Chapter Text
“Now all I want… is my partner back,” Jayce says, the tiniest twist of a wistful smile on his lips.
Clarity, warm and true, spreads like the golden light in Viktor’s eyes beneath his cracked mask.
It was always him . In every possibility.
They clasp hands over the violently glowing rune, together, united once more in purpose and in clarity. Jayce has never felt so certain, so right in this, to die here at the end of the world with the only one who ever truly mattered. He reaches out for Viktor’s neck, the tendrils of hair floating over his fingers like the ghost of possibilities past.
I would do it all over again , he swears. For you, I would do it all over again.
They hold each other, and enter the great beyond.
—
Warm amber.
He remembers the warm amber of Viktor’s eyes, his hair, and then nothing.
Warm amber is in his hand, gently fizzling. A champagne flute.
Viktor , his mind whispers.
“Mr. Talis?”
His fractured consciousness is at last drawn up to his surroundings. He stands in the great hall of the academy in all its glory, banners aflutter in silver trim. A jazz band echoes in the corner, orbited by the saturated colors of the Piltover elite— vibrant flies buzzing around and around. A steady hum of conversation finally reaches the ringing of his ears.
“Mr. Talis,” says a younger Mel Medarda (she’s different, wearing black instead of white, the gleam in her eye more calculated than he remembers it). “Are you quite alright?” she inquires politely, a hand reaching towards his arm.
He jerks back before she can touch him. The ring of Councilors and investors about him are staring, mouths agape like dead fish.
This is real , he realizes, the whirring of his mind at once intact, thoughts sharp through the fuzz of the technicolor landscape.
He’s younger, a lot younger. He can tell by the lightness in his shoulders, the uninjured strength in his knee. The hexcore, he thinks, before it was destroyed it must have shunted us to another world.
It means many things and one thing: he’s been given a second chance.
Viktor , his mind shouts.
He’s scrambled away from the gala and down the grand staircase before the bureaucrats can clutch their pearls. He races across the yard, slipping on a patch of ice (his mind passively catalogs the data that it is winter), catching himself on bench, bursting through a gaggle of undergrads and sending them screeching, sprinting to the lab building so fast he’d burst through a wall if it dared to enter his path.
Jayce careens into the doorway like a force of nature, chest heaving great huffs of warm breath. And there he is.
“Jayce?” The gentle surprise in Viktor’s voice makes the lilt of his accent softer, pouring like honey over Jayce's ears.
Gods he’s so healthy , Jayce’s mind supplies, eyes tracking the pale flush of his cheeks— thin, but not drawn. He stands more upright, grip not as tight atop the cane, form skinny but not emaciated. He is at the blackboard, on the far end of the room, and every foot of distance is a knife.
“Not having fun at the party I take it,” he jokes with a sardonic twist of a grin, tuft of silken hair tossed by the motion. Though he jokes, his eyes are searching, trying to make sense of Jayce’s appearance and the severity in his gaze.
Jayce doesn’t speak, can’t speak, struck dumb by the cosmic kindness he’s been given. After all the horror and the madness it created, the Arcane gave me this gift. He walks forward, trembling with the weight of it.
“There were some important attendees tonight I hasten to remind you,” Viktor continues, trying to lighten the tension he doesn’t quite understand. “Hopefully they do not—”
“Fuck them,” Jayce interupts, voice hoarse as he stops moving, so close to the other that Viktor’s head is craned back to look up at him. Jayce reaches a hand to his face, cups it softly, so softly, thumb running along his jaw to feel the real velvet of skin. It's a revelation, an ecstasy writ in bruised ivory thrumming beneath his fingers. Viktor’s expression shifts, mild surprise melting into shock— disbelief.
“I should’ve told you,” Jayce whispers, “every day I should have told you.”
“Told me what,” he murmurs, brows drawn in consternation, pulse hammering beneath the pale surface. Slowly, methodically ( he is methodical in everything, even this ) Viktor raises his hand to the back of Jayce’s, fingertips light and exploratory against his wrist.
It’s a mirror to before, when they were amongst the stars at the end of the world, and it forces all the breath from Jayce’s lungs. He can’t find the words ( there are no words ) that could encapsulate everything he needs to say.
So he simply says, “I'm yours,” and presses his mouth imploringly to Viktor’s.
He swallows Viktor’s gasp with the vigor of a drowning man, desperately, achingly, pressing impossibly closer ( there is no close enough ). And kisses him. And kisses him, and kisses him, and kisses him.
He would have continued as long as he drew breath but Viktor puts a shaky hand on his chest and pushes lightly. His pupils are blown wide, breaths heaving against Jayce’s chin— anise and coffee, caramel and clove. His expression is one of pure bewilderment, with the slight haze of something else licking at its corners.
Viktor smoothes Jayce’s lapel, where he had grabbed and crumpled it, clearing his throat awkwardly. His gaze shifts down and his cheeks are stained with a bright crimson flush.
It’s an anxious display Jayce hasn’t seen in years. He had forgotten how timid Viktor once was, how nervous to take up space, to be looked at. It all comes back in a rush, the younger men they once were.
And Jayce realizes that he might have come on a bit strong.
“Um… sorry I,” Jayce grumbles, hiding his eyes behind a hand, “that is, um…”
“Well,” Viktor starts, turning and fiddling with the papers on his desk, “ That was one of many developments tonight, I had an idea to streamline the flux capacitor..”
It's an out , Jayce is not too dumb to see, rubbing the back of his neck. An invitation to let things lie unspoken . But he had done that before, and would never do so again.
This world is real , not a dream , he remembers with a pang, I need to do this right .
“Let me take you out,” Jayce says, already collecting Viktor’s coat and scarf from where they always hang off a chair. “There’s that bar on Fourth that has those horrible sweetmilk and coffee cocktails you like so much, and it's always cozy this time of year, and—” he cuts himself off at the wide-eyed return of Viktor’s shocked expression.
Right, take it slow .
He coughs, offering the collected garments forward with a small smile, “Let’s get out of here.”
He can’t quite seem to keep his hands to himself as they make the short walk, a hand to Viktor’s back, a hand on his arm, a brush against his side. If he notices ( of course he notices ) he doesn’t offer any comment. He certainly does notice the dirty looks shot Jayce’s way by the snow covered undergrads still picking themselves off the ground. Viktor raises an eyebrow, carefully contained amusement behind the twist of thin lips. Jayce just huffs, “undergrads, always in the way,” and ushers them quickly by.
The bar is cozy, like he recalls. Perhaps even more so in this timeline, small and warm, dark wooden walls peppered with framed photos of academics from years long past.
He orders himself a Cosmopolitan and Viktor one of those sweetmilk-coffee-vodka abominations, which to Jayce’s horror the bartender calls a White Zaunite. Viktor just laughs, throwing his head back and momentarily exposing the long white line of his throat. Jayce wants to lick it. Easy , he thinks with a heavy sip.
Viktor tries once more to rope him into a work conversation, the familiarity and safety of math and mechanics dangled over the sticky woodgrain between them. Jayce instead asks how Viktor can stand that stuff, with a grin and gesture at the foamy drink before him. When Vik mentions his mother, her fondness for sweetmilk and vodka poured straight, Jayce asks what she was like.
It starts slow, almost stilted, but the drinks and the easy way they always seem to fit together perfectly kicks up soon enough. His mother’s name, where she came from, what Viktor’s very first invention was, his first kiss. They talk for hours, learning each other all over again.
When the barkeep not so subtly hands them the check, all other patrons long gone, they bundle up and head back outside into the drifting snowfall. His belly is warmed by liquor and something else . Jayce doesn’t even make an attempt to be subtle about his manhandling this time, wrapping an arm around Vik and pulling him close.
“Come home with me,” he breaths into the crown of Viktor’s hair, lips brushing the strands gently. But Viktor halts suddenly, pulling back to meet Jayce’s eye, wary.
“What is this Jayce,” he asks, voice sharp but eyes vulnerable, “what are you doing?”
The snow is coming down all around them, blanketing and muting the world for at this moment, they are the only two beings in existence.
“I’m yours,” Jayce offers again quietly. It’s woefully inadequate he knows, but Viktor doesn’t seem to think so, if the way he looses a shaky breath is any indication. A snowflake has fallen onto his lower lip and Jayce can’t help but thumb it away gently and repeat, “I’m yours, Viktor. Forever and always.”
For a moment, Jayce thinks he’s gone too fast again, the weight of such a confession too heavy for this softer Viktor. But the doubts are dashed against the tentative press of a warm mouth, exploratory and wondering. It is Jayce’s turn to shudder and gasp, curling around Viktor, pressing him close at the hips. In this kiss the ache of desperation is replaced by a new ache: a simmering, pulling heat deep within.
The way back to Jayce’s apartment ( not the one that blew up, the one after ) is a tangle of limbs and mouths, nipping, kissing, licking, hands tugging and pulling. He can barely lock the door behind him before he’s got Viktor’s vest and shirt off and is kissing the planes of his chest, his stomach.
They are in the bed, nothing but thin underwear separating them before Jayce realizes this is not exactly ‘taking it slow’. With willpower equal to that he mustered to crawl out of a crack in an alternate world, Jayce pulls back and rests his forehead against Viktor’s. He is pressing him into the mattress, every inch of skin searing against each other.
“Hold on,” Jayce manages, looking heavy-lidded at the other.
Fuck .
Viktor looks like an obscenity, hair mussed, lips kiss-swollen, chin and cheeks red where stubble had rubbed them raw, bright purple bruises blooming on his neck and collarbone. His long lashes lid an amber eye smoky with lust and something else .
“I want to do this right”, Jayce admits with the tremulous draw of an inhale.
“Such a gentleman,” Viktor teases, sly and glittering in the low light, a teasing finger drawn over the base of Jayce’s throat.
Jayce stifles his groan into the pillow, “You’re making it hard.” At the sound of Viktor’s choking laugh he shoots upwards, cheeks pinker than peaches, “Ah I didn’t mean—”
Viktor just laughs harder.
With an indignant huff, Jayce hides his face in between the junction of Viktor’s neck and shoulder. A long thin hand settles onto his hair, even as he continues to chuckle.
For a long moment, they just breathe. Chests rising and falling in sync. We were made for synchronicity weren’t we . When he feels a yawn against his hair Jayce mutters, mouthing along that long line of neck, “You should sleep.”
“Hmm,” comes the drowsy reply, “What about you hm?”
“I don't want to,” he confesses in a soft mumble against skin. “I’m scared that if I sleep, this will have all been a dream, and when I wake up you’ll… you’ll be gone.” Horribly, embarrassingly, his voice cracks on the last words, the heat of tears behind his eyes and at his throat. The stress, the fear, the loss, everything he carries with him from the last world into this one, it has caught up with him and it’s all he can do but weather the storm.
“Oh дорогой ,” Viktor mumbles, hand stroking Jayces hair through the tears. “I am here, you strange man. Now sleep.”
As he drifts off, he wonders where out there the Viktor from his timeline ended up.
He knows that wherever it is, they are together.