Science of Love

If the past few weeks had truly happened, had truly flown by in a flurry of overexcited theorizing and giddy discussions, no one would have been able to tell. Viktor didn’t get much sleep that night, either from the flaring pain in his leg, the fact he’d neglected to take his insomnia supplements for the past few weeks to stay up later, or because the person he felt understood him like no one ever had before, who’d given him a taste of how truly enjoyable university could be, for the first time, had gone and torn his heart out. 

Nor did he get much sleep for the few days after. 

Fatigue pressed against the back of Viktor’s eyes and dried them out, distracting him from the accented rambling of his literature professor. He tried to rub the feeling away, but every time he even thought about acknowledging the physical effects of…well, of that night, his heart shrunk and tears threatened to spill down his sallow cheeks. 

It wasn’t as though Viktor was some heartbroken maiden. They had been friends. Close friends, actually. Viktor remembered a warm moment from a couple of weeks earlier, before he could stop himself. A wistful sigh escaping full lips, bathed in the glow of the dark moonlight streaming into the window, the shyest grin he’d ever seen escaping from the man in front of him. A broad hand on his bicep, and a gentle squeeze, punctuated by pointed eye contact from beneath thick lashes. Fuck, Viktor really had felt something, then. Something that didn’t just silence all of his worries about whether or not the two were really as close as Viktor had thought, worries that Viktor was too eager too fast for a true friend. It assured him so safely, Viktor had thought, that there was truly nothing in the universe to be worried about, the kind of look that shushes a crying child and stops the heart of any onlooker in an instant.  

As always, Viktor had just misread it. It was a different kind of pain, of deepening self-loathing that swirled like oil in his stomach, knowing that the thing he’d been more sure about than anything else in that moment was really just a trick of the light, or something. The expression on his roommate’s face should have been obvious. It had seemed too obvious to Viktor, that the tingling bubbliness he’d been feeling every time they made a breakthrough or the hot humour of embarrassment when they made a silly mistake, was reciprocated ten-fold. There was nothing else that look could have meant, to Viktor. 

It really was difficult to swallow a pill that read the one thing you’ve been worried about this entire time seems to have come true, it lodged in his throat like the thick mucus in his lungs and choked him even on days when his illness eased up. 

His leg didn’t stop hurting, either, but he’d known it was bound to catch up with him sooner or later. He couldn’t just spend weeks avoiding sleep, brushing off the overworked twinge in his joints in order to dedicate all of his time to the physics project. It throbbed with a pulse that echoed harsh words from a thick duvet. 

 Acid pooled in Viktor’s stomach and bubbled up into his throat at the thought—the audacity—of what Jayce had done. Viktor wasn’t a fool, he knew that he was pushing too hard, but something about the way his roommate was biting back misdirected anger just made his blood boil. He was trying to help, for goodness’ sake, not offend the man. 

The sound of the cane hitting the floor rang again in his mind. He clenched his teeth. It had seemed that Jayce preferred to ignore Viktor’s disability, and not bringing it up made it easier for both of them to focus on the thing they were both good at. 

It made sense that he didn’t bring it up, he knew how most people in Piltover would dance around it and suddenly pitch their voices higher, somehow more condescendingly, whilst they filled his ears with apologies and condolences. As if Viktor had ever asked for something like that. 

In fact, Viktor found that it gave him a considerable reminder of the inherent balance in the natural world around him. He loved the bursting life of spring but he loved the blaze of autumn more. Every stifling summer would harden into a merciless winter, then bleed back into summer again. He loved biology, his own biology was flawed. It was just how life was. 

Possibly, Viktor had been a fool to expect his friend to understand. Roommate, something in his head corrected. He had experienced the same dance with every single person in Piltover, minus maybe Caitlyn. The same pitiful glance, the same obnoxious point from a child that was too old to justify such ignorant behavior. He didn’t know why he expected anything different from his… roommate. 

Medals hung on the wall, glass awards on an otherwise empty bookshelf, freshly purchased furniture, severe lack of souvenirs. Real souvenirs, that is, like Viktor’s own collection that had formed somewhat unintentionally from his time picking up interesting rocks or trinkets from various thrifts or vintage markets. Anyone without trinkets was immediately crossed off of Viktor’s list of potential friends, without hesitation. He wouldn’t make the same mistake again. 

A quick glance at the analogue clock hanging above the doorway regretfully informed Viktor that not even ten minutes had passed since he’d decided to zone out. That was another thing, the days no longer zipped by excitedly. Viktor had more free time than he knew what to do with, other than listen apathetically to various CDs, forgetting himself in the work on the kinematics project. What did he even like to do for fun, before they’d partnered up?

Plants, sure, that was something Viktor had always enjoyed, he would never not love plants. Science, yes, but after he’d made finishing touches on a few students’ forty-something page lab reports for Heimerdinger’s class between his and Jayce’s research, there wasn’t much excuse to pursue it. There was still two months until the next semester started, when Heimerdinger would finally reveal each culture of bacteria and undoubtedly crown Cailtyn’s monster as the mystery pathogen, stopping Viktor’s heart forever as he succumbed to the zombifying spores it coughed out during their hours spent together. 

He tried to suppress a groan, burying his head in his hands and raking his fingers across his scalp painfully. 

The class ended just before sunset. The building did not come crashing down over Viktor, unfortunately, and he slowly slipped his computer into his bookbag and made his way out of the overly carpeted building. He blinked at the glaring sun, which always seemed more intense and more in-his-face during the colder months, ironic as it was. The air was crisp, which was expected on a day in early November, and the trees still clung to their crisping leaves with what little strength they had. Soon the fields would be blanketed with a thick layer of brown foliage, attracting the attention of starry-eyed freshmen and the occasional graduate student trying to find a semblance of joy in the trenches that was getting a masters’ degree. 

Who was Viktor kidding? He loved school. It was one of the few things actually getting him out of bed in the mornings, and it frustrated him to no end that instead of focusing on the alliterative tendencies of some slavic author, all his brain could manage to think about was the same cutting words from a few days prior. 

He huffed into the cool air, a cloud of steam billowing in its wake. People had said much worse to him, people from Piltover and Zaun alike, but it was the casual dismissal of Viktor’s lighthearted quip, his genuine attempt at forming a sort of vulnerability between the two, that had him reeling in the middle of his classes. The word rejection, an ugly, bludgeoning sort of word appeared in Viktor’s head and he tried to banish it as quickly as possible. 

Viktor hadn’t been rejected. He couldn’t have, it simply wasn’t sensible. Primarily, there was no way he had been sending off feelings of romantic interest whilst he talked about goddamned hinges and screws, plus it wasn’t like he was actively pursuing the man. Jayce had assured him rather quickly that he and Mel were still definitely together. 

It was possible that Viktor’s (purely primal) attraction to his roommate had been the reason for the outburst, but if that were the case then Jayce’s rejection would have happened much sooner, and he didn’t think the man was capable of something as petty as that. 

There was just no chance that Viktor’s friendship was being dismissed. They’d already been friends, acquaintances at least, for a solid two months before joining forces over the kinematics project. The two of them got along unimaginably well, with so much ease, they could have been lifelong friends. 

Viktor shook his head. He knew Jayce thought of him as a friend, he was almost sure of it. So how was it that he was greeted by silence when he pushed open their front door? How was it that he would spend all day grading papers and thinking about ways to adjust their—Jayce’s—brace design, and return to an empty suite? Now what was he supposed to do with all of the ideas, all of the improvements and changes to be made to their prototype? 

The clench of his jaw made his teeth pulse with the same radiating ache as his joints, and he could barely see where he was stepping under his furrowed brow. Viktor had always liked to watch the ground when he walked, so naturally, he was sort of oblivious to the people around him. It was a bad habit in Zaun, and it was a worse habit there,, on the grounds of the same university as the one person he was trying to avoid. 

Jayce. 

Viktor had just lifted his head, deep in thought, to make sure he was taking the right turn on the winding sidewalk back to the sweet, when his heart nearly leapt into his throat. The jolt of unadulterated shock ripped through him, forcing his face into a wide startle and desynchronizing the pace Viktor was keeping with his cane. He felt the bottom of the wood grate harshly against the ground in a scrape he knew must have damaged the wood and grimaced internally. 

Jayce was standing a few metres away, hand on his hip and head bowed engaged in an intense looking conversation with Caitlyn. His free hand gestured wildly between them, and the intense look on Caitlyn’s face made Viktor want to turn on his heel and get the hell out of there. 

To be completely honest, Viktor hadn’t seen Jayce since that night. It was easy enough to avoid him, with their schedules almost never aligning until late afternoon, when either of them was at the gym, or on a walk, or conveniently away doing something else. Admittedly, all of that was mostly Jayce. Viktor mainly stayed in his room, door shut and typing away on his computer with his CD player blasting at full volume in an attempt to drown out any noise that may come from other areas in the apartment. 

He didn’t want to know when Jayce was home, nor when he left. If his eyes darted occasionally to the crack under his door, they were most certainly not searching for a telltale entryway light to switch on. 

At the moment, Jayce looked about as bad as Viktor felt, and he hadn’t even breathed in a blackened pathogen that blocked his lungs with thick phlegm for weeks at a time. Thebronze skin that seemed to glow under the cool light of his desk lamp was much paler, full cheeks more sunken. There were noticeable bags under his eyes, and he had apparently bypassed combing his hair this morning, judging by the untamed flyaways and tugged-at locs. Though he couldn’t see it, Viktor could imagine the dry skin of his knuckles where he now rubbed firmly with his thumb. A twinge of something—concern, pity, it didn’t matter—flashed detestably between Viktor’s ribs. He tried to squash it down, but it was hard to place the flighty thing amongst all of the other gruesome weights lodged in his heart. He couldn’t repress it all at once. 

In a moment, Jayce’s eyes flicked up to Viktor’s, widening the second his brain caught up with the sight. He’d already twitched to move, maybe wave or call Viktor over, but had stopped himself before it fully developed. 

Viktor just stood. The hole in his chest withered away at the edges and tore cracks deeper into his stomach. 

Jayce tried to play it off, looking around in an obvious show of not knowing what, exactly, to do in that situation, but Caitlyn caught on immediately. She whipped her head around, unpinned hair tossing over her shoulders flawlessly, and caught sight of Viktor. 

He didn’t miss the way her mouth twisted into a grimace before quickly being schooled into a somber expression. He clenched his aching jaw tighter closed, moving to turn away and take the very, very long detour around the other side of the campus to his suite, trying to pretend he had never seen anything at all. Trying to pretend he didn’t know exactly what — who — they were talking about. 

Before he was faced away from them, he saw Caitlyn tug rather firmly on Jayce’s arm in his direction, pressing him with a lecture that looked so stern it almost made Viktor shiver. Then Jayce was glancing back up at him with a nervous frown, gripping his hands together tightly, and taking a tentative step forward. 

Alarm bells sounded in Viktor’s head. He didn’t want to face Jayce, not when he wasn’t ready, not when he hadn’t even had enough time to process what had actually happened, but, oh, he wanted to talk to him so badly. 

Wild desperation pounded in his chest like fists against metal bars, fought equally brutally by the pure fear coursing through Viktor’s veins, and they clashed in a supernova so intense Viktor had to force his eyes closed and calm the shaking of his hands. Without taking another second to think about it, without giving Jayce another opportunity to step closer and envelop Viktor in the fast-paced, unpredictability of his world, Viktor picked up his cane and turned on his heel. 

Though it was far too cold to be overexerting his leg to that extent, and the firm hands that clutched the thick steel bars of Viktor’s ribs urged him back, Viktor walked as quickly as possible away from the two. He didn’t want to cause a scene, but his heart was hammering with the shock of the moment and his breathing was coming in short gasps that stung on each catch of mucus. Tears stung his eyes and burned them in the cold, a shameful heat rising in his cheeks that made Viktor scrub a rough hand over his face and through his hair. 

He probably looked the same as Jayce, if not worse. He hadn’t been sleeping well. When he ate it was pitiful, stomach churning too easily on a stray thought and weighted down by the crushing boulder that sat in his chest alongside all of the other abominable feelings. His leg fucking hurt, and the old brace was not helping nearly as much as it should have been. 

Fuck, even the thought of a brace had Viktor’s mind reeling with memories of their combined work, of their shared notebooks and cheeky annotations, of shared jokes and genuine scientific development. His breathing came in even shallower bursts and his skin burned uncomfortably under the irritating cold and heavy layers of clothing. He tried to catch his breath in quick gasps but couldn’t. 

He walked for some time, not realising his damaged legs were, thankfully, marching him right up the entryway stairs of the suite hall and into the elevator until it pinged open at the penthouse floor. 

He wanted to release a breath of relief, but he knew that tears would roll freely down his face and stain his cheeks in a show of Viktor’s inability to just get over it. He’d always had thick skin, he was always one to roll with the punches, to take a poorly placed joke in stride or with a clever quip of his own. He was supposed to be tougher than this. Not let some offhanded comment made by his roommate, partner, friend, ruin the most promising friendship he’d been gifted in a long time. 

He should have been better. Tears rolled down his cheekbones, more defined now, anyway. The last time Viktor had a reaction like this, it was Jayce who had picked him up off the ground, dusted him off, and enveloped him in the warmest hug he’d ever known. Now, even busting through the door of their shared living space, Jayce was nowhere to be seen, and he wouldn’t be for the foreseeable future. This was the final cruel blow to Viktor’s chest, and he felt his heart split open for the second time that week, collapsing onto his bed with a slam of his door and shaking fingers. 

He coughed over gasps, trying desperately to fill his lungs with coveted air in an attempt to replicate some breathing exercise he’d overheard one of the physical therapists advising a shaky patient about. Phlegm blocked his airways sharply and Viktor could hear the sound of his own ragged breathing in his burning ears. 

He couldn’t think, overcome with shame at his inadequacy. Unable to just let things slide, unable to nurture a relationship so easily like he could his plants, unable to breathe when he needed it the most, unable to lay on his bed without some part of his body aching painfully. His chest burned, but it had been burning for days so what was a little more acid, really? It felt like heavy stones were piled on top of him, though his muscles jolted with shivers racking his entire body. 

He tossed his turtlenecked sweater off and onto the floor alongside his overcoat, toeing off his leather loafers and just barely unbuttoning his pants. He knew removing the brace would be too great an effort, so his trousers would be staying on despite the fire that seared his skin at the slightest friction. 

Under the thick duvet, Viktor could curl up in a way not dissimilar to how Jayce had curled up that fateful day the week prior. He groaned through a cough. All of his extremities were cold, pressed against each other, but he shut his eyes and let the rest of the tears slip onto his pillow as a heavy sleep finally overtook him. 

He couldn’t pry his eyes open when the front door creaked open, and the weight of deep sleep still sat upon his shoulders, blurring his thoughts and sounds in and out. The front door opening, shuffling in the kitchen, steps growing farther away, darkness, footsteps growing nearer, pausing, just on the other side of his door, darkness, the swish of his bedroom door opening. This was enough to clear Viktor’s mind and quiet the sleepy buzz in his ears. He didn’t move a single muscle, trying his hardest to maintain the same breathing pattern. 

Yellow light poured in through the cracked door, illuminating Viktor’s side of the bed and making it very hard to not squint at the sudden brightness. It was silent, save for the steady breathing coming from the doorway. 

Viktor nearly jumped when the footsteps started up again, and for a moment he was afraid that Jayce was going to grab him out of bed, yell at him for being so useless, or something. Instead, they shuffled unobtrusively around his room, stopping and restarting at random points.

With a quiet huff, Jayce padded back to the door, pausing for just a moment before closing it again and retreating to the rest of the suite. 

Viktor’s leg was still more sore than usual, flashing with the sudden upstart in blood flow. Viktor inhaled deeply, readjusting his position from the sprawled out, tangled mess into a tighter, much less troubled one. With eyes still closed, he shifted the sheets and thick duvet back to their even positions across his bed and sighed back into deep sleep. 

_______________________

When he woke up again, his mind was far too occupied in wondering what godless hour of the night it was to notice the state his room was in. 

Viktor wrenched the analogue clock away from its innocent spot on his night table, glaring through the general darkness to try and read it, though failing exceptionally. He reached around to the other side and flicked the brass switch on the little lamp beside his bed. The room lit up in a warm glow that Viktor had to blink for a long time to adjust properly to. After processing the fact that it was 4:45 in the goddamned morning, Viktor shoved the little clock back into its spot on the table and swept a gaze over the room. 

His mouth fell open at the sight before him. That sight being a very carefully organised desk, an empty hamper, a floor free of various clothing, and a fresh set of towels waiting beside the connecting bathroom. Somewhat notably, the coat and loafers he’d tossed with abandon earlier were nowhere to be seen, and Viktor thought he could see the red sweater he’d yanked off onto the floor prior to crashing into bed in one of the neatly folded piles of laundry atop his dresser. 

Something uncomfortable panged in his chest, just barely quiet enough not to rouse the other creatures of burden that had taken shelter there so recently. Viktor remembered, finally, the snippets of sound from much, much earlier in the night. A more powerful feeling in his chest weighed down on him.

Jayce had… how could he explain it? Jayce had come into Viktor’s room for the first time in weeks, since even before their argument, if Viktor could call it that, and cleaned the entire thing. Who knows how many times the lunatic had popped into his room for a cheeky stare, paired a couple of socks and collected some papers into a stack on Viktor’s desk? 

He wanted to feel something grateful, some sort of grace and appreciation for the favour, but he couldn’t. Viktor reached over the side of the bed to touch it, and just as he’d feared, it was still warm from the industrial drier. 

Shit. Jayce was probably still awake, having just set this aside. Had entered Viktor’s room, touched all of his stuff in an effort to—what? Did he think Viktor would be happy with this? Moved, changed? Jayce couldn’t even look him in the eyes, but still felt it was within his right to enter Viktor’s room, whilst he slept, and just touch everything, putting it into a system he’d deemed more fitting. It was such a painful tug of emotion, the residual hurt and anger and confusion at their last real interaction only just having fully developed, sliced right down the middle with crawling vines of something so unbearably confusing it made Viktor’s eyes water. 

Jayce hadn’t re-organised Viktor’s shelves, he hadn’t put papers or books away and didn’t even put the CD sitting in the open player back into its case. He didn’t put Viktor’s laundry away for him, he didn’t try and fit everything into drawers to get it out of the way to make room for a less cluttered, minimalist looking space. Still, the tentative organisation and shifting around of Viktor’s beloved belongings felt like someone had reached into his chest and rummaged around, reorganising his organs in a system that was prettier, but served no purpose. 

He felt like he knew Jayce even less than he did before they met. A yin and yang of unpredictability, stubbornness and insecurity contradicted by unspoken peeks through Viktor’s door when he thought he was asleep, by thinking that doing Viktor’s fucking laundry after not speaking for days was a normal thing to do. Once, Viktor thought Jayce was a rich, naive asshole who was too big for his britches, revelling in the attention he received from the administration and internships alike. Then, he thought Jayce was perhaps more complex than that. A man who covered himself behind a thick mask but wanted badly to escape, to have a shoulder to cry on, someone who might understand him in all the ways that mattered. Once, Viktor had thought that he could be that person. 

Now? Now it seemed like all of the noticings, all of the considerations and aspects of Jayce that Viktor had so painstakingly memorized had been wiped clean. Jayce just seemed small. A man who didn’t know how to apologize, who threw tantrums when he was upset, a man who would use Viktor’s own disability against him. 

Viktor released a long, anguished breath and brought his legs up to his chest. 

Whatever. Didn’t matter. Jayce wasn’t who he thought he was, so what? He’d just been conveniently—mistakenly, assigned to share a living situation with the kind of guy who folded his roommates laundry after spitting some of the most hurtful things Viktor had probably ever heard. Like he thought, whatever. 

He tried to calm his thoughts, tried to just let it go and accept that everything he’d once known about his best friend was probably just another plastic layer under one of many masks. 

Frustration became pure anger. Viktor ripped the sheets off of his bed and stomped painfully over to the pile of clothes, shoving them gracelessly into drawers and slamming them shut again. 

He yanked his cane off of where it sat against his nightstand and, still in his clothes from when he’d fallen into his post-freakout coma, marched his way to Jayce’s door. 

There was a small amount of light emanating from the place between the frame and the door. It was cracked, of course it was. Of course it was. Leave it to Jayce to assume Viktor would be the one crawling back, to be the one to start the conversation again, like he always did. 

Wasn’t that exactly what was happening?

Viktor pushed it open, already snarling and halfway through winning a mental argument against the man he knew would be sitting at his desk, tinkering away at a hinge joining or a ball bearing or scribbling senselessly into his poor chalkboard. 

His heart stopped for the second time that day, for the millionth time that week. Jayce wasn’t at the desk. He wasn’t standing in front of the chalkboard. 

He was on his bed, the warm light of his nightstand burning a hazy glow into the space by his headboard, curled up under his duvet. 

Crying. Very, very obviously crying. His red-rimmed eyes pooled with tears, made shinier by the light next to his head, and, though Viktor tried not to look, a considerable amount of glistening snot dripping down his lips. 

It tightened Viktor’s chest, heart already pounding in anticipation for the fight that would inevitably come. He usually wouldn’t have the mind to yell at someone who was already crying, but it was either really fucking early or really fucking late at night and he’d just woken up to all of his things having been touched, moved, messed with, so his mind wasn’t exactly working right. 

He didn’t let Jayce speak before him. “Were you in my room?” 

“...I was just trying to do something nice, sorry.” 

Viktor sneered at Jayce’s offhandedness, fresh waves of irritation washing over him. “It’s not exactly ‘nice’ to go into an unconscious person’s room, you know?” 

Jayce furrowed his brows and jerked his head back, wiping at his eyes. “Don’t say it like that. Was just doing you a favour, god,” and then, as though he couldn’t resist making a snide remark, “thought you might appreciate a little order in your lair.” 

Viktor wanted to strangle him. In fact, he’d never wanted to strangle someone more. He almost couldn’t believe that Jayce was even attempting to defend himself after the objectively very creepy ‘favour’ he thought he’d done 

“The state of my room,” Viktor corrected, “should not concern you. It would serve you to remember your place.” The words coming out of Viktor’s mouth didn’t even sound like his own, cutting and, though he didn’t want to admit it, rather egotistical. Thoughts of their previous encounter tried to force this way to his thoughts, but he shoved them down. This was about Jayce, being mad at Jayce, letting Jayce know how upset he was. 

Viktor’s stance wavered as he tried not to doubt himself. He knew that he had every right to be angry, that he was angry, but his words were a little too charged and carried too much weight. 

“My place. Right. Night, Viktor.” Jayce turned away from him but Viktor could still  see the indents in the duvet where Jayces fists curled into it. 

He hated being shut down, but there was some reason to it. Clearly the conversation was going nowhere, ideas misaligned so extremely that something so meaningless was just another thing to disagree on.

It was almost funny, the way their minds had clicked together so perfectly before in their partnership, finishing each other’s sentences and bouncing ideas off of one another. They had agreed on everything regarding the project, and when they didn’t, all it took was a short explanation from both sides to reach a satisfying compromise. The idea of their collaboration, a compatibility so perfect it was almost impossible to imagine had Viktor wondering what it might have been like in other aspects of their lives. The thought kept Viktor awake more often than he’d like to admit.

Where was that compatibility now?

Viktor gritted his teeth and turned back to his own room, not giving Jayce a response partially in fear of the fact that returning a goodnight would sound far too domestic for how he was currently feeling. 

When he returned to the safety of his lair—room—he didn’t feel tired at all. Despite the hour, and the events of the day prior, adrenaline was coursing through his veins and reddening his face. Something about Jayce just made him so inexplicably frustrated. 

Perhaps it was the way he spoke as if everything in the world seemed clear to him, with the confidence of someone who’d only ever been right. It could have been the way he’d assumed that Viktor would just fit his entire schedule for their—his—project, even though that is exactly what Viktor had done. Maybe it was the way he spoke to Viktor in a way no one had ever spoken to him before, not only matching his own intellect but challenging it. 

The way he so easily matched Viktor in a dance of intelligence made Viktor squirm, that was undeniable, but Viktor hadn’t thought he was outright superior to the man. What about him had grated on Jayce’s insecurities? What had he done, said, or even implied that had led Jayce to believe such a thing? 

Viktor tried to shake the thoughts of their argument out of his head, but they lingered like a bad headache, even as he reorganised his room to the state it was in before. Admittedly, a bit messy. 

He rolled his eyes. Slowly, without really wanting to think about why he had suddenly decided to clean up a bit, he cleared the floor and surfaces of various papers and stationary. Totally of his own accord, of course. Jayce didn’t know Viktor’s system. He couldn’t claim that it was inefficient or disorderly because he really didn’t understand the logic behind it. 

Viktor huffed as he shuffled a stack of papers on top of his desk. Jayce just didn’t get it. He didn’t understand the way Viktor worked, the way he thought. If he did, they wouldn’t be in that situation in the first place, he would have seen that Viktor had never thought less of him as an intellectual, even when he labeled Jayce as an upper-crust attention seeker. Well, maybe not then. 

But in their friendship, Viktor’s appreciation for Jayce had been so obvious, at least to himself. There was just nothing he’d done that would have suggested otherwise. Jayce asked for corrections, for revisions, for help, and Viktor had been more than honoured to help. 

It was possible that he’s assumed Jayce knew how he felt about him instead of making it clear. 

He sighed loudly, trying to block out the overly sleep deprived thoughts that were sounding too much like they were defending Jayce’s argument and not his own. It wasn’t very effective, because soon he was thinking about his own harsh words. 

He’d meant to argue back properly, but he was just so angry, so frustrated that Jayce would ever approach him with that attitude, with any attitude other than… friendly. He didn’t really mean what he’d said about Mel. Maybe he did. Maybe he just wanted Jayce to talk about it. 

When Viktor was finished, after he’d preened over the placement of some of his trinkets and readjusted the angle of his shelved planters about a hundred times, he could finally feel the familiar creep of tiredness working its way back behind his eyes. 

Despite the strain in his leg from the tense pacing as he cleaned, relaxation came easy enough, and after some minutes of tossing and turning Viktor finally felt sleep overtake him. 

_______________________

A feeling of urgency flooded Viktor’s brain the second he woke up, pulling him off of his bed and to his wardrobe even though it was still early and he’d been planning on sleeping the day away, ignoring emails from various students. 

He had to get out of the suite, try and enjoy the campus whilst it was still the height of his favourite season. Anywhere except for where Jayce was going to be, really. A familiar jittery squeeze made itself at home in his chest at the thought of his roommate, a wound still not fully healed and rubbed raw again by the argument they had just a few hours before. 

It was hard to try not to think about Jayce as he pulled his metallic brace over his knee, and much harder to avert his gaze when he made his way to the door as the man stood silently in the kitchen. He could feel Jayce’s eyes on him, but kept his eyes on his shoes as he slipped them on. It was silent aside from the occasional click of his cane on the laminate. 

He couldn’t even find it within himself to be angry like he was last night, or when they’d first argued, just gritting his teeth against the unrelenting hurt that throbbed between his ribs. He swallowed the building burn in his throat and flung the door open, not bothering to look behind him as it clicked shut. 

Thankfully, the brisk autumn air was exactly the cold plunge that Viktor needed to stop the spiral of thoughts that flurried in his mind like snowflakes in a blizzard. It was a welcome distraction and the cool air danced on his cheeks, almost in soft apology. 

He walked without rush to another side of the campus, closer to the freshman dorms than the postgraduate facilities. He’d spent a lot of time there in his undergraduate years, finding the shadowed benches a comfort in his isolation. It was an area that was more heavily wooded than other parts, trees not as carefully trimmed and hedges growing wildly around in concentric patterns and complex branches. In the autumn, it was nothing short of magical. Though the hedges themselves didn’t turn with the seasons, every single tree dotting the small courtyard was bursting with rich colours, just at the precipice of falling gracefully and restarting the cycle of nature over again. 

Almost no one came here, another reason Viktor had kept returning throughout his time at the campus. Most students preferred the liveliness of sunny quads or grassy fields instead of secluded, shadowed benches. 

Something stopped him in his tracks, the second he passed turned to sit at his favourite bench. A young woman, freckled, with mousy hair and round glasses that swallowed her features. Sky. 

He coughed, but it came out a bit too rattled and wet, sending a shudder through his spine. “Morning, Miss Young.” 

She looked up, quickly readjusting the glasses on her nose and squinting through the pale sunlight. Recognition lit up her face and she nearly leapt out of her seat. 

“Oh, Viktor! How have you been? It’s been a while! I’m sorry, I was automatically reassigned an official tutor after our first session, I didn’t even get a say. I emailed you, I’m not sure if you saw.” The last bit was raised as a question, and Viktor thought back to the hundred of emails he tended to ignore from undergraduate students, varying in desperation to pass whatever course and questionable general sanity.

Guilt constricted in his gut. He correlated the idea of Sky too closely with the entirety of the incident at the lab. Not only had he been neglectful enough to put himself at risk and leave the lab unsterilised, he’d also brought a poor undergraduate into the whole disaster. 

“Eh, right, I am sorry too, it was rather, ehm, irresponsible of me to…” She was shaking her head and Viktor didn’t really feel like bringing it back up again, he’d already been cut open and bled dry and revisiting a wound that was just starting to heal over didn’t sound appealing. “Anyway, how have you been?” 

“Well, once the doctors finally let me go, I was able to catch up fast enough. Still working too much though, I’m sure you get it.” Sky was chuckling lightly but Viktor was suppressing a grimace. 

He almost couldn’t bring himself to ask. “The doctors, eh, how bad did it end up being?” His gaze was concentrated on the bench, but he could see her brows furrow in his peripherals. 

“Didn’t they tell you the same thing?” She was trying to hold onto the remains of lightheartedness, but Viktor could feel the concern that lined her words and strained her voice. 

“I didn’t, eh, the biohazard team tested me for anything bad. They said they didn’t see anything.” Even as he said it, he wasn’t convinced it was the truth. The tests they did were very specific, and there was no way to tell if it was something more complex than, like, pneumonia. 

Sky’s face just reiterated the conversation he’d had with Caitlyn weeks prior. Dangerous. Requiring medical attention. They must have kept Sky for a while, she said she’d had to catch up on classes. “You should probably go see a doctor, Viktor, they ran me through a couple of weeks of antibiotics and I still had to be on watch for a while… it could have been bad, they said I would’ve developed this cough—” Viktor gripped his cane with white knuckles. “Then my lungs would’ve just gotten trashed, they said it was some new thing going around in other parts of the world.” 

They were already using the bacteria as a weapon, then. Whoever the anonymous ‘they’ was this time didn’t matter to Viktor anymore. How could Heimerdinger not have known about this? The air burned in Viktor’s lungs as he inhaled steadily. He tried not to cough it out. 

“I will try and see a medical professional, thank you for reminding me.” It was a thinly concealed ‘that is a terrifying prospect, thank you for sharing’, Viktor hoped she wouldn’t catch on. 

She invited him to sit on the bench, turning to face the courtyard quietly, and Viktor found himself happy to oblige. It was nice to sit in the presence of someone so far removed from his current situation. 

This situation was exactly the type of thing that Viktor tried to avoid, the reason he’d stayed far away from groups in undergrad and remained a solitary creature until now. Getting swept up in the allure of friends, groups, drama was the sort of thing Viktor remembered hating other kids for. 

It was more real to him now. Threads of fate had so suddenly tied him mercilessly to more people than he’d ever expected to be friends with, and had just as suddenly ripped them away. Viktor knew Cailtyn would support Jayce, but it still struck him with a palpable disappointment. He really liked her. Seeing her and Jayce together on campus, frowning and gesturing firmly as they worked their way through a conversation not meant for Viktor to see, was a painful reminder that the group had been just fine without him. They could be fine without him again. 

Sky was simply herself. She didn’t care about the happenings of a few random upperclassmen, no matter how popular or rich they were. He let her describe the events of her day, her week, her work, and it all floated lazily around the trees and through Viktor’s mind. 

They talked about other TAs, teachers, and whatever campus events were coming up until the morning sun was positioned high in the centre of the sky. A few clouds drifted about, but the sky was otherwise a pleasant blue. 

The heaviness in Viktor’s chest subsided somewhat, and by the time Sky was putting the books she’d been reading back into her bag, he found himself wanting to sit there in pleasant monotony forever. She did have to attend her classes, obviously, if she wanted to avoid a very serious infraction for all of the absences she’d accumulated in her time away from school, so Viktor bid her a pleasant goodbye and watched her leave. He released a breath, letting the pleasant lightness wash over him with a new contact in his phone and the promise of a free coffee whenever he wanted an excuse to get out. 

Viktor had neglected to keep up on his work recently, he was fully aware of it. Work seemed like a crushing load of unmanageable tasks with the near-end of the semester, and he’d been good at ignoring the incoming deadlines for student feedback and TA meetings, but it was about time he finally caught up with his own projects. He also tried not to ponder on the word “project” for too long, it sparked something unsavory in him.

Making his way back to Kiramman Hall, he made a mental note to start seeing a physical therapist again. Maybe try out some of the stretches he knew. Find a good filing system for his computer. Maybe learn how to cook his favourite Zaunite dish. Hell, maybe even find the time to actually visit a doctor.

The point was, things were going to get better. Viktor didn’t need Jayce, didn’t need Jayce’s project or his witty comebacks or his infuriating arrogance or his warm hands or enveloping hugs. He didn’t need any of it. He could enjoy university without Jayce.  

It had helped, that’s for certain, but it wasn’t a necessary component. Viktor enjoyed learning, enjoyed the time he spent by himself, and he couldn’t feel out of place on campus if he tried. People like Jayce were different, too difficult and unpredictable to rely on, no matter how much he had wanted to. Viktor had already spent so many years without the man, he could easily find a way to do it again. 

 _______________________

Things did not get better. Viktor couldn’t exactly say he was shocked, though. It was the end of the semester, the point in the year where classes were all abuzz with anticipation for the oncoming holidays, nervous about finals or which European country their family was vacationing to that year. Naturally, with the students’ break came an onslaught of work for teachers, tutors, and TAs alike. 

Revising, marking, remarking, planning, it all seemed like a tsunami looming threateningly on the horizon, one that Viktor could try and ignore until the holidays actually started but would no doubt drown him in paperwork. He didn’t make plans to visit Zaun, he really didn’t have a reason to, anyway. His mother had passed many years ago, and whatever semi-friends he’d made had slowly faded farther into the background until they were forgotten. 

Winter that year would be spent holed up in his room or at the library, if the weather permitted, looking over lesson plans and trying to decode the informal chicken scratch so many students wrote their papers in. Exciting. 

Viktor sat in the lecture hall, listening to Heimerdinger chatter away about the properties of different bacteriophages, or something, he wasn’t really listening. Viktor stared pointedly at the stocky professor, trying to seem unaffected but internally trying his damndest not to make eye contact with a very intense gaze hiding under a mop of dark blue hair. 

They hadn’t talked, not yet. Caitlyn did message him a few times with a proposition to meet for lunch or coffee, each time being politely declined with the excuse that Viktor was just too busy to do anything except for work. Not exactly a lie, but Viktor knew Caitlyn would see through the weak facade, anyway. 

Viktor’s posture straightened when Heimerdinger announced the end of the research project, pulling out a list to recite each bacteria to the entire class. 

He waited with bated breath as the scraggly looking man rattled off about various strains of yeast, E. coli, the typical organisms that were to be expected in such a course, punctuating each bullet point with an oof or good one. It was taking too long, and Viktor knew Caitlyn’s was going to be last, of course it was. It was as if the fluid in his lungs was trying to claw its way up, to wrench itself out of his throat and slide across the floor in an attempt to infect more, more, more. 

Heimerdinger paused briefly, muttering something to himself as though it were far more important than finding out exactly what had reached its way inside of Viktor’s lungs and taken hold, slowly suffocating him more with each passing day.  

“Finally, our star of the show, the ever-generously donated mystery bacteria!” He presented a small, corked vial of the substance Viktor was so sure had been cleared entirely from the campus. He leaned forward and ignored the shake in his hands. 

“This little beast is known colloquially as The Grey, and is currently being researched by military scientists around the globe for its nasty effects on—” his head twitched to the side, furrowed brows momentarily meeting Viktor’s gaze , “the human body. Though don’t worry, I doubt you’ll ever have to come into contact with this icky bacteria, so long as you’re not on the wrong side of any war!” Heimerdinger was laughing, he was fucking laughing, at the sentiment as if it wasn’t a deranged exposition on Piltover’s devastation. 

He wondered if Heimerdinger would consider Zaun to be on “the wrong side” of a war. A class war, a culture war, whatever it had to be. Whatever Piltover could justify it as. How many Zaunites had been exposed to it, either from suspiciously funded research in underground facilities that had a tendency to explode, or from some form of human testing? 

He could think of one. Another Zaunite, victimised by the cunning, no, the ignorance of a filthy rich administration who rolled over and took whatever unethical practice it needed to in order to come home to dinner served on a silver platter. He was currently sitting in a lecture hall. Viktor felt winded. 

Victim of a war crime, just add it to the growing list of how absolutely wonderfully Viktor’s life was going at the moment. He was going to have another panic attack. No, he wasn’t, he already knew he was sick and had deduced that it was most certainly a result of the bacteria trashing his lungs, as Sky put it. All he needed was a name, and Heimerdinger had so gleefully given it to him. They Grey, a name dripping with acid and that ate away at Viktor’s nerves until he couldn’t stop the shake in his hands. 

Class ended soon after, with Viktor too distracted by his ever-piling thoughts to notice a very tall blue haired girl quickly make her way over to him. 

“Viktor.” 

He almost jumped, an intense tightness in his chest forming at the sound of Caitlyn’s voice, but managed to shove it down and force a polite smile. “Hello, Caitlyn, how are you?” 

She stared at him. “Did you hear what Heimerdinger said?” Vikotr’s face fell. Obviously Caitlyn didn’t want flashy, fake smiles, nor did she want pandering small talk.  

Still, he couldn’t find words that would express anything he was feeling as truthfully as he wanted them to. He nodded instead.

Caitlyn’s lips looked worn and bitten, a slight imperfection in her typically effortlessly composed look.  “I’m—” 

“Don’t apologise again, please. It’s—I’m going to see a doctor soon, it will be fine with some antibiotics, I’m sure.” 

She didn’t look convinced. 

“Viktor,” he glanced away, preparing his excuse for what Caitlyn was going to say next, “please. We can… we can get some ramen. I still haven’t paid you back for that, and it’s been so long, and Viktor please don’t cancel. I know you don’t have a lunch break on Mondays and I know it’s been too long since you’ve spoken to a real life human.” 

He missed her. 

She watched him as he sighed and reached down to collect his book bag, following him tentatively to the door of the hall until he turned his head. “I heard they’re having a special on the tom-yum. I’ve been meaning to try it for a while, I suppose.” 

Caitlyn audibly suppressed a squeal as she rushed up, wrestling Viktor into her arms and exclaiming loudly about how she’d also been wondering about the very same special. Something in his gut loosened. 

They walked to a nearby bus stop instead of walking the distance to the hole-in-the-wall ramen shop, as Viktor had already spent so much time walking from class to class and sitting stiffly in his chairs at the front of classrooms listening to the droning of various professors. He had been managing to stretch regularly, and he’d just recently replaced a faulty bolt in his brace so the tension wasn’t wearing too greatly on his knee. 

The sun sat in the sky, resting just above the city line and bathing the pale city in an orangey glow that was surprisingly early considering the time of day it was. Late sunsets and warm breezes seemed too recent to be lost so soon to the clutches of late autumn, but Viktor had been far too busy that semester to closely note the change in seasons. Viktor watched buildings pass as he and Caitlyn sat in silence, not awkward but brimming with tension and the unspoken acknowledgement of what had occurred within the group.

The two of them hopped off the bus and headed into the restaurant. Viktor didn’t expect Cailtyn to be actually serious about paying him back for the ramen he’d once bought for her some months ago, but she shoved her way to the register with a gleaming credit card between her fingers before Viktor could slam his cash onto the countertop. 

Viktor grinned and tried to fight over the poor cashier that was just trying to take their orders, shouting over each other about who was “definitely going to pay” and who was “absolutely not permitted to pay under any circumstance, trust me.” Admittedly, it was the first lighthearted joke Viktor had made in a few weeks, and the ease with which it flooded the air between them was relieving in ways Viktor didn’t know existed. 

They sat with steaming bowls and, as usual, spent a few minutes downing the soup in silence before Caitlyn spoke up, mouth full of dripping bean sprouts. Viktor laughed, he couldn’t help it.

“Are you gonna talk?” Her speech was muffled by the sheer amount of vegetables she’d managed to fit into her mouth, but Viktor’s laughter died out at the severity of the question. 

“Talk about what?” 

Caitlyn shook her head and swallowed. “No, are you going to talk?” She waved her hand around Vikotr vaguely. A pause. “You and Jayce?” 

The intensity of their conversation had ramped up far too quickly than Viktor had anticipated and it was difficult for him to avoid becoming defensive, made harder by the searing burn in his ribs at the mention of his roommate. He gritted his teeth and looked around. “I’m… not sure.” 

She sighed loudly and rested her head in her hands, elbows propped against the table. Viktor could tell that Caitlyn was trying to formulate the right words, her brows furrowed in concentration within the storm of thoughts that was undoubtedly swirling in her head. There was an audible silence in the restaurant and Viktor wished it would swallow him whole, not make him face the current situation of him and his roommates more than strained relationship.

They avoided each other in the suite, danced around each other when they did chores and kept to their rooms as much as possible. If they saw each other on campus, which was somewhat rare, one of them would turn and walk the other way, if not both of them. It was getting to be a bit ridiculous, honestly, but the pain in Viktor’s heart did not subside so neither did his anger at the man. 

“You have to speak. You live together.” Viktor glanced away. “You cannot just avoid each other like children everywhere you go! You could at least be amicable! When’s the last time we all went out as a group? Whatever happened between you two couldn’t have been that horrible, obviously, he still—” She cringed and stumbled over the next few words, backtracking immediately. “You guys obviously got close quickly. He…I don’t think I’ve ever seen him so, well, crazy about someone.” 

It was surprising to hear, not because Viktor didn’t already know that but because it was coming from someone else's perspective. 

Essentially, Viktor knew very well that he and Jayce worked well together, and enjoyed it. He didn’t, however, expect anyone else to be so aware of it. To what extent did Caitlyn know about his and Jayce’s partnership? Had he talked to her about it, or had she deduced it on her own? Had she picked up on it from one of their few group hangouts during the collaboration? 

“I haven’t… I didn’t think you would still want to talk to me.” A shift in topic was easier than addressing a claim so emotionally loaded. “I figured that by now Jayce has told you all about what happened.” 

Caitlyn shifted in her seat and looked squarely at Viktor, bringing her hands together on the table. “Why would you think that? Actually, it doesn’t matter, it’s not true. I have talked to Jayce about it, in fact it’s been all he can seem to talk about for a while, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to avoid you, too.” her gaze did not deviate from Viktor’s warming face. “Jayce wouldn’t ask me to do that, either. You know he wouldn’t.” 

“Wouldn’t he?” Viktor bristled, unable to stop the venom from spilling out of his mouth. It had been so long since Vikotr allowed himself to think on the situation freely instead of forcing all Jayce-related thoughts down into the depths of his memory. The familiar ache in his chest throbbed now, a delicate wound rubbed raw again and split wide open. 

Caitlyn was having none of it. “Viktor, you know he wouldn’t. You don’t understand how bad— how much he’s talked to me about this, how—”

“Yes, about how my superiority complex is far too great for his damaged ego to handle and how everything I touch is beneath me, how he never wishes to speak to me again. I’ve heard it all already, actually, right from the source.”

“Viktor, stop.” The tone of Caitlyn’s voice actually did put a stop to his spiralling train of thought, jarred by the bite it carried. “I know he was a dick. No one gets that more than he does, trust me. It’s just… he won’t talk to me about it but I know you said some things that night, too. I know you wouldn’t just not defend yourself.” 

“I’m surprised he didn’t jump at the opportunity to tell you about it.” Viktor could hear the bitterness in his words, and glanced away. What had happened wasn’t Caitlyn’s fault. Jayce’s reaction wasn’t her fault, either. Viktor was just, most certainly, not ready to face the option that he might have played a role in it as well.  

Caitlyn stared at him, unimpressed. He sighed. “I, yes. I did. I…brought up certain things I’m not exactly proud of, but it hardly compares to taking a cane from a disabled person and tossing it to the ground.” 

 “There is no way he tossed your cane—”

“He may as well have! Who the hell goes into their roommates room whilst they’re unconscious and touches everything, then acts surprised when it doesn’t turn out? Who spends weekswith a person doing nothing but, ugh, connecting, and then just throws it all away in one night?” Viktor’s accent was thickening over the harshness in his words, making it harder to force out the buzzing thoughts in his head. He could feel his throat constricting over the air as he breathed heavily.  

Caitlyn squinted and brought a hand up to rub at her temple. “He…didn’t tell me about the room thing.” 

A silence descended over their table as Viktor tried to regain composure, wondering what it was that Jayce had told Caitlyn, if it wasn’t Viktor’s alleged evil or his own good deeds. He chanced a glance up at Caitlyn, her eyes were off to the side and her mouth was pressed into a firm line. She was choosing her next words carefully. 

“Look, Viktor, I know Jayce was a total asshole. He knows it too, really. I just think… I think you both miss each other more than you’ll ever admit. He just… you guys won’t feel better until you make up, trust me. Ignoring the problem doesn’t magically make it go away, no matter how convenient that would be.” Viktor didn’t want to listen to Caitlyn, he wanted to brush off her words, but he also knew that she knew exactly what she was talking about. 

“It would mean a lot to the group if you could make up, anyway. At least get on better terms, if you can, please. If not for you, then for me?” Eventually Viktor nodded. He wasn’t ready to give up on Caitlyn. He didn’t want to give up on Jayce, no matter how much simpler it might have made things.

“Fine. I’ll try and… talk with him.” 

Caitlyn released a dramatic sigh, folding over onto the table and lifting her water glass in a mock-toast. “Oh, thank god. My inbox is suffering, I’ve had to put my phone on silent with the amount of texts I get from him in a day.” 

They both smiled at that, and Viktor tried another spoonful of the savoury soup in front of him. It had gotten much colder, but Viktor enjoyed it anyway. They sat in a silence much more comfortable than last time, and when Caitlyn finished before Viktor she took the opportunity to update him on the current status of her life at the moment. It was easy, almost too light in response to the emotionally heated conversation but unimaginably relieving.

He’d worried too much about all of the hurtful things Caitlyn could have done, but he’d forgotten to take into account the real, genuine version of her that he knew. The cruel, mean-girl-esque images in his head didn’t line up with her as well as he’d once thought, and he relaxed into the chair underneath him. 

If Caitlyn, a girl who was practically Jayce’s own family, didn’t hate him after all of that, then perhaps it hadn’t been as disastrous as he once thought. Perhaps there was still a chance that Jayce really did miss him.

Perhaps Viktor would talk to him.