Hi! I know this is a long shot, but will you continue the of bootyshorts and injuries series? xx
Omg hahahaha this message made me smile! It's been foreeeeever since I wrote this fic! Back in the day I really planned to write a continuation "The return of the booty shorts" hahahaha maybe I can find my notes for that somewhere! Sadly my fic writing days are behind me for now uwu real life and all that jazz but thank you for reminding me of that story haha maybe I should reread it myself 💕
The first time Viktor meets Jayce, he´s nothing more than nine years old. He´s been growing a lot lately so he might need to get a new cane soon. But since his dad has died and it´s just been himself and his mum, money´s more than just tight. His mum keeps picking up shifts at that big house where the people come and go and whenever she comes home early in the morning, she smells like sweet smoke and alcohol. Viktor doesn´t like it, but he says nothing, just snuggles closer once she slips into bed next to him, chasing all the warmth he can get. His mother is skinny but she still fusses over him. Over his messed-up leg and his hair that keeps on growing, over his scrubby little hands and the motor oil that seeps into his clothes and stains his pants. Over the little cuts and bruises he comes home with every day. She´s worried that other kids are mean to him but he just shakes his head. They don´t play with him, they can´t be mean if they don´t even look at him.
Viktor plays alone, usually. Down down down in one of the deepest, darkest parts of Zaun, where the sun hardly shines and the smog is thick and bitter on his tongue, Viktor usually plays near the small canal. It´s water coming from the Topside, he´s heard some kids say, a crack in the earth, a passageway up for everyone who´s brave enough. There are official ways, apparently, a bridge and an elevator, but they´re guarded. He´s never seen them, has never dared to wander too far from home, frightened by his mothers warnings.
They don´t play around, malá hvězda. They kill everyone from down here, they´re not your friends. Don´t ever go up there, don´t even try, you hear me?
Viktor has only ever nodded, too frightened to ask what they are. Mama had told him that they´re too far from the river and the bridge, that they don´t dare to come down here, that they´re too scared. That this means safety. Viktor isn´t too sure about that, but he trusts her. Who else can he trust, if not his Mama?
So he stays down there, rummages in the trash for metal and builds little toys. They´re wonky little things, crooked and ugly, but his mother still puts them all on the little shelf above their bed and gives him a kiss to the forehead. So Viktor keeps making them, keeps showing them to his mother who keeps kissing his forehead, keeps putting his little figurines up on the shelf for the both of them to see.
Sometimes Viktor wonders about that place up there, where the water runs clean and the sun is supposed to shine all the time. He wonders if there are kids like himself up there, not dirty and hungry, but curious, adventurous. He wonders what he´s done to deserve the life he and his mother have to live, what he needs to do to change it. Because he would. For his mother to stop having to work in that big house where the people come and go and the air is sweet and pink and heavy, for them to be a family again. He wonders if the kids up there have dreams, or if they have everything; if they can even dream because they don´t wish for anything more, they can´t wish for anything more. That´d be sad, Viktor thinks, not being able to dream. He dreams, he does nothing but dream. Mama always calls him malá hvězda, little star. A few years ago shes told him about the place where he´s been born. Where she and his dad came from. About the clear, blue sky and the deep rich nights, about the moon and the stars. He´d love to see it some day. But he probably won´t.
He´s nine now and last week he´s met a man named Singed. While he´d been frightened by Singed and the strange cave-like house he lives in, he´d liked his pet. A big, soft pink thing with big big eyes and a slobbery, soft tongue. Rio, his name is. He had licked the grime and dirt from Viktor´s hand as a greeting and Viktor had laughed. He´d left with the promise from Singed, that he´d be allowed to return any time, take care of Rio with him.
He´s nine and on his way down the dim, wet alley, he hears a sound. It´s strange enough to see other kids his age in the immediate vicinity of his home, but to hear someone crying? Following the sound, Viktor tries but fails to keep the tap tap tap of his cane to a minimum. People don´t cry down here. Crying means weakness and weakness means death. Sometimes, when he was younger and still afraid of the dark, he´d cry into his pillow until his mother came home in the early early mornings and pulled him against her in a bony embrace, reminding him that crying would get him nowhere.
Rounding a corner, Viktor narrows his eyes. Nothing. Besides houses, stacked upon each other like the empty liquor boxes Viktor sometimes stumbles upon when exploring the trashcans of the bar just a couple of blocks from home. It smells like trash and smoke and very faintly like fried pine tart and Viktors stomach grumbles painfully. The noise continues, a bit louder now, and Viktor narrows his eyes at two large wooden boxes stacked upon each other against the side of a brick wall. Peaking around the corner, all he sees for a moment is a mop of dark hair and a pair of tan arms wrapped around knees. It´s a kid, he notices, a very clean, very well-dressed kid with a nasty gash on their knee.
“Hey,” he blurts out, because he´s curious and adventurous and because nobody else is here to see him.
Startled, the kid shrieks and pulls their legs further towards their chest. Still, the kid lifts their head. Big, hazel eyes blink back at Viktor, round cheeks dirty and streaky with tears, blood trickling down the right side of their face. It´s a boy, he notices, and he´s around Viktors age.
“Please don´t hurt me,” the boy whimpers, wiping his snotty nose on his shoulder. Tilting his head, Viktor watches the boy gasp for air and gasp for air and gasp for air. He starts breathing in a way that doesn´t sound quite right, all tight and short and shallow, so Viktor smacks his foot with the bottom of his cane.
“Ouch! What was that for?”, the boy whines, putting his hands over his feet.
“You were freaking out. Who are you? You´re not from here,” Viktor demands to know, still staring down at the boy.
“I´m Jayce,” he sniffles, then coughs. “I…was playing…and there was this crack…and I wanted to check it out and - and then I fell down and and I hit my head and my knee hurts and -”
Viktor ignores the rest of his rambling. He fell down. He could´ve only fallen down when he was at up there, the top.
“You´re a Topsider,” he interrupts, taking a little step back.
“I…I just wanna go back home to my Ma!"
A fresh batch of tears appear in Jayce´s eyes; while wiping them away, clearly frustrated, he bumps against the injury over his brow and starts crying even more, interrupted by the occasional cough that in the end makes him hiccup. He truly is a Topsider, he´s struggling with every inhale down here.
“Why´d you fall in the first place? Are you stupid?”
“N-No, I´m not stupid! Ma says I´m super smart!”
Tilting his head, Viktor absentmindedly taps his cane against the ground.
“What is that, anyways?”, Jayce asks, curiosity in his eyes while tears still roll down his cheeks.
“My cane. Problem?”
“Hm? No! Why do you have it?”
“I need it to walk. Mama says my leg was fucked when I was born so I can´t walk like the normal kids.”
With a gasp, Jayce stares up at him.
“You said a bad word,” he whispers. “Ma always gets mad when I curse.”
“Your Ma sounds weird,” notices Viktor.
“She´s not! She´s the best in the world! Did you make that cane yourself? Can I see?”
“Don´t break it, you hear me?”
Hesitantly, Viktor hands his cane into Jayce´s patiently waiting hands and leans against the box for stability instead. But Jayce doesn´t swing it around like a sword like the other kids used to when they stole his cane - when they still paid attention to him. Instead, he carefully places it in his now folded legs and lets his finger travel over the bolts and screws and folded metal.
“You really made that yourself?” When Viktor nods, Jayce´s entire face lights up. “That´s so cool! Dad sometimes lets me help out in the forge but he says I´m too young to build my own stuff yet. I really really badly want to, though! Did your dad teach you that?”
“No,” frowns Viktor, taking his cane back. “My dad is dead. I taught me all myself.”
“Oh.” For a moment, Jayce looks unsure of what to say next.
“I think I know how to get you back home. Come on.”
Viktor watches Jayce struggle to stand and wince when he puts weight on his hurt leg. Still, he pulls his brows together in determination and shows Viktor to lead the way.
They mostly get through without problems. Viktor has only been in the Lanes a couple of times, mostly because his mother showed him where to get help, if anything ever were to happen to her. From time to time Viktor pushes Jayce into the shadow of houses before following him. Most people here aren´t unkind to kids as long as you stay out of their way. By the time they reach the Last Drop, Viktor is shaking in exhaustion and Jayce is back to being whiny and teary-eyed. Viktor doesn´t dare enter through the main door because Jayce is a Topsider and he´s not sure what people might do if they find out, so he sneaks around the back. It takes some knocking but then, the wooden door creaks open and a large shadow falls into the alleyway.
“Viktor! Boy, are you lucky I´ve been back here. Who´s your friend?”
Vander looks like always, big and hulky and kind. He´s one of the few grownups Viktor likes.
“That´s Jayce,” he explains. “He´s from the Topside, he´s hurt. Help him.”
He´s about to turn and leave when Vander, a laugh on his lips and a heavy hand on Viktor´s shoulder, stops him.
“Not so fast, young man. You two are gonna come inside and tell me exactly what happened. Come on, no need to look at me like that. In you go. Felicia will be excited to see you.”
Lighting up a bit, Viktor slips past Jayce and Vander and enters the backrooms of Vander´s bar. Here, between boxes upon boxes of drinks and food, stands an old, sat-through couch. Jaycee sneezes when Viktor flops down on it and temptively sits on the edge next to him, looking around with big, scared eyes.
“I´m Vander, kid, it´s alright. I´ll be right back, yeah?” Jayce nods lightly and follows Vander leaving with his eyes before turning towards Viktor.
“What is this place? I´m scared…”
“A bar,” Viktor explains, stretching his aching leg out in front of him. “Mama said that if I´m ever in trouble, Vander would know what to do. So that´s what I´m doing.”
The door opens again and Vander returns, followed by Felicia. Viktor has only seen her twice out of the few times he´s been here, but she´s nice. Her dark purple hair has been braided and she´s wearing a dress similar to the one his mother used to wear years and years ago. Nervously, she glances over towards Vander, who rolls his eyes and nudges her closer.
“They´re kids, Fel, you´ll be fine.”
Upon coming closer, Viktor notices her holding a small leather bag in a hand that she, once she´s in front of Jayce, places on the ground.
“I´ll just patch you up, yeah?”, she smiles softly, warm eyes taking in Jayce´s frightened, dirty appearance. While his wounds get cleaned, Felicia wraps him up into a conversation exciting enough for him to chatter on and on and completely forget about the pain.
“Tell me, kid,” Vander starts, sitting on a chair opposite of Viktor. “What exactly happened here?”
“I found him,” Viktor frowns. “He was crying and I heard it. Said he fell through a crack all the way down here.”
“Oh, you poor thing,” Felicia sighs, patting Jayce´s hair while putting a bandaid over the wound on his forehead.
“I was just playing and wanted to check it out,” mumbles Jayce quietly, eyes cast down to his trembling hands. “I…tried to ask for help but this guy just…yelled at me…so I ran.”
“You did good, bringing him here.” Vander nods approvingly, making Viktor´s chest swell in pride. “I´ll bring you back up, yeah? To the bridge, the Enforcers will bring you back home.”
“But my mum can´t find out where I was! She´s gonna be so mad!”
“We´ll see what I can do,” calms Vander him down, chuckling. “Let´s get you boys some food and then it´s time for you to go back home, hm?”
Vander leaves the room again, taking Felicia with him. It´s quiet for a moment before Jayce speaks up again.
“She was nice,” he mumbles, cheeks rosy. Viktor frowns, but says nothing.
“Can…can we meet again some day?”
That makes Viktor turn his head, staring at Jayce in disbelief.
“What?”
“Meet…again…I don´t have many friends my age and…you helped me and…maybe you can teach me how to build things? I´m a really quick learner!”
“How in the world would you even manage to come down here? Fall through another crack?”
Frowning, Jayce crosses his arms in front of his chest. “No. I´ll let you know that I´m very fast and sneaky. I´ll find a way!
“You have a deathwish,” Viktor notices. It´s the next plausible explanation of why anyone would voluntarily come down here.
“I don´t! I just…don´t have anyone to play with!”
Blinking, Viktor tilts his head to the side, thinking. He would´ve thought that people up there live in gluttony, having too much of everything, even friends. Huh.
“...fine. But I´m not coming up there. Ever.”
“And I don´t want to go back to where you found me…the air was very bad down there.”
“It´s bad everywhere down here. It´s your peoples fault,” grumbles Viktor, feeling protective for reasons he doesn´t quite understand.
“I´m sorry that my people are mean to your people,” mumbles Jayce, eyes large and honest. It´s a bit unbearable to look at him. “But I won´t be mean to you! Promise. We can be friends and friends are never ever mean to each other!”
“...okay.”
“You´re Viktor, right? Cool! Ma says it´s important to say thank you, so, thank you for helping me!”
Vander comes back with two smoking bowls of silverberry porridge and Viktor eats so fast, he burns the roof of his mouth. It´s so worth it. Jayce, next to him, is slow and careful in trying it but when he does, his eyes light up again and he grins at Viktor.
Because Jayce is a topsider and apparently gets a lot of food at home, he has some leftovers that Viktor happily devours as well. The hot food has made him warm and sleepy but there´s no time to take a nap before Vander returns once more, this time with his coat in his arm.
“Ready to go?”
Viktor follows the two outside but stops at the corner of the Last Drop. Never before has he gone even a step further. Jayce, holding onto Vanders hand, takes a couple of steps before noticing that Viktor is not behind him. Instead of asking, he just turns and waves, a huge smile on his face that shows a gap in his teeth Viktor hasn´t noticed before.
“See you soon, yeah?”
Nodding, Viktor timidly raises a hand and waves back. He stays until Vander and Jayce, now no more than two figures in the smog, fully disappear. Then, he turns and starts the tiring, gruesome walk back home without waiting for Vander to return. That night, he doesn´t tell his mother where he´s been, what has happened, who he´s met, he just nods when she asks if he had a nice day and lets her pull him closer, lulled into sleep by her stroking his hair.
bbno$ and will neff in complete jayvik cosplay doing a photo shoot with all the money donated going to assist the LA wildfires it is quite literally a monday
