Science of Love

He’s so warm. Everything is so warm. Viktor is enveloped in a cocoon of blankets, but not in a real, physical sense. The hazy air compresses around him like a hug, like the memory of some primal, intrinsic thing he’d known even before he was born. He can’t even feel where his skin ends and where the air begins, he can’t decide what position he’s laying in. 

His eyes are closed, but bursts of orange and pinks and even purples illuminate his mind, dotted with pinprick stars. Viktor feels like he can see the universe. He feels as though his vision pierces right through his eyelids. He can see beyond himself, feel beyond himself, as though he is one with himself and everything that…isn’t. He can also feel powerful swells of burning desire between his legs. 

His mind is muggy, train of thought not quite his own but still guided by a semblance of consciousness in this astral existence.  

A hand caresses his thigh. It doesn’t send a jolt through his muscle, doesn’t send shivers down his spine nor explode in a flurry of butterflies in his gut. It is simply delicate. Intentional. Intimate. It squeezes the warm, gentle hand around his heart, Viktor can’t decide if it’s merciful or merciless. 

From where Viktor sits, or lays, his all-seeing eyes are angled up and away from the owner of the hand. The droplet of consciousness he’s granted in the otherwise swirling display of brainless desire pulls his neck down to peer curiously at the person beside him. 

But he’s slow, movements thickened by the molasses haze they’re both trapped in. Still, the other person wastes no time in swiping their hand tenderly down to Viktor’s knee, then ever so slowly back up, erring much higher than before, fingertips just barely brushing Viktor’s skin. He gives up and relaxes his neck, falling back, pleasure outweighing his curiosity. 

Viktor releases a soft breath, trailed by the smallest whisper of a groan. He feels an arm pillowing his head and the press of weight next to him. He can generally feel more of his position now, he’s laying down, splayed completely bare and on his back, angled slightly inward. Toward the source of the warmth. 

The person beside him breathes softly into the shell of his ear, but it’s in short, shallow exhales. Something burns Viktor’s skin even hotter and the thickness of his mind gives way ever so slightly, a wave breaching the surface for a millisecond. It’s only enough to awaken Viktor to the feeling currently ripping through his chest, the searing, breathless heat of desire. 

He’s so full of it. Every cell in his body has become polarised, magnetised to the source of infinitely growing heat to the right of him, whoever it is. Viktor is angled inward and this person’s arm is under him, but he can feel in his skin, in his ribs, that it isn’t close enough. Not as close as he wants it to be. 

Even in his heavily clouded mind, Viktor can discern the zaps of electricity zipping through his tendons and dropping his stomach even lower. 

The person’s hand moves back down over Viktor’s thigh but it’s fleeting, and the hand starts to make its way up even further, at an agonising pace, stopping just beneath the crease of Viktor’s hips and thighs. Viktor’s breath is caught in his throat. The hand moves back down toward his knee. 

There is an immense heat beneath Viktor’s eyes, no doubt colouring his cheeks and staining his chest with a vibrant rouge, he knows it as something akin to desperation. He wants to whine, make an attempt at encouraging the hand back to its original path, but he can’t. There’s something in the air between them, in the way the hand isn’t hurried or demanding. It’s a sort of promise, unspoken, between them. Viktor knows somewhere even deeper than in his heart that he has time. And for the same, unspoken reason, he’s willing to give it all to this person. Plus, with the way his breath is caught so high in his throat, he doesn’t think there’s any more space in his lungs to produce such a sound. 

Warm, slightly calloused fingertips constrict around the joint of his knee, and Viktor would have tensed if the touch weren’t painfully sweet, tooth-rottingly delicate. It hurts, but not in any way that’s overwhelming or even really occurs to him to notice. It’s a good sort of soreness, one that arrives most commonly under the experienced hands of a skilled masseuse or physical therapist. Both of which Viktor had frequented often during his lifetime. 

Different, though, because even the warmest, most soothing and soft hands that had touched Viktor couldn’t come even close to the pure adoration in this mystery lover’s fingertips. They squeeze at the lean muscle there and prod gently around the cap of his knee. 

Viktor sighs, desire still burning in his chest, but releases his baited breath with a relaxed sigh and leans back to focus on the sensitivity of the joint. 

After just a few moments of doting attention to the knee, which was flooding with the same hazy relaxation as the rest of his body, the hand makes its way back up, all the way up, passing briefly over his hips and resting on his left shoulder. 

The shadowed figure sits up, poised beside him, reaching a wide arm to span the length of Viktor’s chest and covering it in a notably large shadow. Viktor wants to see their face, but the oversaturated brightness of the colours and stars that burst around him make it hard to work out any discernible features. It doesn’t matter, anyway, because the reach brings their head closer to Viktor’s, and it has his eyebrows furrowing slightly as a weighty anticipation burns in his cheeks. They lean down to brush their lips against his, the sweet response to his pleading question, and Viktor can feel the shallowness of hot breath against his mouth. It might have seemed familiar, but Viktor’s ebb and flow of thought was much too subdued to breach the surface, much less crash on a shore of recognition. 

It’s so light, so delicate, and to Viktor it seems as though everything this person does is paper-light, a featherweight brushing of skin for the most brief of moments even though Viktor is pretty sure by the thickness of their arms that they could press much more firmly had they wished. The thought stirs something in his gut, more intensely even than the graze of those fingers so close to his aching hardness. 

He can tell the lips are about to pull away, even after the faintest brush of contact, leaving him again with an untraceable dissatisfaction and missing a piece to whatever puzzle is creating this moment. That piece is something Viktor knows he needs more than the slightest whisper of contact. So, made confident by his hazy-drunkenness, he tilts his own chin up, and finally pushes the warmth of those lips against his own. He might have had the mind to feel nervous, unsure about the mystery person’s reciprocation of the need pooling in his throat, but they push back almost immediately, meeting his neediness equally, if not exceedingly. 

A broad hand finally pushes his left shoulder down, jerking him to face upward more squarely and separating their mouths with a discernable, wet noise, but Viktor is quick to realise it isn’t a rejection. The man, Viktor is pretty sure they’re a man at this point, is actually just leveraging himself with his hold on Viktor’s shoulder in order to sit up. He swings a dense thigh up and across Viktor’s abdomen in a show of searing boldness that has Viktor’s length hardening even more, the source of all the warmth in this universe suddenly piled on top of him. The man’s hips stay supported just above Viktor’s, disallowing any contact between the two. 

Their heads have also separated, but meet as quickly as before, in a fiery kiss that strikes Viktor with a fervor unlike any he’s experienced before. He feels the man’s mouth moving against his, still modestly closed but no less passionate, and swipes gently at the crease in his lips with his tongue. The man picks up on it immediately, inhaling vocally as he meets the tip of Viktor’s tongue with his own. 

If Viktor thought he was warm before, it was only because he had not yet felt the wet heat of this man’s mouth. His skin shivers in comparison as his tongue pushes deeper, sliding against the other man’s obscenely. 

The breaths escaping Viktor’s nose are paired with more and more whines as the man sits above him, still not yet allowing the release of coveted contact between their hips. Honestly, Viktor doesn’t even care. He’s hard, and aching, and embarrassingly close to finishing already, but he would skip the feeling of the man guiding him to completion for another second of this kiss. 

It’s the only thing he can feel, the slick movement of their tongues, the feeling of the man’s mouth, the soft press of lips against his, the warm, panting breaths against him. 

Finally Viktor gains feeling in his own body, no longer left to be tossed around by the delicate riptide of this man’s affection, and does just so. He raises both of his arms and grazes the man’s ribs gently, feeling the abdominal muscles there twitch with sensitivity, and trails his lithe fingertips to rest at the man’s right hip. 

He snakes his other hand, though slightly restricted under the press of a broad palm, up and around the man’s neck, fingers finding hold in shadowy locks of hair. 

Again a flicker of recognition sparks in Viktor but no flame bursts from the glowing embers in his chest. He feels ever closer to knowing his lover, and he wants so terribly to put an identity to the adoration showering over him each second. He wants to show this man a semblance of the same care that’s being given to him at the very second, but recognition is still too far beneath the surface. 

So instead he tries to focus on letting the energy, the force of intimacy and appreciation, flow through his veins and out past his fingertips into the other man’s skin. Viktor hopes he can feel it. 

As if in response, or maybe as a reward, a desperate sound escapes the man above him and it evolves beautifully, gloriously into a raspy moan as Viktor tightens his hold in dark locks. It sends a spike of electricity straight down past Viktor’s stomach and pitches his hips up in a pleasure seeking buck. 

The voice brings Viktor much closer to the moment of realisation, it bridges the majority of the gap in familiarity, launching him toward both the roaring flames and the rocky shore of recognition. It’s all the same to him. The blood in his veins may as well be blazing fire, the pressing weight around him swirling tides, it doesn’t matter. All that matters is that he’s so close to finishing all over the man’s heavy torso and he hasn’t even been touched yet, they’re not even touching, and Viktor still doesn’t remember who they’re supposed to be. And he wants to recognise the voice, to crash on the shore or leap into the flames and really, truly, see what’s — who’s — above him, but there’s a tension pooling in his gut and his thighs are flexing and his mind is split unevenly between the identity of this adoring body and the feeling of their mouths pressed together. 

Before Viktor can process it, there is a shifting of the man’s weight above him, the release of a wide hand on his shoulder and the planting of said hand beside his head. He only realises because it creates distance between the lips he’d been chasing and his own, so he risks another peek through lidded eyes to try and regain his senses.

This time, it feels like Viktor truly opens his eyes. It all happens in a second. He’s looking down at the place where the man’s tanned hips are poised above his own, thighs tense with strain and threatening to crash down at any second and send Viktor over the edge. Viktor knows then that he’s been caught in the wave headed toward the shore. Though the wave seems more comparable to a tsunami. 

He flicks his gaze up over the flexing leg muscles and then to the chiseled angle of the man’s stomach. Viktor’s breath stops when his gaze catches on the small bar of metal pierced through the man’s navel. He’s falling into the untameable flames of a bonfire. 

Though his fate has already been sealed, and Viktor is almost passing out due to lack of oxygen, he makes a final tilt of his chin to chance a look into the man’s eyes. 

Into Jayce’s eyes. 

Deep shades of brown intersected by webs of brighter, almost golden light are nearly completely blown out by even darker, blissed-out pupils. 

At the exact same time, the man — Jayce — decides to lean back on his tensed arms and drop his hips to make euphoric contact with Viktor’s cock. 

  Viktor’s consistent threat of misfortune had struck again, wonderfully, as he slammed a sweaty forearm into his night table. It was painful, obviously, but ultimately forgettable in the sweeping feeling of his overwhelming orgasm. 

Eyes shut as tight as humanly possible, he rides out the throes of pleasure as well as he can, heart pounding loudly at his sternum and breaths coming in short gasps.

It was an orgasm, and those had a tendency to feel good, but Viktor had been caught between the  absolute fright of his life and a sharp pain in his arm at the same time. Needless to say, he found some difficulty relishing the feeling. 

Slender, clammy fingers gripped the sheets beside his legs and he pushed himself upright, forearm throbbing painfully to his hammering pulse. He scrubbed a damp hand over his face in a throwaway attempt to bring his head back down from the thick clouds of conflicting emotions. 

Kurva. Kurva, kurva shit shit shit shit. Oh, fuck. Holy fuckimg… perverted… so not cool, Viktor. Total dick move. Immediately ignoring the rather offensive wordplay in his thoughts, Viktor sighed loudly. He really, really, couldn’t believe that his brain had pulled that, not even twenty-four hours after witnessing the potential breakup of the goddamned season. 

The flush in his chest dwindled and he could feel the cool air of the room slowly creep back up his cheeks, feeling a respite in the clarity trickling into his brain. 

Before the damp mess in Viktor’s sheets could dry any further, he ripped the fabric off of himself and threw it toward the bathroom, narrowly avoiding knocking over the mesh hamper beside his night table.  

His chest burned sharply but not from rising heat, and he clutched at it in an attempt to calm his frayed nerves and vibrating anxiety. Guilt overwhelmed him. He hadn’t even been able to see Jayce that night, provide a helping hand or even reach out to him, yet his own mind had latched onto his image in the most unfortunate way it possibly could have. 

Naturally, the dream was caused by the amount of time Viktor had spent thinking about his suitemate in the past few days, likely spiralled even from their little incident at the bar that night. It didn’t mean anything, of course, just a few crossed paths in his neurons after too much worrying. It was natural, expected even. 

Viktor grabbed his cane from its place on the floor, having been knocked over in his blind flurry of limbs just after waking up, and leaned against it to stand. 

He took some time cleaning himself up, damp towel rubbing over his stomach where his dick had been pressing when he finished, then made himself a hot shower for good measure. He didn’t want to think about the dream. About the feeling of roughed fingertips brushing over his legs, massaging his weakened jointly tenderly. He didn’t want to think about the warmth of his mouth, nor the friction of their lips when they kissed, as if nothing else in the entire universe mattered. 

He definitely didn’t want to think about pressure on his left shoulder pushing him down, to make room for a thick leg to swing over his stomach. Not the gleam of his deep brown eyes, almost golden in the shine of the supernovas that cradled them. 

Viktor felt himself twitch. Cretin. 

So instead of thinking about it, he tried to focus on the smooth rivulets of warm water streaking down his body and warming him back up. It was Saturday, so he took his time in scrubbing the sleep off of himself and running shampooed hands through his hair. Eventually the shock horror of the dream wore off, the guilt eased a little bit, and he felt appropriate enough to venture outside of the bathroom. It really wasn’t his fault anyway, though he could have probably benefited from thinking — worrying — about Jayce a bit less.

The dream had also sparked a sort of apologetic determination within Viktor’s gut, so when he stepped out of his room, dressed comfortably, he was ready to console Jayce. Ice cream, pub crawl, small cry, whatever Jayce needed, he’d be ready to provide. That’s how friendship worked anyway, right? It was a good first step. 

So he slowly padded across the sitting area and past the kitchen to Jayce’s door, slightly ajar in its ever-familiar position. He also figured Jayce would be home at this time, as the campus coffee shop was always, quite inconveniently, closed on saturdays. 

Air rushed in and out of Viktor’s lungs in a tentative inhale, catching slightly on a sharp and stinging cough, but he ignored it to push Jayce’s door fully open. 

Honestly, Viktor had been expecting Jayce to be curled up in his thick comforter, leaking tears and snot and probably staring holes into his ceiling. 

He certainly didn’t expect Jayce to be working at his desk, writing furiously in that same red-bound notebook from before. Journal, or diary or something. This surprised Viktor for two reasons. 

One: had Mel not just broken up with him? Wouldn’t that evoke a sort of negative emotional response, a sort of sense of rejection or regret? The focused expression on the man’s face was furrowed and serious, but reflected no internal struggle or conflict. 

Two: No music was playing. 

Viktor’s eyes had constricted upon entry, Jayce’s thick curtains were pulled tightly shut over the large window-wall and, worse, the entire room was silent. Various clothes and objects and a fair share of half-full water bottles still strewn about, bed left unmade, in some sort of sensory deprivation death trap attempt, probably. The chalkboard was still crammed with the scribblings of a madman, now severely lacking in diagrams and overpopulated with familiar greek letters where numbers should be. 

If Jayce had been working so hard for the entire morning, or maybe even longer , wouldn’t he have been blasting some Chico Buarque -esque Brazilian Classics playlist, or at least humming a small beat? 

The scene seemed jarring without it, almost unnerving. It was just silent. Jayce hadn’t noticed Viktor push the door open, thanks to the pristine quality of the hinges in the building and the ferocity with which he was scratching his pencil across the unfortunate pages of the journal under the cool light of a desk lamp. Thankfully, it was this distractedness that allowed Viktor to stare for a little longer than what was necessary around the space, taking in the dark, freshly pressed duvet cover dipping under the weight of approximately five puffy-looking pillows and otherwise strewn haphazardly across the mattress. 

The framed pictures that had once proudly displayed Jayce’s numerous achievements and merits had been placed, or thrown maybe, to one side of Jayce’s bed, facing the wall. The only picture that had been lucky enough to veer just right of the giant chalkboard depicted three figures, all resembling Jayce quite strikingly, that Viktor assumed to be relatives of some sort. At least the man had some sense of care for his valuables. 

In other words, it was the complete opposite to Viktor’s own den of comfort and relaxation. It may have just been Viktor’s imagination, but he could have sworn the air in Jayce’s room was significantly staler than in his own. Must have been the plants. It wasn’t like the floor-to-ceiling windows could open, anyway, that wouldn’t be a particularly safe feature of the suite no matter how modern the refurbishers had been. 

The cool sun had, for the past few weeks, seemed to grow increasingly distant in their sky as the stifling heat bled into something more brisk and windy. It shone through a sliver in the thick curtains and over Jayce, bathing him in a slice of pale light that sparked off of his pen as he wrote. 

Knocking softly, Viktor stepped forward into the room, though slightly more unsure of how to approach the man. 

Jayce kept his head down. There were a few seconds of silence, nothing but the sound of scratching ink across a paper filling the empty space between them. 

Viktor knocked again. Still, nothing. 

He almost gave up again, even turning to make his way back out of the door, but his eyes brushed over the sheen on a silver frame, and it reminded him quite offensively of the glint of metal pierced through skin. 

A sense of shame washed over him, and he sighed lightly. He turned back around and toward Jayce, who was now sitting completely hunched over his journal, one hand paused over the page and the other threaded tightly through his hair. Something about the way the light of the sun bounced off of his roots told Viktor he hadn’t bathed in at least a few days, clearly not made better by his incessant fixation with tugging at it when faced with a challenging equation or problem. Had he even showered before going out the night prior? Viktor didn’t really feel like asking. 

Instead, he made a loud sound with his cane, moving forward to step even further into the room as obviously as he could. 

It was the telltale click against laminate that had Jayce sitting up a bit straighter, eyes darting from his notebook upward to the window, then behind him as he craned his head around to peer at whatever had made the noise. 

Viktor nearly jumped out of his skin when Jayce reeled back with a resounding “Whoa!” which sent his chair screeching slightly ajar and his hands flying up to shield himself. Viktor almost had the wits to jerk his own head around for fear that something warranting such a response was actually creeping up behind him, but the fright hadn't been too unexpected, considering all the creeping-up he’d been doing.

Jayce was chuckling as quickly as he’d started, rubbing a worn hand up and down his face and poorly concealing a shiver in his broad shoulders.  

“Whatcha doing, Viktor?” He laughed warmly but it was too similar to the polite laugh that had been forced out of him during their first few meetings. It sounded too distant, like Jayce was somewhere deep inside a spacious cavern trying to escape whilst his pleas bounced up the walls and twisted into palatable chuckles. It was certainly not the childish giddy laughter that Viktor had been allowed to see on their best nights out together. 

“Creeping up on you, apparently.” Viktor eyed him up and down. “What’s got your strings so tightly wound?” 

A noticeable tightening of the jaw. The darting of eyes around a messy room. The firm rub of a thumb over a tightened fist. The stretch of a plastic smile. “Jus’ this new assignment for this kinematics research.” He shrugged, spinning around in his well-worn chair and gesturing toward his notebook. Upon a second glance, Viktor realised it wasn’t the same burgundy leathered journal he’d thought it was. It was truly just a school notebook, and freshly bought too, based on the thick stack of paper filling the empty side of it. 

“Need any, eh, assistance?” Viktor knew Jayce liked to work uninterrupted, similarly to Viktor himself, but was thoroughly surprised when Jayce leaned forward over the notebook, blocking it from view, as he tensed his entire upper body. 

“No, no, no I’m good. Nope, I got it,” a burst of more severely uncomfortable laughter, “I, uh, just got a little caught on some simple stuff, really, so it’s, uh, no biggie. Anymore. I got it.” 

Viktor just stared, one eyebrow raised in suspicion. Something was definitely very off about Jayce today. The complete dismissal, or ignorance, of the events that had transpired just the night prior was entirely surprising from the man. Viktor knew he withheld a lot of information about himself, his past or his studies, especially his internship opportunities, but had at least been gradually opening up more and more to Viktor during their time together. That, and the abundance of stories told by their friends and even Jayce himself during their nights out had been enough to keep Viktor’s undying curiosity satiated. Just until he felt they’d bridged the cavern of friendship. Then, Viktor would really try and get to know him. Regardless, the obvious suppression of something deep within Jayce was more than a little concerning to Viktor, especially so freshly after his altercation with Mel. 

The lack of music, the lack of humming, of sound, of anything that would flood the space and occupy the minimal space in his brain that wasn’t being filled with equations or formulae. Not even the tapping of a pencil on the table to a patterned beat. Nothing. Viktor hadn’t really realised how innately musical the man was, how every tap of his fingers together, every rubbing of a hand over Viktor’s shoulder, every tap of his heel against the laminate as he worked, played out its own part of Jayce’s tune. All contributing their own unique sound in the symphony that was Jayce. There was a deathly stillness to the space, even stifling the air that Viktor had choked on when he’d first walked in. Something was stifling it. 

Whatever it was must have been powerful. If only Viktor could reach him, reach his hands up to the metres-thick wall of concrete and just brush them across its surface, hardened rock crumbling and cracking away as the tidal wave finally came crashing down. 

Viktor didn’t like the feeling of drowning. It reminded him of being sick, and he hated being sick. 

He wouldn’t mind if it was Jayce he was drowning in. 

What little droplets of water that had managed to peek their way through the hairline fissures in the dam have shone like gold and refracted millions of particles of light int Viktor’s eyes and across his entire field of vision, pricking each millimetre of space with a prismatic star that yelled indiscernibly, quietly, just not loud or clear enough for Viktor to truly understand. If he could just hear it better, just collect more than a needle-point’s worth of water, cup his hands into the branching stream and draw them out glittering under the fiery light of the sun, maybe he would finally understand his draw toward the man. Maybe he would finally understand why he was pulling away so mercilessly now. Viktor craved the sound of a bubbling giggle, the quirk of his uneven upper lip, the quirk in his eyebrow after a drunken, potentially too-impolite joke. 

The universe had always been cruel to Viktor, after all, and instead pushed the thick sheen of plastic in front of him instead. Though it still glistened under Jayce’s sun, it lapped it up greedily, unlike the lavish flow of the water that refracted rainbows across every surface it could reach.  

Viktor knew Jayce was trying to shoo him away. Still, he stood planted firmly in the centre of Jayce’s room as they stared at each other silently. Well, Viktor was definitely staring. Jayce’s eyes were still caught between glancing around nervously and scanning each line of an unfinished equation on the chalkboard.  

Better to be direct, anyway. “Is everything…alright?” Viktor tried not to furrow his eyebrows, trying as hard as he could to avoid backing Jayce into a corner and pushing him further back into the darkness of the cavern. 

Jayce’s eyes lingered a second too long on the chalkboard. His gaze suggested that he was more so looking past it, toward a thick, billowing cloud in the metaphysical distance. Before Viktor could prod further, though he wasn’t really going to prod, just gently encourage an actual answer out of the man, Jayce inhaled for a long time, smile still stretched around his face and eyebrows raising in a subtle acknowledgement of something. Still, Viktor didn’t think Jayce was truly acknowledging the weight behind his words. Intentionally. 

“What, between Mel and I? Yeah, just got a little… Well, you know how couples fight. Argue. Bicker. It was really just that, a bit of bickering. Hope it didn’t sound too bad, not sure what you heard but-” There was the smallest hint of desperation in his voice, and his widened eyes betrayed the nonchalance in his answer. It wasn’t an answer, not really, instead it was a question posed back at Viktor himself. Jayce wanted to know just how much Viktor had heard. 

That, and he was rambling like his life depended on it. As if Viktor had been holding a weapon to his throat, or accusing him of some serious offense, instead of resting silently and completely inoffensively on his very blunt, very non-dangerous wooden cane. 

“Just some raised voices. I was trying not to, eh, eavesdrop.” Vikto’s accent rolled over the words carefully and slowly, as if he were approaching a skittish stray on the street. Or a dangerous criminal. He really didn’t want to pull something out of Jayce that could potentially impact their still newborn friendship. Viktor desired the rush of glimmering waters, of excited tides and unconcealed laughter, not the dark vacuum of whatever this was. 

It also wasn’t as though Viktor was a stranger to raised voices, obviously. That much could have been assumed, and probably would have been assumed by any of Piltover's citizens upon discovering Viktor’s upbringing. His mother tried as well as she could to shield Viktor from the worst of it, but the sort of involuntarily nomadic lifestyle they led hopping from one couch to another inevitably spit them out in the face of some true violence. Acidic insults spouted from storefronts after she’d begged for a job, to wash dishes or organise products or even clean the shop after hours for half-pay, the sting of words hitting harder after a strike of wooden soles on Viktor’s back after a nearby hostel had decided they’d overstayed their welcome. He was certainly no stranger to all forms of fighting, arguing, and bickering. And it was entirely, unavoidably, deeply emotional. There were no warning signs of rage or rising tension, just the slow relieving exhale of a breath held far too long. 

“Yeah, that’s how it goes.” Jayce paused for a time, leaving a heavy silence between the two, but Jayce could stand awkward pauses in conversation about as well as Viktor could stand without his cane. “...The ol’ ball and chain, right?” 

This immediately had Viktor’s nostrils flaring in irritation. It seemed as though it pained Jayce to say it almost as much as it does for Viktor to hear it, because he clenched his jaw and poorly repressed a grimace as he spun to face further away from Viktor. 

Viktor shook his head. He didn’t think the conversation could have gone worse, honestly. Was Jayce reverting back to some sort of safety backup conversation for when he was faced with an especially ancient internship coordinator? Ball and chain? How was it possible that Jayce had regressed so far into himself that the only thing he was able to manage in a very non -confrontational conversation was some outdated joke about hating your spouse? 

To say the least, that final attempt at a joke dampened the pathetic remains of the conversation. Viktor couldn’t even manage a pity-laugh as he turned and made his way out of the door. Once he’d returned it to its original slightly-ajar position, he put a few paces of distance between it and himself before releasing a tense breath. 

Kurva. Shit. Kurva, kurva shit . English truly could not convey the absolute disastrous feeling that conversation had just evoked within Viktor. Jayce and Mel had fought, bickered, whatever. Viktor had definitely heard the word break through the rather thin wall separating Jayce’s room from the sitting area. According to Jayce, he and Mel were still together. Something tugged in Viktor’s gut. He couldn’t tell which side of the line of belief it was pulling him toward. He didn’t think Jayce would want to lie so easily like that, even when faced with such a difficult situation, but Mel’s words rang in Viktor’s ears and balanced the feeling out. I don’t think I can do it anymore. 

Jayce was probably telling the truth. If Viktor were to over-analyse semantics, which was something he was quite good at, thanks to his various literature courses, Mel had phrased her frustrations in a way that had suggested she was still, in that moment, doing it. So they hadn’t broken up. The thought was relieving, but only for a moment. 

If they hadn’t broken up, what could have possibly been the reason for Jayce to so suddenly retreat into himself, to pull back so entirely from Viktor, out of fear, maybe, or…

 Viktor’s heart sunk in his chest. Was it possible Jayce knew about the dream he’d had just hours before? It was possible, maybe he’d gone in to check  on him during the morning and heard something distressing, or maybe Viktor had been overly vocal in his unconscious state, holding nothing back and subjecting Jayce to a tirade of basically pornographic sounds? 

It was a reality that was too sensitive to accept. Viktor had woken up relatively early, whilst the sun was still rising in the sky. Jayce didn’t check on Viktor if he wasn’t sleeping until at least past noon, and had been doing that gradually less and less, slowly forgetting his general concern over Viktor since the incident at the laboratory. He probably didn’t see anything. 

If Viktor remembered the dream right — not that he was trying to, of course, — he hadn’t been overly vocal or loud, not letting anything louder than a gasp escape his lips for varying reasons. Jayce probably hadn’t heard him. The walls were generally thin, as expected with suites, but there was an entire living room separating them along with the right wall of Jayce’s room. 

Viktor thought about it too hard, and visualised the position of Jayce’s own messy bed. Technically, if the walls were removed, it would face Viktor’s head-on, if not slightly diagonally. Maybe those bullshit cosmo-esque astrology websites really did contain some accurate predictions for the feng shui of bed positioning and spirits entering dreams, or something. It was almost worth a quick search on Viktor’s computer, but his painfully analytical brain couldn’t allow him to blame unexpected wet dreams on the position of a goddamned bed, for goodness sake. He would just have to try not to think about it.

He sighed. Trying not to spiral is much easier said than done. The shame that bled down his scalp and across his skin had eased a bit, as his logical evaluation of the events pointed toward Jayce most likely not knowing about his dream. Unfortunately, Viktor wasn’t about to walk back into the stuffy room and ask Jayce if he’d heard any loud moaning as he tried to enjoy the sunrise this morning, especially after the torturously awkward interaction Viktor was still trying to mentally recover from. 

It must have been something even more pressing and stifling than Piltover’s summer sun, something more bold and invasive than its autumns, more turbulent and intense than its winter snows. Something stormier than its springs. 

Viktor just had to hope Jayce would come to his senses on his own, and that he would trust Viktor and their almost two-month old friendship enough to finally let him be the warm enveloping arms that Jaye had once been for him.

Just to be sure Jayce could at least be somewhat supported by people he was actually close with, Viktor typed out a quick message on his computer. He winced, eyes flitting over the staleness of the previous conversations, left slightly uncomfortable by dry words and tentative, inoffensive jokes. He still hadn’t spoken to Caitlyn about the lab. The two hadn’t managed to organise lab hours at the same time since, either, only seeing each other briefly either from their respective seats in Heimerdinger’s lecture hall or in a reserved haze tucked into a booth whilst Jayce boasted loudly beside them. It was fairer to Caitlyn that he actually spoke his mind, utilised the ever-trusting nature of their friendship as she had, but it was slightly awkward for him to confess his panicked state after being left to clean up after someone who happened to be the rich child of an Elite Piltover family. 

10:02 >> Want to meet for lunch? You can bring Violet, if you want. 

Viktor couldn’t exactly remember Caitlyn’s schedule, so it was a bit difficult to gauge when she’d respond, or even be able to meet at all during the day. Viktor remembered grimacing as she recounted her overstuffed course load to him, but sent the text anyway. Much to Viktor’s pleasant surprise, she shot back a response not ten minutes after.  

10:09 >> Salad spot at 12:30? Vi’s busy today, boxing thing.

A small smile turned his mouth up at the corners, and he puttered around the kitchenette for a small while. He made a pot of coffee, and even considered knocking to offer Jayce some, the man probably needed it, after all the work he’d been doing, but decided against it. Figuring out the mechanics of the coffee-maker was a personal feat that allowed Viktor to not only avoid another mortifying run-in with Jayce at the campus café, but also get his fix of caffeinated sugar if he didn’t feel up to going out. 

There was something seriously wrong with the suite, but Viktor couldn’t exactly put his finger on it. Jayce was being undoubtedly weird, yes, but other than his strange tendencies, not a single hair was out of place. Piltover’s sun was sitting lazily in the sky as it always was, glowing just slightly paler from its increasing distance from the earth with the shifting seasons. Even Jayce’s door was still just slightly cracked, letting some of the warmer light of the suite bleed into his cave-like space. 

Everything was where it should have been. Still, Viktor could not shake the unnerved fist that clenched around his shoulders and breathed a gale of constricting cold into his ribs. He looked around, scanning for an impending threat like a rainstorm, or maybe an asteroid falling from space directly into their building, because that was about the fear-equivalent of the nerves currently crackling on his skin. 

Nothing. Still about an hour until lunch. Good of a time as any to get something done, he figured. He sat up from his perch on the kitchen stool, which had still not imprinted comfortably around his hips in a way that didn’t leave his joints creaking painfully. Goddamned new furniture. So, as well as he could, he pushed up from the island counter and grasped the wooden cane in his hands to head back into his room. Sharp ripples of pain radiated off of his knee with each step, not eased by his very rude awakening and very sudden jolt out of bed. It was better if Viktor could wake up slowly, potentially utilising one or two of the massage techniques he’d picked up from years of attending physical therapists and easing blood flow more rapidly throughout his limbs.  

Unfortunately, there were no mentions in Physical Therapy 101 of what to do when one wakes up from a guilt-induced sex-dream about one’s roommate only hours after you’ve witnessed their partner break up with them. He did what he could, anyway, though it was much later in the morning and he’d already walked around the apartment more than what was really necessary.

Slender fingers rubbed firmly down the tense muscle of his right thigh, sparking a sort of deja-vu that he banished from his mind immediately. Otherwise, the euphoria of blood refilling the veins throughout the muscle were enough to encourage Viktor to finish the trek to his room, though very momentary. 

Sighing somewhat dramatically, Viktor bent down in various spots beside his bed and desk and picked up laundry he’d tossed aside in a vicious habit he’d learned once he joined university. His hamper wasn’t full enough to warrant a load of laundry, but his comforter definitely needed some attention, so he threw the few pairs of socks and vintage jumpers aside to grab it from its place on the floor. He scowled at it, but the poor thing had been shunned for enough time, and, really, it was Viktor’s offense to deal with anyway. 

Another interesting feature of the suite hall was the private laundry in each allocation. In their — Viktor and Jayce’s — case, it was two nondescript machines stacked atop one another in the small crevice-like alcove on the far-right of the suite, facing the kitchen head-on and only a small right-turn away from their front door. 

Anyway, it was one of the most sought-after suites partially because of this luxury, and Viktor had been riding the superiority high since the beginning of the semester, taking every opportunity he had to enjoy the feeling of having a laundry space that he wasn’t sharing with about thirty other probably delinquent international students who, Viktor was almost completely sure, had stolen a pair of his favourite dark corduroy slacks. 

Shoving the tattered, green bundle into the washing machine without the mind to actually separate the cover from the duvet, Viktor realised he was tapping his teeth together in a sort of rhythm. The heel of his right leg, with no pressure on it at the moment, was also rising and falling in a subtle percussion. 

He furrowed his eyebrows. Why not put on some music? If Jayce could blast his Brazil’s Classics station as loud as he wanted whenever he wanted, surely he wouldn’t mind if Viktor decided to play some of his own CDs? Surely. Viktor puttered back into his room and reached onto the top-most shelf on his bookcase, grabbing a handful of plastic CD cases and pulling out his favourite 70s Mix he’d developed after a significant amount of time working in his botanical shop with nothing but a radio that seemed to, almost magically, only want to tune into the Vintage Hits frequencies. 

He was a sucker for some classic rock, sue him. The ever-familiar click of the well-loved CD player as the disc was set into place resounded throughout Viktor’s room, prodding a singular moment of hesitation, of reconsideration for Jayce’s apparent distaste for music or all sound, really, at the moment. He almost reached back to eject the thing but the opening notes of Stranglehold rang out loudly and shot veins of grin-splitting warmth throughout Viktor’s body. He just couldn’t resist a guitar like that. 

Almost immediately, the unnerved feeling that sat uncomfortably in Viktor’s chest evaporated. A sigh escaped him before he could even finish processing the fact that Jayce, of course, had inadvertently pavloved Viktor into growing accustomed to the sound of music whenever the two were respectively working on some homework assignment. They didn’t even do homework together, for goodness’ sake, yet Viktor’s heart had clenched in dissatisfaction at the severe lack of noise in the place. 

 He even found himself moving more freely to the notes of the song, the riff clouding his head in just the right ways, as if it were the first time he was listening to it all over again. The percussion seemed to reverberate in his very bones, and the sultry voice that almost seemed like an afterthought to the tapestry of sound tightened in his chest. Unable to avoid it, he hummed along and furrowed his brow as he bobbed his head to the beat. 

No doubt, he looked somewhat ridiculous, shoving a massively plush comforter into a pitiful washing machine at the penthouse of his on-campus allocation, singing along to an angsty ballad about some guy and his fucked-up relationship, or something. Viktor sort of understood why Jayce liked his music so much, it was rich with a continuous beat and enriching vocals that he seemed to be able to emulate with near-perfection, even in his baritone voice. It was sort of impressive. Viktor couldn’t exactly sing, but the energy that his music strung him with was passionate, and punctuated his movements as he continued to pick up his room. He dusted a few fallen leaves off of the floor and into a small compost under his desk, and even vacuumed the laminate of his floor with the rather poor-quality, plastic thing that was probably older than every piece of furniture in the entire suite but had been shoved carelessly into a storage closet for whatever insane grad-student wanted to vacuum. 

As with most things, the music did reach its focus-limit when Viktor took some papers out of his book-bag to revise and found that he was not in fact reading what he’d written and instead reciting the lyrics to a Fleetwood Mac song in his head. 

When he checked the watch around his wrist, he found that the better part of an hour had passed, anyway, so he could leave the revision until after he returned from his escapade with Caitlyn. Plus, it was time to give feedback on the initial drafts of the students’ lab reports for Heimerdinger’s class, which he’d received soon after the incident at the biology laboratory and didn’t exactly feel like revisiting immediately. Not that he was looking for an out, of course. He would do it eventually. 

For now, all Viktor had to focus on was deciding which pair of trousers — subtle beige or eclectic burgundy — would suit his off-white sweater vest most effectively. Maybe because it was the end of summer, or maybe because Viktor was still riding high on the electricity of his music, but he figured that a nice crisp outfit would reflect whatever sense of freshness he was feeling. Beige, it was. 

The salad place, as Caitlyn had referred to it, was another hole-in-the-wall buffet of sorts somewhat near her own dorms and also frustratingly close enough to allow Viktor to walk there and avoid campus transport, but far enough to seriously tire out his weakened joints by the time he arrived. Still, he was happy to see Caitlyn’s tight smile when her eyes landed on him in the doorway, early for what may have been the first time in her life. 

She got up, leaving an efficient-looking purse hanging unattended off her chair, but it wasn’t as though anyone else was at the restaurant, or even knew about it, so she paid no mind to it. They met at the beginning of the buffet table which was stacked with an assortment of vegetables, lettuces, dressings and even fruits. Viktor tended to pass on the proteins, unsure if Piltover’s food and safety department even knew about this place, much less approved of its practice. 

“Long time no see, Viktor!” She was right. It had been at least a couple of weeks since the entire group had gone out together. He tried not to feel a sort of way about it. “Been busy?” 

He pursed his lips wryly and shrugged, “It would be a miracle for anyone at this school to not be. I assume you and Violet are well?” 

Her smile grew much wider and her eyes softened. “Much better now. Felt like we were getting to know each other for the first time again, but not in a bad way. But, yeah, things are much better now. Thank you, by the way.” 

He raised an eyebrow. “For the ramen?”  

Cailtyn’s slender shoulder bumped his rigidly as they shuffled along the table, tongs clicking together ferociously. “And for letting me get everything out. You have no idea how much it meant.” A pause. “Really! Do you have any idea how hard it is to not tell your girlfriend everything? Especially Vi, she can be so… persuasive…”   

Viktor faked a disturbed shudder at that, to which Caitlyn barked a crude laugh and snatched a few unsuspecting baby carrots from the shallow tub they sat in. They finished loading up their plates with a greedy amount of croutons, on Viktor’s end, and a bowl that was absolutely swimming in dressing, on Caitlyn's end, and paid the meek-looking cashier at the register who was probably entirely unprepared for any actual customer-interaction. Maybe the whole place was a front for some gang-mafia thing, displaying a table of generic salad ingredients to suspicious authorities and city officials whilst actually covering an entire human-trafficking ring. 

Whatever. Something about the food, though really just ingredients, was irresistible to the two. They ate in silence for a few minutes until Viktor decided it was probably time to just get it out of the way whilst he still could. 

“May I ask you a question, Caitlyn?” 

She nodded around a forkful of iceberg lettuce, absolutely doused in a ridiculous amount of caesar dressing. Well, it would have been ridiculous if Viktor’s own bowl didn’t match. 

He took a breath, “Did Jayce tell you about that night in the Microbio lab?” Viktor’s chest remained slightly tensed, but he willed his eyes to remain as nonchalantly as possible on Caitlyn’s casual wolfing-down of her meal. 

She furrowed her brow and swallowed, “Nuh-uh. Why, something happen?” 

Between all of the answers she could have given, this may have been the worst. Viktor thought he might even be able to handle it better if she’d just outright made fun of him, or something. Unfortunately, that wasn’t something Vktor thought she was capable of. Out with it, then. 

“Well, eh, this might be a bit awkward, actually, apologies. You, eh, forgot to clean up properly after your hasty exit.” 

She grimaced unseriously, cutting in with an, “Ah, shoot, sorry. I owe you one.” 

Viktor took another deep breath, and noticed Caitlyn crane her head slightly down in an attempt to meet his now-downcast gaze. Her relaxed expression hardened slightly. 

“It was that… and, well, you must have been quite distracted that day, because you forgot to take proper security measures when, eh, conducting the actual experiment.” She was about to cut in again, but Viktor continued. “I was tutoring a girl that day, and was quite put-off by your brashness, if I’m going to be honest, so I didn’t clean up your station. The girl, she accidentally broke the plate, but the lid wasn’t on.” Images of the tar-black substance flashed through his mind again, and his chest tightened. His lungs felt heavy and he could’ve sworn he felt his sore throat dry further. “We’d been inhaling potential fumes for quite a while, myself for hours. I, eh, I know we don’t exactly know what it was, but I, eh, just wanted to talk to you about it.” 

Caitlyn’s face was ghost white. Her gaze averted, but fixated pointedly at a spot in the middle of the table as her mouth moved around words she couldn’t seem to find. Inky-black fingers that bubbled and pulsated reached around his heart and lungs, squeezing mercilessly and emptying them of much needed oxygen. It wasn’t the reaction Viktor had been banking on as the potential saving-grace of the incident. 

“Caitlyn?” 

“I… Oh, Viktor, I…” She shook her head and her hands cupped around her mouth regretfully. “Heimerdinger told me there’d been an accident with a freshman, that she’d be fine so long as she found proper medical attention. He let me off with a C, said there was nothing I could do about it, because it was… Viktor… it was-” 

“Dangerous. I figured. Did he tell you what, exactly, it was?” His throat tightened as she shook her head again. Frustration bubbled and pooled behind his eyes, threatening to burst free at any moment. Heimerdinger had intentionally given out a pathogenic culture of bacteria to a student — an undergrad, no less. Then, when she’d decided to disregard safety precautions and Sky and himself had fallen victim to it, he couldn’t even find it within himself to reach out. Not even an email, advising him what to do, which doctor to see, where to go. Not even to ask if he was still alive. Heimerdinger, Piltover’s favourite puppet. Their beloved pawn, eagerly beguiling Piltover’s most academic youth with hours of unpaid work, stress, experimentation and reports on a goddamned classified strain of bacteria that may as well have been the incarnation of evil itself. And Caitlyn had gotten a passing grade. Viktor couldn't remember the last time Heimerdinger had let him even arrive late to the class, no matter the excuse, much less let something so significant pass without hesitation. He didn’t want to think about why. 

Caitlyn was apologising profusely, but the words drowned out in Viktor’s ears as he stared into the light streaks within the wood of the table. Proper medical attention. Pathogenic. Heavy lungs. Drowning. His fingers clutched at the fabric around his thighs and he gripped the metal encircling the right one, pressing as hard as possible and curling his fingers around the plush insides of it. The edges creased into his grip and dented the skin on his hands, his knuckles white. 

A hand gripped his shoulder tightly, and he half expected to see broad, tanned fingers in place of pale, thin ones. Caitlyn had sat up from her spot, softly shaking Viktor’s shoulder as her voice flooded back into his ears and the general ringing gave way to the sounds of grating teeth. He breathed in deeply, though shaky around his sensitive lungs. 

“It’s alright, Caitlyn. You didn’t do it on purpose. It’s Heimerdinger.” He could hear the curtness in his own words, but couldn’t manage out anything more amicable in his poorly-repressed panic. Still he tried his best to squander the feeling as best as he could, despite Caitlyn’s insistent apologies and concerned look. 

“Still, I’m so sorry, I wasn’t myself, and, and then I just- I’m so sorry. Did you go to the hospital?” 

The shake of Viktor’s head was so subtle, he wasn’t sure Caitlyn had even seen it, until she was exhaling heavily and tensing her hand around his shoulder. He could have lied, could have thwarted her worry with a small, of course, but the two of them seemed to have an inability to be dishonest with each other. Something of kindred spirits, maybe. Two children, one the victim of Piltover’s unfeeling, unloving vacuum of power that empowered commonality and disregarded difference. The other a victim of Zaun, a city the child of Piltover cast aside just as Caitlyn had been, fluffy white wings singing into something more polluted and black and coating the skies in a layer of smog so thick that Viktor didn’t see the sun on the best of days. Maybe that’s why it made sense, then. Caitlyn and Zaun, brimming with life and diversity and colour, and a deep love for survival that had been engraved in their existence from the moment Piltvoer conceived them. Unloved, cast aside, simultaneously weighed down and freed by the stereotypes that made Piltover hate them so. Viktor loved Zaun. He loved the flowers that grew in the cracks between sidewalks, even though they never lasted more than a day. He loved his mother. He loved the tough-love culture that made the whole of the city feel like a sort of family. Caitlyn was like that, too. There were moments when Caitlyn absolutely bloomed under the lights of a local restaurant, arm linked with Violet’s, even if it was just fleeting. She was also, ironically, the most honest person he’d ever met. Leave it to the most restrictive and discrete society to foster someone so unabashedly genuine. 

He couldn’t lie to her, no matter how it created fissures in his icy heart when she moved to rub her hands through her hair and pressed her eyes tightly shut. 

 Viktor could, however, try and veer the conversation somewhere else. “Well, eh, speaking of Jayce…” 

Thick eyebrows furrowed even more in a flicker of confusion, but she caught on quickly to the reference of what Viktor had said earlier. 

“You haven’t… noticed anything, eh… wrong with him, lately, have you?” 

She just sighed deeply and shrugged. “Actually, I haven’t seen him since the last time we all went out. He’s got some new kinematics assignment that’s just been eating away at him, if his texts are anything to go by. Why, did something happen?”

I don’t know if I can do it anymore. 

“No, I don’t think so. Perhaps you should talk to him.” This made Caitlyn raise an eyebrow but she didn’t press any further, much to Viktor’s appreciation. 

There were a lot of things Viktor didn’t really understand about their relationship. They were obviously close, as were their families, yet they spent weeks not seeing each other nor speaking. The two seemed to hold back any sense of distress or problems from each other, so much so that they allowed whatever pressing issues to fester alone for weeks, maybe even months, until it all came spilling out on an unsuspecting bystander like Viktor. He thought about Violet, and Caitlyn’s mother. How was it possible that Jayce didn’t suspect a thing, knowing both parties rather personally? 

Viktor had never had any siblings, and honestly he didn’t wish that he had. His mom had enough on her plate with just one child, and if any siblings of his ended up also malformed or even sicker, there was no way she would have been able to support them. Plus, in the many homes Viktor spent time at, there would be the occasional child close enough to his age to pass the time he didn’t spend at school. Ini truth, he didn’t find any of the children his age engaging or interesting enough to spend much time getting to know them. He found that everyone was far too focused on whoever their most recent hallway crush was, or which teachers wore the silliest clothes. It was certainly not what Viktor cared about, anyway, and it made it exceedingly difficult to form any potentially long-lasting connections. 

Once, when he was maybe in his early teenage years, he’d met a couple of much younger kids, a girl with shaggy blue hair and a boy with the beginnings of striking white locs. It was a communal home that he was staying in, known for its acceptance of families and single parents, but also its quick turnover rate. The most amount of time they could allow a family like Viktor’s was about three weeks. 

Still, during those three weeks, he found himself drawn to the ever-tinkering duo that sat, watched like a hawk by a slightly older girl with vibrant pink hair. They drove dull screwdrivers into the sockets of toys, prying them apart like a dissection, and with the inquisitive eyes of a scientist to match. Viktor brought a few of his own beloved tools he’d picked up from various stays around Zaun and showed them the most effective way to dislodge a metal panel from its side. The awe that sparkled like glinting stars in their tired eyes filled Viktor was something probably akin to protectiveness. He found himself a bit embarrassed under the scrutinous gaze of the pink-haired girl, though she was still much younger than him, but sat and showed them carefully the inner workings of some mechanical toy with utmost care. They chattered excitedly as Viktor took care in removing each greasy component piece by piece until he’d laid them all out side by side, falling silent to allow Viktor to sheepishly explain the function of each part in his still-broken English. 

They didn’t care. They lapped up his words, almost immediately diving back in to piece the thing back together once he’d finished his spiel. For the next several days, they pestered him with relentless questions, but Viktor had been more than happy to finally indulge another human about his boundless knowledge in mechanics. He grew used to their presence, expecting it upon his return from school and collecting more and more notes to bring back for them to pour over. It was, as its foundation, a sort of kinship. The pink-haired girl never spoke to him, but relaxed day after day as she realised he posed no threat to the precious children in her care. 

On Viktor’s final day, he’d left them with his worn, blunt tools wrapped carefully in a leather string, laying carefully on their cot-bunk. He didn’t get a chance to say goodbye. 

He still thought about them sometimes, wondered if his isolated teenage mind had conjured them as phantoms in a way to cope with his chronic pain and unending loneliness. A mirage of rippling waters deep in an arid desert, beckoning and pulling him closer without needing words, just pure connection. He didn’t think he’d ever connect that way with anyone. There was a small bit of hope when he’d been accepted into Piltover University of Scientific Advancement, because surely there must have been someone who could understand his adoration for the sciences at a science school. To no avail. Most of the students around Viktor just echoed the same meaningless drivel as every other person his age. 

Anyway, that was probably the closest thing to siblings Viktor had ever had. He wondered if things were the same in Piltover. The desire to teach your siblings, friends, whatever, to connect with them over something you loved and protect them from the cruelty of the world all at the same time. Maybe that’s how Jayce felt about Caitlyn, or her Jayce. So much so, even, that in their closeness had formed a plastic mask. They didn’t want to seem weak to each other. 

Viktor’s ribs hurt. He was getting sick. Caitlyn and Jayce hadn’t talked. He wondered — hopefully — if those kids had made it out. 

Caitlyn and Viktor finished the rest of their meal in pensive silence. For the most part, their talk had been successful. Not really positive, but Viktor had learned a few things, so successful. He’d take it. Caitlyn seemed lighter, anyway, without the weight of being an ideal daughter and partner pressing on her thin shoulders. 

It was fine she hadn’t spoken to Jayce, that he didn’t speak to her. They’d texted somewhat recently, at least. That’s how siblings were, Viktor thought. One day you’re on the phone with them and hours pass like seconds, then another day you realise you haven’t heard the sound of their voice in weeks. The love remains. Viktor shouldn’t worry. 

It was a sort of feat for Piltover to raise two children so capable of feeling so deeply, and then wrap them in layers upon layers of plastic film to hide it instead. 

After they’d finished, and chatted amicably, if not a bit superficially, about their courses and plans for the coming weeks, Caitlyn glanced quickly at Viktor. 

“You’re absolutely, one-hundred percent sure there’s nothing wrong?”  To be honest, Viktor wasn’t exactly sure how to answer that. Getting sick, weird Jayce, and unfortunate REM cycles aside, there was nothing that was really glaring him in the face. It had really just been a weird day. So he shook his head and shrugged. 

The two of them cleaned up their table, dishes clinking in the empty restaurant, and offered an awkward goodbye. Caitlyn reached a long arm around Viktor’s shoulders in a sort of side-hug, and he returned the gesture with a “See you later, Caitlyn,” that had them both smiling softly at each other before turning to head their separate ways. 

A cool breeze ripped through the air suddenly, locking most of the joints in Viktor’s body and shooting an icy pain through his pelvis. His hip shuddered in the unexpected cold and it reverberated painfully down to his knee and up into his vertebrae. Fall was upon them, and Viktor would have been reveling in the feeling but the slacks he’d so confidently chosen earlier were a fibre too thin, and the obvious lack of necessary body fat insulating his muscles meant his bones received the brunt of the chill. 

Anyway, he made his way safely back to his suite despite the chill, though not without having to take several breaks on various campus benches which hadn’t been there before he’d arrived. Something about encouraging loitering, or something, was the noncommittal response given to the majority of his strongly worded letters. An anonymous article published to one of Piltover’s most divisive and cutthroat journalists about the lack of accessibility under the guise of pushing students to do better was, in summary, totally effective. 

When he returned, the cave-dwelling creature he’d once known as Jayce was actually outside the safety of his den. In the kitchen, that is. Innocently pouring himself a cup of the now-cold coffee Viktor had left in the pot, just in case. He glanced up, wide-eyed and clearly startled from an intense train of thought, judging by his white knuckled grip on the counter next to him and the almost overflowing cup of coffee on the counter he faced. Viktor nodded curtly at him, exhaling as if to rid his lungs of the biting cold and shake off the chilling wind from his sweater. 

Jayce watched him slip his shoes off, then place the contents of his pocket (a vintage leather wallet, a set of keys, a stick of gum, a crumpled receipt) on the kitchenette island. Viktor knew better than to try and start a conversation, intending to avoid another conversation like earlier as well as he possibly could. 

Unfortunately, Jayce had other plans. 

“Um- actually, Viktor, um,” Viktor looked over his shoulder, one hand placed on the handle of his door and poised to open it, the other resting too much weight onto his cane. He shifted his weight to his left leg. 

“I was just- there’s just this, like, thing for kinematics, and I was, uh, just- do you wanna come take a look?” 

Jayce’s shoulders were probably more tense than Viktor had seen, including the time during one of their excursions when they’d run into a couple of internship coordinators, one of which Jayce had been diligently pursuing for the better part of two years. Watching Jayce try to charm his way into a secured spot with a few whiskeys, neat, was endearing as it was absolutely mortifying. Viktor had dragged him away once he offered to pay for another round. 

The point was, Jayce’s shoulders were completely upright and pushing his spine straighter than it had been in the past two-weeks or so, and his jaw clenched with such fixation that Viktor might have thought Jayce was preparing a speech for the goddamned president of the earth, for goodness sake. 

But at the same time, a bubbling feeling of hope crammed its way between Viktor’s ribs and quirked one corner of his mouth pleasantly. Jayce had gotten over whatever was holding him down so tightly this morning just enough to allow him to speak to his friend like an actual real person. Also, a chance to go over the research Jayce was doing for his kinematics research was nothing short of absolutely tempting, so Viktor nodded again, with much more enthusiasm than the last, and made his way across the foyer. 

When Jayce didn’t relax his shoulders, Viktor realised that Jayce wasn’t nervous about asking Viktor to go over his work, that the trouble was not in fact with asking for a second pair of eyes or a helping hand, but in the actual work itself. He was seriously worried about whatever apparent abomination had formed out of the half-finished equations and rambling scribbles on his chalkboard and made its way into his notes. 

But when Viktor’s eyes ran across the parting of the notebook, past the tight grip of Jayce’s fingers over the edge of the book, all he saw was a drawing. He would’ve labelled it a diagram, but all diagrams he’d seen were severely lacking in what he loved so much about all other art: soul. They had clean, unvaried lines and measurements that all worked to serve a purpose greater than the actual creation of art, and it all seemed a bit too narrow-minded for Viktor to truly appreciate it as an artistic talent. 

Jayce’s was different from that. The line weight, the sketchiness, the sore lack of measurements and, most importantly, the intention between the piece was all somewhat profound. Jayce had said he didn’t indulge in other hobbies, and Viktor was right not to believe him. He was undoubtedly an artist. He just channelled his talent into his work. 

What Viktor saw in the piece was a leg, splayed out in a relaxed way as if stretched out across a floor, foot lolled to the side and toes pointed out. A circular, metallic-looking brace sat wrapped securely around the thigh, dimpling the bare skin where it pressed weightily. Just as Viktor’s made their thirtieth pass over the drawing and caught surprisedly on a dot of graphite in the spot where one his own darker moles would have been if it were his leg. 

He was smiling softly, mainly in subconscious appreciation for any sort of relatively good art placed in front of him, but it faltered and his eyebrows furrowed ever so slightly. 

As he had that one time in the bar when Vikto had been presented with a charming little sketch of himself (now pinned onto one of his cork-boards on his wall), Jayce was eyeing him warily. Of course, he noticed the shift in expression and jerked the notebook a bit closer to the side of the desk he was leaning over, and away from Viktor’s 

“It’s-” They spoke at the same time, Viktor’s expression splitting into a cheeky grin, Jayce’s stuck in a barely-repressed-panic grimace. 

Viktor went ahead anyway, taking full advantage of the rising heat in Jayce’s face. “It’s me.” 

“I- it’s- you don’t know that!” 

Viktor’s eyes only crinkled more as his grin widened into a smirk. Jayce’s eyes darted around and his mouth sputtered over some unintelligible rambling defense, ultimately dying out in a reddish flush of his cheeks and a downward slumping of his head into his hands, elbows propped onto the desk. Viktor had, actually, come into Jayce’s room for a reason, so he darted his left hand out as fast as possible, releasing his grip on his cane and letting it fall toward the floor. 

Of course, Jayce jerked around and darted a hand out to catch it without thinking, and of course, Viktor thrust his own hand over the notebook and skidded it across the desk so he could flip through more pages. Jayce gasped in over-dramatised betrayal, and shoved the wooden thing into Viktor’s chest as he tried to pry it out of Viktor’s unrelenting grip. 

Viktor just so happened to be very good at controlling his reflexes, so he made no movement to grab the cane being crammed into his side and moved to hunch over the notebook, blocking any path forward for Jayce’s grabby hands and cackling wickedly. 

Jayce just huffed and leaned to place Viktor’s cane down more gently against the desk, then sat with a beguiled sigh into the desk chair he’d pulled back to its position beside the desk. Viktor skipped over a couple of pages that were just equations or scratched out notes, ignored the beginnings of a portrait with defined cheekbones and thick, daring eyebrows with a cough, and finally landed back on the sketch of his braced leg.  

The words Physical Adaptations and Biological Mechanics titled his page broadly and subtle notes and quotes from various medical journals scattered both pages, some of which Viktor recognised from his own experience. There were clipping of other leg braces, of shoulder slings, of casts and even of an overly-mechanical looking wheelchair. 

Most of the writing was, however, targeted lines of questioning with either a tick mark next to them or an aggressive underline beneath it. 

Clasps or Buckles? A line struck through both, next to it a hastily scrawled Straps.

Lined? Padded? Comfortable? A tick next to the former. 

Does he take it off to sleep? Can it be waterproofed? Shower ??   

Viktor was still smiling, but it faltered as something burned in his throat. He blinked repeatedly to divert the mistiness edging its way to the surface. It was so just so… observant? Viktor wasn’t sure what it was, he just knew that something about the way Jayce was considering him, writing small notes and sketching drawings of him over countless pages and wondering, in his quickened handwriting, if Viktor’s leg brace was comfortable, that tightened in his chest and left him a little breathless. 

A small amused huff escaped him and he turned back around to place the notebook loudly down in front of where Jayce was now sulking, trying to burn holes in his desk with a leveling gaze. He snatched a dark red pen sitting nearby and flicked the cap off, which rolled past Jacye’s line of sight and made him tilt his head to look at what Viktor was plotting. 

As if grading a paper, he pretended to scrutinise the work under a solemn gaze. Jayce stayed silent as Viktor jotted down curt responses to each note in his own clipped cursive. A few circles here and there, a couple of question marks next to some particularly puzzling musings, and even a couple of snide responses later, the pages were covered in scribbles of red and black pen. 

Viktor slid it over to Jayce, who tentatively scanned over each line, eyes darting back to Viktor once or twice. He scoffed at a few of the responses, but turned the page to a blank one and began writing down the important bits Viktor had added. 

“...So, are you, eh, going to tell me what this is about?” 

Jayce had the audacity to look genuinely startled when Viktor finally spoke up, looking over at him with a baffled expression and glancing around his work station rapidly to find an adequate start to his explanation. 

He resolved to just gesturing vaguely over the entire desk instead of any specific spot. “It’s, well, we started this unit a couple of weeks ago, uh,” he flipped back to quickly point at the blocky title above his notes, “yeah, that. We gotta prototype some mobility aid or assistive devices, and I thought, like, simple, right?” 

Viktor tried somewhat unsuccessfully not to raise an eyebrow. 

“Well- whatever, I thought it would be simpler than it is! I thought the hard part would be, like, materials and stuff, but I can’t even decide on a single idea. It’s due before the winter holidays and I haven’t even started! It- it’s kind of crazy, because, I mean-” he waved his hands at Viktor, “It’s not like there’s a real lack of inspiration. I just wanted to try something original, maybe?” He sighed and brought his hands up to work circles into his temples. “I thought some observational studies might be a good start, I guess. Hence the- you know.” 

“The totally normal, not at all serial-killer-esque candid drawings of my, eh, bare leg?” Jayce was making it far too easy. “I must say, your anatomy has improved significantly.” 

When Jayce looked back up miserably, and caught Viktor’s expression just as he let out an unattractive snort, his melodramatic pity party easily subsided into a begrudging grin. 

“Not as horse-y as last time?” 

The absurdity of hearing a man like Jayce utter the word horse-y in his deep voice had Viktor releasing another loud laugh. It seemed to be all Viktor could do, shake his head and laugh, ease flooding into his shoulders and breaking any earlier awkwardness into the ease of familiar conversation. He prodded Jayce to finish recounting the assignment to Viktor, who did so enthusiastically despite his current inability to actually work on it, and the way he was grinning and stumbling excitedly over his words was nothing short of infectious. Viktor could certainly sympathise with the fascination between the intersection of mechanics and biology. It was, some could say, his thing. 

It was also, unsurprisingly, entirely enlightening to hear a perspective on his beloved subject from the perspective of a dedicated engineer. Of course he had experience in most types of engineering, but naturally fell on the biological side of the line, restricted by the university’s subversive choice of major without the option of a minor or even double-major. To have someone like Jayce, who’d been nothing but mechanics, engines, and machines for his entire life, provide his perception of the topic, was totally foreign to Viktor. The conversation became a quickened patchwork of overlapping, intersecting sentences that grew in volume proportional to their growing excitement. They discussed biological enhancements, gene-knockout technology, prosthetics, and, of course, mobility aids like braces and canes. Viktor was a bit taken aback by Jayce’s more wild ideas, like a full-body connected system style brace that would act a sort of backbone to the entire spinal column and extend down the backs on the wearer’s legs. A ribbed back brace with neck support that looked, in Jayce’s scribble, like some sort of macabre fashion statement one of Piltover’s more edgy celebrities would wear. 

What caught Viktor’s attention the most was a very practical looking knee brace, with the addition of unobtrusive metal barring extending up past the thigh and around the midsection for added hip support. Honestly, it looked like the sort of thing someone like Viktor could really use. There were some glaring issues, though, typical of someone who’d never truly had to get to know the inner workings, comfortability level, practicality or even aesthetics of something like a brace. 

They skirted around the topic of criticism for the moment, instead enjoying the rare joy of a reciprocated interest between scientists. After a considerable amount of time, Viktor realised he was clenching his teeth and tensing his muscles more than he should’ve, as the temperature outside must have dropped significantly and bled through the large window that backed Jayce’s desk instead of a wall. He noticed, mainly because his hip was bothering him much more than it usually did, no doubt thanks to the irregular contractions of his leg muscles, and his knee was flaring with a perpetual pain that was much stronger than what he would expect on a normal day. He also noticed, because Jayce had grabbed his shoulder in a flurry of excitement to dive into one of his most recent theories about material integrity, or something, and felt the noticeably cool temperature of Viktor’s sweater. 

Without a second thought, Jayce was commenting about how Viktor should have said something and that he hoped it wasn’t a problem when he slung a soft, dark blue throw-blanket over Viktor’s shoulders. From his spot, standing hunched over the desk and scanning a diagram of his own that he’d added to the pages of the notebook, Viktor hadn’t seen Jayce retrieve it, nor had he really been paying attention to what the man was muttering about, tuning out the noise to try and configure his thoughts on Jayce’s theory. 

Obviously, the entire concept Jayce had just explained to him was forgotten completely as a cloud of linen-scented freshness overwhelmed Viktor’s senses. Was this what all of Jayce’s clothes smelled like, or had he just done his laundry? Was it a new cologne? His body wash? 

Regardless, Viktor inhaled deeply and tried to pry his eyes away from Jayce, who was leaning slightly over Viktor with his natural height, arms still positioned up and around Viktor’s shoulders as he placed the blanket there. He couldn’t move his eyes. Jayce was leaning his head over Viktor’s left shoulder to glance over the diagram and Viktor could just barely see stubble beginning to dot his sharp jaw, could see the way the almost-setting sun lit the profile of Jayce’s face like he was glowing, and the way his prominent brow bone curved into a rather adorably sloping nose. 

Finally, Viktor glanced away and down, forcing down whatever stray thought had just escaped from that same neuron in his head that produced misplaced feelings and attractions and dreams . It wasn’t the blanket that caused an intense warmth to creep up under his cheekbones and draw out an embarrassed redness on the back of his neck. Definitely not the time. 

Whatever weekend plans the two had committed to previously were forgotten as Saturday afternoon bled into Saturday night, then to Sunday morning, swapping ideas and annotating each others’ notes relentlessly until they were making the same points and coming to the same conclusions, and neither of them could tell where one’s notebook ended the other’s began. It was like the meeting of two seas, swirling with completely different directions and colours and pulls but unavoidably crashing into each other in a frictioned swell. Their waves worked against each other until Viktor’s purple became Jayce’s turquoise, until there was a singular ebb and flow of the tide working away at the shores of scientific discovery. 

In all of his time spent at the University for Scientific Advancement, this was the first instance in which Viktor knew, without a doubt, that he would have never been able to experience such shared passion or enlightenment anywhere else. It had been a long time coming, and Viktor could have just missed it. Two burning stars careening through their own galaxies, pulled by their own threads of fate, just barely grazing each other in time to share a fiery, blinding light for a singular moment. Anything could have pulled them away from each other, the gravity of another star, an impact with space debris, a shifting of the fabric between them decentring their journeys just enough to never allow them to cross paths. Nothing had. A lot of Viktor’s recent misfortune, regarded with the typical jaded nihilistic bitterness, suddenly felt misplaced. 

When they broke away from the rip-current of Jayce’s project, to sleep or eat or maybe go outside,  Viktor could still feel the vertigo in his blood pushing him side to side. He felt it when he slept that night. He felt it in his dreams. He felt it during each of the classes he aided on Monday. It was what Viktor imagined the comedown from some hard drug to be like, if he’d ever tried them. The weariness that settled in his bones after bright-orange electricity ripped through them for hours even after, and the way his mind looped each hypothesis over and over again, even the ones they’d scrapped, searching for more material, for some sort of glaring answer within the madness of it all. 

It may have also been, if not a little bit, due to the fact that Viktor was having fun. Lots of it. He loved science — biology especially — and found a unique sort of catharsis any time he engaged with it or allowed himself to become lost in a theory or formula, but it was a deeply personal, resigned sort of content. It was something that from a very young age, Viktor knew he’d never really be able to share with another person. Something he had to remind himself of after his first semester attending the university in undergrad, to try and avoid disappointment when not a single one of his peers seemed to sparkle at the thought of field test day or chromatography like he did. Being with Jayce in that room, spending hours upon hours finally giving in to the crushing weight of his appreciation for the craft, had been the one instance he’d been searching for to prove himself wrong. 

That’s how it was, science. A theory is, until the end of time, just that. Something to be proven over and over and over again, in countless repetitions of the same experiment and countless reports on the exact same findings. All it took was one experiment to prove it wrong, and to take the entire theory down with it. It was one of the most exhilarating things about his work, yet no one had allowed him the feeling of a challenge. Not until Jayce. 

Viktor knew Jayce’s opinions regarding science, engineering mainly, were sort of… out there. His general opinion of kinematics being forgettable, when topics like galileo’s fucking arsehole, or something, was much more interesting, bothered Viktor immensely. In Zaun, he was taught the most practical aspects of each science, growing to love them all for their respective roles in contributing to daily life and how the earth and stars function. There was no time for dreaming up a scenario in which a flash of light hits someone standing on the side of a moving train, or anything ridiculous like that. That’s why Viktor took so well to combining the practice of biological enhancement with metallurgy and mechanics, because he was taught by the people who worked in the pits of Zaun’s forges, dedicating their lives to crafting the most basic of building materials and calculating mathematics of the highest level all the while. That type of mechanics is what kept society pushing forward. It’s what framed Piltover’s skyscrapers, what paved their roads, drove their cars. Not a philosophy-based argument on who saw the light first? 

It was sort of a difficult topic, anyway, for Viktor, who loved waxing poetic any chance he could get, losing himself to a pensive train of thought at least once per-hour. He just could bring himself to see the use in any of it. It wasn’t living, nor breathing, and depended on the same sensitive scale of perspective as Piltover’s rhetorical politics. It was no wonder that’s where Jayce excelled. 

It was, truly, like stepping into a world he had never been able to see before. No one had opened his eyes so widely, and Viktor had never really willingly allowed anyone to try, anyway. Jayce was fucking brilliant. The way he danced around philosophies, jumped from one school of thought to the next, surfed on well-read references and obscure arguments, utilising perspectives Viktor was pretty sure hadn’t been considered within the past couple of decades, at least. It was like seeing a compilation of every corner of engineering Viktor couldn’t quite reach, cracked wide open, organised like a library built by a mad-man, labyrinthian in nature but each micrometre filled with knowledge or concepts Viktor had never considered. 

Of course, Jayce’s downfall was his self-limiting nature. Once, he’d said he didn’t do anything but his major. That same night, he’d captured Viktor’s likeness in one of the most genuine, soulful sketches and proven himself wrong. If he’d truly embraced the other sciences, even the core ones, Viktor couldn’t imagine what kind of scientific superpower his mind would be. To say the thought struck something deep, deep inside of Viktor’s chest was an understatement. Less admittable, was the warmth it stirred in a much more southern part of Viktor’s body. 

As Monday progressed, Viktor couldn’t even manage enough energy to try and pry himself away from his obsessive thoughts, mulling over his few favourites of the countless prototypes they’d designed over and over again. Every time he thought about that one diagram, the one he’d quickly sketched into a page of Jayce’s notebook, his mind couldn’t help but remind him of the overpowering scent of cottony-freshness. Was it possible for something like a blanket to smell so fucking good? Viktor did his laundry correctly, obviously, as he’d been doing for his entire life, wore various colognes and perfumes, and sniffed his fair share of candles. He had never been graced with something so purely clean-smelling in his entire life. It satiated the powerful voice he’d learned to manage quite well, sitting in the back of his head, whining and complaining about sanitation or general hygiene. It had grown much louder after his incident in the laboratory, and only worsened as he felt himself grow sicker with each passing day. 

He tried to re-imagine the scent, to feel the subtle weight of the blanket around him when it puffed up billows of aromatic clouds and enveloped his head in a pillow of satisfaction. The only thing that came to mind, in reality, was the primal awareness of a warm presence behind him, like he’d felt when Jayce put the blanket over him in the first place. He could only imagine the shift in pressure as the man leaned his head over Viktor’s shoulder from behind to quickly scan the page himself. Viktor was a little sleep deprived, clearly. 

Still, even with his lack of finished work and sleep from the past days, Viktor managed to survive his overfilled schedule. He could feel the effects of the weekend truly settle into his knee as he meandred back to the suite hall, the dull aching pain that followed him on any good day had recently increased into a much more present pain, one that Viktor wasn’t looking forward to growing accustomed to. Plus, with the chill relaxing into the air with the beginnings of autumn, his joints were never truly able to relax or decompress. 

The sight of a bright yellow dusting of leaves on the outer edge of every tree on campus that Viktor passed on his way back almost made it worth it. It was like a painter’s dream, a scenic utopia of colourbursts and supernovas that no paint set could truly capture. The paleness of the autumn sun returned to its large, warm, summer state every evening just after Viktor finished supervising classes. Ever the show off, the sunset was a stunning display of orange and pink that the trees on campus would soon emulate to near-perfection, the impression of the moment captured for a few weeks until it dulled once again and the leaves fell to the ground, overexerted from the effort of trying to replicate something as grandiose as a sunset. Still, the shy beginnings of yellowing leaves was an exciting promise for the near future, and filled Viktor with a begrudging appreciation for the season. His joints still hurt, his arms were still cold, and the tips of his fingers still burned bright red when he arrived back at the suite, but it was all a fair trade off to see the idyllic vibrancy of Piltover’s sunsets frozen in the trees every day. 

It was the silence of the suite that gave Viktor immense pause in his train of thought upon entry. He kicked his shoes off haphazardly and strained for the sound of music, if he was lucky, a vintage Brazilian hit from far too long ago. Nothing. In fact, the woody click of his cane against the floor seemed to echo too loudly across the space, as if no one had lived there at all. Viktor wasn’t worried about that, or even worried about where Jayce was, as he’d still neglected to gather any real information about Jayce’s course schedule. The silence did, however, allow room for a crushing wave of realisation to pour over him as he stared dumbly at Jayce’s wide open door. 

He had felt so energised, so sustained, all day. He was severely lacking in sleep, the colder and colder temperatures were taking their toll on his joints, and he had just spent an entire day sitting in uncomfortable plastic chairs as underpaid teachers talked at him unenthusiastically (except for Heimerdinger, who’s excitement might have been a perpetual medical condition). All of this made for a pretty shitty day, one worthy of an entire week spent inside, tending his plants and listening to a soft jazz CD whilst he grinded out a couple of essay corrections. 

The only problem was, Viktor didn’t actually feel like shit at all. He’d brushed off every inconvenience as if it were nothing, ever limiting factor as if it were nothing more than a leaf landing lightly on his shoulder. Nothing had seemed to matter, because in his mind, he would absolutely, undoubtedly, be returning to he and Jayce’s den of science upon his return. 

Viktor had no real reason, nothing of substance at least, to have believed that so firmly for the entire day. It was just one of those unquestionable facts that Viktor’s mind had conjured after too much time spent doing something he absolutely loved. Obviously he and Jayce would get right back to it once he returned. What was it that made it so obvious? It was obvious the two hadn’t finished their discussion, no amount of time could allow the two to truly get into the depths of every scientific interest or theory they had, and Viktor had left a significant amount of his own notebook in Jayce’s room, but neither of them had actually explicitly suggested a resuming of their work. Viktor felt silly for doubting it, because Jayce was clearly also having the time of his life, but at the same time felt almost sillier for simply assuming they could jump right back in where they’d left off. 

Viktor continued to stand, brow furrowed, staring at Jayce’s door, wondering if he should politely go and retrieve his notebooks and stationary so Jayce could have some alone time in his own room, undisturbed by their musings of the previous nights. Viktor didn’t dwell on any potential second meanings of alone time as he quickly shuffled his way through the open doorway, surveying the absolute bomb-site state of the room they’d left behind. He almost felt bad for Jayce, but the man had seemed far too out-of-it to really notice. Plus, sleeping in a bed that smelled that goddamn good must have done wonders for the soul. Viktor wouldn’t mind… 

He cleared his throat. The ornamental cane was placed against the desk to allow Viktor to begin separating their strewn pages of notes into more organised piles, a feat much harder to accomplish than he’d originally guessed, thanks to their similar messy-cursive handwriting and emergency switching of pens mid-equation after running out of ink a few times. 

It only occurred to Viktor that the front door to their suite had opened loudly, slammed shut, bags had been placed on the counter, and a very unaware Jayce was now approaching his room, until it was far too late. It wasn’t as though Viktor was doing anything nefarious, being in Jayce’s room, but he figured that if the man truly did want some time to wind down after their weekend, he probably didn’t want to start it by finding his roommate hunched over his work desk. Unfortunately, there was really nothing Viktor could do except await the moment Jayce burst into the room with an impending sense of absolute doom.

But Jayce was already talking aloud before he pushed open the door. He didn’t even look up from where he threw his overcoat onto his duvet, nor from where he placed down a brown paper bag beside the stacked papers on his desk. He was still talking when he turned around to face his closet and ripped a large university-branded hoodie from its place on the shelf and threw it over himself. 

“So, I was thinking, while I was out,” he pointed over his shoulder as he pulled the cinched hem down, “check the bag, by the way,” Viktor’s gaze shot to the innocent looking thing on the desk. Two unassuming pastries peeked out from the opening. “I was thinking that we could try adjusting the nodule length, and maybe also the lining density because, like, if someone’s gonna wear it, then-”

It really was just that simple. Maybe that famous quote had a point, about great minds thinking alike. Viktor sighed loudly, a weight slipping off of his tensed shoulders and raised eyebrows relaxing. Of course they would fall back into where they’d left off, pick up exactly where their studying paused. Of course.  

They both slipped easily back into Jayce’s project after that, though much less overzealous and rushed as it had been for the previous nights.What little time each of them had spent outside and away from their echo chamber provided some sense of reality and the promise that, yes, they did actually have enough hours in their days, days in their weeks. 

What little free time they had between Jayce’s job at the coffee shop, which Viktor still hadn’t inquired about, and spaced-out schedule was filled so completely with each other. Viktor’s attempts to bridge the gap between them with the occasional night out at the bar was entirely incomparable to what the project was doing for their friendship. It lodged itself right underneath them, a pillar of common ground that raised the two higher and higher together, stronger, more fortifying than any of Piltover’s steel put together. 

Viktor was having fun. He didn’t need to go out, or worry about petty gossip, or go to endless parties to finally feel the excitement of attending a university. Time was soaring past him, days ending far too quickly when he and Jayce cooped themselves up in his room, and dribbling past unimaginably slowly when they were too busy. Autumn had fallen upon in its typical unabashed fashion, lighting a fire on campus with all of its vegetation and filling the vast courtyards and fields with powerful gusts of chilly air. It didn’t rain during Piltover in the autumn, that was a luxury reserved only for the throes of late spring and early summer, so there was a dryness in the air that scratched at faces and emptied the lotion isles in the nearest convenience store. 

It was, to say the least, absolutely grand. Each time Viktor drew in a slow breath, careful not to agitate the sensitivity of his lungs, it was like he was inhaling fire. The air was consistently brisk and the leaves glowed in their bright oranges and yellows, interrupted by an occasional evergreen that grounded the scene in a uniquely Piltover look. 

The sunsets weren’t half bad, either. 

Viktor’s chest overflowed with a giddy delight each time he left his last classroom Monday, each time Jayce declared that it was his day off from work, each time Jayce deflected some superficial invitation to a party. It bubbled over each time Jayce re-entered his room holding two steaming mugs of coffee, one near-white and one pitch black, pushing the door to a near close with his hip and cheekily dodging various notebook pages strewn about the floor. When Jayce walked toward Viktor, hands outstretched, offering the drinks with a knowing grin and mind stewing on an additional idea to jot down on their recently purchased shared notebook. 

_______________________

There is a moment, Viktor had learned once in an ecology course, where the volume of an organism overwhelms its surface area too greatly, and it’s that moment in nature that decides when something is simply too great to continue surviving. The energy needed to keep living is simply too much, and various metabolic pathways become too inefficient to justify. 

The same is true, Viktor supposed, with emotion. There is a moment where the surface area of one’s mask stretches far too thin, and the volume of suppressed feelings finally cracks the concrete walls of the dam. Then it all comes tumbling out, steamrolling every inch of land, greenery, civilization, desert, canyon, all the same. It can be destructive in its power, but Viktor hated dams. 

It was really only natural, as a wildlife and evolutionary biologist, to hate dams. It was the perfect representation of their society’s insatiable appetite for control, of its perceived entitlement to any land it deemed necessary. To try and control something as powerful as water, to separate the very life blood of the earth from its canyon veins, was symbolism too overt to ignore. 

He hated dams. He hated that he could still feel the tension press against the dam that Jayce had constructed all by himself, maybe out of the same steel he produced in his forge, maybe out of the concrete Piltover liked to pour into the minds of its young. It didn’t matter. He could practically see it, water lapping close to the edge and greedily filling every fracture or flaw in its surface. 

Viktor wanted to be the one to press a firm hand to the wall, apply just enough pressure, and finally watch it come down. Maybe he was greedy, for that. Maybe he had a death wish. 

It was unexplainable, but Viktor wanted so terribly to let Jayce feel free as the rivers that intersected every country on earth. He wanted to see Jayce laugh his stupid, childish laugh, to watch him grin that crooked grin, to hear him cry just as Jayce had heard him cry and hold him anyway, just as Jayce had held him. He felt like, really, it was the least he could do. He wanted to lay eyes upon the glittering, aqua flood and drown beneath its gravity. 

Viktor figured it would come with time. Viktor figured the dam was constructed with expectations, with pressure, with promises and with the apathy of Piltover. 

Viktor figured he was prepared for what could have been behind that great concrete wall. 

So one day, a Wednesday in late October, when Viktor had finished upkeeping his plants and tidying his room, when he had gone over the notes in one of their notebooks over and over until he felt he could recite it from memory, and Jayce had come into the suite quietly, set his keys down, and made his way into his room and closed his door , Viktor thought his opportunity had finally arrived. 

It didn’t excite him like it should’ve, the chance he’d been waiting for to finally, finally , be Jayce’s crutch if he fell arriving. It just drew a small coil in his gut, just above his sternum, and pulled his face into a frown. 

He questioned whether or not he should even impose, but brushed the thought away quickly. That day had been colder than usual, layering the campus in a sheet of frost and slowing down Viktor’s commute to the convenience store by a significant amount. Iciness had also slipped its way into Viktor’s knee, freezing over the joints and emphasising the grind of bones in a way that was just painful enough to make Viktor clench his teeth for the better part of the day. To top it all off, Viktor had neglected to read the weather report that morning, and chosen a thin coat that had ended up being completely inappropriate for his journey. The shivering only made the pain worse. He would definitely need to consult his physician about a back brace, sooner rather than later. 

Really, though, they were things Viktor could brush off. He’d been dealing with pain his entire life. He’d been cold before. He’d be home soon. Jayce still had his blanket. 

Brush it off, he did, though he couldn’t reign in the slight furrow of his brows, nor the clench of his jaw. He didn’t feel like he had to. 

He walked slowly out of his own room, through his wide-open door, and across the foyer, past the kitchen, cane clicking against the floor in a tentative rhythm. 

His heart began to thump louder in his chest. Viktor raised his hand to knock, and again a flash of hesitation flared in his chest. 

Jayce responded after the second knock. It was a small sound, a reserved “ Yeah? ” tinged with an alarming hint of irritation. 

Viktor balked for a second, realising his lack of preparation, he truly had no idea what he would even say to the man. “Ehm, may I come in?” It sounded too rushed, not delicate enough. Viktor wanted to be delicate. 

“...Yeah?” was the response. 

So Viktor turned the handle of the door as softly as he could and pushed it ajar, revealing the still-messy room, now with a certain level of organisation to their madness. He didn’t see Jayce immediately, and wondered if the man was just trying to take a shower, or something, and obviously would have wanted the door closed, considering the two had already seen each other in much less clothing than preferred. Vikotr’s heart stopped when his eyes landed on the curled up shape underneath Jayce’s puffy blue duvet. 

Once it started to beat again, it ached and burrowed a deep hole into Viktor’s chest. Jayce didn’t move to look at him , nor did he say anything else. Viktor couldn’t hear crying or sniffling, though he strained his ears to try and catch the slightest of noise, as if walking across a frozen lake with spikes on his boots and no idea how thin the ice below him was. 

“Are you…alright?” Viktor’s voice felt far away. It wasn’t enough, it didn’t communicate his concern, his care, his worry over his friend. The attempt fell flat. 

Jayce blew out a puff of air, then pressed his speech further in response. “Yeah.” The way he said it like it was the most obvious thing in the world, frustration bleeding into his words and sending a blaring warning message to Viktor to leave Jayce alone. Viktor ignored it. He needed to be there for Jayce, he wanted to catch him if he was falling. He wouldn’t know if Jayce didn’t tell him. 

Viktor shifted his weight and the tight coil in his gut became even tighter. There was an oppressive silence blanketing the entire room, the entire suite. It wasn’t the sort of silence that could be forgotten about with a click on Viktor’s CD player, either, it was the kind of silence that the most hearty of conversations couldn’t hide. It sat between them like unspoken word, twisting the coil in Viktor’s gut uncomfortably. 

“Jayce, it’s okay if-” 

“Yeah. Yep. All good, though, thanks.” Jayce’s words were so clipped it almost sounded like the automated message after an unanswered call. Viktor supposed it was, to some extent, an automated response to the relentless beck and call of Piltover, to the shallow pretence of caring about someone’s emotions only to extort them. 

“ Jayce , you can talk to me.” It was too insistent, sounded too much like Viktor asking Jayce for a favour. At the same time, it wasn’t enough. If the roles were reversed, Jayce would have already made the distance across the room, probably to put a warm, soothing hand over Viktor’s shoulder and tell him some profound theory he’d once read in a physics textbook. 

Viktor didn’t know how to do that, though it pained him. He didn't know how to bring up clever stories, or jokes, or wisdom, he never knew when or if it was the right time or if he should even say anything at all. Fuck, he wanted to. If not to pay Jayce back for that one time in the laboratory, that time that seemed so long ago but each detail had still burned clearly into Viktor’s mind. The answering of a phone call. The enveloping arms. The warmth. 

Viktor could be that warmth for Jayce, if he would just allow it. But the man just huffed again, and Viktor could see from under the covers that he was shaking his head. 

“You know you can talk to me,’ Viktor repeated, “about anything.” He was urging. Maybe Jayce couldn’t detect it in his voice, but Viktor felt it. The coil in that wrapped tightly around his insides shrunk tighter and his chest began to burn with something akin to embarrassment. He was standing here, in front of Jayce, in their shared suite, after two months of friendship and one month of whatever they were when they worked on Jayce’s project together, pressing his hand to the fractured concrete wall that precariously held all of Jayce’s tumultuous feelings locked away inside of him. He couldn’t bring himself to press harder, but he could feel the fractals of cement fissuring out further from his touch. Maybe if he pressed a little harder-

“Just, ah, lab was pretty hard today. Thesis supervisor was being confusing, you know how it is.” Jayce’s voice sounded significantly less clipped than they had before, but it only urged Viktor’s burning desperation further, because it meant Jayce was no longer as close to cracking as he was before. He was already drawing into himself, physically snuffing the flames in himself that threatened to grow too high and, god forbid, warm him enough to actually be vulnerable for once, like Viktor was desperate for. Jayce denied him that. 

“Yes, I, eh… that is why biology will always be superior, of course.” It was all too easy for Viktor to fall back into his jaded comedy. He knew it was the wrong move, he knew it but he did it anyway, because Jayce was retreating into himself and Viktor’s leg was hurting and his chest was aching so deeply that he thought if he looked there might have actually been a gaping hole where his heart had been, and he was standing in the middle of Jayce’s room practically begging the man to talk to him. He needed something to ground him, something familiar like the sound of Jayce’s laughter. Shit, he would have even taken the sound of Jayce’s fake laugh, over the silence between them that deepened with each passing second. 

Jayce didn’t pause again before his response. “Always superior.” 

Something in the dam had broken. A piece chipped off. But all too suddenly the water was the wrong colour and it didn’t refract light, it absorbed it, and it flowed in the wrong direction far too quickly. It hit Viktor like a high-speed train, like a javelin straight through his aching chest. He could almost feel the blood spilling out of him as he stood there, impaled. 

“ Excuse me? ”

“Fixing my equations, changing calculations, annotations, talking about your degree, always thinking you’re some prodigy.” 

“As I recall, you asked me to help with the project.”  

Jayce scoffed and finally shifted under the duvet, throwing it off and whipping around, “It’s not just the project! You’re always walking around thinking everything you do is somehow better than everyone else!” 

Viktor jerked back, eyes wide. “What are you-?” 

“You’re always walking around, giving your opinion, hanging out with whoever you want! It’s like you just don’t care about rules, like, oh, I’m foreign so I can just make friends with anyone, or all of my opinions are automatically right because I’m just so smart, and I don’t have to play by anyone’s rules because I’m not from here! Sometimes it makes me wonder who even raised you!”

A slight pause, before, “How dare you? You know nothing about me, do not pretend to. I’m shocked that you’re insecure enough to allow yourself to fall into such ignorance.” 

“I am not insecure.” Jayce’s voice wavered slightly. 

“Oh, no? Not insecure enough to wait for weeks until you ask for help? Insecure enough to beg me to revise your research notes?” Viktor’s voice was raising, heart pounding loudly in his ears and drowning out his thoughts. “Not insecure enough to fake having a girlfriend for days after you’ve broken up?” 

Viktor could see Jayce clench his jaw and he did the same, the loud ringing in his ears muffling the sound of his roommate’s thundering footsteps. 

Jayce stopped in front of Viktor with lowered eyes and pointed a finger into his chest. “I don’t wanna talk to you. Get out.” 

Viktor’s feet remained planted. “Stop being ridiculous, just tell me what’s thrown you into such a tantrum-” 

“I said I’m not fucking talking to you.”

Viktor glanced behind him at the desk. “You cannot just-” 

“I don’t need your help with my project anymore. Now if you don’t leave-”

“Your project? As if I didn’t spend an equal amount of time designing the prototype and fixing your calculations as you? The research may be yours, but we made that goddamned brace together, don’t act like I didn’t-!” Viktor’s words were passing right over Jayce’s head, who held his fists tightly at his side. The man shot a hand out and Viktor jolted back, stumbling toward the doorway. 

His cane caught. Viktor tried to yank it back and balance himself before too much pressure landed on his leg, but something pulled it back. Not something, actually. Someone. Jayce. 

His broad hand gripped the wood and yanked it out of Viktor’s grasp, pushing him back through the doorway by his collar. Searing pain locked up Viktor’s knee, quickly doing the same in his hip and rendering him useless against the force that was Jayce Talis. 

Once finally on the other side of the threshold, Jayce let go of Viktor’s collar and jammed the cane back down onto the laminate, releasing them both with a shove and turning back into his room with the slam of his door. Viktor could hear a high pitched clanging as his cane fell to the floor. 

His knee flared with pain, just salt on the gaping wound. He could hear Jayce’s rhythmic breathing stop, and the sound of a thick duvet being thrown around. If he regretted what he said, he didn’t let Viktor know. Viktor coughed painfully and turned to leave, wooden cane click, click, clicking on the floor beneath him. 

The walk back to Viktor’s room felt like trudging through deep, deep snow. His chest bled out onto the blurred white around him, the blizzard clouded his vision and filled his ears with the sound of rough breathing and a cane on the floor. There was such an intense pain in his leg that it wasn’t even centralised in his knee anymore, just an intense and flowering ache that knocked the wind out of him and radiated into the adjacent places in Viktor’s body. His spine, his pelvis, his ankle, the heel of his foot. He was shivering. 

He was shivering when he got under the covers in his bed, and he was shivering when he tried for longer than usual to get the brace off of his leg. He bypassed the final few straps completely, opting to just shove it down past his ankle which only sent a sharper twinge into the joint. He couldn’t even grimace. His breath just caught in his throat, already fragile and strained with the choking fluid in his lungs. They hurt, too, of course they did, and once he started coughing he didn’t stop for a long time. He felt like he was drowning.