Chapter Text
It’s another perfect day in Piltover. The sky is awash with a viridian gray cloak of smog that hangs low to the earth, so thick it makes Jayce wonder whether the sun still exists. The streets bustle with the twitches of faceless automatons in the fog, moving just out of the corner of the eye. Sure, the once-great towers and stately halls of progress are now laden with boughs of arcane sludge and slouched with neglect, but what can you expect from an empty city? There’s nothing so peaceful as being the only living thing left.
Jayce hasn’t heard another person’s voice for three months and fourteen days.
A part of him still hopes to wake up and find himself passed out on the laboratory floor to Viktor looming over him with his signature arched brow of bemusement speckled with concern. Viktor before the explosion. Before Jayce broke his promise and set off an almost laughably cataclysmic chain of events. He clings to the hope it’s all been a nightmare. Maybe that’s what makes it easier. Or harder. Jayce isn’t sure.
He used to have such a pure sense of right and wrong. The world was beautifully simple; clear-cut black and white. Now it’s all spun and spun into a mess he can no longer recognize. Even before the arcane began festering in his open wounds like a churning wheel of blinding color, the black and white world he knew was graying. Answering the city’s demands with the conviction of his heart only made everything worse. He’s been naive. A fool. A puppet.
Violent, jarring thoughts of the reality he’s been ripped from keep drumming into the sides of his skull. Memories and regrets that make the membrane keeping his brain intact ache.
I shouldn’t have let you leave.
It didn’t take being stranded at the bottom of a pit in the twilight of a dead world to come to that conclusion. He knew from the moment Viktor told him Goodbye. It’s been the only thing on Jayce’s mind since the day Viktor came back to him as something else entirely. Gods . That day. He witnessed a miracle. Lazarus remade with a body of sinew like god-thread; some strange, inconceivable blend between flesh and machine. Viktor was different, but alive. That was all that mattered to Jayce.
Letting him leave was only the most recent mistake of so, so many. Every night he left for the council room instead of the lab. All the gallivanting with the high echelons of society, bartering his own body and mind just to further all the agendas Mel proposed. Meanwhile, Viktor was suffering alone. Sick. Tired. Dying.
Alone.
It hurts every time Jayce presses back into the memory of it all. Like prodding at the yellow around a bruise. Yet he circles through every mistake. Again and again. A penny rounding the drain. It’s obsession. Every time he remembers Viktor’s body in the ruins of the council room, it pushes him one step closer to the brink.
There are two truths that live at once. That using the Hexcore to bring Viktor back is a betrayal he cannot earn forgiveness for. It will bring an end to Piltover. To Zaun. To everything. And still, Jayce knows, in the silence of the new world, there is no part of him in any reality that could keep him from doing it again.
There’s no version of Jayce that could let the Viktor he knew die. No, not in any world.
When Jayce makes it to the zenith of the ancient Hexgate the sunlight is blinding. In some distant place inside his mind, he’s aware of his own condition. Everything aches with exhaustion. His stomach curdles with hunger. There’s a film of dirt and grime that covers him like a second skin. Every step sends a jolt of pain up the center of his spine, a constant reminder of the break healing wrong, oozing from the open wound with the colors of a celestial oil spill.
His body is in a state of survival. Yet, there’s something even worse going on inside his head. Scattered and senseless. Loss and regret whisper in his ear with the voices of his mother, the council, his lover, and his partner. All the moments that have shaped him. Broken him. Every choice and every mistake. There’s nothing Jayce can do but press forward towards the shadow of a hope he can make things right even as his head swarms.
Rotting in that cave, Jayce didn’t realize how he was drowning in the noise until so suddenly— like the final chime of a bell— it all goes silent. Underneath a pale blue sky, surrounded by a bed of green grass air thick with pollen, Jayce sees Viktor.
It’s not his Viktor. The eyes are different. They mold and shift colors of wispy sunrise on an aged face, partially shrouded by the hood of his cloak. A product of the arcane he wields. It makes his heart hurt to know Viktor had saved him twice. Twice before he had even known his name.
“It doesn’t have to go this way, right?” Jayce holds his wrist, rune stone gleaming in the unnatural canopy of clear sky and sunlight. “Just tell me there’s a chance.”
Viktor’s eyes don’t leave him. Never once since they spoke. He doesn’t hide it either. Which is something that Jayce isn’t used to. At least not from Viktor. Not like this. Maybe he’s missed the sight of other living people. Maybe he misses Jayce like Jayce has missed him.
This Viktor watches him without shame. There’s something soft in it. The shift from the lay of Jayce’s hair, to his eyes and lips. Jayce brings a hand up to fix himself somehow, hovering over the scruff of his beard out of old habits of keeping up face. Even after the hell he’s been through. The solitude. The hunger and madness. He doesn’t want to be seen like this.
Then, Viktor smiles at him. A quiet smile. The kind you can barely see. Jayce remembers it so well. And for a moment, he clings to that. The one memory that isn’t made ugly by his own mistakes. The smiles that he earned through their time together, through a friendship that went deeper than blood.
“Of course there’s a chance.” Viktor’s voice is like a balm. It takes real strength for Jayce not to close his eyes and lean into the sound. “You’re the reason for it.”
Jayce looks down at the echo of a body that Viktor stands behind. A man made of porcelain, kneeling at the foot of his own hammer. Something inside his chest snaps with vague recognition, and then with warring horror in knowing exactly what must be done.
“I’m sorry.” Jayce closes his eyes as he grimaces in pain that lies somewhere between the physical and incorporeal, unable to meet the shifting eyes of his old partner any longer. Just how long has he been here? Alone? “I just wish I could have told you everything from the beginning. I wish I was honest. With you. With myself. I just wish… I just wish I could go back to when things made sense.”
When Jayce opens his eyes, Viktor is already watching him. Like some kind of a benevolent deity. Removed from desire as mortals know it, but reminded, all the same, of the way it burns when Jayce speaks from that fire.
“Even if it changes nothing? There are paths set in the threads of time that cannot be unwoven.” Viktor sweeps around the statue as galaxies swirl in the shadows of his cloak. “Your mission remains in your own timeline. To send you anywhere else would be… pure sentiment. Nothing more.”
Disquiet burbles at the edges of his mind. Again, the regret returns, so palpable it makes it uncomfortable to exist in his own body. A physical affliction. Jayce doesn’t deserve closure. Or retribution. He must kill the only person who matters and there is no other choice but to bring his city to ruin.
“I understand.” Jayce steels himself and meets Viktor’s eyes once again, this time, unflinching. “Send me back.”
The mage sets his hand on the statue’s shoulder. There are runes carved into the flesh between the joints, but the shape of his hands are the same as they always were. Viktor has always had a lighter touch. Jayce remembers handing over the most delicate machinations of their projects to him because he was always better with things like that. It always took too much thinking for Jayce to touch things lightly. His pencil marks always press into the next page. The door always slams the wall when he walks in. It takes control that requires purposeful effort. Jayce has always been that way; the kind of person to put all of himself into every choice, or nothing at all.
For Viktor, it’s second nature. There were times he was so engrossed in the minutiae of some tedious contraption that he would fail to notice Jayce watching. The deft movement of his thin fingers, tactile and engrossed in every little detail. That’s when it dawned on him with startling fondness, that at the very core of his being, Viktor is gentle.
Without thinking and without having to think, Viktor is gentle.
Jayce stares at Viktor’s hand on the statue’s shoulder and for a moment, he finds himself nauseous with envy. Jealous over even the vaguest semblance of touch. It’s a trivial thing to think about at the end of the world. After sleeping in manic blips on the cold cavern floor, tearing raw newt apart with his teeth, and rebuilding himself a leg from the scraps of his only defense, all Jayce can think about is how he can’t remember the last time he touched another living person.
Then, the automaton cracks and creaks like an old machine returning to life as the hammer extends its haft for Jayce’s hand to take.
“I won’t fail.” He stands as the anomaly bursts to brilliant color around them, and the rune embeds into his flesh. Like ink fusing to paper, a permanent promise. “I swear it.”
“Self-centered, amoral, unconscionable—” Viktor finds himself slinging together any adjectives that vaguely resemble ‘bad’ as he makes his way through the final stretch of hallway that leads to the heart of the Hexgates.
He and Jayce had to make concessions in their blueprints for the Hexgates. The gemstones themselves were too volatile to be employed without some way to ensure city safety. Thus, the installation of an off-site containment chamber. Except, it’s not exactly off-site. It’s directly below Piltover, albeit it far from any inhabitable part of the Undercity, there’s still something about it that feels wrong.
Hence, Viktor’s frustrations.
It was the only way to push their dream forward. Not that the fact does anything to ease Viktor’s conscience. Jayce had rejected the initial proposal just as vehemently. Even more so, considering how loud he got during conferences. Yet, all it took was a couple choice words from Mel to sway his conviction. Some assurance that the site was plenty far. As if she knows any better than them on how devastating a breach in their power grid might be. Jayce found the logic sound in the end. Because of course he would.
That’s just the thing with Jayce though, isn’t it? His heart is in the right place— always, almost infuriatingly always, in the right place— and he’s so receptive to everyone and anyone’s point of view. He’s happy to listen and to change. And when you earn his trust, it’s all too easy to have him listen and change for you. That naivety is just a part of the charm. Mel has learned to expose it all too well.
Viktor wishes that he could fault her for it. If things were different, perhaps, if he were more like her, then he wouldn’t hesitate to do the same thing.
But things are different. Viktor is not a gilded politician with a silver tongue and doe eyes. He’s the one stuck miles underground in a dome bunker of metal palladium alloys while Jayce takes the rest of the day off to attend a symphony on Mel’s arm as her most esteemed investment. Her man of progress.
Stop obsessing. Viktor grits his teeth, irritated by his own lack of control. Just because you don’t know how to stop working, doesn’t mean Jayce doesn’t deserve a night off with his… whatever Mel is to him.
He tells himself that and yet. That’s not really the part that bothers him. There’s something far more green and ugly going on that Viktor tries his hardest to ignore.
The doors to the Hexheart slide open at his approach. The crest of house Talis burns a brilliant blue against the metalwork, before slinking into the recesses that leave the archway open. While the ethics of the chamber’s construction are still up for debate, the sheer awe of its enormity is undeniable.
Everything is cast in ethereal blue light. The hum of Hextech. The panels forming the dome above all glow in angular patterns that meet at the oculus, a hollow in the very center that stretches up to the Hexgate’s aircraft transporter. Viktor’s cane makes a satisfying click click on the floors of tempered aluminosilicate glass, embossed with fleurs of delicate bronze-work that make a pathway to the center chamber. Jayce has a flair for detail. It shows even in the places no one but those with the highest clearance will ever see.
Normally, he would probably wait for Jayce to be available before coming down here alone. After all, there was nothing more than a ding on one of the secondary conversion oscillators that was probably due to human error on the operating side, rather than any fault within the gemstone refractories. In other words: nothing to worry about. Yet, Viktor has more selfish reasons for handling it alone. With Jayce most likely not returning for a couple hours, or maybe not even until tomorrow morning, Viktor would rather handle this himself and get as much time as possible with him in the lab.
Strategically pathetic, some might say. Viktor wishes that he didn’t think of these things. It would be so much easier to just act normal and be fine with whatever time he happens to have around Jayce without optimizing the probabilities himself. Again. Pathetic. Whatever.
Viktor huffs. His breath fogs in front of his eyes, wisping away like a plume of smoke. It’s always freezing down here. He circles around the great bronze hill in the center of the dome. All the lights hum in unison, pistons pounding, gears churning their endless circles. All is fine. Normal.
A waste of time.
Viktor shakes his head and turns back towards the exit.
Then, there’s a snap of cold. The temperature plunges so suddenly that Viktor has to clench his jaw to keep his teeth from clattering. A jolt of pain shoots up his leg, ligaments and joints angered by the drastic shift. He turns back to look at the heart of the Hexgate.
No. There is something different. Oozing from the seam of a gemstone cylinder is something that Viktor has never seen before. A viscous slime that shifts in color: brilliant magenta,to a simmering green and cyan. It’s almost too saturated to comprehend. Viktor narrows his eyes and tightens the hold on his cane. Something akin to a baser instinct warns him to stay back. Instead, Viktor takes a step forward.
The air itself crackles. Ice breaking apart. White light swallows the world. Viktor covers his face, shielding himself. As if that could save him from the compounding implosion of Runeterra’s largest collection of Hextech gemstones self-detonating all at once. In the very back of his mind, he finds himself grateful, at least, that he hadn’t waited for Jayce.
Just as quickly as it had come, the light dies.
Viktor exhales a shaky breath. The room is practically balmy compared to the cold spell that just shuddered through. And there was no explosion. That’s a plus. He blinks until his vision returns, all the blue lights humming in tandem as though nothing had happened at all.
Except something did happen. Because one moment ago, Viktor was alone and now he’s not. Ten paces from where he stands, a lone figure is branded over the backdrop of bronze. His head is hung, lank brown hair shrouding his face. There’s an exhaustion that bleeds into the very air around him, just as tangible as the tattered state of his cloak and the grime smearing his skin. There’s a whiz of buzzing power as the stranger tips a great-hammer in a downward arc and drops it on it’s head with clang that echoes throughout the chamber.
The mercury hammer. Or at least a close match to Jayce’s blueprints— which he barely drafted a week ago and remains an engineering impossibility without some way to stabilize the gemstones. This prototype is completely morphed. The blunt edges have been eaten away by time or poor upkeep into the vague shape of a butterfly with jagged, lopsided wings. The same substance that oozed from the gemstone receptacle coats the tool. It climbs up the haft towards the lever. Like an infection.
Viktor finds himself in a stasis. Erratically, he tries running through the most likely explanations. Which, honestly speaking, are not much help considering how improbable this all is. Logically, that hammer should not exist. It can’t exist. Not in the current—
His entire train of thought derails as the stranger lifts his head. Short, sharp exhales make little clouds of vapor puff from his lips. His fingers, blackened with dirt and wrapped with shreds of his own clothing, curl into a fist around the haft of his weapon, leaning against it to support his own weight. It’s the eyes that drive the air from Viktor’s lungs.
He knows those eyes.
He knows that face.
“Jayce?”
At the sound of his own name, Jayce recoils. His teeth grit together as he grabs his own head to turn himself away, breaking the hold of his stare. The intensity of it lingers though. Like the bright flash of a camera. The look on his face stains itself to the forefront of Viktor’s mind. He looked like… almost like an animal.
He’s seen Jayce focused. Intense. That dogged determination that leaves him working until he’s verging on manic and Viktor has to make some excuse about his own exhaustion just to make him take a break. There was always something soft there though. A rounded sort of loveliness to even the sharpest expressions Jayce would pull. A little piece of his good-natured heart bleeding into the very way he watches the world.
Viktor has never seen him look like this .
Haunted.
He redoubles the effort of his initial assessment while ignoring a sudden flood of panic. Viktor steps closer, slowly. He’s been injured. There’s a brace strapped to his leg, which he’s clearly favoring in the way he uses the hammer for support. Looking more closely, there’s a makeshift bandage tied just behind his knee to the bottom of his calf. In the state he’s in, it’s hard to tell abrasions from patches of muck and mire. It’s possible he could be hiding a lot more injuries.
Jayce looks like he’s been through hell. Viktor tries to keep his head level. He tries to stay calm. But his chest feels like it’s collapsing into itself. A flurry of concern and panic trying to wrest the helm of his mind. There’s a million questions. An endless amount of things he should be asking like: ‘ how did you grow a full beard in the two hours since I last saw you?’ or ‘ how do you have a real prototype for something that isn’t physically feasible?’
Instead, Viktor asks the one question he already knows the answer to. The one thing all people ask when there’s too much feeling to actually think .
“Are you okay?” Viktor reaches out as he asks. His fingertips graze the weathered fabric of his sleeve. Ever so light. And yet, Jayce jerks back like Viktor had just cut him open.
It startles them both away from each other. One step back. Viktor stamps his cane down to keep himself from falling over. Jayce grips the hammer with both hands and sweeps it off the floor with a horrible screech . Then, it whirs to life. The mercury hammer in the flesh, aimed right at Viktor’s chest as it hums with the charge of Hextech.
There are two things that make Viktor freeze. The marvel of engineering made real right before him. Which is immediately overshadowed by the fact that Jayce is aiming a fucking death laser directly at him .
Shock hits him like a punch to the gut. The kind of punch that knocks the wind out of your lungs. Viktor meets Jayce’s eyes, blazing cold and black in the searing blue light. Then, he jerks away with a snarl. His entire head twitches to the side with a grunt of pain. The laser charges, humming at a higher frequency as it gathers power.
“Jayce!” Viktor finally snaps out of his shock just enough to shout his name, horrified and hurt and for the first time since they’ve met years ago— scared. “What the fuck are you doing?”
The hammer clatters to the ground with a crash that reverberates through the entire chamber like a gong. Immediately, the charge powers down and returns to the quiet, steady blue glow. Jayce grabs his head with both hands and drops to his good knee with a harsh cry. His breathing comes hard, broken. He mutters under his breath. No. It’s not right. It can’t be. He can’t make me—
Viktor finds himself trying to regain his breath as well. For a moment there it really looked like Jayce was going to… He should have known better. This man is hurt. Also quite possibly insane. Yet, it’s still Jayce.
He repeats that to himself. It’s still Jayce.
Viktor steps forward again. Even if there’s a piece of him that debates calling his own Jayce to deal with the deranged body double. He leans his cane against the discarded mercury hammer and crouches down to Jayce’s level as his leg makes a mild protest.
“Jayce?” He tries again, this time with himself between Jayce and the weapon. Which doesn’t do much to ease his worries considering that this Jayce just seems… larger. He could probably push him over and take another shot without even trying. “Just breathe. If you want to kill me that badly, you can wait until you calm down a little. Or maybe after you see a doctor.”
Jayce doesn’t laugh. Which Viktor wasn’t really expecting anyways. It’s hard being the funny one in the lab, but they manage. Instead, Jayce lifts his head once again to look at him. This time, really look at him.
A slow, stuttered exhale wisps from his parted lips. His eyes are frantic; starving, with how they swallow the sight of him unblinking. It makes the hair on the back of Viktor’s neck rise. A warning from his own biology. To stay wary. To run. To act on whatever neglected shred of self-preservation instincts he might possess. Yet, Viktor can only stare. It’s him. Beneath the dirt and the lines of years lived, it’s really Jayce.
Slowly, with a tremor in the stretch of his hard hand, Jayce reaches over until his palm grazes across Viktor’s cheek. The movement is so tender, so deliberate , that Viktor finds himself hiccuping a breath.
“Look at you…” Jayce’s voice is deeper than it should be, gruff and mumbling, as if he hasn’t used it in a very long time. “Viktor.”
A new kind of panic bursts inside of his chest. Viktor feels his face go hot at the timbre of Jayce’s voice when it whispers his name. The feeling of his hand holding the side of his face. Briefly, Viktor wonders if this is some sick fever dream. All his repression circling back in new and psychologically concerning ways.
The pad of his calloused thumb brushes over the bone in his cheek. The touch is light. Uncharacteristically so. As if Viktor is made of more delicate things than figment, liable to fade away from the tangible world at his fingertips.
The Jayce he knows is always touching him. Touching him too much, in his humble opinion. A squeeze of the shoulder. A brotherly pat on the back. It always comes as a surprise. Even after two years of working together, there’s still pieces of him that remain startled by it.
When this version of Jayce rises from his knees and pulls Viktor into his arms it does more than startle him. His head is like a bucket tipped over, shaken until every odd and end, every hint of idea and thought, hits the ground. The wipe of a slate. Nothing but the hum of surprise buzzing alongside the vague recognition of being held. A warm chest against his own and an arm corded around his waist. His chin is nestled against Jayce’s shoulder while the palm of his large, wide hand cradles the back of his head. Fingertips comb through his hair, brushing along his scalp in a way that feels possessive and far, far too tender.
Viktor stands there uselessly, frozen in time, as Jayce clutches onto him. He can feel the hot fanning of his breath against his ear and how Jayce inhales against his hair. As if deliberately trying to smell him. The Jayce he knows has definitely never done that before.
His stomach flips at the thought. Has he ever been held like this in his life? There’s been plenty of one-night-stands that feel less intimate than this; the weight of Jayce’s hand squeezing his waist where his arm cinches their bodies together. Viktor hesitates a little longer than he should before he finally hugs him back. He awkwardly brings his arms up around Jayce’s rib cage so he can stiffly pat the space between his shoulder blades.
Jayce sighs against his neck in one long, shaky exhale. He’s exhausted. He smells like sweat and dirt and spite. This Jayce is bigger. Older. There’s so much more bulk to him in a way that Jayce in his youth was still growing towards. The broad lines of his shoulders and the sheer density of his body makes it hard to think normally. As in, think about anything beyond cataloging all the little ways his body has changed. Viktor braces himself as Jayce sinks a little more of his weight into him, probably without even realizing. His heart starts to ache. A dull throbbing pain that feels suffocating yet outside his body all at once. Viktor tightens his grip on Jayce, fingers fisting into the filthy fabric of his house jacket, as he tries to bring them impossibly closer.
They hold each other in silence until Viktor can no longer bear it. There’s no real explanation for it. He feels like a coward being the first to pull away when Jayce clearly needs it so badly, and yet… well. There’s this little problem that Viktor has whenever Jayce publicly displays his platonic brotherly affection. And it may or may not be the small minor detail that Viktor’s affection is neither platonic or brotherly in any definition of the word.
It’s overwhelming. Viktor can only take so much without feeling like he’s developing a new and deeply humiliating disease.
At first, Jayce clings to him. His hold tightens which sends a sharp jolt of panic straight up the column of Viktor’s spine. Then, reluctantly, movements stiff and jumpy he loosens his arms. Viktor takes the smallest step away, though his touch lingers, loosely holding onto Viktor’s wrist as if to keep him from running. As if that’s something he needs to worry about.
The expression on Jayce’s face morphs. Suddenly, he looks so much older. Not just due to the unspoken things he’s no doubt been through, but he just is different. As if somehow Jayce has grown even more into himself over the years. The look on his face shifts though, from something like acolyte reverence to a deep sorrow.
He’s never seen Jayce look so… sad.
“I don’t understand it.” Jayce mutters, to himself more than anything. “He should have known I couldn’t… Not when you are…”
Viktor raises an eyebrow. A cloud falls over his eyes. As if falling back into sour memories, despite his physical body remaining here.
“You think better when you talk it through with someone.” Viktor says as he begins to pull his hand away, but Jayce clutches onto it before he can. He blinks in surprise, hesitating only a fraction of a second before continuing, “You’re… not my Jayce, are you? I mean— not my Jayce. The Jayce in this, uh, reality.”
Jayce blinks. The corner of his lip twitches. For a moment, it looks like Jayce is dazed just looking at him. Just staring and staring for an unnervingly long time before finally nodding. “You really are brilliant. How could I have forgotten for even a moment just how…” He draws a breath, cutting himself off with a grimace. As if trying to refocus. “I— yes. I had something to fix, but I’m in the wrong time. I don’t know why he would—”
“—You almost shot me with a laser, Jayce.” Viktor narrows his eyes, swallowing up every fraction of information to pin together the larger picture. “Did you know it was me?”
Jayce swallows, hesitating. Another shadow crosses his face. Viktor almost regrets asking before the other man reluctantly nods.
“So that’s what you were sent back for then…” Viktor pulls his hand out of his grip completely at this point, stringing together a shaky thesis that really doesn’t like. “To kill me? Why?”
Jayce turns his face away. There’s a shaking in his lip. Viktor can almost see the memories flashing through the glass of his eyes. Painful and fresh. He wants answers, but maybe they can wait. Just a little while.
“Are you going to kill me now?”
Jayce huffs. Almost a laugh. If he’s even capable of that in the state he’s in. “No.”
Viktor stares at him for a moment longer. He wonders why. Why travel through time to kill someone and then stop because it’s too early? Is this Jayce here entirely by accident or is there a greater purpose at play? Too many questions with no way to answer down here in this state. Besides, Viktor would be a bald-faced liar if he tried to pretend like that’s all he cares about when Jayce— any version of Jayce— is standing before him broken and alone.
“Then we need to get you out of here before Jayce comes looking.”
“ Your Jayce?”
Viktor spares one last glance at that. It’s strange to be assigned ownership over a person who has never really been his. The way Jayce looks at him is strange too. A simmering intensity in the golden discs of his eyes, like metal underneath the hot sun. It unnerves him. Unable to think of a response, Viktor ignores him as he picks his cane off the floor and leads Jayce to the exit.
It’s a rare, miserable day in Piltover. The rain comes down in sheets and the market stalls are all abandoned but for a couple food vendors that Viktor makes a quick stop at. Jayce stays on his heels, head low, despite the massive hammer he’s lugging behind him. For once, Viktor is thankful for the rain. Because in any other circumstance Jayce would probably be detained by enforcers for simply looking like that .
Most of the academy windows are dark at this hour. The massive building hulks over the entire city like a monolith. Viktor’s eyes drift towards a particularly wide window on the western wing, so tiny from where they walk along the street, but even at this distance, he can see the lights are on. A thread of guilt sews through him. Jayce is working on their project alone. Meanwhile, Viktor is smuggling his alternate self through the cold and storm-swept streets like a dark secret.
Maybe I should tell him.
That thought catches Viktor by surprise. It’s just sort of… foreign. He’s become so used to telling Jayce everything because of proximity. Now, his distressed brain is jumping to that as a natural conclusion, when before Viktor would always handle these things himself. It’s hard to pin exactly why the thought rattles him as much as it does.
He shakes his head, as if to wring the rain out of his hair as they come upon a block of crowded townhouses huddled alongside the river. The neighborhood is quiet. It straddles the comfortable middle ground between minimum and excess. The hedges out front are overgrown and crawling with rain-dappled wisteria, shrouding the alcove to his front door in wisps of leaf and vine. Viktor picks through his keys with half a mind as the other half thinks only of the familiar stranger’s looming over his shoulder.
“I’ll put some wood on the stove. You need a shower before you sit on any of my furniture. No offense, of course, but you are…”” He says as he shrugs off his coat while the rain drips onto the wordless welcome mat. Jayce has been here before, of course, but this time is different. Worlds apart. Jayce doesn’t even look back to acknowledge his words, just standing in the doorway to the rest of his home. “Are you alright?”
Jayce makes everything look small. Which is something Viktor never considered his place before. A little on the cozy side, sure, but with Jayce standing in the doorway to the sitting room, he practically blocks the entire entry. He’s just big.
Without giving an answer, Jayce steps inside. His boots track flecks of mud over the carpet. He moves slowly, cautiously, as if the living room were a capsule of another time that might crumble to dust if he doesn’t show the proper reverence. The very tips of his fingers brush along the spines of Viktors cluttered books shelved against the wall, moving behind the couch sat before the fireplace. Jayce stops at the window beside a high-backed armchair. A book on niche interpretations of theoretical physics is left open on the armrest, alongside a discarded button up. Just as Viktor is about to excuse his own mess, Jayce picks up his shirt. It looks comically small in his hands.
His thumb brushes over the collar reverently. Tenderly. It’s hard to make out the expression on his face in the dim light of the distant streetlamps.
Viktor isn’t sure that he wants to see it.
When Jayce looks over at him, he jolts, startled back into his own body. “Sorry, I…” He trails off as he sets the piece of clothing back down, palm still pressed to the fabric, lingering.
“It’s okay.” Viktor says softly. It doesn’t even matter what he’s apologizing for. There’s a flicker of sorrow on Jayce’s face before he turns his head away. A flash of something so palpable and aching. There’s a sudden, fierce urge to protect him somehow. He has always wanted to protect Jayce. It’s just that Jayce has never needed it before.
Viktor forces his mind back on track. Focus. “I’ll keep the food warm. Just go clean up and then I’ll take a look at your leg. The spare towels are—”
“In the cupboard next to the sink.” Jayce looks at him. “I remember.”
Viktor closes his mouth, lips pressing together. Those eyes are startling every time. They burn with earnest and threaten to swallow Viktor whole. Jayce’s gaze searches him, sweeping between every feature of his face and devouring each detail. It’s different. Unsettling. Uncanny. It’s Jayce, but changed.
He nods, and turns for the kitchen. How much can someone change before they become something else?
All sins are an attempt to fill voids. He had heard that somewhere once. The kind of phrase that drifts away to the depth of memory as a catchy one-liner to pull out in surface-level conversation on a vaguely adjacent topic. Not this time.
Jayce knows his sins. Betrayal and pride. Of wanting something so badly it makes you sick . He had never known how to name the void until Viktor had left him. And again, as he stands as a shell in the warm, closed palms of a home that lives and breathes Viktor. Every piece within these walls was chosen by him; used and touched by him. The void was this. It was always this.
His head hangs under the stream of scalding water. The water puddles black around the drain, carrying all his grime and dirt until it clears and bubbles with soap that smells like lemons. He stays under the spray long after he is clean. Partly because the grime feels like it’s merged into his skin. And also because there’s a piece of him that fears facing Viktor as much as it is the only thing he cares about.
Every moment spent with Viktor makes it all so much more… impossible.
Why? Why would he be sent back to a pointless timeline when his reality is suffering? What could be the gain? The purpose? Viktor had said it himself, to send him anywhere but his own timeline would be pure sentiment. Nothing more.
So, why? For old times sake?
Jayce closes his eyes and Viktor’s face appears in the cover of his eyelids. The sharp lines of his lovely face. The intensity burning in his stare. The pretty mole underneath his eye. Another on the corner of his lips. He used to think about mapping them out in his weaker moments, before it all went to shit. Back then, daydreaming was part of the fun. To romanticize without realizing how quickly time was gliding through his fingertips. It’s getting harder and harder to understand the Jayce from a decade ago. He has become something worse than a stranger. Because now, face to face with the Viktor from his past— the bright amber glean in his eyes and the life glowing under his skin— Jayce is struggling against his better judgment.
The sin. The sin of wanting what he can’t have; what he never deserved.
Jayce shuts the water off and braces himself against the sweating tiles. He can’t tell whether this is another test. Maybe a punishment. Or if he allows himself to be foolishly optimistic, perhaps a consolation prize for isolation and agony he went through at the bottom of that pit. Maybe the Viktor from that dying world is simply fulfilling the thing he had wished for so earnestly— a chance, just one chance to say he was sorry. To show him everything.
There’s a knock on the door, then a muffled voice. “Are you decent yet? I need to look at your leg.”
“One second,” Jayce grimaces, glancing down at the injury. It’s still hideous. The bone has healed all wrong and the arcane infests the healing wound. Worse than that, Jayce feels this awful twinge in his stomach. That raw, uncomfortable rising of guilt at the thought he’s derailed Viktor’s entire night. His entire life, really. He’s gonna try not to think about that last bit though.
The figure in the foggy mirror is barely human. Jayce ties a towel around his waist. He tries not to let his gaze linger, like avoiding an old acquaintance at a Piltovan party. Some people are better left unknown, be it beady-eyed politicians who have had one too many shrimp cocktails, or Icarian inventors who can only bring ruin to the people they care for.
Jayce braces his arm against the wall before reaching for the door. There’s a heavy distrust between himself and his leg sans the brace. Pain ripples through his tendons at the slightest pressure. Even if he pushes through that aspect, putting any weight on it in this state would probably send him straight to the floor. So he grips the edge of the sink as he pulls the door open, trying his best to look semi-stable as Viktor peers in with a doctor’s bag tucked under his arm.
Immediately, Viktor stares. Eyes owlish and perfectly rounded as they sweep over Jayce like he’s grown another head. The apple in Viktor’s throat bobs, displacing the delicate mole hidden in the shadow of his collar. He must be swallowing back some choice words. Probably something the lines of, ‘ holy shit you are a wreck’. Jayce really couldn’t fault him. He hardly feels like a person right now. Even so, the intense way Viktor’s eyes sweep across the entire length of his body is more than a little humiliating.
“Consider me ready for the shirtless feature on Man of Progress Monthly.”
Viktor’s gaze snaps back up to his face. His mouth is a little slack in surprise, as if he’s been caught staring. Which he has. Maybe it’s the steam, but his face seems a little less pale and a little more pink than usual.
“Shut up and sit down.” Viktor shakes his head, pointedly not looking at him any longer as he helps Jayce situate on the edge of the bathtub as he pulls up a stool. He rummages through his bag, before pausing, looking back at Jayce with a strange look. The kind he gets when he’s thinking a little too much. “Did you… actually do a magazine shoot?”
Now it’s Jayce’s turn to look aside. He forgot that this Viktor wouldn’t know about his whole Man of Progress rise and fall. This is, after all, the beautiful and perfect frame of time before he becomes a councilor and immediately fucks everything up.
“Maybe one or two.”
Viktor scoffs. “People will buy anything.”
Jayce huffs, almost laughing. He sets his hands on the rim of the bathtub, copper still warm and slick beneath his palms. Viktor sits just outside the gap of his knees. His posture is upright and rigid, a great contrast to man Jayce remembers deteriorating before his very eyes. He pushes aside the sad realities of why that is and instead focuses on enjoying the sight. Viktor with his back held upright, all gentlemanly and proper. It’s almost easy for Jayce to forget about the debilitating guilt that threatens to swallow him alive as he watches Viktor prepare swabs of cotton and peroxide with that delightfully focused furrow to his brow.
“So,” Viktor murmurs, keeping his gaze laser-focused on preparing his medical supplies rather than making the mistake of staring again. “Were these photo shoots before or after you stopped waxing?”
Jayce glances at his own chest, then raises both brows at Viktor. “Um, before?” He shakes his head, smiling faintly for the first time in a very long time. “You’re really stuck on the photo shoot thing, huh?”
“Shame…” Viktor sighs, glancing at his chest, then shrugs to the latter part. “Just trying to see what kind of future I have to look forward to.”
Jayce shakes his head to stop himself from smiling again. There’s a feeling he almost forgot about. Where he expected Viktor to make fun of him, instead it just feels oddly flattering. Regardless of what he’s been through, an unshakable piece of Jayce’s identity is how much he wants Viktor to think about his shirtless body. Or, well, that sounds a little strange. More so that he just wants Viktor to think about him in general.
“Are you trying to make up for staring at me earlier?” Jayce half teases, half still stinging from the way it cut him. “I know I don’t look… I know I’m different.” He swallows as his voice grows softer with a shaky kind of sincerity. He’s changed. His body and mind feel like they belong to two different planes and if Jayce loses focus for even a moment, another piece of himself will slip away. “I was just surviving.”
Viktor lifts his eyes. When they meet his own, the concern there rattles him. A strike of lightning zings up his spine. No one in his life has ever looked at him like that; seen him as Viktor does. The click . Two interlocking components engineered to the nth decimal of error, the closest thing to perfection that something real can be.
It takes him back to the night they met. The very first time Jayce was truly understood.
The night magic became real.
“Jayce.” The way his voice sounds around the syllables of his very name is enough to make his eyes water. So he closes them. He blocks out the sight of Viktor. “I… that wasn’t why I was staring.”
The muscle along Jayce’s jawbone twinges, so he doesn’t respond. He doesn’t have to. Viktor sets a hand over one of his own. A hesitant touch, but the squeeze makes him realize how tightly his own fists had clenched. He forces his shoulders to slacken, for the tense brace in every muscle of his body to forcibly relax. Viktor’s thumb brushes his own, pulling away all too quickly as his fingertips graze the runestone embedded into his flesh.
“Oh, Jayce …” Viktor barely breathes his name, a sickened sort of pity lying underneath the words. He can feel it. He has become some sad, ill thing to be taken care of out of obligation. Is this how Viktor sees him now? No longer a partner but instead something lesser. Something broken. “I’m sorry.”
That disarms him. Jayce looks back into his face. There’s a very foreign look there. Viktor holds his hands in his lap, clinging to a pair of medical gloves he hasn’t yet put on. The Viktor he knows— the one he’s always known— never despairs. There’s always a direct path to success, or maybe sometimes a winding path that doubles back on itself and spins in circles until they stumble on some sort of solution. Right now, he looks lost.
“Sorry? You have nothing to be sorry for.” The force Jayce puts into those words is almost violent. Outrage sparks in his chest. How could Viktor of all people be sorry? He is the one who should be sorry. All he’s done is make mistake after mistake after stupid, stupid mistake . He’s doomed the world with the weight of his own hubris. Even now, instead of righting his own wrongs, he’s letting himself be coddled by the man he has to stop.
Viktor’s brow twitches into a look of thought at the vehemence in Jayce’s voice. Those eyes seems to soak up all he’s worth and wring out every secret. He selects his words carefully before speaking again, “You’ve been through something horrible. Of course I’m sorry. I… It’s not exactly pleasant to see you like this.”
Something about that makes Jayce’s blood sour. Like this. He means ‘broken’ in the kindest way. Weak. Pathetic. A little insane. Jayce jerks his head away, staring at a cracked tile in the corner of the room.
“Don’t.” Jayce grimaces. Guilt feels like a second skin, one that he can’t peel away. “Don’t pity me, Viktor. I can do this myself.”
“I—” Viktor starts in protest, but cuts himself off abruptly. He presses his lips together tightly, draws a breath in through his nose, before continuing. “I know you can. That’s not the point.”
Viktor leans closer. As if to emphasize something. This close, his eyes seem to grow even larger. Two wells of honey, suspending every coherent thought Jayce has ever hoped to hold in sticky sweet amber. Again, he traces the constellation of freckles, this time including the one that hides at the base of his throat. There was rarely ever a time Viktor initiated closeness. He was always flinching at Jayce’s friendly pats to the back or freezing up at sudden hugs when their inane theories somehow worked out. Viktor only bridges the space between them when he’s attempting to speak Jayce’s own language; to comfort him.
And it works. Even without touching him, Jayce feels a sense of calm at seeing Viktor lean into him. To willingly be closer.
“Do you remember the first time I had a bad flare-up in the lab?”
Jayce does. They had been working for over 72 hours straight, very little food and various types of caffeine instead of water. Viktor was in the middle of an extremely tedious wiring job when his back began spasming. It’s blurry now. Most of it. Except for the sight of Viktor curled up on the floor, sobbing and breathless from the pain.
Even now, the mention feels like a fist closing around his heart.
“It was before you had surgery. The pins.” Jayce murmurs, glancing at Viktor out of the corner of his eye. “I had no idea what to do.”
Viktor’s lips curl at the corners. “You did fine. I mean, granted, you panicked and almost tripped over me while I was in excruciating pain but nobody’s perfect.” He looks down, knocking a knee gently against Jayce’s good leg. “It took me a long time to figure out the difference between pity and compassion. I know that you didn’t understand what it was like. How humiliating it can be to rely on someone else. Or just knowing that they’re going out of their way for you all the time when you can’t really reciprocate in the way you want, but,” Viktor takes a breath, voice lowering, “You never looked down on me. Never treated me like anything less than your partner.”
Jayce just stares at him. Soft silence warms the room. It makes Viktor continue.
“I know this is hard— in a way I probably can’t understand. You’ve always been the strong one. Healthy, athletic, and capable of anything. Gods , you just walk into a room with the assumption that everyone you meet is going to love you.” Viktor scoffs softly, as if recalling some slice of memory where the Jayce he knows gallivants around a room of strangers as easily as he can diagnose a misfiring quantum converter. The fond look fades in favor of a solemn stare, downcast to the tile at their feet. “You were right, of course, most of the time. I’ve… I’ve never been that person. So, I know that for you this… this is difficult.”
Jayce feels like an idiot. Every time he thinks he might finally understand the way Viktor might feel— or the lines of his thinking— it’s immediately flipped upside down. Another variable he never considered has revealed itself. Jayce never realized how much he took his own body for granted until it was shattered. He never realized how the stark differences between them might have made Viktor feel.
“I’m sorry.” Jayce looks down at the floor, frowning deeply. The guilt returns. A new wash of shame and disbelief at his own oblivity. “I never thought—”
“—Do I sound bitter?” Viktor cuts him off with a question that catches Jayce completely off-guard. Reluctantly, he lifts his gaze to meet Viktor’s eyes. To his surprise, their edges soften. The only word to describe the way Viktor looks at him is gentle. That alone answers the question. No. No, you don’t look bitter at all . Even if you have every right to be. “You don’t understand what I’m trying to say.”
Jayce frowns. Maybe more of a pout. “Then just say it plainly.”
“The things you do amaze me, Jayce.” Viktor looks away as he says it, clearly finding the honesty a little difficult to bear. “You can walk up to anyone and say anything. You can deliver whole speeches to these massive crowds without throwing up even a little bit. You make impossible things real . You’re the most brilliant person I’ve ever met so how… ” Viktor cuts himself off, a little sheepish, but he forces himself to meet Jayce’s eyes anyway, “How could I pity you?”
Jayce stares. His head clicks back into place and his body feels a little more like his own. There’s the sound of water still dripping in slow, steady plinks from the copper faucet, mingling with the exhale of his every breath. Humidity clings to his skin, heavy and slick. The air is warm and cloying with the smell of lemon soap and two bodies in a small space. Every sense eases back into focus; centering on the only thing that matters.
Viktor shakes his head with a small laugh to displace the embarrassment from what he said. “I feel like that’s immediately going to go to your head so I’m going to ignore you now and actually re-wrap your leg.”
He had almost forgotten what it felt like to hear Viktor’s praise. The warm words soak into his skin and make his bones melt. A familiar sense of weightless euphoria fills him as an equally cogent hunger for more starts burning in his belly. Jayce tightens his grip on the rim of the tub as he watches Viktor, unblinking. The hunger is for more than sweet words. Every passing moment shoves him deeper into an ocean of nostalgia.
I missed you more than anything . Jayce devours every piece he can. The strand of hair that keeps falling into Viktor’s eyes and the crooked press of his lips in focus. Every poised movement of his delicate fingers, like the sway of a willow branch and every pale leaf. Every eye roll. Every scoff and chuckle. Jayce takes it all and presses it to memory like a petal would imprint itself to the heart of a heavy book.
It’s unbearable. Suffocating. Jayce has never wanted anything like he wants to reach out and touch him. The wanting scratches at the inside of his chest, writing on the walls of the cave, hollowing him of everything but desire that feels starvation. His eyes burn as Viktor pieces him back together. Forceps and a cotton swab soaked in disinfectant that sizzles in the wound. The pain is only a fuzzy backdrop to the thought of how it must feel to kiss the sympathetic frown on Viktor’s lips as he wraps his calf back up.
“There we are.” Viktor murmurs as he tucks the tail of the bandage away, “Feel better? You should probably…” His voice trails off as he looks back up into Jayce’s face. Immediately, he tries for an uneasy smile, trying to understand the look in his eyes and why they’re brimming with tears. “What? Why are you looking at me like that? It’s eerie.”
Jayce huffs a laugh as his throat tightens. Despite himself, despite the warnings in his head, he reaches out a hand to brush his knuckles against the skin of Viktor’s cheek. Soft . It’s like crushed velvet.
“Eerie?” He croaks, trying to sound amused but the only tone he can manage is fond. Terribly, terminally fond.
Viktor swallows. He doesn’t move even as Jayce’s palm curls around his cheek, thumb brushing the bone beneath his eye, tapping the first star in the constellation; the loveliest freckle. Jayce can see the gears clicking and whirring behind his eyes. Just like a machine that wants to work but can never quite jump the engine.
“Yes.” Viktor breathes after a long draw of quiet. “You look at me like I’m a ghost.”
“No, no. You’re not the ghost.” His thumb slowly strokes the soft skin just above the strong angle of his cheekbone. There’s a flicker of hesitance in the sharp glow of Viktor’s eyes. A single moment of second guessing, before ever so slightly, he leans into the weight of Jayce’s touch. The breath catches in Jayce’s throat. It’s like holding a star in the palm of your hand.
“When I look at you,” Jayce continues, speaking in a soft, private way. The words melt on his tongue. Could love alone explain it away? Could he just say ‘ I look at you and I know what love is’? It feels like so much more than that. In a place deeper than his soul he knows it is more. “I feel everything coming back together.”
Broken worlds merge. Split halves make their whole. The waxing gibbous becomes a true blue moon. Jayce has been so blind. Regret is swallowing something sharp. Every cut reminds him of another night alone with Viktor under the light of soldering irons and glowing gemstones where he told himself, tomorrow. Tomorrow, I’ll tell you.
“I’ve been an idiot. A coward. I searched my entire life for someone who believed in magic. In my dream. In me.” Jayce leans closer as his eyes dance across every line of Viktor’s soft face. The slight part in his lips. The way his breath hitches as the gap between their bodies grows smaller. “You were the only one. The only one. I thought I had forever to tell you, but I was wrong.”
“Tell me what?” His voice is hardly more than an exhale. Jayce can feel it against his skin.
Viktor’s fingers tap a silent, anxious rhythm against his own thigh. Their gazes hold, though Jayce can tell it’s difficult for him to stay like this. Yet, he does. Almost as though pulling away would be worse than the discomfort of this strange in between; the line drawn for the purpose of being crossed.
“That you’re perfect.”
A cliche. As scientists, they both know there is no such thing as perfection. Even the most ingenious of all things can be made better. Maybe the technology has simply not been invented yet. Maybe the materials exist in another spacetime. Perfection is for poets who have run out of clever words. Perfection is for sonnets and love ballads. The world they belong to; the world of logic and reason, of rule and law, has no time for the implausibility of true perfection. Viktor has made a poet out of him. Jayce has always believed in magic— he’s seen it with his own eyes. Perhaps now, he believes in perfection much the same way.
Viktor’s eyes flutter close. Breath catching; holding. A smile curls at the corner of his lips despite his best effort. Adoration floods Jayce like the oxygen in his bloodstream.
“Viktor,” Jayce breathes his name, “Would you let me kiss you?”
There’s a small nod, their foreheads knocking together. Viktor’s voice is steady, almost unaffected but for the slight crack at the second syllable. “Yeah. That’s— I was assuming that’s where you were going with all of that.”
Jayce is gentle. He’s used to handling sensitive things. Disarming the catastrophic workplace hazards that Viktor assembles on a whim when he’s too sleep deprived to consider how blowing them both up would not be an ideal way to end their day. Not to say that he kisses Viktor like he would maneuver an explosive— no, he treats Viktor far more delicately. This is precision work. A whole new quadrant of discovery.
There’s a small noise from the depths of Viktor’s throat that he swallows eagerly. The press of their lips is unlike anything he’s ever felt before. Isn’t that absurd? That the innocent press of two mouths could mean more than any other gesture Jayce has given or received in his entire life. Simply for the fact that it’s Viktor he’s kissing. As if it was all leading up to this. His entire life constructed and played out only for this moment to finally exist; to feel the give of Viktor’s soft skin and the stuttered gasps as he’s kissed to breathlessness.
Jayce presses in harder. He holds Viktor’s face in the palms of his hands just to feel his body melting. Heat licks his skin. Liquid desire floods into his very veins. He wants to show Viktor everything he knows. To bring him pleasure like no one else could. That no one else ever could.
I want to be good for you. Good enough to make you stay.
Jayce pulls back at the memory of Viktor telling him goodbye. He licks the taste off of his own lips as he scans Viktor. And the sight nearly has him diving back in. Viktor’s face is flushed bright pink, bleeding down below the collar of his shirt. His lips are a darker shade, parted just barely around quickened breaths.
He swallows, meeting Viktor’s eyes and watching them blur back into focus. Viktor clears his throat, glancing aside.
“Mmph.” He commends, adjusting his neck-tie without sparing Jayce another look. “Very nice.”
Jayce blinks. “Very nice?”
Viktor nods, standing so abruptly that it causes him to stumble. Immediately Jayce reaches out to steady him. Two huge palms planted on his waist, gripping. Viktor catches himself with his hands on Jayce’s bare shoulders, bracing with a huff of amusement at his own misstep.
Then, their eyes lock again. A pure white-hot zing of desire punches Jayce in the gut. He shifts his eyes away, suddenly tight in the throat. This is fine. He looks down. His hands engulf nearly the entire circumference of Viktor’s waist. It’s so difficult to truly comprehend just how petite Viktor is from sight alone. It takes hands-on experience. A tactile approach. The feeling of his fingertips grazing the pins hidden beneath the back of his shirt, thumbs pressing the soft give in the flesh just inside his hip bones. Encompassing him completely. Fabric bunches beneath his palms where the shirt doesn’t fit Viktor tight enough. Jayce stares. One thumb sweeps up, just a tick, over the divot of his belly button beneath his academy vest.
Suddenly, Viktor backs up, breaking the hold. “I managed to find some clothes that might fit you. I left them on the table. You should eat something too.” He smooths his hands back down over the sides of his vest, expression perfectly indifferent. “I phrased that like a suggestion but in concrete terms, I’m not really giving you a choice.”
Jayce blinks again. Maybe his head is a little fuzzy from how incredibly horny he is, but mainly he’s confused. Instead of pressing further, Jayce nods. He takes another long look at Viktor before easing himself up with a slight wince.
Their chests nearly bump together. He watches how Viktor’s lips part around a quick inhale, before he braces an arm against the door frame, glancing back. He opens his mouth to say something. I thought it was more than ‘very nice’. Or maybe just to flat-out apologize for pushing Viktor too far.
Instead, Jayce reaches over and gives his shoulder a familiar friendly squeeze. “Thanks, V.”