Human Canary AU

og image under cut

Me, sobbing:

Much as we would like some sort of reconciliation, or at least for them to be on speaking terms and able to TALK about what happened

We will likely have to go through something like this first assuming one of them doesn't die before that happens HEY WHO SAID THAT

Mordecai: *stirring his tea* Maybe I just like it with salt.  

Little animation test for our favorite rat <3

Part 1 Part 2

"Strelyay, matematik.."

The permission hung in the air for a fraction of a second—a variable that Mordecai didn’t bother to verify. He didn't calculate the angle. He didn't assess the risk. For the first time in his life, he didn't check the math.

He lunged.

It wasn't a smooth, cinematic motion. It was a collision. Mordecai surged forward across the center console, ignoring the gear shift digging into his hip, ignoring the awkward twist of his spine. His hands, usually so careful with their grip, scrambled frantically, snatching at the rough wool of Viktor’s coat to haul himself in.

He crashed his mouth against Viktor’s with a force that was equal parts violence and starvation.

There was a clatter of frames as Mordecai’s glasses knocked against Viktor’s nose, skewing wildly, but neither of them corrected it. Mordecai didn't care. He was drowning, and Viktor was the only solid thing in a universe of water. He kissed him like he was trying to inhale him, messy and desperate, tasting of sharp, expensive gin and the bitter, burnt-sugar ghost of clove cigarettes.

It was chaotic. It was sloppy. It was perfect.

Viktor let out a low, surprised grunt into the kiss, the sound vibrating in his throat like a growl, but he didn't pull back. He took the impact the way he took everything else: like a stone wall taking a wave. He held his ground.

Mordecai’s gloves found purchase on Viktor’s shoulders, his fingers digging in hard enough that the sharp points of his claws pricked through the heavy fabric. He needed to be sure. He needed the tactile confirmation that this wasn't a hallucination brought on by blood loss or alcohol. He dragged his hands up, fumbling blindly until he found the thick, corded muscle of Viktor’s neck, his thumbs pressing into the pulse point, feeling the heavy, steady thud of life beneath the fur.

Real. The data point screamed through his nervous system. Real. Constant. Here.

Viktor shifted, the leather seat groaning under the shifting weight, and finally, the statue moved. His large hand, still resting on the back of Mordecai’s neck, tightened its grip, not to push, but to anchor. He tilted his head, deepening the contact, opening his mouth to allow the frantic energy of the smaller cat in, meeting the desperation with a slow, heavy heat that tasted of cheap tobacco and patience.

The kiss shifted then. It went from a collision to a devouring.

Mordecai made a small, broken noise in the back of his throat—a whimper that had no place in the vocabulary of a hitman—and pressed closer, trying to eliminate the physics of space between them. He felt Viktor’s other hand come up, massive and warm, landing on his waist to stabilize him, keeping him from tumbling completely over the console.

The world outside the car ceased to exist. There was no alley, no truce, no Marigold, no Lackadaisy. There was only the heat of the cabin, the smell of damp wool, and the overwhelming, grounding friction of Viktor’s mouth moving against his. It was a disorderly, unformatted, terrifying mess of sensation, and Mordecai drank it down like it was the only clean water he’d seen in five years.

He tasted the years of silence. He tasted the apology he couldn't articulate. And beneath it all, he tasted the iron-clad forgiveness he didn't deserve.

When they finally broke apart, it wasn't by much. They separated only inches, just enough to drag air back into their lungs. Mordecai’s forehead dropped against Viktor’s, his breathing ragged and wet, his glasses hanging off one ear, his chest heaving against the solid wall of Viktor’s torso.

He didn't open his eyes. He didn't dare. He just stayed there, trembling in the aftermath, clutching Viktor’s lapels like they were the only thing keeping him from falling off the face of the earth.

Viktor pulled back only an inch, just enough to let the heavy, ragged sound of their breathing fill the small space between them. The wire-rimmed spectacles were a casualty of the collision, skewed diagonally across Mordecai’s face, one lens pressed uncomfortably against his cheekbone, the other aiming at the roof. They were a barrier and Viktor had no patience left for obstructions.

He didn't speak. He simply raised his hand, his thick fingers surprisingly deft as they hooked the frame. He slid the glasses off Mordecai’s face, careful not to snag the fur, stripping away the last layer of the mathematician's armor.

For a second, the streetlamp outside caught Mordecai’s face—stripped bare, eyes unfocused and blinking, looking young and terrifyingly open without the shield of his intellect. He looked blind. He looked like he was waiting for an impact.

Viktor placed the glasses on the dashboard with a soft clack, then immediately claimed the space they had occupied.

He was thankful for the darkness of the truck cab. The heavy shadows pooled in the corners, hiding the flush on his own neck, hiding the raw, unguarded hunger that he knew was contorting his face. In the dark, he wasn't the broken bodyguard or the cripple. He was just a force. He was just the night closing in.

He didn't wait for Mordecai to adjust to the blur. Viktor leaned in and captured his mouth again, but this time there was no frantic collision. This was deliberate. This was an excavation.

He kissed him with a heavy, bruising slowness, a thorough claiming that tasted of iron and heat. He tilted his head, deepening the angle, his tongue sweeping past Mordecai’s lips to taste the sharp tang of gin and the sweeter, darker taste of the man himself. It was a kiss that demanded everything—every secret, every equation, every lonely night of the last five years.

Mordecai made a noise low in his throat, a vibration of pure surrender, and leaned back.

It was instinct, pure and overriding. The logic centers of his brain, usually firing with constant calculations of posture and defense, simply went dark. The rigid, vertical line of his spine dissolved. He let gravity and Viktor take him, sliding down against the cracked leather of the passenger seat, his head tilting back to expose the pale, vulnerable arch of his throat. He opened up. He invited the weight.

Viktor followed him down. The center console dug into his hip, awkward and unforgiving, but neither of them gave a damn. Viktor shifted his bulk, leaning heavily over the gap, his broad shoulders blocking out the windshield, blocking out the alley, blocking out the entire world until the universe was reduced to the heat in this cabin.

His hand, still on the back of Mordecai’s neck, slid around to cup his jaw, his thumb pressing into the soft corner of his mouth, urging it wider. Mordecai complied instantly, desperate, his hands scrambling up to grip Viktor’s lapels, pulling him closer, harder, trying to eliminate the physics of space entirely.

They breathed each other's air, a hot, recycled rhythm. The kiss turned wet and messy, a tangle of tongues and teeth and the desperate friction of stubble against fur. It was the frantic, starving intimacy of two men who had spent half a decade starving in sight of a feast. Viktor groaned, a low rumble that vibrated through Mordecai’s chest, as he pressed harder, his weight pinning the smaller cat against the seat, grounding him, holding the variable down until it stopped shaking, until the only thing left was the constant, heavy pressure of their honesty.

Spice Warning.

Mordecai the worst flirt ever in all of St Louis, but his drunken little heart will try! Viktor having to hear non stop how great he is, how strong and dashing he is from his intoxicated partner...

The truce was held together by spit, grit, and the uneasy clinking of high-end glassware. It was a "peace summit" in name only—a gathering of St. Louis’s underworld factions in a neutral hotel ballroom, trying to carve up territory without carving up each other.

For Viktor Vasko, it was purgatory. He sat in a high-backed booth near the back, nursing a glass of amber liquid he hadn't touched in twenty minutes. His knees were throbbing in time with the bass fiddle from the bandstand.

Then, the impossible happened. The booth cushion depressed across from him.

Mordecai Heller slid in.

He didn't look like a man seeking a fight. He looked... uncharacteristically fluid. Usually, Mordecai moved like a geometry equation solving itself—sharp angles and rigid lines. Tonight, he moved like mercury. He signaled a passing waiter with a languid flick of his wrist that resulted in a fresh tumbler of gin appearing instantly.

"The air quality in here is atrocious," Mordecai stated. His voice was level, distinct, and terrifyingly calm. "And the Marigold gang is wearing polyester blends. It smells of melting plastic and desperation."

Viktor grunted, eyeing his old partner. "You are drinking."

"I am acclimating," Mordecai corrected, the words clipping out with practiced precision, though the pause between them was a fraction of a second too long. He held the glass up to the light, inspecting the condensation. "This is a social camouflage, Viktor. If one does not hold a beverage, one invites conversation. I am holding a beverage to repel the idiots. It is a tactical decision."

He took a long, deliberate swallow that would have made a lesser man cough. He didn't even blink.

"Besides," Mordecai added, setting the glass down on a wet napkin with a fastidious little pat. "The gin is the only thing in this establishment that has been properly distilled. The water likely contains cholera."

Viktor didn't blink. He didn't shift his weight. He just stared, his heavy brows knitting together like two tectonic plates colliding.

"No," Viktor rumbled, his voice dropping an octave, cutting under the noise of the jazz band. "You do not drink."

He pointed a thick, scarred finger at the glass.

"Seven Years," Viktor counted. "I know you Seven years. You drink coffee. You drink water—boiled only. You do not touch spirits. You say it makes the mind..." He tapped his own temple, struggling for the English word Mordecai had used a lifetime ago. "...fuzzy. Inaccurate."

Viktor leaned forward, the table creaking under his elbows. "You are not 'acclimating.' You are drunk."

Mordecai scoffed, a soft, sharp exhale of vapor and dismissal. "I am simply operating with reduced friction, Viktor. Do not confuse efficiency with intoxication. I am... enhanced."

But he didn't hold Viktor’s gaze. His eyes drifted. They slid down Viktor’s heavy frame, past the cheap fabric of his suit, and landed squarely under the table. On the leg Viktor had stretched out straight to relieve the pressure.

Mordecai stared at it. He stared at it for a long, uncomfortable moment, his expression unreadable behind the glint of his round spectacles. The air between them suddenly felt very thin.

"Does it hurt tonight?" Mordecai asked.

It wasn't taunting. It wasn't the cold, clinical assessment of a hitman checking his work. It was a genuine, quiet inquiry.

"The barometer is dropping," Mordecai continued, his voice lowering, losing that sharp, dangerous edge. "I imagine the pressure differential... is unpleasant. I remember you used to complain about your shoulder when the rain came. Now..." He gestured vaguely at the table leg, indicating the knee beneath. "Now there is more surface area for the ache."

Viktor stiffened, the muscles in his jaw bunching tight. The audacity was enough to make him forget the pain for a second.

He slammed his heavy hand onto the table. The silverware jumped. The candle flickered.

"You do this," Viktor snarled, his voice a low, gravelly rumble. He didn't pull the leg back; he planted the heavy brace firmer against the floor. "You put lead in bone, Mordecai. You don't get to ask. You don't get to make... polite conversation... about what you did."

He expected the cold look. The flat eyes. The logic. He expected Mordecai to tell him it was necessary. Tactical.

Instead, Mordecai… checked.

It was small. A sharp intake of breath through his nose. His ears pinned back flat against his skull instantly, and the hand holding the gin tightened so hard that the sharp points of his claws pricked through the leather of his gloves, scraping audibly against the glass.

It wasn't fear, exactly. It was a wince.

Viktor’s anger hit a speed bump. He blinked, the aggression stalling out, replaced by a heavy, suspicious confusion. Mordecai Heller did not flatten his ears like a scolded kitten. Mordecai Heller stared you down until you felt stupid for shouting.

Viktor leaned back slowly, pulling his massive frame away to give the smaller cat air, studying him like a map that had suddenly changed borders.

"I saw that," Viktor grunted, narrowing his one good eye.

He stuck two fingers into the air, catching the bartenders attention.

The waiter had barely withdrawn his hand before Mordecai’s gloved fingers snapped around the stem of the fresh martini. It wasn't his usual delicate grasp; it was a snatch. He brought it to his lips and downed a hazardous amount, a visible shudder rippling through his sleek frame as the gin bit back. His ears twitched, flicking away the sensation.

"Since when do you care if I yell?" Viktor asked again, the question hanging heavy in the smoke-filled air.

Heller shook his head, a tight, jerky motion, squeezing his eyes shut for a moment to fight the sting of the cocktail. When he opened them, the cold, mathematical gleam was gone, replaced by something glassy and uncomfortably raw.

"I just wanted to know if you were in pain," Mordecai murmured, staring into the olive at the bottom of his glass. "If it hurt."

He didn't add a caveat. He didn't explain the ballistics or the necessity of the angle or the fact that a headshot would have been cleaner. He just let the words sit there, naked and uncomfortable.

Viktor stared at him. The noise of the ballroom—the laughter, the clinking glass, the saxophones—seemed to fade into a dull roar. He searched Mordecai’s face for the trick. He looked for the sarcasm, the mockery, the cold detachment that usually armored the smaller cat.

It wasn't there.

Instead, Mordecai’s shoulders were slumped, the sharp lines of his suit failing to hide the way he seemed to be caving in on himself. His ears were tipped slightly sideways, not in irritation, but in defeat.

There was something in his eyes Viktor hadn't seen in a long time. Maybe never directed at him.

Regret.

It sat on Mordecai’s face like a physical weight, pulling his mouth down at the corners. It was the look of a man who had solved an equation perfectly, only to realize too late that the answer was something he couldn't live with.

Viktor opened his mouth to bark an insult, to tell him to shut up, but the sound died in his throat. He shifted in the booth, the heavy metal brace on his leg grinding against the floor.

"It hurts," Viktor said. It came out quieter than he intended. Rough. "When it rains. And when I sit too long. And when I look at you."

Mordecai’s claws clicked anxiously against the stem of his glass. He looked like he was trying to solve a puzzle with missing pieces, his brow furrowed in a way that crinkled his usually pristine hairline. He wanted to apologize. The impulse was there, rising up his throat like bile, but the mechanism for it was rusted shut. They were on opposite sides of the trench now. Tonight was supposed to be about territory lines and bootleg routes, not the jagged scar tissue of 1926.

"It's possible it is psychosomatic," Mordecai muttered, staring intently at the condensation weeping down his glass. He was grasping for logic, for a medical textbook explanation to shield him from the guilt. "Which is... fair. I caused you trauma. Significant trauma. You see me, and the neural pathways fire, remembering the impact. You see me and remember... God."

He trailed off, his voice cracking on the last word. His gaze unfocused, drifting a thousand yards away. He wasn't seeing the ballroom anymore. He was seeing the alleyway. The rain. The flash of the muzzle. The way Viktor had fallen like a demolished tower.

Viktor watched the memory eating him alive. He didn't like it. He reached out and nudged Mordecai’s elbow with a heavy knuckle—not hard, but enough to rattle the ice in his glass.

Mordecai jumped, blinking rapidly as the present rushed back in. He looked at Viktor, eyes wide and watery, waiting for the condemnation.

Viktor took a slow sip of his amber liquid, setting the glass down with a deliberate clack. He gestured vaguely at his stiff leg with his free hand.

"I think it just misses you," Viktor said.

The words hung in the air, absurd and heavy. It was a joke—a grim, Slovakian sort of joke—but Viktor didn't smile. He just watched Mordecai over the rim of his glass, his expression unreadable, waiting to see if the math-obsessed hitman would understand the variable he was offering.

Yes," Mordecai breathed out, the word rushing out of him like steam from a cracked valve. He set his glass down hard—too hard—sloshing gin onto the tablecloth. He didn't care. He leaned in, his eyes blown wide, practically vibrating with intensity.

"Perhaps it misses our symmetry. Precisely."

He waved a hand in a frantic, encompassing arc. "We were a closed loop, Viktor. A perfectly balanced equation. I provided the trajectory, the calculus, the finesse... and you..." He pointed a shaking finger at Viktor’s chest. "You provided the mass. The kinetic energy. You were the irresistible force to my precision guidance."

Viktor took a drink, watching Mordecai unravel. "I was just muscle, Mordecai."

"Do not reduce it to mere biology!" Mordecai snapped, though there was no bite in it, only passionate correction.

"You were a constant. In a universe of chaotic variables, you were a fixed point. Do you remember the job at the railyard? With the crates of Canadian whiskey and those idiots from the North Side?"

Viktor nodded slowly. "I remember. You complained about dust on your suit."

"I complained because they were messy!" Mordecai insisted, his voice rising, drawing a few wary glances from nearby tables. "But you... you were magnificent. You walked through that door like a force of nature. I didn't even have to draw my weapon for the first three minutes. I just watched you work. It was like watching a glacier carve a valley. Efficient. Brutal. Silent."

Mordecai grabbed his glass again, sloshing it dangerously as he gestured.

"These people I work with now? The Savoy siblings?" Mordecai let out a wet, derisive noise. "Variables. Chaos. Nicodeme is a sledgehammer swung by a toddler, and Serafine is... statistically improbable. But you, Viktor... you knew the rhythm. I stepped left, you stepped right. I reloaded, you covered. I signaled, you broke a jaw. It was poetry."

He slumped forward, resting his forehead in his hand, his elbow slipping slightly in the spilled gin.

"You were the only person," Mordecai mumbled into his palm, "the only one.."

Viktor sat in silence for a long moment. He looked at the disheveled, brilliant, broken man across from him. He felt a strange tightness in his chest that had nothing to do with his heart condition.

"You talk about me like I am favorite wrench," Viktor grunted, but his voice was soft. "But... I remember the railyard. You shot the light out so they couldn't see me coming. You covered me."

Mordecai lifted his head from his hand. His glasses were crooked now—an unheard-of state of affairs—and his eyes were swimming, the pupils blown wide and dark. He looked around the ballroom, sneering at the Marigold agents in their cheap suits and the Lackadaisy crew huddling near the buffet.

"I would cover you anywhere, Viktor," Mordecai stated, his voice dropping to a fierce, conspiratorial hiss. He leaned over the table, invading Viktor's personal space, ignoring the boundaries he usually enforced with a ruler. "Even here. Even tonight."

It wasn't the air conditioning. It wasn't the pain in his leg. That shockwave was something older, something buried deep under layers of scar tissue and resentment. It was the terrifying, electric feeling of being trusted.

For five years, Viktor had been a tool. A guard dog. A heavy object to be moved in front of bullets. But hearing Mordecai—this precise, traitorous, brilliant little calculator—swear loyalty to him in the middle of a room full of enemies?

It made Viktor’s breath hitch in his throat.

"If the bullets started flying... if this fragile little treaty dissolved into the chaos it deserves... I would calculate every trajectory. I would neutralize the threats. I would clear the path." Heller locked eyes with Viktor, his expression deadly serious.

"I would shoot Nicodeme first. Then the trumpet player. Then anyone who looked at you sideways."

He stared at the smaller cat. Mordecai was vibrating with the intensity of his own confession, leaning so far over the table that his tie was dipping into the candle flame.

Viktor reached out. His hand, massive and scarred, moved slowly. He didn't push Mordecai away. He didn't grab him by the collar.

Instead, with a surprising, clumsy gentleness, Viktor pinched the bridge of Mordecai’s spectacles and tilted them back to level.

"You are a mess, Heller," Viktor rumbled, his voice rougher than usual. He didn't pull his hand back immediately. His thumb brushed against Mordecai’s cheekbone—just for a second. "You talk treason. You talk madness."

He leaned in, matching Mordecai’s proximity, lowering his voice to a subsonic growl that only the two of them could hear.

"But if you shoot Nicodeme... aim for the liver. He is wearing a vest."

Viktor had just leveled Mordecai's glasses, his thumb brushing the cheekbone, and was pulling back when Mordecai moved.

It wasn't a calculated strike. It wasn't swift. Mordecai’s hand drifted up, fighting the gravity of the gin and the weight of five years of silence. His fingers trembled slightly before landing softly, not on a weapon or a lapel, but on the worn leather strap of Viktor’s eyepatch.

He traced the line of it where it crossed Viktor’s temple.

"We forget ourselves..." Mordecai breathed, the realization hitting him even as his fingers lingered on the prohibited territory of Viktor's face.

He glanced around, eyes wide and paranoid, but the ballroom was a chaotic ecosystem that had forgotten them entirely. Rocky was now balancing a spoon on his nose; the Savoy siblings were shouting over a spilled drink. No one was checking the dark corner where a Marigold man was touching a Lackadaisy man with something that looked terrifyingly like tenderness.

Mordecai’s gaze snapped back to Viktor, his thumb brushing the strap again.

"You kept it," Mordecai murmured, as if verifying the data point.

"It's efficient," Viktor replied, and a soft, genuine grin formed at the corner of his mouth—the kind that usually didn't survive in this line of work.

Mordecai stared at that grin for a second too long. Then, the sensory overload of the room seemed to crash back in on him. He winced, his ears flattening against his skull.

"It is loud here."

"Yes," Viktor replied immediately, catching the suggestion before it was even fully formed.

Viktor shifted, the booth groaning as he prepared to rise. He didn't ask where they were going. He didn't ask if it was wise. He simply slid out, his heavy boot hitting the floor with a solid thud, and offered his body as a barrier against the room.

Mordecai attempted to stand with his usual fluid grace. He failed spectacularly.

The moment he put weight on his feet, the world tilted on its axis. He swayed, his hand shooting out blindly to find purchase.

It didn't find the table. It found Viktor’s arm.

Viktor didn't budge. He was a statue, a pillar of concrete and cheap wool. He caught Mordecai’s weight without even blinking, his large hand cupping the smaller cat’s elbow to steady him.

"Careful," Viktor rumbled, stepping in close so his broad shoulders blocked Mordecai from the view of the Marigold table. "Your equilibrium is... compromised."

"The floor is uneven," Mordecai lied, staring at his own feet with betrayal. "The architect should be shot."

Then poor Mordecai getting his compromised mind blown by Viktor's willingness to show him kindness despite everything. Maybe the big guy knows that Mordecai was trying to get him out of danger through extreme measures

The heavy steel service door clicked shut behind them, severing the connection to the ballroom like a guillotine. The roar of the jazz band was instantly replaced by the low, wet hum of the city night and the distant hiss of traffic.

The alley was cooler, damp with the earlier rain, and smelled of wet brick and exhaust—a scent that, for both of them, felt more like home than the perfume inside.

Mordecai inhaled sharply, the cold air hitting his gin-soaked lungs, and promptly stumbled over a crack in the pavement.

"The topographic variance of this alley is unacceptable," Mordecai complained, his words slightly slurred but his tone indignant. He gripped Viktor’s arm tighter, his claws digging into the wool of Viktor’s coat. "It is a hazard. Someone should file a grievance."

"Lift feet," Viktor grunted, adjusting his stance to take more of the smaller cat’s weight.

He moved them with a grim, practiced efficiency. Viktor ignored the main lot where the limousines were gleaming under the streetlamps. He knew better. When you walked into a room full of people who wanted you dead, you didn't park with the valet. You parked where you could leave without reversing.

His truck—a dark, heavy-set thing, courtesy of Mitiz's fling, that looked more like a battering ram than a vehicle—was tucked deep in the shadows near the loading dock, nose pointing toward the street.

"You parked in the delivery zone," Mordecai observed, squinting at the vehicle as they approached. "That is... contrary to signage."

"It is tactical," Viktor corrected. He fished his keys from his pocket, the metal jingling softly. "Marigold parks in front. I park where I can drive through fence if I have to."

He hauled the passenger door open. It creaked, a heavy, solid sound.

"Get in."

Mordecai hesitated, looking at the open door, then at Viktor. He looked like he wanted to argue the logic of driving through fences, but his equilibrium gave a dangerous wobble. He surrendered to gravity and basically fell into the passenger seat.

Viktor caught the door before it could slam on Mordecai’s tail, guiding it shut with a firm thud.

He walked around the hood, limping heavily now that he didn't have to hold himself upright for an audience. He slid into the driver's seat, the springs groaning under his bulk, and pulled the door closed. The silence in the car was absolute. No music. No shouting. Just the smell of old leather, machine oil, and the faint scent of juniper emanating from the passenger seat.

Viktor didn't start the engine. He just sat there, hands gripping the steering wheel, staring out at the brick wall of the alley, letting the quiet settle the ringing in his ears. Beside him, Mordecai slid down in the seat until his head hit the leather rest, his glasses now fully askew.

"Secure location achieved," Mordecai mumbled, closing his eyes.

The silence was beautiful. It was a physical weight, pressing out the memory of the saxophone and the screaming trumpet. They just breathed, the air in the car cycling between them, warm and smelling faintly of Viktor’s cheap soap and Mordecai’s expensive clove cigarettes.

Viktor watched him. He watched the way Mordecai’s chest rose and fell, the way the tension was slowly bleeding out of his frame, leaving him loose and uncharacteristically vulnerable against the cracked leather seat. He looked less like a weapon and more like a man who had been awake for five years straight and just closed his eyes for the first time.

Viktor opened his mouth. He wanted to say something—about the truce, about the leg, about how quiet the car was—but Mordecai beat him to it.

"I missed you too..." Mordecai murmured, his eyes still closed. "I am not good at expressing... feelings."

He lifted a hand, waving it vaguely in the air as if trying to swat away a fly.

"It is... inefficient. It clouds the diagnostic. Emotions are data corruption, Viktor. Usually, I quarantine them."

He cracked one eye open, the green iris unfocused and swimming in the dim light of the dashboard.

"But the quarantine has failed," Mordecai stated simply. "And the data is... overwhelming."

He turned his head on the headrest, lulling to the side to look at Viktor.

"Since I left... the equation has been unbalanced," Mordecai explained, his voice quiet and clinical, yet trembling at the edges. "I have calculated the variables. I have better funding now. I have superior weaponry. The Marigold organization offers a dental plan. Statistically, my life has improved by forty-two percent."

He let out a sharp, bitter laugh that turned into a sigh.

"But I am... unmoored. The people I work with, they are entropy. Chaos. I spend all my energy calculating their errors, predicting their failures. It is exhausting. It is infinite noise."

Mordecai reached out, his hand drifting across the center console until his fingertips brushed against Viktor’s coat sleeve.

"You were silence, Viktor. You were the constant. When I stood next to you, I did not have to calculate the floor. I knew where the floor was because you were standing on it. You were... gravity."

He tapped Viktor’s arm, a slow, clumsy rhythm.

Viktor looked down at the hand resting on his sleeve. It was a gloved, trembling thing—the hand of a man who claimed to value precision but was currently clinging to the past like a lifeline.

"Gravity," Viktor repeated softly, testing the word. It felt heavy in his mouth.

He turned his head slowly, the leather of the seat creaking, and looked at Mordecai. There was no anger left in his one good eye. The rage that had fueled him for five years—the fire he’d used to burn away the pain of the therapy and the brace—had sputtered out, leaving something much colder and much harder to look at.

It was just hurt. A deep, confused, festering wound that had never scabbed over.

"Mordecai," Viktor said, his voice dropping so low it was barely a vibration in the quiet car. It wasn't an interrogation. It was a plea.

"If I was 'constant... if we were this 'sym-metry'..."

Viktor swallowed, his throat clicking. He reached over and covered Mordecai’s hand with his own. He didn't squeeze. He just held it there, trapping the trembling.

"Why did you leave?"

He paused, searching Mordecai’s face, looking for the man behind the glasses.

"And why..." Viktor’s voice cracked, just a fraction. "Why did you have to leave like that? You didn't just walk away, Mordecai. You walked through me. You broke me to get to the door. Like Obstacle"

"An obstacle?" Mordecai choked on the word. He looked as if Viktor had slapped him. "No. No, Viktor... you were the entirety."

He pulled his hand back, gripping his own knees, his knuckles creaking in their gloves

"You were the only thing in that godforsaken organization that made sense. You were the anchor...."

He looked up, his eyes wide and unguarded behind the crooked glasses.

"You were my partner. You were the only reason I stayed as long as I did. I calculated every day based on you. Where you were. If you were safe. You were the entire equation."

"Then why?" Viktor asked, his voice rough, the hurt plain in the single syllable.

"Because you wouldn't come with me!" Mordecai cried out, a sudden flare of drunken misery. "I was leaving a sinking ship, Viktor. And you... you were chained to the deck. You wouldn't let go...you'd never leave her, for his sake."

He squeezed his eyes shut, shaking his head.

"I had to stop you. If I just ran, you would have chased me. You would have hunted me down. And then..."

He swallowed hard.

"Then one of us would have had to kill the other. And I knew... I knew I couldn't kill you. The probability was zero. I looked at the gun, and I looked at your head, and the math returned 'error.' I couldn't do it."

He gestured vaguely at the leg brace hidden under the dashboard.

"So I... compromised. I aimed low. Because I am a coward. And because I needed you to stay alive, even if you hated me for it. Having you hate me was... statistically preferable to having you dead."

Viktor watched him. He saw the frantic calculations spinning behind those green eyes, the desperate attempt to justify heartbreak with arithmetic. He knew Mordecai. He knew that when the little man started talking about probabilities and equations, it was because the truth was too big to fit in his mouth.

"We could have—" Viktor started, his voice a low rumble, reaching for a reality where things had gone differently.

"Could we?" Mordecai cut in, sharp and defensive. He turned away, staring out the windshield at the brick wall of the alley, his jaw tight. "Look at us, Viktor. Look at the variables. These are the men we are. We are implements. We spill and clean blood. For the men with power and coin. We do not get happy endings. We get severance packages or shallow graves."

"Stop," Viktor said. It wasn't a command; it was an anchor. "Stop acting like you are machine. Like you are without choice."

"I am a function of my environment!" Mordecai snapped, his hands fluttering in agitation. "To pretend otherwise is a logical fallacy. I operate within the constraints of—"

"What do you want?" Viktor interrupted, leaning across the center console. The leather creaked under his weight.

"You trivialize the complexity of—"

"What do you want, Heller?" Viktor’s voice rose, filling the small cabin of the car. He wasn't asking for a mission report. He wasn't asking for a strategy. He was stripping the wires.

"Vasko, stop," Mordecai warned, his voice trembling. He shrank back against the door, cornered by the question.

"Mordecai." Viktor didn't move. He just said the name. He put the full weight of their history into it. The railyards. The late nights. The coffee. The bullet. "I said stop-" Heller shot back. "Čo odo mňa chceš?!"

Something in Mordecai snapped. The wire pulled too tight and finally broke.

"Ich will dich!"

The scream filled the car, shocking in its volume. Mordecai stared at Viktor, chest heaving, his eyes wide and wet and terrified. The silence that followed was deafening.

Then the dam broke completely.

"I want to breathe," Mordecai rasped, the words tumbling out in a frantic, disjointed stream. He clutched at his chest, his gloved fingers digging into his tie. "I want to stop holding my breath. I have been holding it for five years, Viktor. Every day. Every minute. I wake up and I calculate the odds of survival and I hold my breath until I am back behind a locked door."

He leaned forward, desperate, his glasses slipping down his nose again.

"I see you," he whispered, frantic. "I wait for you. In every crowd, in every job. I scan the perimeter and I am looking for the eyepatch. I watch for you. I check the obituaries. I check the hospital admissions."

He reached out, grabbing Viktor’s coat with both hands, shaking him slightly.

"I want to know that no matter what, you are okay because I am sure of it. Not because I estimated it. Not because I hoped for it. I want to be the one who ensures it. I want to stand next to you and know that the variable is secure."

He choked on an exasperated breath, his head dropping until his forehead rested against Viktor’s shoulder

"I want the silence back," he mumbled into the wool. "I want the constant."

Viktor sat there, a statue carved out of conflict.

His knee throbbed—a sharp, hot line of pain that shot up his thigh, keeping time with his heartbeat. He shot you. The thought was a jagged stone in his throat. He crippled you. He left you. The logic was sound. The anger was justified. It should have been enough to make him shove the smaller man away, to open the door and kick him back out into the cold reality of the alley.

But Mordecai was shaking against his chest.

The vibration of those sobs traveled through the layers of wool and cheap cotton, sinking straight into Viktor’s ribs. It was a terrible, undoing sensation. To hear the most composed, arrogant, precise creature he had ever known reduced to this—a shivering, weeping mess begging for a constant.

It was unfair. It was cheating.

Viktor let out a long, ragged breath that rattled in his chest. The fight went out of him. It didn't leave with a bang; it just drained away, leaving him tired and aching and unable to deny the truth.

He lifted his hand. It hovered for a second, heavy and scarred, a final hesitation.

Then he let it drop.

His palm landed on the back of Mordecai’s neck, his fingers curling into the fur at the base of his skull. It wasn't a gentle touch—it was a grip. Solid. Heavy. Grounding.

"Quiet," Viktor rumbled.

It wasn't a command to shut up. It was a command to stop breaking.

He pulled Mordecai closer, tucking the smaller cat’s head firmly under his chin, shielding him from the world, from the logic, from the consequences.

touching. It's ok.

"Damn you," Viktor whispered into the silence of the car, his voice thick. "You make it very hard to hate you, Heller."

He shifted his leg, wincing at the pop of the joint, and leaned his cheek against the top of Mordecai’s head.

"You want constant?" Viktor grunted, his hand rubbing a slow, heavy circle between Mordecai's shoulder blades. "I am here. I go nowhere."

Mordecai stiffened slightly under the weight of the hand, then melted. He pulled back just enough to tilt his head up, the leather of the seat creaking softly behind him.

In the dim, amber light filtering in from the alley’s lone streetlamp, Viktor looked like a landscape carved out of granite.

Mordecai’s eyes traced the lines of him with a drunk, hungry fascination. He usually detested asymmetry—it was an error, a flaw—but on Viktor, the damage was compelling. The scar tissue around the eyepatch wasn't ugly; it was history. It was a topographical map of survival.

He looked at the heavy, square line of Viktor's jaw. It was stubborn. Immovable. A load-bearing wall that could hold up a collapsing roof. Mordecai felt a dizzying rush of appreciation for that sheer structural integrity. In a world of variables and fragile things that broke under pressure, Viktor was built to last.

Mordecai’s gaze drifted lower.

It snagged on the rough texture of Viktor’s coat, then moved to the throat, thick and corded with muscle, and finally, inevitably, settled on his mouth.

It was a stern mouth. It wasn't designed for smiling. The corners were usually pulled down in a grimace of concentration or irritation. It was broad, the lips slightly chapped from the cold and the cheap cigarettes he insisted on smoking.

There was no softness there, and that was exactly what pulled at Mordecai’s chest. It was a mouth that issued commands. A mouth that didn't waste movement.

Mordecai stared at it, his own breathing shallow. He found himself calculating the distance. The friction. The impossible, terrifying variable of what it would feel like to press against something that solid.

"You still look.." Mordecai murmured, his voice barely a ghost of sound, his eyes locked on the line of Viktor’s lower lip. "...structurally sound."

Viktor didn't need his missing eye to see the trajectory of that stare. It was a tangible thing, heavy and electric, landing on him with the weight of a physical touch.

He sat motionless, trapped in the amber-lit stasis of the car cabin, feeling the air between them thicken until it felt like breathing syrup. He watched Mordecai watching him. It was a revelation. For years, Viktor had been looked at in two ways: as a threat to be neutralized, or as a tool to be utilized. He was a battering ram, a shield, a wall of meat and fur to stand between expensive people and bad consequences. Even Mitzi looked past him sometimes, looking only at the safety he provided.

But Mordecai? Mordecai was looking at him.

Viktor felt a low, involuntary thrum start deep in his chest—a purr he suppressed before it could reach his throat. He studied the wreckage of the man in front of him. The Mordecai he remembered was sharp edges, starched collars, and eyes like polished emeralds that deflected everything. This Mordecai was soft. He was blurred. The gin had melted the ice, and what was left was something terrifyingly open.

He saw the way Mordecai’s pupils had blown wide, swallowing the green iris until his eyes were dark pools of want. He saw the slight tremor in the smaller cat’s jaw, the way his ears were swiveled forward, shutting out the rest of the world to focus entirely on the frequency of Viktor’s breathing.

And he saw where that gaze had settled.

Viktor felt the heat of it on his mouth. It made his lips tingle, a phantom pressure that was almost painful. He realized, with a sudden, lurching clarity, that Mordecai wasn't analyzing a target. He was starving. He was looking at Viktor’s mouth the way a drowning man looks at oxygen.

It shifted something in Viktor’s foundation. The bitterness of the betrayal, the chronic ache in his knee, the years of cold silence—they didn't disappear, but they were suddenly dwarfed by the sheer magnitude of this moment. The man who had broken him was now looking at him as if he were the only thing holding the universe together.

"Structurally sound," Viktor repeated internally.

It was the most romantic thing the idiot had ever said.

Viktor felt a sudden, fierce possessiveness surge through his blood. He didn't want Mordecai to look away. He didn't want him to sober up and remember his equations and his shame. He wanted to keep him right here, in this dark, quiet car, where the only truth was the gravity pulling them together.

He shifted his hand on the back of Mordecai’s neck, his thumb digging deeper into the soft fur, feeling the frantic pulse hammering beneath the skin. He looked down at the smaller cat, his single eye half-lidded, dark and heavy with his own confession.

"You look..." Viktor started, his voice a rough scrape against the silence, struggling to find words that fit. He abandoned them. He didn't have Mordecai’s vocabulary. He dealt in actions.

He leaned in. The leather groaned. The space between them vanished. Viktor tilted his head, bringing his face inches from Mordecai’s, close enough to feel the warmth of the other cat’s breath, close enough to smell the clove and the gin and the sharp scent of rain. He let his gaze drop to Mordecai’s mouth, returning the stare, answering the hunger with a silent, heavy promise of his own.

I got really into writing this MordecaiXViktor oneshot. Something about making these two grown ass men make out in a truck like teenagers is absolutely *chefs kiss*

Weloveservicetopviktorinmyhc

The tragic attraction

This is a full post based on my response to a great analysis by @sedgewick-gayble

Let me start by saying that if you read Mordecai as being totally asexual/aromantic and any affection he has for other characters to be entirely platonic that is entirely valid and I respect that

However as this response by Tracy makes clear on the topic of fans reading Mordecai as gay there is an intentional ambiguity about it. Being 28 at the time of the main story his "lifestyle is certainly asexual" up to this point, yet "being ace and being gay are not mutually exclusive things" and people sometimes "don't know themselves or understand their own motivations all that well"

This leaves the possibility open that Mordecai is actively repressing his natural desires and feelings

Mordecai's early life didn't exactly provide much time or opportunity for "self discovery", even by the usual standards of the less than tolerant and understanding world of the early 20th century

Being born into an impoverished family and having his father die very early in his life leaving him and his Mother and two younger sisters in dire straits, Mordecai had to get to work and assume adult responsibilities pretty damn early.

As Tracy says "selling newspapers wasn't going to cut it" and so using his natural talent with numbers Mordecai starts bookkeeping for the mob. Is it any wonder someone with that background would develop such a serious and rigidly buttoned up demeanour?

Since being forced to abandon his mother and two sisters at the start of the 1920s and flee New York, being picked up by Atlas's due to his habit of collecting useful strays, Mordecai had very few people he was close to in St Louis. With his generally anti-social personality and not only lack of interest but discomfort with any sort of flirting or romantic entanglements, that would be unlikely to change

Side note: Probaby coincidence but

There are only two people who seem to make it onto that exclusive list of people that "count" for Mordecai, who he cares about and are able to bring things to the surface he would normally keep hidden

Atlas to Mordecai is not just an employer, he is the man who saved his life, the man who moulded a desperate fearful shabby young stray into the sharp professional he is today, who took him under his wing and made him his protege. Filling the empty space his father left in his life. His grief and desperate hunt for those responsible for his death are his big motivation (the strain of which is slowly tearing him apart)

That connection is undertsandable

Much more surprising on the surface is the bond with the partner Atlas teamed him up with soon after his arrival, Viktor Vasko.

The assumption at the start would have been that while their skill sets might compliment each other in the field there would have been no warmth in their dynamic.

Certainly not on Mordecai's part as Viktor appears to be a sum total of many things Mordecai hates. Viktor is unshaven, relatively casual in his attire, speaks a broken English, has an asymmetrical face due to his missing eye, and hates people chattering or “noise, noise, noise” as he calls it. Clashing hard with his obsession with good grooming, symmetry, high quality tailoring, correct grammar etc. Indeed Mordecai doesn't hesitate to nag/criticize Viktor for many of these things

Yet at the same time Mordecai has far better chemistry with Viktor than with anyone else, able to banter and bicker with him in a way you rarely if ever see with others

Its why when he gets tailored clothes for the first time Viktor is the first person he wants to show off too. Its why the one time he is intoxicated Viktor (and his large physique) are his chosen topic of converation. Its why at Christmas/Hanuhhah he gives him the gift of a tie while claiming its just because of the big guys poor fashion sense and that its "embarassing to be seen with him" (even that justification makes him sound like a nagging girlfriend)

A smaller detail is that during their iconic chess playing in the side content, set during their days staking out the remote town of Defiance, Viktor is shown very casually winning the game much to Mordecai's visible distress

This is hilarious but could also be taken as a metaphor for Viktor (possibly without even realizing it) breaking through his defensive emotional barriers

Something Mordecai doesn't know how to handle or respond to

The animated short only adds fuel to the fire

During their dispute over strategy Mordecai moves his face so close to Viktors that he almost knocks his cap off his head. His eyes at one point even dart down towards his mouth

Sharp eyed Vikdecai fans have also noted that Mordecai seems on some level to want the two of them to match

The tie being the same colour could simpy be Mordecai giving Viktor one of his own ties because its a joke gift and he just grabbed it on a whim to tease Viktor about his poor fashion choices

But think about the matching suits at the New Years party for 1926

I mean, seriously, not only is it the exact same style of suit in the same blue-grey colour distinct from everyone else, but they are standing in the perfect spots to be symmetrical to each other. Something that we all know means a lot to this compulsive man

Mordecai must have known there was going to be a big group photo ahead of time and then carefully planned this

Got matching suits made to his and Viktors measurements

Made sure they were both what Mordecai believed to be Viktors favourite colour based on what he usually wears

Then most impressively convinced/nagged Viktor into cooperating (he may have taken off the tie and rolled up the sleeves but hey him playing along at all is quite a compromise from Viktor "I hate dressing up" Vasko)

Mordecai is intent on making Viktor retire and get out of danger, and avoid a situation where he gets sent to kill him by Marigold because he knows he could NOT do it, and his cover and investigation into Atlas's death would be over

He is horrified that Viktor is still working at Lackadaisy (though he again has to hide how much he cares) and that he has gotten not only hurt again but hurt by Mordecai again (albeit this time indirectly by stealing the guns)

Can this be read as simply platonic comradere? Absolutely

But there is something so *intense* in the fact he was willing to resort to kneecapping him. Its an extreme and desperate act that could only result from intense emotions, seemingly out of character for someone who tries very hard to appear logical and controlled.

While Vikdecai is a very fun ship when imagining them as an actual bickering married couple, I have often said that a tragic one-sided on Mordecai's part version of Vikdecai is the one that fits closest and surprisingly well into the canon.

His nagging and complaining about Viktor in that context take on a Tsundere aspect, both to protect himself from being found out and maybe even try and convince himself the uncomfortable alien feelings aren't there. He not only doesn't want others looking too hard at his feeling he doesn't want to examine them himself all that much

There is a heartbreaking but appealing angst to the idea of this extremely repressed man having such feelings for the first time in his life for his straight best friend and NOT knowing how to handle that. Having to perform the balancing act of being around him so much as his partner but being painfully aware that he can't let anyone catch on, especially not Viktor himself, as it would likely destroy his bond with the only person in town other than Atlas he is close to.

Though tragically he did that anyway later via the kneecapping, which while about trying to keep Viktor safe, he may now looking back try and tell himself its actually somehow "better" for Viktor to hate him for that

Because the big guy now wrongly thinks the feeling is mutual and that Mordecai never really cared about him, which may be better than (what Mordecai assumes would be) disgust at his partners doomed more than platonic feelings

Because he sees those feelings, and his situation, as a sad perfectly structured joke life has played on him

Yet those feelings are still strong enough that ,when encountering a thug named Gracie Grombach, another very large imposing man, during his hunt for answers, this cold, calculating hatchet man has the most emotionally open moment we have seen in the main story so far. Almost breaking down

Almost like there is another empty space in his life beside Atlas's where Viktor used to be, and with the strain of his investigation and the lack of progress getting to him, a part of him wishes that they could just sit down and talk things over together, like the good old days

And Gracie, in terms of bulk and his big suspeners at least, is just similar enough to make Mordecai, consciously or unconsciously, let his guard down for a moment

Despite it being with a poor substitute

Mordecai isn't going to: