Ugh I don’t have time to write the fic yet so here’s what keeps bonking around my brain
Jayce becomes Viktor’s internal monologue for taking care of himself and his chronic issues.
It takes months of observation before Jayce starts piping up when he knows Viktor is doing something that will cause him pain later.
First it’s just big things— moving him to the couch when he falls asleep on the desk. Getting him a rolling stool and then making him sit on it when he’s spent too long standing at the chalk board.
Then it becomes smaller things. When Viktor has his bad leg bent across his other knee, twisting his back and hip and leg all in the wrong direction, Jayce will come over with a chair and a pillow to prop it on. Jayce clears all of the top and bottom shelves in the lab, only having things that are within Viktor’s normal range of motion. He tuts when ever he hears Viktor get up to go across the lab briefly without his cane, not even looking up as he goes “nuh uh” until viktor sighs and picks the damn thing up. “It’s only 12 steps, Jayce, I can go 12 steps” “you make that walk 25 times a day. It’s adds up.” He’s even started setting an alarm for 2 pm every day where he makes them both stop and do stretches to combat the stiffness of sitting and writing for hours on end.
Slowly, viktor’s internal voice that tries to remind him that something he’s doing will make him hurt later shifts to sound like Jayce. “Be nice to yourself, V” “that’s gonna hurt later, don’t do that” “if you leave your leg like that you’ll have a hard time walking home.” Even things that Jayce has yet to see, like the correct configuration of pillows on his bed, the way that he has to lay his arms so that his back doesn’t tweak in his sleep, start getting corrected in his mind with a “nuh uh” instead of the usual “whatever”
By the first anniversary of their meeting, every thought he has that encourages him to be kind to himself comes in Jayce’s voice, Jayce being so synonymous in his mind with the desire to treat himself well and be mindful of his limits. Jayce has no idea how much of viktor’s routine now consists of choices fueled by the thought that Jayce would be disappointed if he knew he was doing something that would cause him pain later all because Jayce can’t help but love viktor until he loves himself.