, nearly slamming him into it. Viktor jerked, but didn’t flinch. His gaze held steady, pupils blown wide, defiant. No fear, only anger, mockery — and that unbearable tension that made Jayce’s head spin.

“You—” his voice shook, teeth clenched, a storm of curses crowding his tongue he barely managed to hold back. “You seriously don’t know when to shut up, do you?”

Viktor’s face — so close now. Jayce’s grip tightened on his chest, dragging him forward, leaning in without the faintest idea of what to do next. The anger bubbling up inside him fizzed like champagne, rising fast under his skin, and all he wanted was to scream at him, to tear into him with words—

—but instead, he crashed into his mouth.

It wasn’t a kiss; it was a bite. He caught Viktor’s lips hard, pressing in with such force it knocked the breath out of both of them. Viktor gasped into him, ragged, like someone had driven a punch under his ribs. His hands landed on Jayce’s chest — not to push him away, but to stay upright. Fingers fisted tight in the fabric of his jacket.

Jayce moved against him like he wanted to tear the kiss apart from the inside — ignite it until it burned. His grip slid down from Viktor’s collar, lower, closing over the narrow curve of his waist. He dragged him closer, pulling him flush: thigh to thigh, chest to chest, stomach to stomach. Through layers of fabric, heat, pulse, motion bled together. Viktor drew in a sharp, uneven breath — then surged forward, biting at Jayce’s lip like he wanted to leave a mark.

Jayce didn’t remember how exactly Viktor ended up on his knees — whether he’d pulled him there himself or Viktor had simply decided he was done talking. Everything inside him knotted up when deft fingers loosened his belt, unbuttoned his fly, and the cool air brushed over the head of his cock. He was already hard, painfully so, flushed and slick with anticipation, bared too suddenly. Viktor only glanced up — a short, lazy look, like he was asking, this is what you wanted, isn’t it? For me to shut up?

And then he took him into his mouth.

No warning. Just wrapped his lips around him and sank down, slow and deliberate, confident, and Jayce nearly lost his balance at the first hot slide of it. The wet heat, the glide of Viktor’s tongue tracing the vein beneath, flicking up to tease the head, had Jayce’s head tipping back as his fingers clamped down on the edge of the sink. He was trembling. His voice was somewhere deep in his chest, trapped, useless — all he could manage was ragged breathing as his eyes locked on Viktor, watching the way he moved, unhurried, focused, like he was doing this for himself.

Viktor set the pace — steady, relentless — drawing him deeper with each breath, the stretch of heat closing around him until the head of his cock brushed the back of Viktor’s throat. Jayce almost groaned out loud — it was tight, wet, enveloping, overwhelming. There was nothing tender in it, nothing romantic. It was hungry, rough, Viktor’s tongue pressing insistently against the sensitive underside, the wet sounds low and obscene, sliding out from the depth of his narrow throat. His cock would disappear between Viktor’s lips only to return with a wet, deliberate pop, like he was doing it on purpose — savoring him, drawing it out like candy melting on his tongue.

“Fuck…” Jayce hissed through clenched teeth, biting down on his lower lip. “Viktor—”

Viktor’s hands settled firmly on his thighs, unyielding, locking him in place, guiding him deeper with every drag, forcing him to move at his rhythm. Jayce was already close — everything blurred into one long, unbroken pulse: the glide, the heat, Viktor’s harsh, uneven breaths, the wet slick across his lips, and the brutal, aching need to come. He glanced down and couldn’t look away: Viktor’s flushed cheeks, his tousled chestnut hair sticking to damp skin, and those amber eyes fixed on him, unblinking.

“I’m close… fuck, I’m—” Jayce managed to whisper, and Viktor only swallowed deeper, his throat tightening around him in answer.

He was barely aware of where they were anymore. The only thing real was the feeling of Viktor’s sweat-damp hair under his fingertips, clinging to his palm, and the stuttering rhythm of Viktor’s breath. And when Viktor sank down again, dragging him in with a wet inhale, nearly to the base, Jayce broke.

It tore out of him — sharp, shuddering, his hand locking at the back of Viktor’s head, holding him down harder, rougher, fucking into his throat without grace, without thought, chasing that snap of release like he needed to drown him in it.

He thrust deeper, faster, his spine arching, his thighs tightening around Viktor’s head, nothing elegant left — only instinct, only raw, ragged want.

The orgasm hit like a live current, ripping through him from his spine to the tips of his fingers. Jayce’s grip tightened painfully in Viktor’s hair as his body jerked forward, spilling hard down Viktor’s throat, sharp, greedy, until there was nothing left but the ringing in his ears and the hollowed-out rush of release.

Viktor didn’t pull back — not at first, not even after. He swallowed deliberately, steadying himself against the reflex, once, then again, slow, measured. Only after several long seconds did he ease away, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, and looked up at Jayce from below — eyes glazed, unfocused, almost translucent.

Jayce was still holding his hair.

A beat passed before he let go, his fingers loosening slowly, stepping back like a man surfacing with lungs full of lead. He released Viktor, released the wall, released what little control he’d been hanging on to. Viktor didn’t rush; he rose with deliberate care, almost like he was collecting something invisible from the floor — some quiet dignity untouched by what they’d just done.

He reached for his cane, smoothed out his shirt, slow and unhurried, savoring the way Jayce’s hunger still showed in the creases of the fabric. Not the faintest sign of shame. Not even a shadow of awkwardness. As if nothing had happened. As if Jayce hadn’t just fucked his mouth to the edge of blackout, holding him by the hair while the rest of the world narrowed to a single point.

Jayce just stood there, forehead pressed to the cool tiled wall, like an idiot in confession. His mind was empty — well, almost — and the numbness had the same flavor as botching a pitch to investors: the slides were there, the suit perfect, the words rehearsed, but somewhere along the way everything had slid straight into freefall.

Viktor, of course, walked up to the mirror, wiped at the corner of his mouth like he was dusting off powder, not spit and sarcasm. Only then did Jayce open his mouth. He wanted to ask something like what now, or worse, say I’m sorry — but didn’t get the chance.

“No, Jayce. You’re worse than I thought.” His voice was even, almost polite, the words a sentence handed down. “Don’t leave right away. Wait a couple minutes.”

Click — the door swung open, letting in the muffled hum of voices, a soft “congratulations!” from somewhere outside, then shut quietly behind his slender frame.

Jayce stayed. Standing in the empty room that smelled of sugared diffusers, overheated emotions, and something he’d try his best never to recall again. He braced both palms on the sink, leaned over it, breath still uneven, before finally lifting his gaze to his reflection.

And for a moment, he didn’t recognize the man staring back.

It sounded like the wedding cake was being cut outside.

Chapter Text

Jayce, you had to admit, owed fate a fair bit. Or at least, he couldn’t really complain — compared to most people, he’d been handed a pretty enviable starter pack.

A stable childhood in a loving, comfortably well-off family; brains — not a prodigy, of course, but sharp enough to outshine most of his peers, at least when it came to self-awareness, which was rare enough already. By his teenage years, looks joined the mix: tall, broad-shouldered, the kind of face that made people pause and think, “Where have I seen him before?” — usually in some sports supplement ad.

Jayce wasn’t particularly proud of it, but he wasn’t going to play modest out of politeness either: facts were facts, and personal tastes were secondary. Even if someone wasn’t into his particular “configuration,” his charm worked like a built-in adapter — smoothing over mismatches and overloads alike.

Learning to talk to people came later, long after he’d realized he’d hit the genetic jackpot. But even that turned into a bonus. Life was more interesting when there was something to tweak, after all: polishing manners, tuning his tone, training restraint, perfecting the art of pretending he wasn’t bored out of his skull. Grad school, you could say, became his testing ground for those experiments. Just a little bonus unlocked along with the diploma.

It especially came in handy when it was time to defend his dissertation and pretend to be a collected, mature specialist instead of an overgrown burnout with three nervous breakdowns and a habit of finishing papers at four in the morning.

And, of course, the most valuable thing — as always — was his health. Practically textbook-perfect. A legendary immune system, the kind yogurt-brand bacteria would envy. Aside from, of course, the seasonal pollen allergy that turned spring into a living hell — sneezing, watery eyes, and the constant feeling that you’d become a walking tissue. Oh, and one little system failure — that one, from childhood.

Eight-year-old Jayce, fever spiking close to forty, lips pale, hands clinging desperately to his mother’s as he lay under an IV drip, drifting in and out of his own feverish haze. A whole month spent on his back, staring at the hospital ceiling where it almost seemed like the answers to all of life’s big questions were about to appear: why the sky was blue, why you couldn’t eat toothpaste, and why Mom wouldn’t say where is Dad.

Jayce hardly ever got sick.

So rarely, in fact, that over the years he’d built up a reflex: handle any cold on his feet, drops in his pocket, laptop under his arm, and the automatic “I’m fine” ready for every worried glance. But this time, something went wrong. Quietly, without a clear trigger, without a date to circle on the calendar — like it wasn’t his body breaking, but the supporting structure itself. The foundation he stood on.

Rest suddenly stopped being a luxury and became a necessity. And it turned out the foundation he’d always leaned on wasn’t stone at all. More like compressed paper, edges already curling damp.

He told his coworkers he’d caught something. Handed off his current tasks to the nearest team, turned off notifications, shut his laptop, and decided to take a break. A couple of days — a week, tops. Just to breathe. Everything under control.

Of course.

The ceiling.

That’s what the ceiling in his new apartment reminded him of. Smooth, blank, pressing down just a little too much. He’d hauled boxes out of Mel’s place in a rush — literally the day after Cait and Vi tied the knot.

Box after box, furniture she’d never warmed up to — like the pair of soft armchairs he’d pictured them sitting in ten years down the line. Each of them with their own thing: she with a book, he with a laptop, both in silence. Fingers accidentally brushing on the armrest. Like an antidepressant commercial, but with a hint of stability.

Almost a month had passed since he’d gone on “sick leave.” A month of lying there, stubbornly staring up at the disgustingly white ceiling of the new apartment. The move had been impulsive, though it felt more like an escape. Just grab your things and run, before the walls started talking back. He’d picked the first listing in the rental app; the only real requirement was that it couldn’t be so bleak it made you start thinking about a noose in the living room.

The ceilings were high enough, for what it’s worth.

Ironic, really.

If childhood pneumonia had been treated with antibiotics and his mother’s care, whatever had settled under his ribs now didn’t respond to any known remedy. No amount of tea with honey helped. Nor did long, scalding showers where he stood trying to warm himself from the inside out. This pain didn’t throb, didn’t bring fever — it just quietly, methodically hollowed him out from within. No fuss. No days off.

He still hadn’t unpacked the boxes. Occasionally he’d pull something out when he needed it — things that immediately ended up scattered across the nearest surfaces: a toothbrush rolling along the edge of the sink, pants draped over the back of a chair, a couple of shirts thrown across the armchair Mel used to call “hideous” with a very particular expression on her face. Now that chair had claimed an honorary spot by the window. And, for the first time in a long time, it felt like something in this apartment was finally where it belonged.

The hardest part, at first, was maintaining radio silence. His hands reached for his phone automatically — a habit so ingrained it had become something like twitching an eyelid or tapping your fingers: barely noticeable, but stubborn, persistent. He’d pick it up from the nightstand, from the floor, from the pillow, and, without even realizing, find himself scrolling — through other people’s lives, other people’s news, other people’s happiness — until his eyes ached from the dim light.

After a couple of days, the habit only brought irritation.

After a week, the phone was permanently on Do Not Disturb.

Another week later, it served a single purpose: ordering food.

He actually liked cooking. It was one of the few things that grounded him, helped him feel steadier on his feet after long workdays and endless bullshit conversations with unpleasant people. A well-rehearsed imitation of normalcy. Jayce liked putting on his headphones, blasting music (never a podcast — too many other people’s voices), and methodically, almost meditatively, chopping something up for dinner: meat, vegetables, whatever he had on hand. His hands moved on their own, no thoughts needed, and there was almost relief in that.

But the move had washed even that out of him. The pans were still buried somewhere in the depths of taped-up cardboard boxes. The fridge held nothing but water, some leftover ketchup, and a bottle of wine he’d meant to give as a gift but never did. Hot meals arrived in plastic containers. He barely dirtied any dishes — there wasn’t much point anymore, same as with most other things.

He could barely taste food anymore. Eating had turned into something warm and faceless — not pleasure, not ritual, just a way to keep his mouth and hands busy, to quiet the noise in his head for a few minutes. He chewed on schedule, not thinking about what he was putting in his mouth, and certainly not why.

Feeling sorry for himself turned out to be laughably easy — so easy it almost became part of his stripped-down daily routine, which, at this point, mostly resembled a bad Groundhog Day rerun. Wake up closer to noon, spend another hour in bed, toss a few half-hearted mental reminders at himself: get up, shower, brush your teeth, make coffee, put something in your stomach so it doesn’t start protesting. And with every passing day, it felt like his back was growing roots into the stale bedsheets — which, honestly, he should probably change too.

And every fucking day he stared at that goddamn ceiling.

When did it all go wrong? Where did he slip? At what point did he become… what was it Viktor had said?

You’re a shadow of the man you could’ve been, Jayce Talis.

At first, what happened at the wedding felt like a dream. A drunken fever blur teetering on the edge of blackout. Jayce tried not to think about it — but thoughts were stubborn. They came back every time he closed his eyes. And maybe he was supposed to feel ashamed, guilty, disgusted — and he did. But the memories, despite all that, didn’t repel him. They pulled at him. Burned him from the inside out. And they were what kept making his hand slip under the waistband of his boxers, again and again.

Every orgasm — quick, sharp, almost desperate — followed by a landslide of self-loathing, so familiar it made him sick. Shame and emptiness, like a fucking postscript.

Jayce grabbed his phone off the floor and unlocked it — the screen immediately drowning in notifications. Dozens of unread emails in both inboxes, app pings, retweets and likes on Twitter where, apparently, someone had dug up his three-year-old article and decided to play necromancer again. He opened Messenger on autopilot and instantly tapped on the group chat with Cait and Vi — they’d been sending photos, videos, and voice messages from their trip, and he usually replied with nothing more than a reaction: a heart, a thumbs-up, or that same lifeless emoji that had long since come to mean “happy for you, but not from the heart.”

Photo after photo slid past at alarming speed: sunsets, beaches, turquoise water, coconuts in plastic cups, entire collections titled “what we ate today” — a tropical island straight out of a glossy travel brochure.

Selfies from Vi came in bulk — varying levels of blur, with local cats, cocktails, palm trees, and, of course, Cait always in the background. Cait, on the other hand, sent those painfully perfect, over-composed shots that could blind you just as much as the beach sun itself. Her frames almost always included a sunset, a wide-brimmed hat, and some godawful cocktail in a glass posed against the ocean.

He scrolled through the chat and stopped on the latest message — a selfie from Cait. Vi stood behind her at the check-in counter, looking like pure, unending misery. Jayce snorted, unable to hold back a smile.

Cait
Look who doesn’t want to come back to work.

Vi

i wanna grow old and die on this island! :(
Jayce, we need to pool our money and buy it

Cait

We’ve spent so much here, the only thing we’ll be able to buy in the next six months is a new vacuum cleaner.

Vi
lol :(

Vi
we meeting up tomorrow?
y’know, if mister talis bothers to haul his ass out of his executive chair or wherever it usually lives

Cait
“are we”. I swear, one day i’m getting you a grammar workbook.

Jayce set the phone down, screen first, and stared back up at the ceiling. All the excuses that used to be explained away by “the schedule” didn’t hold up anymore. He had nothing left to hide behind.

He reached for the screen again.

Jayce
What time?

Vi
holy shit, he replied!

Cait
Tomorrow at 8? Gives us time to actually sleep in.

Jayce reacted to the message with a thumbs-up and locked his screen, setting the phone back down somewhere within easy reach. A deep inhale, and an equally deep, drawn-out exhale didn’t lift the heaviness in his head. If anything, it made it worse — like some invisible hand pressing against his chest and refusing to move.

First of all, he needed to get up. Preferably today. Try to deal with the mess in the apartment, take a shower, look in the mirror. If only out of curiosity — who was even there now? A face he wouldn’t recognize? Or something that still barely counted as his? He couldn’t remember the last time he’d looked at his reflection for more than a passing glance. Somewhere along the way, his self-image had faded into a ghostly silhouette — messy hair, dark circles, nothing more.

Second, he needed to tell them about the breakup with Mel. That part, somehow, felt easier. Cait and Vi would listen, hug him, ask how he was holding up, say Mel had no idea what she was giving up — and, of course, they’d mean it. Not out of politeness, not out of pity, but because they genuinely believed it. And Jayce, most likely, would let himself keep that thought in his head for a while. He’d put it on the shelf alongside all the other convenient little self-deceptions, letting their sympathy patch over the cracks inside him that couldn’t be sealed anymore — not with tea, not with sleep, not with endless procrastination.

But the truth was — Mel knew exactly what she was doing. And so did he. By the third year of their carefully, cautiously stitched-together relationship, everything had already become obvious. He’d started to crumble, fraying slowly but surely at the edges under the constant background hum of “not enough”: didn’t listen enough, didn’t understand enough, didn’t sit close enough, didn’t think far enough ahead. And somewhere around then came the first thought that this wasn’t going to be one of those stories with a happy ending — the marriage, the double coffin, the neat little “and they died on the same day.”

Jayce pushed himself off the couch like his body wasn’t his own — like he was borrowing it from someone with chronic fatigue. He stretched lazily and dragged himself toward the bathroom, stripping off the same home clothes he’d been living in for days, the ones steeped in sweat, inertia, and sticky self-pity, tossing them blindly into the laundry basket on the way. He didn’t even glance at the mirror — too risky — and stepped under the hot shower like the water’s heat might melt down all the junk crowding his head and piece him back together again.

He stood under the spray, letting it soak into the back of his neck, stream down his spine, as if it could wash away more than just sleep or weeks of exhaustion — as if it could scrape out everything else, too. The things that hurt worse than any muscle strain, the things crawling under his skin, making it hard to breathe.

And then, the third problem — Viktor.

Viktor. The only person in years Jayce had absolutely no idea how to act around. He’d shown up out of nowhere, like an anomaly — thin, sharp-edged, closed-off, and within days had dragged him through every level of an emotional rollercoaster whose final station felt like voluntary euthanasia. He’d turned Jayce inside out, dragging into the open all the things he’d kept buried deep: the anger, the desperation, the rotten ache under his ribs — and, worst of all, the wanting.

Dirty. Ugly. Painful.

Jayce couldn’t understand where Viktor’s precision came from — the sharpness, the contempt, the way every hit landed clean. If the plan had just been a one-time blowjob, they could’ve skipped the theatrics, the drama, the needles under his fingernails. Skipped the lines that made him want to chew through walls — because the worst part was, Viktor had been right.

But Jayce wasn’t any better. In those last minutes, he hadn’t been acting on reason but on something darker, untamed, something that refused to answer to logic. And if he was being honest, he hadn’t meant to kiss him. He’d wanted to hit him. Shake him. Hurt him, just enough to claw back a little control. But instead, his fingers had grabbed Viktor’s collar, and his body lunged forward.

His cock twitched at the memory — his body, the traitor, still reacting to that moment with heat under his skin, like there was still an ember smoldering from it: Viktor on his knees, slowly sliding down, like a knife slipping off the edge of a table. His mouth — hot, wet, wrapped around him so tightly it hurt. Jayce’s hands could still feel the grip in Viktor’s hair, holding on too hard for it to be mistaken for tenderness.

He could almost feel Viktor choking, wincing from the effort, squeezing his eyes shut — from disgust or arousal, Jayce couldn’t tell — but still not stopping, not pulling away. His throat stretched tight around him, that searing look shot up from under his lashes, and those hands — gripping Jayce’s thighs, either for balance or to keep him from pulling away.

He didn’t know what he wanted now — for Viktor to appear behind him this very second, to make it all a mistake they could undo, or for him to disappear forever, dissolve into another cutting remark and the click of a closing lock.

No, Jayce. He fucked you.

He wanted to believe problems could be handled as they came — and that Viktor wouldn’t show up tomorrow at the bar, knocking the ground out from under him all over again. Funny, really: the guy who walked with an uneven gait, leaning on a cane, somehow managed to dismantle him brick by brick, step by step, like it was nothing.

The rest of the day, Jayce dedicated to battling procrastination — if you could even call the slow, methodical unpacking of laundry “a battle.” His attention just wouldn’t stick to anything. Whatever he tried to pick up, his eyes slid off, his hands dropped, his thoughts scattered in every direction. By evening, the apartment looked less like post-move cleanup and more like a chaotic secondhand market — clothes, bags, books, a couple of unopened boxes, and somewhere in the middle of it all, Jayce himself, wandering around like a glitched NPC.

The sun drifted toward sunset, warm light spilling across the floor and walls through the half-open blinds, turning the living room into a striped cage. Jayce stood in the middle of it, not knowing where to put his hands. Technically — anywhere. In practice — he ended up settling for instant noodles in the kitchen, staring at nothing while the water boiled.

On the laptop in front of him, a quiet science video played, its content slipping completely past his awareness. Jayce ate slowly, almost absentmindedly — not because he was full (the last time he’d eaten properly was too long ago), but because hunger just couldn’t cut through the cotton stuffed in his head. Everything felt endlessly dull.

His eyes wouldn’t close, even long past midnight — standard operating procedure for a brain that had fully given up on cooperating with melatonin. Inside his head, he pictured a tired little cartoon serotonin molecule, dragging a suitcase of leftovers behind it, tossing a resignation letter somewhere into the folds of his brain, and with a heavy sigh passing the reins over to cortisol. Assuming there even were reins. Or hands. Or a face to frown with. But the point stood.

He knew he shouldn’t, but he still took the pill — a light antipsychotic, bought over the counter, courtesy of an old, bad habit. He promised himself he’d deal with it later. Definitely. Tomorrow. Or next week. He didn’t remember when or how he fell asleep, or whether he dreamed at all, but he woke up a couple of times before morning — either from his own snoring or from that falling sensation, like he was about to slip into a black void he’d never crawl back out of.

And then everything rolled on, like clockwork. Like yesterday. Like the day before. Like a hundred years ago.

By noon, he finally managed to look at himself in the mirror after a shower. Well… it could’ve been worse — though his mom would still say he was her most handsome boy, even if she probably wouldn’t recognize him at first glance. His usual undercut had grown out into something undefined but not yet catastrophic, and his face… Jayce had planned on experimenting with a beard closer to retirement, but apparently it had decided to show up thirty years ahead of schedule. The smooth, lotion-scented cheeks were long gone — now replaced with a half-drunken topography of stubble and exhaustion.

Jayce ran a hand over his face, assessing the scale of his lost youth, and made up his mind: fuck the razor. Mel had never liked even the slightest stubble — and maybe now was exactly the right time to finally figure out what he liked. Call it a symbolic act of rebellion. Mel was gone — the beard stayed.

He trimmed up what had grown so far, and, to his own surprise, was almost satisfied with the result. Almost — because the man staring back from the mirror wasn’t him. Or at least not the one he remembered. More like his father. His mom always said how much they looked alike. And she’d probably be crushed to know how wrong she’d been.

He got dressed quickly, with zero enthusiasm and zero effort to impress. Dark jeans, a half-wrinkled black t-shirt, a denim jacket on top — the final stage of not giving a shit. “I’m tired of expensive clothes; just give me a fucking potato sack already.” He ordered a cab, reasoning sensibly that there was no way he’d turn down a couple of beers, which meant driving was off the table. In his jacket pockets — the usual: phone, wallet, cigarettes. Jayce double-checked that he hadn’t forgotten the lighter.

Right in front of the bar, it hit him — that dissonance of wanting to leave and wanting to go in at the same time. Happy and nauseous, like meeting an old friend you haven’t texted in years. The Drop was still exactly where it had always been — cozy, a little worn around the edges, smelling of hops, fried onions, and memories. At some point, someone had dubbed it “the sitcom set for spilling your soul,” and the nickname stuck — because, really, it fit too well.

Years had passed since that very first time Cait had dragged him here under the pretense of “great beer.” Later, he found out she hated beer — the real reason was to introduce him to the girl she “maybe had something going on with” back then. That night ended with Vi, mid-flirt, shattering a mug, Cait stumbling over her words, and Jayce dropping his heart somewhere under the table watching them. Since then, this place became the place they always came back to — for honest talks, terrible jokes, and a kind of warmth that had nothing to do with the weather.

The second wave of feelings wasn’t as sweetly nostalgic as it was heavy and sticky with guilt. He hadn’t shown up here in God knows how long, like he’d crossed The Drop off his map entirely — like a forgotten home. Or maybe more like a home you trade away for cold meeting rooms, endless pitches, and awkward smiles at near-strangers just to scrape together funding.

And now he was standing at the door, wondering which familiar faces might be on the other side. Besides Cait and Vi, of course.

Jayce snorted under his breath, raising an eyebrow. Great. Just what he needed — for Viktor to turn into the local Voldemort, the one you can’t see, can’t mention, and God forbid, can’t ever say by name.

Inside, everything felt jittery: something nervous, stubborn, completely irrational. He wanted to see him. And at the same time, he had no idea where he’d find enough sand to bury his head in if Viktor actually did show up.

From the inside, The Drop was exactly as Jayce remembered it: dark green walls, dulled with age, patches of chipped paint — not messy, more like… intentional. The bar was a constant, a fixed point in space, something that didn’t change no matter how hard the rest of the world fell apart. He stepped further in, glancing around, and didn’t see Vander behind the counter — but when the old floorboard squeaked under his sneaker, perfectly on cue, it almost made up for it.

Something strangely warm stirred in his chest — almost like a cheap buzz, but without the side effects. That creak under his foot felt like the bar itself greeting him: “Still alive, huh, prodigal son? Come on in, there’s a seat at the counter — just don’t look at the weird guy in the corner.” Absurd, sure, but there was more comfort in that sound than in any of his failed calls to his mom over the last two weeks.

The coziness of The Drop had always come with a certain edge to it: the bar didn’t take you in because you were fun or charming or had jokes stolen from some American stand-up — it took you in because, honestly, you didn’t really belong anywhere else. And somehow, that brutal honesty was comforting.

He spotted his friends almost immediately, and his pace picked up without thinking. Whatever he’d been telling himself on the way here, it was… really good to see them. Almost like the old days, back before everyone scattered into different apartments, fractured personalities, and messy mistakes leading straight into depressive episodes.

Except — they didn’t seem to recognize him at first. Vi frowned, watching this six-foot-something guy approach with the vibe of someone who’d either just been kicked out of his apartment or lost an argument with a cab driver. She half-rose from her seat, looking ready to start something, then froze mid-motion, her mouth dropping open into a silent “holy shit, Talis.”

“Jesus fucking Christ, Jayce,” Vi breathed out, shoving her chair back. “Please tell me nobody’s dead.”

They both stood up almost at the same time when they finally recognized him — scruffy, exhausted, slouched, but still Jayce. They hugged him tight — with that delayed relief of holding not just a friend, but someone who’s finally come home after being gone too long. Like each of them had a split-second thought that if they didn’t reach for him now, he’d disappear again.

He smelled like tobacco, frowned more than usual, but it was still him. The same Jayce — just a little crumpled. Or a lot. Depends on how you looked at it.

Taking his first breath after the hug, he wanted to say a thousand things in one go. Like, for starters, exactly what haddied. But the right words just weren’t there — everything had collapsed too fast, and somewhere under the rubble were all the explanations, the excuses, the old debts to the twenty-year-old version of himself. He just snorted instead, breaking the hug, and sank into a chair across from the newlyweds.

And they really did look like they’d just been pulled straight out of the oven: Cait’s usually pale skin had picked up some color under the southern sun, and the last bits of peeling skin were sliding off Vi’s shoulders like she’d fought and lost against a beach chair.

“I honestly thought you were gonna bail like always,” Vi said, leaning back in her chair and giving him a look that carried everything from mild reproach to the usual “finally, you absolute pain in the ass.”

“Vi…” Cait murmured, giving her a pointed glance.

“What?” Vi shrugged and took a sip. “He always does this. Disappears for six months, then shows up like, ‘oh wow, it’s September already?’”

Jayce huffed in response, not even trying to argue. There was no point — she wasn’t wrong. He had disappeared. Not in the dramatic “changed his number and fled to Tibet” kind of way — more like he just quietly crossed out anything that wasn’t work. Everything too loud, too demanding, too exhausting. He’d just… slipped out of their lives.

And yeah, he’d been a shitty friend.

“Well… I’ll start working on redeeming myself in your eyes,” he exhaled, rubbing his temple. “Step one: picking up the tab.”

“Wow, look at you, Talis — straight-up sprinting through those redemption arcs,” Vi saluted him with her sweating glass. “Don’t think you can buy your way back into our good graces with beer and a fat tip that easy, though.”

He smirked, and finally, his shoulders relaxed. Jayce knew he technically didn’t have to pay when it came to their little crew — The Drop was family business, and somewhere along the line, Vander had started treating him like yet another stray kid someone left at his doorstep in the shape of a six-foot-something engineer. Still, Jayce always tried to leave at least something — or a lot — chalking it up as “just tipping.”

Except for that one time back in grad school when he’d been living off instant noodles in a mug while the lone tomato in his fridge started growing fur and, judging by the vibe, was two weeks away from developing a political opinion.

His jacket slid lazily off his shoulders and landed on the back of the chair while he leaned an elbow on the table, glancing toward the chalkboard menu behind the bar. The handwriting was the same as ever — borderline illegible, like whoever wrote it was tipsy — but the bartender was new: a tattooed guy with faded blue hair Jayce had never seen before. Which, fair enough — he hadn’t exactly been around much himself.

He squinted, trying to make out even a single word on the smudged board, but all he managed was a couple of random letters and a poorly drawn beer mug. Not a menu — more like a damn side quest.

“Great,” he muttered. “You guys pick for me, I’m basically blind today.”

He nodded toward the bar.

“So… when’d they get a new bartender?”

“About four months ago, I think?” Cait frowned slightly, glancing toward the counter like she was cross-checking her memory.

“Yeah, sounds right,” Vi confirmed, standing up and automatically patting her pockets out of habit, even though she didn’t need a card. “I’ll go put the order in with the kid.”

“Last time, he made me something with passionfruit, and it wasn’t completely terrible, so there’s hope,” Cait snorted, eyes following Vi’s back. “Anyway.”

That was when Jayce realized she was staring at him. Pinpointed, precise — not just looking, but peeling him apart layer by layer, like carefully lifting the scabs off an old but not-quite-healed wound. He straightened up, braced his elbows on the table, and clasped his hands like he was about to be interrogated. Given Cait’s job, the whole setup felt… symbolic. She’d trained him well enough that his body just automatically kicked into compliance.

At least he wasn’t drooling yet.

“…Yeah?”

Jayce honestly had no idea where to start, but he was hoping she would — preferably with something harmless, like their honeymoon stories. He already knew every detail anyway, thanks to the photo dumps in their chat and Vi’s endless voice notes whenever she found Wi-Fi, but he’d gladly hear it all again if it meant delaying the inevitable conversation about himself.

“What do you mean ‘yeah,’ Jayce?” Cait raised a brow like she’d already asked the question. “It’s like someone took sandpaper to your shine — and your shirt’s wrinkled as hell. What’s going on?”

He exhaled and dropped his gaze to his hands, where one finger was methodically picking at a hangnail on his ring finger. Maybe he should’ve waited for Vi before unloading everything he’d been carrying around since the day of their wedding. Today’s circus program: death-defying act. Amateur acrobat, no safety net, no encore.

He glanced over his shoulder, searching for Vi — she was at the bar, leaning casually over the counter to grab their beers, laughing at something the new bartender (well, “new,” he’d been here nearly five months) had said. The guy had a hairstyle so wildly un-Drop-like it almost felt illegal. Vi clearly liked him, judging by the way she laughed, slapped his shoulder, and balanced three pints with the kind of practiced ease you only get from knowing every squeaky board and uneven tile in the place.

The thought of just how long it had been since he’d last been here flickered by again. But before it could dig in, a soft touch on his hand — the same one still tormenting the hangnail — pulled him back. Jayce flinched, instinctively looking down at the table.

“Jayce…” Cait’s voice was quieter than usual.

Everything was there in her eyes at once: concern, sympathy, and that sharp, unerring focus that seemed to strip things down to their core. Her thin hand gave the smallest squeeze, like she was steadying him on the edge of a cliff before a leap of faith.

“Something… happened,” he breathed out, barely keeping his voice from cracking. His thumb brushed slowly over her knuckles. “Actually, it was before the wedding, but I didn’t want to ruin anything, so—”

And right then, three pints landed on the table with the force of a torpedo. Foam slid lazily down the sides. Vi dropped a can of something neon-bright and suspiciously labeled on the table — the kind of drink that screamed, “this is probably gonna fuck you up, but you’ll have fun first.”

“What’s with the soft-focus heart-to-heart without me? Again?” she plopped back into her seat next to Cait, looping an arm around her waist. Cait, like clockwork, rested her hand over Vi’s thigh.

Jayce swallowed hard. The air in his chest felt heavier, like right before a jump. It’s already happened, he told himself. It’s already done. Just say it. Say it, and it’ll stop being a weight. You’re not the villain here. Sometimes shit just happens. Say it. Make it a fact.

“I moved out of Mel’s.” His voice cracked slightly on the last words, and he licked his dry, chapped lips. “We… broke up. For good.”

Jayce could swear the silence that followed was trying to strangle him. Or maybe it was just the sudden lump lodged in his throat. Or — more likely — it was their eyes on him: soft, sympathetic, focused. The kind of looks that made you want to crawl under the table. Or down a manhole. Or just… never be born.

He looked away, trying to focus on literally anything else. Like the bubbles on the surface of his beer — solid candidate for “object of intense study,” especially if you stared at them for five straight minutes without blinking, trying not to fall apart at the seams.

Back at the start of his voluntary hermit phase, he’d spend hours lurking on forums where people dumped their breakup stories. He read everything — from gut-wrenching tragedies to desperately funny disasters — just to feel like he wasn’t alone in this. Not that he’d never been dumped before. In high school, for example, a girl once told him he talked about physics and coding too much, then left him for a guy who could juggle oranges. Funny in hindsight. Not so much at the time.

But Mel was different. Deeper. Longer. So much messier. Because she wasn’t just someone it didn’t work out with — she was an anchor point in that version of his life where he’d spent years trying to be someone else.

It wasn’t until she left that he finally saw how much energy he’d burned trying to fit into a mold that was never his. All those compromises, all the “nah, it’s fine,” all the “of course that’s what I wanted too” — they’d been eating him alive way more than he’d realized.

The truth was, no one betrayed anyone. There was no scandal, no melodrama, no backdoor escapes. One day the foundation just cracked, and he realized he’d been building a house where there was never going to be room for him.

And now Cait and Vi were looking at him. No judgment, no anger — just warm, heavy understanding. And somehow that burned worse than any criticism ever could. These were the kinds of looks that made you want to apologize for everything: for disappearing, for staying quiet, for never becoming who you were supposed to be.

Cait moved before the panic in his chest could finish curling tight. She slid closer without a single unnecessary question and just pulled him into a hug — firm, grounding, like she was giving him his outline back. The same way he used to do for her when she was little: careful but steady, brushing away tears with the edge of his hand.

Her warm palm settled on the back of his head, rocking lightly in a quiet, soothing rhythm. Jayce let himself close his eyes for just a second. Just to breathe. To sink into this strange, still moment — the warmth of her narrow shoulder, the familiar scent of her perfume, the almost-forgotten sense of someone simply being there, no strings attached.

“I’m sorry, Jayce,” she whispered.

And he didn’t know what exactly she was sorry for — the breakup, the pain, or the fact that he’d kept silent for so long, refusing to let himself talk or cry. And, strangely enough, it didn’t matter.

The words he’d been holding back for weeks turned out heavier than he’d expected. All those nights in an empty apartment where even the fridge hummed in quiet judgment. Every attempt to convince himself this was better, that he was fine, that everything was “under control.” Turns out, the second you say it out loud — it all comes crashing down.

When the wave of pain finally loosened its grip, he told them everything. Honestly, it didn’t take much time — they already knew. They’d seen how messy things had been with Mel, no matter how carefully they tried to hide it. Retelling it now was more like summarizing the finale of a TV show that had been canceled years ago but you still somehow think about in the shower. A finale everyone saw coming, but nobody wanted to talk about.

And it got lighter. Not immediately, but with every word it felt like the weight crumbled into pebbles, scattering across the creaky bar floor. The air felt a little less heavy. His shoulders, a little less rigid. And when they started joking — casually, effortlessly, like it was nothing — it was the best Jayce had felt in months. Like someone was gently prying his fingers off his own throat.

“If you don’t mind, I’d actually love to hear about your honeymoon,” he finally exhaled, setting down his nearly empty glass. When he’d finished it, he couldn’t even tell.

“Please. Like there’s anything you don’t know already,” Vi snorted, rolling her eyes so hard it probably hurt. “You literally know what we ate every single day. You even know what was on the goddamn breakfast buffet. God, Jayce… I miss the breakfast buffet so much…”

With that, she groaned and buried her forehead into Cait’s shoulder.

“This morning we just stood in the kitchen for, like, three full minutes, completely lost on where food is supposed to come from,” Caitlyn laughed softly, ruffling Vi’s messy red hair. “We’re permanently spoiled now.”

“Facts. But I am not ready to start making pancakes every morning, and I have no idea how the fuck we’re supposed to go back to scrambled eggs,” Vi whined again, leaning back in her chair with full tragic-theater energy. Then she stood, stretching lazily before grabbing their empty glasses and heading for the bar.

Somewhere mid-step, her gaze snagged on something near the door.

“Oh. Speak of the devil,” she muttered casually, lifting one of the empty glasses in a lazy half-wave toward the entrance.

“Who?” Jayce turned automatically, following her line of sight.

But before he even spotted the silhouette, he heard it — the familiar, rhythmic, slightly dragging tap of a cane against the wooden floor.

Chapter Text

For the past month, Jayce’s mornings had all looked about the same: ten ignored alarms, which he kept setting out of sheer habit — or maybe just for the sport of it.

He stubbornly pretended that one day he’d get up by at least the third, but in reality he only woke when his brain, tired of the sabotage, yanked him out of sleep on an emergency protocol: attention, incoming signal — light in the eye, time to drag yourself into another day.

From under the blackout curtains seeped a sour, watered-down dawn, barely touching the gray ceiling. His brain chemistry struggled to wake up alongside his body: the hormones had apparently quit long ago, leaving the night shift to some drowsy intern. Jayce rolled from side to side, pretending to look for a more comfortable position, when in reality he was just bargaining with reality.

And then he finally pried open his gummed-up eyelids, feeling his lashes peel apart with a traitorous crackle. The phone on the nightstand landed in his hand on the third try — which already felt like a small victory. The screen burned his eyes, but he looked anyway: ten a.m. Before the fourth alarm. He hadn’t heard the first three, but the fact remained — he’d woken up earlier than usual.

“Making progress, Jayce…” he mumbles to himself, tongue still not fully under command.

His brain rejoices. Somewhere deep inside his skull, an imaginary parade kicks off with fanfares, banners screaming You did it!, and the ceremonial handing over of a gold medal engraved with: Not entirely hopeless. Serotonin—if any of it’s left—offers a shy round of applause.

Hauling himself out of bed turned into a full-on quest, but his bladder wasn’t open to negotiations. He had to surrender. So he got up, wincing crookedly, lower back aching. God only knows what kind of position he’d spent the whole night twisted into.

Jayce had long since realized coffee didn’t actually wake him up. Caffeine was a myth propping up half of modern capitalism and the entire “successful morning” industry. As if you could just wake up, drink some “rise and grind” bullshit out of a mug, and go conquer the world.

Basically, you’re just pouring down over-roasted beans with a hint of despair, trying to stomach the fact that you’ve been dragged back into the endless cycle of having to breathe.

Usually with a nice bonus: a faint tremor and a rabbit-in-shock heartbeat. But hang in there, champ—you paid for that privilege. And you even grabbed a second cup because it was “discount today only,” like your anxiety needed a special offer on extra stimulation.

But Jayce never makes it to the coffee machine.

He just stands there in the middle of the living room like some glitching human simulacrum, body technically awake while his brain is still loading three tabs: “Who am I?”, “What’s the point?”, and a third one that never loads. In the background: the dial-up modem hum of 1998.

When his brain finally catches up with his body, Jayce glances around the room. On the surface, it’s all the same as yesterday—the same boxes, the same half-unpacked chaos of a “new life” he’d been shoved into like a scene from 300. He’s still plummeting into the abyss, just already tired of the freefall.

And yet everything grates. He feels like a clown who accidentally showed up at a funeral—balloons, face paint, stupid smile—pinning a “congratulations” banner onto a cardboard headstone.

Every box is a spit in the face, a reminder that he moved out of the past but forgot to throw the past itself away. Yesterday’s t-shirt is on the floor, a sock has gone AWOL under the couch, and somewhere in between lie the remains of that Instagram-motivational-video version of himself.

The previous evening slowly replayed in his head: he’d come home way past midnight. The girls had left earlier—work waits for no one, least of all your body’s refusal to function before eight a.m. Especially for Vi, who got pissed off just hearing words like “morning briefing” or “come in early.”

And yeah.

Yesterday Viktor had been there.

He really had.

Jayce buried his face in his hands, as if that could muffle the dull, whining sound pushing out of his chest the second he remembered how he stared — no, let’s be honest, he outright stared. Like he’d just seen a ghost. Or a statue carved out of sleep paralysis and white marble, slowly making its way toward their table.

Viktor walked slowly. Just as sharp as ever, painfully beautiful for some reason, his chestnut hair a little ruffled—the kind of softness Jayce still felt in phantom echoes against his palms. All of him dressed in gray, like a storm sky about to throw lightning at him in the form of some razor-edged remark.

Jayce felt like one of those lonely trees in the middle of an open field — already rotted out from the inside long before the storm, but still standing. A lightning rod, just waiting to be punished for not producing enough oxygen.

Not a single detail on Viktor’s face shifted when he saw him — except maybe the faint lift of a brow, like a quiet, almost polite question: “What’s wrong with you?” Or maybe he just didn’t understand why Jayce looked… like this.

And right then Jayce realized he wasn’t ready. Not for that face, not for that voice, not — goddamn it — for that cane.

His lungs went straight into flight mode the second Viktor sat down next to him — close enough that his knee brushed Jayce’s. Jayce didn’t move. Didn’t even breathe. His heart was hammering out a marching beat—run, run, run—but his body stayed politely frozen in place.

“Hey. Ran as fast as I could,” Viktor exhaled, like he really had walked quicker than usual. He leaned his cane against the edge of the table, nodded at everyone at once. “Still not much of a marathoner.”

Vi snorted. Actually—no, that was definitely a squeal.

…Did he just make a joke?

“You both showed up? Holy shit.” Vi grinned, looking from one to the other. “Okay, tomorrow’s the apocalypse. Or taxes are going up tenfold.”

“I’ll take the apocalypse,” Caitlyn smirked, leaning in conspiratorially toward Viktor as she slid him that same bright can with the radioactive label. “Sorry, it’s already a bit warm. Last one they had, so we didn’t wait.”

“Thanks.” Long fingers closed around the sweating can, and Jayce couldn’t not look at those hands. Get a grip.

And why the hell hadn’t he asked right away who that thing was for? It was obvious: Vi wouldn’t touch a can like that—she had principles. Caitlyn preferred cocktails, even the ones the bartender slapped together in a “eh, close enough” kind of way because he was used to pouring beer, not eyeballing Pornstar Martini ratios. But a neon can with a toxic label?

Of course it wasn’t for them.

But Jayce was too busy in that moment to think. Too busy keeping his own hands from shaking. Too busy trying not to choke on emotions. Too busy not to collapse under the table and cry like a sixth grader. He wasn’t analyzing the situation—he was in survival mode. And in that mode, the subtler social cues just went straight in the trash.

Normally he caught those things first. Normally, he knew in advance who was bringing what to whom, who was paired with who, what was going on behind someone’s eyes. Years of learning to weigh other people’s moods, to nail it from a single glance, a pause in a sentence, the way someone held their glass. He was the one who filled silences, smoothed the edges, guessed the want before it was ever spoken.

That had always been his gift. His quiet, never-failing soft skill.

Now—nothing. Like he’d been cut out of his own equation.

A student forgetting the formula he himself once came up with. All his focus narrowed down to keeping his palms dry. Not staring again. Not brushing against Viktor by accident—or worse, on purpose.

It pissed him off. The polished, easy, put-together version of himself had cracked wide open, and everything that made him that Jayce had drained out through the gap. What was left was just a frayed, twitchy nerd. Did Viktor notice? Dumb question. He was sitting in the front row of this long, fucking unbearable performance—whether he wanted to or not.

And the headliner wasn’t some stripper popping out of a cardboard cake. It was Jayce, fucking Talis. With his embarrassingly shaky hands, ragged cuticles, and hollow stare. Especially considering how their last encounter had ended—the phantom knife was still lodged between his ribs, the blade stamped with the owner’s name in bold letters. First one’s a “V.” Want to keep guessing, or do you take the prize?

“Guess I need a separate fridge in the back just for craft,” Viktor hooked his keyring under the tab and the can snapped open with a hiss. “As usual—soon as I pick something for myself, suddenly everyone else wants it too.”

“Oh, I know who’s to blame. Ever since Vander put Thomas behind the bar, we’ve been getting way more hipsters and students collecting these cans. Or whatever the hell it is they do with them. Not sure I wanna know.” Vi shrugged.

In an instant, Jayce stops catching the thread. Stops understanding the words. Stops being a person. He’s a brick.

“Thomas?” Jayce echoed dumbly, a beat off from the flow of conversation, like it wasn’t obvious whose name had just been dropped.

“The bartender.” Caitlyn took a sip from her glass, holding it carefully by the stem. After all these years she was used to Jayce’s habit of zoning out at the most random possible moments.

Viktor didn’t seem to notice Jayce at all. As if the chair beside him was empty, not occupied by the pathetic shadow of a person—the one he’d somehow managed to dirty his mouth on.

“They don’t come for the cans. Tom just looks like he should be working in some shiny new pub for people who live on Twitter and eat sous-vide, not a century-old dive. The cans are just— ” Viktor lifted his own a little, “ — eh… a questionable aesthetic garnish. But if you want to cash in on it, stock up and triple the price.”

“I’m just waiting for the day you admit you actually like that ugly-ass design,” Vi snorted, nodding at the can. “You’ve been secretly hoarding them in the back room, top shelf. Mommy’s little nihilist.”

“I don’t like it. It’s absolutely dreadful.” Viktor gave a short laugh, tilting the can to study it again from different angles. “But sometimes what’s inside matters more. And for the record, it’s a lot less disappointing than regular beer. Doesn’t tear your head off after a few sips.”

Jayce twitched. Wait. Was that… a metaphor? Did he mean that? What’s the probability this was a deliberate jab? Or a reference? Or just—fuck—pure coincidence?

Jayce forced himself to blink. Took a sip of beer.

You’re just a fucking anxious idiot, Talis. Take a deep breath, let it go. Maybe he really was just talking about the drink. Wild concept, huh? Sometimes people actually mean exactly what they say.

He shot Viktor a sideways glance. Viktor was calmly drinking, studying the label like he’d never seen it before. Not a twitch on his face to hint at some deeper meaning. No tell.

Of course not.

“I’ll never forget that one can that turned your tongue blue…” Caitlyn giggled, covering her mouth like she was about to add something but thought better of it.

“Like you just got face-fucked by a Smurf?” Vi asked with innocent bluntness. Caitlyn burst out laughing, burying her face in her hand.

“God…” Viktor’s mouth tugged into a smile, head shaking slightly. “And it tasted about the same, too.”

“I’m not even gonna ask how you know that, Vik.”

They sat like that for a couple of hours. The girls, warmed up by beer and the safety of familiar company, finally moved on to retelling their honeymoon. Mostly for Viktor’s benefit.

They started, of course, with the flight check-in: Caitlyn recalled pulling a power bank out of her carry-on, while Vi was choking on laughter, cutting in with how the security staff could’ve mistaken it for a vibrator and how that would’ve been hilarious.

“Picture it — she pulls out a charger, and they’re like, ‘Nope, that’s definitely something else.’”

Caitlyn rolled her eyes, but not without affection, and Jayce smirked into his glass. Their jokes, the half-tangled storytelling, the interruptions, the back-and-forth over what day that tour actually happened, and the heated debate about whether the guide was gay or just well-dressed — all of it made a kind of background noise that thinned out his own anxiety, at least a little.

The whole time, Jayce wasn’t exactly chatty. More like deliberately sparing with his words. His brain was running in threat-mode, filtering out every phrase that might be careless — God forbid Viktor had something to say back to it.

He figured that was Viktor’s hobby. His divine mission — breaking people down. And Jayce? A buffet of unresolved trauma, all-you-can-eat.

Tonight, though, Talis had been banking on a quiet evening of self-pity — wallowing in his own swamp, soaking in it, going soggy in his own juice with zero consequences.

An assistant who could drown him according to the laws of physics, with mathematical precision, did not fit into that plan at all.

When Vi yelled for Thomas to “make it a repeat” for the umpteenth time, Jayce decided it was as good a cue as any to step out for a smoke. On the way he scooped up their third round from the bar. The bartender, looking like a man who absolutely knew what he was doing, produced yet another can from under the counter, same retina-searing design — this time with cats in space, apparently.

He set it down next to the beers for Vi and for Jayce, while Jayce was still remembering Caitlyn’s words — the last one was supposed to have been in the fridge.

Caitlyn politely turned down another round — said a couple of cocktails were more than enough before a workday. As soon as he set everything down on the table, gave the girls a quick nod, tucked a cigarette behind his ear, he stepped outside without waiting for replies.

Jayce loved late summer. For all his background, he never handled the heat well — something that always cracked his mom up, since she could spend hours in the garden under brutal sun without even flinching. That woman was absurdly resilient.

The lighter clicked the way it always did in his hand, and the first drag — the sweetest one — rolled soft and bitter across his tongue.

“How are you?”

Caitlyn had slipped out beside him while he was half-listening to some guy yelling at a cab driver a block away.

“While I’m listening to you two? It gets easier,” he said, drawing in smoke again and letting his eyes drift shut. “Sorry I didn’t say anything sooner. I don’t think I even fully understood myself what happened.”

Caitlyn quietly looped her arm through his, resting her head against his shoulder. The silence wrapped around them — thin and sticky, like the skin on boiled milk. Strange, but unexpectedly comforting.

Jayce let out a rough, uneven breath, smoke spilling past his lips, and pulled her into a clumsy half-hug. They weren’t exactly the kind to be tender with each other often — but right now, this was one of those moments. And he was grateful for it, for that shared weakness, for being able to fall apart right in front of her without knowing if he’d ever be able to piece himself back together again.

“I thought I could hold it all together, Cait,” another shaky exhale broke across his mouth, smoke trembling in the air. “That… I’d be enough. I really tried.”

Her grip on his arm tightened, steady, grounding — like she was saying, I’ve got you.

“And only when we finally talked,” he shook his head, “I realized we never even had a chance. Maybe somewhere in another reality, sure, but in this one…”

“I know, Jayce.” Caitlyn let go of his arm, both hands lifting gently to his cheeks, forcing him to turn, to meet her eyes. God, that was hard. “Listen to me — this isn’t your fault. Sometimes it just… happens. When you don’t fit. When you’re just different. When you’re looking for different things and can’t even agree on which way to turn your heads.”

He didn’t answer. The cigarette burned quietly between his fingers, and it sounded like he almost sobbed. He couldn’t meet her gaze — but he couldn’t look away either.

“You’re not the sum of what she turned down, Jayce.” Caitlyn’s voice softened, almost a whisper. “You’re still here. You haven’t spun out of orbit, you’re still on your feet and, for God’s sake, you’re breathing. Give yourself time.”

Her thumb brushed softly beneath the corner of his eye, leaving behind a damp trace.

“Come by our place if you ever want to talk. Or just… come by. We missed you.”

What happened after that? Jayce ended his nosedive into the abyss on his sixth beer, when his peripheral vision finally toppled into the center — blurred in that pleasantly sloppy way, not just at the edges anymore but across the whole fucking emotional surface. His thoughts were smudged over with a warm, sticky haze that made it hard not just to focus but even to sneak glances at the guy sitting next to him.

Although, truth be told, he probably wasn’t sneaking at all. Sometimes Jayce caught himself just staring — way too long. Maybe you could at least take the knife back, Viktor? Or if you’ve already started — finish the job. Twist it. End it.

But Viktor, of course, wasn’t looking. Not once. He just drank his weird beer, dropped clever observations, tossed out sarcastic comments that had Vi laughing out loud. He was fine. Jayce, on the other hand, felt something clawing around inside him — hungry, pathetic.

When it came time to leave, the girls hugged Jayce one by one—tight, with that kind of love you usually give a pain-in-the-ass relative. The one who always shows up with baggage, with a pile of unsaid “sorry”s, and a chronic need for saving. But the kind you could never actually turn away from, no matter how much you sighed about it. He was yours, after all.

Vi reminded him they had the console at home, and that Jayce could drop by anytime to get humiliated—if he wanted to seal all his life’s failures with a couple of crushing losses in Mario Kart. As if the ones he already had weren’t enough, and what he really needed was a final slap in the face in the form of losing to her on a pixelated racetrack.

At what exact point Viktor left, Jayce couldn’t remember. His memory refused to log the details, wiped everything clean to static—but one image stuck: the cane, hooked easily into his hand, the slow stride toward the bar—and Thomas.

Not-so-new-anymore-bartender with the tattoo sleeve, the one Viktor was talking to far too… sweetly. Almost tender. And the way Thomas looked back at him—like someone had just promised him a promotion with foreplay. Good tips and a drawn-out moan.

And then—there it was. Jayce saw Viktor’s fingers “accidentally” brush against Thomas’s at the bar. Half-lidded amber eyes sliding lazily over the man’s face. The faintest smile on those thin lips—barely there, but landing like both a sin and a slap.

Jayce remembered the way it twisted him up. Sharp, low in his gut—hurt, dull fury, humiliation. His jaw locked as he yanked out his phone and started stabbing at the screen, fumbling for the rideshare app, missing the icon again and again, only winding himself tighter in his own helplessness.

He never figured out what broke him more: Viktor’s look of deliberate indifference when he’d first shown up, or the way he never once glanced back as he walked out.

By the time his mind finished dragging him across last night’s wreckage, Jayce had managed to make it to the coffee and keep tearing open boxes. They felt endless. He felt like fucking Sisyphus, shoving that rock up the hill—except it wasn’t a boulder, it was cardboard, and it wasn’t a hill, it was his life. The rock had already rolled back down, and here he was, starting over.

But today felt different. Yes, mostly he was just sick to his stomach—physically, down to the bone. But anger was creeping in too, on quiet feet—under his skin, up his throat, into his ribs. Hooking inside him, like it was about to yank his insides out.

And Jayce never knew how to handle anger. Not gracefully, not like an adult. Which meant there was only one option left—sublimate it. Throw it into action.

Before, he would’ve gone running. Until the stitch in his side burned, until breathing hurt, until his pulse drowned out thought. Or to the gym, like every time he and Mel fought over some fresh comment from her mother—sharp, polished barbs delivered with that air of cultivated superiority, because in her eyes he was never good enough for her daughter, and Mel never once tried to say otherwise.

Or he’d jerk off in the shower, rough enough to hurt, just to shift the pain from his head into his body—somewhere easier to bargain with. But this time, he just started ripping tape off the boxes—the yellow kind, the color of a stale lemon.

Or maybe like that tape cops use to cordon off a crime scene. He tore it the way you rip a bandage off a wound—fast, before you can think twice, before the pity for yourself can crawl back in.

Reflection had always come too easily to him. Since he was a kid, Jayce had been too good at digging inside himself, too quick to pinpoint what hurt and why. So figuring out what was pissing him off right now took all of two minutes.

The breakup with Mel had broken his heart. That was painful, humiliating, yes—but explainable. Speakable. Rational.

Viktor, though — he’d done worse.

He turned Jayce inside out and left him with nothing. No answers. Just regret over a hundred tiny choices, and some not-so-tiny ones—all dragged out of him in a handful of offhand lines, with that half-squint and that goddamn eyebrow. And then, instead of burying it cleanly — with a shovel and a proper funeral — he gave Jayce the best blowjob of his life and blacklisted him.

What the fuck was that “You’re even worse” supposed to mean?

The conclusion was simple enough: sooner or later, they were going to have to talk. Properly. No sidelong glances, no sarcasm thick enough to choke on — like it was built to keep them from ever touching the real thing. Just talk. Preferably not in a bathroom, and at least somewhere in the neighborhood of sober.

Though if he was being honest, deep down he still wanted to make the same mistake again. Not because it was right — because the body doesn’t give a damn about morals. The body has no concept of “emotional context.” It only remembers what it felt like: sharp, blinding, nerves lit up end to end. It had gotten a tasting menu of Michelin-star dishes—and now it wanted dessert. Or at least to lick the plates clean.

Viktor had, in every way possible, made it clear they had nothing left to talk about. That everything had already been said—or, more accurately, left unsaid in the grand tradition of emotional impotence—and he wasn’t about to revisit it. Only life hadn’t rolled credits under Hans Zimmer’s soundtrack that night.

They were still stuck in the same trap of shared company: sitting at the same tables, crossing paths in the same chats, hearing each other’s names in other people’s retellings.

He took a pause — a hot shower, to rinse off the morning, the sticky anxiety, to claw back at least the illusion of control over his body. Afterward, he finally decided to finish what he’d been putting off. The boxes. Those fucking stratigraphic layers of his old life.

And there it was, right in the middle of the room, like it had been waiting for him on purpose. The last one.

The tape was different — faded, almost like rotting banana peel, edges frayed and peeling. And on it, Academy stickers, mangled by time and too many bad moves. It looked like it had long since given up on patience, and was now just screaming: “Look at me, you son of a bitch!”

Jayce rolled up his sleeves, crouched beside the box, and froze for a second, staring at the logo that somehow made his chest tighten. Even the silence of the living room couldn’t quite swallow the weight of his sigh — it slipped out uneven, almost a groan.

The box was lighter than it looked — inside, between layers of papers sloppily stapled together, lay yet another sin of his own pride.

Old blueprints, letters with red-penned edits, printouts of reviewer comments, formulas underlined so hard the ink bled through, numbers scrawled in the margins — all that remained of the life where Jayce had once believed he’d actually finish his doctorate. That he could just hold out a little longer — through the Academy, through the back-room politics, through the professors who could barely lift a pointer anymore but still clung to their power.

At some point, he decided he could make it without the degree. That he could leapfrog past all those suffocating conferences, the formal titles, the endless battle for citations in papers read by maybe one and a half colleagues. What he needed was to do, not sit at roundtables arguing over methodology.

Because Jayce had a hot head, restless hands, and zero patience for bureaucracy. He needed to act. No long preludes. Just build something useful, justify the oxygen he was burning into carbon dioxide. He wasn’t some careerist — he was an idealist with a diploma. Young, dumb, and drunk on his own ideas — giddy, fanatical, and, as it turned out, monetizable.

And yeah — the ideas worked. They hit the target. Just not the right one.

His startup, born out of the desire to help the people who actually needed it, had very quickly turned into something closer to a scientific McDonald’s. The water purification stations he’d spent his entire master’s working on did work: compact, easy to maintain, they could turn even the filthiest sludge into drinkable water within a day.

All by the book, all by science—until one particularly forward-thinking investor announced it sounded a little too… poor. Not inspiring enough. Too little aesthetics, packaging design lacking. And worst of all — it wasn’t the kind of thing you could sell to people who’d never once had rust in their tap water.

Now he was successful, rich, polished. And, of course, a hostage. Of his own ideas and his own naïve, crunchy optimism. He hadn’t sold out all at once — it was slower, a gradual erosion — but he’d sold out all the same.

The idea, born out of the cries of the slums, now delivered on premium subscription to corporate high-rises. Branded service. Custom filters to match the interior design—so the jacuzzi water wouldn’t irritate sensitive skin on the penthouse floor.

Everything was for sale: you, me. Especially me. Slap a copyright symbol on it.

And so all his dreams of something better ended up here—stuffed into a dusty cardboard box.

Jayce skimmed through the printouts of his own writing — each page of revisions signed off by him personally. Some would call it vanity, and maybe they’d be a little right. But Jayce knew too well how academic verification worked — and how fast people were willing to snatch what wasn’t theirs.

Now it all read like letters to himself — from someone else, in another life. From a possible future that had been left behind at a fork in probability.

You are the result of the so-called Big Bang, which, strictly speaking, wasn’t even a bang. Just a convenient metaphor that stuck in pop culture because scientists got tired of explaining inflation theory to schoolkids.

You are stardust that, by some ridiculous accident, managed to take shape, learn how to breathe, suffer, reproduce — and argue on the internet.

The winner of an evolutionary race that started in a puddle of proteins and finished with two not-so-attractive but very determined primates who decided to screw in the nearest cave a few million years back.

Think about it: your DNA survived through eras, mutations, extinctions—just so one day you could believe that lactose intolerance is a conspiracy, a PhD is “too much work,” and that your so-called ethics aren’t for sale… right up until someone throws some spotlights on them and offers you a contract.

You are Jayce Talis. A dead-end branch of evolution with a diploma rolled up as a mousepad. Humanity spent millions of years getting to you, only for you to launch a startup and sell your conscience for a slice of stock options.

Now do you get it, Jayce? The thought whispered in his head. And the voice was painfully familiar — carrying that Eastern European lilt, dragging its vowels.

. . .

Youth always swings wide. From the sacred belief in magic—when you’re five and waving a stick like it’s a wand—to the reckless decisions you make at twenty-five. Too bad there isn’t some indicator light that says “frontal lobe fully developed.” That’d be useful. Bulb flicks on—you’re finally cleared to make choices that won’t haunt you as prime cringe material when you’re barely past thirty.

Jayce finally cleared out the boxes and, somewhere along the way, mapped out his next steps in his head. A million tiny moves. Like a sapper’s dance through a minefield—careful, methodical, so you don’t bury yourself up to the neck too early. Exhausting. But the fact that he hadn’t hung himself in the living room during that month spent putting down roots in the couch already said something about his stubborn will to live.

Maybe he was rebelling again. Maybe he just wanted to prove—to himself, to someone, to anyone—that he wasn’t completely scrap yet. Or maybe he was simply afraid of hitting absolute rock bottom. Because down there, the only thing waiting would be a cleanup crew.

He went back to the office the very next week. Once upon a time, Jayce had actually been proud of that place—the obscenely overpriced rent in some trendy neighborhood where even a sad, wilted sandwich at lunch cost more than a family of three’s daily budget on the outskirts. Polished windows, glossy façades, disgusting coffee, and the constant illusion that you were standing with one foot in the future.

And they had a logo too—professionally made, technically speaking. Some no-name freelancer cranked it out for peanuts, even though they could’ve paid ten times more. They still went with this one: minimalistic, sterile, forgettable. The kind of design that sold well precisely because it had zero personality.

Not scaring off investors. Easier to slot into any pitch deck.

Hard to say what exactly the grinning employees thought when they saw him after a month gone AWOL. But gossip spreads faster than files in the shared folder. Especially when even the security guard at the checkpoint hesitated to let him in, mumbling, “Sorry, didn’t recognize you.”

Once upon a time, Jayce would’ve died of shame. Straightened his shoulders, given some inspiring speech, proved he had everything under control. And he sure as hell wouldn’t have shown up in his own damn office half-bearded and without a button-up. But now—now he just walked past and let them whisper. Gave himself permission to drag his balls out of the drawer and be whoever the hell he was.

Not everyone needs to be socially acceptable.

He gave himself permission to stumble—and fell headfirst into a bottomless pit he wouldn’t be crawling out of anytime soon. But isolation had its perks: you stop caring. Dehydrated by the lack of human contact, your priorities shift. It’s not about looking presentable anymore. It’s about remembering the basics.

Like, shower occasionally. Dig up your therapist’s number. Pray he hasn’t moved out of town.

If you’re going to build—first you have to demolish. If you’re going to destroy—start with the foundation that’s already crumbling. He had no clear plan, no strategy, no bullet points in a notebook. Just this wild, desperate urge to pour gasoline over everything and light a match. Because none of this—none of it—was what he wanted.

The rest of the week slipped by fast. Too fast. Time blurs when you’re neck-deep in problems only you can untangle. His assistants had picked the perfect time for vacation, like they’d smelled the existential crisis coming.

So Jayce worked. With the same rabid fanaticism he once put into sketching schematics for his project. In five days, he chewed through two branded pens, without even bothering to come up with a poetic metaphor for how symbolic that was. He drafted plans, replayed the list of people who’d taken turns gutting his ideals, and kept glancing at the door—like he half-expected Mel to walk in.

At some point, she would anyway. He could only hope that by then they’d both have figured out how to actually talk. No sidelong looks, no poisonous quips, no old wounds poking through every seam.

By the end of the second week, he decided to break the radio silence in the group chat: he needed to let some air out—and probably tell the girls not just about the breakup with Mel. They wouldn’t be thrilled by that twist, though Vi would most likely just choke on laughter.

What he needed was advice. Rational, simple, human. The kind you don’t get because you’re paying by the hour to a therapist, but because someone’s known you long enough to see how you’re coming apart under the weight of every new secret.

Jayce
What about Saturday?

Vi
uh?

Caitlyn
Jayce, did you mean to send this to the wrong chat?

Jayce
You mean it was a one-time thing?

Caitlyn
Actually, we were planning to just stay in this weekend.

The chat kept flickering between both of them typing and sudden silence. Jayce figured they were probably sitting next to each other, discussing it out loud. He gave them time.

Caitlyn
Vi doesn’t want to rewatch Fleabag, so we could drop by the Drop.

Vi
what do you mean I don’t?? I do! but maybe… after?

Jayce
I could swing by your place, we can head out together?

Caitlyn
Fine, but for the love of God, not before seven.

Jayce
Uh… will anyone else be there? Like Powder and Ekko?

Vi
or Viktor? 😏

The name, six lowercase letters, landed in his chest like a dull knock against wood. He started typing, but every time his finger hovered over “send,” he’d erase it and start over.

Jayce
I don’t know

Jayce
Maybe

Jayce
If he wants to

Jayce
I hope so. Because I can’t stand this silence anymore, pretending nothing happened. And I want to know what he meant right after I came in his mouth and right before he walked out the door.

Five seconds. Ten. Fifteen.

Jayce
Okay, I’ll be there at seven :)

Needless to say, Jayce showed up before seven—then spent another half hour circling around their place, pretending to look for parking while really just trying to steady the tremor in his hands. So that when he finally went upstairs, he’d be breathing evenly. So he wouldn’t blurt out another awkward confession with a flushed face and blotches creeping up his neck. So Caitlyn wouldn’t have to look at him with more judgment than he’d already imagined.

Which is why, right on the dot, he was standing at their door, wiping his sweaty palms every ten seconds and mentally filtering his vocabulary down to one word: hi.

Caitlyn opened the door—wearing an old oversized T-shirt that Jayce was pretty sure used to belong to Vi, judging by the faded logo and the unpronounceable name of some ancient rock band across the front. On her feet were fluffy cat slippers, one of which had clearly survived the washing machine worse than the other.

“For someone who spent his entire life on the verge of being late to his own funeral, you’re suspiciously punctual,” she remarked with a soft snort, stepping aside to let him in.

“Hello to you too,” he muttered as he walked past. “Just got free a bit earlier.”

Just nervous, like a teenager before confession. Except this one comes with beer, and my priests are you two.

Jayce’s gaze immediately landed on Vi, hunched over in the middle of the living room. She was sitting cross-legged on the floor, surrounded by the scattered parts of some half-assembled furniture, frowning as she studied the instruction manual like it was a bomb defusal guide.

“No sweaty hugs today, sorry,” she said without looking up. “We’re in the middle of an emergency interior-rescue operation. Tried dragging the old bookshelf from one room to another until Caitlyn stopped scowling.”

“And that’s what, then?” Jayce tilted his chin toward the obviously new piece of furniture.

“That’s the fucking new bookshelf,” Vi muttered. “Because she refused to throw out the old one.”

Somewhere behind them Caitlyn let out a very deliberate little huff.

“It’s older than you are,” she pointed out calmly. “And why throw it away when it can hold your arcade trophies and that broken guitar from the three-day teenage band you were in?”

“Fair,” Vi shrugged, going back to the screws, now sorting them into neat piles with almost pedantic focus.

Jayce dropped onto the couch, still wiping his palms against his jeans. How the hell do you even start a conversation like this? Every inch of his body was broadcasting pure discomfort, something in the range of ‘hey, mind if I just yeet myself out the window instead?’ But he stayed silent, stomach tightening into another knot as he blankly watched Vi organize screws into little clusters.

What was he even so afraid of? It happened, so what. Not the first, not the last scandal in their tangled mess of lives; nobody was going to write him off over it. Even if he told them months later—so what? Sexual misadventures between the bride’s friends were practically a cliché. Almost as traditional as the wedding cake. The only thing more canonical would be the Second Coming—for those still convinced kneeling every Sunday in church saves you from sin, instead of making it more appealing.

Kneeling.

Fucking hell.

He pressed his lips together, drew a deep breath, and exhaled through his nose.

“Jayce, are you okay?” Caitlyn’s voice cut in. “You look—”

“Viktor blew me at your wedding,” he blurted, all in one breath. Quieter than he meant to, but still far too clear.

The silence that followed was so sharp he could practically hear their neurons tripping over themselves, scrambling to reroute, collapsing entire logical branches, anything to process what the fuck he’d just said.

Jayce felt a bead of sweat crawl down between his shoulder blades, and suddenly the room turned suffocating. Somewhere between the dull clang of a dropped screwdriver and the burst of hysterical laughter from Vi, he remembered: the human body actually does require oxygen. Preferably on a regular basis. Especially if you don’t want your mother’s question, “What were his last words?” answered honestly with: “Viktor blew me at your wedding.”

Looking Caitlyn in the eye was nearly impossible, but adrenaline had already taken over, running him like a dog on a treadmill. He turned, searching for her gaze—only to catch her retreating back as she disappeared into the next room.

Was that too much? Did he just go way over the line?

Jayce jerked, half-standing.

“Cait, listen, I—”

But she was already coming back. Calm. Almost tired. With the face of someone who knew exactly what they were doing. And in her hands was… oh god. No.

“I told you,” Vi wheezed through her laughter, wiping tears and clutching her stomach. “I! TOLD! YOU! Jesus, cupcake, I’m gonna fucking die.”

Caitlyn, silent as ever, walked over to her wife and handed her a bill. Jayce stared, slack-jawed, while his brain scrambled to catch up, tripping over the sheer absurdity of the moment.

“What…” He glanced between them. “You two made a bet?”

“They sent us the wedding photos. Just the other day,” Cait shrugged, settling next to him like nothing had happened. “And I was hoping it was just my imagination.”

“Wedding photos? Imagined what? Christ, could one of you please explain what this bet even was and why it existed in the first place?!” His voice was edging into full hysteria, and he was about ready to yank a fistful of hair out in exchange for clarity.

“Maybe try breathing while I pull up evidence on you,” Cait said coolly, already scrolling through her gallery.

On you?

The screen landed practically in his face. His heart dropped to his heels, then ricocheted to his stomach, did a backflip, and got stuck somewhere between his ribs, unsure which side to commit to.

“Fuck.”

Vi burst out laughing all over again, clearly having abandoned her lesbian IKEA project, while Jayce desperately tried to remember the address of the nearest church. Because otherwise there was no way to explain how his life had turned into a sitcom apparently written by a third-grader on recess.

Clearly he’d been sinning so enthusiastically that God, tired of waiting for his confession, had decided to teach him a lesson: this is what happens when you don’t call your mother enough and cheap out on donations.

And the photo? God, the photo was beautiful—too beautiful. Dead center: Cait and Vi at the altar, staring at each other with such unbearable, molten tenderness it looked like it might spill through the pixels at any second. Ready to tumble into a kiss. Soft bokeh, petals drifting in the air—like a stock image, only one that didn’t even have the decency to look like a boomer Facebook postcard.

But there was one catch.

God, please don’t let this be in the photos.

He and Viktor, standing right across from each other, weren’t blurred into the background, weren’t lost in the haze of the moment. No—razor-sharp, in focus, like the camera had dragged them into the spotlight on purpose. And the way they looked at each other—like the ceremony wasn’t even happening. Like the vows, the music, the guests were all just background noise.

Like it was their wedding. An accidental one, ordained not by choice but because the universe decided, yeah, that’s how this goes. No vows, no rings—just that brutal density of feeling that didn’t need words.

Jayce—blushing down to his throat, grinning stupid and bright.

Viktor—stunned, but holding his gaze anyway.

“Holy fuck.”

“Yeah, I lost a couple pints to Vi,” Cait said with a shrug, tucking her phone away. “We pulled that one from the shared album, by the way. In case you were wondering.”

Jayce groaned, sinking back against the cushions and dragging his hands down his face.

“That photo was supposed to be framed. On our dresser. A reminder of the best day of our lives. And now every time we see it we’re gonna remember somebody was blowing somebody.”

“Gross,” Vi muttered, grabbing her screwdriver again. “What the hell’s going on with you two, Talis? You just broke up with Mel and you’re already out here living like it’s a porno. Not judging, though.”

And despite the sweat under his arms, the crawling embarrassment, the sense that he’d just tripped face-first into reality — it was getting easier. At least now it was out in the open. At least now he could start figuring out how the hell to approach Viktor, just to talk.

So he started from the beginning — told them the whole story, nearly word for word, quoting back conversations like scripture. Cait brewed tea, Vi didn’t look up from the IKEA battlefield, and every so often she cut in with a perfectly timed:

“Holy shit.”

He talked about how he’d been stewing in his own misery without leaving the apartment, like a dumpling in the broth of an existential crisis. How the days blurred into a mush of half-burnt omelets, to-do lists he never opened, and intrusive thoughts along the lines of, “What if I really am an asshole.”

An asshole, sure — but maybe one who deserved forgiveness. At least from himself.

He wrapped it up at the last time he saw Viktor—especially the part when the girls left and it was just the two of them. He even mentioned the bartender. Because apparently, you can’t suffer properly without props: heavy stares, alcohol, dim lighting, and a third party pretending not to notice but probably posting about it later in some anonymous thread.

“Think they fucked?” Vi asked out of nowhere. “Thomas and Viktor?”

Jayce had always appreciated her bluntness—in theory. In practice, that question landed with the kind of tone that implied he should care. And he was… well. Not exactly.

He wasn’t jealous.

Obviously not. Why would he be? He barely knew Viktor at all. Didn’t know his birthday, his last name, his favorite songs, his—

Not jealous.

At all.

“If they did, that’s kind of a hilarious coincidence,” Cait summed up, leaning back against the couch. “Because I’m pretty sure we don’t have a single straight person left in this circle.”

“Oh, we do. They’re just boring, so we don’t hang out with them,” Vi said, scratching her temple with the screwdriver. “Or they’re married. Which is basically the same thing.”

“We’re married,” Cait snorted.

Jayce coughed, cutting through the bit—normally he’d be grateful for the comedy break, but not now.

“Any actual advice? He’s flat-out ignoring me. And I have no idea how to even start a conversation with him. Why he treats me like —” Jayce paused, then sighed. “Okay. I partly get it. I admit I acted like an idiot. That the blow-up was out of nowhere, that I was drowning in my own shit and I wasn’t even mad at him. But fuck, seeing his face at your wedding was physically unbearable.”

“Whoa.” Vi whistled, actually setting down the screwdriver. “Therapy’s paying off, huh?”

“I’m still waiting for someone to tell me, ‘Sorry, we’re at capacity for lunatics, you’ll have to manage on your own.’” Jayce let it out with a crooked grin, more tired than funny.

“You’re a damn catch, Jayce. Where else are they gonna find someone who’s basically got ‘Money like a monarch, feels like he’s spent ten years in a basement’ stamped across his forehead?”

Vi got up off the floor, stretched, her spine cracking as she straightened, and walked over to the newly assembled bookcase. She inspected it with the kind of professional seriousness that looked one step away from issuing a six-year warranty. Jayce waited, fingers drumming an annoying rhythm against his knee.

“He didn’t even want to come to the wedding,” Vi finally said, like she’d just given herself permission. “We honestly didn’t think he’d show. I had to push to invite him at all. We’re both from Zaun, old ties and all that crap… He never flat-out said he didn’t want to, too polite for that. But trust me, he squirmed every way he could.”

“What? Why?”

Vi’s heavy sigh spoke louder than words, and she flicked her eyes toward Cait. Her expression was complicated, but deep in those piercing blue eyes there was regret. She traced a finger along the rim of her mug, like she was trying to scratch the right words out from underneath it.

She picked up where Vi left off:

“I’m not sure it’s really our place to say,” she began slowly, “but I think by now it’s not just his secret. It’s context.”

Cait went quiet for a second, as if checking that the air around them was still moving.

“You know he only just got back from abroad, right?”

Jayce nodded. Vi had tossed that in casually during rehearsal.

“He was basically left at the altar not long before that.” Her voice was soft, but the words hit like a fist to the chest. “They’d been together for years. Looked… perfect, from the outside. Proposal, ring, promises. And then — cheating, just a couple months later. He caught them in the city by accident. Said the moment was so blatant even wishful thinking couldn’t spin it any other way.”

“His ex is a fucking asshole,” Vi spat, so full of contempt Jayce was half-convinced she’d spit on the floor too if Cait’s inborn obsession with order wasn’t powerful enough to stop divine wrath in the name of clean laminate.

And that short, sharp, venomous little verdict — dripping with sympathy even as it burned — was enough to jab something right under Jayce’s skin. His heart skipped awkwardly, then went back to its old tricks—pounding hard, shoving that too-familiar lump of guilt straight into his throat.

Needless to say, he felt like the biggest fucking idiot alive. In that exact moment, everything that had once seemed unsaid, strange, defiantly impenetrable in Viktor’s behavior snapped into a terrifying, painful kind of clarity. Jayce hadn’t known. But that, unfortunately, didn’t excuse him.

Viktor hadn’t kept his distance out of pride — he’d been learning how to piece himself back together. He was grieving in his own way, in the kind of silence that comes natural to people who’ve already been betrayed once. And Jayce… Jayce had marched straight into that quiet flame of sorrow, blind to the fact it wasn’t some bonfire of comfort but the volatile ash of someone else’s loss. He’d barged into Viktor’s grief like it was an open door, convinced that his own pain hurt more, that he had the right to unload his broken heart into someone else’s.

Now, replaying everything that had happened between them, he could feel that one drop of guilt turning into a hailstorm — sharp, humiliating, cold as ice. Two broken hearts at someone else’s celebration of love. Two people, each choking down their own loss alone. Two separate trajectories of freefall, colliding only by accident.

Jayce bent over his knees, burying his face in his hands again.

“And me too, apparently…” His voice came muffled, leaking through his fingers. “I need to apologize to him. For everything.” He dragged his hands down his face, as if he could wipe the guilt away with the sweat, with the strange fever crawling over his skin that offered no escape. “I had no right to act the way I did.”

Cait shifted a little closer. Her hand settled between his shoulder blades, rubbing gently up and down — just a reminder: you’re here, you’re held, you’re not alone.

“I think you’ll have the chance tonight.”