Chapter Text
Viktor is Jayce's favorite coworker. They’ve been benchmates at Hexco Chemical for a few years now, charged with the task of testing the effects of prolonged pesticide usage on soil fertility. The results: not good. It is not glamorous to work for the institution known best for poisoning the world's water and speedrunning desertification via monoculture.
Luckily, Jayce has Viktor. He makes up for the dubious morality of their employer with his quick wit and dry humor. He’s good company to have when they discover, yet again, that Hexco’s latest formula can be used for maybe five decades before it robs the earth of crucial minerals.
Cancer juice, Viktor calls it. Nothing more refreshing after a hearty slice of microplastics.
Grim, but they have a nice laugh about it. They laugh so much to cope with the horrors that their older labmates have gotten suspicious, often throwing them curious glances or even going so far as to ask what’s so funny.
“Oh, nothing,” Jayce always rebuffs. “Just shooting the breeze.”
This happens every day. They’re like magnets, like planets doomed to orbit the same gravitational center. Jayce might call it chemistry—the friendship kind. If he wanted to be old fashioned, he might even call Viktor his workwife. A partner who exists from the hours of nine to five, in an exclusively professional context. Their relationship does not translate outside of the laboratory.
Attempts have been made. It does not go well.
Take for example the time Jayce matched with Viktor on Tinder. Jayce had just ended things with his college girlfriend Mel and was back on the market, much to his despair. He hates dating apps for how impersonal they are. It gives him too much of an opportunity to obsess before he’s even met someone, mapping out all their life details and charting their compatibility. He can envision a thousand lifetimes in the span of an evening, then chickens out when it comes to actually messaging. These are strangers. No need to envision them walking down the aisle or holding their firstborn after glimpsing a single selfie. It makes rejection sting that much worse. Everyone wants a hookup. Few people can handle a guy ready to put a deposit down at Piltover’s best wedding venues.
Because God kinda hates Jayce's guts, one month into working for Hexco, he stumbled across Viktor’s profile. A total heartstopper, because it confirmed Jayce’s wildest dream of Viktor’s queerness. He liked men! Hallelujah! His about me section read:
chemist, cat mom
woo me with your latest read
Cryptic yet charming. Jayce liked the pictures best, a total of three. One was him cradling a massive fluffy cat and admiring it, Madonna and child style. Another featured Viktor on a picnic blanket surrounded by green grass, propped on his elbows, looking romantically off to the side. The third was special, because it featured a rare smiling Viktor—not with his teeth, just an upward curl on one side of his lips. He reclined the stone wall of an alley, dressed up for a night out in a billowy blouse tucked into tight pants, wearing a tasteful yet noticeable amount of mascara and smudgy eyeliner. He looked candid yet modelesque, and Jayce couldn’t deny his dick’s interest.
Viktor was attractive. He had a soft beauty despite being a quite angular guy, rail thin and bony with intense facial bone structure. The softness came from his wide doe eyes and sweeping lashes, the mole on his cheek and the other one above his mouth. His fluffy brown hair curled at the edges like a cherub in a renaissance painting. He could walk the runway or be a muse for an Italian master painter, and either way, he had the world’s most snatched, snatchable waist.
He was Jayce’s exact type.
But they were coworkers. It would be so pervy to pursue him in their place of work. Unless they matched—a match was an agreement, an acknowledgement of mutual interest.
Jayce swiped right and never heard another peep from Viktor. Not the next day, nor the next month, or even the next year. Jayce goes into work day after day, single, armed with the excruciating knowledge that Viktor was some sort of gay.
Jayce has his suspicions, sure. Viktor is very stylish and has an eye for the cut of his clothes. Despite his trimness, he finds pants that cling tastefully to his skinny legs. His shirts do not swamp him, even when they’re that pirate-esque type with drapey sleeves. A little feminine and quickly shielded by a lab coat, Jayce only catches peeks of Viktor’s outfits in the employee locker room. He catalogues them in his mind and wonders each day what Viktor will wear. A harmless pastime, he thinks, though each morning is like Christmas: what will Viktor unwrap when he sheds his outerwear?
So yeah, it's hard for Jayce to not see Viktor like that. He inevitably gets crushes on all his closest friends. It's probably some glitch of being bisexual, where once he knows someone well, he can picture them married and decades older, sharing a hot cup of tea on a sunny morning, wearing matching handknit sweaters. Because in this fantasy, they don’t toil away their precious hours for the evil empire. Jayce can't help putting himself as close to Viktor as possible. He latches onto Viktor's side the moment the man steps foot into the lab. It pains him to separate for any meetings or for the times when Viktor leaves work early to go to the doctor.
He has a lot of doctor's appointments, and he doesn't like discussing them.
“That's private, Jayce,” is his go-to response.
Of course, of course. Just because Jayce blabs about his entire life story to Viktor doesn’t mean Viktor has to return the favor. It spills out of him—stories about his morning gym sesh, his weekend hangs, his unsuccessful love life. That part he doesn’t love sharing, but he ends up unloading anyway. Viktor can sniff out all his emotions when they’re in a three foot radius.
“Why the long face, Talis?”
“Oh, uh.” Jayce resists the urge to rub his neck or run his hands through his hair, seeing as he’s just handled samples of boric acid. “Bad date last night. Thought she was the one, but she doesn’t wanna have a family.”
“Devastating,” says Viktor.
“Plenty of fish,” Jayce says, with a tacked on smile. He sometimes hates that Viktor knows how undateable he is, how afraid he is of being alone, so much so that he gives himself something to do every night, whether it’s bar trivia or coaching youth soccer or attending midnight mass because God is less scary than the inside of his own head.
Viktor refers to him as my very busy boy. He has made it clear that he does not enjoy going out. He doesn't drink and disdains bars. Each night after work he says he’s going home to rot in peace.
“Do you need a rotting buddy?” Jayce has the audacity to ask one afternoon. Viktor gives him a bewildered look, brow twisted and eye whites shining, as if he had whipped his dick out and slapped it on the table.
“Hah, sorry,” Jayce recovers. “I’m not trying to invite myself over or anything. I hope you have a good time, I guess.”
“As good as it gets,” Viktor replies.
The interaction throws them off their groove. He senses a sort of agitation in Viktor after that—he’s jumpier than usual if Jayce lands at his side. If Jayce accidentally touches his shoulder or hip checks him, he stiffens up like a cat, curved spine and all.
It’s better if Jayce shuts the crush door. He’s perfectly fine being work friends. He's the fucking worst when it comes to pushing boundaries and becoming an emotional burden, which Viktor likely senses. There’s no way a guy that composed wants the hot mess express to crash into his living room. Jayce is lucky Viktor hasn’t asked for a new lab partner yet, given how Jayce glues himself to Viktor's side. It’s his personality. He likes people. He likes his people. He feels much more at ease when he’s got a friend nearby, especially if that friend makes their dastardly work more palatable.
We're in homeostasis, he tells himself.
But then things begin to change.
Viktor changes.
Jayce thinks he’s going a little crazy at first. He definitely goes a little creepy. One day, Viktor’s hair smells like it always does, something vaguely minty with undercurrents of his natural scalp oil. The next day, his hair smells like sandalwood and vanilla, hints of vetiver, an absolutely insane thing to recognize in shampoo. Jayce has to suppress the urge to sniff Viktor’s hair each time he comes near, to confirm his suspicions regarding the new scent, to suss out its different notes.
It’s a gorgeous scent. Pretty, even. It harmoniously gels with Viktor’s aura, adding what Jayce sees as a soft glow, radiating from Viktor’s unbeatable physique.
It only takes a single week for Viktor to catch on.
“Do you have a cold, Talis?”
Jayce straightens up, putting his face out of range of Viktor’s lush waves.
“Uh, no. Why?”
“You've been sniffling all week. Right into my ears. I have half a mind to forcibly administer nasal decongestant.”
Jayce tacks on a smile, a natural defense when Viktor shoots him his classic unamused kitty cat stare.
“Honestly,” he begins, taking a risk. “It’s your new shampoo. It smells really good.”
Viktor blushes himself into silence, which de facto ends the conversation. They spend the rest of the day with nothing but pragmatic conversations: pass me that, take these, did you record it in the database. A good reminder for Jayce to keep things strictly professional—he can’t deviate by perving on Viktor’s hair. It could get him fired for misconduct. Losing Viktor might be the death of him.
Problem is, that’s just the beginning. A few weeks later, Viktor shows up to the lab with his ears pierced. He sports two small golden studs punched into his lobes. The left one sits millimeters away from one of Jayce’s favorite moles, one he finds himself ogling when Viktor goes on one of his hyper-technical diatribes.
Jayce manages a ten second stare before Viktor cocks a brow.
“What is it?” he asks.
“Your earrings—” Jayce gets out. “They're lovely.”
Shit, God, fuck. Lovely is not an HR-approved adjective. Jayce is doomed for the Hexco chokey. For a slap to the face and a stomp on his foot.
Retribution comes in the form of a rosy blush high on Viktor’s cheekbones.
“Thank you,” he demurs. “Let us get to work.”
The word lovely does not escape Jayce’s mind in the coming months. Viktor has always had a tired look about him—dark eye bags, hollow cheeks, stooped posture related to his spine problems. Jayce figures it’s all health related, a chronic pain condition that prevents Viktor from flourishing. It doesn’t change what a good human Viktor is, like he totally has this innate spark, a little candle flame that no matter how small, warms Jayce's heart.
The candle flame grows. Viktor’s face seems to soften. With fat, maybe? He eats better than he used to—in part because Jayce meal-preps three lunches, two for himself, one for Viktor. A habit he picked up when he realized Viktor skips lunch. Either he’s too focused in the lab to leave, or he fixes himself a sugary latte in the break room and pairs it with a vending machine danish.
These days, he accepts Jayce’s gifts of lunch—no trouble at all, Jayce makes his meals in bulk every Sunday. The extra calories round out Viktor’s frame, something Jayce notices mostly in his cheeks, but also his jaw, and a little bit on his wrists. Even his eyebags soften and fill. His eyes glimmer with newfangled energy, like a kitten with their sights on a fish tank. This is why nutrition is so important! Food feeds your brain, first and foremost.
The softness is mirrored in Viktor’s voice, a slight rounding of his usual harshness. Like he’s speaking in a whisper without being quiet, a silkier tone with a more gentle delivery. Jayce is attracted to it as if Viktor is the narrator of an ASMR video. He listens so intently he’s overfilled test tubes and cross-contaminated specimens, acts that earn him a gentle, dick-stirring scolding:
“My, my Jayce. I thought you sporty types were adept at keeping your head in the game.”
Viktor’s hair pushes Jayce over the edge. He grows it out over the span of many months, his curls sprayed like brunette sunbeams around the perimeter of his head. These curls lengthen into waves, a glossy mass that Jayce wants to bury his face in or snare in a fist. He truly has no right being so gorgeous in such close proximity.
Then he cuts it. Shapes it, really, shortening the front into shaggy, springy bangs that blend into the shoulder length backside. It tips Viktor over into a look of effortless androgyny that makes Jayce’s brain flare like a cartoon dog, heart-eyed, tongue lolling, foot thumping uncontrollably. It takes all his willpower to resist asking Viktor out right there in the locker room. His frat instincts tell him to shove Viktor against the wall and steal a kiss. He’s too fucking pretty.
It turns Jayce into a ticking timebomb.
“That bad?” Viktor asks, when Jayce fails to produce an intelligible response to Viktor’s haircut. He lets out a breathy laugh of an exhale, stupefied.
“If I say what’s on my mind, I’ll have to answer to HR.”
“Jayce,” Viktor returns, so close to a purr that Jayce’s dick twitches. He toys with the collar of Jayce’s lab coat, smoothing the lapels flat. “Down boy.”
It’s a terrible tone to set for the day. Jayce is tempted to go home sick and spend eight hours whacking off, milking out every drop of uncouth horniness. Only then would he be stable enough to work alongside Viktor. He’s radiant. He’s clearly in his element. He carries himself with more grace and less hesitance. He’s more prone to smirking and playfully swatting Jayce’s chest and biceps. He smells super fucking good and adopts a new habit of batting his eyelashes. He’s like, fruitier. Noticeably gayer. A bottom who teases, who flirts with disaster with all his coy remarks and twisting of his curls. Jayce wonders if Viktor isn’t doing it specifically to torment him. Nerf Jayce’s performance at work so that he’s a more desirable candidate for promotion.
A terrible thought. Traitorous. But Jayce can’t keep his head on straight, half hard and otherwise lightheaded with thoughts of cornering Viktor and demanding a date.
It’s under these conditions that disaster strikes.
Jayce is daydreaming—sue him, okay?—so he doesn’t register anything anyone says, not even Viktor. He fetches a gallon jug of lye solution from the supply cabinet and carries it back to his station. He does this all the time. It isn’t rocket science. Only today, when he rounds the corner, he collides with Viktor. The jug squishes between their torsos, and the cap pops off. Improperly fastened. Solution sloshes from the opening, dousing both their coats. When the caustic liquid itches the palm holding the handle, Jayce lets it go, and the jug sloppily descends between them on its side, dumping lye down both their fronts, from their coats to their slacks to their shoes. Jayce feels a distinct sizzling warmth soak into his socks.
“Shit,” Jayce says. “Shit, shit, shit.”
“Shower,” Viktor pants.
“Shower,” Jayce agrees.
Plagued with the thought I fucked up on loop, Jayce’s body operates subconsciously as it finds its way to the chemical shower in the corner of the lab. He helps Viktor hurry along by hooking his hand into Viktor’s elbow. The tip of his cane slip-slides in the lye and his braced leg can’t bear weight with the lack of friction. Meaning Jayce sidelong carries Viktor to the stall, shouting over his shoulder, “Lye spill on the floor. Need some help.”
Jayce crowds Viktor into the shower. It’s a better set up than some labs, with two tiled walls and a three-quarters stall wall for privacy, plus a raised basin and drain to collect their rinse water. It’s built for one person, not two, so squeezing both of them inside puts them at kissing distance.
Jayce tugs the shower handle without thinking, just feeling the uncomfortable heat in his skin as lye soaks through his shirt. Water cascades down their heads, a violent slice of rainstorm with droplets so sharp they could cut.
“Our clothes,” pants Viktor. “My brace—it isn't—waterproof—”
“Fuck.”
Jayce drops to one knee to futz with Viktor's brace, a series of metal buckles and velcro straps that thankfully any distressed homo sapiens could operate. He discards it from the shower once removed, but notices that Viktor isn't stripping. Not his coat, not even his lanyard. His jaw quakes as a quaint smell punches through the mineral gush of the water. Pale yellow liquid swirls from Viktor's shoes and down the drain.
“Oh, Vik,” says Jayce. His guts cinch harshly, as if with a rusty clamp. This is all his fault. He's lost his Viktor and gotten a frightened cat. This cat shudders under the thunderous spray of water with limp hair and wide, quick-blinking eyes, looking extra thin with his drenched clothing plastered onto his quivering limbs.
“I'll help you,” says Jayce. “I got you.”
He fucked this up, so he can unfuck it. He has enough dexterity to untie Viktor's shoes and unbuckle Viktor's belt. He shimmies Viktor's pants down his legs. He angles his head to the side so that he doesn't get a dick to the face, though he can't help noticing the flash of pink fabric that comes down with his slacks.
Lacy underwear.
It's fine. It's fine. It's none of his business.
Jayce stands to help Viktor shrug off his lab coat and remove his button-up shirt. Beneath he wears a snug undershirt that Jayce wrangles over Viktor’s head. It drops to the shower floor with a wet plop.
“Holy shit,” Jayce says.
Beneath the shirt, Viktor sports a pink corset, panels of satin that hug his contours and nip his tiny waist to a mere speck of itself. Above it sits his chest, swaddled in a lacy pink bra. He isn’t as flat as Jayce would have thought, not that he's even an A cup. Two lace triangles suspend slight mounds of chest meat. It's fucking girly.
“Holy shit,” says Jayce.
“Did you boys need—”
“We’re fine,” Jayce spits. His arms shoot out to block Viktor in and block out what definitely sounds like their nosy supervisor Heimerdinger. Something primal kicks in, seeing Viktor sopping wet and cowering, his arms crossed over his chest. The pink of his undergarments is a peachy pink, close to the color of his flesh, hard to discern from far away. But Jayce doesn’t want anyone else to see this. He recognizes it as private, something Viktor wouldn’t want to showcase to the entire lab team.
“I’m stripping down,” Jayce says over his shoulder. “I’d appreciate it if you steered clear for the next fifteen minutes.”
It probably isn’t kosher to share the shower with a colleague. Jayce knows he’s staring down the end of his position because of the accident that he caused, being lovestruck and reckless. The damage is done, and his clothes are scalding on his skin. He peels them off, many times heavier than usual, and dumps them at the side of the basin.
“We’re okay,” Jayce says. For Viktor, and for himself. “It’s going to be okay.”
Viktor carries the vibe of a wounded animal. It's hard to read his face with the water pounding them nonstop, but Jayce can definitely read the frowning shape of his lips.
“Help,” he rasps. He indicates his torso.
“With your—oh—uh—okay—”
Jayce fumbles with the little clasps on the front of the corset, constructed of a flimsy metal that feels easy to damage. It springs free. Viktor undoes his bra with a simple twist of a closure between his breasts. Because they are breasts: two swells of tissue capped in large, erect nipples.
“Holy shit,” Jayce says, before he can stop himself. He tugs his dick down on instinct, then realizes he’s fucking naked. “Sorry, fuck. Um, where do want—”
“Hide them,” Viktor says. “Please.”
Jayce nestles the bra and corset beneath the hefty pile of his own clothing, then straightens back up. Only then does their situation truly sink in.
He’s in the shower. At work. Naked. With Viktor. Viktor, who has pretty little tits and a trim waist, decorated with moles and the pink impression of his corset. His cock hangs pinkly from a manicured triangle of pubes, not six inches from Jayce's partially soft cock. One misstep and their dicks would kiss.
“Jayce,” Viktor pants, swaying on his feet. “Without my brace, I cannot—my cane is—”
“Oh, let me—”
Jayce coils an arm around Viktor’s bare middle.
“Relax back into me, okay? I promise I can hold your weight.”
Viktor offloads a chunk of his bodyweight, reclining against Jayce’s hold. To prevent the dick kiss, Jayce angles his body at ninety degrees from Viktor’s. It also prevents Jayce from fully checking Viktor out. It’s so like him to turn a wet dream of a scenario into his biggest nightmare:
You will shower with Viktor, but it will be because you threw lye in his face, at work, where you’ll inevitably get fired. That's what you deserve for thirsting after your coworker.
“I'm really sorry,” says Jayce. “Do you think you got burned?”
Viktor shakes his head. Poor guy doesn’t really seem like talking. If Jayce had to guess, he was just trying to keep calm enough in the face of a pretty awful situation. He’s actively getting sexually assaulted on the clock. Jayce handled his underwear, for fuck’s sake. What was up with that? Cross dressing? How is Jayce supposed to cope with the knowledge that Viktor prefers feminine undies? He wears a bra. He kinda needs it, with how puffy his boobs are. There’s probably a sort of endocrine situation going on, like gynecomastia. He wears the corset because of his spinal issues, and the lace panties because a lot of gay guys do that. It's a gender expression not intended for Jayce's retinas.
Not intended for anyone at Hexco. This whole experience is a brazen disruption of his privacy and personal autonomy, for which Jayce will pay.
He counts down the seconds in his head, not that he has any clue how long they’ve been under the torrenting showerhead. Any burning in his skin has been replaced with coolness of water, though it’s not as comfy as a typical shower. His forearm aches from supporting Viktor’s weight, but he doesn’t dare budge. He doesn’t indulge his urge to apologize nonstop, instead turning inward, to the tune of I’m the worst. I’m a fucking monster.
By the time Heimerdinger throws two towels over the stall wall and calls, “Time’s up,” Jayce is actively holding back tears. He passes Viktor a towel and backs up a few steps to dry himself off. He makes quick work of rubbing his limbs so that he can wrap the towel around his hips. It barely fits. One wrong move and his dick will be flapping in the breeze.
Viktor has a lot more fabric to spare and has tucked himself quite securely. He stands there with a shell shocked expression, water spindling from his soaked locks.
“I think we should hit the locker room,” Jayce says. Viktor doesn’t budge. He blinks hard. “Do you need a hand?”
Viktor nods. When Jayce offers an elbow, he clings to Jayce two-handed. Jayce uses his other arm to scoop up their wet clothes, plus Viktor’s brace and cane. A full load.
It’s a funny walk of shame down the hall and down the elevator to the basement level. They look like they went for a skinny dip, or are headed for a nice sesh in the sauna. Only Viktor slumps against Jayce's side and takes unstable steps, the water from his hair dripping down Jayce's bicep and off his elbow. He likes that he's able to help Viktor but can't unwind the knot of dread in his belly regarding his fatal error. It tightens every time they pass by another surprised human. Jayce offers them all a flat-lipped white guy smile. Not his first choice of expression, but he can't get away with flashing pearly whites while half naked in his place of employment.
Jayce escorts Viktor to his locker—he knows exactly which one, six lockers down from his own. The first thing Viktor does after opening his up is reach for an orange pill bottle. He shakes two blue pills onto his palm and gobbles them dry. Anxiety medication, Jayce suspects. He's too cowardly to ask for a spare dose. Besides, he needs to focus on himself right now. He dries the rest of the way off with help from a spare towel, then changes into clean sweats and a t-shirt. He shuts his locker to see Viktor in an undershirt, sitting on a bench to wrangle on a pair of boxer briefs. He finishes the procedure out of breath, like his breath is totally dysregulated, erratic and fringed by whimpers. He hunches over with his head in his hands and trembles in time to dramatic sniffs.
“Oh my God, Viktor.”
The tightness in Jayce’s stomach seizes his heart: he did this. He ruined Viktor’s life.
He drops to a seat beside Viktor and almost drapes his arms over his shoulders, but remembers at the last minute that it would be another assault, this time in the locker room.
He sets his hand on the far edge of the bench behind Viktor, propping his weight to the side and subtly caging Viktor in from behind. He may be the source of Viktor's pain, but he still wants to comfort him. If he can alleviate even a smidge of the trauma he's caused, he needs to do it.
“I'm so sorry, Viktor. I'm the fucking worst. You don't have to worry about me anymore, though. I'll resign if I don't get fired first.”
“What?” Viktor uncurls and runs a hand beneath his nose. His eyes are rimmed red. “Why would you do that?”
“I gave you chemical burns and then sexually assaulted you, V. I groped you and exposed myself in the workplace. I'll be lucky if you don't sue.”
Viktor pats Jayce's thigh, close to the knee. He leaves his hand there. It's a bandaid for Jayce's shattered spirit. Generally, if people touch you nicely, it means they don't hate you.
“Jayce,” Viktor says. “I am embarrassed, not litigious. We followed safety protocol to a T. It is not optimal so share the shower, but it was advisable given the circumstances. I think we both avoided any lasting damage.”
“Well, yeah,” says Jayce. He didn't get any true burns, but he senses some minor irritation now that he's dried off. Could have been a lot worse given the concentration of the lye. “So you're not burned?”
Viktor shakes his head. “I'll be fine. I'm sure Heimerdinger will require a doctor's note, but it means we get time off, so I can't complain.”
True. Not that Jayce is particularly interested in confronting any of his coworkers now that they've seen his bare ass. He spends a lot of time working his glutes in the gym, but that's for his own personal gain, not because he ever planned on streaking in the lab. He feels worse for Viktor—whatever the deal is with his underwear.
“I don't think anyone else saw,” says Jayce. “If that's any comfort.”
“Saw what?”
“Uh, you know. The like—” Jayce circles his hand over his chest, because apparently the word bra is too advanced for his elementary ass. He knows the message comes across when Viktor's cheeks darken. It spreads across to the tips of his ears, which look insanely kissable.
“No judgement from me, by the way,” he says. “With the water and the color of the, uh, garments, and with me standing in the way, it was basically invisible. So like, I don't think anyone else saw, is what I'm saying. Your secret’s safe with me.”
“Eh, a small consolation, I suppose.”
“Cool, yeah.”
Jayce decides to keep his mouth shut, given the choppy water he wades in. Better to stop rubbing Viktor's nose in whatever happened and put it behind them. Jayce's job hangs by a thread, and being weird about Viktor's choice of underwear will not do him any favors. He needs to be normal. A normal, regular guy who is not thinking unsavory thoughts about his colleague dolled up in lingerie. How long has he been doing that? Is that what's always lurked beneath his tightly belted slacks and billowing shirts? How the fuck is Jayce supposed to show up at the lab and not think about the potential for a matching set, one lye spill away from being in Jayce's grasp?
Viktor lets out a bitter laugh. He stares at a spot on the tiled floor like it's his mortal opp.
“The irony is, I was going to tell you. You were going to be my test subject. But I kept waffling and waffling, and, eh, the universe chose the timing for me.”
“Tell me what?” Jayce asks.
“That I am a transwoman.”
Jayce cocks his head back. Trans. Yeah. Of course. Yes. That is an option that he is aware of, and somehow didn't put the pieces together. The pieces collide at light speed and click into place, a total galaxy brain moment where he swears he understands the entire universe and Viktor's gender within it.
“Sick,” he says. “I think I knew.”
He slides his hand beneath Viktor's and locks their fingers together, just in case Viktor is a flight risk. He needs Viktor to hear this.
“You’ve been like, glowing. Like with, uh, feminine energy. I know that isn't scientific or anything—”
“It's estrogen, Jayce.”
“Right. Because you're a woman.”
“Eh, yes. It would seem so.”
He tucks a bent finger beneath Viktor's chin and tilts her face up toward him. Not a very professional gesture, but pure instinct. He wants to see this person, his beloved benchmate, as she would want to be seen. Pretty is what comes to mind, with her round nose and smattering of moles across her rosy cheeks. Such romantic bone structure—it seriously belongs in an oil painting.
Funny that such soft features hit him so hard in the gut. Her sweetness seeps out her pores and completes the vision, the perception Jayce formed of her regardless of appearance. It's not his place to decide what gender makes sense for another person, but this one fits better than a glove. It fits like a matching corset, undies, and bra. The word Goddess comes to mind, cheesy as it is. It's an honor to re-meet her.
“Did you pick a new name?” Jayce asks.
“I have, yes. It's Vera.”