Chapter Text
The Distinguished Innovators competition was only three days away and Jayce was certain he hadn’t slept properly in three times that long.
He and Viktor were up at all hours in the lab, notching gears, testing and re-testing tensile strength, calibrating the pressure, until every time he closed his eyes he saw the brass machinery whirling and the sharp blue of Hextech’s glow.
But it had to be done.
If they didn’t have the Hextech gate prototype ready in time, it would be another year before they had a chance like this to secure more funding. And if the prototype didn’t work, they’d be the laughingstock of the Academy. Worse, they’d make a laughingstock of their patrons– the Kirammans, the Medardas– and lose the funding they had.
That was if the whole machine didn’t explode.
Who would have known that the runes needed for an array that would transport huge boxes of cargo from one location to another had to be so precise, or so fast? If the machine didn’t cycle through the runes in the exact right pattern, at the exact right speed, it risked slingshotting the cargo halfway across the continent to explode on a mountainside in Freljord, provided it didn’t just vaporize on the launchpad.
And they still needed to find a way to have it safely transport people too, or all they’d created was a more sophisticated rail line so that rich councilors could send their goods to distant markets, and what good would that do for anyone? For Viktor?
Jayce’s vision swam and the tiny indents he’d made on the gears warped and faded and multiplied. His eyelids fluttered. His hands were shaking and, though it always felt too warm in the lab lately with spring collapsing into summer, his fingers were cold and clammy.
He knew he should probably eat something, or go home to sleep in his own bed, but there he only tossed and turned, and that pit of dread in his stomach only grew at the thought of failing, of disappointing everyone who counted on him. It made the thought of eating, or sleeping, or doing anything but continuing the preparations for the event nauseating.
If there was still time, he would have gone to work at the Talis hammer factory for a day, out on the floor like any of the other laborers, to pump the bellows and hammer the steel until the physical demands of the forges exhausted his body enough to sleep without the whirl of his thoughts jolting him awake five minutes after he put his head down. But there wasn’t time for that anymore. They only had three days.
“Jayce?”
He startled. The clippers he’d been using to notch the gear spun out of his hand and clattered to the table. Jayce swore, clutching his hand around the gear so it didn’t go spinning after it, the tiny notches cutting into his skin, and whirled his chair around.
Viktor stood over him, leaning against his cane. The circles under his eyes were just as dark as Jayce’s but there was a faint smile teasing the corner of his lips.
“What?” Jayce snapped, then caught himself, took a deep breath and smoothed back the strand of hair that had fallen into his face. He should get a haircut before the event if he wanted any of the other councilors and rich merchants there to take them seriously but, dammit, there wasn’t enough time. He took a deep breath. “What is it, Viktor?”
“I only came to say that it looks like that gear has been notched quite enough,” Viktor said, dry amusement in his voice. “Don’t you think?”
Jayce frowned and opened his hand to look at the gear. It was done, all the teeth precisely spaced apart. He’d been going in circles, notching the same ones over and over, and he hadn’t even noticed. “Dammit. I’m—I’m sorry, I didn’t realize.”
“It’s alright.”
Jayce opened his palm so the gear slid down to the table onto the finished pile, dropping with a brassy ping, then took up the next one. There were still hundreds left. “No, it’s not alright. We barely have time to finish the gears we have left to cut, I can’t be wasting it just… going in circles.”
“Jayce…”
“I’ll do better, ok?” Jayce insisted. He grabbed the notch clippers again, squared up with the smooth gear smaller than his thumbnail, so small his fingers dwarfed it. God, they needed that funding, they needed assistants, and more tools, and industrial-grade production output, or Hextech would always be a science fair project, and there wasn’t any time. “My mind must have wandered. I’m sorry.”
“Jayce.” Viktor’s hand settled on his shoulder and Jayce jolted, this time keeping a firm grip on both the gear and the clippers. Viktor barely ever touched him. Jayce looked up in confusion at his partner. “I think you should rest.”
Jayce gaped at him until Viktor’s words finished trickling through the fog in his brain. Then his jaw clenched and he turned grimly back to the gear in his hands and began clipping out the notches, one by one. “We don’t have time. Do you see that pile? There’s another one after that, and those are even smaller. I have to get through them tonight, and…”
“Jayce, it is already after midnight. The gears will keep until morning,” Viktor said.
Jayce grimaced at him. “Oh, like you’ve never stayed up working later than this.”
“True,” Viktor conceded. “But we have enough gears to get through without doing the same ones over.”
“It was an accident, a… a momentary lapse. Can you just forget about it?” Jayce protested. The warmth of Viktor’s hand on his shoulder was working through the fabric of Jayce’s shirt and making the fog around his brain even worse, reminding him how tired he really was. This wasn’t the time to be thinking about it, or wishing Viktor would touch him more often, at times where they weren’t under deadline and he wasn’t so on edge.
Would it kill Viktor to reach out when it was the end of a long week, and Jayce offered to share a drink with him at the tap house near the Academy? Why did he only reach out when Jayce was half-dead on his feet and there was still too much work to do?
Then again, that meant Jayce must really look like hell if Viktor was still there, still resting his hand on his shoulder and wearing that skeptical expression, instead of accepting his excuse and leaving like he usually did on long nights when Jayce told him not to worry.
“Fine. You’re right,” Jayce sighed. He put the clippers and the unfinished gear down on the work table. He wanted to reach up and clasp his hand over Viktor’s, just to hold it there for a moment, but as usual he repressed the instinct. He knew he was too physical for Viktor’s liking, and did his best to hold back from constantly slinging an arm around his partner, or patting him on the back, or hugging him when they finally made a breakthrough on an experiment.
Sometimes Jayce lapsed. He knew he wasn’t perfect. But all it took was Viktor stiffening at his touch to remind him that this was a one-way street. That Viktor was only ever indulging him when he didn’t tell Jayce off for breaching his personal space as often as he did without thinking.
“Good,” Viktor said, with a hint of self-satisfaction, the air of a contest won. Most people didn’t know how competitive Viktor could be, and the sight of his quiet, understated triumph brought a wan smile to Jayce’s lips. “Now, go home. Take care of yourself and come back tomorrow to finish the work.”
Jayce’s smile slipped.
“Honestly, Viktor, I’m not sure I know how,” Jayce admitted and hung his head. At least Viktor hadn’t moved his hand yet, so that was something. Maybe they were both more tired than they realized. “When I try to sleep, I just end up tossing and turning, and then wake up more exhausted than when I lay down. And I can barely taste what I’m eating. I just see the judges' table from last year’s competition, you remember them, and how they were just waiting to prop up one of their favorites ahead of us…”
“Our inventions will speak for themselves, Jayce,” Viktor said.
“I know, I know, but I still can’t get the image out of my head.” Jayce pushed the hair back from his face again, his fingers clenching in it as he stared sightlessly down at the pile of gears in front of him. “If something goes wrong, anything, you know that’s all the excuse they need to say we’re overrated. And if that happens, and word spreads, then everything we’ve done will be for nothing, and…”
“Jayce, that will not happen. And even if it did, we would just start over, hmm?” Viktor squeezed his shoulder, drawing Jayce’s gaze up. His partner was smiling, faintly. “Hextech is the miracle of this age. Even if these judges do not see it, others will.”
“How do you do it?” Jayce said. “How do you stay so calm?”
“I’m not calm,” Viktor said, calmly. “Frankly, when I think about the setback that failure at this event would represent, it makes me want to throw up. But, until we are there, I try not to think about it, because there is too much work to do.”
“But once we’re there, then you’ll throw up?” Jayce snorted.
“Probably,” Viktor admitted.
Jayce chuckled under his breath and shook his head. “Well, at least I’m not alone.”
“You are never alone, Jayce,” Viktor said. “We are in this together, after all.”
Jayce’s hand twitched, and he tightened it to a fist in his lap to hold back the fresh urge that returned, twice as fierce, to clasp it around Viktor’s. “Except, unlike you, I don’t know how to just switch off that part of my brain until we get there, and now I’m worried everything’s going to fall apart because I can’t.” The silence stretched and he looked up at Viktor. “What? No easy answer for that one?”
“It’s… not something that can be easily answered.” Viktor sighed. “If I could simply control the parts of you that do not respond to the rational direction of your mind, I would. We both need you rested tomorrow, badly. I cannot do this alone and as little time as we have for rest, we have even less time for you to push yourself to the limit only to… crash before the work is done.”
“I know, I know,” Jayce said, rubbing his hand over his face. He could feel the exhaustion pressing in around him, but just as strongly he could feel the panic churning in his gut pushing outward, forcing the exhaustion back. That, alongside what felt like several gallons of coffee he’d been drinking throughout the day, which refused to let him settle now even when he needed to. “Maybe you could just, I don’t know, tell me what to do?”
Viktor frowned, his brow drawing together. “What?”
“Tell me… what to do,” Jayce fumbled for his words. “How to take my mind off of all of this. Like I was one of your students.”
“We’re partners, Jayce,” Viktor said cautiously, measuring out each word and watching Jayce intently. “You’re not one of my students. And I’m not sure it would be right for me to, what? Order you around?”
Jayce made a wordless sound of frustration. “It wouldn’t be ordering, I’m asking you to do it. I was always top of my class growing up, I know how to follow a teacher’s directions and… And you, you were a star at the Academy. You still know so much more than I do, even now.”
“I had some seniority over you during our Academy days, yes,” Viktor said, nodding as if weighing Jayce’s point from side to side on a balancing scale. “But I hope you do not think that means I view you as a lesser partner now.”
“It would be fair if you did. You weren’t just a student at the Academy when I met you, you were the Dean’s assistant!” Jayce insisted, adding with a self-deprecating laugh, “And I almost got kicked out.”
“For creating an experiment that may yet change the world,” Viktor reminded him.
“For blowing up a building because I didn’t secure it properly,” Jayce shot back. It was years since then and easier to joke now about what at the time had been the worst day of his life. “Viktor, I’m not asking you to look down on me. I’m asking you to—to help me be more effective in the lab.”
“You say that as if I have any better idea than you do,” Viktor scoffed.
“I know.” Jayce’s smile faded. The exhaustion was pressing in but the buzzing of nerves hadn’t dimmed, even with the distraction of their conversation. He felt useless, trapped in a fog, too worn to work and too awake to rest. Like he was hanging by a thread that wouldn’t just let him drop. “Just… please, Viktor. Tell me what to do. I’m so tired. I’m tired of thinking. Tired of making decisions. I don’t know how you do it all the time. You always seem so… put together in the lab. Like nothing shakes you.”
“Do you really think that of me? I’m flattered,” Viktor said dryly. But his expression had softened and his golden eyes were kind, concerned when he looked down at Jayce. How many people outside this lab had ever seen this side of Viktor? How many people besides Jayce? Sometimes he just wanted to take Viktor by the hand and parade him around Piltover, to show him off to everyone he knew. It felt so unfair that Jayce was the only one who seemed to know about this side of him, or who ever got to see just how remarkable he was. “Very well, come with me. We will go to my apartment.”
Viktor’s hand lifted from Jayce’s shoulder and he hadn’t realized how much it had been steadying him until he instinctively rose to follow it and swayed on his feet. The room tilted. Jayce shook his head to right it and when he turned, Viktor was already walking towards the door, the staccato of his cane matching his footsteps in a song more familiar to Jayce now than his own heartbeat.
“Wait, your apartment?” Jayce said, stumbling a little as he moved to follow Viktor.
Viktor paused and turned around. “Naturally. Unless you thought we would return to your home? I’m afraid the distance there is… prohibitive, for me, if that was your intention. And I would not wish to wake Ximena.”
“No, of course not, we can go to yours,” Jayce said and caught up to Viktor. Together, they began to walk out of the lab. “You’re really still living here at the Academy? I thought by now you could afford a place of your own.”
Their stipends from House Kiramman and House Medarda were generous by any scholarly standard. But as heir to House Talis, Jayce had little need of it and passed most of it on to his mother as a sort of rent since he'd gone back to living with her, more for her sake than his own thanks to his father's passing. But though he and Viktor rarely discussed their personal finances, he knew that their stipends would be significant for someone of Viktor’s background.
Viktor shrugged with one shoulder and drew a key from his pocket to lock the lab behind them before continuing on. “I was offered a teacher’s quarters while still assistant to Heimerdinger and I see no reason to change now, so long as the rooms are available. You cannot, ah, ‘beat the commute’, as they say?” Viktor smiled knowingly at Jayce and continued down the hallway.
It was a fair point. Viktor’s apartment on the Academy grounds were only the next building over from the one housing the lab. Given his leg, the proximity made it much more convenient than even the finest apartments he would find in the area immediately surrounding the Academy. Still, Jayce could not help but feel that Viktor deserved better. Especially once they arrived.
The apartment was modestly furnished, to put it generously, with a combined kitchen and sitting area, an office, a bedroom, and washroom. The whole apartment appeared only lightly lived in, which Jayce supposed made sense, given how many hours Viktor spent at the lab. As far as he could tell, the only personal effects or decorations beyond the furniture the apartment came with were the books stocking the shelves along the wall and a wind-up tin boat, a child’s toy, displayed on the table beside the door where Viktor dropped his keys.
“Please, take a seat at the table,” Viktor said, nodding towards a round table near the center of the room that looked as if it split its duties between serving as a dining table and a work table. “Make yourself comfortable. I’m afraid I will have to ask you to make one more decision but then, if you still wish it, we can proceed.”
Jayce did as he was bid but when he realized what was happening, namely that Viktor had gone to the small open kitchen and was rooting around in the ice box for food to prepare, he flushed with embarrassment. “Viktor, I… I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for you to think that I was asking you to take care of me or… Here, let me help you with that.”
Viktor pulled a large pot of what appeared to be a mixed vegetable stew and placed it on the stove, moving smoothly despite the need to set aside his cane for a moment, and was done before Jayce could finish rising from his seat.
“I am capable of navigating my own kitchen, Jayce, and of heating my own meal,” Viktor said dryly. He flicked on the burner and turned to lean against the counter beside it, facing Jayce at the table. “I would have had to do so anyway this evening. It is no trouble to cook for you as well.”
Jayce carefully settled back in his seat. “You don’t have to, really. Besides, I already told you, I can barely keep anything down with the competition coming up.”
Viktor tilted his head to the side. “Which brings us back to the question at hand. Jayce, were you in fact serious when you asked for me to tell you what to do this evening?”
The heat of Jayce’s blush returned full force, setting his blood on fire with embarrassment. “I was but… I didn't really expect you to do it. I don’t know what I was thinking. It was probably the exhaustion talking and…”
Viktor shook his head, interrupting Jayce. “You misunderstand me. I am perfectly willing to proceed, if that is still something you want. And I promise you, if the answer is yes, that it will be the last decision you have to make this evening.”
Jayce realized his mouth was hanging open and quickly closed it. “Why would you do that for me? Isn’t it… I don’t know, ridiculous?”
Viktor sighed and pushed himself up from the counter. There was weariness that mirrored Jayce’s own in his steps, as he leaned heavily on his cane when approaching the table where Jayce sat, frozen. Viktor then braced himself with one hand on the back of the chair across from Jayce and let the cane hang loose in his hand.
“I am, unfortunately, no stranger to the fact that sometimes our needs from others are greater than we would prefer,” Viktor said pointedly. Then his expression softened and became rueful. “And, I know what it is like when the tools of the mind have been overused. Mental exhaustion, decision fatigue, these are as real for the brain as strain and damage are for any muscle in the body, and we have been putting ours to the test lately. There is no shame in resting before you bring damage to your body’s finest instrument. Indeed, as your partner, whose career is also rather tied up in your ability to function at this competition, I feel it is within my rights not only to offer, but to insist.”
Jayce swallowed. “You really don’t mind?”
Viktor inclined his head. “Not in the slightest. If anything, I believe such an exercise would be mutually beneficial. You are able to rest, and I am able to ensure that my partner is at his best tomorrow in the lab.”
Jayce let out a slow breath. It must have been the exhaustion, but he felt his throat tightening and the threat of tears building behind his eyes at the offer. He swiped a hand down his face to banish them.
“Alright, yeah. I mean, yes, please, Viktor. I’ll do whatever you say.” And because that felt too intimate, too… close to something he would say if circumstances could ever be different between them, he added with a laugh, “Especially if it means I’ll get some sleep tonight, seeing how you’re the expert.”
“I’m not sure if ‘expert’ is the right word,” Viktor scoffed and returned to the stove to give the vegetable soup a stir. “I may not suffer restlessness as you do, but I often simply forget to sleep. Though, I have never been unable to sleep once I choose to.”
“What’s your secret?” Jayce leaned over the table, his hand pressed to his cheek. Maybe he’d fall asleep right here waiting for the food and solve all their problems at once.
“There is no secret,” Viktor said. He reached into the cabinets above the stove to pull out two standard-issue Piltover Academy glasses that he filled with water from the tap, and then two cafeteria bowls, which he set aside before giving the soup another stir. “I do not have the luxury of pushing my health to its limit more than is necessary for our work. When I return home, I sleep, eat a balanced meal, and return to the lab. Given my condition, I’m rarely able to indulge in alcohol or other… vices. I’m afraid it makes me terribly uninteresting outside of our work.”
“So that’s it then, clean living?” Jayce replied with a wan smile.
Viktor returned it with a grim one of his own. “Something like that. It was more difficult to keep to such standards of self-maintenance—standards you would consider to be quite basic here in Piltover—when I lived in the undercity. I do not take the privilege for granted now. But, I do not expect such self-denial from others, if that is a concern for you.”
Jayce’s brow drew together in confusion. “Why would it be?”
“I have seen you go alone to the tap house near the Academy after a long day.” Viktor nodded towards the window and sure enough, when Jayce craned his neck he could see a glimpse of the familiar streets surrounding the Academy below, including the corner tap house where many students went to kick off their weekend. It was between the lab and Jayce's family home, so he’d begun the habit of stopping in there while still a student, and it was one that had stuck since. He’d mostly given up on inviting Viktor along some time ago, after Viktor had refused each time. “I do not judge you for going.”
“I… wasn’t worried that you did,” Jayce said with a slight frown.
Honestly, it hadn’t occurred to him that Viktor thought much about him at all when he wasn’t there. His lab partner always seemed so caught up in his own research. Even being invited to Viktor’s home was rare despite how close it was to the lab, though Jayce had been here before when Viktor invited him by to look over some notes. He’d never stayed for a meal. He hadn’t dared to think it was a possibility.
If Jayce started thinking like that, started hoping that Viktor thought about him, or wanted him around, or wanted him as more than just a friend and successful working relationship, Jayce knew he wouldn’t be able to keep how badly he wanted all of that off his face. So he just tried not to think about it at all. “But why don’t you ever come with me?”
Viktor made a face. “I detest crowds. And there is very little else to recommend such a place if I cannot have a drink as well. I assume the alcohol goes a long way to dulling the noise and other… unpleasant aspects.”
“Like?”
Viktor snorted. “The anger of all the Academy ladies present if I was there to drag your attention away from them?”
Jayce smiled reflexively, as if at a joke. But was Viktor joking? At the thought he might not be, the smile slipped. “Wait, are you serious? You know I wouldn’t ignore you if you came out with me, right?”
“Hmm. I’m afraid that is a chance I am not willing to take,” Viktor said. “I have seen the way people look at you. The thought of going to such a place, only to end up there alone the moment you are dragged away is… nightmarish, to say the least. No, thank you. I will simply abstain.”
“What about the people who look at you?” Jayce challenged, perhaps more heated than he should be at the thought but after over a week with little sleep, his self control was not at its sharpest. Hopefully he could chalk it up to exhausted delirium later, if he crossed a line. “Maybe if we went there together, they’d all be looking at you instead of me, and I’d be the one left alone.”
“Jayce, you are the handsome heir of a wealthy house, one with a bright future ahead of him, and I? I am a crippled research assistant from the undercity. No. No one is looking at me in such places,” Viktor said both amused and pitying at once.
“What about—what was her name—Sky? That graduate student we had in the lab last summer, the one who wanted to come work for us once she finished her studies? She’s from the undercity,” Jayce shot back.
“Who?” Viktor frowned. His golden gaze ticked side to side, as if searching through pages in the book of his memory. “Oh, yes. Miss Young. What about her? You realize not everyone from the undercity knows each other, yes?”
“She was always making eyes at you,” Jayce insisted. He’d noticed. Of course he’d noticed, it was the first time he’d forced himself to stop looking at Viktor, only to see someone across the room doing the same thing. He hadn’t even been mad about Sky’s interest in Viktor. At the time, it had just felt like seeing the only other sane person in the world. He was constantly baffled by Viktor’s empty love life and was forced to assume it was from a lack of interest in anything but his work. “Come on, tell me you noticed.”
“I could, but it would be a lie.” Viktor shrugged. “Besides, Jayce, we spend five days out of every week in one another’s pockets, and that’s if it’s a short work week for us. I do not blame you for wanting some time to yourself after to indulge.”
Jayce’s lips firmed to a line and he looked away. Was he strange, for wanting to spend more time with his partner after an entire week sitting shoulder to shoulder, bent over their work? Sometimes it felt like he went to the tap house on Fridays to drown out the loneliness, the empty space where Viktor should be beside him. It never worked, and on the weekends after those “short weeks” when they both had time to themselves, he found himself eager for Monday, and the chance to see Viktor again, even if it was just to spend another day silently working together on either side of the lab.
“Well, next time I invite you out, then, it’ll be somewhere quiet. Maybe after the Distinguished Innovators competition?” Jayce pressed. “There’s a wine bar not far from here that my mother likes. Or—or a coffee shop. Would you like that?”
Viktor’s eyebrow rose. “Are you inviting me out to coffee with you, Jayce Talis?”
“Maybe?” The tips of Jayce’s ears went scorching hot and he ducked his head, hoping the blush was not visible on his face. “Not today, though. I think the gallon or two I drank earlier might have a lot to do with why I can’t sleep.”
Viktor chuckled under his breath and turned back to the soup. He gave it one last stir then switched the burner off before ladling the two bowls full. He held one out to Jayce who was up, scrambling over so that Viktor wouldn’t have to serve him the meal he’d also made for him, and managed to bang his leg against the table in his rush. The sharp stab of pain was enough to clear his thoughts and bring a brief, sympathetic smile to Viktor’s lips. Jayce then grabbed the glasses of water and the bowl for Viktor as well and set them down side by side, before he realized the problem from earlier hadn’t really gone away.
“I’m, um,” Jayce began once Viktor was seated next to him, after placing a spoon beside each bowl, taken from a drawer Jayce knew he wouldn’t have been able to find if his life depended on it. “Sorry. Still not hungry.”
“You will eat it,” Viktor said calmly. He took up his spoon and dipped it into the soup. A minestrone of some sort, though there was a sharp bite of peppers in the air, something spicier than the usual for such a dish. Despite himself, Jayce did feel a slight stirring of interest at the aroma.
“Viktor, I didn’t mean to put you through the trouble, but…”
“You asked that I make decisions for you this evening and that is what I am doing,” Viktor said. He let his spoon rest in the bowl and gave Jayce a measured look. “I have often known what it is like to go so long without eating that food no longer has its appeal. That is why you will eat it, all of it, before you leave this table.”
Yes, Mom, a small, childish part of Jayce’s mind chimed in, but most of him was transfixed, like a mouse in front of a snake, at the sheer solemnity with which Viktor gave that order.
Viktor turned back to his own bowl and began to eat silently, looking forward as if it didn’t even occur to him that Jayce wouldn’t obey.
It was a strange feeling. Part of Jayce wanted to resist just for the sake of it, pride prickling at being told what to do like a naughty child who would be sent to his room if he didn’t. But… this was what he’d asked for. And his brain hurt just thinking about coming up with more arguments for why Viktor was wrong here, or why Jayce should back out of this very embarrassing request he’d made of his lab partner the moment Viktor actually began to carry it out.
So instead, Jayce dipped his spoon into the soup and took the first sip. As expected, it didn’t taste like much to him, and his stomach churned in protest after so long being empty. But a furtive look at Viktor revealed that his partner was still focused on his own soup, silent and intent as if meal times were meant only for eating, not for conversation, and so Jayce turned back to his own meal and forced down another bite.
The second taste wasn’t so bad. There were spices, some sort of peppers, added to the dish that made it taste more like Jayce’s mother Ximena’s cooking, when she made one of the dishes from her childhood.
Jayce’s stomach rumbled, as if it was indeed reminded that it existed and, for that matter, that it was empty. And very soon thereafter, so was the bowl.
“You may take more, if you wish, now that you have finished,” Viktor said without turning to face him.
“I… sure. Do you want more too?” Jayce said, a little dazed at the realization of the pit that was yawning inside him, his stomach gurgling back to life.
“Yes, I think I would. Thank you, Jayce,” Viktor said with a slight, knowing smile and handed his empty bowl to him.