Chapter Text
Jayce rolls over at the sound of Viktor opening the door. He blinks his eyes open with evident effort.
“What… what are you doing here?” Viktor asks.
He answers part of his own question immediately. He gave Jayce a set of keys last year because a vendor kept accidentally routing deliveries to his apartment, and it was quicker to have Jayce pick them up than send a courier. That stopped months ago, and Viktor assumed Jayce left them to collect dust in a drawer or lost them. But here he is, looking every inch like he’s pulling his weight in the hangover category.
“You weren’t at the lab.”
“It’s very early.” The thought of visiting the lab at all seems tortuous, but Viktor doesn’t need to go into that.
“I got there, um… very late.”
The answer to the second implicit question — why Jayce is in his bed — is evident: there’s nowhere else to lie down.
“And so you let yourself into my apartment.”
“Well…” It seems to finally strike Jayce that he’s breaking basic elements of the social contract. He makes the drawn-out, time-buying noise that Viktor recognizes from particularly excruciating investor conversations — if Jayce were a little less lucid, he’d probably be telling Viktor that’s a great question. “You didn’t answer. I was worried. And I was tired. And I wasn’t really — I wasn’t really thinking straight. And then…”
Jayce levers himself off Viktor’s pillow and sits up. He’s wearing the vest Viktor straightened last night, but it’s unfastened and wrinkled, and his boots are abandoned on the floor. Viktor wonders if he looks much better himself. His shoes still have fragments of colorful paper on them, and his tie — the one from Jayce — is askew where the enforcer touched him. His fingers are crisp with dried liquor and tears. His face feels much the same.
“Are you okay?” Jayce asks.
Viktor doesn’t have the energy to deliver a lie convincingly. The apartment is narrow, and he crosses it in a few careful, halting steps, lowering himself to the bed and letting his cane fall to the floor.
“Was it a good party?” he returns before Jayce can put any questions to him — because the last thing he wants is to relive the past night. And it seems to work. Jayce nods wearily and lets his head fall into his hands.
“Yeah. Sure. Wonderful time.”
Viktor has never felt good at reading people, but he can read Jayce, and it’s not hard to tell when Jayce is miserable. And logically Viktor should resent it. Jayce spent the night at Piltover’s most prestigious New Year’s Eve bash drinking a month’s wages in champagne. Whatever problems he has, they’re better than having a friend dead of a drug or being at the mercy of an enforcer.
But — there’s no particularly delicate way to put it — misery loves miserable company.
“Did something happen?”
Jayce shakes his head without lifting it from his hands. “We got another investor. Maybe more, if I impress Councilor Bolbok next week. He thinks I’m a promising addition to his guild’s astronomy club.”
He says the words through gritted teeth; the tone seems worse than their usual mutual irritation with aristocrats. And Viktor — Viktor is relieved. There is a problem now. There is something Viktor can try to fix that isn’t himself or the claw.
“Jayce…” Viktor fumbles in vain for an eloquent phrase. “What’s wrong?”
Jayce, for his part, seems too exhausted to demur.
“Do you remember the trial? The one where…”
There is one trial they’d both remember, and it happened two years ago.
“Of course.”
“Bolbok told them to exile me. The Council almost did it. They were going to take my family. My research. My entire life. And now… now I go to parties with them. I talk to them like we’re friends. I don’t know if they remember sometimes.”
If they do remember, Viktor thinks, he can’t imagine they know the worst of it.
He and Jayce have talked about the night they created hextech. Jayce has worked the basics of the story into pitch decks and Viktor has made up those embarrassing sensual epilogues in the comfort of his bed — the one they’re both sitting on now. But they’ve never talked about all of it. They’ve always skipped over one part: the bit where Viktor followed Jayce into his ruined lab and saw him standing at the cliff-edge of a broken wall. Like the source of Anton’s wares when he was a child, Viktor hadn’t even put the pieces together at the time. It was only later he realized what had nearly happened, how close he’d come to losing Jayce before they ever knew each other.
“Can I ask a delicate question?”
Jayce starts to laugh, and Viktor gets the joke — since when has he asked permission for that? But the seriousness on Viktor’s face seems to cut it short.
“Yeah. You can.”
“Did you ever tell anyone about… about the circumstances we met under.”
It’s open to interpretation. Plenty of people know the way they first spoke — they were in a room full of enforcers and academy apparatchiks, talking about damages and research approvals. Jayce can always retreat to that, if he doesn’t want to talk about what Viktor really means.
“No.” Jayce’s voice is soft. “I never did.”
“Not even your mother? Or Heimerdinger?”
“Especially not them.”
Heimerdinger asked Viktor once what Jayce was doing out there in the middle of a rainstorm. Viktor demurred, and now he’s glad he did, even though it’s put distance between them. The more Jayce has occupied Viktor’s thoughts, the more he’s wondered what Heimerdinger would say if Viktor asked about it. If he would tell Viktor he regretted his harshness at the trial. Or if he would say that keeping Piltover safe required sacrifice. Or that he’d been making compromises for the Council, like he did with those exam quotas and scholarship funds years ago.
“I still think about being back there. Not all the time, I mean. Just…” Jayce shrugs. “When I’m up high, sometimes, and it’s dark. Outside on those little balconies at parties. If I’m alone and it gets quiet. And I just think — I think I wouldn’t start thinking about it, except that I keep having to not say it.”
Investors buy stories as much as inventions, and hextech is a triumphant one. It would smack of self-pity to reveal what could have happened if — well, if Viktor hadn’t disobeyed those orders Piltover’s elite threw around so confidently, before they started throwing money around instead. Everybody wants to say that they helped change the world. Nobody likes admitting they helped make a world that needed changing.
Viktor doesn’t think Jayce would want I’m sorry any more than an undercity-dweller would right now. Their worlds are not always that different.
“I appreciate it, you know,” Viktor says. “You working with them.”
Jayce gives a wry smile. “That’s what I’m here for. Good at cocktail parties.”
Which might seem true to some of their patrons, but Jayce is far more than that. Viktor wonders where he’d be now if Heimerdinger hadn’t sent him to pick up a graduate student performing unauthorized experiments, if he hadn’t watched Jayce Talis dress down the Council for not believing in his dream. He had ideas as an assistant, sure, ambitions. But they’re hard to remember compared to this thing he’s built with Jayce, like seeing a firelight’s glow against a bonfire.
Now Jayce leans over. He smells like champagne and cologne and Viktor’s chest aches with his nearness. Jayce puts a hand to his shoulder, and Viktor reminds himself of that awful drop in his stomach when he realized his mistake with Arkady — reminds himself that it’s better things stay like this.
“V… should I ask where you went?”
Viktor hesitates. Every moment he keeps the past hours away from himself makes them a little easier to stand. He needs time to let the pain settle, like the cooling of hot steel in a forge, to get used to the idea that even the worst nights have a dawn. And he likes this. Having Jayce close to him, feeling like Jayce needs him, not the other way around.
“Later. Maybe.”
“Your clothes smell like smoke.”
Smoke must be the best of the things they smell like, but Jayce doesn’t seem bothered.
“I’m fine. If you came to my apartment because you were worried—”
“I didn’t.”
“Then… why did you?”
“I was worn out. I was lonely. I…”
Jayce trails off and squeezes Viktor’s shoulder in lieu of words, as if that’s supposed to explain something. A rash move out of late-night affection springs unwillingly to mind.
“Anyway,” Jayce says. “Wherever you were. Did you sleep at all?”
Viktor hesitates.
“I mean — you must be exhausted. I shouldn’t be keeping you up. I should go—”
“Don’t.”
Viktor’s mind is getting too fuzzy to devise a rationale that might stand up to the flimsiest token protest. But he touches Jayce’s arm to stop him from leaving, and as he does Jayce gets even closer, and Viktor finds it hard to breathe.
“Okay.”
“You’re tired too,” Viktor says. “We can both rest a little longer.”
“Where would I…”
Jayce, to his credit, guesses.
This will be fine — because it has been two years, and Viktor has borne every touch from Jayce without asking for more, and Jayce has granted them without seeming to wonder what Viktor does with them when he’s not there.
Viktor fumbles with his shoes until they slide off somehow, and he hooks his fingers into his tie the way he once practiced with Barukh — learning how to undo one without wrinkling it after practicing their knots, because they weren’t sure if appearance counted at the exams, but they were sure it couldn’t hurt. He folds it by the bed and hesitates and peels his jacket off to crumple inside-out around it. Jayce’s hand brushes his back as he does, and Viktor thinks: he is making a terrible mistake.
It’s all right. He can control himself. And it isn’t… it isn’t selfish. Jayce will get a good night’s sleep and he will never have to know what he has given Viktor by doing this.
“You sure there’s room?” Jayce asks as Viktor stretches himself out over the covers. The bed is small; Viktor hasn’t had the time or inclination to do anything that would make its size an issue. Viktor doesn’t answer, and Jayce gives in and lies beside him, barely touching him. Good. Safe.
“You must be cold,” Jayce says. “It’s freezing outside.”
“It is not. The ice was melting.”
“You know what I mean. Get under the covers.”
That should be safer — a layer of fabric between them — except the bed is too narrow to cover just one of them. Viktor pulls the blanket from under himself, and there’s not a polite way to avoid pulling it over Jayce as well, enclosing them in a space more intimate than the apartment.
And suddenly, staring at the ceiling with the heat of Jayce’s body beneath the sheets beside him, Viktor is crying again. Crying and angry at himself for crying, and thinking that at least he’s being silent until he takes a breath and he can’t keep it steady. Closing his eyes and telling himself that it’s simply more fallout from an awful night, because it’s stupid to be upset over getting what he wanted and finding out it’s not enough.
Jayce doesn’t say anything, which is the best Viktor can hope for. Viktor can pretend to be asleep and wait for Jayce to leave and trust they both are tactful enough to never bring this morning up again.
Instead Viktor feels a hand on his face. Jayce is running his fingers down Viktor’s cheek — lightly, gently, the opposite of the enforcer’s casual violation. He thumbs a line of tears off Viktor’s skin and lets the touch linger like it might on precious metal.
Maybe Viktor is already asleep, and this is only an oddly tender dream. Except that it feels too foreign. He wouldn’t have imagined Jayce’s touch this delicate.
So he lies motionless. Not feigning sleep exactly, but trying not to disturb the odd equilibrium that has allowed whatever this is to happen. He breathes shallowly and concentrates on the feeling, memorizing it. Two fingers against the edge of his cheekbone, pressing just enough to indent his skin. One lying carelessly against his jawline. And Jayce’s thumb at the corner of his mouth, so close Viktor can feel the moisture of his own tears on his lips.
Then he feels the pressure of Jayce’s lips, barely harder.
Viktor’s eyes flick open. Just in time to meet Jayce’s as he pulls away.
“I’m sorry. That was stupid.” Jayce’s voice is panicked behind its hangover sluggishness. He starts to throw the covers off. “I shouldn’t have done it—”
Viktor grabs Jayce’s hand.
“No.”
Jayce stops. Viktor freezes. Tries to think of something to say next.
“Did you mean it?” he asks.
Jayce lies back down warily. Viktor can’t see his face, but his posture has the kind of tension it does before a speech he hasn’t had time to memorize.
“What?”
Viktor rolls onto his side so he can look Jayce in the eye. The bed has them nearly pressed together, and no matter where Viktor puts his hands they seem to touch part of his partner.
“Did you — did you mean to kiss me.”
Jayce laughs nervously. “You think it was an accident?”
And… Viktor would believe Jayce if he said it was. That after so many touches that mean nothing, he simply slipped and went too far.
“It’s been years, Jayce. If you had intended to—”
“I…” Jayce doesn’t seem to catch how absurd Viktor feels now that he’s asked that. He furrows his brow — with that little scar, the one from their first night together — like it’s a question worth taking seriously. “I did. How many times do you think I wanted to?”
It is not the answer Viktor expects.
“I did,” Jayce repeats. “I just wasn’t going to… wasn’t going to spring it on you. I…” He laughs again, and it sounds less nervous now than embarrassed. “I thought it was obvious.”
It could be a cruel joke. Jayce feigning all the things Viktor has really spent two years thinking. But of all the things Viktor might call Jayce… cruel isn’t one of them.
The safe thing, the careful thing, would still be to reject it. They have a dream that could change the world. They shouldn’t compromise it for something as selfish as affection. Then again, Viktor has never considered himself careful.
Jayce is careful. He’s immovable as Viktor reaches a hand to Jayce’s waist and tries to draw him closer. Viktor touches his face, and Jayce flinches — not with the look of a man worried he’ll be hurt, but with the caution of one afraid to break something.
Viktor has spent two years afraid of the breaking. He’s too drained for any more fear.
He pulls himself closer until he can feel Jayce’s broad chest against his own. Their height difference matters less in bed, but Viktor’s first kiss still reaches Jayce’s jaw. He works his way up, the fabric of their shirts sliding together, until their lips touch again. For a second Jayce still doesn’t move, and Viktor starts to get that awful cold sense he’s done something wrong—
Jayce leans into the kiss. He wraps an arm around Viktor’s waist beneath the blankets, his fingers tracing up Viktor’s spine. His leg slides between Viktor’s thighs, parting them even as he holds Viktor chastely, barely suggesting more.
Fantasies reproduce input one already knows. Viktor’s own didn’t account for him being so tired that he starts to slip into a state of pure sensation. He’s always imagined planning this somehow, working through a sequence with his partner, a kind of mutually negotiated algorithm.
Instead he lies still with Jayce, surrendering to the urge to simply feel him. His fingers run over the buttons on Jayce’s shirt but he doesn’t quite undo them, just listens to the noises Jayce makes every time an edge indents his chest, while Jayce catches the edge of Viktor’s shirt and pushes it up until Viktor finds hot skin on his bare ribs.
Jayce breaks the kiss to nuzzle Viktor’s hair and Viktor makes a low, needy sound against Jayce’s ear, and when Jayce’s leg slides higher Viktor rubs into it, the pleasure warm and distant. He feels for the button of Jayce’s pants — the sequence again, the algorithm. He gets the zipper down and reaches in, but his mind can’t quite coordinate a rhythm for his fingers. He leaves them in place and lets Jayce move against them, taking in the vibration of Jayce’s moans into his neck.
Neither of them do the work of orgasm. They make each other feel until Viktor starts to drift off, vaguely aware of Jayce’s arms heavy around him, enclosing him. He wonders if he’s missed his chance — if when they both wake up Jayce will regret this, if they’ll have to pretend it never happened. But when he’s nearly gone, he senses more than hears Jayce whisper in his ear.
Wish we’d done this a long time ago.
Viktor wakes with a headache that he suspects could rival Jayce’s — undercity liquor fights to the bitter end. He kisses Jayce sleepily and Jayce returns it, and then Jayce asks if he’s got painkillers somewhere, because he can’t remember how much damn champagne he had. They straighten each other’s clothes and Viktor looks out the window to see a midday sun.
They take a carriage to the lab for a token late-afternoon appearance, as if they have both wordlessly agreed to make sure they can still work around each other. As Jayce starts the water heater on the counter for coffee, Viktor catches the indicator blinking on their little-used pneumatic receiver.
He clicks the latch and lets a message tube drop into the trough. It’s dull and dented, bearing the marks of a long trip across Piltover’s operator network. Then he opens it to find a note inside, and he realizes that’s underselling the distance. The words are written in the same jagged hand as Barukh’s graveplate. This came up from the undercity.
The Factory Twenty-Three dayshift supervisor plays cards at the Last Drop in the Lanes, says the note, using a language Viktor hasn’t read for longer than he’s gone without speaking it. Come by late and wait till he’s out of coins, and I bet he’d sell you anything. Just leave a good tip for my Lana while you’re at the bar. And if you play a hand to help things along — I wouldn’t cheat.
Jayce looks at the tube and the note with transient curiosity. But he doesn’t ask questions and Viktor doesn’t offer answers. He only squeezes Jayce’s hand and kisses him again, feeling the kind of bemused wonder he once gave the sunrise.
Nights. Dawn. Et cetera.