Omg, you make Malik perfect every time @questionartbox 😍 I adore you and you art, and can't thank you enough for making Mals story come more alive with each comission!... STAY AMAZING!!
Ffff love how you can see how Mal has aged from novice to now. 😍
Gotta love how Malik can handle a king cobra with no fear, yet when it comes to horses *inserts run music*
The cobra was placed in Mal's room by his nemesis. But Mal simply thought it slivered its own way in to get out of the sun. So ofc he puts it back outside to a shaded area.
And after stealing a horse to escape his pursuers, Mal managed to get off the horse, thankfully unscathed, and let the horse go on its merry way... WELL away from Mal.
That was the initial plan, but the horse had other plans and wanted to stick around and follow Malik. Almost like it was trying to say "Ok, you can take me back home now."
The first thing Jayce is aware of is the inconfoundable feeling of Viktor. Next to him, around him, intertwined atom for atom.
Anything else would be secondary.
When the rest of reality coalesces back into something his brain can process and quantify, his senses come back online like circuits, lighting up one by one and instantaneously.
Touch, hearing, sight, smell. Viktor, solid in his arms, still wrapped in the soft blanket Jayce had draped over his new body, his arms around Jayce's shoulders, hands clenched in the fabric of his coat. Viktor, breathing quick and quiet next to his ear. Viktor, the pale curve of one mole-dotted shoulder peeking from his covering, and his hair gleaming under sunlight, long and fading into that pale color, like sweetmilk poured into coffee. Viktor, clutched so close in his hands, Jayce can taste the faint ozone crackle of the Arcane lingering on his skin.
Viktor, his honey eyes looking at Jayce, wide, disbelieving, alive.
"Jayce," he says, in his soft voice. The slight stretch of the 'A', cradled tenderly. The silky softness of the 'C', sibilant, always - somehow - sensual, even when Viktor was calling his name for the fourth time from across the lab at three in the morning.
Jayce has Viktor in his arms and they are alive.
"It worked," Jayce whispers, and his hands are already cradling Viktor's face. A laugh bursts out of him from some place he thought had been buried in a gulch forgotten by the apocalypse. "IT WORKED!"
He ignores the jolt of pain his knee sends shooting up his spine as he goes jumping up to his feet, fists raised and a howl of incredulous, manic triumph shouted up to the clear skies overhead. He remembers the first prototype for the Hexgates, the hellish trial phases, and he remembers the day they got an apple from one side of the room to the other. Jayce had screeched and jumped and paced, babbling like a maniac while Viktor stood, silent and awestruck, holding the apple in his palms like it had just been placed there by the hand of a god. When Jayce finally collapsed onto the floor, half laughing, half crying, Viktor had wheeled his stool over, flicked open his little pocket knife, and wordlessly split the fruit in two, handing half over to Jayce. He'd been certain he could taste the magic they had harnessed. That day pales in comparison to this moment.
He wants to sprint a mile. He needs to scream, he wants to laugh, and cry, and he needs to make a plan to orient himself and find food and get Viktor some clothes, he's still only wearing that goddamm blanket-
"It worked! Viktor! Viktor, we did it, it worked!" He shouts, hands clasped around Viktor's cheeks again, and he smacks a kiss off Viktor's forehead because he can, because Viktor is here, and they're together and alive, they're alive, they're alive-
His body allows him a few more moments of frantic, unrestrained celebration, before it starts warning him, Alright Talis, you've had your fun, now lay down, you're about to pass out, because that sure is a head rush he's feeling isn't it?
He stumbles to the ground the same way his laughter trails off from a manic giggle to heaving gasps, giddiness fizzing in his chest, his head, his whole goddamn body, and he stares up at the clouds, floating unbothered overhead. They might as well be in a different universe. It's entirely possible that they are.
It doesn't matter. Especially not right now. Jayce forces himself to breathe, even as he can't stop smiling, arms splayed out over his head. There's a soft shuffling sound, bare feet trekking uncertainly through the soft grass. He raises his head from the grass, because he would recognize Viktor's gait anywhere. There's a moment, suspended from the rest of reality like a crystal hanging in a window, that Jayce swears he will preserve in his memory to his dying day. Of Viktor, of course, and the way he's looking down at Jayce in this moment.
Haloed by the sun, even more beautiful than when he had towered over every soul in creation, wreathed in magic and might - because this is Viktor, his Viktor, with his thin, uneven shoulders, and the slight crookedness to his nose from a fall as a little toddler, and moles everywhere, and untamable hair, and his beautiful golden eyes that can only be outshone by his beautiful golden heart, full of kindness and curiosity and ruthless drive to do good.
Had it seriously taken the apocalypse for Jayce to realize he loves this man above anything and everything?
It must be written quite plainly on his face, because Viktor's eyes widen as he realizes something, and takes a step forward, to-to what?
With that thought lancing his chest and lighting up his brain in bursts of color, he very nearly rockets to his feet, knee be damned, when Viktor's wide eyes go even wider as his knee buckles and the bubble bursts a little.
"Ngah!" he sputters, arms flailing, the blanket flapping a little as he instinctively reaches for a crutch that rudely neglected to materialize on the other side with them. But Jayce is already moving, arms outstretched. Viktor reaches back, and he is caught in broad hands that immediately pull him closer and squeeze him to Jayce's chest. They fall back onto the grass, Jayce giving a little oof! as Viktor's weight lands atop him.
For a second they're nose to nose, and Jayce looks up at Viktor with all the love in every atom in his body. Viktor looks back with the same love written plainly on his own face.
They don't say a word. They don't need to - Jayce tugs him close once more, presses his cheek to the top of Viktor's sun-warmed head, and Viktor listens to Jayce's heart thunder under his ear. He's lifted, ever so slightly, by Jayce's breathing, a gentle rocking that provides a steady countermeasure to his own rabbit-fast pulse. Jayce holds Viktor like he'll never let go again, and he might just not. Viktor tucks his head under Jacye's chin and he starts laughing as it hits him too.
That they're here, together - and no matter what's waiting for them beyond this meadow, beyond this moment - that will never change again.
fun fact, while most mini horses and ponies look fat, like the shetland above, some are genuinely just scaled down versions of regular horses
you look at this and think “wow that’s a horse i bet I could ride that” but you’d be wrong because this is an american shetty and it’s the size of a large dog
also fun fact, this is the world’s smallest horse, thumbelina
and this is the largest horse ever, brooklyn supreme
