Chapter Text
Jayce hasn’t moved since—he is in the liminal space of something breached, the light coming through the gap—too sharp for him to look at but behind the shield of a raised hand. Viktor’s breathing isn’t steady yet, and Jayce sees himself in it. Finally, something to be proud of: fragments of himself in the heat of Viktor’s skin, in the marks down his shoulder—everywhere he touched him, took him. He sees it moving through Viktor’s lungs, and Jayce wishes it could stay forever, the fingerprints of that moment.
The quiet stretches, the air cold on the sheen of sweat down his bare back. Viktor’s hand hovers, not quite sure, then finally settles against Jayce’s shoulder. Paper-touch softness, fog on the glass. Jayce shifts slightly on top of Viktor, adjusting his weight over his bad leg. Salt against the window frame.
“Am I too heavy?”
“No,” Viktor replies, and Jayce notices the faint shaking, the waves of aftershock. “It is fine.”
“I can move if—”
“Stay.” Viktor’s arms move, holding him where he lies, and Jayce looks at him—the hues of winter and exhaustion shifting across his face, pale lashes against his cheeks.
“What was that word?” Jayce’s lips tug into a smile. “You said it twice. What was it?”
“Have you ever considered not being incredibly embarrassing?”
Jayce laughs, and Viktor does too—a soft huff, the heels of his palms pressing into his eyes. Oh, but you love to be upset with me.
“Idiot. That is what it meant.”
“I’m sorry, but I don’t believe you.”
Jayce had found the room a little austere when they had first walked in, but he can hardly imagine leaving it now. He thinks of Ekko, of those endless four seconds, and wishes he could use them. The quilt rustles against Viktor’s fingertips and that too, is something worth hearing, over and over.
“I do not know how to translate it. Keneva—” Viktor manages, and Jayce can tell it’s prickly on his skin. “It is like saying at last, but you do not use it in any situation. It is a hyperbole, I suppose. At last, but you have waited for a century, maybe more.”
Jayce tilts his head, his hand brushing absently against Viktor’s arm, tracing the faint shape of his bones beneath the skin. “That sounds… big,” he says. “Like something you’d say in a story. To someone you’ve been searching for your whole life.”
Viktor’s eyes narrow slightly, his lips pressing together, and Jayce catches it—the tremor of hesitation, something unsaid, lingering in the air between them.
“It felt fitting,” Viktor replies finally, his voice almost drowned out by the creak of the old heater next to them.
Jayce shifts closer, tilting Viktor’s head back on the pillow, and watches him part his lips, expectant. Impatient.
“Then say it again,” he whispers, and it grows bold and dangerous, spreads in the room like a promise of later, and again, until we’re both too tired to move or speak. Viktor glances at him, passion like an urgent brushstroke across his eyes—red and wet, like the inside of a mouth.
He pulls Jayce closer, tugging at the back of his neck until they can both taste it on their lips.
“Keneva.”
Jayce whines, the bed frame sighing as he moves again, slow and sure over Viktor’s body—conquered, pliant.
***
Viktor sees Sky before she notices them, the echoes of chatters and debates filling the dining room as Jayce and he walk in. A fire crackles in the stone hearth behind her seat and there’s a scent, both herbal and earthy in the air. Heavy tables are scattered about, lit by low-hanging lamps, worn-out with years of use, but freshly varnished, something that speaks of care, of the will to preserve—theirs is longer, eight seats facing each other in a quiet corner of the room.
Viktor’s cane taps faintly with each step, and he rolls his shoulders, surprised not to feel the bite of the braces about his spine. Jayce brushes at the small of his back as Viktor pauses to study their table, figuring out their seats, and his bones immediately relax into the curve of that touch.
“Look who decided to show up,” Sky says, smiling as she straightens in her seat. “I wasn’t sure you’d join us for dinner!”
The students gathered around Sky whirls around to look their way, and Viktor nods at each one of them with a smile, a few names mumbled in greetings. Jayce draws a chair for him, and they share a glance that says too much before they both join the group.
“We went for a walk at the beach,” Viktor says, settling his cane next to his seat. “Sorry for being, eh—almost late.”
Sky shakes her head, her hand, like she’s chasing something; a candle flickers on the table.
“Don’t even worry. We thought you were both exhausted—we ourselves pretty much all took a nap right after check-in this morning. That train ride from Piltover is quite something,” she huffs, grabs the glass in front of her to sip at a half-finished drink. Cider, Viktor believes. “And that wind, too. Isn’t your room a bit cold?”
Jayce shifts on his seat next to him. “No, I’d say it’s actually pretty warm.” A dash of jealousy like a tiny splinter of glass.
Viktor coughs, presses his hand against his lips. He doesn’t have to look at Jayce to picture the grin on his face. It’s tempting to get used to it, to let it grow on him—the hint of Jayce’s hunger, the certainty to be wanted and warm. He finds himself already starving for it. Hand-sized appetite digging into his waist now, gnawing holes at his chest just with the faintest taste of what it could be.
“Must be these old heaters, then,” Sky says, oblivious. Or unimpressed. “I need to ask that nice lady to have a look at them before I go to bed.”
“That nice lady?” Viktor asks.
“The nice inn-keeper,” one of his students says, and he can’t really tell if she’s being sarcastic or not. She’s young and bright-eyed, with coarse, curly black hair. “It’s really nice to have you with us, Mr. Talis. It’s been a while.”
They talk about Pona, about the ruins—an abstract thing in the night now, gloved in fog beyond the jagged silhouette of the coastal cliffs. Viktor’s mind keeps shifting, flashes of something he tries to push back inside his eyes, his fingers pressing along the hard parts of his face. The dining room fills in with more people, and it’s too hard to focus. Jayce is speaking, laughing next to him, both mellow and massive in his chair, pinpricks of shivers down Viktor’s neck each time he says his name. The morning spell has gone, and he’s as easy as ever now. Golden boy, Viktor thinks, then wonders where he’s heard that before.
The innkeeper appears to set down bowls of steaming stew on the table, plates of bread and a pitcher of cider; solid and brisk as she moves between tables, her sleeve streaked with flour and her gaze flickering briefly to Viktor. “You look better than this afternoon.”
“I got some rest,” he says, and feels the weight of Jayce’s hand sliding up his thigh.
“How’s the room?” the woman asks, and Viktor wants to say something about the accommodations, about Sky’s heather thing maybe—but it all peels from him, like loose pages from a book.
“It’s great,” Jayce replies instead, and to Viktor’s surprise, she winks at him.
“Thought so.”
The room swells with the clinking of spoons against the plates and the hum of conversation. The food is warm but tasteless. Too much salt; it turns Viktor’s throat dry, makes him thirsty. Sky teases one of the students—Nell, nineteen, too tall—for her messy handwriting, the ink dappling her clothes, and Viktor takes a better look at the notes they all brought with them.
It’s buzzing around them—Sky laughing softly at Nell’s protests, the students leaning over a map, scribbling over half-finished sketches and the spill of cider on a small stack of paper.
After a while, Jayce doesn’t really mingle anymore, but he watches, gaze flicking between faces, movements, gestures. Acute and sharp. The room is warm, stifling even, but he doesn’t seem to feel it. His hands remain steady on Viktor’s thigh, his shoulders unnaturally still, like he’s holding himself just outside the room, taking stock, counting victims.
Sky is saying something—an anecdote about a botched study—and he laughs at the right moment, low and genuine enough to blend in. But Viktor catches the way his eyes linger a fraction too long on the students across the table, how his smile doesn’t quite reach them. It’s a shockwave in the air, and Viktor can’t quite follow, can’t tell where the epicenter might be.
He wants to say something. He is looking at him—a moving picture, just slightly out of reach. But Jayce is already turning back toward Sky, leaning forward as if to listen more intently. Viktor’s fingers twitch toward the edge of his chair, but he doesn’t move, eyes on him, the way his body angles slightly toward the table but never fully commits. The way his presence fills the space but doesn’t settle.
The room welcomes them back into its belly, and Viktor feels nervous. It’s getting late now, the night deep and sullen, like the maw of a beast under the sea. Jayce closes the door behind them, and Viktor looks at him. Too tall, too broad—too much shoulders and the face of glazed posters covering buildings.
“I am going to take a shower,” Viktor says, and it sounds like he’s asking for permission. It’s absurd. Five years of sharing a life, long mornings and bad nights, getting sick at the worst possible times and arguing over menial tasks. It hasn’t all been pretty. Love is labor, or something close to it.
We’ve done it all, already. What is there to be nervous about?
This—this is the easy part.
“Do you want me to come with you?”
Viktor considers the possibility, watches it stir and move; the whole logistics of it. He hasn’t seen the bathroom yet, hadn’t bothered to check because he’d been too eager to leave earlier. It’s the easy part, he keeps telling himself, but it's not quite true. Yes—it’s easy to give love.
And it’s so much harder to receive it.
Viktor squeezes his eyes shut. He wants to ask, Do you remember how we met? because, for a moment, he’s scared Jayce might have forgotten.
“I do,” he says then, all at once, like jumping off a ledge. I do want you to come. I—do remember how we met.
“Yeah?” Jayce’s eyebrows shoot up, and Viktor looks at him like you’d dissect something dangerous—odd, and immensely beautiful.
“Yes.” He crosses the space between them and takes his hand, watching Jayce’s fingers swallow his whole where they hold each other. “Come.”
The bathroom is small, intimate in its simplicity. Tiles, white and cracked at the edges, run along the walls, and the mirror above the sink is fogged with age. Viktor glances around, his eyes tracing the space like it’s a problem to be solved.
Jayce steps ahead, releasing his hand only to reach for the tap, and the rush of water fills the room, sharp and steady. Viktor watches the steam begin to rise.
“You okay?” Jayce asks, low, gentle.
Viktor hesitates, his fingers brushing the hem of his shirt—the same one Jayce had eased off his shoulders, just a couple of hours ago.
“I am,” he says, because it’s never easy to talk. I’m okay, but I want you in ways I never thought possible. I’m scared, and ravenous, and you don’t seem like yourself. You’re looking at me like you know something I don’t, like you could slip through my fingers and turn into dust, just the remnants of you, something I can never get back.
“You need to tell me,” Jayce says, tilts his head, noses along Viktor’s jawline. “If anything feels uncomfortable.”
Uncomfortable. He wouldn’t call this uncomfortable. It’s new, unlooked for. Sex isn’t something he’s ever really considered, because not needing it is different from not wanting it. And isn’t it strange, in a way? The pressing of lips against skin, the sounds, the rushed breath. Why do we kiss? Why do we feel the need to speak that way, when we have words? And why do words keep failing us, all the time?
He doesn’t hate it. But he hates that he might need it now, and it’s ridiculous. Because why would he add something to the list of what he might be afraid to lose?
“I feel like—there might be something you are not telling me.”
Viktor feels the shift, the air around them folding tighter, crumpling, distorted in time.
“This—” he adds. “This is so good. But I do not think it is something you planned, or something that happened because you thought about it and made a decision.”
Jayce’s hand rises, his fingers ghosting over the line of Viktor’s collarbones before sliding down to the buttons of his shirt. Again.
“You woke up this morning, and you knew. I could tell.”
Jayce hums—doesn’t rush. He’s careful as the shirt falls open, careful in the way he follows the brace marks down the dip of Viktor’s hips.
“No nightmare can do that. Can it?”
The sound of the water grows louder, almost drowning out the sound of his own heartbeat, the pulse of it ringing in his skull. Jayce glances up and looks at him.
“Are you asking questions you already know the answers to?”
For a second, it’s right there, in Jayce’s eyes. The whole story, compiled in lines, effervescent, and furious. A world of overgrown things, rotting colors, the weaving and weaving of something ancient and lethal. Viktor feels the pain, feels it radiate from his leg, from Jayce’s leg, from the foundation of everything he’s ever known.
So much senseless pain.
“Tell me, then.” Viktor closes his eyes, and Jayce leans forward to kiss a bruise on the side of his neck. “How bad was it—what we did in that other timeframe?”
The water streams over them, hot and steady, steam swirling in the faint light above. Jayce is pressing Viktor against the tiles, reverence bending into urgency.
“Can you stand like this for so long?” Jayce asks. He’s panting and Viktor wants to laugh. Civilizations ending but, can I stand like this for so long?
“I might need to hold onto you, at some point.”
“Yeah. Okay.” Jayce’s hands slide under his thighs, strong as they lift him into his arms and back against the wall. Viktor makes a sound at the back of his throat, laces his arm around his neck. “Better like this, then.”
“How bad?” Viktor asks again.
“Bad.” Low, like he’s hoping the word might wash away down the drain. “But it’s over now. We’re here.”
Viktor exhales sharply. “Are we?”
Jayce tilts his head, his lips brushing along Viktor’s jaw to the corner of his mouth. “You’re here” his breath hot and heavy against Viktor’s skin. “And so am I. That’s what matters.”
“I will need to know. You will have to tell me.” He cards his fingers through Jayce's wet, long hair, fingertips dragging along the side of his beard. Their bodies move again now, all wet skin and belly-deep longing—Viktor feels it fuse into the bones of his hips. Both hard against their stomachs, raw desire that should be shameful, but that has grown tired of shame.
“It was my fault,” Jayce says. “I started it—all of it—what you did after was just collateral damage.”
“Something tells me you are finding me excuses.” Something is telling you're reshaping a monster into a god.
“Viktor,” Jayce glances at him, trapped in his arms, locked between his thighs. “Let us have this, just once more. I just need to do this, this—this is fixing something for me.” He's kissing his chest now. “The world can wait. Is there a word for that, in your language?”
Viktor thinks about it.
“Zren vlina kroky za milovach.”
Time slows behind the steps of lovers.
He sees it in Jayce—the core of his longing, a quiet plea in every breath, in the slow blinking of his eyes, veiled, transcended—I implore you, will you let me? I swear I’ll be good. I promise. And in this moment a part of him knows—yes—with a terrible, aching certainty, that he would trade the world, would gladly die for this.
He nods, just once, and the next instant, Jayce has Viktor harder against the tiles, his mouth all over his skin, pushing him higher up to press his lips to his chest. His hands grips him like he could dissolve, expand, swell like a cloud to turn into downpours of rain, of stars. The smell of soap on Jayce’s skin, the pulse within.
Viktor gasps, his head tilted back, hair wet and plastered to his forehead, to the side of his face. He thinks that he can now call that man his lover—amongst other things. He hopes, fiercely, that he will get to see him like this for a very long time: exalted, half-mad, sworn like a knight to his king in the old times. His nails rake across Jayce’s back, leaving trails of red in their wake, and the ring of his moan is enough to make Viktor dizzy.
Wandering fingers, slick with something Viktor didn’t see him use, over his body—one Viktor would call broken, but that Jayce keeps calling beautiful. Down his belly, between his legs again. The steady rhythm of it, grounding; then lower, prying and intimate. Viktor digs his nails into Jayce’s shoulders, his breath hitching. It’s slow, slightly uncomfortable, too fascinating to be stopped—like being pulled into himself, in and out, and pushed deeper to grow more space.
“Tell me if I’m hurting you,” Jayce pants. Viktor grips a handful of his hair, wants to tell him to shut up, to keep talking, to keep going until there’s nothing left of him to take.
Words of praise, of encouragement, spilling against his throat, and the buzzing behind his eyes, in his ears. The stretch of fingers becomes more insistent now and—oh gods—so much better. It spreads through him, nerves tingling, warm and burning, bones-deep; consuming him with a shapeless bliss that keeps eating and growing.
“Tell me how you feel,” Jayce insists. “Please.”
“Good, great, I am feeling—” It comes out as a higher, trembling sound—something Viktor hates, something Jayce seems to love.
He locks eyes with him, chest heaving, his lips moving around hushed, wide ohs and ahs that Jayce doesn’t miss, leaning in to drink them directly from his mouth. “Fantastic. Incredible.” It courses through him, shivers, shivers, shivers. “You?”
“You have no idea,” Jayce manages. “Viktor, you have no idea.”
Pleasure like a precise, crushing point within him, everything circling back to it—faster, harder—more movements, bolder as Viktor’s back arches against the wall, chasing it, clinging to that massive body. Dips and hills of muscles, of strength under his hands—Jayce, his beautiful face—and it’s all too much, too strong, too—
“Gods, right there—” and it’s so good it’s almost painful, worthy of tears, streaks of light pressed deep behind his eyes. Jayce keeps pushing, more fingers, another hand wrapping around Viktor’s cock while he watches his gaze turn blind, glassy with ecstasy. They're both stupid with it, base and glorious, until Jayce wrests Viktor’s orgasm from him.
He comes with a sharp cry that resonates through the room, tensing and breaking, hips moving on their own to grasp at it desperately, mourning as it fades, flashes, then fades again.
It takes him a few minutes to catch his breath, and Jayce holds him through it, his hand moving across Viktor’s back, soothing shapes drawn where he can touch him. He’s careful as he lowers him, wobbly legs on slippery tiles, and holds him there again for a while.
“You are too good at this,” Viktor whispers after a moment, when his heart is no longer tearing through his chest. The water is still streaming over them. “And far too selfless.”
Jayce huffs a laugh. “I’ve done this for you as much as I’ve done it for myself.” He kisses him—slow and deliberate. “This is exactly what I wanted. I don’t really care about getting…anything else.”
“Well, we cannot have that, can we?”
Viktor loves the hint of confusion on Jayce’s face before he pushes him to the other side of the shower—still hard and aching—where the stream won’t be as much of a problem.
“I have no idea what I’m doing, but—”
“Wait, Viktor, you don’t have—”
“Will you stop being so—hluvak, for a minute?” Viktor lets his fingers slide along a trail of dark hair, down the sharp, firm lines of Jayce’s belly. The movement is tentative, a probing interest as he touches him—so eager—in return.
“What does that mean?” Jayce asks, breathless, a tremor running through his hips.
Viktor’s lips part as he stares, mouth watering.
“It means insufferable, well-meaning idiot,” he says, distracted, then kneels as carefully as he can. He hisses at the faint hint of pain in his leg—adjusts—then settles. Jayce exhales as he watches him, a long, shuddering sound that rattles through his chest, and Viktor holds him there, glancing up, then down; liquid excitement. A taste of apprehension on the flat of his tongue.
He kisses him, the soft spot between the inner side of his leg and his cock, and Jayce immediately reaches out for Viktor’s hair, stuttering. A rush of blurry words, of threads pulled from him, one at a time, fraying and—
I love you.
Viktor licks at his length, then takes Jayce in his mouth, looking at him from between his thighs. The shock on his face, blood-deep relief morphing into something pure and bare. Jayce’s head lolls back against the wall, shards of shame—Viktor can tell—so he hums around him, closes his eyes as it seeps through his veins. Relief, too, swaying with the way Jayce holds his neck, scared and strong; he is huge, his reserve a noble thing as he tries not to move, tries to let Viktor find his own pace.
It should be strange—maybe a sliver of it should even be repulsive—but it’s not. He's probably terrible at it, it's beyond what he could ever have imagined. But this all makes sense, like it’s happened before. Like it was meant to happen again. The ripple of another revelation.
Somewhere beyond another blink of time, they made love—are still making love, in one way or another—and this all goes according to plan. A healing, like light filling a wound, like bones unbreaking themselves.
Jayce makes a sound at the back of his throat, deep and vulnerable—he is molten now, dripping bliss, clipped groans and sobs like he’s waited for years.
Keneva, Viktor thinks distantly, and he could cry, too.
He thinks he is.
***
The morning creeps in slowly, watery light filtering through the curtains. Dawn is soft, tip-toeing about the room in muted tones of gold and grey, and Jayce stirs, bleary with sleep and heavy-limbed. For a moment, he doesn’t move, senses gradually catching up: a faint, damp smell lingering in the air, the creak of the floorboards above; the warmth beside him.
He shifts slightly, propping himself up on one elbow, and looks down at Viktor, still sleeping next to him. He’s facing Jayce, the sharp lines of his features softened in the powdery daylight, his hair a mess, curling against his temple where it dried unevenly. Jayce’s eyes trace over him—the sheets drowning the white lines of his body, his collarbone peeking from beneath the covers. The delicate rise and fall of his chest, and his pale, bare neck; water-colour dappled, bites and soft bruises.
Both infinite and fragile.
His fingers brush lightly along the curve of Viktor’s shoulder, and his hand lingers for a moment as he listens to the inn waking, the slow settling of life, of chores around their room. He needs to take it all in. He needs to remember. Viktor’s steady breaths, the occasional cry of a seagull outside.
The sheets move just slightly beside him. “You are awake,” Viktor whispers, not quite a question, blurry with exhaustion. His brow furrows slightly as he opens his eyes, blinking the light away.
Jayce smiles, his hand reaching for Viktor’s chest beneath the covers. “Yeah. Couldn’t sleep much.”
“You should have tried harder,” Viktor mutters, not unkind, closes his eyes again, a faint smile tugging at his lips. Jayce chuckles, his gaze lingering on the beauty mark just above Viktor’s mouth—Cait had once told him that such marks are said to be the memory of where one was kissed the most by their lover in a previous life.
It must have been me. He must have been mine then, as well.
His fingers skim through bare skin to squeeze Viktor’s hand gently. “Didn’t want to miss this.”
Viktor huffs softly. “Miss what?”
“This,” Jayce replies. The light shifts slightly, brighter now as the sun climbs higher, and Viktor pulls the quilt up around his shoulders.
“Five more minutes,” he mutters, his voice already drifting off.
Jayce chuckles, fond. “You’re not making fun of me in your mother tongue anymore? That’s disappointing.”
Viktor opens his eyes again, blinks. Presses his lips together.
“Milovan tě.”
“What does that mean?” Jayce asks.
“I am not telling you,” he says, draping his arms around Jayce’s waist.
***
The wind picks up as they make their way along the rugged coastline, the sea a churning mass of grey and foam beneath them. Jayce walks just behind Viktor, his gaze shifting between the rocky path and the cliffs that drop sharply to the water below. Sky leads the way, her enthusiasm barely contained, students trailing behind; chatter ebbing and flowing like the white horses of the tide.
The ruins emerge slowly in the distance, bathed in pale sunlight. The weather is clear, barely freckled with clouds—bright, winter-blue against these tall silhouettes. The path crests a hill, and there they stand: stone pillars jutting from the earth like fractured bones, like teeth; some leaning precariously, others toppled and half-buried. The remains of an arch, its edges scalloped with time, frames the view of the sea beyond, and Jayce feels like he’s walking directly into the gaping jaws of something.
“They called it the Temple of Oris,” Sky says as they pause to take it all in. Her voice is reverent, carried on the wind. “One of the last remnants of a civilization lost to magic—or so the stories go.”
The stones are dark, slick with the spray of the sea and gnawed away by salt, carvings still visible along the surface. Many symbols and ragged lines, almost alive in the shifting light. There's a massive, circular platform lying at the center of the building, grooves radiating outward like spokes on a wheel.
Stone-shaped sunlight.
Jayce feels the weight of it immediately—a strange hum in the air, low and steady, like a chord held just beneath the threshold of senses. He glances at Viktor, who is oddly quiet, standing still and sharp by his side. Sky beckons the students over, smiling, pulls out a notebook from her satchel.
“Alright, as always—no touching,” she’s walking backwards as she gestures to the pillars looming over her head. “Dead things can always be dangerous. Especially when it comes to dead magic.”
“It doesn’t feel dead,” one of the students says. His coat flutters in the wind.
Sky nods, swallows, pushing her glasses higher up her nose. “It’s said the magic here never fully left. Some believe it’s dormant.”
Jayce frowns, his hand brushing against Viktor’s arm. His skin feels cold to the touch, and he suddenly feels the rush to grab him, and run. They exchange a quick look before Viktor chins up and takes a step forward, his cane clicking softly against the stone.
You asked me for the truth and I couldn’t even give it to you.
“This place has been studied, many times of course,” he says, his gaze lingering on the cracked platform ahead. “But magic has a way of getting lost in history. It is a slippery thing, it does not want to leave witnesses behind—it is cunning, as you already know. But that has not stopped people—scientists, historians, or us today—from coming here, hoping to understand.”
And it was a mistake, wasn’t it, Viktor? I can feel it. I can feel its thrumming, refracted in time. In light.
One of the students steps closer to the platform, kneeling on the wet grass to draw one of the grooves and its rune below in their sketchbook.
“Careful where you step, Antoine,” Sky warns, gesturing at them.
“It is like—a humming,” Viktor whispers, mostly to himself, and Jayce’s heart sinks for a second, watching him; the wind catching at his coat, his hair.
His best friend. His lover.
There’s something in his eyes—Viktor looks at the carvings again—slightly paler—tilting his head as though they might start moving, speaking. Sky guides the students ahead, the wind blowing harder as she picks up the lecture where Viktor stopped.
“What do you see?” Jayce asks, stepping closer.
“It is,” Viktor says quietly. “This place… it is not just a ruin. It is a scar. A wound that never healed.” He hesitates, his fingers brushing along the edge of one of the carvings. “A possibility.”
Don’t you start—sounding like him. Like you, but when you had already lost yourself.
The wind whistles through the fallen pillars, clouds shifting in the vast, cold sky above, and Jayce feels the hum again, stronger now, a pull in his chest. He watches the students fan out across the ruins, their voices low as they set up their tools. He stays close, his gaze sweeping the cliffs, the sea, the stones; something about this place—watching, waiting.
“Do you feel it?” he asks.
Hungry.
Viktor nods, his hand tightening around the pommel of his cane. “Yes,” he replies. “But what is it?”
***
Jayce’s attention shifts briefly, his gaze drawn to the far edge of the ruins where one of the students is adjusting a device, its small screen blinking faintly against the dull stone. Sky is there with them, pointing at something along the cliffside, her voice carrying just above the wind now.
Viktor doesn’t follow his gaze. Something else has caught his attention—a faint shimmer on one of the walls, just beyond reach. A trick of the light, the spray of the sea catching in the gouge of the stone. But he sees it more clearly then: colors blooming across the surface, iridescent. Alive.
The sharp smell of iron. Gun-powder reaching across a deep, star-tainted blueness. The celestial humming of agony.
The hues shift as he gets closer—a deep green that ripples into gold, threads of violet curling at the edges like veins, red, branching filaments. Rot spreading. Death. It could be paint, old and weathered, but it shines too brightly, its surface too smooth, too fluid. It feels like it’s moving—breathing.
He glances back at Jayce, but he’s still distracted, his broad shoulders turned toward the students. Viktor’s hand rises before he realizes it, fingers brushing the edge of the colors. They’re warm—unexpectedly so—and soft, like touching the surface of water without breaking it.
“Viktor,” Jayce calls, his voice an echo across the space. Viktor doesn’t respond. He frowns as he leans in, his palm flattening against the stone.
Two sides of the same coin, intractably bound.
The warmth strikes up his arm, a tingling sensation that turns sharp, electric. His breath catches, his knees buckle. The world tilts violently.
“Viktor!” Jayce’s shout cuts through the quiet just as Viktor collapses, and sinks.
The colors on the wall dim now, humming. Their belly full.
Satiated.
***
Viktor opens his eyes to chaos, dust and splinters filling his mouth. The room sprawls around him, walls and floors cracked, veins pulsing with colors—bright with knowledge, deeply corrupted. The same iridescence that had danced across the ruins.
Shards of glass hang suspended in time, midair, pivoting slowly on their axes like frozen stars; and the whole place, warped, bending inward and outward, breathes in waves of aftershock.
The circular table where the Council once sat is shattered, eaten alive as it slowly sinks into the ground. Viktor can almost hear it groans, and sighs—the magic. The Arcane.
He stirs, whines, pushes himself to his feet; his leg aches as he clings to a splinter of ceiling for balance, breath ragged as he steadies himself.
“It is sad, is it not?” a voice says, and Viktor sees it then—the silhouette standing near the edge of a gaping hole in the wall, where there once was a window overlooking the city; just a wound now.
The silhouette turns to face him, and Viktor should be surprised—he is surprised that he is not. His reflection is gaunt. Frame and bones thin to the point of frailty, on the edge of breaking. He is a blur, his edges shaking, outlined with a light that seems to be pulling at him.
“Who…are you?” Viktor’s voice falters. He gets a little closer, takes a hesitant step forward.
The other tilts his head slightly, a faint smile touching his lips.
“A version of you,” he says. “From a path you did not take. A path Jayce could not take.”
Viktor’s gaze flickers around the room—a fracture in reality. “This is the council room,” he whispers, frowning. “But it is…”
“Changed,” the other says. “Broken, perhaps. This is what remains of the day I died—we died. It is one of the many realities we explored, tried to fix. Another declination of the same prerequisites, over and over.”
Viktor swallows hard. “What happened?”
“The world. As it always does. War, amongst other things. In many realities, we are responsible for this. In this one, Jayce is.”
The colors swirl in an exhale around them, a kaleidoscope playing across both Viktors’ faces.
“Jayce?”
“We died, and he could not save us—madness gets us all, when wounds are too deep. When pain becomes too hard to bear. He blamed the world for what it did to us. The fissures. The disease. And the horror, well… it takes root in love. It distills it, turns it sour. Vile. And it leads to this: a pain so grand it grows teeth, and eats it all.”
Specks of dust in the eye of the cosmos, clawing at the hungry in-between of the Arcane.
“Promise me you will destroy it. I cannot do it.”
“I promise.”
The other crosses the space between them, and Viktor sees it more clearly now—a constant shifting on his skin, myriads of them; masks and realities rifling over the surface like pages, like memories.
Beyond the gap in the walls, Viktor realizes the world is burning.
“Jayce did this?”
“There is only one invariable in the world,” the ripple says. “And no matter what we do, we can never prevent it from happening.”
Viktor already knows what it is. “Love.”
“And everything that comes after, yes. Collateral. Yet often tragic. Violent.”
“Why are you showing me this?”
The ripple pauses. The shifting masks across his face slow, settling briefly on one: tired, driven to exhaustion. Death, beneath the skin. Taken, and gone.
“Because you still have a choice,” he says. “And I no longer do.”
Viktor’s chest tightens, his hand reflexively reaching for the head of his cane—but it’s not there. He feels brittle as the light shifts onto him, pulling, fingers dancing about his shoulders. Choirs, distant, like children singing.
“You will always—” the other’s breath catches, a split across his face, a small part of his shoulder slicing open like it’s been struck, then stitches itself back together. “We will always love each other. There is no stopping that. In all timelines—”
“All possibilities.” Viktor echoes.
The other waves his hand, and the room fractures further, its broken edges spinning into something vivid. Viktor sees it—another self. His body splayed across the council floor, blood seeping into the cracks, and the sound—Jayce’s voice, low and broken, a howl he can feel tearing through his chest.
“I cannot predict whether you will succumb to our disease. There are possibilities in which we did. There are possibilities in which we did not. But you must love, Viktor, as fiercely as you can. And let him love you, while you still have time. Whatever happens, you must accept it. Jayce must accept it. The Arcane shall stay where it belongs, or it will grow hungry again. Watch over each other. Do not let pain drag you to this.”
The fractured space breathes louder around them, expanding, tugging. The reflection’s arm sweeps outward, a ripple in the Arcane mirroring the gesture. Viktor feels himself fading.
“You will return to him now,” the reflection says. “And I will grant you one thing—it is a choice, as well.”
The ripple extends his hand, his palm gleaming with something Viktor cannot quite see. It is blinding.
“Do you wish to remember what Jayce remembers? To see what he saw?” The color in his palm courses through his arm, infinite and sprinkled with stars, seeping into his skin, tainting his hair. He is light. He is death.
“It is not to be taken lightly,” he warns. “It might be terrible to face. You might regret it—and it cannot be forgotten again.”
The space shivers around them, morsels of colors and sounds, the echo of something.
“Am I interrupting?”
“I don’t even know your name.”
“It’s Viktor.”
The Arcane swells louder, its hum vibrating through Viktor’s bones, sinking deep into his marrow. It shifts, bends—everything crumbling inward, collapsing into itself.
A hole opens before him, gaping like a mouth.
***
The world is still when Viktor opens his eyes, the air like sea salt and wood smoke, a dampness about it, tingling with something familiar—bergamot, faint and grounding.
It’s quiet now.
Jayce sits by the window with his back to the bed, silhouetted against the pale light. His shoulders are tense, the lines of his body drawn tight. His hands are resting on the windowsill, fingers curled like he might grip the edge of it, and tear it from the wall.
Viktor blinks, watching him for a moment.
“Am I interrupting?” he asks then, the first ripple in still water. He barely recognizes his own voice.
Jayce starts, his head snapping around, and the worry on his face shifts—relief rushing in.
“Viktor,” he breathes, his voice thick, and he’s at his side in an instant, kneeling by the bed. His hands hover, unsure of where to go.
“You look terrible,” Viktor says, smiling.
“And you don’t,” Jayce replies, his laugh shaky, a crack running along an edge. His hand finally finds its place, cupping Viktor’s cheek, his thumb brushing just above his lips.
Viktor exhales slowly, tilting his head into the touch. “You are upset.”
“I thought—I looked away and then you—you just collapsed.”
“Yes, I have a tendency to do that, I suppose.”
Jayce huffs through his nose, seems about to smile, but then a tear clings to his eyelashes. It rolls down his cheek.
You’ve been through so much, my love.
“Gods, I thought I’d lost you again. I could have—gods, Viktor, I don’t even know—we brought you back here, and I was awful to Sky, she just wanted to—but—”
“Well, at least you did not throw up.”
Viktor watches as realization dawns on Jayce’s face—a gasp through the veil of memory, a sputtering of moments.
Jayce saving his life, stepping in at the right moment.
“In the pursuit of great we failed to do good.”
“What? You—”
“I remember,” Viktor says softly. “I think I met the Arcane—or perhaps, met it again.”
Jayce shifts back, haggard, his fingers sliding down Viktor’s chest to grip his hand on the bed. He exhales like he’s been running for hours—for years. Lost, scattered, too broad for the chair he’s sitting on.
“It found a way back to you,” he says, and the pain in his voice is almost unbearable.
“I think I found a way back to it, instead,” Viktor whispers. “I think it was a good thing. I think I wanted it.”
“I don’t want that thing near you, ever again. I can’t—it knows what’s inside of us.”
“Possibly, yes. Probably.”
“I don’t want—I want to forget that it exists. If something ever happens to you, I can’t—” Jayce looks away, eyes welling with tears. “Heimerdinger was right. Magic is an awful thing in the wrong hands. If something was to happen to you again, I don’t think I could resist it. I know what I did, and I fear I know what I’d do again.”
His voice falters, then presses on, as if trying to outrun himself.
“But then—what if I do lose you again? What if I can try to stop it?”
Viktor shifts, leaning back against the pillows. He sees it now—how Jayce would have gone after the world to cure his pain. To avenge a dead man who couldn’t be avenged. Hating a disease, something that can’t be looked in the eyes.
I died loved, there. And he lived in fury.
Blood on our hands.
Isn’t it terrible, what it all makes us do. And isn’t it terrible, that I still think it’s beautiful.
Viktor’s gaze softens.
“We cannot stop life from happening,” he says. “But we can waste it trying.”
Jayce stares at him for a long moment, his thumb brushing absently along Viktor’s knuckles.
“You scare me,” he says finally, his voice cracking. “Not just today. Always. I don’t know how to stop being scared of losing you.”
“There is no stopping, Jayce. I have told you before.”
Jayce leans forward, his lips pressing gently against the side of Viktor’s face, damp with tears, breath warm and steady on his skin.
“It’s inescapable—humanity. It will happen, no matter what we do.”
Unless you make it all go away.
But then, everything dies.
“Your fear means love. It is the absence of death. It is the core of life.”
Jayce cries, soft, almost childish. It’s breaking him. It’s breaking both of them. “I don’t want to waste it.”
“Then it is a promise,” Viktor tilts his head to meet Jayce’s gaze, smiling. He’s tired. He’s happy. “I won’t waste it, either.”
“I want to go home,” Jayce says, cupping Viktor’s face. “Could we do that?”
Viktor doesn’t have to think about it. They do have a home now.
“We could.”
***
The apartment feels different, though nothing has changed. The same high ceilings, tall, opened windows that let the fading afternoon in, streaked with the golden hues of Piltover’s skyline. The breeze is cool against the side of Viktor’s face. He is sitting at his desk, his cane folded at his feet and a small screwdriver in his hand—tinkering with something.
Spring is coming, though he shivers slightly, his shirt sleeves rolled up and too busy to bother fetching a jumper.
Jayce leans against the doorframe, watching him. The buzzing of the city drifts in from outside—a distant train whistle, the hum of airships, the faint chatter of voices from the street below. Familiar. Grounding.
“You are staring again,” Viktor says, doesn’t look up.
“Can you blame me? The view is quite pretty.” Jayce pushes off the doorframe, stepping into their shared study; he hears Viktor scoff, hears the smile hidden in the sound. “You’re quiet today.”
“I am thinking,” Viktor sets the tool down carefully, his gaze shifting back to the pieces left untouched, scattered across the desk, then back to his work—a small brass contraption, half-assembled, its purpose unclear.
“Have I ever told you that you’re thinking a little too much?”
“Someone has to make up for your lack of thinking, don’t they?”
Jayce laughs, bold and loud, his arms wrapping around Viktor’s neck as he leans over the workspace.
“You’re mean,” he says.
“Do not pretend that it does not turn you on.”
Jayce huffs through his nose. “You’re even meaner.”
“But usually right.”
Jayce’s lips feel soft on the side of his neck, his beard clipped shorter, the longer strands of his hair tingling, inside the folds of Viktor’s collar. He kisses him like they have all the time in the world, angles his head, moves, until they can look at each other. Viktor shivers, lets go of whatever he is building.
He hums, deep, at the back of his throat. “How did it go, with the Council?”
“It went fine,” Jayce says, distracted, leaning in for more. He circles the chair, pulling Viktor closer until he has to stand.
“And how is Mel Medarda?”
The kiss is more loose now, slowly spreading, fingers getting tangled in clothes, in the fraying fibers of stillness.
“Are you jealous? Again? ”
“Jealousy is an emotion I have never once experienced in my entire life.”
Viktor’s skin is chilly to the touch, and Jayce half-considers scolding him for working with the windows open when it’s still warming up outside, but he doesn’t have the heart to do it. He laughs, low and warm, against Viktor’s jawline, his hands skimming down to his waist.
“Liar.”
“I guess there are things that time does not transcend.”
Viktor tilts his head, an air of feigned indifference as he pretends to look outside. The sun shines on his face, and he looks beautiful, decked in gold, a statue of himself. An idol. He looks like a choice Jayce wants to make until they’re both too old, both too tired to worry.
He catches Viktor in another kiss, one that manages to surprise him—the delight of the sound he makes when Jayce presses him against his chest. Warm and yielding, endlessly longing.
“How about you stop pawing at that thing,” Jayce nods at the unfinished device on the desk. “And sulking.” A whisper against Viktor’s lips—they’re parted, as if in shock. “And focus on something more important?”
“Arrogant, as ever,” Viktor says, but comes undone under Jayce’s fingers—the way they dig into the soft part of his hips, a signature, like he’s something to be owned. To be claimed.
I think he’d like to be claimed.
I think I’d like to reap what I sowed.
“Come on,” Jayce says, smiles. “You know you can’t resist me.”
“Who cannot resist who—I believe it is disputable.”
“Ah, let’s dispute, then.”
Jayce has been improving at learning Viktor’s mother tongue, and Viktor has been getting better at letting him in, especially when it comes to intimacy. There is less hiding now, fewer hushed words—a slow opening that comes with learned trust.
Practice makes perfect, Jayce thinks, and it’s especially true with love and sex.
The bedroom is dim, evening has come; a deep blue across the sky, winter giving in to softer days, softer nights. Viktor’s honest, ragged breathing is breaking the quiet, carrying over the hum of music in the background.
He has become louder too, and Jayce can’t get enough of it, will never see the end of his own craving. Maybe he’s been encouraging him. Maybe he’s been coaxing him to talk more, to say things he wouldn't have dared to say before. But it’s only fair—in return, Viktor has made him a weaker man. He’s made him a better man.
They moved Viktor’s bed to what was used to be Jayce’s bedroom—better lighting, more space, less noise from the streets outside—and it’s usually where they make love.
He’s taking him now, where Viktor belongs at least for a few hours, if Jayce can be optimistic.
The covers shift under them, catching at their knees as he presses closer, the scent of cedar, the taste of sweat clinging to Viktor’s neck. It’s all achingly passionate; a pace designed to drive mad, to edge Viktor to the brink of mindlessness. He wants him gone so far he forgets himself—what he should say, who he should be.
Viktor never curses in their shared language but he does, sometimes, in his mother tongue, and Jayce watches out for these moments. Pinpointing them in the course of Viktor’s pleasure, knowing then what to do next, where to go. He’s no longer afraid of hurting him, fully aware that the man he loves so desperately is far stronger than he looks.
“Proša,” Viktor says, please, keeps saying it, and it makes Jayce’s heart swell, and soar.
“Please what? ”
Viktor curses, softly, under his breath, gestures to press the heel of his palm against his mouth, then thinks better of it—claws at Jayce’s shoulder instead. It’s a specific word, Viktor had told him, kurya—fuck, but softer. There’s awe in it, a sweet shock that usually comes in a gasp.
These moments fight death. They fight diseases, sadness. They build walls around lovers, and Jayce watches the stronghold grow taller, studier—always eager to build more, to give them his soul.
“Please what?” he insists, smiling, a drop of sweat rolling down his temple, all the way to the sharp line of his jaw.
Viktor’s hands reach for his face, his eyes flickering open as if he’s suddenly realized something—something urgent, that must be shared immediately.
“I love you.”
The words strike Jayce’s heart without warning, seizing him by the throat. He has to readjust himself, has to brace an arm against the head of the bed. Catch up his breath.
“I love you,” Viktor says again, and maybe—maybe they’re wielding different weapons. Maybe Viktor is just as good. Maybe he knows him too well.
I suppose we can call it even this time. I will grant him that. I will gladly surrender.
I love you, Jayce echoes, shattering with it, tempted to say it in Viktor’s words. Milovan tě—the ones he’d used in Pona, the ones he hadn’t dared to make sense of then.
The world outside doesn't wait for them, it never does—clocks ticking, streets humming, movement, buzzing, shifting. Time, always unforgiving. Jayce has often thought about the impermanence of it all: living to build, to break—the relentless turning of gears, the way even the strongest things crumble, die, and rot.
There is only one invariable in the world.
Jayce’s arms tighten around Viktor, closing his eyes as the end looms closer. Threads of light across pale skin, sun-kissed, bodies, held tight. Welded, like steel plates of devotion, melted and hammered together. The steady rhythm of Viktor’s breathing. Another invariable, if time can grant him one thing. One last thing.
Somewhere across the city, a young girl named Powder laughs at her boyfriend’s joke. Not far, a pink-haired fighter from the undercity kisses a woman in a blue uniform.
And even further, in some other timeline, stars have gathered around a blinding constant, liminal, something that won’t stop shining.
Two souls like liquid gold, pouring into the same chalice.