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mistythedritten · 9 hours ago

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It'll Be Fine: Chapter 4

Summary: The final chapter!! So much hurt/comfort to come :D

Tag List: @ihavea-natural-curiosity @milkywaysipper @fangirlshenanigans04 @voxconcordia @beetpatchkids @amiableamos @misforvendetta @pigfartsviatardis

Read on Ao3!

Trigger Warnings: Panic attacks, flashbacks

The walk home felt unbearable. His whole body ached from how tensely he’d been holding himself for hours, and he couldn’t stop shivering, it was getting worse with each second. Each step gave him another flashback, the snow on his face making the panic dig its heels in harder.

The kid is freezing, we need to get him inside now.

It’s okay mijo, we’ll get out of here soon, don’t worry. Take my gloves, you’ll be alright.

Mom, is he going to be okay? He’s still shivering.

Viktor hadn’t tried to take off the mittens again, but he held one of Jayce’s hands in his own, covering his icy knuckles with the soft glove. Jayce hoped he couldn’t feel how hard he was shaking, but was doubtful that was the case.

Jayce couldn’t get the door unlocked on his own. His hands were shaking so bad that he dropped the keys twice before Viktor took them gently and opened the door. Jayce stumbled inside, the warm air of his home immediately stinging his face and his hands, beginning to melt the snow in his hair. Jayce pulled Viktor inside behind him, and quickly shut and locked the door. Then he began going around his home and pulling all the curtains closed.

“Y-You need to take off y-your clothes.”

“What?” Viktor snapped, looking at Jayce incredulously.

“N-Not like--Th-That’s what y-you do to t-treat hy-hypothermia,” Jayce said, still shivering violently and starting to shuck off his layers. He checked his hands for frostbite again. “Y-You have t-to take off w-wet clothes, I-I can get y-you some from my closet--”

“I…” Viktor trailed off and Jayce looked at him, and was a little shocked to see the expression on his face. It was even more sad than before, and utterly, completely confused. For the first time, Jayce saw Viktor seemingly have no idea what to do.

“I don’t have hypothermia, Jayce,” he said softly, staring at him.

Jayce looked at him a moment, with his jacket still half-on, and still shivering.

“I-I know that,” he said, after a few moments.

It… didn’t help, for some reason.

He knew Viktor was okay. He knew that he didn’t have hypothermia. He even knew that there wasn’t frostbite underneath those gloves he was wearing. He knew all of that. But it didn’t help. There was something deep, deep inside his chest or his brain or somewhere that was convinced that all those things were true. Convinced that they both needed to get into dry clothes as fast as possible, that they needed to start a fire, to keep their fingers and toes protected from the cold, to fight every second not to die.

It was the most horrible war in his mind that he just couldn't make sense of.

It was only when Viktor spoke again, that Jayce could come back to reality.

“I’ll… I’ll take off my sweater, how about that?” Viktor suggested. “It’s wet, and will feel better with it off. You may get me a new one, if you would like.”

Jayce nodded and quickly made his way to his room, his mind buzzing again with a vague, panic-induced plan. Just get off the wet clothes, and it’ll be fine. We can start the fire, and make something warm to eat, and it’ll be fine. Viktor will be fine, he has the gloves, he’ll be fine.

He quickly got out of his freezing clothes and put on new ones, still shivering rather harshly as he yanked a thick blue turtleneck over his head. He checked his hands for frostbite again, and after a thorough inspection of them in the bathroom he felt slightly more confident that there was none. He grabbed another sweater for Viktor from his closet, tugged his blanket off his bed, and quickly made his way back down the hall to the living room.

“Okay, I got your sweater and I brought an extra blanket, we just need to keep your torso warm and--What are you doing?”

Jayce walked into the living room to find Viktor in the adjacent kitchen, stirring something in a pot on the stove. He wasn’t wearing his wet sweater anymore, just a simple brown long sleeve shirt. The fire in Jayce’s fireplace was lit, and he looked up at Jayce when he spoke.

He’d left the mittens on.

“I found soup,” he said simply. “In your cupboards. Figured you would like something warm to eat, yes?”

Jayce blinked, and nodded, feeling a little relieved that he didn’t have to do all of that by himself. His hands were still shaking badly enough that he wasn’t sure he’d be able to open the soup cans.

He walked over and handed Viktor the sweater, which he now realized was a dark red one, a turtleneck to match his own. It was a good idea, he thought vaguely, to have something to warm up your throat. Lots of important veins and arteries there.

Viktor put it on, and Jayce swallowed a little at the sight. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he thought Viktor looked rather cute, wearing his sweater.

But the thought was washed away quickly by the bubbling panic in his mind, and he spoke.

“You left the mittens on,” he said quietly.

“You asked me to,” Viktor replied. He smiled, but it was still a little sad, concerned. Jayce nodded, surprised that Viktor was still listening to him when he was clearly acting like a madman.

“Thank you,” Jayce whispered. “Can I um… see them? Your hands?”

“Of course.” Viktor gave the soup another stir before allowing Jayce to pull the mittens off slowly. As he did so, his mind injected images of blackened frozen fingers over his eyes that made his heart pound, and part of him was sure he’d be greeted with the same horrifying realization he had as a child, seeing his mother’s fingers that way.

But when Jayce finally got both mittens off, he breathed a sigh of relief.

Viktor’s hands were fine. Still rather cold, as he maneuvered them around to check at all angles, but not nearly as red as before. They would probably be back to their usual temperature in a few minutes, Jayce concluded.

Jayce’s hands were still shaking though. The shivering in the rest of his body was going down, but his hands were trembling just as bad as they were outside.

“Jayce,” Viktor started as he continued to look over his fingers. “Correct me if I am wrong but… are you looking for frostbite?”

“I… Your hands were so cold and red, I thought maybe--”

“You know that my skin is much paler than yours is, yes?” Viktor said. He was frowning up at him again, his head tilted to the side. He squeezed Jayce’s shaky hands, though it didn’t do much to still them.

“Huh? Wh--I mean yeah, but what does that have to do with anything?”

“My hands are going to look like that when they’re cold,” he explained gently. “They are going to look red a lot faster than yours will. My hands will look like that if I hold a cup of ice water for too long.”

Jayce frowned and looked down at Viktor’s hands again. He knew that. He had to have known that, somewhere in the back of his mind. Of course. His hands were much darker than Viktor’s, if they were bright red like that on him then it would be a problem but. Viktor was perfectly fine.

“You know that you don’t have frostbite either, yes?” Viktor asked. “Or hypothermia?”

Jayce pressed his lips together and looked down at their joined hands.

“I-It feels like I do. Sometimes,” he whispers. He can feel his eyes start to sting again, and when his shoulders start trembling he knows it’s not from the cold anymore.

Viktor nods, looking a little lost in thought for a moment, before he lets go of one of Jayce’s hands and stirs the soup again.

“How do you feel? Right now?”

“It… hurts,” Jayce said slowly. “My hands hurt. My back and shoulders, the shivering hurts. And my brain is… it feels like it’s going too fast and too slow at the same time.”

Viktor nods again, thinking for a moment once more.

“Well, we should get you warmed up then,” he suddenly says with a smile. It’s not a sad one anymore either, it looks oddly triumphant. The same kind he wears when he’s finally solved a problem.

He takes both Jayce’s hands again, and pulls him back to the living room, gesturing to the couch to sit down. Once he does, he takes the blanket Jayce brought with him and drapes it around his shoulders, pulling it tight under his chin.

“There you go. You stay by the fire, I will bring the soup in a moment, and we can make sure you stay warm.”

He straightened up again, and walked back to the kitchen, leaving Jayce feeling rather dumbfounded. He hadn’t ever really panicked like this in front of anyone before, he’d been certain that Viktor would believe he was crazy and leave.

But no, he was still here. And even though Jayce still felt insane, the panic started to subside slightly, as he realized that maybe if he was crazy, he’d found someone that didn’t seem to mind.

Viktor came back a moment or two later with two steaming bowls, and handed one to Jayce. His stomach rumbled quietly at the smell curling under his nose. He hadn’t realized how hungry he was until now.

“Oh, and I found this,” Viktor said, drawing something from his pocket. He handed it to Jayce and he was greeted with the sight of his blue and yellow rice pocket. It was warm again, heat immediately radiating through his skin. “It fell out of your jacket. I warmed it up again for you, I hope that is alright.”

Jayce squeezed it tight, and pressed it to his chest again, feeling a lump grow in his throat.

“Thank you,” he said, his voice catching a little.

“Of course,” Viktor replied. “Eat up, before it gets cold.”

Jayce’s hands still trembled strongly as he ate, but from the first bite he could finally feel the warmth filling him up, replacing the deep chill that had occupied his lungs for so long.

“Thank you,” he said again, surprised that his voice wasn’t shaking so much anymore.

“Of course,” Viktor replied again. Jayce loved the way he said that. Like it was only natural to do this for him, and not even something to thank him for.

He looked at Jayce for a moment, and then back at his soup.

“I was right.”

“Huh?”

“You were lying.”

Jayce looked down at his soup and took another bite before answering.

“I’m sorry.”

“You have no need to be. You never hurt me.”

“I don’t really like lying anyways.”

“Then, why did you?”

Jayce looked down at his bowl again for another moment.

“You remember how I told you about the mage I saw as a kid?” he said. Viktor tilted his head and nodded, his eyes narrowing. “I um… I never told you how I met him.”

His hands started to shake harder so he put the bowl to the side and gripped the warm pocket of rice in his hands, hoping to steady them.

“I um… My family is a house of toolmakers. Blacksmiths, basically. It wasn’t an easy life, especially where my family came from, because… well, back there people didn’t care quite so much about the things you and I study. Science was an afterthought. A trade for the nobodies. So when I was eight, my dad wanted to try something to get us on the map. Make us known so our lives could be a bit easier. So we decided to move here.”

Jayce took a deep shuddering breath and ran a hand up his face, pulling roughly at his hair. He let his head fall back for a moment, opening up his lungs and throat as a crushing feeling fell on his chest.

“And um… When we were travelling here, we knew we had to go through the mountains. We thought it would be okay, it was the very beginning of winter, there wasn’t any snow on the mountain yet. But… a blizzard came when we got to the top. And my dad um, he fell in a deep snowbank. By the time we dug him out he was um… he-he was gone. We tried to bring him with us, but our cart got stuck, and eventually we just gave up and tried to find a way out alone.

“We walked for so long, and it--Fuck, it was so cold. I felt like my lungs were frozen. Everything was numb. My mom’s fingers got red, and then blue, then… then black. And then she fell unconscious.”

And for some reason, this of all he spoke of, was what made the dams break. His breath hitched, and he clenched his jaw shut as a small sob escaped him. He covered his mouth and squeezed his eyes shut, bowing his head.

He heard Viktor stand up, and then suddenly a weight settled on the couch next to him, and thin arms pulled him into an embrace. Jayce fully welcomed it, clinging to Viktor like he were the only warmth left on this earth.

“Sh-She’d given me her gloves because mine ripped--It was my fault she got frostbite. I-I called for help, and the mage came,” Jayce choked out. “He took us here, a-and it was the Kiramman’s who found us first. We both had hypothermia when we got to the hospital. Mom had her fingers amputated, and I-I got pneumonia--It was so awful, Viktor, I was freezing for fucking months, and I couldn’t breathe--Fuck--”

“Shhh,” Viktor soothed, running fingers through Jayce’s disheveled hair. “It’s okay. It wasn’t your fault Jayce. She was being your mother, taking care of you. You are not in that time of your life anymore. You are safe, and warm now. Even if it does not feel that way at the moment.”

“Heh, I feel insane. I keep seeing things from when I was in the storm,” Jayce said. He pulled back again so he could look at Viktor properly when he spoke. “It gets hard to breathe, like when I was sick. Hell, even this,” he held up the rice warmer, “This is the same warmer the nurses put on my chest when I had hypothermia. We kept it and used it while I was sick. We stayed with the Kiramman’s for a while, and I would hold it until it was cold and then ask my mom, or Mrs. Kiramman to warm it up again, over and over. Sometimes they couldn’t because my fever was running too high and they didn’t want it to get worse. I kept it all this time because I thought maybe I’d get hypothermia like that again--god, how pathetic is that?”

He squeezed the warmer tight in his fist and buried his head in it, trying not to sob again.

Thin hands ran up and down his back and arm, pulling him into Viktor’s warmth again.

“I knew that something had changed, in the last month or so,” Viktor started, adjusting the blanket around Jayce’s shoulders. “You were more distant. Going home early, looking like a ghost when you came in the morning. And you made a mistake, on the chalkboard.”

“I did?”

“You did calculations for temperature on it. It took me a moment to realize they were not for the hex gems. It was the freezing point of blood, and I could not for the life of me figure out why you wanted to know such a thing,” Viktor said.

It was true, Jayce remembered now. He’d done it in a bit of a panic one morning, when he got in the lab before Viktor. He forgot to erase the board.

“For the record,” Viktor spoke again, “I do not think you are pathetic. Or insane. I… I only wish you had told me the truth.”

Viktor broke away, and at first Jayce thought he was leaving, but then he reached over for the bowl of soup still sitting at Jayce’s side.

“You should finish this,” he said, handing it to him. Jayce gave a small smile, again surprised by Viktor’s concern. There wasn’t much left so he brought the bowl to his lips and downed it. Viktor took the bowl and stacked it on top of his own.

It was then that he took Jayce’s hand, lacing their fingers together. His hands weren’t cold anymore, but Jayce still covered Viktor’s hand with his other one as well, just to be sure it stayed warm.

“I… I wanted you to have a good time,” Jayce said eventually. “And I know you really wanted me to go.”

“I did not want you to go that bad.”

“Vik, c’mon, you looked at me like you were inviting me to go to a science fair. I know I’ve only known you a couple months, but I can tell when you’re excited by now,” Jayce said, shaking his head with a smile at him. Viktor turned a little pink and he looked away sheepishly.

“I-I did not want you to go if you did not want to.”

“But that’s what you do for people you care about,” Jayce reasoned. “You make sacrifices, you do things they want to do even if you won’t necessarily enjoy it.”

“Yes, but not for pain, Jayce!” Viktor suddenly snapped, squeezing Jayce’s hand tight. Jayce started and looked up at him properly, stunned to see the look of both anger and worry on his face. “Inconvenience, yes, annoyance, of course, discomfort, maybe, but never, ever pain, Jayce!”

He quickly reached over and grabbed his cane from the side of the couch, and held it in front of Jayce.

“Would you ask me to go on a run with you, knowing I needed this just to walk?” he asked sharply.

“Wh--No--It’s not the same as your disability though Vik--”

“Can you get through the day without it hurting you?” Viktor snapped.

“I--Well, in the spring and summer, yes--”

“Can you get through all the days without it hurting you?”

“Wh--No, but it’s not--”

“Then it is disabling!” Viktor said, throwing his hands in the air. “This fear of the cold, it may not be a disability but it does hurt you, and disables you from doing your daily life when it is cold. It may not be as all-encompassing, but other than that variable, it is no different than my leg. You would never ask me to run, and I would have never, ever asked you to go to the winter festival, in the freezing cold, if I knew you had almost frozen to death as a child.”

Viktor finishes his rant with a huff, his amber eyes still fiery with anger, but triumph now as well, similar to how he looked before.

Jayce couldn’t help staring into those eyes a bit longer. He hadn’t really paid attention to it before, but Viktor’s eyes were so warm. For a man who coveted winter, the summer sun had decided to reside comfortably in his eyes. Perhaps that’s where it goes in the winter, Jayce thought. It wasn’t lost. It was just there, in Viktor’s eyes, waiting for him to notice that he’d never been far from its light in the first place.

Even as he looked at them the warmth grew as Viktor placed a hand against Jayce’s cheek.

“I will never ask you to hurt yourself for me,” Viktor says softly, his sunlit eyes glancing down to Jayce’s lips.

Finally, for the first time that day, Jayce felt a heat in his chest, a growing flame in his heart that burned away all the cold that had consumed him. His hands were steady as they squeezed Viktor’s hand, and pressed his other to Viktor’s thin chest. A heat burned there too, gentle sunlight shining on Jayce from Viktor’s heart. He could feel it surround him, like he were in a celestial cloud made up of Viktor’s light.

“Would you ask me to kiss you?” Jayce asked.

Viktor smiled.

“Would you--”

Jayce surged forward and pressed his lips to Viktor’s, drinking in his endless warmth like it were the last day he would ever feel it. There was only a moment of surprise from Viktor before he kissed Jayce back, his pale fingers sliding to the back of his head and pulling him closer.

It was a few moments of bliss before they broke apart, and even then they hovered in each other’s space, each other's light, pressing their foreheads together.

“I have wanted to do that for a very long time,” Viktor breathed. Jayce laughed, letting his head slide to Viktor’s shoulder.

“I didn’t think it would take a blizzard to finally make me admit it, but I have too,” he said breathlessly. “I guess I thought you wouldn’t like me back.”

“I believed much the same,” Viktor said, nuzzling his cheek into Jayce’s hair. “Are we stupid?”

“Maybe when it comes to this stuff,” Jayce laughed. “Can’t be a genius at everything I guess.”

“We will simply have to do what we do best then,” Viktor said confidently.

“Hm? And what’s that?”

“Learn.”

Jayce tilted his head up and kissed Viktor’s jawline.

“I could learn about you every day forever.”

Viktor turned and kissed his temple.

“And I with you.”

They fell asleep on that couch not long after, tangled in each other’s light and warmth, safe and sound from the blizzard outside. Jayce didn’t worry about the snow for the rest of the night, as long as Viktor was here.

The cold wouldn’t dare touch such a man of light.

A/N: Thank you all so so much for reading and going through this little journey with me! I truly appreciate all of you, especially all of the new friends I've made in the Jayvik fandom :D

I'll be honest I started writing this story when I was in an awful mental place and needed some catharsis, and while I think that the world is still taking its toll on me, I'm glad that I have a wonderful fandom and story to go back to when I need it <3

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