Total Organ Failure

"The most important part of any fandom experience is scrolling through AO3 at 4 am during the honeymoon period of the hyperfixation and reading a fic that is so beautifully written that it permanently alters your brain chemistry and haunts you for years to come"

[Tucker on Twitter]

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Since his first breath of sentience, there has been an amorphous truth shadowing his existence which only really solidified into something nameable when he was ten and everyone thought there were only three states of matter in his class despite his impassioned attempts to convince them otherwise: that no one would ever understand him. Either because they weren’t trying to or because they really, genuinely couldn’t. The latter possibility terrified him and made him feel an acute sense of aloneness for about a second before he realized that he didn’t give a shit.

So Jayce carries the freedom of this certainty with him to university, where it is promptly shattered with quiet dignity by a dark-haired boy whose sincerity is stranger than his accent. He moves his hands while speaking as though moving his words into meaning; it’s impossible not to watch. Nineteen years old and he still believes in everything. Life must be unbearable. []

Maybe in another universe he never meets Viktor. Maybe in another universe humanity never bothers to look up at the stars. For the first time in his life Jayce meets someone who doesn’t sound like white noise and it is a relief he hadn’t known possible. Like the first crackling of another voice through the radio years after capitalism has wasted the world into nothing. Like a knife through his stomach, finding itself a home among the other sharp things under his skin. Viktor burns with the obvious conviction of a higher purpose too violently honest to miss. Jayce asks him one night while they’re both misusing library property if he’s going to save the world and Viktor says yes.

Somehow, despite every truth he's learned and held close for nineteen years, Jayce believes him.

[From "total organ failure" by ptimusprime33 (engineering)]

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[Photo: Hexcore necklace by @rocklovejewelry]