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There comes an unfortunate moment in every young, passionate innovator’s life where he must realize that he’s landed in over his head. It occurs when the pestering questions from people with expensive names, long, restless nights, and weeks spent not going home in favor of keeping with the research finally coalesce into a beast stronger than the current weapons of hypothesis and putting heads together can best.
Things had been altogether great as far as successfully bringing brilliant ideas to life was concerned. Several conceptual inventions that previously only existed as chalkboard diagrams had burst free of their powdery confines and were being constructed all around. Jayce and many others had felt that Piltover had not seen this kind of speedy renaissance. At least, not in his living memory, and in as short a time.
He’d been miraculously saved from complete outcastment and had become quite the shining star. Ideas he conjured in dreams and conceptual rows with teachers and peers were suddenly being borne with real grease and grit. Construction efforts had been choking the city, but it was going to be worth it. Jayce knew. The Hexgates wouldn’t appear overnight, and while the city brought them to fruition, he was given the opportunity to ruminate on other matters. New, fresh ideas that could continue to improve lives, solve real problems—grace the world with a breath of magic, save them as he had once been.
Only the other matters were now of concern to people who were financially invested in the current successes of Hextech, with no moral attachment. Which meant he had to put those dreams to use. He had to produce something. They had to produce something.
His partner was also in deep with the sudden onslaught of queries. Where Jayce got dragged off to as the face of their research, Viktor had to follow. Jayce, certainly, wasn’t leaving him behind.
There would be no demand for their work at all had Viktor not been there that night in the Kirammans’ workshop. There wouldn’t even be a Jayce without Viktor. They were both swarmed, burdens of work only unequal in that Jayce was tasked with most of the talking and was receiving far more mail. Viktor always mused that it was his fault for carrying all that charm that the big and important people ate up, but Jayce always let the comment roll right off, bringing Viktor with him into the undertaking regardless.
Which brought them here: swimming in ideas and half-assembled prototypes. Scattered pieces of scrap and barely organized blueprintery peppered the laboratory like the oddest kind of snow. It matched the half-sticking winter weather outside. The snow was wet enough to melt on the glass of the windows around them but had enough staying power to end up in piles down on the street. Piltover looked about as clean outside as the lab did inside.
They had been sitting in their respective seats for unquantified hours, beating their brains into the wall in the hopes it might make their synapses begin to fire again. Jayce in particular whinged in agony at the state of his head, both buzzing over the demand but devoid of supply. Viktor was across the way from him, reading an investor’s letter, the top half of which was weighed down with some kind of ridiculously large and complicated wax seal. The thing made him want to roll his eyes right out of his skull.
“They are asking about advancements in carriages again.” Viktor announced as he let the paper fall to the metal table beneath his hand. The stupid seal dragged it down with a smack. Jayce puffed out a scoff, the metal doohickey he was toying with rattled as he observed it with an absent gaze, some piece of a larger scrapped machine that now rested in scattered bits and bobs on the big round desk.
“They’re building our unrivalled marvel of transportation at this second and are asking about carriages?” Jayce’s voice came with a dry edge of exhaustion. “They’re asking us to fix things that aren't even broken.”
“This I know.” Viktor assured, swiveling his stool to face Jayce from where he sat across the workspace. “The famous burden of genius. People will want your help even with non-issues.”
Jayce dropped his attention from the object in his hands, looking instead at a spread of papers that detailed some hypothetical Hextech invention. He was tired enough that reading his own notes on what it was was a fool’s errand. He followed the lines of his pencil over the shape of the machine, around and around, with a scowl settling on his lips.
“It’s not that we can’t give it the time of day, but shouldn’t they be asking us about real problems? Not… if a carriage can drive itself or something.” Jayce sighed. “I don’t even know what we’re trying to help them with at this point.”
“That's just it. What we see as ‘real issues’ is not what an investor sees. Most of the time, anyway. I believe we may add more fruitful contributions to the world yet. Not simply… toys.” Viktor rolled his stool back from the edge of the table, freeing himself up to a more relaxed position. The exhaustion of nonstop tinkering weighed on him, too.
“If any of these letters could ask for useful things, maybe we wouldn’t be drowning in nonsense.” Jayce sighed, bringing his hand to scratch at his stubble. He was unshaven, unkempt, and the walls of this lab were beginning to feel like a tomb he was being buried in. When was the last time he’d even gotten up to move? “Can you tell me what I’m looking at?”
Viktor sighed in a laughing sort of way, a short rasp of bemusement as he leaned over himself to grab his crutch from where it rested.
It was a new development, graduating from the cane to something designed to support a higher fraction of his body weight. The advancement of his condition had been evident in recent months, though he’d spoken little of it.
Jayce didn’t need him to say anything. It wasn’t exactly a secret; the pronounced slouching of his back and the pallid color that had been creeping over his skin announced plenty. It hurt to think they were conceptualizing trivial things that helped nobody while Viktor grew sicker. They had been given such little leeway to continue real improvements; the true ideas they might have had were buried under requests and questions. They had been happy enough to bang out all of the details for the Hexgates. When could they go back to that? Would they get the chance?
Jayce tried not to spiral when he thought about it. Being trapped between what he wanted and what he was expected to do. The rhythmic shuffling of Viktor’s shoes and cane approached, and he felt the clawing unease begin to settle.
“Mm,” He hummed as he leaned over Jayce’s shoulder. His fingers spread out on the yellow paper, framing the sketched blueprint between his thumb and forefinger. Jayce observed him from this lower angle, tracing him from hand to face. Sometimes he felt as though he could see the cogs spin in Viktor’s brain. Other times, he seemed entirely alien, like he was something Jayce was still trying to fully understand.
They had been quick in how well they fit together. It took basically no time at all for their ideas to link like chains. In a slower way, it seemed they’d become friends, too. Not just a pair of great minds, but a duo academic and personal. It was a unique sort of connection, one that created a dance easy to maneuver but needing steps filled. For Jayce, much of the greater image of Viktor still needed to be colored in, and he wanted very badly to take up the brush.
“I must admit, you have me at a loss.”
“Really?” Jayce slipped the paper from under Viktor’s hand, looking at it face to face. He didn’t know either. A vague machine that existed to do who knows what.
“It’s your blueprint, Jayce.”
“I don’t even know what this thing is.” He sighed hopelessly, crumpling the paper in his hand. “I don’t know what any of this is!”
Viktor straightened to the best of his ability, watching as the ball of undecipherable machinery was halfheartedly launched towards the bin at the end of the desk, and then as it missed entirely.
“That is not true.” Viktor asserted, giving Jayce a skeptical once over. “Perhaps you have forgotten why there are people writing letters asking for your ideas in the first place?”
Jayce took a deep breath, slowly in and harshly out. He shut his eyes and nodded his head in concession.
“No, I know. I know.” He looked over his shoulder at Viktor, who had moved away in order to scoop up the paper and place it rightfully in the garbage.
The back of Jayce’s neck fevered with the embarrassment of forcing Viktor to clean up after him, but it wouldn’t have been the first time. He was quite guilty of leaving the lab disorganized, especially during long stretches of work such as this. Viktor ran a much tighter ship by comparison. “I think—this is all just piling up on me. And I just want to do something meaningful with all the resources we have instead of all these things I think are useless.”
“You understand these investor letters are not binding? We don’t have to build every scheme with a house’s seal on it.” Viktor tried to console, leaning back on the table. He broke his attention from Jayce’s exasperated face, looking down at some of the jumbled pages below him. There lay a few mock-ups for a variety of kitchen tools. They weren’t detailed ideas by any means (a mark of how little the ideas really meant to Jayce), and, Viktor agreed, meaningless in comparison to the inventions they were capable of. The pages weren’t even signed. He could almost laugh about how ridiculous it was.
“We need to secure their continued interest, don’t we?” Jayce bleated pathetically. He was genuinely agonized by the idea that the only way people would continue to invest in their work would be to spend each waking moment making things to stuff a landfill with.
“Have we not done so already?” Viktor gestured to the letters that littered the table. “We have done our part of the approach. Now, they come to us. We do not have to give them each trinket they dream up. I think our time and our research will be better spent on creating our aspirations first. Then we will worry about convincing others.”
Jayce leaned back, a hand coming to comb through his hair. He didn’t know how Viktor did it. How he cleared the air with such ease. Perhaps it was just the effect he had on Jayce alone; Viktor always seemed to come in at the right moment and supplement solutions to his problems, both in the lab and in moments like this. In all the years they had thus far spent together, that hadn’t changed from their first meeting. With Viktor came a sort of clarity that Jayce could get lost without. It was one of many things that caused a big, bleeding welt of admiration in his chest. Another inexplicable thing about him: how Viktor’s particles seemed to complete Jayce’s dispersion so harmoniously.
Viktor approached his side of the table again and sat down at his previously abandoned stool, rolling it forward and parking it by Jayce’s side.
“But where do we even start?” Jayce asked. “We’ll never run out of things that need fixed. How do we pick what to focus on right now?”
“Well, it’s not any of this.” Viktor chided. He looked at Jayce, expecting to see some kind of granted relief, but found only that his face was further contorted in concern.
As such, Jayce was feeling his head begin to spin and spin. Dissatisfied that he’d spent the last few days wishing he was working on something else, but didn’t know what the something else was supposed to be. His time had never been so effectively wasted, and he felt indignant and scared all at once.
He looked at Viktor and was reminded again that they may not have so many days to squander, then was struck by a pang of additional guilt that he shouldn’t think of another person that way. Especially not Viktor, who had spent so long trying to be anything but just a sick man. He was accomplished. He had a vibrant mind. He was Jayce’s favored companion in all endeavors. And he was sitting there, waiting for Jayce to say something.
He sighed.
“That much is obvious.” Jayce said, turning to sit in alignment with the table. He began to clear it of pages and tchotchkes, building haphazard piles of prototypes he had no passion for. Viktor observed him with silent unease. He knew that Jayce was still disquieted, he didn’t wear his feelings in a private way. His jaw was tense, square bones grinding back and forth as his hands worked blithely at cleaning the area around him. Viktor rarely saw him this way, plagued by some unspoken anxiety. His mouth pulled into a tight frown.
With a certain deftness, he flipped down his crutch to hold it by the footed end, reaching the underarm support to hook around the pole underside Jayce’s seat and pulled it back around, swiftly dragging him away from his morose episode of tidying.
The look on his face was worthy of a laugh, completely stunned. His eyebrows were knit together and mouth open. Viktor looked at him seriously.
“So, what are you going to do about it?” Viktor asked, putting his crutch right again, holding it near the hand grip.
“What?” Jayce replied, an air of exasperation coming alongside.
“You are not sure of what to do next, but you want to move on, so what are you going to do?”
Jayce crossed his arms, giving Viktor a tight expression. He looked exhausted and irritated, like he’d been buttoned up from the inside and the seams were starting to wear from the tug.
“I don’t know.” He said, leaning over his knees, resting his elbows on his legs in a hunch. “I told you that already.”
“That’s not an option. We cannot stagnate. Cannot simply do nothing.” At this, Jayce’s head rose quickly from the bowed position that it rested in.
“I know! I know, I just—I’m not inspired.” His hard annoyance softened into something lighter. He was Atlas, and in need of the removal of all that pressure from his shoulders. “When I first started planning my ideas around what we accomplished, it felt like I had more room for imagination. Everything was newer, freer. People have fingers in the pie now. There’re parameters we have to put up with.”
“Our last set of boundaries, we broke. Hextech itself is outside the field of what anyone thought possible, or wise, but we achieved it.” Viktor’s voice grew more somber, trying to reach that soft center of Jayce beyond the knots of worry he’d tied himself up in. “You have time yet. You don’t need to know what the next step forward looks like tonight.”
“But I want to. I want to start now, get at least something out there to go from tomorrow.” Jayce looked behind him again at the piles and sighed.
“And you are feeling coherent enough for that?” Viktor asked, his voice edging on provocation.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Jayce faced him directly again.
“You seem to be running on fumes, that’s all.”
Jayce supposed that was true. He was physically and mentally losing the fight.
The laboratory had adequate enough faculties to prevent either of them from going completely feral while cooped up there for extended periods of time. A place to sleep, a bathroom, and space to stroll, not to mention delightfully close to several shops that drew in the academy crowd. But these things, as nice as they could be in the moment, did not make up for actual time away, real beds, or hot showers. Perhaps the only real refuge afforded were the bars and food carts, yet even those grew stale on too-frequent visits.
“Yeah, maybe. I don’t know. I wouldn’t feel right leaving now.” Jayce said.
“Making the attempt to conjure something new when you are in this state is how you design machines neither of us can understand the function of.” Viktor stood at this, pacing passed Jayce’s seated form to the mass of failures on the table. Jayce turned to track his movements. “We need to get you out of here. Clear your head, as it were.”
“My head is empty, believe me.” Jayce said, stopping short at the chuckle such a statement dragged from Viktor’s throat. “How can you lecture me on pacing? You do this all the time!”
“I am not a stranger to sleepless nights or working in unwell conditions.” Viktor reminded him, before taking the papers in his hand and dropping them promptly into the bin. “In truth, it is not a habit I take a great deal of pride in. But I have grown around it. You, on the other hand…” He trails off.
“Please, you remember how I was before we presented the Hexgate prototype.”
“And it’s not a state I would like you to be in again.” Viktor’s tone fell somewhere between sympathetic and daring Jayce to argue. “It makes you sloppier.”
“Oh, nice.” Jayce rolled his eyes.
“When did you last take a break?” Viktor continued clearing the table, leaning his hip against the edge to free both hands, sweeping metal bits and loose screws into his palm and picking through them for things they’d be capable of reusing in future models.
Jayce observed him as he stood there. He looked tired, though he carried it with a practiced sedateness. He didn’t get messier or lazier in his exhaustion. Quieter, quicker to frustration at times, but he didn’t lose himself. Jayce figured it was a byproduct of his constant malaise. Illness and pain are taxing for anyone, but living with it every day was a different beast entirely, an impenetrable burden that he assumed Viktor had long since come to grips with. Jayce was not so well-practiced.
He seemed languid like this, relaxed despite his drowsiness, moving with a flow. It brought back the memory of when Jayce had first met him. Viktor, a few years younger, who stood a little taller and milled through rooms with more confidence. In brief episodes such as this, when it was just them and their wall of ideas, Jayce saw that man. Aspirant scientist, trespasser, and enabler of would-be exiles. He saw him every day. He was paler and sharper now, but always as bright.
Despite the shroud of change around them, around him, and even when he seemed obscured by the haze of time, he never stopped being the startling young man that struck Jayce’s life just as fast and transformative as lightning hitting sand. He made the grains into glass.
It took too long for Jayce to realize he’d been staring at him and doing nothing.
“You sound like my mother.” Jayce moved his seat forward to begin sorting in much the same way as Viktor, pulling what he could from the rest of the salvage.
“Do I? I would hope Ximena has the same invested interest in your health as I do.” Viktor quipped in return, dropping the contents of his left hand into the trash.
“Not since lunch.” Jayce admitted at last. Viktor tutted in disapproval.
“You are not doing yourself any favors,” He said, placing his scavenged screws and hinges on the table once more, “Come. You need fresh air.”
Jayce contemplated arguing. He needed something to focus on, some physical object to pour all that swirling energy in his chest into, but when he looked up at his partner, he couldn’t voice a word. Viktor’s face never left room for opposition and when he was set on something, that was the end of it.
“Okay,” Jayce conceded, “if you insist.”
--
Much to his chagrin, the cold weather did not miraculously disappear since Jayce last went outside. He was bundled well up, in a thick wool coat and scarf, the same ones he’d worn into the lab at the beginning of the week, but the chill was ever evident. The only reprieve for him was that the snowfall had been mostly swept out of the foot path by other people’s trips through the area. He could avoid that completely obnoxious crunch of boots on snow that he hated so much.
He tried not to hate most things. But he hated winter.
And to his further dismay, they had been walking for quite some time.
Viktor was in front of him by only a pace or two, tottering onward in silence. He was wearing one of those coats that tied around the waist, with buttons up the front, and a pair of cloth gloves. Jayce observed him idly.
Sometimes it seemed like the lab was the center of the universe and only there was where their lives really took place. As rare as they were, each outing they shared away from it felt like an interference with the natural order. Jayce knew, obviously, that Viktor had a life of his own. He’d seen glimpses of it over the years, hearing anecdotes about life at the academy before the two had met, notes on his childhood, and even heard passive comments about his parents once or twice. But this was different. Viktor was actually taking him along on a trip through his inner world, or at least a piece of it.
It wouldn’t be the first time they’d gone out together. Jayce used to be rather insistent on inviting him out to places, even if he ended up talking to the brick wall that was Viktor’s adherence to reservation. He would coax him along to parties or out to drinks, but never often enough to qualify as a “thing” they did together. He’d even had him over to his apartment, only twice, and both rather soon after he’d moved in, but he counted it as something special regardless.
It was special when their ties extended beyond Hextech. It was special when they were not simply colleagues or buddies, but companions. It was special to Jayce, at least.
Part of him couldn’t tell if Viktor really cared about that kind of thing. It was always a little difficult to gauge whether or not Viktor wanted to be anywhere. On the rare occasion that Jayce could convince him to say yes, he always seemed to be placidly enjoying his surroundings at a pub or dinner party. He barely mingled and would often fade into the edges of crowds while wearing a fixed look of neutrality, shadowed by discomfort. Yet, he could’ve said no and hadn’t. It was something Jayce was trying to wrap his head around. Eventually, he stopped dragging him along to those particular events. He began to figure it’d be easier to meet him where he was at.
Only that Viktor didn’t seem to do much else but work and go home. And these days, the latter was growing scarcer.
They were friends. Jayce was at least confident of that, and he figured that Viktor must agree for situations like this to even arise. Most people would not insist on traversing the winter just to give their coworker a break from painting the walls with the sweat off his forehead. But so rarely did Viktor ever initiate this kind of interpersonal entanglement, and Jayce could think of so little to do other than be near him when the opportunities arose.
It made Jayce’s chest ache in a strange sort of way, the idea that if he didn’t force him out of his skin, he’d have no personal time with someone he cared about. That they might have to live on forever as just cohabitants in the lab. That an arrangement like that might spell a deadline for their relationship. Jayce, with ample confusion as to why, wanted something else. He cared too much. Viktor was not just a lab partner, not just a second skull to toss ideas at, and not just a simple friend. He was someone that Jayce sought out. He hoped nothing would ever change that. Especially not now. Not when it was Viktor dragging him somewhere instead. It was exactly what the heart in his chest had been begging for.
“You are rather quiet.” Viktor’s observation sliced through the silence as they rounded a bend. He cast an inquiring glance over his shoulder at Jayce, who had thus far been staring at the hems of Viktor’s coat, making note of the roughness of it, strings dishevelled and shedding onto the fabric. It looked like he’d had it for a very long time. He looked up and met his gaze, expression finally softening from his contorted meditation.
“Sorry,” Jayce said, “thinking.”
“Ah.” Viktor returned his gaze to the path ahead of them. Jayce took the opportunity to tune back into the world around them as well. They were decently far from the lab now, closing in on the upper city’s limits. The buildings grew a bit darker and dimmer here, significantly less gilded than the surroundings Jayce had been accustomed to as of late. The ground was snowier once more. “About?”
You was not a viable answer, despite the truth of it. Jayce chuckled at himself, which earned another prying glance from the man ahead of him. He was feeling something dance in his ribs.
“Where are you taking us?” Jayce replied, a non-answer. “I don’t think I’ve really… been to this side of the city before.”
“You sound a little scared.” Viktor remarked, a ghost of a smile playing on his face. Jayce caught up to speed with him at last, taking up residence at his side so they might talk a bit easier.
“A quiet winter night, in a strange place, with no people around,” Jayce spelled it out like reading a spooky story to a child, “sounds like the start of a riveting horror novel. I could never make it home tonight.” His brain seemed to breeze right past the accidental euphemistic nature of the comment.
“I have spent the good of my energy on getting us this far.” Viktor admitted before a grin blossomed over his mouth. A wolfish sort of thing that one might wear if telling a naughty joke. “I will not be killing you tonight. Not unless you want to die very slowly, and without fighting back.”
Jayce bellied a laugh, though something twisted in his gut at the visual. He dared not go so far as to admit he’d be curious to see what that would be like.
“Well, thank you for sparing me.” He quipped with all the gaiety he could muster. “But seriously, a hint, at least?”
Viktor stopped abruptly, Jayce scuffing his shoes against the stones below him as he tried to hit the brakes quite as hard. When he looked at him for explanation, Viktor merely nodded his head in the direction of the building they had parked in front of.
It was a small place, carved out in between two larger buildings, with a lovingly rendered wooden sign hanging above the door that spelled out the name. It looked choked out with such little room to exist, or like the structures around it were trying to smash it. Despite this, the windows glowed warm inside, spilling an inviting orange light into the dark world around them, illuminating the glittering snow on the ground.
“What?” Jayce asked, half-baked in his surprise.
“I wanted dinner. I figured we were already in need of an escape from the lab, so I would use the opportunity.” Viktor simply said. He cleared his throat as though he meant to continue explaining himself, but the follow up never came. Jayce nodded.
“And we came all the way out here for it?”
“You will understand once we get our plates.” Viktor turned on his heel, heading towards the door. Jayce followed behind by only steps.
Inside was not any bigger than the exterior had led Jayce to believe it would be. There was a bar on the left with only three stools, and four tables opposite, each with two chairs. From the ceiling hung a great number of incandescent lamps. There were pictures and portraiture scattered across the walls, presumably of the owners and their families. Each table was adorned with some kind of decorative flora bundled in glass jars. The whole place smelled strongly of baking bread.
As the two entered, the person behind the bar looked up with a face of boredom. It was rather late at night, after all, and surely whatever staff took up residence here were ready for everybody to leave them alone. Jayce felt a rush of guilt at the idea, but when he looked over to remark on his bad feelings, he found Viktor had already made himself comfortable at one of the carved wooden tables, slipping out of his winter coat and leaving it to hang on the chair behind him. Jayce huffed and jumped to join him.
“Isn’t it a bit late to be out like this?” Jayce began stripping off his winter layer, too, and settled in his chair.
“You are the one who insisted on toiling all through the evening,” Viktor said, nodding with gratitude as a pair of menus found themselves set on the table by the same person who had been tending the bar, “and the dining options closer to us would have been closed now.”
Jayce accepted this, though he still eyed the man behind the counter with a degree of shame. He took his menu and observed the options. None of it was food that he’d usually go for, mostly soups and filled baked things. He was a bigger fan of roasts, hearty and spiced, or leaner things. Fibrous vegetables. And anything his mother made, though he had it in him to be picky on occasion. When the man reapproached to take his order, he settled on some kind of stew.
He surveyed his surroundings again, then his eyes fell on Viktor across from him, sitting comfortably, staring with intensity back at him.
Jayce nearly jumped.
He had such a curious look on his face, a fixed expression of contemplation, the subject of which evidently Jayce himself. He would’ve killed to know what exactly he was seeing as his eyes moved from spot to spot on his face, almost in a pattern.
That feeling that Viktor was somebody he was dying to fully understand returned to him. Jayce wanted to uncover the bits that made him more than just a force of inspiration in Jayce’s life. He didn’t like thinking of him as some foreign entity that showed up merely to improve things or help him realize his dreams. He was a whole individual, with crooks and crannies and innumerable secrets, just like everyone else. Was it fair that Jayce wanted to crack him open? Perhaps it was less intrusive to leave Viktor to his mysteriousness, but he was not capable of accepting that. He was dying to see the nerves alight in his head.
And more than anything right now, he wanted to know what he was thinking as he stared. Did he care in the same way? Was he chasing Jayce’s approval the way Jayce was running after his? Did his mind turn to him in quiet, lonely moments? Had he memorized that swish in his hair, too?
“Is there something on my face?” Jayce broke.
“You look nervous.” Viktor remarked, lip twitching in half-a-smile.
“Maybe.” Jayce laughed. “I’ve never been here before. I mean, obviously, just… why’d you pick this one, out of curiosity?” Viktor took a beat to formulate his response.
“It’s my favorite.” Jayce felt perhaps too giddy at this reveal of information. He really was being shown something in Viktor’s world, even something as impersonal as a favored public space. Anyone could come here, it wasn’t a secret, but it was something he didn’t know of before. Something private in that way. And now Jayce felt fractionally less of a stranger. Closer to him by increments. “When I first began receiving a stable income, I would come here very often. Not so much in recent times. I try not to get excited at the prospect of spending lots of money.”
“Do you need me to cover down?”
“No,” Viktor interjected, perhaps too sharply. He took a half breath as Jayce sat there with his eyes flickering wide. At once, Viktor’s tone simmered down. “No need. Just informing you.”
Jayce nodded. It settled on him then that they were the only patrons in the entire establishment. This wasn’t much of a surprise; it was nearing 9PM, yet the world felt suddenly devoid of everyone. Everything but him and Viktor at this two-person table, waiting for their meals in the warm lamplight, with a bundle of dried herbs in the glass jar between them.
It looked like quite the intimate date.
Jayce internally sputtered. He looked around again. The man behind the bar had disappeared into the back, rendering him and Viktor truly, entirely alone. All the more friendly. It wasn’t like this was even planned. All those dinner parties were closer to dates than this. Viktor would have come here with or without him.
But he was with him. And it was his favorite restaurant. And he insisted on bringing Jayce.
Suddenly, he felt as though he needed to get a good grade in eating here. He looked at Viktor again and found him watching. Still.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” Jayce practically cried. He certainly felt like he might’ve. His head had once again begun to swim.
“Like what?” Viktor replied, his voice beginning to edge on genuine perturbation, his eyebrows pulling together in concern. “You are very fidgety, Jayce. What’s going on?”
“I don’t know, I feel like you’re studying me.” Jayce said. He tried to make it sound better than it did but failed. Viktor’s face screwed up at the strange accusation.
“You are right in front of me. Would you prefer I sat somewhere else?” Viktor replied, a coolness settling over his speech.
“No, I didn’t mean it like that.” Jayce tried to redeem himself, but Viktor still looked as though he was observing an agitated mouse in a cage. Jayce was going nuts.
It was much easier to exist in an open space. Now it felt as though the full weight of the itch had come down on top of him. Just him and the man he was weirdly obsessed with the opinion of alone in a cramped room, at the same table, eating a meal together. “What are you thinking about?”
Viktor’s face blanched, caught on some kind of invisible hook.
“What am I thinking about?” He repeated, to which Jayce nodded. Could it finally, at some time tonight, be Viktor’s turn to face the scrutiny? He seemed caught off guard by the question. Jayce pulled his chair closer to the table and began to speak softly.
“You had this look on your face when you were looking at me. I just wanted to know what’s on your mind, because honestly, I feel like I never know. I see when you’re thinking but never hear the outcome.” Jayce admitted. Viktor was sitting up straight, peering at him with a renewed expression.
If he had to describe it, he’d say it was somewhere between perplexity and observance. Calculated but charmed, if Jayce would allow such a word to be used. For some reason, he hoped it was that way. He hoped Viktor was charmed by him. He hoped the kind of dedication he was fighting to realize was mutual. He hoped when he looked at him, he was thinking of him. Hoped that Viktor was trying to unravel and understand Jayce in the same consuming way. Hoped that he wanted to. Hoped that alongside how much he knew Viktor cared for their mutual passions, their work, he found Jayce himself as important, that he was indivisible from his innovations.
“The lab,” Viktor began, his voice lilting between two unknown feelings, “I’m ‘brainstorming,’ as you say.”
Jayce tried not to be crushed. It was an odd thing to be upset over, he knew. And part of his chest growled with the idea that that couldn’t be all there was, but what would the point have been in pushing?
“Alright.” Jayce adjusted himself at the table, hearing as the waiter had made his approach once more. “Well, talk to me. Maybe you can bounce some ideas off of me.”
--
The meal was good, albeit adulterated by Jayce’s tension.
He felt he could understand why this was Viktor’s favorite. It was quiet, which is something he always seemed to appreciate, in an unassuming place in town, and cozy but not suffocating. The restaurant was quite literally too small to ever harbor a crowd and served food both hearty and filling. It seemed perfectly tailored to him, for all Jayce understood about the man.
He felt an ache of guilt at the thought that it was so different from the things Jayce had so often invited him to. High society functions with loud music and annoying rich people, food in the shape of squares that only came in single bite portions, champagne and dry red wine: it was possibly the farthest cry from this beautiful brick building that smelled of creature comforts Jayce could think of.
Despite this, he was inspired. Renewed. Jayce knew better now what he should organize in order to do something fun with him, how he could fix an outing to be right. He could meet Viktor on familiar turf. The wheel was already turning around in his head, ideas for future days beginning to accumulate like spun sugar.
In this excitement, he had bulldozed right over the implication that this meant he wanted to take Viktor out on another pseudo-date, perhaps even a real one next time.
This private outing to a tête-à-tête restaurant was prime to be the inspiration for future endeavors with him. It was a short and sweet fact that this was something Jayce wanted. It barely registered at all, and when it did, it was instantly unquestionable. He knew that long before, feeling as though he had just remembered it now. A clear result to an easy equation.
Viktor had once done him an unrequitable service. He had pulled loose many suffocating strings of doubt and confusion with enough ease that it still rippled in Jayce’s pond to this day.
And he was a maddening presence to be around.
Stubborn, sharp as a blade, and deeply private but still inviting. Jayce knew he wanted to be around him always. He thought so before, and he knew it now as an irrefutable fact. This night had once again opened his eyes. Would Viktor ever stop awakening him? As he visualized it before, their physical makeup was interwoven to the state of existence, the grains of Viktor’s corporeality so fine as to be indivisible, and Jayce wanted to be surrounded, no, integrated. No space, no time, just atomic processes reacting and reacting and reacting.
It was a desire years in the making that had suddenly been dropped hard on his head. He felt his face mantle at last, unseasonably hot in the cold air. They were nearing the laboratory once again. The moonglow made the land blue. It conjured a memory.
Viktor’s hand on his shoulder made him jump almost out of his skin, a violently startled reaction that sent Viktor reeling back two steps.
“My—!” Viktor yelped in surprise, pulling back his hand as though he had touched a hot pan.
“God—sorry! You startled me, I’m sorry.” Jayce put a hand comfortingly through his hair, taking a deep breath. Viktor looked at him suspiciously. “What’s the matter?”
“Perhaps I should be asking you that question?” Viktor replied, his voice still raised in the aftershock. He lowered his arm to return to his pocket. The air around his face was obscured by dragon’s breath. The temperature had dropped since they started walking home.
“I’m fine. I was just thinking.” Jayce peered at him through gleaming eyes. Viktor could not possibly begin to interpret the fervent look on Jayce's face. His skin looked almost glowing as the intensity of his expression emitted around him like radiation.
“That seems to be your problem a lot tonight.” Viktor said. He had an edge in his words, though Jayce did not understand it.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” He inquired, watching as Viktor stalked passed him to the door. He hummed something low, but did not produce an answer. He began to riffle in his pocket for the keys. Jayce turned and faced him completely. “Viktor, what’s wrong?”
Viktor’s mouth was tightened into a line, procuring the ring of keys at last. The jingle of them was especially loud as the snow choked out the ambience of the city’s nightlife echoing from far reaches. Jayce hadn’t noticed it beginning to fall until this moment.
“You have been very lost in your own head tonight, Jayce. I see that you did not have a good time with me.” Viktor cast a look over his shoulder at him, hand paused in its search. Jayce’s mouth gaped, utter confusion raining down on him. He had been having a perfectly fine time. In fact, he was completely and totally giddy to be here with him. Or there with him. Or anywhere with Viktor. He thought now that perhaps he had been overcompensating for this. He had been too worried that Viktor might not understand or reciprocate the pull of Jayce’s strange longing for him. He felt a degree of offense at the accusation.
“What?” Jayce asked. His posture stiffened, hands shooting out to emphasize his bewilderment.
“You have been tense and quiet. You flinched at every turn. I did not mean to force you to spend your personal time with me, I understand that this is not your definition of fun—”
“Wait—”
“—but I don’t have the means to take you to a party or something alike. Nor would I want to. I have to deal with quite enough passing judgement in places where I must endure it.” Viktor resumed his action at last, Jayce sputtering in the wake.
As he moved to insert the key, they slipped through his grasp and into the powder that had accumulated at the foot of the door. He coughed out a groan of frustration.
Jayce jumped into action to try and find them at the same unfortunate moment that Viktor had begun to lean down, and promptly their heads connected with a dull thud. There was a mutual hiss of pain. Jayce wheeled backwards as Viktor straightened from his crouched position, holding a palm to his forehead. Jayce felt his foot give out from under him as his heel met with a particularly slick patch of ground, falling backwards and right on to his ass.
There was a beat of silence as the two were inert in the aftermath of their discombobulation.
The snow fell down in fat flakes around them, breezing gently in swirls through the air before landing and melting on their persons. Jayce looked up at Viktor from this angle. He was peering back at him with a completely unreadable face. Upset but unable to fully mask his amusement at the slapstick nature of what had just occurred. Jayce opened his mouth, closed it, opened it, and tried again.
And then he began to laugh. It was a bubbly sort of sound, quiet at first but growing in intensity. He shut his eyes and laughed a bit harder. Viktor looked down at him, a dry smile tearing open his mouth. Jayce felt ridiculous. His chest was starting to crack.
“What is so funny?” Viktor asked, voice somewhere between offended and bemused. Jayce had to collect himself for just a moment longer, looking up at him again, drawing himself into a proper seated position.
“I had a good time tonight,” He began, “I was really happy to be spending time with you.”
“Then why have you been like that? I know you are stressed about what to do next, but it seemed different than that. Personal.” Viktor retorted.
“Because of—” Jayce stopped short for a minute. His brain was screaming not to pass go and he was desperately muffling the sound. “Because I’ve been thinking about you. And how badly I want to be around you. I care about you so much; it’s like a weight in my chest. And every time I would get lost, I’d see you and remember what we were doing and—I don’t know. It reminded me of how heavy it was. We practically went on a date just now, but I don’t know what you think about me. If it’s wrong for me to like that. I feel like I’m going crazy and it’s eating me alive.”
Viktor was silent, staring at him from his perch by the door. His lips opened and closed in a small movement, as though his tongue was weighing the words he would wager a response with. His eyes seemed so bright, so intense, like staring right into the sun, and they were leveled right at him. Jayce began to swelter under the heat. The moment stretched on an instant too long, and Jayce let out a defeated, choked sigh, looking down and away so that he might start to breathe again.
“I’m sorry. I sound completely insane.” He tacked on. He could feel the presence of all those particles bearing down on him. There was another stretch of silence before Viktor blew a laugh out of his nose. Jayce’s eyes snapped to him.
“At dinner,” He started. He stepped forward once. Twice. Keeping a firm hand on the pole of his crutch, he extended his free hand down to him, offering with caution, “you said you can see me think, but never know what is on my mind.”
“Believe me, I remember.” Jayce said. Pushing aside that holding on to any part of Viktor, for even a moment, might cause his heart to give out right now, he grabbed his hand and helped himself be drawn up to a standing position. He was quiet, retracting his arm and holding it tense at his side.
It struck him how close together they were standing. Viktor was mere inches from being flush with the door behind him, Jayce a foot or so away from him. He could move his hand and touch him, and it wouldn’t even be a reach. When he thought of it, this was extremely typical for them. It was natural for Jayce to occupy such a near distance, always with a hand on his shoulder or back, always with eyes carefully committing his face to memory. But this felt significantly more charged. Energy flowing, chemicals reacting.
“I was feeling then much like what you are describing now.” Viktor said. His gaze rose from Jayce’s shoes to his eyes. “You occupy a great deal of my thoughts. It’s frustrating.”
“I’m sorry?” Jayce hazarded a laugh.
“I was trying to gauge what you were feeling. Thinking. To know if you were enjoying this time with me, or if I was no better than the issues you were avoiding. I often find myself wondering…” He trailed off. Jayce stood there stock still, looking at him, the snow cascading down. An errant flake landed on Viktor’s eyelash, and he watched as he blinked it into melting. Viktor shook his head.
“About?” Jayce pleaded with him to continue. He was facing him directly now; bodies parallel with one another. Jayce thought that if they didn’t reach some kind of conclusion soon, he might freeze to death right here, waiting forever, as he always would for him.
“You. And where I’m meant to fit in your life.”
“I’m confused about the same thing, about you.” Jayce moved half an inch closer, watching as the breath clouded in front of their faces. “Can you tell me?”
He couldn’t comprehend when Viktor’s hand found its way to his scarf, but soon after, the specifics no longer mattered. In a whirl of the strongest gravity he’d ever endured, Jayce found himself pulled forward, their lips meeting with something of an awkward crash. Teeth to teeth, pluming clouds of breath ebbing out like a machine losing steam.
The movements themselves were routine, but the feeling in Jayce’s head was something entirely alien.
They’d split the atom and now he had begun to disintegrate. He felt his protons shaking loose of the strong force. He was all charge, all energy, completely unstable.
He pressed forward a step, bringing Viktor’s back to the door, rooting his hands firmly on him. One on his neck, the other on his face. His skin felt so cold, it almost gave him pause. Almost.
Viktor’s free hand snaked into his hair, his other still clinging tightly to the hand grip of his crutch. Jayce pulled back to readjust the angle of his attack, and in doing so let his hand fall from Viktor’s neck to his waist, pulling him against him. Viktor seemed to take notice, letting the crutch fall slack against the wall, curling his fingers into the soft fabric of Jayce’s coat, pressing even flusher.
It felt like the collision of two celestial bodies: an asteroid striking a planet. Jayce felt like the comet, crashing full force into the heavenly specimen that was his partner. Debris fluttered into the black pull of space, shockwaves cut valleys into the now molten crush, the force of their impact lit the cosmos entirely on fire until all had burned away into a haze of specs. A Jayce-and-Viktor-hued webbing that surrounded and created a whole new universe from the singularity of their explosion. It was agonizing. It was like finding air outside the atmosphere. Jayce moved left enough to kiss feverishly at the side-middle of his mouth. Viktor gasped around him pleasantly.
This is what he had been seeking. That all-consuming feeling, the need to have fingers run through his subatomic granules, the urge to be suffocatingly surrounded. He found it here, like this.
At once, Jayce stopped abruptly as the need to breathe caught up with him. Viktor shuddered against him, taking in a similarly choked gasp of air. The intensity began to subside from the air, the snow and the breeze around them rushed in to catch up with the vacuum left in the wake of their excitement.
Jayce sighed in a shaken sort of way, pressing his forehead against Viktor’s as he shut his eyes tightly. Viktor followed suit, letting his face take in the warmth of Jayce’s skin against his. He absently ran his hand down from Jayce’s neck to his bicep and found a perch near his elbow where it bent between them, his hand still on Viktor’s cheek.
Finally, after time enough had passed, Jayce pulled himself upright again, looking down at Viktor with a serious set of eyes. He smiled, his lips twitching with some mysterious feeling. Viktor couldn’t help but smile in kind.
Gently, with significantly more reverence this time, Jayce pressed in again.
The kiss was deeper, slower. The first was to entwine and this was to savor. Jayce felt that he could never get enough of this. He brushed his hand up through Viktor’s hair and felt a hum reverberate against his chin. He could’ve lost it right there, but instead, he moved to kiss the corner of his lips as they rested open. He ghosted from his mouth to his jaw, leaving heat peppered across his cold face. Viktor’s arms found themselves looped over Jayce’s shoulders, holding on to his own wrist to complete the circle. The air around them was clouded with the fog of their breath.
With a final press of his lips to the long muscles of Viktor’s neck, Jayce raised his head and observed the scene around him at last.
The sky was completely black, with moonlight and dim city lights keeping the full dark of the night at bay. And, like a specter parting the shadows, Viktor was there, standing chest to chest with him, looking at him with clouded amazement. His lips were flushed and purple, eyes shining but lidded, his hair messier than Jayce had seen it in quite some time. He was so, so beautiful that Jayce could only laugh. Viktor looked at him funny before he, too, let a chuckle slip.
“Did that answer any of your questions?” Viktor asked, something like playfulness edging into his voice.
“One of them, I think.” Jayce replied. The amusement was ever evident in his voice. “And gave me a hundred more.”
“Mm,” Viktor hummed, leaning away at last, grabbing hold of his crutch from where it rested against the doorframe. “We can begin to answer them as we look for the keys, no?”
“Oh, shit—!” Jayce sprung a step backwards, looking down at the ground with a stricken look of complete panic. “My God, I completely forgot. They could be anywhere!” He’d left a trail of odd footprints all over the ground of the surrounding area. He could only hope they hadn’t been kicked somewhere completely odd in all the commotion.
“Good luck with that.” Viktor said, that same predator's smile returning to his face.
“You’re not going to help?” Jayce asked incredulously, already descending to his knees in order to scour the snow for keys that weren’t even his own.
“I’m afraid you have exhausted me.” Viktor said, an obvious lie.
“Oh, I’ll do worse than that.” Jayce retorted. It was meant to be a threat, but didn’t land as such. Viktor’s eyebrows raised high on his forehead.
“Not before you find those.” He moved to stand at Jayce’s kneeling side, observing the ground idly, being absolutely no help at all. “And not on the first date.”