New Years

[Took place on 1/1/2026]

The Anomaly writhed violently, spasming against the hold of the runeplates. Jagged fractals tore outward like shards of glass, streaked with furious, shifting colors—swirling and snapping in chaotic eddies as if the very air rebelled with it. Viktor could feel its scream at the edges of his mind, claws of raw intent raking at him, desperate to latch onto some foothold as it teetered on the brink of being cast into oblivion. Every pulse of its rage felt like fingers scraping against a cliff’s edge.

Blood dripped to his lip as he channeled everything into the runeplates, his grip locked tight around Jayce’s wrist, anchoring himself as the gemstone hummed with energy—responding, amplifying, fighting back against the chaos. Then, in a violent, multicolored eruption of light, the world fractured.

And suddenly… silence.

The Anomaly stilled. The world flooded with calm.

The silence was so complete that Jayce, for a heartbeat, was convinced that was what dying felt like. Then a warm drop of Viktor’s blood struck his hand, and his heart roared back into his ears. Adrenaline numbed the cramping in his forearms from his grip on Viktor, holding him tight enough to rip him from the tide of the Anomaly’s pull. Puppets clattered from cut strings and dissolved before they could strike the floor. The sickly green light of chaos’ fury faded and dimmed, and the world returned to itself—walls, white floodlights.

The alarm blared in the distance, and it was as sweet as the trumpets of victory. The Hexcore spun, and Hermes delivered the message that they were alive.

“Viktor?” Jayce breathed, his name the first word of a not-dead man.

He loosened his vice so that he may hold him elsewhere, hands flying to Viktor’s shoulders as he spun him around to make sure that he wasn’t celebrating this victory alone.

Viktor’s ears rang; his vision swam with spots. Lightheaded from the surge of magic, he felt a rush of elation rise up through him. He looked up at Jayce with wide, dazed eyes, wonder coursing through him as if they were the only two people in the world standing at the center of a storm while chaos still whirled around them.

“Did we… did we do it?” he asked, hands resting on Jayce’s forearms.

“Yeah… Yeah, we did it.” A grin slowly overtook Jayce’s face as their triumph sank in. “We did it!”

Relief washed over Viktor, and he sank into Jayce’s arms, giddy and elated. “I cannot believe…” His eyes sparkled with delight. “It worked! We did it! We actually did it…!”

All he could do was gaze up at the wonderful, beautiful man above him, whose hazel eyes mirrored his own thrill and excitement, haloed by the soft glow of the room and the faint, lingering pulse of residual magic.

And somewhere in their laughter lay the last impulses of a man who had made his peace with death. Jayce thought not about their short past together or the endless future. He only saw what was in front of him, knowing only what he could reach, and hold, and make immediate was guaranteed. All he owned was this moment of perfect glory, and he shared it with a beautiful man and his proud, snaggle-toothed smile which had spoken words that made Jayce feel as though nothing had ever mattered before this.

Before him.

It was the last gasps of a man he would have been if he were about to die. It was the things he told himself he would do if he didn’t.

Jayce held him preciously close. He wrapped an arm around Viktor’s waist and slipped his fingers through his hair, cradling the back of his head as softly as if laying him down to rest. When he pressed his chest to Viktor’s and swept him clear off his feet, he dipped him like it was the end of a dance.

And he kissed Viktor like it was the end of a war.

The world tipped abruptly off its axis, and it took Viktor a long, disoriented moment to realize there were warm lips on his own—and longer still that they belonged to Jayce. That Jayce was kissing him. His heart hammered; his thoughts scattered, everything unreal and hazy. He was being held, kissed, wanted in a way he had scarcely allowed himself to desire.

Surely this must be a dream.

And if it was a dream… why resist?

His trembling fingers curled into the fabric of Jayce’s shirt, and Viktor pressed in and, almost shyly, kissed him back.

Jayce tilted his head, enveloping Viktor’s lips as he deepened the kiss. His fingers dug into his waist, his thumb slyly grazing down a lock of hair. He held him closer and kissed the breath out of both of them. His eyes squeezed shut as he took it all in.

Then the last gasp of a not-dead man faded.

And then he realized what he was doing.

Viktor blinked, eyes wide as moons, lips still tingling with warmth and damp as Jayce abruptly pulled away. His mind raced and yet felt utterly stunned, taking in the stillness around them: the calm Anomaly’s gentle light lapping against the walls, the purr of the perfected Hexcore.

“I—I…” Viktor struggled for words, any words at all.

“O-oh, um,” Jayce stammered, straightening both himself and Viktor, making sure he was steady on his feet. He scooped Viktor’s cane from the ground and handed it to him. “Um. Mm. Ah,” he cleared his throat. “Sorry. I—sorry about that, I’m—so sorry,” he spouts, scratching the back of his neck. “I’m so sorry.”

Viktor opened and closed his mouth, then glanced down at his watch. A moment past midnight. His thoughts were still hopelessly scrambled, but something sparked anyway.

“Ah, uh… New Year’s, yes?” he said, flustered, looking up at Jayce with eyes that were very nearly pleading him to take the bait. “Ah… one cannot simply… ignore that, right…?”

“Yeah! Because it’s New Year’s. It…” Jayce looked around the cavernous containment facility for the Anomaly as if fireworks were shooting off around it. “Uh. Happy New Year, Viktor! What a way to start it off!”

What a way to make things weird.

Great job, Talis.

The alarms would eventually fall silent. The lights would dim. Two men would leave that chamber and they would tell themselves it was circumstance. Adrenaline.

They would be wrong.

Because across realities yet unwritten, across versions of themselves that had never met and others that would meet too late, this moment would resonate. Not loudly. Not with spectacle. But with the insistence of gravity, pulling distant stars toward one another again and again.

And neither of them would escape that cosmic dance.

Not in this lifetime.

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