Work Text:
They are so close that he can almost taste it - the ozone and metal and magic on his tongue. Viktor draws himself up and there is an undercurrent of steel in the thickness of his accent, a remarkable strength in his thin fingers when he squeezes Jayce’s shoulder - an encouragement, an insistence .
“Whatever happens,” he murmurs, “do not stop.”
“Wait!” Sudden fear seizes Jayce’s chest, a terrible thrill that floods his veins. “What are you -?”
Viktor shores himself up against the door frame, resolution writ across his odd, angular face in the blue throb of the crystal’s light. Without hesitation, he palms his cane, ramming it through the gilt handles of the double doors.
“Buying time.”
Beneath the thrum of electricity - their hextech theory made real - he hears the first staccato strike of bootheels coming down the marble corridor. Heimerdinger’s sharp, nasal tone cuts through the whirring of the crystals, the deafening roaring of the blood in his ears. “Stop this lunacy at once!”
He is a meager barricade, but Viktor leans all his weight into the door - shuddering with the first impact of fists slamming against the hardwood - and demands “next sequence!”
Jayce, fumbling with adrenaline - with fear - works the dials frantically and forces himself not to think about what will happen if they fail. If he damns them both. Instead, he slams his eyes closed and forces himself to breathe , to picture the precise gestures of the mage, carving runic arcs through the bitter cold Fjordland air.
Graceless without his crutch, Viktor throws himself bodily toward their makeshift workbench and Jayce hasn’t even known the man for a full twenty-four hours, but the presence at his elbow - the fierce warmth of Viktor’s conviction, of his belief - is the catalyst Jayce needs. The rhythm of the rune sequence settles in his bones in a way that belies the nervous pitch of his own voice.
No pressure.
It takes a pressure of approximately 825,000 pounds per square inch to form diamonds. To form their first hexgate requires only a surge of adrenaline and the weight of one fine-boned hand upon his forearm.
Heimerdinger’s lab gives a sudden, terrible lurch. It’s gut-wrenching, punching the air from their lungs - an explosion of light and the nauseating vertigo of instant weightlessness. Of being hurled through space. And Jayce waits for the inevitable pain of collision - slamming into the wall, the ceiling falling down around their heads…
It never comes.
“Oh.”
A small, astonished gasp - Viktor.
Jayce blinks the searing afterimages of blue supernovas from his vision, shaking his head until the single siren-note of tinnitus that he is becoming intimately familiar with these days begins to ebb. And - wow .
The stars have come down to settle around them - a galaxy of soft, blue magic that brushes up against the domed ceiling of the laboratory. It sparkles with residual electricity, a glitter that hums over their skin and raises the hairs along Jayce’s bare forearms.
“It’s beautiful .” Viktor’s angular, unusual face is slack with reverence - with awe - his voice soft enough that Jayce just barely hears him.
He’s right.
Jayce had thought it beautiful when he was nine, half-frozen and watching as tattooed hands worked raw magic out of the elements - but this? He’s crafted this. He and Viktor, machining it and refining it and making magic out of science. It’s incredible.
Grinning - giddy with the rush of their success - Jayce reaches into the nebulae for a stray cog making slow orbits around his head. He gives it a gentle flick, holds his breath as he watches it turn end-over-end toward the little blue miasma of a portal. It shimmers out of existence and, in the space between heartbeats, reappears before Viktor’s outstretched hand.
“You’ve done it.”
Back in the world where this was supposed to be impossible - where Professor Heimerdinger, eight feet below them, has both his little feet planted firmly on the ground - there is a hint of astonishment in the yordle’s voice.
“You’ve actually done it - but just because it can be done, doesn’t mean…”
What had Viktor said? That sly, crooked smile cutting through the shadows. When you’re going to change the world, don’t ask for permission.
“Will you please stop hovering? ”
A part of Viktor’s keen mind has already started running the figures; calculating the mechanics of their suspension, the physics involved in magical flight. A smaller, selfish part of him simply relishes the sensation - the unanticipated relief of weightlessness, free from the drag of gravity on his sore, weary joints.
“I’m… not sure how to do that, sir.”
He’s not sure he ever wants to stop - to fall back down to earth.
But, already, gravity is stretching up to enfold them once again. They sink by inches back toward the laboratory floor as Jayce beams down at the Councilors and, mindless of any political maneuvering, corrects Mel Medarda with a breathless “ hextech - the era of hextech.”
“Hextech,” the Councilor agrees.
Heimerdinger’s short legs carry him across the laboratory to inspect their hastily reconstructed resonance cage, muttering all the while. His displeasure is obvious and Jayce catches a few choice words about the mess, the admitted ingenuity of their design. As a scientist, the yordle has no choice but to acknowledge that a thing, once discovered, cannot be undiscovered. There is no halting the trajectory of this now.
“Believe me, my dear boys, I can sympathize with the enthusiastic pursuit of scientific inquiry - but this ?!” Heimerdinger strokes his mustache, puzzling over their equipment with a deep scowl. “Blatant disregard for safety, for the ethos - not to mention breaking into a superior’s office to perform illegal experimentation? I am disappointed , gentlemen.”
Viktor, dismayed, opens his mouth to interject. “Sir -”
Anything he might say is lost in a startled yelp as Heimerdinger brings one small fist down on the cage’s dial. Like blowing out a candle, their hextech galaxy vanishes, sending Jayce, Viktor, and all the free-floating odds and ends caught up in their experiment plummeting the few final feet back to solid ground.
His twisted leg buckles on impact. It is only a desperate, blind grab for the edge of the workbench that keeps Viktor from crumpling to the floor in a heap.
It feels just a little bit like an unspoken punishment.
“Professor.” Jayce, slightly more agile, still struggles to get his breath back, hazel eyes bright with concern when they dart from Viktor’s hunched figure to Heimerdinger and back. “You have to understand, I -”
The yordle sighs; a sound heavy with the full weight of his three-hundred years. “I admit, I am not surprised to see you continuing to pursue this line of inquiry, Jayce - but Viktor?” He shakes his head. “I would not have expected such a violation of my trust from you .”
Viktor’s face falls.
Jayce remembers what he’d called himself - a poor cripple from the Undercity - and, for the first time, realizes just how much Viktor stands to lose. “Please, Professor,” he interjects. “It was my fault! I… I’m the one who convinced him to -”
“Are you dissatisfied in your role as my assistant, Viktor?”
For all that he is no higher than their knees, Cecil B. Heimerdinger manages to give the impression that he is looking down his twitchy pink nose at Viktor; hands clasped behind his back, held erect with all of a Piltovan founder’s righteous self-importance.
Viktor, for all that he seems taken aback by the question, does not shy from it. He pushes himself up from the edge of the desk, squares his shoulders, and says - like it is blatantly obvious and yet slightly embarrassing - “well… yes .”
“Hm.”
Do you think it was my life’s ambition to be an assistant?
Heimerdinger nods, as though he has expected this. “And so you seek a grand project, do you? Something with a bit of scientific panache to make a name for yourself with - to step outside the shadow of your old mentor?”
Each word is a barb, calculated to wound and yet seemingly offhanded.
“ Sir ,” Viktor gasps out, the gleam of his eyes bright with hurt. “If this is what you think of me -”
Jayce hasn’t even known the man’s name for more than a handful of hours, and yet he can see how false the accusations ring. Viktor - mouth agape - looks positively devastated by the mere insinuation. Does Heimerdinger know his assistant at all ?
“I want - I have only ever wanted - to make a difference, Professor.” Embarrassed, dismayed, Viktor grapples for his words. “To make the world a better place. Were my name forever consigned to obscurity, I would not care, so long as my work had meaning.”
“And you fail to find meaning under my tutelage?”
One white, tufted brow lifts in challenge and Jayce is flummoxed at the thought that their esteemed professor could be so obtuse.
“Not all of us can afford to wait a hundred years for progress” Viktor bites out, dragging one fine-boned hand across his face. Too late, he registers the surliness in his own words, wincing. “I have the utmost respect for your work, Professor, please do not mistake me - I only mean…”
He falters, the deep ‘v’ of his dark brows scrunched with confusion when he sees the self-satisfied smirk hiding behind Heimerdinger’s full mustache.
“Is this…” Viktor blinks. “You are testing me?”
“Am I?” Heimerdinger thrusts both hands into the pockets of his Academy suit coat, a picture of innocence. “Wherever did you get such an idea?”
It’s… irritatingly cryptic, the yordle’s expression mild and entirely unreadable when he looks them each up and down in turn.
“I will expect to see your formal resignation on my desk first thing tomorrow morning,” he hums. “ And there will need to be an official proposal submitted before the Council - best you get started on the paperwork at once, if this venture is to be approved.”
Paperwork.
Viktor hates paperwork.
Jayce - still soaring on the high of their enormous, improbable success - tries and fails to appear even remotely chastised. “Understood, Professor.”
“Lock up, get some sleep - the mess can be dealt with later.” Heimerdinger waves a hand to encompass the riot of his formerly tidy office. Turning to leave, he offers a final, parting thought. “I disapprove of your methods, boys, but if you must follow this line of inquiry to its logical end, however, I would much rather you do so under the Council’s eye.”
Viktor’s strong brows are wildly expressive, face cycling through a hundred different micro-expressions as he makes aborted, exasperated gestures at the yordle’s retreating back. When the heavy doors sigh closed, a strangled sound - somewhere between distress and profound relief - escapes.
And Jayce - giddy with adrenaline, reeling and sleep-deprived - melts to the floor amid the loose papers and stray bits of machinery in a fit of giggles. “I’m… I -” he splutters helplessly. “Did we just… did that just happen ?!”
“It did,” Viktor agrees - barely more than a murmur. In the sudden stillness a faint, stunned smile slides crookedly across his face. “You have proven the Hextech Theorem.”
He darts a glance down at the bulk of Jayce’s broad frame, sprawled out on the floor, and has to quickly look away again. There is something that doesn’t bear contemplating in the young man’s expression, his hazel eyes soft and looking at Viktor - at Viktor , of all people - like he has hung the stars in the sky.
“I never could have done it without you,” Jayce tells him, earnest - a little bit breathless with the strength of his conviction. He is quick to cut off Viktor’s protest. “I meant what I said, earlier.”
Viktor is grateful for the broken laboratory windows and the blue-black midnight that cools the unexpected heat rising in his cheeks. “You said a great many things.”
“ Partners .” It’s unbearable, the way he says it. Worse, still, when Jayce levers himself upright and concentrates all the warmth of that thousand-megawatt smile on Viktor. “Hextech partners, you and me - that is… I mean, if you…”
Viktor lifts a sardonic eyebrow, the corner of his mouth twitching. “You are in luck,” he hums, careful to keep his voice even. For lack of something better to do with the adrenaline jangling through his fingertips, he crouches to shuffle uselessly through the stacks of paper avalanching off the side of Heimerdinger’s desk. “It would appear that I am, eh… how do you say? On the market for a job.”
Jayce barks out a laugh.
He joins Viktor, sweeping up another armful of blueprints and pages in the Professor’s impenetrable shorthand. Here and there, he spots notes scribbled down in the same crooked, spiky penmanship that now covers half of the scorched chalkboard in his apartments.
It seems hilariously pointless, the two of them tidying up stacks of paperwork amid the total shambles of the laboratory, but neither one of them is willing to let the moment end. There is broken glass scattered over every surface, glassware and delicate bits of machinery upended and strewn about, and it seems important to prolong this somehow - as if just a little bit more time will solidify this tremulous, new connection.
Occasionally their hands brush. Viktor comes across a particular sheaf of notes and clucks his tongue, shakes his head at something scrawled in the margins. Jayce smooths the crumpled pages of several old tomes, gathers up some of the largest shards of glass and dumps them in the waste basket. And, half-hidden in the mess, he finds - or rather, the heavy tread of his boot finds -
“Oh.” A fretful note to the words. “Viktor, your…”
In his outstretched hand is the splintered knob of Viktor’s cane.
“Hm, yes.” Viktor favors him with a rueful look. “A sacrifice in the name of progress.”
The lightness in his voice does nothing to ease the worry furrowing Jayce’s dark brow.
“Do you have a spare?”
Viktor grits his teeth against the bolt of pain that lances up his thigh when he straightens, suddenly self-conscious and irritated, trying to pretend that he doesn’t need the sturdy edge of the desk to prop himself up. He has overtaxed himself and he knows it - rebels stubbornly against it.
He scowls defiantly up at Jayce, suddenly guarded against the unctuous pity he has come to expect of well-meaning Piltovans. A false compassion that is always so much harder to swallow than the usual lofty disdain.
There is nothing like that in Jayce’s expression.
“In my rooms,” Viktor concedes. And taking Jayce’s journal from the evidence collection, breaking into Heimerdinger’s lab, proving the hextech theorem - all that had seemed easy in comparison to the effort required of him now. But he lets himself delate, just a little bit, shoulders sagging with the enormous weight of these last few, frenetic hours. “Which, I admit… are suddenly feeling very far away.”
The sun will just be starting to clear the horizon by the time he makes his way across the labyrinthine campus to the staff accommodations, up the thrice-damned staircase, and… He will have just long enough to grab the spare and clean his teeth before he has to start the same, slow journey back again.
Already, Viktor can feel the bone-on-bone grind of his joints protesting.
He is sorely tempted to shake the fine sprinkling of glass off the blanket thrown over the back of the Professor’s armchair, find a debris-free corner to curl up in, and say ‘to hell with it’ for the time being. It’s not like he hasn’t slept in the labs before - and if he’s still desperate, come sunrise, he can tube a message to the building custodian who will be kind enough to send his cane along with her daughter who studies in the Academy’s undergraduate levels.
The last thing he expects is for Jayce Talis - a lower house, but still a house - to offer to walk him home.
“Just…” Jayce scrubs shyly at the back of his neck, afraid he has offended. “I’m pretty sturdy - if you need something to lean on, that is. You know, since your cane is…”
“Okay.”
Viktor agrees before he can think the better of it.
“ Okay ,” Jayce sighs, unexpectedly relieved, as though Viktor were the one doing him the favor. “Right, how should I -?”
“Your arm,” Viktor instructs, indicating that Jayce should keep to his left. “If you please.”
Sturdy , he decides, is the perfect word for Jayce Talis.
The years of experience in his family’s forge have been generous, sculpting the breadth of his shoulders with thick muscle and lending steel to the hard tendons of his forearm when they flex and contract beneath Viktor’s fingers. Even through the fine material of his shirt, the man’s honey-brown skin is warm, bleeding into Viktor at their every point of contact as they negotiate the first few, awkward steps together.
Somehow, Jayce is accommodating without ever being overly solicitous. He lets Viktor set their pace, shores him up, and - aside from a little hum of concern the first time Viktor trips over his own turned-in foot - never once attempts to cajole or coddle or even to focus much attention on Viktor’s obvious debility.
It is only when they are making their slow descent down the pavilion steps that Jayce, looking up at the blown-out windows that mark Heimerdinger’s darkened lab, makes a thoughtful noise and says “any thoughts on how we can dampen some of that kinetic blowback during the stabilization process? I never quite got that far.”
Viktor hums; already having begun to consider the same question. “The better question, I think, is not whether we can dampen its energy - but could we, perhaps, harness it?”
“You mean turn it into some kind of feedback loop?”
“Think bigger.”
Jayce braces the door to the staff accommodations with one big shoulder and gapes down at Viktor, registering his line of thought. “A self-sustaining energy source.”
The possibilities are staggering .
It’s Viktor’s grin - wide and wolfish - that knocks the breath out of him.
“Too bad we did not have the opportunity to, eh, liberate a few dosimeters from the equipment storage,” Viktor muses - grateful to fix his mind on something, anything, other than the quandary of getting himself up the looming flights of stairs. “I suppose there is always next time.”
He expects Jayce, having escorted him safely across campus, to bid him goodnight then and leave Viktor to his own devices. Instead, the metallurgist absently shuffles around, rearranging their positions with his big, calloused hands - a firm grip on Viktor’s elbow, a steadying palm that braces the dip of his spine.
“ Next time ,” Jayce blows the words out with a sigh as Viktor lurches up another step. “Gods, this morning I didn’t even think there would be a ‘next time.’”
He does not quite manage to swallow down the damning way his voice cracks around the words and Viktor pauses, head cocked, craning his neck to find Jayce somewhere over his left shoulder.
“You…” There is such compassion, such knowing in the molten amber of those eyes - a knot of worry puckering Viktor’s dark brows - that Jayce almost sobs. “Viktor, I don’t know how I’ll ever thank you.”
Viktor does not trust easily - but he trusts that Jayce will keep him upright when he lets go of the bannister, turns to lay his strong, dry palm against a stubble-rough cheek.
“Prove that it works,” he says, and they are so close he can feel the stammering leap of Jayce’s pulse, the way he shivers when the quiet demand ghosts across the shell of his ear. “Prove that it works, and then do something good with it.”
Jayce’s squeezes the sharp knob of his elbow in return, his smile - momentarily dimmed - rekindled a hundredfold. “We will.”
“Yes,” Viktor agrees. “We will.”
There is the faintest note of wonderment in the way he says it; a bemused awe born of too much adrenaline and too little sleep and something like enamoration that leaves him giddy, heart swollen and buoyant in the confines of his chest.
Dragging himself up the last several steps, Viktor automatically fumbles for the chatelaine at his waist, searching by touch for the familiar room key. Almost in spite of himself, he huffs out a laugh - the whole thing is so utterly, perfectly preposterous.
“Eh, what do you know?” he muses, dizzy with the whirlwind of the last twenty-four hours and just a little bit punch-drunk. “It appears I am sneaking a pretty boy back to my rooms after all.”
That startles a laugh out of Jayce - unexpectedly loud and absurdly delighted , ringing back at them in the confines of the dim, too-quiet corridor. And, in the grand scheme of things, it is simultaneously the least and most daring thing he will do tonight when Jayce - bolstered by adrenaline and the way Viktor’s slim frame fits so surely along his side - ducks down to brush a kiss along the ridge of one sharp, lovely cheekbone.
“Goodnight, Viktor.”
It earns him the most endearing blush, Viktor’s angular face suddenly soft and vulnerable - bashful - in the low light.
“I…”
For a moment, every word of Common he’s ever learned seems to have evaporated.
“Good night, Jayce.”