Archive of Our Own ^beta

After Viktor gets worse, he doesn’t get better. Doesn’t get worse-worse, either. The biggest change is that he finally asks Jayce for help. Asks Jayce to pick up his cane if it falls. Asks Jayce to pass him things which are on the other side of the lab. Asks Jayce to flip their chalkboard so that Viktor can write on the other side of it rather than reach to the top.

Jayce is relieved, and doesn’t know how to say it. He stares at the back of Viktor’s head across the lab, imagining scenarios.

I’m glad you got bad enough that you finally accept my help? No way.

I’m glad you trust me enough to let me help you? Also no.

Jayce spins chalk in his fingers. Takes aim at the back of Viktor’s head and throws it, but Viktor dodges out of the way. Doesn’t even turn to look at Jayce as he speaks. ‘I can hear you thinking,’ he says. ‘I hear your plans before you even make them.’

To test that theory, Jayce thinks really, really hard about his plan to corner Viktor at one of those stupid high society parties they have to go to and finger him until he’s speechless, then walk back out and ignore him for the rest of the night before fucking him properly in one of their stupidly small Academy beds.

Viktor doesn’t react. So he can’t hear Jayce’s plans, then. He tilts his head. His hair—thick, auburn, uncharacteristically healthy—spills to the side. ‘Can you bring me that notebook?’ he asks, and Jayce happily obliges.

That night, he’s pent up. Shaky. Bids goodbye to Viktor in a way that feels normal, then goes straight to the forge and starts hammering shit. Makes a pole. Folds the pole in on itself. Hammers it soft, then makes it brittle and shatters it. 

It’s not even that he just wants to fuck Viktor. That’s part of it, sure, but there’s plenty of people Jayce would happily take to bed. Mel’s beautiful. Sky’s friendly. Heimerdinger—maybe not. It’s not just sex. It’s more than that.

He wants Viktor to believe him when Jayce says that he’s not a burden. He wants the permission of casual touch—to brush a hand over his hair, to pass a thumb over the corner of his mouth. He wants the conversation that all new lovers have: when did you know? How did you know? What do you want now?

When did you know? Immediately. Or maybe the day after. When Jayce was at his worst, his absolute lowest, and Viktor appeared: golden-eyed, his restrained, clever smile playing on his mouth. 

How did you know? Because when he sees Viktor talking to other people at those stupid parties, Jayce feels sick. Because he looks at the Man of Progress banners and wishes Viktor’s face were on there too. Because he thinks Viktor’s mind is the most beautiful equation he’s ever had the privilege to experience.

Jayce kicks at the shards of metal on the floor, then picks on up and turns it over in his fingers. It’s jagged and sharp. It looks like a little frozen piece of hextech, broken off from the whole.

What do you want to do now? One or the other. That’s all he wants. He wants either to be working in the lab with his platonic partner, with their sexless meeting of minds, or he wants the permission to take Viktor home at the end of the day and make out with him until they’re gasping, overheated, desperate. As it is, Jayce sits somewhere in the middle. He wants, and he cannot have.

Viktor doesn’t often leave the lab at lunch. He eats on one of the small pairs of armchairs they’d dragged into a corner beneath the window for that precise purpose. But recently, he hasn’t even been doing that, and Jayce knows why: the chairs are too low. Getting down into them is painful. Getting up out of them is nearly impossible.

So that lunchtime, Jayce proposes a walk.

Viktor gives that restrained, barely visible smile of his. ‘I am not much of a walker, Jayce.’

‘I’m not saying we should hike to Zaun and back. It’s just such a nice day. Maybe the sunshine will…spark some new ideas.’

‘Well. Aren’t you in a whimsical mood.’ Viktor lays his screwdriver on the bench, sets his goggles down next to them, and joins Jayce by the door. Small victories, Jayce thinks.

They make their way slowly through the corridors. Viktor walks slowly, lightly, and Jayce suspects he’s trying to distribute his weight—slight as it is—evenly, so as not to wear out specific joints. They pass younger students and smile, nod, then laugh together at the expressions they receive. They’re a big deal. Jayce is an even bigger one. The man of progress, out for a stroll.

‘With his resident tortoise,’ Viktor says drily.

‘Don’t.’

Viktor opens his mouth to reply, but seems to change his mind.

Eventually, they reach a small courtyard. A gaggle of students glance at them, look away, glance once more, and then depart in a chorus of giggling and whispers. That puts a small smile on Viktor's face again. ‘I am walking around with the human equivalent of insecticide,’ he says.

Jayce laughs and pats the bench next to him. He’s picked the smallest bench, and though Viktor looks a little perplexed, he obligingly sits. His thigh brushes against Jayce’s own. Sun lights his profile. He pulls a wrapped sandwich from his pocket and offers half to Jayce, who accepts only because he knows that Viktor’s never managed to finish a whole sandwich in his life. 

Add it to the list of things he knows about Viktor. Nothing about his family. Nothing about his life in Zaun. Very little about his early years at the Academy. But he knows that Viktor can get angrier than any person that Jayce knows, but keeps it all inside and invisible until he lets it out, all at once, like a poisonous sigh. Jayce knows that Viktor knows he makes polished, gleaming Piltie elites feel uncomfortable, and he knows that Viktor leans into it. Deliberately doesn’t press his shirts or straighten his posture. Lets them all see him as he is. Jayce knows that Viktor is afraid of himself. Of his own body; of his own mind.

In front of them is a fountain. Light speckles its clarity like glitter. Viktor chews slowly, his eyes cast down but flicking up occasionally to watch it. Jayce chats: inane things, random thoughts he has, ideas for the hextech. He’s beginning to sense they’re at a stalemate with the hextech: either they leave their progress as is, or they lean into Viktor’s more radical ideas about wild runes. Something in Jayce pushes back against the idea. Something in Viktor is running full tilt towards it.

There’s a butterfly drinking pollen from the small lilac flowers growing at the base of the fountain. Jayce sees Viktor watching them; sees his small smile, and the way it sloughs off his face so quickly. 

Jayce leans forwards. Sometimes he feels bad evidencing all the ways in which his body works in front of Viktor, whose doesn’t. But he ignores the feeling this time. He crouches on the grass at their feet on his hands and knees, one arm extended towards the small purple flowers, his index finger outstretched. The butterfly senses his presence and steps up onto his flesh as though stepping over an obstacle. When Jayce pulls his finger away with it standing on him, he sees the butterfly’s delicate proboscis withdraw in a curl.

He sits back on the bench and extends his finger to Viktor. They bend their heads together to look at the butterfly as though examining a problematic equation. Jayce can smell the sunlit scent of Viktor’s skin; can feel the heat radiating off his hair.

Viktor laughs. It’s a small, almost insignificant exhalation of air, practically soundless, but the butterfly streaks into the air. It’s so white that it gets lost among the fountain’s sun specks until it’s revealed once again against the royal-blue sky.

Days later, Jayce is in the lab alone. Viktor’s in a workshop, deaf and blind to the world, utterly absorbed in a vibration dampener he’s welding. Jayce drags his stool into the centre of the lab and sits there on it. For novelty’s sake. Then he feels somewhat stupid and drags it back again.

He wanders around the room like a guest. Drags his fingers over tabletops; taps small inventions they’ve cast aside and sets them whirring. He touches the pad of his index finger to the chalk equations on their blackboard and rubs his thumb against his own skin afterwards, feeling the chalk’s dust there like rosin.

Viktor’s side of the room—though that’s a permeable division, not a strict one, and largely came about because Jayce likes to sit in the sunlight and Viktor doesn’t—is littered with blueprints and notebooks.

Jayce flips one open. Equations. Turns a page. More equations. Turns another page.

A drawing of a butterfly. Jayce leans down closer. It’s the one they saw the other day. He can tell, because his own hand is rendered in gentle, sketchy lines—almost tenderly. He huffs out a laugh and tilts his head. Turns another page.

Another butterfly. Improved: cogs, braces, hextech. It’s a blueprint for a butterfly that can never die; a butterfly that isn’t fragile, that isn’t short lived.

Jayce slams the notebook shut and crosses back onto his side of the room, into the light. Viktor’s idea of perfection is…well. It’s his. Jayce lets him have it. They don’t talk about it. It’s too easy for Jayce to forget, sometimes, that Viktor isn’t nice. Viktor’s good. Viktor’s kind. Viktor wants to lift up the weak and the helpless and cast down the mighty. But he isn’t nice. And he’s only human: sometimes, he takes things too far. Sometimes, Jayce wonders if Viktor pictures perfection as a vast white wasteland: sterile, untouched.

But Jayce isn’t one to criticise. He, too, has his flaws. That night, Jayce pictures Viktor bent over the welding bench and he takes himself in his hand, moving quick and fast and cruel until he comes. Yes: he, too, has his flaws.

The next day, Jayce meets Viktor’s eye like an innocent man. ‘Morning,’ he says.

‘Is it?’

Jayce gestures to the sunlight spreading across the floor, and Viktor looks at it only cursorily before turning back to his tools. ‘Hm,’ he replies.

‘You didn’t sleep?’

Viktor glances up at him. A brown-orange flash of eyes. ‘What is that saying, about glass houses and stones?’

Jayce laughs, and Viktor does too. Jayce laughs like a man who didn’t stay up until the early hours of the morning jerking off over his partner, his best friend, his most trusted confidante. He sits on his side of the lab and stretches his forearms out towards the sunshine, rolling up his shirtsleeves to make the most of the light. When he leans back again, he sees Viktor watching him from the corner of his eye.

That night, they’re exhausted to the point of hilarity. Viktor drops a spanner and they double over laughing. Jayce knocks his knee against a stool and has to lie on the ground, cackling so hard that he’s just heaving silently, his chest aching, unable to stop.

Eventually, he sits up and wipes his eyes. He glances at Viktor. ‘Let’s be honest,’ he says. ‘We’re achieving fuck all tonight.’

Viktor rubs the palms of his hands across his face. ‘Agreed,’ he says.

Jayce gets the sudden sense that the night is winding down. Things are wrapping up. Finishing. He doesn’t want that—finds he can’t bear the thought, not tonight. He stands and strides over to Viktor, clapping an arm over his narrow shoulders and flipping the notebook on the table closed. ‘I’m too wired to sleep right now. Let’s go for a drink. Just one.’ 

‘Jayce, I do not think—’

‘Just one?’ Jayce feels as though he’s cashing in some sort of currency. Like he’s spending something that’s going to leave him in debt.

Viktor sighs. Takes the cane. ‘Alright,’ he says. ‘Lead the way.’ And then walks ahead of Jayce, leading the way.

Jayce hails them a tram and they get out at one of the only bars Jayce really knows in Piltover. It’s near the border of Zaun, and it’s chilled out enough that he hopes Viktor might actually enjoy it. It’s got low ceilings, booths, little tables, and warm golden lighting. There’s a mixture of Pilties and Zaunites, though not within groups. They’re just there. They’re not mingling, but they’re there. 

‘Your poison?’

‘Red wine.’

Viktor finds them a table and Jayce orders. He picks beer for himself, though he’s not really much of a drinker, and is taken aback when the barman produces a tankard full of liquid the size of both Jayce’s fists stacked on top of one another. Next to it, Viktor’s glass of wine seems elegant and restrained. Jayce carries them to their table and is surprised that Viktor’s chosen to slide into a booth, leaving his cane lying on the seat behind him.

‘Cheers,’ says Jayce, and lifts his beer.

Viktor’s eyes are steady and narrowed slightly. ‘To you,’ he says.

Jayce laughs and drinks. ‘And you.’

‘Not tonight. You do not always need to try and include me, Jayce. Tonight, just you.’

‘I don’t have to try and include you. I just have to try and stop you forcibly not including yourself.’

Viktor smiles. Jayce doesn’t know anyone else who can smile in a way that makes their face look so nakedly, undeniably intelligent. Doesn’t know anyone else with those bright, hawk-coloured eyes; doesn’t know anyone else with such aristocratic fingers, such a well-shaped mouth, such a narrow and touchable body. Jayce looks down at his drink and realises half of it is gone. It’s possible he’s slightly drunk.

The music changes. Jayce sees Viktor’s expression change. He looks watchful; he looks like he’s listening.

‘What is it?’

‘This…music. It is—was—popular in Zaun. They used to play it in the bars. This was years ago. I had not thought I would hear it again.’

‘It’s funky.’ It is. A few pairs have stood up to dance and they’re clapping and boogying. It’s fun music. Jayce’s vision is blurred at the edges and he wishes he were less drunk so that he could do the thing he’s about to do but be a bit smarter about it. 

He stands and extends a hand to Viktor. ‘Dance with me,’ he says.

Viktor puts both his hands flat on the table. ‘Absolutely not.’

‘Please. I’m so drunk that if you’re too embarrassed then I’m not even going to remember what happens. Please? What if I dance by myself and fall over?’

‘I wouldn’t catch you. You’d squash me, Jayce.’

‘You always say my name. The way you say it.’ Jayce takes Viktor’s wrist in a light, pleading grip. ‘Please,’ he says again.

He can’t tell what expression is in Viktor’s eyes. Acquiescence, perhaps. Viktor sighs and stands, leaving his cane on the seat and leaning on Jayce’s arm as they walk to a wider space. Jayce can’t hear anything but the music; can’t see anything but the stain of red wine on the inside of Viktor’s lips. He pulls Viktor close, his hand between Viktor’s shoulder blades, and they sway. It’s not really swaying music, but they’re at least in time.

Viktor’s shoulders relax an inch—almost exactly an inch, as though he’s calculated the extent of his own relaxation inside his head. Jayce flattens his hand against the back of Viktor’s waistcoat and feels the metallic pinch of his back brace; the rounded ridges of his ribs. He smells the dusty, sunlit smell of Viktor’s hair when Viktor rests his head on Jayce’s shoulder. 

‘Are you really drunk enough to forget?’

‘Absolutely,’ lies Jayce.

Viktor presses his cheek against Jayce’s jacket. ‘I can hear you thinking. I can hear your plans before you make them. I can understand the way your mind works so intricately it is as though our thoughts are one. And then something always snags: you surprise me, or you do something I would not do. I could not love that in anyone else. I would not be able to stand it in anyone else. It would be utterly unacceptable. It would ruin them for me. But not you. Your imperfections…’ Viktor’s hands fist and tighten in the back of Jayce’s shirt. His face presses in. All around them: music, heat, dancing.

Jayce wakes feeling as though someone’s rolled his brain in cat fur, or as if he’s been lightly poisoned. He stumbles into the lab late. 

Viktor’s not there. His welding goggles are gone. Jayce groans and sits at the stool Viktor usually takes, grateful for once for the shaded corner. At least last night taught him something: he’s a lightweight.

‘You are a lightweight,’ Viktor says, when at last he appears. The goggles are pushed up on the top of his head and the hand which isn’t braced around his cane is holding a stack of papers to his chest. ‘Can you help me with this?’

Jayce takes the papers before they slide onto the floor and spreads them out on Viktor’s table. Then he plucks the goggles from his head and hangs them up, noticing—once again—the softness of Viktor’s hair. With his hand still halfway from the wall hook, Jayce pauses. Then he turns. ‘We went dancing last night.’

‘Yes. Ill advisedly. It will not happen again.’

‘I liked it. And by ill advisedly, do you mean ‘on Jayce’s advice?’’

Viktor smiles. He flips open a notebook and begins to write. Jayce crosses the room and closes it, ignoring Viktor’s slight frown. ‘You are not really annoyed, Jayce?’

‘Not even slightly. I just want to hear you say that you liked it.’

‘But I did not.’ Viktor picks up Jayce’s hand by the wrist and gives it back to him like some abandoned possession. He takes his pencil and begins to write rapidly. His eyelids are still lowered and his expression is still neutral when he says, ‘Last night’s only redeeming feature was the company.’ And he looks up at Jayce.

Unmistakable. There’s no way Jayce is misinterpreting it. In Viktor’s eyes: raw, naked, undeniable desire.

That night, Jayce showers under water that’s nearly boiling and jerks off swiftly, efficiently, picturing Viktor’s mouth and the expression he gets when he’s listening to Jayce being clever. Then, in a rush, the memories of the night before come to him and he leans his head against the shower wall with a groan. Jayce made Viktor dance to funky Zaun music. Fuck. Fuck; fuck.

Then he opens his eyes. Viktor said…didn’t he say it? Viktor said he loved Jayce. I could not love that in anyone else.

The next day. A weekend, for normal people. They’re both in the lab. Viktor lies obligingly on the floor while Jayce drops rune-scored pebbles next to his head, and Viktor marks times and bounces in a notebook. 

Jayce ignores the way Viktor’s hair spreads out under his head. Ignores the way his fingers grip the back of the notebook as he holds it above his head. Ignores the way his eyes look as he glances up at Jayce with all the trust one person can place in another.

‘Have you noticed we have been party-free for nearly two weeks?’

Jayce drops a pebble badly and Viktor jerks out of the way. ‘Sorry,’ Jayce says.

‘I dodged it. Do you think there is a reason? Is our funding not steady? Do you think we need to be worried?’

‘I’ll talk to Mel,’ Jayce says, and his hand obscures the way Viktor’s expression clouds over.

In the end, he doesn’t even need to talk to her. An invitation arrives, delivered by a nervous Academy student. A charity function. Charity in the sense that only very rich people will be attending, but they’ll all be able to feel good about themselves. 

‘You’re so cynical,’ Jayce says to Viktor.

‘I am correct. You will see, when you go.’

Jayce grins. ‘When we go.’

Viktor’s expression is stricken. If he were a crueler person, Jayce would have laughed. ‘What?’

Jayce holds the paper aloft and Viktor snatches it. Reads it with his orange-brown eyes flicking over the lines. ‘No,’ he says.

Jayce laughs. Perhaps he isn’t that good a person.

Jayce waits for Viktor outside his rooms. Jayce is wearing what he usually wears: Academy dress uniform. White jacket. It fits him like a glove, and makes his skin seem slightly darker than usual. The gold accents glint in the half-light like winking eyes, which makes Jayce think of Viktor’s eyes, which makes him panic and picture a series of the ugliest insects he can think of so that he doesn’t get a hard-on.

Viktor appears. He’s not wearing dress uniform. Instead, he’s opted for a simple black jacket, high-necked and buttoned down the middle. Black trousers which fit him neatly at the waist. It’s simple. Elegant. Jayce feels a sensation like a fish hook twisting in his stomach, and knows that if he doesn’t get to lay Viktor down somewhere and fuck him tonight then he’ll just fucking die. 

Jayce extends an arm. ‘They’re going to think you’re the wait staff.’

‘That is the idea.’

Jayce rolls his eyes. The pressure of Viktor’s hand on his arm is a brand. It’s a vice. It makes him feel like his blood is going to boil out of his body, and he wonders if Viktor can feel the insane thumping of his heart.

The event is, predictably, terrible. Well, it’s gorgeous: held in a greenhouse filled with rustling, yonic plants, alcohol flowing, beautiful people chatting Jayce up in the hopes that they can give him some funding. But it’s terrible. 

‘Rich people feeling good about themselves,’ Viktor mutters, and snags a glass of bubbling alcohol which Jayce knows he’ll hold and not drink all night. 

‘You match,’ replies Jayce, and gestures to the retreating waiter. Viktor snorts.

Soon, Jayce is thronged with people. They’re made up extravagantly in gleaming metallic makeup, and slices of their skin are revealed to the humid air. Everyone is beautiful, and available, and everyone wants him, and none of them are Viktor. Halfway through the night, a vast flower in the centre of the lake unfurls, and a small chamber orchestra begins to play.

‘Subtle,’ Viktor says at Jayce’s elbow, and then disappears again. Jayce tries to follow him, but a glinting hand falls on his arm, and soon he’s drawn back into the shining fray.

Later, he tries to escape politely, aware that their research relies on these people. Then he lies and says he has a headache. He ducks under toned, sweat-shined arms. He snags a bottle of alcohol from a nearby table. He goes to find Viktor.

He’s not at the edges of the room. He’s not hiding behind a pillar. Jayce passes through the kitchen and sticks his head out the back entrance, where a mixed group of Zaunite and Piltover servers hastily wave away tobacco smoke. He glances at them. ‘Have any of you seen a guy dressed in all black? With a cane? Brown hair?’

‘Mezzanine,’ one of them says. Jayce nods in thanks and retreats inside again.

There’s a small set of spiral stairs near the back of the huge greenhouse, and Jayce wonders how Viktor managed them with his cane. When he emerges at the top, Viktor is leaning elegantly on the railing, looking over the party with an amused expression on his face. He doesn’t turn to acknowledge Jayce.

‘You abandoned me to their clutches.’

‘But you are so good at being clutched. They love to play with you.’

Jayce flushes and he sees a slight frown pass over Viktor’s face.

‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘I did not say that to be cruel. I only…’

‘What?’ Jayce is near enough now that he can see sweat beading on Viktor’s neck. He can see the long line of Viktor’s eyelashes; the drape of his fingers.

Viktor swallows. Even with the raucous noise below—the chamber orchestra, the chattering—it’s like that’s the only sound in the world. It’s all Jayce can hear. I can hear you thinking, Jayce thinks. 

Viktor glances up at him. In the light, his eyes are the eyes of a hawk or a cat. ‘I hate to watch them with you. When you are mine.’

Jayce grabs him by the jaw. Kisses him hard enough that Viktor stumbles back and steadies himself by grabbing the back of Jayce’s jacket. He gasps against Jayce’s lips. 

Viktor pushes Jayce backward until Jayce slams against the back wall of the narrow mezzanine floor, the breath pushed out of him. He can’t replace it; Viktor’s mouth is on his, Viktor’s hands are under his jacket, Viktor’s leg is pressing between his own. 

Jayce takes Viktor’s neck and holds him still, kissing him more slowly, feeling the hot slide of their teeth, their tongues, their skin. He lifts the bottle he’d snagged before and takes a long, deep swig of it. Then he holds Viktor’s face steady, brings their mouths together, and lets the alcohol run from his own to Viktor’s.

Viktor takes it and swallows it. Jayce can feel his neck moving under his palm. Viktor’s leg is pushing between his own, insistently, and the pressure is nearly too much. Jayce feels like he’s drunk, like he’s in cardiac arrest, like a world of possibilities are unfurling in front of him. On either side of them, green-purple plants, plasticky with light, rustle and yearn.

‘Not here,’ he says.

‘I want them to know that you are mine.’

Jayce laughs. ‘We’re not fucking in a greenhouse.’

Viktor levels his eyes at Jayce. Shoves a hand down his dress uniform and takes Jayce in hand, jerking him steadily and efficiently. ‘Are we not?’

Jayce groans and braces himself on Viktor’s shoulders. The music from below is too loud, the temperature is too hot, and dew is settling on everything, making it slick, as though the world itself is aroused around them. ‘If you keep going…’

‘I know,’ says Viktor.

Jayce groans again. Viktor’s mouth comes back to his and he kisses Jayce, muffling the noise he makes as he comes, harder than he ever had in his life.

Viktor brings his hand to his mouth and licks his wrist clean with the brisk efficiency of a cat. He kisses Jayce again, then leans back. ‘I hear your plans before you even make them,’ he says. His eyes are bright and alive. In the whole beautiful room, he is the only thing that’s perfect.