Chapter Text
Jayce Talis has never known heartache like this. He’s never known how bone-deep and miserable it was to lose someone so close to you that they felt like one of your own limbs. In a way, Viktor had become an extension of himself, and if he was older, he may consider it unhealthy how closely wrapped around Viktor’s fingers he found himself.
No matter how deeply he slept or how hard he squeezed his eyes shut, all he can see are Viktor’s careful hands and his messy hair, the curve of his spine, the way the corners of his mouth will pull up in a small smile when Jayce has said something particularly silly. The creak of Viktor’s brace and the clack-clack-clack of his cane still echoes around in his chest.
His fourteenth birthday is two days away, and his mother has already started decorating the entire house. Even in his misery, she’s throwing some stupid fucking bash and inviting all of her politician friends and all of their children. He has friends coming from school, too. Every new piece of tinsel she hangs is surely put up to mock his sorrow. Every new gift he sees, wrapped in sparkly paper and topped with a shiny bow, is a kick to his stomach.
His mother has no idea, naturally, why he’s locked himself away in his room. The lights stay off. His food stays untouched. His mother tuts and tsks and dresses him like a doll since he can’t find it in himself to get dressed on his own. This kind of grief is so all-consuming that he feels it might actually, literally kill him. He finds himself wishing he were dead more often than not these days.
Jayce pulls the covers over his head when his mother comes into his room that morning to shove his curtains open. He has no idea what time it is, but the light burns his eyes even as it filters through the blankets he’s currently attempting to smother himself to death with.
“Jayce Alejandro Talis,” she hisses without any real venom. “What is wrong with you?” That’s a question he hears increasingly often, but he’s never dignified her with an answer. He would have to tell her everything, and he’s not ready to talk to anyone about Viktor’s lopsided smile, or how he’s memorized the way it sounds when he walks. He’s not ready to talk about how hollow he feels. He couldn’t even find the words to describe how raw he feels anyway. Instead, he pulls the blankets tighter around himself in an attempt to make himself small. Maybe she’ll leave his room, just like every other time she’s tried to have this conversation with him.
Jayce hears his mother sigh, followed by the sound of her footsteps crossing the room. His mattress creaks when she eases herself down onto his bed, sitting next to his hip. He holds his breath. Maybe he can do that long enough that he’ll pass out and die.
“My darling,” she says. Jayce feels her hand run up and down his leg in an attempt to comfort him. “Won’t you talk to me?”
“No,” he says from beneath his blankets. His own voice sounds foreign and stilted in his ears. No matter how much he cries, there are always more tears waiting behind his eyes. He hates himself for it.
“Did something happen at school?” Ximena tries. She’s moved her hand to run up and down the curve of his back and he wants to wiggle away from it, but he doesn’t. Truth be told, Jayce had always been a sucker for physical touch. A love language, he had heard it called once. Jayce doesn’t answer. “Is it a girl?” Jayce almost wants to laugh, just for the briefest second. If only it were that simple. After a long pause, Ximena speaks again:
“Is it a boy?” Involuntarily, his shoulders tense. There’s no walking that back. His mother had always known him inside and out, and her question feels like pressing down on a bruise. Ximena makes a soft noise above him and he feels his bed rock as she moves to lay down behind him, draping an arm around him in his little cocoon. Jayce blinks away tears and sniffles, cursing himself.
“I love you,” she says. His mother’s hand finds his head, her thumb tracing a careful line back and forth over him through the blanket. “You can tell me anything, mi hijo. Nothing in the entire world will change that. You know that, right?” She plants a kiss to the back of his head, which is silly, given she’s kissing his blanket.
“Please don’t throw me a birthday party,” is how Jayce eventually responds. His voice is watery and he wipes at his nose from beneath the blanket. His mother moves to pull the blanket away from his head and he doesn’t fight her, but he keeps his eyes firmly shut.
“Heartbreak is a natural part of life, my little love,” she tells him. Her voice is soft and kind, just like it always is. “Even if it hurts, we have to keep going, yes?”
“I can’t,” Jayce says, and he succumbs to his emotions. A sob bubbles up from his chest and his mother pets his hair and offers another kiss at the back of his head. “I can’t do it, mama, I can’t do it,” he cries. And he cries, and cries, and cries. His mother holds him through his snot and his tears for longer than he can keep track of. He cries so hard it makes his head throb. His stomach hurts, and he’s hungry because he’s hardly done anything more than nibble on any food he’s given, but he’s so ill with grief that he can’t bring himself to keep anything down.
By the time he’s done crying, he’s turned over to face his mother. He squeezes her as tightly as he can and his tears have soaked through his pillow. They’re hot and warm, and his face is wet and he really needs to blow his nose. He hears his mother sniffle a bit above him, too, but she doesn’t say anything and lets her little boy cry into her chest.
By the time he’s done crying, Jayce finds himself fighting sleep. His head pulses and pounds as his mother rakes her nails softly up and down his back. Ximena pulls back and Jayce wipes at his eyes.
“No birthday party, then,” she says quietly. Her mother offers him a small smile. “Do you want to talk about it?” Jayce considers that for a long time, blinking away another wave of hot tears and biting anguish. His bones ache as he pushes himself to sit up and his mother follows suit shortly after.
Then, he tells her everything.
His mother has always been kind and soft, and has always listened to him when he rattled off about something he was excited about. She’d mostly raised Jayce herself, his father dying when he was only six. He had seen his mother move through the thick slog of heartache but he hadn’t understood it, not really, given his young age. Sure, he was sad, and he missed his father even now, but he didn’t really get it. He didn’t get how wild and frantic real hurt made anyone feel until Sky told him that his best friend was dead.
Sky was crying when she told him, naturally, and Jayce felt like the ground was opening up to swallow him whole. Where he saw the Undercity as something fun and familiar– he was always so excited to go see Viktor and Sky, easily looking past the hacking coughs and hungry pleas of it’s people– it now felt wicked and cruel. Without Viktor, it was a dark and miserable place.
He never went back after that, and sometimes when he cries it’s out of guilt for leaving Sky all alone. Jayce knew that she was grieving, too, but no force, natural or otherwise, could ever bring him back down to the riverbank. He misses her. He misses Viktor.
Ximena lets him talk through the whole story without interrupting with either comment or question. He watches as her eyes get glassy and wet, and he watches her wipe away tears as they fall from her eyes when she blinks. She’s hurting because he’s hurting, and he’s thankful for her. He loves his mother, and wishes he were small enough for her to cradle, swaddled up in her arms so he could fall asleep and forget about everything in the world except for the smell of her perfume and how good it feels for her to hold him.
By the end of it all, his mother is holding both of his hands in her own, thumbs tracing a careful path across his knuckles. Her augmented fingers are warm in his sweaty palms. The room is hot but he’s still shaking.
Ximena leans forward to press a long kiss to his hairline and lets out a long, shaky breath.
“Whatever you need, my love, just ask,” she says when she pulls back. Jayce wipes his nose on the sleeves of his pajama shirt. “Nothing in the whole world can take away how much it hurts. No matter what anybody says, that will never go away. But you have to keep going. Yes?” Jayce can’t look at her, but he nods all the same. “You are a kind, special boy with a beautiful heart, Jayce. You don’t have to let go of the grief, but you can still keep going. I promise.”
His mother lets him skip school for a week after that, and treats him very carefully. She’ll bring him things in hopes of distracting him, like new books and the occasional toy. The pile of presents waiting for him remain unopened, and one day they disappear altogether. He doesn’t mention his birthday when it passes, and neither does his mother.
It gets easier, day-by-day. Opening up to his mother turned out to do a lot more for him than he ever considered that it would. He caught her crying once, when he finally shuffled his way into the kitchen. She was leaning over the counter, holding her face in her hands, and something about that made him embarrassed. He didn’t make a noise, instead slipping back down the hall and making his way to his bedroom to do his own bout of crying into his pillows.
He tells the kids at school that he was sick, and they’re none the wiser. His grades keep him at the top of his class, like they always have. He goes to wrestling, horseback riding, and fencing, all while his chest remains open and bloody in the wake of his anguish. The other kids in his class smile and laugh and joke, ignorant to the fact that the brightest light in all of Runeterra has been unfairly snuffed out.
As he gets older, the Undercity stays on his mind. Viktor had been ill fairly frequently and that was something that impacted him even as a child. The disparity between the Undercity and Piltover wasn’t lost on Jayce as a child, even if sometimes he tried to pretend that it wasn’t. Sneaking home after his days with Sky and Viktor sometimes were scary. Once, he even had to outrun a group of older kids with knives who he was fairly certain would actually flay him alive if they managed to catch up with him. Deep down, Jayce knew he would never understand. Still, he did his best to empathize.
Eventually, the Undercity officially became Zaun, and Jayce knew what his purpose in life was. He couldn’t fix Viktor while he was alive, and he couldn’t bring him back from the dead, but if he had the power to do so, he would make it his mission to keep families from losing their children to the same sickness that had taken Viktor from him.
Sometimes he still talks to his mother about Viktor, whenever he comes up in conversation. Viktor had let him take their first successful invention home, the improved spring-powered paddle boat, where it sat high on a shelf full of wrestling trophies and polo medals. The contrast between them is startling: the boat, a rusty mixture of whatever materials he and Viktor could piece together against bright, shiny gold.
Even into college, he never got rid of it. When he moved out of his mother’s house, it sat on his bedside table. Some days he did his best not to even look at it, but that eventually got easier to do, too. Sometimes instead of feeling despair rip through him when he held it, it would be replaced with a warm fondness, buttery and fuzzy at the edges of his heart.
While working on his master’s degree, he made no attempt to hide that his creations were for the betterment of the kingdom of Zaun. Everything was for Zaun and, indirectly, Viktor. When his designs became more sophisticated and actualized, he picked up funding for his first real project: industrial-grade air filtration systems meant for the Fissures. His case was easy to make to the right people. Charity looked good, and if it meant Jayce would make an impact in Zaun, he would do whatever it took to schmooze with anyone who had the cash to spare for the sake of furthering his research.
Having graduated early, Jayce filed for his first patent and was almost immediately sponsored by House Kiramman at age twenty, and it was all uphill from there. His life became a whirlwind of parties and galas and handshakes and paperwork, and that eventually landed him a spot on the council when he was twenty-three, which led him to a title of Lord by the time he was twenty-four. It was all rather ridiculous, when he thought about it, but now he was able to ensure that his mother lived a comfortable life of leisure while still working toward his own goals, so he took whatever he could on the chin to make sure it stayed that way.
His least favorite part about his title, other than the fact that he had to slog his way through all kinds of shitty red tape, was the fact that now he felt like his life really wasn’t his anymore. He’d risen to such fame that he was more of a concept than a person. Occasionally, his mother wasn’t immune to that, either.
Jayce had never brought anyone home to meet her, and she was tired of his wistful sighing and long looks out the window, so much so that she thought it prudent to find him someone. She had arranged dates, mostly with men (which surprised him at first), but nothing had ever panned out. Jayce found that nobody could ever match him on the same level that Viktor had, and nobody ever compared to Viktor in any conceivable way that mattered enough for them to be anything other than a nice dinner and a quick fuck. Which was fine.
When his mother would ask him, eyes alight with excitement, how his dates went, he would always disappoint her with the same answer: they were fine. Not his type, but they were fine. They were always nice and wholesome, and of great pedigree. But they weren’t Viktor, so they never went anywhere.
Jayce had long accepted that, while Viktor had been his best friend, he had also been the first person he’d ever loved. He’s heard plenty of times that a first love sticks with you the longest, but no matter how hard time tries to rip that away from his fingers, Jayce still holds onto it, steadfast. He imagines what Viktor might think of these parties (stupid) or politicking (also stupid). He imagines what Viktor might look like now (beautiful). What kind of cologne he would wear, or what his hair would be like, or how he would look in a finely tailored suit. Jayce thinks of Viktor always.
As a result of what he assumed was his mother’s meddling, House Kiramman had proposed to throw Jayce what was, essentially, a ridiculously large speed-dating party. The words they used were fancier and looked much better on paper, but at the root Jayce knows it was nothing more than an excuse to get him to settle down. The Man of Progress would just look so much better and so much more wholesome with a partner and a family. Initially, he had refused. However, after the third time his mother showed up on his doorstep to beg and plead with him to just “give it a try,” he’d finally caved.
Jayce doesn’t expect anything to go anywhere, and much like his arranged dates, they would be a fun time with beautiful people that would result in another night spent alone in his home. He had agreed to it in order to appease the council, and to appease his mother.
So, here he is: fitted in another perfect suit with his hair immaculately coiffed and his shoes shined to high heaven. He’s the poster child for Piltover’s elite. Jayce hasn’t openly protested the ball to anyone save his mother, even if he’s had to duck away into some random coat closet to scream a little before the party started. As soon as the clock hits eight, Jayce puts on his mental Man of Progress hat and plays pretend, the same as he does every day.
The event space is big and beautiful and crowded as Jayce takes his place at the far end of the room, standing with his arms behind his back and offering a smart smile to anyone who looks his way. He feels like a piece of meat.
As he stands on the dais, his mother to his left looking positively radiant with excitement, the fourteenth name is called and Jayce forgets it as soon as he hears it. Another woman walks in and she’s unfairly beautiful: her skin is a deep, rich brown, accented in gold. The white dress she wears is striking against her skin. Still, as she makes her way into the space, he does the same as he has with everyone else who had walked forward thus far: he bows at the waist and offers a polite smile, bringing her hand to his mouth and planting a kiss there. She offers him a dazzling flash of pearly teeth before sauntering off to join in on the festivities.
In total, there are forty-three people he has to sit through announcements for before the party is officially in full-swing. It’s achingly boring. Hello, nice to meet you, how are you? Oh, you’re from Freljord? That must have been quite the trip. Wow, how fascinating. No, I do not want to ‘get out of here.’ Some people are more bold than others, grabbing for him and making passes that are staunchly the opposite of subtle. Some faces are familiar, and some are even faces from the Council. He has to keep himself from laughing when Salo offers his hand for a kiss and asks Jayce to reserve a dance for him. It’s all very stupid.
It’s almost eleven now, and there are no signs of the party slowing down. People are throwing themselves in front of him, desperate for even a brief moment of his time. Jayce is on his third glass of champagne by the time he sees something out of the corner of his eye that gives him pause. While he hadn’t kept careful note of everyone who was introduced to him at the start of the party, he is keenly aware that whoever is standing in the shadows is not someone who came in at the start of the party.
“Excuse me for a moment, Miss Medarda, I–” Jayce looks up, and whoever it is that was standing in the shadows hasn’t moved. “I’ll be right back.” The woman, Mel, is so far the only person in the room other than his mother that he’s been able to tolerate for more than five minutes. She’s witty and intelligent and undoubtedly the most gorgeous woman he’s ever seen. But she’s not Viktor.
Jayce gets a few paces closer and his eyes scan the figure again: they’re draped in a powdery blue cloak, face obscured by the hood pulled tightly over their head. Jayce is more curious than anything. And, hey, maybe if he’s lucky, they’re actually here to kill him. Wouldn’t that be a treat. He moves to take another step further and a squat, plump man weasels his way in front of him, immediately going off about his daughter, who is apparently some duchess somewhere that doesn’t really matter to him at the moment.
“I’m sorry, sir, I’m actually–”
“She would love to meet you, Lord Talis. My daughter is–”
“Thank you, excuse me, just a moment,” he interrupts, handing his near-empty champagne glass off to the first hand that reaches for him. Jayce offers him the kindest smile he can muster up in the moment, pointedly ignoring another voice that calls his name off to his left. Whoever it is that was lurking in the dark has retreated just a bit more.
He’s close enough now to see the face of the person beneath the hood, just a bit. Jayce picks up the low slope of their shoulders, and the way they curl into themselves fractionally. It’s a welcome contrast to the braggadocious, overconfident nature of the other partygoers he’s met thus far.
Their cloak shimmers brilliantly under the strings of lights along the railing of the terrace where they stand, and Jayce can finally make out the warm brown of their eyes. The person, presumably a man, presses their lips tightly together as their eyes nervously flicker from Jayce to the party and then back to Jayce again.
Just as Jayce gets close enough to speak, he opens his mouth to do so and the stranger turns around and takes a few quick steps away.
“Wait!” he says before he can stop himself. Jayce reaches forward and takes another step, still illuminated by the warm yellow light of the party. “Wait, hold on.” The man freezes and turns around slowly. His eyes are wide. He’s beautiful.
“I didn’t hear your name,” Jayce says. The man looks at him like he’s an idiot and he laughs a little at himself. “Earlier, when they were announcing– ah.” He shakes his head. “Nevermind. I’m Jayce.” He sticks out a hand, an offering. A question. The man still doesn’t speak, opting instead to pull the cloak tighter around himself and look at Jayce’s outstretched hand like it’s something to be studied. Jayce feels a little stupid suddenly. “Right. Ah. Sorry– you probably know who I am already. That was stupid.” This is going poorly, but it’s kind of exciting. This encounter is the opposite of all the others he’s gone through up to this point and something gnaws at his stomach. Thrill, maybe.
Jayce doesn’t have to think on that for too long, though, because the stranger says, “you’re not stupid,” rather quickly. It surprises him at first and he feels his eyebrows creep up toward his hairline, his smile faltering just a fraction. Then, long, pale fingers reach up to push the hood off of his head and Jayce feels like he’s been hit in the head with a hammer.
His face is long and thin, his cheekbones high and sharp. His eyes are a warm and bright swirl of brown and silver. His mouth seems to be stuck in some sort of perpetual half-frown and there are dark, heavy bags beneath his eyes. His hair is a brilliant, breathtaking white and for a moment, Jayce is struck dumb. He does his best not to gawk but feels that might also be going poorly.
This man must also think the same thing, because he says, “I shouldn’t be here,” in a quiet voice. His accent is thick and sharp.
“No, no, everyone’s welcome,” Jayce says. He’s entranced. There’s something about this man that’s stupidly magnetic and he feels like he’s chasing a high. His heart flutters excitedly in his chest. “To be honest, I already know a lot of these people, so it’s really nice to see a fresh face. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you before.” Jayce does his best not to sound as awestruck as he feels.
“I’m from Zaun.” Jayce can feel his hands trembling, so he buries them in the pockets of his slacks, ironically almost the same shade of baby blue as the man’s cloak. The universe has it out for him tonight, it seems. “I don’t imagine you make your way down there often,” he says. The universe absolutely has it out for him. For the first time in a long, long, long time, Jayce feels the familiar tickle of butterflies in his stomach. He has to try. For his mother, he tells himself.
“I used to, actually. Snuck out all the time. Got grounded all the time for it, too.” Jayce laughs a little, shrugging at the ground before turning his eyes back to the man’s face. Is it possible for someone to look like they’re glowing? Like they’re the embodiment of the moon? “I had a couple of friends down there, but…” He trails off. He feels a pang of familiar sadness but does his best to tamp it down.
“But?”
“It’s a long story. But,” Jayce starts, his blood singing in his ears. The tips of them are red, partly because of the cold, and partly because of something else entirely. “I could possibly be tempted to tell you over a dance?” The chatter and laughter and music is loud behind him, and the stranger’s eyes look past him again, nervous.
“Not in front of them,” the stranger says, his voice growing even quieter. It’s actually kind of endearing, but Jayce understands. He holds up a hand to the man before turning back and poking his head around the corner of one of the large, square pillars lining the open hall.
“Could you, uh. A little privacy?” he asks the attendant, who nods and turns around, untying one of the great gold braided ropes that stretch toward the tall ceiling. Just after Jayce has made his way back out to the open terrace, the curtains behind him close with a heavy whoosh. He offers the stranger another smile that he hopes doesn’t come off as desperate and holds out his hand, hoping that it’s not shaking enough for him to notice.
Jayce almost sighs with relief when a long, slender hand slides into his palm and he reaches forward, slipping his hand into place on the stranger’s waist. He’s a good head smaller than Jayce, maybe a bit more, and up close it’s hard to breathe. There’s a freckle under his eye and another at the corner of his thin mouth.
His eyes are even more startling up close, and it’s frankly really fucking difficult to maintain eye contact with him. His fingers close over the stranger’s just as he raises an arm to sling over Jayce’s shoulder. To keep from fidgeting, Jayce starts to sway, just the smallest bit. It’s hardly a dance, really, but he’s too distracted to put any real thought into it.
The music fades into something slower, only slightly muffled by the long stretches of curtains separating the two of them from the party. The man’s eyes follow the column of his throat before he ducks his head down, decidedly not looking up at Jayce.
“Don’t be so nervous,” he says in a tone that he hopes isn’t too aggressively teasing. “I’m nice. I promise.” That grants him the first smile of the evening, even though it’s barely there. Jayce feels like he might float right out of his stupid, shiny shoes.
“I know,” the stranger says and Jayce raises an eyebrow. Whoever this is, they seem to know exactly the right things to say. He feels like a dog, salivating over the promise of a steak.
“You know? Seems like you know a lot more about me than I know about you, then.” The man still hasn’t offered his name, but Jayce has all night. He has the rest of his life, really, if that’s what it takes. The stranger laughs and Jayce thinks it might be the most beautiful sound he’s ever heard. Is it possible to fall in love immediately after meeting someone?
“That’s,” the stranger pauses, thinking. “Probably true. Wouldn’t it be prudent for everyone here asking for your hand to do their due diligence and at least do a little bit of research before they dive headfirst into marriage?” Ah. Right. Marriage. This whole party. His mother. The Kirammans, et cetera. He laughs, then, his hand (the traitorous thing) sliding over the fine fabric at the stranger’s waist to rest at the small of his back. He feels something beneath his waistcoat, hard and knobby under his fingertips. Curious.
“That’s assuming that anyone in that room even cares about me as a person, rather than me as a concept,” he says. Maybe that’s cutting a bit too deep, but the night has taken a surprising enough turn that he feels alright enough to say so. He regrets it for a moment, given that this person is also here at the same event, presumably for the same reason.
“Ah, the Man of Progress feeling the weight of everyone’s eyes on him, hm? That doesn’t seem like you.” He couldn’t be more wrong, though. Some days feel better than others. Some days it feels like he’s a walking facade, a mishmash of whatever it is that other people want him to be. Though, truthfully, without Viktor, Jayce isn’t really sure who he is in the first place.
For the first time in a long time, Jayce finds that he doesn’t want to think about Viktor. Not right now. He doesn’t want to think about how he feels like he’s betraying the deep, dark, cavernous love that he still feels for someone who has been dead for ten years. Is it weird to love someone so strongly who isn’t even around anymore? Jayce has asked himself that very question on more than one occasion.
The topic turns to Zaun, then, and Jayce spills his guts in as reigned-in a fashion as he can. He tells the stranger about Sky, and about Viktor, going into as few details as possible while still ensuring that his words are honest. That they still hold weight.
He tells the man that his best friend is dead, but tries to move past that as quickly as he can without sounding rushed. Somehow, every conversation always makes its way back to Viktor. His life is an ouroboros of grief.
“I’m sure he would have been very proud of you.”
The amount of times he’s actually mentioned Viktor in conversation to people who aren’t his mother are so few he can count them on a single hand. After the first few, he’d grown infuriated at the oh I’m so sorrys and the that must have been very hard for yous. Nobody else could even begin to fathom the way he wore his love for Viktor, a heavy thing around his neck that made him feel like he was being pulled into the center of Runeterra. That, though, was something he hadn’t heard from anyone except his mother.
He’s going to fuck this up, probably, but Jayce can’t help himself. He pulls his hand from the stranger’s and tips forward, wrapping both arms firmly around his middle. He can feel the hard bumps on his spine pressing against his forearms as he does his best not to squeeze too tightly and fights the urge to bury his face in the man’s shoulder.
Jayce is absolutely, positively sure that he’s fucked up, until he feels the stranger’s arms slowly wind their way around his shoulders to hold him, feather-light. He feels grounded, then, like the thin arms wrapped around his neck are the only things keeping him from floating up into space. He can’t help himself.
“Thank you. Even if it doesn’t mean much coming from some stupid Piltie like me, that means everything coming from you.” Jayce is sincere when he says it, and he can hear Viktor’s small voice bouncing around in his head, echoing some of the last words he ever heard his best friend say to him. Everything always comes back to Viktor.
“Don’t call yourself that.” The sharpness in the man’s voice makes him freeze for a moment before Jayce barks out a laugh and pulls himself away. He’s so close to his face, eyes scanning the high points of his cheeks, the freckles on his skin, the thick lines of his eyelashes as his wide eyes look up at Jayce. “Besides, you don’t even know who I am.”
Jayce pauses for a moment. There’s an aching familiarity in the big, silvery eyes looking up at him with a startling intensity that serves only to suck the breath right from his lungs. Over time, Viktor’s face in his mind has lost some sharpness around the edges, and he can really only remember the briefest impression of Viktor’s full cheeks and long nose. Viktor also had a few freckles on his face that Jayce had trained his eyes on more often than was comfortable for both himself and Viktor, probably. But, Viktor was dead, and his hair was not a riotous white, and his eyes were not a swirling silver. This is not Viktor, Jayce tells himself. Viktor is not here.
“Walk with me?”
Talking with the stranger is as easy as breathing. He’s witty, and his tongue is sharp, and his hands reach directly into the gaping wound that makes up his heart and squeezes it between his long, thin fingers. Jayce had zero hope for the evening to bear any fruit, but here the fruit is anyway, draped in a brilliant, sparkling powder blue and walking with him through a maze of budding white roses. Perhaps he’s getting ahead of himself.
He’s honest about that when the stranger asks. He sincerely did not believe for this event to serve any other purpose than proving a point that he doesn’t need whatever it is that the Kirammans and his mother keep trying to push him toward. He was fine on his own, and that was fine, and living by himself is fine.
“Tell me about you, then,” Jayce starts. He listens as the man rattles off something that he clearly has distaste for. Family business, legacy, the works. He can sympathize and thinks it doesn’t sound that dissimilar to his current situation, in a way. Maybe that’s a part of growing up, though. Ensuring that your feet properly mold into the shoes that someone else has picked out for you. Jayce feels like the shoes picked out for him are mismatched, and not even on the right feet.
He keeps listening to the man as he tells Jayce more, and Jayce hangs off of every word. He’s hit with wave after wave of an emotion akin to misery and considers, for a moment, if this is a setup. There’s just no practical way that this person was put on this planet for any other reason than to torment him. Viktor, Viktor, Viktor. In every sordid fantasy that his mind had dangled in front of him, Viktor had been exactly like this. Maybe he’s hallucinating. He’s going to throw up. His heart has grown wings inside of the hollowed-out cavity of his chest and it’s bouncing around between his ribs, wild and frantic.
“Listen,” Jayce starts. This is a stupid fucking idea, but he’s always been one for stupid ideas anyway, so he doesn’t try to talk himself down from the ledge. “This is going to sound fucking crazy.” It is fucking crazy. “But, this party– I mean, this whole thing is for– ah, you know what it’s for, and I’m just assuming you came here for the same reason as everybody else, but would you.” God, he’s really going to say it. He’s a big stupid idiot and he’s going to say it. Jayce fights through his words, stuttering in time with his heart. “It’s a big ask, but even if it’s just to get to know each other better, would you–”
Jayce is promptly interrupted by the toll of a bell. Midnight, then. Party’s over. He doesn’t have time to dwell on that, though, before the figure beside him doubles over, ripping his hands away from Jayce’s own.
“I have to go.” Jayce feels like someone’s just dumped a bucket of ice water down the back of his shirt. “I have to leave, I’m sorry, I have to–”
“Wait, what?” he interrupts, frantic. His life is just one cruel joke after another, apparently. “What do you mean? Are you alright?” The stranger groans again and attempts to stand, but seems wobbly. He takes a step forward with his right leg and it almost buckles out from under him. Jayce stands and takes a step toward him in kind. He’s fucked everything up. “Listen, I’m sorry. What I said was stupid, and this whole party is stupid, but please–” don’t go.
“I’m sorry, Jayce. I’m sorry for everything, but I have to go.” The way the stranger says his name cuts him like a knife. This can’t be happening. The man practically falls down the steps of the pavilion and for a moment, Jayce’s feet are cemented dumbly to the ground. Jayce watches as the stranger actually does fall, then, and he leaps down the stairs toward him. By the time Jayce makes it to where he fell, the man is already gone.
Jayce can hear him fighting through the bushes and decides that he is not going to chase after him like a creep, which is a much more difficult task than it should be. His muscles are tense, his breath coming in great, heaving gulps that he can see, heavy and wet in front of his face. Jayce wants to cry.
He ducks his head down, holding his own face in his hands while he squeezes his eyes shut. Jayce pushes the heels of his hands into his eyes and the faint echo of the stranger’s face backlit with a vast smattering of stars pulses behind his eyelids. He registers for a moment that he’s working himself up, but can’t help it. A wad of panic and shame reaches itself up in the shape of a fist from deep in his stomach, up his into throat and he can do nothing else but scream.
Jayce allows himself to throw at least a little tantrum, standing alone in the garden, surrounded by roses and firelights and string lights. Little flecks of green fade in and out as the firelights drift from rose to rose and he is completely and utterly miserable. Another light, though, catches his eye for a brief moment. It’s small and faint, laying in the dirt where it was disturbed when the stranger fell. Jayce stares at it for a beat, eyes hardly catching the glow through tears. He blinks them away and leans down.
It’s a simple thing: a roughly carved stone, glowing a faint and weak blue, hanging from a simple gold chain, and Jayce thinks just for a moment that maybe, just maybe, there’s hope. Even if it’s small, there’s still hope.
Jayce lets himself cry, just a little bit, and he doesn’t go back inside to the party. He can still hear the music all the way out in the garden, but it does nothing to draw him back in. Instead, he stuffs his hands into his pocket with the pendant curled into one of his fists. Jayce walks home, flashes of white hair and silver eyes and a wiry smile playing on loop in his mind.
And, of course, it starts to rain just as he’s about a mile from home, so his mopey walk turns into a mopey jog. By the time he makes it inside, he’s soaked, but he’s had the opportunity to consider where to go from here. He even allows himself to entertain the thought that maybe, possibly…
Viktor.
Of course, the plausibility of it actually being Viktor is very, very slim, but by the time he’s sat himself down at his empty dining room table and dumped a ridiculous amount of whiskey into himself, he’s almost convinced it’s him. Who else in all of Runeterra would draw him in so magnetically? Who else would ever be able to hold his attention the way Viktor had?
And, even if it wasn’t Viktor, Jayce wouldn’t deny that the meeting with the stranger seemed like something out of a ridiculous fairytale. Downing the last bits of his near-empty bottle, Jayce makes up his mind: he’s going to find him.
—
His mother finds him in bed the next day after having let herself into his home, fighting the stale nausea of a hangover. Jayce pulls a pillow over his head when she barges into his room, she’s brimming with excitement and asks him how his evening went. She must have seen him slip away with…with whoever it was that he spent the last bit of his night with. He only offers a grunt in reply and buries himself deeper in his blankets.
“I’m making you breakfast,” his mother tells him. Jayce doesn’t tell her that his cabinets are mostly empty. “You never have any food in here, so I brought everything over already. Get up and join me at the table in twenty.” She’s excited, her voice airy and eager.
“Mama,” he drawls from his bed, groggy. She throws open his curtains.
“Twenty minutes, Jayce.”
It takes him five minutes to peel himself out from under his blankets, and another five to finally make it to the bathroom to shower. By the time he’s made his way into the kitchen, his mother is serving them both up. Jayce kisses the top of her head and she makes a happy noise, turning around to set the table and asks him how he feels.
“Awful,” he answers simply. His mother sits at the head of the table and he sits at the corner beside her.
“So,” she starts, “tell me about who you met. I saw you, you know, sneaking off.” He’s hungover, and feels a little bit manic, but Jayce does his best to tell his mother that, yes, he met someone and yes, he would like to see them again. He does not tell her that he’s almost positive it was Viktor. He’s still working out the logistics of it all, really, and still feels the rational part of his brain gnawing at him, telling him that it is most definitely not his dead best friend, brought back to life.
“And what’s his name?” she finally asks. Ah. That part.
“I..,don’t know, actually.” His mother balks but Jayce keeps his eyes firmly glued to the eggs on his plate.
“What? You didn’t even ask for his name? Jayce,” she says, tone accusatory. “I raised you better than that. That’s so rude.” He tells her that it wasn’t for lack of trying and describes as best he can in as few details as he can that something immediate seemed to come up, and the stranger had, well. Just sort of disappeared into the night.
—
So, life goes on. Jayce doesn’t protest when his mother proposes the idea of searching through Piltover for his mystery date, as she’s taken to calling the stranger. Jayce can agree that it’s a good idea, in theory, but there are a few issues. Namely:
How can Jayce be sure that the stranger is in either Piltover or Zaun? Sure, he could be from Zaun but not live there. Or, he could have been lying about being from Zaun in the first place. There’s not really any way for him to know.
If the stranger is in Zaun, that complicates things even further. He can’t very well go door-to-door with enforcers behind him and raid everyone’s homes looking for Viktor. That would be absurd. Ximena suggests posting a bulletin in search of the stranger, but something about that seems wrong.
Dear Citizens of Piltover, I’m searching for my best friend who died when I was fourteen. He was sparkly and beautiful in the moonlight and when I was with him it felt like I was flying. If this fits your description, please come forward.
XOXO, Jayce
So, no, there is no formal announcement or anything of the like after the party, but his mother fields questions and opens letters from the partygoers for him as Jayce considers what to do. She’s not overly enthused that Jayce has seemingly set his sights on some nameless person who disappeared without ever telling Jayce his name, but she’s still in his corner, and she understands.
Jayce does his best not to seem manic and desperate, but as he looks at himself in the mirror, he realizes that he looks very manic and very desperate. His beard has grown out, and he’s in serious need of a haircut, but that would take time and he doesn’t have that. The hole where his heart used to be is wider than ever now, and if it grows any bigger then he feels like he might blip out of existence entirely.
So, he hangs onto hope. He combs over the list of attendees from the party again and again, and maybe the next time he does it another mystery name will magically appear at the bottom of the roster and point him in the exact direction of Not-Viktor.
It’s been a full month since the ball and he’s running on fumes. He shows up late to meetings looking like hell, and he misses proposal deadlines but does his best to offer his trademark Man of Progress Smile as he asks for extensions. He spends almost every waking moment in search of the stranger and, honestly, he feels like it’s making him go fucking crazy.
When Jayce is sure he’s exhausted all of his resources, he considers the pendant, something he’d not yet brought into the equation. It sits on his nightstand, the brilliant blue having long faded from its core. Now it’s a dull, bleak gray and in truth it looks like nothing special. However, Jayce can’t forget how warm it felt in his hand, and how brightly it glowed in the dark where it had fallen into the dirt. He’s holding onto hope that this is the missing piece.
—
Usually, Jayce is a fairly heavy sleeper. On more than one occasion as a teenager he’d found himself awake in the morning on the hard floor of his bedroom after rolling out of his bed, continuing his sleep against his carpet. He’d also, very notoriously, slept through a rather large earthquake once. So it comes as a surprise when Jayce peels his eyes open, having been pulled from sleep by a soft, barely-there sound behind him.
It takes a few blinks before his eyes adjust to the darkness of his room, only a single razor-thin sliver of light filtering through his dark curtains. Jayce sucks in a slow, sleepy breath and curls back into his pillows, figuring it’s nothing until he hears it again: a soft clink against his floor. He’s frozen just for a moment. There, standing in the center of his room, is the same hooded figure from the ball. Jayce’s heart feels like it’s in his throat.
Jayce sits up in a rush, shoving his blankets off of himself as he practically vaults himself into a standing position before he realizes that it’s not the same stranger from the party: they’re a bit taller, their shoulders a confident line instead of the stranger’s low slant, and they have their tattooed hands wrapped around a tall, twisted staff. The head of the staff casts the same startling blue glow across the room as he had seen emanating from the pendant before it had fizzled out into its current dull gray.
“What the fuck are you doing in my house?” Jayce spits, fists clenched at his sides. His entire body is wound tight, ready to spring into action.
“Coming to retrieve what is mine,” the hooded figure says. Their face is hidden in the thick darkness of their hood, the blue light filtering through the room being dissolved in its depths. In the figure’s free hand is the pendant, which has started to glow the same blue as the head of their staff. Jayce narrows his eyes. “I am surprised that he did not tell you…” the intruder’s voice trails off.
“What are you talking about? Who?” Jayce shakes his head. “You have ten seconds to get out of here before I stop talking and start swinging.” The figure’s cloaked head tilts to the side but they make no move to leave.
“I suppose I could give you more time,” they say in response. Jayce’s brows knit further together, eyes flitting frantically back and forth between the deep dark within the stranger’s hood to the pulsing pendant in their hand. What is going on?
“More time for what?” Jayce asks. He takes a step forward.
“Aren’t you looking for someone?” they ask, the slow, quiet drawl in their voice teetering on sardonic. Jayce snaps fully awake then, a sharp zip of panic driving itself through his chest. “You’re doing a very poor job of it.” Jayce takes offense to that.
“How do you know about that?” Jayce asks. “Who are you?”
“Someone here to remind you of the unused tools you have at your disposal.” The stranger’s fingers unwind from around the pendant and Jayce watches, eyes wide with wonder, as the pendant lifts itself away from their palm and hovers above it. The gold chain drifts around it as though suspended in an ebbing tide. “He is not dead, Jayce.”
Jayce’s eyes tear away from the pendant to stare into the dark, gaping maw of the stranger’s hood.
“What?” he asks, sounding breathless. All of the heat leaves his body and Jayce begins to shake. The stranger makes a low noise before their hand returns to their side, leaving the pendant suspended in the air.
“You have all the answers that you need to take you precisely where you need to go,” they say. “Good luck, Jayce. I sincerely hope that you are more successful than I have been in the past.” The stranger’s fingers twitch at their side and the pendant slides through the air into Jayce’s direction. He reaches up to catch it before it bumps into his chest. It’s unusually warm. When Jayce looks back up toward the stranger, they’re gone.
—
It’s pissing rain the day he decides to take his search into Zaun. He can’t take the bridge, because too many people would recognize him and it would raise too many questions, so instead Jayce has resolved to poking around the same bypasses that he had used as a child. Most of them are, predictably, either sealed shut or heavily guarded. With the pendant firmly fisted inside of his pocket and his cloak tightly pulled around himself, Jayce comes to the very last entrance he remembers and it’s also sealed, because of course it is. For a moment, he feels hopeless. Jayce continues on and the rain continues to pour.
The sound of children’s laughter pulls him out of the pit of self-pity he’s currently wallowing in, and Jayce follows its direction. Squinting through the rain and wiping at his face, Jayce barely catches small bodies zipping around the corner up ahead and he picks up his pace, jogging after them. He sees three bodies, then two, and then only one small child is left, eyes finding Jayce as he approaches. She gasps before looking down at her feet, and then disappears.
Jayce picks up the pace as the childrens’ voices grow distant, and eventually they’re too far away for him to hear. He curses into the cold, wet air before he sees it: an open grate leading into an empty passageway. It’s narrow and Jayce knows he won’t be able to get in without getting absolutely filthy, but given it’s his only option, Jayce doesn’t give it a second thought before he worms his way inside and makes his way into Zaun.
He ducks into the first open business that he can find and is hit with the warm smell of sweetbread. He could cry with how relieved he feels to be out of the rain and Jayce shuffles to stand in line in order to do his best to look natural. He’s in the most raggedy clothes he could find at a secondhand store and hopes he blends in at least a little bit, which may not be a problem given their current state.
“All right?” a voice asks, pulling him out of his reverie. Jayce nods his head and steps up to the counter. He hasn’t even looked at what they have on offer, but he points to something in a streaky display case that’s mostly empty and the person at the counter simply nods, reaching in to grab what he’s ordered. Jayce leaves a few coins on the counter and looks around: the shop is small and fairly dingy, obvious patchwork fixes putting in their best effort to make the inside look put-together. It’s about as nice as he would expect for this area, and it’s certainly nicer in Zaun now than it had been when he was a child. The council of Zaun had put in good work, but there’s still a long way to go.
“Jayce?” His head snaps up in the direction he hears a familiar voice and he’s hit with a wave of surprise.
“Sky?” Jayce looks around and sees that the shop is mostly empty, thankfully, save an elderly couple sipping coffee in the corner and one person behind him, waiting to order. Sky Young, his childhood friend, stands behind the counter holding a tray of bread in her hands.
“Oh, my god,” she says, looking immediately panicked. She pushes the tray into the hands of the person who took his order before practically vaulting herself over the counter. “Oh, my god. Oh, my god!” Jayce can’t help but laugh at how natural it feels to have her rush into him, and he holds her like he’s a kid again. She’s short, at least a foot and a half shorter than him, and she fits so perfectly in his arms that it’s unreal. “What are you doing here?” she asks.
“I’m– I’m just–” Jayce can’t seem to get the words out.
“Not that I’m not happy to see you, I just. I’m surprised. What are you doing here?” she asks again. Her glasses have started to slip down her nose and he takes her in: she looks healthy. Happy. Her hair is collected in a high, curly tuft at the top of her head and she’s covered in flour. “Oh!” she says suddenly, seemingly unable to let Jayce answer before the next thought tumbles out of her mouth. “Viktor. Jayce, Viktor– I’m so, so sorry, I couldn’t come tell you, and I got it so wrong.” She continues on in a flurry of words that bleed together. Jayce can only pick out a few words: Viktor, Silco, not dead, so sorry.
Jayce spares a look around the shop and all eyes are trained on them. He holds her shoulders and gives a small squeeze, his heart hammering in his chest.
“It’s okay, it’s alright. Look, let’s talk somewhere a little more private, yeah?” Sky nods, and says “of course,” before wrapping a hand around his wrist and dragging him back through the doorway he assumes she came out from. “Back in five, Gert. Or maybe ten. I don’t know. Fill in for me.” The person at the counter, Gert, makes a noise of protest but Sky doesn’t slow down, hauling Jayce out of the back of the shop and into the narrow alley where they pass through another doorway on the other side.
This takes them into a small apartment, clearly Sky’s. There are photos of her on the wall with her parents, other candid photos of people he doesn’t know, and a few pictures of herself and Viktor from when they were young. Jayce’s stomach does a hard flip as his eyes settle on a photo of the two of them that looks like it could have been taken a few years after the last time Jayce ever saw them.
Jayce looks around the small apartment to find that he’s alone, but he can still hear Sky somewhere in another room. He follows the sound of her voice and she nearly runs into him when she appears in front of him with a bundle of clothes in her arms.
“You’re soaked, so I thought– these are my girlfriend’s, but they’ll probably fit you. I hope.” Sky thrusts the bundle of clothes into Jayce’s arms and he accepts them, giving her a small smile. “I’m going to put a kettle on. Go change. We have a lot of catching up to do.”
The clothes do fit him, and Jayce hadn’t even realized how awful it felt to be sopping wet until he’s clean and dry. The chipped floorboards beneath his feet creak as he makes his way back the way he came from. He follows the sound of clinking dishes to find Sky in the kitchen. There are two small plates in front of her with large, fruit-filled pastries and two mugs, steaming as she tosses tea bags into them. Sky looks over her shoulder at him and gives him another big, bright smile.
“It’s so good to see you,” Jayce says honestly. It’s strange, seeing someone after so many years who had been such a large part of your life. He feels like he should know her like the back of his hand, but here she is: someone completely new.
“It’s good to see you, too,” she says, handing Jayce his plate and his mug of tea. She takes her own to the small two-person table against the far wall of her cramped kitchen and Jayce follows in kind. “Viktor–”
“Let’s start with you,” Jayce says, doing his best to keep his voice from shaking. His stomach curls itself into a hard knot.
Sky tells Jayce her story: her parents are both gone now, and she runs the bakery. She’s happy. Work is fun. She has a cat named Pookie, who makes an appearance not long after being mentioned. Pookie decidedly ignores Jayce in favor of hopping into Sky’s lap and attempts to paw at her pastry as she nibbles on it. Her girlfriend’s name is Ila. She has catch-up dates with Viktor on the last Wednesday of each month.
“He never sent you a letter?” Sky asks eventually. Across her nose and cheeks she has a smattering of freckles. She’s beautiful. Jayce shakes his head and ducks his eyes down to his empty plate. “Any time I asked him about you or told him that he should reach out, it was always, ‘maybe,’ or ‘he doesn’t want to hear from me, Sky.’” Her Viktor impression is pretty spot-on, if Jayce can be one to judge. Jayce lifts his eyes back up to her when he feels the toe of her boot tap against his shin.
“You’re here to find him, though, right?” Jayce’s stomach flips and he nods.
“Yeah,” he says, all of the breath rushing out of him. “Yeah, I’m here to find him.” Smiling, Sky scoops Pookie up into her arms and stands up to cross the room. She reaches for a set of keys hanging by the door.
“Well, lucky you know someone who has a key to his house, huh?” she says, turning around and tossing him a wink.
Yeah, Jayce figures. He is really lucky.
—
By the time Viktor leaves his room, the house is empty. He makes his rounds, peeking into Jinx’s room, and then the kitchen and then ambles into the living room to crouch down in front of the wide hearth and stoke the meager fire back to life. Viktor’s back pops when he rights himself, satisfied with his efforts, before turning around to go back into the kitchen and put on the kettle. He replays his conversation with his father in his head.
Viktor is still angry, and knows he has the right to be. What Silco had done– keeping him locked away like an animal– was unforgivable. But now he’s faced with another conundrum: Jayce.
Jayce was looking for him. How his father knows that, Viktor can’t be sure, but Silco has eyes everywhere. Of course he knows Jayce is looking for him. But, that’s the thing: Jayce is looking for him.
Part of him isn’t even sure that Jayce knows it's him that he’s looking for. For all he knows, Jayce had a nice night with a stranger and like the fairytale prince that he is, is searching for someone who decidedly is not Viktor. Jayce Talis may well be searching for someone who doesn’t even exist. But before Viktor can sulk anymore, he hears a noise.
Viktor hears voices outside, but there are always voices outside, so that’s not alarming. But then, there’s something else: the scrape of keys in a lock, followed shortly after by the creaking of his front door. He assumes for a moment that it’s his father until he hears the thud of heavy footsteps in the entryway that don’t sound like Silco’s, or Jinx’s. They’re as heavy as Sevika’s but the gait is wrong. Viktor can pick out his family by sound alone, and whoever it is that’s in his house is not a person who belongs here. Viktor switches off the stove and reaches for his crutch, pulling out the knife that’s hidden in its handle.
Viktor ducks off to the side when he hears the footsteps growing closer, heart thumping hard in his chest. Truthfully, it’s not the first break-in they’ve had, but it’s the first time he’s been alone during one. Desperate people do desperate things, and desperation was a common theme in Zaun.
The footsteps pause at the mouth of the kitchen and Viktor has made himself as small as possible while whoever it is takes a moment to look around the room. He can’t peek his head around the corner to see who it is in fear of giving himself away. Eventually, though, the footsteps retreat further down the hall and toward the living room.
After steadying himself with a few deep, quiet breaths, Viktor slips away from his hiding place and follows the footsteps down the hall where they've stopped. He hears the hearth crackle as he approaches. Doing his best to remain unseen, Viktor pokes his head around the corner and feels all the heat leave his body.
Seeing Jayce again hurts much more than Viktor had anticipated. He’s standing with his back to Viktor, eyes scanning the photos above the hearth. Viktor feels like he’s going to shake apart. Jayce’s shoulders are broad, and his hair is messy and wet. Viktor would know Jayce’s silhouette from a hundred miles away, a thousand, a million. A whole galaxy away, even. Viktor is not prepared for this even in the slightest. His tongue is heavy and useless in his mouth and he thinks he might suffocate on it.
Jayce turns to look out the window and must catch Viktor standing in the doorway out of the corner of his eye. It takes all the power he has not to bolt. This is everything he’s ever wanted in the entire world, right here in his home. It feels unreal.
“Viktor?” Jayce says, sounding breathless. He has a beard. Viktor is insanely not prepared for this. He opens his mouth, hoping some sort of reply will actually crawl its way out with no success. Jayce is panting like he just ran a mile, his brown eyes scanning Viktor’s face before he crumbles at the same moment the knife tumbles from Viktor’s hand.
Viktor has done his best to forget how he had imagined Jayce might look when he cries. It had plagued him as a child, after Sky had told Viktor that she told Jayce that he was dead. The thought of his beautiful best friend, curled up in bed with his face red and wet haunted him. The real thing is infinitely worse.
Viktor limps forward, holding onto his crutch like a lifeline, his brace clicking in a way that he said he would fix whenever he got around to it but still hasn’t taken the time to do. It feels like he’s walking in a dream.
“Jayce,” Viktor finally says. Jayce’s hands are covering his face, but he walks blindly forward and right into Viktor’s space as if he’s memorized every single route in the known universe that would lead him into Viktor’s arms. There’s much less fanfare than Viktor imagined there would be with their reunion. Jayce’s hands peel away from his face and slot around Viktor’s middle. He’s shaking.
Viktor’s eyes, wide with disbelief, stare into the weak fire burning in the hearth. Jayce smells like rain and pine and something else he doesn’t care to go searching in his mind for, because he’s here. He’s here.
A dam breaks then, and Viktor lets his crutch fall to the floor as his arms wind around Jayce’s shoulders and he closes his eyes. He can feel the force of Jayce’s sobbing against his chest as his best friend in the entire world, the love of his life, holds onto him like it's the only thing keeping him alive. Viktor feels his mouth wobble as he bites back a sob. He listens as Jayce chants his name like a prayer against his shoulder and holds him like it’s an act of worship.
They stand there like that for a long time, Viktor eventually reaching up to cup the back of Jayce’s head. Jayce cries into his shoulder like a child, and Viktor really, really can’t blame him for it. He’s crying, too, but Jayce has always been the more openly emotional one out of the two of them.
Viktor’s hands find the sides of Jayce’s head and it only takes the barest hint of pressure to get Jayce to lift his head. His eyes are red and glassy, fat tears making tracks down his cheeks and into his beard. He’s the most beautiful thing Viktor has ever seen.
“My Jayce,” Viktor says in a hushed whisper and Jayce lets out another sob, pushing his forehead against Viktor’s and closing his eyes. Jayce’s hands find his face. They’re large and warm, calluses doing delicious things to Viktor’s brain as Jayce’s thumbs skim over his cheeks. “My Jayce,” he says again, because he can’t help himself.
“I can’t–” Jayce starts, shaking wildly. “You’re–”
Viktor noses his way into Jayce’s space, his mouth smearing over his wet cheeks where he leaves a long kiss on either side of Jayce’s face. Jayce lets out a few shaky exhales in an attempt to compose himself.
“You’re alive,” Jayce breathes and Viktor lets out a watery huff that he meant to be a laugh, but sounds a lot more like a whimper. Jayce pulls his face away from Viktor then and meets his eyes. “You’re perfect.” This time, Viktor’s laugh actually manages to sound like a laugh.
“Hardly,” he says and clears his throat. “How did you…” Jayce can’t seem to tear his eyes away from Viktor’s face. Not that Viktor is complaining, even if it is a bit overwhelming. Jayce’s hands stay steadfastly glued to his cheeks. He’s so warm.
“The ball,” Jayce says and Viktor feels a hot lick of shame wash over him. “It was you. I knew it was you, I knew it had to be you. Why didn’t you tell me?” Viktor sucks his lower lip in between his teeth.
“I didn’t know if–” Viktor stumbles over his words. “I wasn’t sure…” if you’d want me. If you remembered me.
“Viktor,” is all Jayce replies with. For a brief moment, his eyes flutter to Viktor’s lips. “Can I–”
Viktor feels his face grow hot, and it travels down his shoulders and into his stomach. He only has time to give the faintest nod before Jayce leans into him.
It’s criminal, really, how perfectly Jayce’s mouth fits against his own. There aren’t fireworks, or sparks, or any explosion happening behind his eyelids or in his chest. It’s slower, and it feels more like a conclusion than a revelation. Jayce’s beard is scratchy against his chin, and his mouth is soft and wet. Viktor feels faint, his knees feel weak, but Jayce’s hold on him keeps him upright.
Jayce kisses him like it’s the only thing he’s been made to do. Like it’s his sole purpose in life. Time drips by, slow and thick, and Jayce Talis takes him apart with his mouth and his hands and everything feels exactly like it’s meant to. Jayce makes a noise into Viktor’s mouth and Viktor feels like he’s being unwound. Maybe he is, though; his skin peeling apart and his chest opening up for Jayce to slot perfectly into his ribcage exactly where he’s belonged since the moment they met.
Viktor’s shaking hands grip the damp fabric of Jayce’s shirt and Jayce doesn’t stop kissing him. He holds Viktor, carefully and perfectly. Maybe he was brought into existence to kiss Jayce, too.
When they finally separate, Jayce lets out a long sigh. Viktor can practically see the tension bleeding out of his shoulders.
“I’m going to be honest,” Jayce says, breaking the silence. His voice is low and rough and it shoots straight into the pit of Viktor’s stomach. “I’ve thought about doing that almost every day since I was, like, twelve years old.” Jayce offers him a little laugh and it sounds shy. Viktor loves him with every fiber of his being. Viktor replies with a laugh of his own.
“I would have let you,” he whispers, and Jayce laughs again before ducking forward to kiss him a second time.
—
Even if Viktor wanted to, there was no way Jayce was going to go back to Piltover that night. He doesn’t even have to invite Jayce to stay, it being an unspoken understanding between the two of them. The house is blissfully empty of anyone else, and Viktor hopes it will stay that way. Jinx is gone increasingly often these days, which Viktor had given her shit about initially but in the moment, he’s grateful.
Jayce asks him about his health, asks Viktor to show him his spinal implants, to talk to him about his crutch and his brace, and how he spent the last ten years of his life. It would have been embarrassing to admit that he’d spent the majority of his life pining for Jayce if Jayce hadn’t confessed to doing the same thing first. There’s an unabashed joy burning in Viktor’s core, but the sadness is still there, albeit fuzzier around the edges than it used to be.
Jayce is glued to his side, even as Viktor gets up to go make them tea–
“I’m only going to the kitchen for a moment, I’ll be back,” He’d told Jayce. Jayce had reached forward to grab his hand and that had been that.
–and they end up curled against each other in front of the hearth. Jayce sits between his legs, his broad back to Viktor’s chest. They had fished around in a few closets and found a set of dry clothes that mostly fit (that were definitely Sevika’s), so at least he’s not cold and damp anymore.
Viktor rests a cheek atop Jayce’s head, arms draped easily over Jayce’s shoulders. Jayce holds his hands close to his chest, occasionally bringing them up to his mouth to kiss along his knuckles and his wrist.
“You missed me so badly that you broke into my house,” Viktor says. He can feel Jayce’s laugh through where they sit against each other. It’s deep and rumbling and gorgeous. If they weren’t already sitting down, Viktor might have felt his knees knock together with nerves.
“I would have done way worse than that to find you, but, yeah,” Jayce says. He kisses the inside of Viktor’s wrist. “Some kind of dumb luck led me right to Sky and– wait, why does she have a key to your house?” He presses another kiss to Viktor skin, higher up his arm.
“She used to babysit Jinx for my father when we were both at work,” Viktor answers simply. “Did she tell you about our dates?”
“Cute,” is all Jayce replies with. “You’re so cute.” Viktor laughs. He doesn’t think he’s ever been called cute in his entire life. At least, not to his face. Viktor runs the hand that Jayce isn’t laving kisses over against Jayce’s broad chest and makes a curious noise when he feels the lump of something small and jagged beneath Jayce’s shirt.
“That–” Viktor leans over Jayce’s shoulder as best he can, eyeing the gold chain around Jayce’s neck. He freezes. “What is this?” Viktor knows exactly what it is.
“You wouldn’t even believe me if I told you,” Jayce says, fishing the pendant out from beneath his shirt.
Viktor comes clean then about the night of the ball. He tells Jayce about everything: the stranger, his transformation, his leg. Jayce listens intently, staring into the fire before recounting his own encounter with the hooded figure.
“I’m sorry,” Viktor says after a long moment of silence. Jayce makes a quizzical noise and tilts his head. “For the ball, I mean. It was not kind of me to leave you like that.”
“Water under the bridge,” Jayce replies simply. “Now tell me more about how much you love me.” Jayce twists around in his arms to look up at Viktor, who hasn’t been able to keep a fond smile off his face. His cheeks hurt.
Viktor leans down to leave a kiss on Jayce’s forehead, above the scar slicing through his eyebrow. “Of course, Lord Talis.” Jayce rolls his eyes and Viktor slots their mouths together again.