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He’s been living with Jayce for a year when Viktor is forced to acknowledge that he is never going to have a normal relationship.
He sort of already knows this, on account of the obvious. The obvious being their origins, that is. He’s not sure what a normal, well-adjusted person would consider stranger: that Jayce had stalked him for seven years, or that it had taken seven years for Viktor to finally give in. Certainly, the matter of Jayce’s varied and increasingly concerning behaviours during those seven years factors into the overall abnormality too: the stalking itself, the kidnapping, the murders (Viktor estimates at least three) going on behind his back.
Viktor would be remiss if he genuinely claimed to care about all that, though. The way he sees it, Jayce has never killed anyone worth saving. He doesn’t think so, anyway, and it’s easier to believe as much than it would be to go down the rabbit hole of self-pity and blame and pointing fingers. He’s never killed anybody Viktor cares about, and anytime he’s threatened to (a few idle comments, here and there, about doing away with distractions—employers being difficult about contracts and exes he’s on good terms with and once, notably, Sky when she pointed out that Viktor and Jayce were ‘moving too fast’) Viktor has shut it down without much difficulty. Jayce is a control freak, but he likes making Viktor happy. So long as Viktor’s happiness doesn’t get in the way of what he thinks is best for both of them.
When it really comes down to it, though, when all the fuss of what he should think and feel and believe can be primly set aside, Viktor is left with the only part that really bothers him.
Viktor’s autonomy will never be one of Jayce’s priorities.
He can claim it is as much as he likes. And he does: often, and on occasion during shouting arguments, pointing out the plethora of measures taken in the past to ensure that any actions which seemingly go against Viktor’s personal freedoms are only done so after a thorough investigation of his boundaries otherwise, asserting that he’s never done anything to Viktor that Viktor has truly hated. And Viktor would like to argue with this, but it’s—not exactly untrue, and so.
Even kidnapping him was something he couldn’t bring himself to hate Jayce for. To say that he regrets the series of actions that led him to live in Jayce’s basement for three weeks would be facetious. Viktor knew what he was doing when he turned up at that restaurant. Every decision he ever made that led him to Jayce’s chains was one subtle nod of consent after the other. Not even Jayce drugging him, holding him down, and raping him—not that Jayce would ever let him describe it that way—could be argued to be against Viktor’s wishes. Forget asking for it; he’d spent seven years practically begging for it.
The problem starts when his mind begins to turn over the what ifs, though. It’s all well and good for Jayce to argue that he knows what’s best. He does, in his uncanny way, always seem to know what Viktor wants before Viktor knows it, and usually with an eerie degree of accuracy. The kind Viktor figures can only come from seven years of obsessing over someone.
Viktor has a shitty immune system. As a result, he tends to get sick frequently. It is something he is considerably used to living with, miserable but hardly unbearable enough to justify letting it graduate into the larger problem of missing work. The first time he gets the flu in front of Jayce, they bicker about Viktor’s dismissal of his symptoms, his refusal to medicate himself for what is merely a common seasonal illness he happens to get a few times a year. “I appreciate that you care for me,” he’d said at the time, in an attempt to remove the feral determination from Jayce’s face, which was beginning to make him feel unmoored. “I promise I don’t need to take anything for it. It is really not that bad.”
Most natural medicine is a load of horseshit, in Viktor’s scientific opinion. Similarly, anything that would genuinely alleviate his symptoms enough to be noticeable has codeine in it, which he cannot take.
“If you’re sure,” Jayce had said neutrally.
The following night, he just slipped it into Viktor’s tea without permission. Viktor didn’t notice until he was already drowsy, stomach swooping and Jayce’s heat pressed against him in bed, the soft fuzzy shape it all took when he finally slipped under.
He’d missed work the next day. The sleep had helped him heal significantly faster.
It shames Viktor that he is someone who has historically advocated for equal, healthy adult relationships. That he is now in a relationship with someone who evidently does not respect his autonomy in the slightest. He fluctuates between forgiving and hating himself for choosing it, for having all the knowledge and foresight to know and still choosing it.
Jayce is right. It turns his stomach to know how often Jayce is right. But Viktor never would have gone on that date in the first place, let alone continued to position himself at Jayce’s mercy, had he not been willing to choose it.
As much as he wants to point out any evidence of Stockholm Syndrome, the mercies of his absolution in every isolated piece of proof available—something explainable, if not forgivable—he knows that what Jayce said about there being something wrong with him is more accurate.
There is something wrong with Viktor. There always has been.
Viktor knows he can’t be a sociopath. He used to think so, worry about it, before he was able to successfully intellectualise his every trait in a satisfying enough manner to dissect them, processed like data: an issue with empathy on account of his autism diagnosis that does not predicate a lack of sympathy, but rather often an excess. Viktor feels much and very deeply. And he needs. At his core, he is a needy person. He cares and he wants and he needs. This has to be enough to render the sociopathy theory unlikely, although sometimes Viktor looks between his and Jayce’s reflections, brushing their teeth at night, and wonders.
In all probability, Jayce is not a sociopath either. Whatever he is, it’s much worse.
“We should get married.” It’s not the first time he has ever brought it up, nor even in so blunt of a manner.
Viktor still scrambles to change the subject. “We should get brunch tomorrow. That new place.”
He feels Jayce’s eyes on him at the obvious deflection, the way he hurries back to bed just to be in a different room for a moment. Jayce gets the light, climbs into bed behind him, and Viktor is already suffering the crossed wires of fear and desire that make him arch his spine against the firm source of body heat. Jayce’s fingers slip right in.
Viktor knows he’ll start pushing the subject eventually. There is no subject on earth he has not thus far managed to bully Viktor into being honest about.
It makes Viktor nervous. He has never seen himself marrying anyone, because he has never imagined himself in a relationship serious enough to negate doing so before now. That he has no experience even fantasising about it makes it new, frightening, uncharted territory. Knowing Jayce, he’ll get what he wants eventually. This notion is soothing in a sort of embarrassing way. He’ll wear Viktor down, so Viktor might as well just say yes, right? Save them both the trouble?
“You’re getting a cold,” Jayce comments the next evening.
Viktor fights the reflexive terror, the curl of dread and unease of getting caught. “No I’m not.”
“You’re hiding it.” Jayce squints at him. “I heard your little sneezing fit in the shower earlier. It was cute. Right now you sound nasal as hell and I can tell you’re poking around to check if your lymph nodes are swollen. They are.” Unfortunately, Jayce is sort of a dork. It tips the scale of how Viktor sees him from pure evil to regrettably endearing, a fucked up weakness Viktor has for this sort of behaviour. “Why are you shutting me out, V? I want to help.”
“Because last time you drugged me,” Viktor says pointedly, and it kills the argument completely.
Fifteen tense seconds later, Jayce’s hand is on the back of his neck. “Did you know at the time, baby? Or did you figure it out the day after, once you were more clear-headed?”
The way he asks is sickly sweet, a condescending croon against the hot shell of Viktor’s ear that has him squirming. Eager to stop Jayce from successfully weaponising this against him, he says, “You don’t respect my autonomy.”
Jayce’s hand stills on his neck. “Yes, I do.”
“You don’t. You historically do not.” Viktor bites the end off a maniacal little hiccup. “Jayce. Be serious.”
“I do value your autonomy,” Jayce argues, insanely, like the obvious is not standing in the room with them. “That isn’t what this is, Viktor, and you know it. I value your opinions and your personhood and your… god, I just. I love you. Of course I value you.”
“You value the idea of me,” argues Viktor, “or possibly what I offer you. Valuing me as a human being is another matter.”
“Come on, even you don’t believe that.” Viktor says nothing, and Jayce’s hand migrates to the side of his neck. “Sure, we’re a little fucked up. Maybe we have—needs that are a little. Whatever. But don’t pretend like it doesn’t work for us. Don’t pretend like I don’t fill those needs for you, Viktor. I give you absolutely everything you want.”
“That is easy to claim when you evidently have the final say over what I want!” Viktor feels his face flush. He huffs. “You never ask if I want to get married. You only speak as though it has already happened.”
Jayce’s expression, horrifically, goes soft. “Baby. That’s what you’re worried about?”
“You are abhorrent,” Viktor marches on, mortified by the way Jayce is looking at him. “You are missing the point. I don’t actually get a choice, just the illusion of one.”
“That’s ridiculous,” says Jayce. “If you genuinely didn’t want to marry me, then—”
“You’d what?” Viktor counters. “You’d let me go? Would you really, Jayce, or is this just what you tell yourself to justify whichever drugs you feel like dropping in my tea?”
“That was different,” Jayce argues.
“How is it different?”
“You didn’t relapse, did you? You got better? Much faster than you would have if you’d tried to raw-dog the fucking flu without any medicine. You just refuse to accept that you’re horrible at taking care of yourself.” Jayce shakes his head. “I love you. I know what’s best for you, even when you don’t. How can that upset you when the result is the same every single time, Viktor?”
“How do you not see that this is coercion,” Viktor stammers. “You are a scientist. By all evidence, you are a very smart man. This is textbook coercion. You cannot think that is normal, Jayce.”
“Fuck being normal,” Jayce fires back. “I know you. Sometimes you just need—”
“Need what? A push, like how this started?”
“I don’t know, maybe!”
“Do you hear yourself?”
“You’re being awfully mouthy,” Jayce says, his demeanour shifting, his tone turning on a dime, “for someone who’s allegedly so afraid of me.”
Viktor’s mouth opens and closes. He attempts to unsuccessfully explain himself half a dozen times before something makes it past his teeth. “I never said I was afraid.”
“Just a victim, then? So brave, baby.”
Viktor feels his face heat.
“If you want to play the victim,” says Jayce, getting right up in his space now, hand sliding to press against the front of his throat, “that’s fine. If you want to pretend like you’re not well aware of the type of person I am, and the things I have done for you…”
“Of course I’m aware,” Viktor chokes. “You think it did not ever cross my mind that my kidnapper was a murderer?”
“That’s fair. But I haven’t murdered anyone since you moved in. I know you know that.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Fine. Be the victim.” Something in Jayce’s gaze sharpens, hones in. “Oh. Is that what you want?”
Viktor squirms. He can’t look him in the eye now, knows that doing so will just negate the entire argument the second Jayce gets a look at his pupils. It isn’t Viktor’s fault. His brain is wired wrong, he likes—he’s got an unbalanced taste for dark shit, whatever, he’s got trauma. He’s not sure it’s normal to feel it so intensely that it conquers every other emotion, though.
“You like it.” Jayce’s breath has sped up. “You like having your options stripped away. You like not having to think about it. You like being forced, Viktor.”
Viktor’s stomach bottoms out, a hot coal in the very pit. “I don’t.”
“Is that why you’re trying to hide the fact that you’re sick?”
“I’m not hiding,” he lies. “It’s just a cold, Jayce. You hardly need to drug me over this.”
“Disappointed? I can do it again, baby. I can slip something a lot more serious than codeine into your tea this time. Tie you up again like old times, fuck you when I want, have you sign the marriage certificate. Is that what you want?”
Viktor’s face is burning. Still, he musters the dignity to argue, “No, of course not. You’re—sick—that’s—and anyway, you need a witness.”
“Viktor, I murdered people for you. Do you really think I’m above forging a few signatures?”
It’s then that Viktor realises that he’s actually scared. It shouldn’t be making him burn so hot his face itches. It shouldn’t have him so wet he can feel it pooling in his shorts.
Jayce isn’t touching him anywhere other than his neck, he can’t possibly tell, but Viktor is terrified it will visibly seep through, and Jayce will give him that look, the one that says Viktor’s lost all credibility. It’s fucking awful. It’s unfortunately the best feeling in the entire world.
“I wouldn’t,” says Jayce, finally breaking the tension as he turns his attention back to the television. “Just so you know. I want our marriage to be legitimate. I want to give you a wedding. A real one, something beautiful.”
“Oh,” says Viktor.
“I think about it all the time. You on our bed, in a veil for me.” Oh. “Take you on a honeymoon after, fill you up with expensive food and fuck you full of my come every night…”
Viktor does a manifestly bad job of pretending that the idea doesn’t appeal to him. “Sounds like a lot of unnecessary time off work.”
“You’ve earned a lot of time off,” Jaye murmurs. He slides his hand onto Viktor’s thigh.
Weakly, Viktor angles himself away. “I’m tired,” he mumbles. “And I really am getting sick… my whole body is sore. I’m not in the mood, Jayce.”
Jayce’s hand pushes down. For a second, Viktor gets a sick thrill that Jayce is going to make good on all his threats and force him anyway.
But he backs off, removes his hands, presses a kiss to Viktor’s brow bone. “I’ll go make you some tea,” he says. “Let’s not fight anymore.”
“Are you going to drug me?”
“Tonight? Not unless you ask me to.”
Viktor believes him. He is busy fighting with the much more pathetic realisation that he feels disappointed.
He wakes in the early hours of the morning to the gradual awareness that he is sicker than he thought he was. Groggy, leaden with brain fog, his whole body wakes aching and boiling with fever. It is a fairly miserable way to wake up, particularly because it must be early if his alarm hasn’t gone off yet. Viktor reaches for his phone on the nightstand only to become abruptly aware that his hand can’t reach that far.
Viktor’s wrists are cuffed to the headboard.
His first thought is that he’s back in the basement. Panic turns his breath short despite his most aggressive will, fills Viktor’s already swimming head with pure cotton. Jayce appears in the doorway like he has been summoned, an avenging angel from some stained glass nightmare, Viktor’s holy terror.
He’s holding a tray. Viktor can see a bottle of pills, orange juice and a bowl of some steaming-hot substance that looks beige enough that it is likely easy on the stomach. He’s picked a poppy from the front porch. “Morning, sleepyhead. Don’t worry, I called in sick for both of us. Have you moved onto a fever yet? Hot chills, high temp?”
“I am going to kill you.” Viktor’s teeth chatter.
“That was a chill. Good guess. I give you four days before you’re back to your normal self.” Jayce smiles. “That’s three days below the average. Five below the average of people who don’t take any time off work to let their bodies heal.”
“I’m going to be.” Viktor pauses to sneeze. “Behind at work.”
“That doesn’t matter. You’re going to let me take care of you whether you like it or not.”
Viktor likes it not, thank you very much, or at least this is what he tells himself. There is an ache starting in his arms by the time Jayce moves onto feeding him, spoonfuls of plain oat porridge, a little honey. What tastes like oat milk, which is an offensively considerate touch, score 2-0, Jayce’s favour. He tries to argue that Jayce doesn’t need to know his exact temperature to identify a sinus infection and still ends up with the thermometer jammed under his tongue.
Viktor hasn’t felt knocked out by an illness like this in a while. The fever is bad enough to render him weak and shaky and out of it for the first forty-eight hours. He is too limp to deny Jayce the opportunity to care for him, to carry him to and from the bed, the bathroom, the shower, to comb out the knots in his hair—getting long, now; Viktor sometimes misses his short layers, something he hasn’t felt since he stopped caring about his appearance. Jayce makes him—care.
In and out of fever dreams and delirious, he dreams about getting married, only everything goes wrong. A big gaudy wedding, not at all his style, some disaster with the cake. He dreams about the foggy streets of Europe and a winter honeymoon and Jayce’s hand on his lower back, Jayce’s bruises pressed into his skin where everyone can see. Jayce holding him down and fucking him, filling him, biting him, claiming him in a new permanent way, something that feels like forever, the veil sliding off—
Viktor wakes on what he believes is the third day of being sick to find that his fever has broken. He’s still a little warm, but quite a bit of the fog has cleared from his head. His skin remains sore to the touch, the only major indicator that he’s unwell. And he’s humping Jayce’s leg in his sleep.
Jayce is awake. Viktor feels the stir of breath in his hair, Jayce’s chest moving. The rapid rise and fall of his ribcage, like he’s just finished running a marathon. They meet eyes in the dark, and then Jayce is on him.
Viktor whimpers, hears it trip and turn into a drawn-out, fractured whine. “Don’t,” he begs. “No, I’m still sore. Jayce.”
Jayce doesn’t listen. He touches him everywhere, big hands sliding over Viktor’s too-sensitive body, forcing his aching thighs apart. It feels like being split open when he presses the head of his cock inside—too much, everything a continuous ache, like his body is one big bruise being pressed on. Viktor’s breath hitches, he sobs dry until his eyes start to prickle with stinging moisture. He is too weak to thrash or fight and not well enough to do anything but let Jayce fuck him.
Jayce groans in his ear when he bottoms out. “Fuck. You’re like an oven. So hot inside—do you still have a fever, Vik? Poor baby. I’ll fuck it out of you.” His hips draw back. He fucks back in. A stab, a harpoon through his body. Coring Viktor out. Jayce shifts, fucks in again, builds a hard rhythm that only gets harder the longer he continues spearing Viktor on his cock, over and over again and so deep it’s making Viktor’s eyes roll back. “Yeah, that’s it. I don’t care, you can sweat it out, let me make you feel better—” And it should be disgusting, how unconcerned he is with Viktor’s germs, how little he cares whether Viktor is contagious. How proprietary he is about sharing Viktor’s body, cracking him open like the spine of a book, sinking inside like Viktor’s cunt is something to be shared, space he’s entitled to fill.
And Viktor loves it. He clings to Jayce with all the strength he can muster, mewls and sobs and whines from the pain, the pleasure. Overstimulation and overwhelm war at being the first feeling to break the tears pooling in his eyes. Jayce reaches down without warning to rub rough fingers over his cock and Viktor thrashes to get away. “It hurts, don’t, don’t.”
Jayce groans. He loves when Viktor fights it. He loves when Viktor says no, begs him to stop.
It makes Viktor feel powerful. Makes him less ashamed of the dirty need burning a hole in his belly, the sudden realisation that he and Jayce are exactly the same.
So he plays it up for him. Fights, squirms, whines and begs. “Please stop please stop please—”
Jayce comes inside of him with a grunt. He pulls out, and Viktor clenches to keep as much of it inside as possible, just for a moment. He’s not even thinking about it.
Jayce practically snarls when he notices. He goes down on Viktor immediately. He cleans Viktor out like it’s his job, like it is inconsequential if Viktor comes or not, tongue deep and licking up his own release, utterly filthy. When he finally sucks Viktor’s cock between his lips it’s like he’s just remembered it exists. He slides three blunt fingers back deep inside Viktor, and Viktor comes with a wail.
It’s good enough to essentially knock him out after. He curls into Jayce, who doesn’t seem to mind that he’s all sweaty, and drifts back into a dreamless sleep.
Viktor wakes feeling much better on the fourth day. Jayce insists he takes one more day off work. Maybe a few months ago, Viktor would have protested, excited about his professional life for the first time in years. But lately he’s been wondering if that’s not been more about his partner than the work itself.
Jayce uncuffs him. For good, this time, not only to massage Viktor’s wrists, which are bruised purple despite the luxurious padding, a result of his fragile skin and overeager blood, his poor circulation. Jayce drags his lips over the bruises, uses his teeth until Viktor’s stomach twirls. They leave the bedroom for the first time in days.
They’re drinking tea out on Jayce’s porch in the afternoon when Viktor brings up marriage again. “If I did agree to marry you,” he asks, “where would we do it?”
Jayce launches into an explanation like he’s been waiting eons for the opportunity. “Anywhere you’d like. It could be as big or small as you wanted. We can invite as many people as you want, or—”
Viktor interrupts him. “You’ve thought about it. What did you picture?”
“A small group,” Jayce confesses, after first taking a pause to genuinely think about it. “A meadow somewhere, flowers. Or on top of a big cliff overlooking the ocean.” He touches the ends of Viktor’s hair, loops a strand around his ring finger the way Viktor sometimes idly does. “You, radiant in the sun. Then just the two of us in the back of a car heading to the airport. And a long, long honeymoon.” He gets an intense look on his face. “You all to myself for as long as we can get away with. A month or two in Europe. Just taking you out to restaurants and art museums and buying you whatever you want. Or, hell, we could find a secluded little hotel, a private villa, we could stay in our room the whole time—”
“That,” says Viktor, and kisses him. “I want that.”
Jayce kisses him into the side of the patio swing. Wood digs uncomfortably into Viktor’s spine and he doesn’t even care. His tea has to be set aside before he spills it all over both of them.
Jayce carries Viktor back into the house. Bridal style, the irony of it not lost on Viktor, who blushes and squirms and bickers through the entire affair. Jayce lays him out on the bed for ravishment, but he’s being so painstakingly gentle and patient, like he thinks that what they talked about necessitates this diversion in style.
“I have no qualms with you being romantic,” Viktor teases, “but this doesn’t mean you need to treat me like a porcelain doll.”
“Oh?” There is a flash of heat in Jayce’s eyes. “And here I thought I was sick for always being so rough with you.”
“I have never once complained about you being too rough with me— Jayce,” this last part exclaimed in a high shriek, because Jayce is suddenly flipping him over.
He presses Viktor’s spine until he’s face-down, one hand wrenched behind his back to unbalance him, forced into the sheets by the back of his neck. It’s a lot, it’s too much, and Jayce is already kicking Viktor’s legs apart like he doesn’t care if it hurts him. One big hand slides up his belly to forcibly guide his back into an arch. It sends all the blood in Viktor’s body roaring south, and upside down as he is, gravity turns the world into a pounding vortex like he’s got a fever again.
Jayce leans down to whisper right into his overheated ear. “Was that too vanilla for you, baby? It’s okay, I know what you like. Don’t worry your pretty little head about things like suddenly having a choice. You just lie there while I hold you down and do what I want with this body, okay?”
The somersault of heat in Viktor’s belly is all he can focus on. “Yes, yes, that, I want—”
A sweet laugh, utterly adoring, drawing the lobe of Viktor’s ear between his teeth. “That’s nice, but I don’t care what you want.”
Viktor’s eyes slam shut. He fights to wriggle his thighs open. Jayce is rock hard against the back of his leg.
He slides inside like a dream, a never-ending coring of his insides, until Viktor feels scooped clean. Jayce’s cock is in his guts where it belongs, fucking him so hard his eyes are rolling back already, hitting him where it feels like he’s going to die. “Gonna marry you,” Jayce is gasping, rambling at his ear, talking the kind of shit that only comes from the wires between his brain and mouth getting severed. “Gonna keep you, lock you down, get you fucking pregnant. If you ever try to leave me I’ll fucking kill you—”
This has Viktor graduating from getting there to so close he’s abruptly breathless, shaking all over, the escalation a violent jump. His hole spasms around the unreal stretch Jayce is forcing it into, burning at the edges. He gasps over and over again, tongue too big for his mouth.
Jayce doesn’t miss any of this, of course. He narrows in on it, unforgiving and brutal. “Yeah? You like that? Wanna hear how I’d do it, sweetheart?”
He changes the angle. Suddenly he’s nailing Viktor’s g-spot with so much precision that Viktor’s vision floods grey. The blunt head of his cock pounds far too close to his bladder, sparks in his fingertips, a deep aching build. Viktor suddenly can’t tell if the pain and discomfort are worse than the pleasure, all increasing with such intensity that Viktor’s spine starts to spark. He is suddenly terrified, unused to the sensations in his body, fighting the terror of losing control—fighting, period, bucking Jayce off—
Jayce doesn’t budge in the slightest. He’s always going on about knowing the difference but the fact that he doesn’t stop or even slow to check in has Viktor’s head spinning. His stomach clenches, he tightens up. He’s not even sure if he likes it anymore, he just knows that what he’s feeling is so fucking much—
And Jayce is still talking.
“I’d hold you down,” he whispers, “choke you, look into your eyes the whole time…” Spoken in a tone that says this is singularly the most erotic conversation he’s ever had. “Or maybe I’d stab you first. So I could dig my fingers in and feel all the blood drain out. I could taste you, lick your chest clean. Fuck, I could eat you right up after. We’d be so close, Viktor, that’s the only way you’d ever get to be inside of me too…”
His grip on Viktor’s arm hurts so bad. His free hand tangles in Viktor’s hair, slamming his face into the bed as he drills him into the mattress, tearing him apart from the inside out.
Viktor’s orgasm sneaks up on him, a hot pulsing at his core and then a gush of fluid that covers both their thighs. It’s not often that Jayce makes him come like this and it is as shocking and good-bad as always, has him crying hysterically until the rhythm of Jayce pounding into him changes into something deeper and grinding and selfish, his hands wrapping all the way around Viktor’s throat from the back as he groans. “Baby. Baby oh my god, fuck, you’re so—”
Whatever Viktor is gets lost in translation as Jayce chases his own pleasure right off the edge. He comes as deep inside Viktor as he can get, like he really is trying to knock him up; comes biting down on the side of his throat, his teeth stuck in deep.
When he pulls out, he scoops Viktor up and rolls him so he’s lying on Jayce and not the wet patch. Viktor is humiliated to realise that for whatever inexplicable reason he is still crying, fighting crazed little shivers all through his body as he hiccups his every breath.
“Did you mean it?” Jayce whispers when he finally starts to come down, kissing his wet mouth over and over again. “Would you really let me?”
For a disorienting moment, Viktor thinks he means would you let me murder you, before he remembers the pseudo-proposal.
“Eh,” Viktor says, shrugging. “I might need a little more convincing. I deserve a better proposal than that, surely.”
Jayce’s face lights up. He is brighter than the sun. He launches into a speech about romantic proposal spots and engagement venues that Viktor only half listens to. He closes his eyes, buries his head on a murderer’s chest, and listens to the heartbeat of his soulmate.