#spoilers in the tags but like it’s just a teeny little Drabble anyway

[popcorncomet]

Jayce’s Valentine’s Day is spent finding a trail of handwritten notes.

Do you know that you stick out your tongue when you concentrate?

The biscuits are for you, from me. Don’t share.

He concludes these missives must be from Viktor, because only Viktor knows where Jayce goes to be alone when the frustration gets too high. Only Viktor could possibly recite Jayce’s schedule well enough to slip a little square cards onto the tea tray unseen between breaks. It’s simple logic, even if the handwriting has been disguised and the man himself is conspicuously absent.

Honestly, the idea of Viktor being shy about it is almost intolerably cute.

They have been drawing closer to the line each day, the two of them dancing with the idea of more than friendship. More than science or progress. But there is so much at stake… Jayce has been too much of a coward to say anything out loud. Maybe Viktor has been scared, too. They’re both too practical to compromise their work with the messy human nature of affection.

My favourite part of the day is when the lab is empty and we get to sit quietly together, just you and I.

He pulls the new note from inside his leather work glove, and finds himself grinning widely. The luxurious white paper is thick, embossed. Nothing like the watermarked notebooks peppered across their desks. He runs the pad of his thumb over the words, thinking that he must have been stupidly oblivious to have pushed Viktor to these lengths. What stages of communication has Jayce missed that Viktor felt the need to be this explicit about everything?

He pockets the note. Jayce has, after all, always been a romantic, and he can’t help being won over by playful gestures. It’s time to find Viktor, and let him know that Jayce reads him loud and clear. Finally.

The search that he expects to take a long while ends up taking mere minutes. Jayce walks into the break room to see Viktor’s coat over the couch, and Viktor himself stood at their paper-piled coffee table as though he hasn’t been sneaking around for the past several hours.

“Happy Valentine’s, V,” Jayce tells him indulgently, leaning on the doorframe. Viktor glances back over his shoulder.

“Hm? Oh, yes.” He plucks some papers from the pile, tucks his cane more securely under him, and turns for the door. Briefly, he waits for Jayce to move his over-large frame from the door. He meets Jayce’s eyes without hesitation, and quirks one eyebrow.

After a beat too long, Jayce steps back to let him through.

“Thank you.” Viktor says, resuming his uneven stride down the short corridor to the lab. Behind him Jayce frowns. It isn’t going to be fun at all of Viktor committed to being an anonymous admirer forever. “Did you finish the modulator?” He asks, accented voice muffled as he slips through the laboratory doorway.

“Uh, no. Sorry. I’ve been…distracted-“

“I can see that.” Jayce almost walks into him. Viktor looks annoyed, and has a card held elegantly between two long fingers. He taps it against Jayce’s chest. “We are on a deadline. This sort of thing should stay out of the lab.”

Jayce reaches to catch the note out of instinct alone when Viktor spins on his heel to walk away.

“I’m no enemy of fun, but it is both of us who will be scolded by the council if we can’t present-“

“But you wrote it.” Jayce realises that’s a stupid thing to say the moment that he says it. Viktor lowers himself to his stool and spins it so that they are face to face.

“I did not,” he says, clearly.

“You..did not,” Jayce echoes. Viktor did not.

He flips the note in his hand to read it.

I made plans for us tonight. Wear something nice, won’t you?

Jayce drops it. It swings through the air to the floor, sliding across tile. The other notes in his pocket feel heavy, hot like coals. Viktor did not write them.

“Jayce, are you alright?” Viktor asks. Jayce opens his mouth to say something, anything at all, but has all thought slashed in two when the chemical alarm suddenly shrieks at them both.

Jayce covers his ears instinctively. Viktor’s face is scrunched up, and they turn as one to the fume cabinet.

The glass doors are open wide. Inside, a collection of chemicals have been upturned and allowed to slowly run into each other. In an empty beaker sits a single red rose. It wilts before their eyes as the reaction starts to consume it.

Off the top of his head, Jayce knows at least three of those beakers would result in a colourless, odourless gas that could knock them out at best, suffocate them at worst.

Jayce covers his nose with the crook of his elbow and launches to slam the fumigation doors closed. He flicks on the filtration system with a curse.

“We have to leave. Now.”

Viktor nods and is already getting up. He throws Jayce a rag, and uses another himself over his mouth and nose. When he coughs it immediately transmutes some of Jayce’s rising anxiety to rage.

Viktor doesn’t even argue with him when Jayce places a hand on his spine, leading them both at a slow but steady pace from the lab. The last door before they reach the clean outside air is wood and glass and filigree, a tall and pretentious thing, but now it has been scrawled over in elegant red script.

Jayce ignores it and slams a palm into the door to push it open. The paint smears across wood and his own fingertips. Outside is clear and sunny. Viktor throws his rag and takes deep breaths, and already there are people approaching to help.

But the words on the door are trapped behind Jayce’s eyelids. They make him feel sick.

Be Mine, Valentine?