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“Now there is nothing to fear;
Nothing lies beyond the underworld.”
Hercules Furens, 891 - 892.
Six Tragedies, Seneca. Trans. Emily Wilson.
It isn’t a bad time to realise he loves Viktor (has always loved Viktor, and will always love Viktor in every possible iteration of time and space), but it is a bit late. Jayce watches the limpid gold movements of Viktor’s eyes. What a thing to realise while they're suspended in some kind of cosmic space-time vortex—what a simple, stupid thing to finally realise at the end of everything.
Jayce pulls Viktor’s head close against his own. Viktor’s hand on his arm; the soft, cat-like texture of his hair against Jayce’s fingers. Why can they feel each other, in that space? Or maybe it’s just Jayce that can feel Viktor. Perhaps Viktor is beyond feeling.
Except, when Jayce opens his eyes again to the royal blue skies of Piltover, Viktor sits upright, leans to the side, and performs a prompt, tactical vomit. So he does feel, Jayce thinks. And the way he feels is…not great.
Viktor wipes his mouth and turns to look at Jayce. They’re both in their Academy uniforms. They both look young—like they did when they first met. Viktor’s eyes are still that impossible tawny-gold colour. Jayce reaches out to him. Pulls him into an awkward, half-sitting hug which Viktor returns. Jayce can feel him against his shoulder, in his arms, against his legs.
His legs. Jayce looks down. Viktor’s legs seem…restored. Viktor looks too. Touches his own thighs with gentle, exploratory fingers. The sight turns Jayce on, which is totally inappropriate, and which he tries to put out of his mind by staring over Viktor’s shoulder at the small pile of vomit which is slowly drying in the sun.
‘This must be some kind of joke,’ says Viktor. His voice is quiet and thoughtful. Jayce loves it. Loves everything. Loves his face, his eyes, the moles on his skin; loves his hair, his posture, his habit of hanging at the back of groups. Loves the way he holds pens and pencils like the bow of a violin; loves the way Viktor forgets himself for hours when absorbed in a problem; loves the way that Viktor is kind to everyone, unfailingly, except himself.
‘I don’t care if it is,’ Jayce says.
All around them are the crumpled bodies of Viktor’s army. Viktor looks up and seems to see them for the first time. His face pales.
Jayce seizes him and pulls them both to their feet, where they sway slightly, the patterns of the globe beneath their shoes throwing them off balance. They’re very high up. Jayce feels completely jubilant. He feels like he’s won something, but can’t put words to what it is.
A figure groans nearby and climbs out of a pile of metal-white bodies. Viktor walks forwards—stops—walks forwards again. Jayce watches him, knowing as though it’s his own body that Viktor had limped by reflex and been taken aback by a lack of pain. When he helps Ekko to his feet, he turns back to Jayce with an expression that Jayce can’t quite place. Like he’s lost something, but can’t put words to what it is.
They have their Republic meetings on the border between Zaun and Piltover. It’s symbolic, Caitlyn explains—the meeting of cities. Egalitarianism. Something something. Jayce is just glad they won’t have to gather at the shattered table anymore.
Caitlyn speaks first. ‘I want to establish limits before we begin discussion. First: there will be no death penalty. Second: I will hear all opinions, and reserve the right to disregard them. Our final decision about what to do with the war criminals and traitors will be by vote.’
‘War criminals?’
Caitlyn turns to Jayce. ‘Criminals. From the war. Which we just had.’
‘Right,’ says Jayce, and pictures Viktor as he left him: bent over notebooks, writing furiously, refusing to leave the small cliff cave in Zaun he’s claimed as his own. You’re living like a hermit, Jayce had said, to which Viktor had replied with something that had implied Jayce should be grateful he chose to keep living at all. To which Jayce had replied, if you die I’ll drag you back to life again. To which Viktor had replied, don’t you have somewhere to be?
‘Right,’ Jayce says again, and sits as they begin to discuss the fate of Viktor and the others like him.
He tunes back in for the decision. Open imprisonment. A labour sentence.
Afterwards, Jayce stops Caitlyn. Asks what the fuck open imprisonment is, and what the fuck a labour sentence is, though not quite in those words.
Caitlyn gives him a look with her one good eye. ‘Were you listening at all? Did you tune in even for a moment? Out of curiosity, if not responsibility?’
‘Sorry,’ Jayce says. It’s not that he doesn’t care. His priorities have just changed. Hey—he expected to die. Made peace with it. Now he’s got life number two. He’s already had his little bildungsroman: the parallel universe, the annihilated Piltover, dragging himself up from the pit. Now he wants a quiet retirement. He’s in the mood to pick up a hobby. Whittling, maybe.
Caitlyn sighs. ‘Open imprisonment,’ she says, ‘is a humane form of punishment. The war criminals won’t be jailed, they’ll just be restricted to Piltover and Zaun for the remainder of their natural lives. Labour is more like…volunteering. Which they won’t actually get to volunteer for. Cleaning up the city, helping rebuild. Things like that.’
Jayce pictures Viktor in a prison jumpsuit, forced to lift bricks for the rest of his life. ‘Right,’ he says. ‘That sounds reasonable.’ He’s thinking: no fucking way.
Viktor is still in his little hermit cave. When he sees Jayce, he holds up his hand, in which sits a small mechanical heart. ‘I made it,’ he says, accent sharpening the consonants. ‘I thought perhaps the hospital might let me work for them. I have some experience…using machines to help the body. In a way.’ He lowers his hand and stares at the little heart there. Nudges something with a screwdriver.
‘That’s a great idea,’ says Jayce. He walks closer and puts his hand on the back of Viktor’s chair, where he can feel the heat of his neck. ‘Or it would be, if we were staying here, which we’re not.’
‘What?’
‘They want to give you a life sentence. So you’re coming with me.’
‘Jayce, a life sentence is far kinder than what I was expecting.’ Viktor’s head is still bent to the little heart. Jayce puts a hand under his chin and lifts his face. Stares into those orange-gold eyes, which are wide, innocent, trusting.
‘Either you let me take you away before you’re imprisoned, or you wait until you’re imprisoned and let me jailbreak you.’
‘I wouldn’t let you. My sentence is merciful and just.’
‘Bullshit. I don’t care. I’ll drag you out of here kicking and screaming if I have to. You’re not injured anymore, so you couldn’t even make me feel guilty about it. You can scream all the way to freedom.’
Jayce loves the way Viktor’s face looks in his hand. He brings the other one up too, marvelling at the dark texture of his skin next to Viktor’s own paleness. Viktor half closes his eyes. Leans against Jayce’s palm. ‘Very well,’ he says. Then he stands and begins to pack.
In the end, they manage with two small bags, don a cloak each, and escape under cover of darkness. Jayce doesn’t even have to knock Viktor out and carry him. He barely even has to talk him into it.
They sleep in a forest clearing. Jayce wakes to a small fire, two tin cups with boiled water, and a slice of bread held out to him. ‘I assume you have a grand plan.’
Jayce takes the bread. Viktor is kneeling across from him, the fire lighting his face from below and the morning sun lighting it from above so that his skin seems a mask of brightness. Jayce is reminded of hair the white colour of starlight. ‘I’ve got no plan at all, actually. Unless ‘walking until we find a place to stop’ counts as a plan.’
‘It does not,’ says Viktor, the ghost of a smile in his words.
They walk again. Make it over a hill, go along some coastline, find an orchard. It’s nice. Jayce picks two apples and tosses one to Viktor, who catches it and then stares at it with something like shock. He’s still not used to his own body. Jayce isn’t used to it either; it’s still slightly jarring when he sees Viktor striding confidently, kneeling and standing, jumping from a rock and landing easily.
Jayce lowers his hand and lets the apple roll out of it. Puts his hand on Viktor’s sternum and pushes him against a tree. Those eyes—were they always so clear? So easy to read?—stare at him with something like desire. ‘Here?’ Viktor asks. 'Now?'
Jayce thinks about answering. Wishes he had something clever to say. But Viktor’s the one who always has something clever to say. Jayce leans in and kisses him. Traces the pad of his thumb along Viktor’s eyebrow; feels Viktor’s hands come up under his shirt and trace the skin where once there was a scar.
It’s easy. Slow. They have all the time in the world.
Viktor gasps and tilts his head back and Jayce finally—finally—gets to kiss along the line of his neck, fisting one hand in Viktor’s hair and running the other up under his shirt, tracing his ribs. He loves the differences in their bodies. It’s addictive. He wants to keep doing what he’s doing forever. Then he has a better idea and sinks to his knees. He’s tall enough that his head is at the level of Viktor’s lower belly, so he rucks up Viktor’s shirt and kisses the skin there.
Viktor’s hands are in Jayce’s hair. They’re on Jayce’s face, they’re touching Jayce’s mouth. Viktor’s long, clever, aristocratic fingers. Jayce wants to slam their foreheads together and project every good thought at once—he worries that if he says any of this out loud, it’ll sound trite. Unimaginative.
Above him, Viktor says ‘Jayce.’
Jayce looks up. Viktor’s mouth is slightly parted. His pupils are huge. His neck is bruising.
‘Here?’ Viktor asks again.
Jayce grins. Then laughs. Wants to say something like, I realised I was in love with you in a liminal universe realm, and you think a blowjob under an apple tree is inappropriate? But he doesn’t say it. Instead, he undoes the front of Viktor’s trousers and sucks him, marvelling at the sounds Viktor makes, bracing himself with his hands on Viktor’s legs, which are still too slender, but which feel strong.
Jayce swallows. Wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. Stands up, does Viktor’s trousers back up again, and kisses him, feeling the sensation of a smile under his mouth. Viktor’s hands reach down—then down further. Jayce thinks about making a ‘handjob under an apple tree’ joke, but then loses the ability to speak, only feeling able to gasp, to groan, to press more open-mouthed kisses down Viktor’s throat.
That night, lying in a cave and listening to the sounds of the sea beating against rock, Viktor says ‘I’m sorry I used one of my vicarious corpse drones to nearly choke you to death.’
Jayce rolls onto his side. Looks at Viktor where his head is pillowed on Jayce’s arm. ‘No hard feelings,’ he says.
Viktor raises an eyebrow. Reaches a hand down between Jayce’s legs. ‘Some hard feelings,’ he replies.
Viktor, predictably, had packed notebooks and pencils in his bag. Some days later, they pause to eat lunch next to a river, and Viktor makes Jayce sit still so he can draw him.
It’s no hardship to Jayce. He likes watching Viktor’s face bent in concentration; likes watching the serious line of his eyebrows, likes the way he holds the pencil, still, like he’s going to play violin with it. Viktor holds his toothbrush the same way, but thankfully gives handjobs with a normal grip.
Jayce tilts his head and stares at Viktor’s mouth, which stretches in a smile. ‘Staring,’ Viktor says. He glances up for another look at Jayce and Jayce is struck with the absolute wonder of his luck. He wonders if, maybe they really did die, and now they’re in heaven. Finds that he doesn’t care. Though they probably wouldn’t be running from the law, in heaven.
‘Haven’t I earned the right to? Think of all those years I wasted not staring at you.’
‘You stared back then. You passed it off as thinking. Once you said, ‘I can’t help where my eyes go.’ Remember?’
Jayce doesn’t, but he believes Viktor. Viktor has a memory so clear and precise that Jayce sometimes suspects it’s eidetic, or photographic. ‘I don’t believe you,’ he says, and Viktor laughs. The white flash of his teeth is a gift.
Jayce glances at his own hands. They’re still broad; still calloused. His body feels young and strong. He feels like he’s been given a second life. ‘Do you remember,’ he starts, and then stops.
‘Go on.’ The scratch of Viktor’s pencil. The orange-gold glances of his eyes.
‘Do you remember those dinners? In Piltover? We’d both get in our dress uniforms and everyone would want to talk to me but they ignored you, so you’d bring me glasses of wine and pieces of cheese?’
‘I remember.’
‘You used to say the funniest things. They were so funny that nobody else realised you were joking. I would nearly cry, sometimes, with how hard I was trying not to laugh. Then you’d just disappear again. You always left early. I always wanted to go with you. I always wished I was standing on a balcony with you, listening to the party behind us, instead of having to hobnob and shoulder-rub.’
Viktor glances at Jayce’s face. Draws a line. Smudges it with his knuckle. ‘I always wished they’d stop inviting you. It ate into our time together. I never liked seeing you with other people. But I always liked that they liked you. It made me feel…proud. Proud and jealous. I would look at you and think, 'they have him for now. But he is mine.'’ Viktor glances up again. His eyebrows are thick and dark; well-shaped. Jayce likes them a lot. Likes to trace them with his fingers. ‘I am not a good person, Jayce Talis. I should have stayed in Piltover and accepted my punishment, but I wanted you. I wanted to run away with you. I wanted to be free, even though I know I do not deserve to be.’
Jayce pictures a litany of faces. Some of them lost; some not. ‘Very few people get what they deserve. Really, people only get what they take.’
Viktor turns around his notebook. Jayce is rendered in heavy lines, his face drawn with the kind of tenderness that only love can render. He smiles.
Viktor stands. Crosses over to Jayce and lays a hand on his head, then tugs at his hair. When Jayce tilts his head back, Viktor’s hand creeps around his neck and he rests his fingers there, smooth with dark smudges of charcoal. ‘I may have been funny, to you, but you were always the wise one. Without you, I’d have been so much worse. Even though I tried so hard to be good.’
Jayce takes Viktor’s hand, which has left dark charcoal fingerprints on the skin of his neck.
They travel for weeks. Then months. No one seems to be coming after them. It feels like a holiday. An adventure.
They find a small township and settle there, claiming to be cousins. It feels good to sleep in a bed. Even better, Jayce thinks, to fuck Viktor in one. Feels good on the table, too. And the floor.
Jayce gets a job working at a forge. It feels satisfying to come home physically tired; to experience the sensation of muscles in his back again. Viktor spends a while—weeks, really—mooching around the house. He makes a lot of small, intricate inventions, and then takes them apart before Jayce comes home. He reads his way through the town’s small library. He whitewashes the wall of their dining room so that they can write equations over it.
Then he gets a job as a teacher. On his breaks, Jayce sometimes sees Viktor sitting outside with his small, devoted class of children clustered at his feet. Sometimes they make small explosions. Sometimes big ones. There’s always a chorus of laughter afterwards.
Once, a small girl knocks at their door. Mid morning. Weekend; they’re both home. Jayce answers the door and looks down.
‘Is Mr Talis in?’
Jayce hides a smile. ‘Yes. He is. Something he can do for you?’
The girl hands him a book—she’s returning it, she explains—and skips away.
Jayce turns the books over in his hands. Then he crosses the house and leans in the bedroom doorway. Viktor’s hair is going everywhere. He’s got a coffee in his hand, which has cooled to room temperature. He’s frowning at a book.
‘Delivery for Mr. Talis,’ Jayce says, and tosses the book on the bed.
Viktor flushes. ‘Well. I had to pick something.’
‘Could have picked Smith. Black. Tilpover. McZaun.’
Viktor sinks lower and pretends his book is too fascinating for conversation.
The stars are amazing in that place. There’s no city light to block them. On a high cliff above the town, Viktor lies with his head on Jayce’s shoulder. ‘We won’t stay here,’ he says.
‘No. Not forever. But for a little while.’
‘Do you ever feel like a thief?’
Jayce turns his head. Bring up his free hand to trace Viktor’s profile. To pass his thumb along Viktor’s eyebrow. Watches Viktor smile. ‘Why?’
‘As though we’ve stolen luck we didn’t deserve.’
‘I don’t feel like a thief. Although sometimes I used to wonder if we’d died and gone to a better place.’
‘In a better place, I would not be responsible for a horde of small children with destructive tendencies and questionable literacy.’
Jayce laughs. Viktor’s hand comes up to touch his mouth, as though verifying Jayce’s happiness is real and tangible.
Jayce takes Viktor’s hand in his own, holding his fingers in a loose fist, as though keeping something between their palms. ‘I don’t feel like a thief,’ he says again. The stars are impossible above them; so bright, that they could almost be suspended inside them. Flashes of white; Viktor’s eyes gold in the half-light.