#lies au

[tenderwatches]

Viktor, @Jayce (bleeding out)

viktor: if you don't calm down I will ask Violet to carry you

vi: don't I get a say in this?

viktor: would you carry him if I asked?

violet: well, yeah

jayce: don't I?

both Vs: No

[tenderwatches]

Jayce (and Viktor)'s lab in our fic, Lies We Tell Ourselves

main floor

receives guests to the lab and is the primary work space of the lab assistants, Sky and Thomas

upstairs

large private lab, secure testing room, and connected observation room. the bathroom upstairs also has a drain in the floor for emergency hose-downs

and this is roughly how they overlap please pretend i lined it up properly and everything is to scale yep

[tenderwatches]

“Viktor.” Jayce’s hand catches his wrist, stilling his movements. “I’m okay.” Viktor doesn’t look up. He’s staring hard at Jayce’s skin, deep tan, mottled with the outlines of rivulets of mingled antiseptic and blood. He picks up a clean cloth and moves to wipe away the residue, but Jayce catches that hand too. “I’m okay,” he repeats, bending down low to try to catch his eyes despite the pain Viktor knows it must cause him. “Mind your stitches,” Viktor snaps, guilt on the tail of his irritation. He pulls his lower lip through his teeth, hissing in annoyance with himself. He needs to keep a better handle on his emotions—or so he tells himself, falling into the well-worn pattern of diminishing his own reactions, of folding his feelings into ever-smaller parcels to tuck away and abandon. He can’t expect to function if he’s going to be set off by every little thing. But there’s nothing little about this moment, about watching Jayce bleed beneath his hands. Though his fingers were steady enough to administer stitches, his heart trembles with each breath, steeped in a deep, rending anxiety that no amount of clinical distance will spare. “What were you even doing down there?”

Chapter 25: I have always been afraid

“It is not just pollution,” Viktor insists, moving perhaps faster than he ought to, given that he nearly collapsed not but twenty minutes before. “Yes, the Gray has always been with us, but not like this. This is different.”

Ekko’s expression shifts from scepticism to careful curiosity as he weaves through the crowd, easily keeping up with Viktor. “Different how?”

Viktor shakes his head; anything he can say about the matter will seem completely outlandish, bordering on mysticism. Piltover has never been a point of concentration for the magic flowing through their world. It’s one of the reasons that the city has thrived on trade and commerce, rather than manipulation of spirit, void, or the celestial. “Do you know what hex gemstones are?”

“Of course I know what hex gem—”

“What kind of stone are they? Where do they come from?” Viktor doesn’t wait for Ekko to answer, continuing, “Hexite—from Galsite—found only in Shurima.” He speaks at the pace he walks—too fast. “And do you know why they’re only found in Shurima? This increase in the Gray, the synthetic hex crystals—it shouldn’t be possible without—”

“Synthetic what now?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Viktor dismisses, still thinking too quickly to even admonish himself for speaking about their work more than is wise. “Magic flows through natural channels: beings, foci—like genuine hex gemstones. But these synthetics,” he gestures with his free hand, fingers splayed as if trying to physically grasp the concept, “force the arcane through pathways in a land that is barren of it—disrupting a magical ecosystem.” Viktor’s voice grows hoarse with exertion but remains no less passionate. “We have evolved with a certain balance of magical energy in the environment. Now, that balance has been disrupted. Your tree’s growth—it is being unsustainably augmented.”

Ekko frowns as Viktor turns back to lean heavily on his cane and faces him. “Why just this tree, though?”

“I theorise that proximity—”

His explanation stops abruptly as he catches something over Ekko’s shoulder. The intensity drains from his face, replaced by dread. Ekko turns, following Viktor's shocked line of sight. Viktor stumbles a few steps forward.

“Jayce?”

The name emerges as a whisper with ragged edges.

In the crowd of the Undercity, Jayce Talis stands out like a shard of sunlight. Even with his hair uncharacteristically dishevelled and dirt smeared across his face, he is too bright for his surroundings, like the subject of a masterwork lovingly painted with light. Jayce looks up at the sound of Viktor’s voice and dares to send him something that looks like a weary smile as he approaches, still half-stunned with disbelief. “Hey, V, there you are…”

Viktor’s heightened energy from his theorising with Ekko dissolves into immediate, visceral concern that threatens to overtake him. He forces himself instead to catalogue Jayce’s ashen face, the unfamiliar coat he’s wearing, and his hunched-over frame hanging off of Violet, who clearly bears much of his weight. Before Viktor can question what in the gods’ terrestrial realm is happening, Ekko breaks in from his right. “What the—Vi?”

Viktor blinks in confusion, wondering briefly if their worlds have collided—Jayce here in the Undercity, this stranger and Violet, seemingly well acquainted, based on how Violet’s tired expression warms as Ekko takes up Jayce’s other side. “Hey, Little Man,” Violet greets, strained, but with a wavering smile. The thinning crowd pays them little mind, but that will change quickly if they remain exposed on the main thoroughfare.

Violet and Ekko seem to conclude this as well, for they share only the briefest of glances before devouring onto side streets that are shadowy despite the time of day. Viktor’s crutch scrapes against the metal walkway that leads to where the trio have gone. Jayce, in the Undercity, looking like that. This must be some kind of fever dream or a waking nightmare.

They stop further into an alleyway, either to catch their breath or give Viktor a chance to catch up. Jayce leans against a mildewing wall, slats of light through a fire escape illuminating what looks like a smear of blood across one cheek.

“What happened?” Viktor demands, his raw throat constricting around the words.

Jayce’s eyes flutter open at Viktor’s voice, and he manages another weak smile that does nothing to ease the anxiety causing Viktor’s heart to thunder in his ribs and ears. “It’s not as bad as it looks,” he mumbles, though the dark stain beginning to spread across his borrowed coat suggests otherwise.

“Your genius partner decided to play detective down here,” Violet states, her words tight with poorly disguised worry. “Got himself stabbed for the trouble.”

Viktor’s breath escapes in a single heartbeat, and he nearly trips on his crutch in his haste to close the space between them. “Stabbed?” He repeats, every limb going cold with a piercing fear. He pushes aside Jayce's hands where they clutch the front of the coat in a futile attempt to hide the damage.

“It was a small knife—a kid’s knife. Literally,” Jayce offers, as if this fact might be consoling.

Viktor wants to shake him and demand what he could have possibly been thinking, but the newly revealed sight of blood seeping through a crude bandage steals his voice. He swallows hard, willing himself to think past the rush of blood in his ears and what feels like a drumbeat reverberating through his spine. “Keep your hands away,” he orders Jayce as his hard-headed partner moves as if to cover the injury again. Viktor drops his crutch and half-kneels, half-falls before Jayce to carefully move aside the makeshift bandage. Someone—Violet, he assumes—has done a passable job at field dressing the wound, given their limited resources.

In the dim alleyway light, Viktor squints to examine the dark, angry mouth in Jayce’s right flank, just below the ribs. Necessity awakens dusty knowledge from his youth, and he finds himself reluctantly grateful for the time spent with his old mentor, poring over anatomy books until he’d memorised them. He can almost see the stained pages now, their diagrams of abdominal muscles and blood vessels crystal clear in his mind.

The wound stretches approximately seven centimetres, its edges clean. Thankfully, it doesn’t appear deep enough to suggest immediate danger. The bleeding remains steady but doesn’t pulse, indicating the ‘kid’ had missed any major vessels. Still, the location across such an active muscle concerns him.

“We can take care of this back at the lab.” He redresses the wound, his work slightly messier than he’d prefer, but time for neatness is not a luxury they can afford. If they can reach the upper city quickly, they should be able to manage without involving the hospital—and the questions such a visit would inspire. His breath hitches as he inhales, forcing him to cough to clear it, and he's unable to help the rest that follow. “Can you walk a bit further?” he questions when they subside, wiping his hands (trembling, stained with Jayce's blood) on his shirt hem before he allows himself to touch his partner’s face.

Jayce’s skin is clammy, but he closes his eyes and tips his head ever so minutely into Viktor’s fingers. “For you? Always.” Jayce’s attempt at a smile comes out more like a grimace, and Viktor resists the urge to jerk his hand away in frustration.

“Save your charm. We must move quickly—and keep pressure on that.” He can hardly believe this man. He’s practically bleeding out in an Undercity alleyway, and he has the gall to waste his breath on foolish words when Viktor can’t imagine it’s so easy for him to breathe at all.

“We can keep going this way,” Violet says, angling her head towards the path onwards into the alleyway. Viktor must look sceptical, as she flashes him a shameless grin. “Guess we’ll go on a little adventure.” She shoulders Jayce’s weight again despite his protests, and she silences him with hissed words Viktor can’t hear but supposes might be a threat. “Ekko,” she continues, letting Ekko take up Jayce’s other side again, “do you still know your way through the service chutes?”

“Do I still—” Ekko breaks off with an indignant scoff, but Viktor catches the way his eyes dart to Jayce’s wound as their steps quicken. “Half those routes only still work thanks to me.”

They begin their journey upwards through illicit paths Viktor has never seen. He wonders if they’ve always been here or if they are a development he’s missed in the many years he’s been away. The metallic tang of corroded scaffolds and pipes mingles with the ever-present haze of the Gray, thinner though it is up towards the border. Their surroundings morph into a maze of rusted metal and dripping condensation, shafts of dim light breaking in from above. Each inhalation feels like drawing air through wet cotton, and the darkness creeping into his periphery warns him he will shortly make their problem worse if they don't rest soon.

But he finds himself watching Jayce, detailing every wince, every shallow breath. After everything—after what he’s seen Viktor through, what they’ve promised they’re going to do—Jayce put himself in this kind of danger to look for him. I did this, he thinks, and it settles like something waterlogged in his lungs.

Viktor thought he’d figured out how to let Jayce worry about him—but never in his most outlandish imaginings was there any possibility Jayce would wind up stabbed in the Undercity. A refrain made up only of ‘why?’ and ‘how?’ taunts him, bringing a tightness to his chest to accompany the stabbing labour of breathing.

Through the sheer force of his notably stubborn will, Viktor manages to keep up with the three others as they wind through the Undercity. Though half-carrying Jayce hindered their pace, Viktor is wheezing when Violet and Ekko’s ‘service chute’ route spits them out to the side of the bathysphere station.

Winded, Viktor leans on his crutch hard enough that his shoulder begins to go numb. He silently attempts to will away the faint whistle of his inhalations as he looks back at his Undercity fellows and his very, very idiotic Piltie partner. All three of them lean back against the side of the bathysphere station, unnoticed by the crowds of people bustling out in intervals. Ekko tilts his head back as he takes deep breaths of the relatively clear air, but when he opens his eyes, they go wide with shock.

Viktor’s eyebrows crease with concern. “What is it?”

“Holy shit,” Ekko breathes, “Vi, what did you get me into?”

“Me?” Violet laughs. “Oh, no—you were already with that one,” she asserts, gesturing at Viktor.

“Well, ‘that one’ is trying to get this one back to the lab,” Viktor scoffs, his irritation evident, but Ekko pays no mind and remains frozen as though he has leapt into the Pilt on a winter day. Viktor tracks Ekko’s sightline to the nearby buildings that boast a mix of Piltovan architecture and Undercity flair, but nothing strikes him as alarming. All he sees are boutique windows, stencilled shop names, and painted advertisements for attractions like Count Mei’s Menagerie, Zindelo’s Incognium, and Progress Day.

Oh.

Progress Day.

Viktor’s gaze lands on a handsome painting above them that depicts the freshly stabbed member of their party, sans stab.

“I can’t be seen carrying a bleeding Jayce Talis through Piltover,” Ekko protests in a low whisper, pointed jabs emphasising Jayce’s name.

“You are about to be carrying a dead Jayce Talis, Man of Progress, through Piltover if we do not move,” Viktor retorts, invoking the full of Jayce’s moniker like a threat as he hefts his crutch to his other side and shakes out the tingling arm.

“Hey, I’m not dying—” Jayce argues, but his expression goes strained with the effort. “I think.”

Viktor resists the urge to roll his eyes and gestures for them to hurry. “As the resident expert on dying, I get to say. Now, move.” He can see another group alighting the bathysphere through the station’s tinted glass walls; if they go now, they should be able to join this crowd without trouble.

As it turns out, moving through Piltover in the middle of the day, half-carrying, half-dragging the aforementioned bleeding, possibly dying (Viktor’s mind denies this possibility with vehemence), Man of Progress through the streets is both more and less of an affair than Viktor might have thought.

Though suspicious eyes watch their unusual procession, no one tries to stop them, perhaps each assuming that they must be someone else’s problem. The three lead in front, Viktor laboriously following at length, each step bearing so heavily on his crutch that he feels he uses it more to drag himself through the streets than to steady his steps. By the time they reach the lab, Viktor is coughing again and has to relinquish the keys to Violet to unlock the doors with her one free hand as he doubles over, spasms in his chest forcing out bright blooms of red blood into his well-stained handkerchief, which had been white this morning.

Once inside, he leans against the wall, closing his eyes and giving in to the bout of vertigo; he’ll just rest here a moment whilst Violet and Ekko get Jayce in, and then he will need to clean the wound, anaesthetise the flesh, stitch the laceration, and dress the injury appropriately—hasn’t it only been a couple of months since he’s last given Jayce stitches?

“Hey, V, you okay?”

Viktor looks up as calloused fingers touch first his jaw, then his chin, and Jayce tilts his head up. The pallor of the other man’s skin makes it look dull and waxy, and he’s broken out in a cold sweat, but he looks at Viktor with a concern so deep that Viktor pulls away. “I’m fine.” He wishes Jayce would stop looking at him like that—with this immense sadness and the oft-present shadow of things they’ve not yet said about what has changed between them.

Jayce frowns at him, worry emphasising the lines of his face. “V, you promised you wouldn’t lie about how you’re feeling.”

“I wager that of the two of us, I presently have the higher blood volume, so if you would please lie down so I may do the necessary.” They must not fight. They do not have time for fighting—and Viktor seems to be losing his grasp on language, besides. He nods to Violet and Ekko still standing on either side of Jayce, who protests as they haul him over to one of the workstations.

Viktor manages to lock the doors, shutter the windows, and retrieve their first aid kit without collapsing (again). He sinks onto a stool, gripping the edge of the table as he pulls himself closer. When he sets out the materials, his hands are steadier than he anticipated—a small mercy. With a quiet, readying breath, he begins cleansing the wound with short, gentle strokes, the antiseptic running pink down Jayce’s side.

Silence reigns in the lab as he works; he’s glad to see his initial assessment is correct—the knife wound is hardly a pretty sight, but it’s not life-threatening. The amount of blood Jayce has lost is suboptimal, but Viktor works with a concentrated efficiency that suggests he has blocked out everything else in the lab except for the skin and sutures in front of him.

The meticulous work swallows some length of time he can’t quite fathom. He simply goes through the motions, making neat stitches from one end of the gash to the other, until it no longer gapes like a bloody maw. His hands, not as deft as when he started, struggle with the last knot, but he manages to tie it off as neatly as the first. “You will need to keep this clean and dry,” he instructs, his voice as short and neutral as any Piltovan doctor. He presses a clean pad to the wound and reaches around Jayce’s waist with a length of bandage to wrap it in place. “And you will need to rest—”

“Viktor.” Jayce’s hand catches his wrist, stilling his movements. “I’m okay.”

Viktor doesn’t look up. He’s staring hard at Jayce’s skin, deep tan, mottled with the outlines of rivulets of mingled antiseptic and blood. He picks up a clean cloth and moves to wipe away the residue, but Jayce catches that hand too.

“I’m okay,” he repeats, bending down low to try to catch his eyes despite the pain Viktor knows it must cause him.

“Mind your stitches,” Viktor snaps, guilt on the tail of his irritation. He pulls his lower lip through his teeth, hissing in annoyance with himself. He needs to keep a better handle on his emotions—or so he tells himself, falling into the well-worn pattern of diminishing his own reactions, of folding his feelings into ever-smaller parcels to tuck away and abandon. He can’t expect to function if he’s going to be set off by every little thing.

But there’s nothing little about this moment, about watching Jayce bleed beneath his hands. Though his fingers were steady enough to administer stitches, his heart trembles with each breath, steeped in a deep, rending anxiety that no amount of clinical distance will spare. “What were you even doing down there?”

Now, it’s Jayce’s turn to wince, though Viktor sees it’s not from the wound in his side. “You… weren’t back—I was… worried something had happened,” he admits, unable to meet Viktor’s eyes as he gives the explanation.

Viktor wants to berate Jayce for, yet again, failing to trust him—but in this one instance, Jayce was correct. As it happened, he crashed into a perfect stranger in the midst of a near-episode right there in the Undercity. That the affair has turned out to be rather serendipitous doesn’t much alleviate his feelings of shame and embarrassment.

“Jayce? Viktor?”

Thomas sounds alarmed and eager, as if he’s been waiting for them to return. Their young lab assistant comes barrelling out of the stairwell, stopping short at the sight of their unexpected company. He looks from Ekko to Vi and back again in startled confusion, then finally to Jayce and Viktor. “Oh, I didn’t realise we were… expecting anyone—” he says, slowly setting down a fern that appears to be several times too large and shimmering faintly. He nudges it towards the wall with one foot, though seems to have trouble with its weight, if Viktor has to guess by the grimace on his face and the way the plant almost tips over.

“Mr. Prescott, this is Ekko,” Viktor sighs, gesturing between them as if there’s nothing unusual about the situation. “And I believe you have met Violet.”

“In passing,” Violet supplies, helpfully glancing between Viktor and Jayce and raising her eyebrows high into her pink hair as she eyes Jayce and the distance they have neglected to put between them. She clears her throat, tucking her bloodied hands beneath her jacket as she pivots towards the doors. “And that’s my cue. I need to get back to… well, get back.” She gives one door a sharp tug, grunting when she’s only met with unyielding resistance. She remembers with a swear that Viktor locked them in to avoid any unhelpful new visitors during his tending to Jayce’s wounds. “Got it!” She announces when she manages to free herself, turning the latch so it catches again behind her.

Viktor coughs. “And I suppose, also—Jayce, Ekko. Ekko, Jayce,” he introduces, nodding at each of them‌. The two of them look at each other for a moment that feels too long, the younger man scrutinising his partner as though trying to place him from someplace other than the buildings plastered with his face. “Still contemplating the Man of Progress…?” Viktor ventures, unsurprised by this, at least.

“Oh, no.” Ekko snaps back into focus, turning his attention towards Viktor again. Now Jayce is blatantly staring at the young man’s back, eyes lifting only to meet Viktor’s with a curious ‘No clue what that was either’ look on his face. “What did you say about your work with the plants?”

Viktor pinches the bridge of his nose and turns to look at Thomas, desperately hoping the boy has managed to learn how to read minds. Thomas fidgets with his tie pin, and Viktor can practically hear their young lab assistant flipping through a mental Rolodex of what he might want. “Oh, uh, I don’t know if I can—” Viktor shakes his head a fraction as Thomas starts to protest Ekko’s question. Thomas’s confused expression turns slightly more panicked, the obvious answer now ruled out. “No? Okay—then, um—” Viktor flicks his eyes to Ekko, then to the open door frame to the stairwell. “Mr. Viktor wanted to… show you the plants…?” Viktor nods once, and Thomas heaves a sigh of relief.

They’ve never before brought anyone else into the work, but between the blood on the workstation (which Thomas thankfully hasn’t questioned), Jayce still looking haggard, and Viktor calling the shots for once, Thomas seems to find it best to simply go along with the prevailing winds, uncanny as they are. “Right! Okay, Ekko, you can call me Thomas, by the way; he’s the only one who calls me Mr. Prescott—the plants are upstairs, and they’re really more Sky’s forte than mine, but she’s over at the Arbour Botanica for more reference material, so I’m afraid you’ll just have to imagine my better half is regaling you with the details…”

Their footsteps echo up the stairwell, then fade, leaving Viktor and Jayce in a silence that feels both heavy and oddly fragile.

“Oh, hey—I found—” Jayce rummages through the jacket, discarded on the other end of the workstation. He procures a crumpled, blood-stained parchment, which Viktor takes with tentative fingers. “I found this in the warehouse—”

“Where you got stabbed.”

“Where I got a little stabbed,” Jayce emphasises, and he doesn’t need to look up to know that Jayce is looking at him with the pleading eyes he uses when trying to wring an ounce of leniency from whoever he’s looking at.

Viktor turns the paper over, seeing only scribbled calculations on the back side. “You say that as though you expect me to be reassured by this.” He moves to set the parchment aside, but something in Jayce’s expression makes him pause. His partner looks almost wounded—beyond the actual wound—like Viktor has just dashed his hopes and dreams. With a sigh that pulls at his chest, Viktor smooths the crumpled page against the workstation.

His eyes roam over the page, taking in what he’s looking at—equations, hasty mathematical notations, half-formed theorems. It’s a crude amalgamation of runes and a blueprint for a vessel whose sophistication leaves much to be desired. The framework for the patterns, despite being horrifically rudimentary, is all wrong; domination is used several times over where there should be at least one instance of precision or resolve, and inspiration has been completely left out of the diagram, much as he did in his early research. And in the margins, barely legible: increased yield = increased waste. Containment???

Jayce leans towards him, reaching for the blueprints. “You see it too, don’t you? Here, let me show y—”

“No,” Viktor interrupts, holding the paper just out of reach. Where his mind normally latches onto equations and formulas with a ravenous appetite, he finds himself unable to focus now, despite the implications of the notes on the page. “This blueprint is evidence you found in a dodgy warehouse in which you were stabbed. It will go to Officer Kiramman.” Since his mention at last month's gala of the Ferros' suspicious, if not potentially criminal, activity, Caitlyn has been looking into the family's interest in the Undercity. Gods, that was only a month ago? It feels more like a year.

Viktor sighs, putting aside his frustration at how quickly time passes when an unpleasant future lies ahead. “And besides, I must clarify something with you.” He sets the blueprints aside carefully before turning to fully face the other man, who stares back at him with anticipatory energy. “I did not lie earlier. When I said I was ‘fine.’” He hadn’t meant to lie, anyways, but the words feel feeble.

Jayce’s earlier plea echoes in his mind—”You promised you wouldn’t lie about how you’re feeling.” The weight of that promise sits heavy in his chest, alongside the sharp ache that has become the constant companion of every breath he takes. It is important that Jayce sees he is trying.

“It…” Viktor searches for the words, teeth worrying at the inside of his lip as language eludes him. He is normally articulate, able to conjure specific words to convey his exact meaning—but now, he finds himself at a loss for words that don’t sound too weak on one hand or too clinical on the other. “I am accustomed to… managing these things on my own,” he finally states, idle fingers picking at the corner of the parchment lying otherwise disregarded on the workstation.

“V…” Jayce’s voice is soft, so plaintive as to make some inner pain quite obvious.

“No,” Viktor cuts in, but his tone remains gentle. “Do not start with that. When I say that I am ‘fine’, I do not mean that I am without pain or discomfort. I believe you will need to adopt this understanding if we are to… communicate properly,” he asserts without looking at Jayce’s reaction to his statement. “I have spent so long categorising my symptoms, compartmentalising what I can and cannot handle—so when I say I am ‘fine’, I mean there is nothing concerning about my state, even if it might be…” He gestures vaguely at Jayce’s worried expression. “… Concerning to others.”

“Concerning?” Jayce repeats with a laugh that holds no humour, voice gone rough. His hands clench where they rest on the workstation. “Viktor, you stopped breathing. In my arms, you just—” His breath hitches with a sound like he’s choking, and Viktor sees his chest heave. The next time he inhales, it’s too shallow, and he breathes faster in a futile attempt to compensate. “I don’t think you understand what that’s like—to—to have you there, and you’re—” His words come rapidly now, like raindrops, one after the other, bleeding together. “It wasn’t even like you just stopped—it was like watching you drown, right there, and I couldn’t—”

Viktor places his hands on Jayce before even registering the thought to do so. He soothes with his palms up the sides of Jayce’s thighs, first to his hips, then down to his knees, and finally up again, where his hands come to a rest. Viktor leans in, letting the contact steady them both. For a suspended moment, he’s sure neither of them breathes.

“You are correct.” He speaks into the tension humming in the space between them. He’s acutely aware of every point of contact—his palms against Jayce’s legs, the heat of him even through his clothes. “I cannot know. But I am… sorry.” He knows Jayce will likely brush the apology aside—it isn’t, after all, as if he’s suffered a near-death experience for the sole purpose of worrying Jayce. But he is sorry. Jayce’s eyes hold the look of a cornered animal; his breathing is still short and panicked. Viktor’s thumb worries gently at the crease of one hip joint, a slow ministration. “I am sorry for frightening you. For… putting you through that.”

He’s sorry for being the cause of that fearful look; he’s sorry for being the object of such worry; and he’s sorry for all the times he’s pushed away the only person he’s likely to accept help from. He’s tried to weather these things alone, has always prided himself on his independence, but he sees now that this is not the time to rest on pride. This is beyond him.

“If… I had not been at the lab with you, when it happened… Had I been alone…”

Jayce tenses under his palms, hands moving to grip both Viktor’s wrists with an intensity that almost hurts.

They don’t speak. Neither of them can finish the thought. Instead, Viktor lets Jayce hold onto him, even though his hands are beginning to feel cold and bloodless. He leans down with a breath of hesitation before his head comes to an experimental rest against Jayce’s thigh. He’s thought about this countless times before, but in his mind’s eye, it’s always been Jayce where he is. That’s how it always has been: Jayce in surrender, bowed in supplication. But now it’s Viktor, and he feels himself yielding, weathered walls receding.

“I do not know how to do this,” Viktor murmurs after a moment, his lips brushing against Jayce’s still-tense muscles as they form the words. “I do not know how to… share this burden. It has never been necessary before.” A trembling rises in him, starting from somewhere low. It’s a feeling that could be sensual, but the vulnerability that cracks him open is unmistakable. He presses his fingertips against his partner’s hips to keep his hands from shaking.

Then, the grip encircling his wrists disengages, and Jayce’s hand comes to a rest in his hair. He feels released in the moment; the contact is a quiet recognition that, despite the complexity and challenges ahead of them, there is something here. Something small, perhaps, but profound—it is both eternal and fleeting all at once. “You don’t have to know,” Jayce says, warm but crumbling, soft and rich with the promise to break against him. To give way to what he needs, whatever it may be. “We’ll figure it out.”

Viktor closes his eyes, allowing himself to relish in this, to be held, to be comforted. He has spent so long holding himself rigid against the world, against the pain, against this very tenderness that now threatens to undo him.

Over the years, Jayce has proven himself, again and again, to be the one who gives. He gives as if service is his divine purpose, offering up his reputation, his position on the Council, and his ambitions for Hextech—all in sacrifice of… what? Viktor? Viktor feels insubstantial in the face of it. What has he given in return? What can he give? His fingers curl into the fabric at Jayce’s hips, no longer to still their trembling, but to draw him closer as he makes another confession. “I have been afraid,” he admits, his voice hardly rising enough to be heard, “of leaving you with nothing but regrets.”

“Viktor, I—”

Viktor lifts his head, finding himself just a whisper away from the other man’s face, his warm golden eyes alight with surprise at their proximity. The jolt of pain that runs through Jayce’s body crashes against Viktor, but he speaks through it, heedless of Jayce’s unfinished thought. “I do not wish to hear your protests or what you think I have given you.” The words come much easier now, like sea foam drifting together on the tide. Is this what Jayce feels during his impassioned speeches? This sense of words building up inside, threatening both abandonment and destruction if left unspoken?

“Your dream, your life—the things you always say.” He stares down at the sliver of workstation he can only just see between Jayce’s knees, swallowing past the ache in his chest. It doesn’t subside, exactly, having metamorphosed into something beyond the lesions in his lungs. He sees, now, what Jayce has needed all along—not Viktor’s brilliance or his determination, but this: his trust, freely given.

Understanding makes its way through Viktor like dawn breaking over the twin cities, warm, inevitable, fragmented. His mortality has always stood between them, a wall neither can scale. But at this moment, Viktor wants what Jayce has always wanted for him: to live—not for progress, not for their work, but for himself. For them. “I will… give you this,” he continues, not yet looking up. His fingers tighten at Jayce’s hips, seeking to anchor them both to this moment, trying to convey without words what ‘this’ is.

A lifetime of meticulously constructed walls has begun disintegrating, years of fastidious maintenance giving way to this newfound understanding. Viktor has held his illness close like a jealous lover, as if preventing anyone from seeing the face of it might let him wrest the weight of his future from beyond his grasp. “I thought that… to keep it all to myself was to retain some measure of control over it.” He realises now that his possessive company has been false. Illness is not a lover kept, but a growing shadow, spreading further and further until isolation is all he knows. “As if by parsing it into pieces small enough to bear alone, I could somehow…” He trails off, losing his conclusion in the tangle of the ever-present reminder of his mortality. When Viktor looks up, it is to meet the forlorn concern in Jayce’s eyes with threadbare honesty. “I am tired.”

“Let me.” Jayce’s request is a revelation. Viktor knows this is the end of his twisted relationship with his illness and the nascence of something much more complicated. It begins as a flutter, delicate as moth wings against his ribcage, frantic wing beats under his sternum. “Do you trust me?”

Viktor acknowledges Jayce’s question with a minute tilt of his head. “That is an asinine question, but…” That sensation grows in his chest, threading between his ribs—a warmth that borders on ache, a fullness too vast to cage behind ribs and reason. “Of course I do.” Something in him finally succumbs.

“Then let me carry this with you, Viktor. Please.”

Viktor exhales, counting seconds as the weight of years spent holding himself together begins to dissolve against Jayce’s warmth. He hears the soft whir of machinery, something humming with energy, and whispers of pneumatic messaging tubes around them. These familiar laboratory sounds, ones he’s heard for so many years now, envelop them like the respite of this moment made tangible.

Death may soon claim his future, but this moment—this vital serenity—belongs to them both.

[first chapter | previous chapter | next chapter on AO3]

[tenderwatches]

summary: Jayce and Viktor go on a date out to lunch

Jayce is still riding the high of convincing Viktor to join him for a casual lunch in the actual outdoors when they make their way to a picturesque café off Sidereal Avenue.

It’s not terribly far from the lab, but it had never been in their usual rotation of quick meal locations during their early days. Back then, the lab had been smaller, less grand, still tucked into the Academy Square itself. Places like this strayed too far into the highbrow parts of the city to make it worth visiting—Cait was the one who actually took him here the first time.

The café is a green glass building with a beautiful tiled patio. He picks it for its abundance of greenery and sunlight—and because it’s not too far a walk for them to make, even with Viktor needing a break halfway through. Jayce pauses as he notices Viktor hesitate at the gated entrance, scanning the well-heeled patrons before stepping through the threshold, his shoulders straightening almost imperceptibly.

His partner is sullen and withdrawn today, more so than usual. Almost two months of working together and their recent breakthrough about the composition of the synthetic hex crystals has begun to thaw the ice between them, but they are nowhere near the warmth of the past. Viktor looks weary, a short breath shuddering through him as they settle into the metal patio chairs. Jayce isn’t close enough to hear, but he would bet a silver gear that it’s undercut with a telltale whistle; it’s something he’s noticed more than once this week. Viktor’s been coughing more, and he seems dizzy, distracted. Even his eyes are more shadowed than usual, as though whatever rest he’s finding is doing nothing to improve his situation.

It’s a bad week then. Perhaps the first truly bad week Viktor’s had since he’s been back. The other man lifts one hand to pinch at the bridge of his nose, and Jayce watches as he suppresses a cough, his chest jolting under the cream-coloured fabric of his vest.

Jayce has the ludicrous urge to bundle him up and take him someplace quiet, bright, and full of clean air. He wants to strip away the layers of his vest, shirt, and tie until he can unearth the metal brace he knows Viktor still wears. He wants to take the time to slip each clasp open with careful fingers, releasing him from the casing of metal that keeps his slight frame from shaking with the effort of holding his spine straight. Then, he could let the other man lay back into his lap, soothe the cage of his ribs, and let him breathe, breathe until he might sleep more restfully.

Jayce blinks away the intimacy of the imagined moment, trying to return to reality and clear the longing from his bones. Gods, but he’s wanted this man. If only a younger version of himself had known before everything fell apart. The weight of that realisation makes the bright, polished world around them feel suddenly over-bright and painful. He cuts his eyes away before his partner can notice his wistful staring, seeking refuge in the steady flow of people ambling along Sidereal Avenue.

It’s a beautiful street, in the typical way of Piltover’s higher districts. It glimmers with glass, copper, and gold; the older buildings are hewn from stone and decorated with the fanciful flourishes the Piltover elite deem tasteful. Something about the outrageous wealth of the financial district always makes him deeply aware that his father made hammers for a living. He feels like he needs to check his face for soot and watch his posture, lest someone here catch him being less than the gleaming Man of Progress he’s been elevated to. It’s a bit too much like being on stage for him to ever feel fully at ease.

His eyes trace the arching windows that decorate the face of the Ecliptic Vaults across the square. The blue and yellow glass in them glitters in the midday sun as people shuffle in and out of the bank. He’s glad for the chatter around them if only that it spares them an awkward silence. The waitress comes, takes their orders, and goes again. Jayce just begins to consider small talk when he notices a familiar figure across the street.

Councillor Shoola’s lean frame and clockwork collar draw his attention, and he wonders vaguely if the tall woman has seen him before their eyes catch. He sees Viktor’s gaze wander from his own face, then across the lane to the councillor, and realises he must have made some expression of acknowledgement.

Jayce lifts a hand in polite greeting when he realises there isn’t going to be a way to avoid at least a short conversation. He murmurs a quick “excuse me,” in Viktor’s direction and rises from his seat to go exchange a few social niceties with the Councillor. Viktor’s eyes bore into his spine the whole time; it’s a similar experience to what he imagines a frog might feel on a dissection table. But when he returns to their table, Viktor’s face is turned away, staring sightlessly in towards the café building.

“Sorry about that,” he offers sheepishly, and that clever gaze returns to his face.

“Saying hello to a colleague?” It’s a light remark, but there is the hint of venom underneath that he’s too tired to do much about.

“Former colleague,” he corrects, slipping his napkin into his lap as their waitress arrives with their food. She sets a plate heaped with golden waffles, seasonal berries, and light, fluffy eggs in front of him. Viktor has opted for a cup of coffee and wheat toast spread with ruby-red jam.

“Shoola no longer sits on the council?”

“No, I’m no longer on the council.” He sees Viktor receive that with a much less unaffected expression than he assumes the other man would prefer. A hint of surprise flashes across his thin face before a frown settles on his lips. The waitress finishes setting out their spread and Jayce thanks her with a gentle smile; it’s a testament to Viktor’s sincere state of distraction that he doesn’t acknowledge her at all.

“You were removed from the council?” he asks at last, and Jayce looks up, meets those assessing eyes.

“I left,” Jayce corrects, “almost two years ago.”

A flurry of emotions flicker across his partner’s face—shock, confusion, and something else, something that makes Viktor’s fingers tighten around his cup. His partner’s gaze drops away, and Jayce notices the slight tremor in Viktor’s exhale, the way his shoulders draw in as if absorbing an unexpected blow.

When Viktor finally looks up again, his attention sharp with questions he appears unwilling to voice. Jayce feels, absurdly, like he may have actually won this exchange, but the victory, such that it is, tastes hollow. There’s too much left unsaid between them—why Jayce left, what it meant, how it might have changed things if Viktor had known.

It was for you, he thinks, and doesn’t say. I left for you, because you were sick, and I couldn’t be there. But then you were gone, and it was all for nothing.

Perhaps his reasoning, like so many things between them now, is irrelevant. Leaving the council hadn’t freed him from anything in the end, just left him powerless to do anything to bring Viktor back in the years between his exile and now.

He lets the silence lie between them. Cutlery and glass clink as they begin to eat. “So, these years apart,” Viktor starts roughly, and Jayce catalogues the way his brow crinkles slightly, the same expression he wears when trying to solve a particularly stubborn equation. “You, what, stooped to only enjoying being the sole proprietor of Hextech instead?”

Jayce laughs bitterly and shakes his head. “You’re my partner Viktor,” he responds, not in the mood to keep up the farce to soothe Viktor’s prickly disposition.

“I thought we established—”

Jayce drops his fork in frustration, arms coming up across his chest like a measure of defence. “Yes, of course, we’re perfect strangers now!” he scoffs, commanding enough patience to not roll his eyes. “No, I mean you are literally—legally—still a partner in Hextech. You’re still on every patent. Every cog, every gear it’s made in these past two years—you have a part of that.”

He watches Viktor’s eyes grow just the smallest bit wider at his words. A terrible, prophetic sense of disaster looms.

Jayce feels his stomach drop out. He scrambles for words, trying to fix a problem he hasn’t even identified yet. “It’s all in your accounts—Viktor—” The other man shakes his head and struggles for an alarming second to swallow, but manages, with the coffee a trembling hand raises to his mouth. His thin chest shudders with staccato coughs, and Jayce’s ire falls to pieces. “Have you been…” He searches for the right words. “Have you been taking care of yourself?”

Immediately, Viktor’s expression sours. Jayce has definitely miscalculated—these are the wrong words.

“How would that be possible for me, Jayce?” The rhetorical question stings. “I assume every shiny cog we made went here.” Viktor gestures to the gleaming vaults across the street. “It’s not easy to touch money in topside accounts from the Undercity. There is red tape, limitations on how much money I can access—and even then, the taxes alone on income flowing down from Piltover—” Another series of coughs cut him off, wracking his frame harder than the last, and he reaches to drag a handkerchief to his face and muffle the sound. Jayce feels as if he’s been smacked.

“I’m sorry.” He has no other words. He’s too stunned to offer anything other than the simple truth. “I didn’t know.”

Viktor presses the cloth to his lips for a moment. His eyes are watery with the force of his coughs, but they are molten gold. “I didn’t expect you to.” Jayce receives that bitter retort with as much grace as he can.

It’s the months just before Viktor’s dismissal all over again—watching someone he cares for so deeply fade, scrambling to stop it, and failing. Viktor is sicker now than he was then. On top of it all, Jayce’s good intentions of ensuring Viktor still benefitted from their work meant nothing—because he’d failed to consider access.

He feels foolish for sitting there in the gilded square, self-conscious and feeling alarmingly unsuited to be accepted amongst the wealthy and the powerful—and yet, he, like any one of them, could waltz across the street and demand a fortune from his accounts without question. He’s always been taught that talent and hard work will open doors in Piltover. After all, his own family, their status as a lesser house notwithstanding, had a well-respected and highly recognised name due to the dedication of his father, and his grandfather before him.

Trusting Viktor’s trajectory to the ethics committee was a mistake; he’s brilliant, and Jayce has never known a more steadfast scientist—and yet, one decision stripped everything from him. Despite being proven wrong once before, Jayce had trusted that these fundamental things remain simple for people like Viktor. He had assumed those doors, once open, were enough.

Jayce thinks back to the arguments he spat at the ethics committee following Viktor’s dismissal from the academy, how he raged at them, only to find them twisting away from his attempts to explain. They were so ready to jump to unfounded conclusions—ones they never would have made of a Piltover-born scientist—at least, not one who had grown up here instead of the Undercity.

It was one of many painful lessons he’s had to learn about the fragility of Viktor’s position at his side.

Ever since that first night, when Viktor confided in him, “no one’s ever believed in me, either”—he held the assumption that he and Viktor were more similar than they were different. They were both outsiders with big dreams and feelings of being out of place in their newly elevated societal status. But there has always been a difference in how people make space for them. Where Piltover’s society is eager to accommodate Jayce, praising how he drives them forward with his unconventional methods, so many seem to resent Viktor’s presence. It’s as though they think he doesn’t deserve the courtesy they graciously extend, or that his achievements disrupt their scrupulous homogeneity.

He wonders if he’ll ever stop missing the tiny ways the world moves differently around them, or if he’ll just have to get used to the shocks of discovering them time and again. The arc of his life unfolds in his thoughts over the rest of their silent meal, and the scientist in him can’t help but try and dig in deeper. The most direct course is to simply ask Viktor—but the times of carefree, open honesty between them have long passed. He fears he might never get them back.

The thought provokes a spike of anxiety that he quells with great difficulty. No, even if he could ask, this is something he must pursue independently. He owes Viktor that much. This story of how the world works has been fed to him since childhood and reinforced at every turn. Like so much else, he’s never questioned how well it holds up to reality. In the face of everything he’s learnt in their time apart, he’s decided it’s past time to start.

𐡸.:𐫱:.𐡷

Summertime, 980 AN - thirteen years ago.

Jayce was twenty-one in his third year at the University of Piltover, eager as the endless days of summer swiftly crescendoed into Progress Day once again. He woke in his dormitory to the sounds of the city outside the leaded glass panes. The apprentice quarters at the academy were sparsely furnished: ivory walls adorned with nondescript paintings, a narrow bed, plain but comfortable linens, and a desk that looked like it had seen one too many student mishaps. And yet, he still sometimes couldn’t believe he was there, living in the beating heart of progress.

It was, admittedly, later than he’d intended to wake. Voices and the shuffle of footsteps sounded outside in the hallway, the harried sound of students rushing to petition the city’s richer merchant clans for patrons. The academy was a living hive of creation, all sleepless nights, working late in labs and workshops, tools and cogs, gears and springs scattered across desks and spilling out into common areas. It was just as busy and energised as he’d heard throughout his life, but he was only just then understanding how much pressure this time of year promised for the University’s apprenta.

This opportunity was one most lesser houses could scarcely dream of. His parents had worked hard to afford him the exciting possibilities offered at the Academy, and so far, he’d had an excellent tenure by any measure. He’d distinguished himself as an innovative thinker, outstripped his fellow students in his engineering and mathematics courses, and proven accomplished in the lab—but day by day, he was growing frustrated.

In truth, he didn’t have the space or resources he needed to do more than dream of the work he actually wanted to do. Failed blueprints and rushed note-taking littered every surface of his small living space. His personal journal overflowed with every scrap of information he could find on magic, but without individual funding, he was limited to the Academy’s library, whose shelves were notably barren of texts on the Arcane.

Home wasn’t any better; though his mother understood better than most, having been saved by a mage years ago, he’d learnt to temper his excitement around her. What was once an eager child’s fantasy now read as an uncomfortable obsession rather than the crux of his future work.

In some ways, he saw her reasoning. Looking to magic, rather than innovations of the mind, was decidedly non-Piltovan. When he had expressed an interest in pursuing science, she’d been glad that he was embracing his gifts to move towards more stable things. Things that were well-founded, highly regarded, and socially acceptable.

She needed not know that he spent every evening poring over runes, using the maths from his lessons to try and navigate their potential using science instead of grabbing drinks with the other young inventors.

This morning was a penance for one such late night. His own inventions for the application process were already settled into his satchel by the door. Perhaps he should have been more nervous, but he felt reassured. His work was good, the design of his multitools top-notch. But, solid work or not, tardiness would be a door slamming in his face if he couldn’t make it to the merchant clan artificer tents before they started turning people away.

Thus far, he’d only interacted in passing with Piltover’s elite; his family made tools for the city and he’d grown up helping his father repair equipment in their fancy factories and workshops, right up until Ezra had passed four years ago. As the son of a blacksmith and businesswoman, he wasn’t accustomed to occupying the same space as people who drank Noxian spirits and treated gold like water. But the idea of earning their respect, finding that those previously locked doors might open for him now—that was intoxicating.

He finished washing his face and even managed a shave before smoothing pomade through his hair. After throwing on his uniform, he assessed his reflection in the mirror and knotted his tie the way his father had taught him. He looked respectable, clean-cut; his mother had always pressed that looks mattered in these situations. Looks and the right set of manners would get you far when it came to encouraging these people to imagine you as their next great investment.

Satisfied, he gathered his notebook, tucked it into his bag, and hustled out of the room towards the busy streets below, where the Academy District was alive with motion. This energy radiated in crowds across the city, which he skirted on his way straight to where the distinguished families of Piltover would be setting up huge tents to show off the accomplishments of their workshops.

Auditioning academy peers already made up a steady flow of anxious chatter in the same direction. In a group of older students in front of the Giopara family’s tent, one unfortunate scholar was in tears. From her despondent look and the still-smoking burn on her vest, he assumed her audition must have gone poorly.

He felt for her, he did. Success was a unique thing in a city alive with the greatest of minds. He’d found his own perspective on that (“failure is part of the process“) was not so welcomed by teary classmates. He’d used that line on a girl he suspected had been sweet on him after she’d utterly failed an organic chemistry exam, and found her much less interested in spending time with him afterwards.

But that was how he felt; there was almost a rush to the challenge he found here. The heady belief that anything was possible with enough ingenuity. He knew there would be people here who would see the same vision he’d been dreaming of since childhood. If he closed his eyes he could see a future where he wasn’t presenting just clever tools, but technology powered by the hum and energy of magic. Magic he’d brought, magic that gave people the same sense of wonder that had lived in his heart for decades.

As he passed his papers over to the guard at the tent’s wide entrance, he felt his first flutter of nerves. The guard looked them over; she was a broad-shouldered woman with a hard, freckled face, but she smiled as she looked at his credentials. “Ah, Talis,” she remarked, handing the pages back to him. “I knew your old man. Sad to hear about him—good luck in there.” He gave her a grateful smile before moving into the tent’s interior.

The crowd he found inside was respectable; each inventor gave their fellows a reasonable berth as they waited, trying to appear poised and professional enough to distinguish themselves as worthy of patronage.

As names were called, Jayce swallowed his nerves and steeled himself to put on a good show, shoulders back, head high.

“Jayce Talis?”

He knew the process: present to the artificer panel a short summary of your work, demonstrate your invention, be judged yes or no. But it was only when he was stepping out the other side of the tent with a paper clenched in his hand, and an official offer for sponsorship from Clan Giopara that Jayce had the full realisation that something extraordinary might be happening.

He had an offer—an offer from an established merchant family who ran the Forge of Tomorrow. These were the people whose warehouses he used to haul shipping crates into when he was a teen. It was almost too much to process, like he was still asleep in his cramped dormitory, sleeping off his late night. But he’d done it. He was also, undeniably, and impossibly, the youngest person to have ever received a full offer like this.

His success buoyed him; suddenly he could taste the future on his tongue, a fusion of nerves that intermingled with sheer enthusiasm. He felt like he was glowing. If this was what true success felt like, he understood why people chased it so hard.

He paused at a vendor’s booth away from the still-hectic frenzy of scholars to grab a quick breakfast and try to reconcile the way his head was spinning. A wild idea occurred to him then. A student might only need one official patronage to set them up for life, but his mother was a shrewd sort of businesswoman; she’d always said never to settle for your first offer, settle for your best offer. He might as well try another house.

The atmosphere in this next audition was notably colder; Clan Ferros had an intimidating presence in the city, but the kind of cut-throat tactics in innovation that might keep him from being pigeonholed into building tools forevermore.

He was slightly shocked when he strolled in to face the waiting panel of house artificers that they all leaned forward at the mention of his name. “Ah, Mr Talis! Yes we heard you made quite a show of it with the Gioparas—youngest inventor we’ve ever seen with an offer. Well, dazzle us.”

Seeing that he was known almost threw him off completely. He felt sweat under his collar, a small tremor in his hands, but he kept his voice steady, his smile easy as he pulled out his tools and explained the way he’d condensed a regulator, oscilloscope, and function generator into a palm-size tool for easy engineering purposes. He noted the mutters between them as he began his demonstration but couldn’t tell exactly how he was being received until he was complete.

“Well, Mr Talis, Heimerdinger has mentioned you—it seems the professor picks his pupils well.”

And he was once again ushered from the room, clutching a second offer for his future. He blinked in utter astonishment as he stared at the two offers he held in his hands. He could choose who to work with—the possibilities this gave him were incredible. He could accept one of these right now, and so long as he worked to maintain it with enough dignity, he’d be able to petition for an independent study by his final year in the academy.

He was still reeling, frozen between twisting lines of academy scholars when a silk top hat struck him right in the chest.

“Caitlyn!”

He glanced up to see a stately woman marching in his direction and hastily shoved his two offers in his bag, stooping to scoop up the top hat at his feet. He was straightening to offer it to her when he noticed the wide blue eyes of a young girl taking him in with interest.

“I’m so sorry,” the girl said hurriedly, snatching the hat from his hands. “I was just excited—it flew right out of my grip.”

Jayce blinked at her before he managed a soft smile. “Think nothing of it, Miss...?”

“Kiramman.” The woman had reached them now and offered him a slender, gloved hand. He took it and shook it firmly, suddenly realising he was standing in the presence of two very important people. It took everything in him not to glance over at the ornate sigil of the Kiramman Clan that hung over the audition tent to his left.

“Mrs. Kiramman, I hope you and your daughter are enjoying Progress Day.” She was wearing a blue-black sharp-cut walking suit and the kind of high-collar ruffled blouse he’d only seen in portraits of very fancy women. For some reason, this fact made him more nervous to speak with her than anything else about her bearing. He watched her eyes move over him, realising then that he was being assessed.

“Such as it is. Not much to be excited for in the city at the moment,” she sniffed. “But you are a scholar here looking for patrons, I assume?”

“I have two offers now, ma’am, just debating them.” He leaned on a skill his parents had always taught him worked well with the elite: make what you have seem desired, let them know you’ve got something special that they might covet and you can hook them into wanting to outbid others to obtain what you have.

“Two? My my, aren’t we popular.” Something calculating in the way the lady of the house looked him over now reminded Jayce that the Kirammans were known to be excellent hunters. He clasped his sweating palms behind his back to keep them steady. “What’s your name?”

“Jayce Talis,” he answered, giving her a deferential nod. He felt suddenly small standing not in front of the clan’s artificers, but the actual scions of a great house. He tried to remember that they were simply people—people with money certainly, but people nonetheless. But he couldn’t seem to clutch onto that thought as he felt himself flushing. A boy from a minor house of smiths and craftsmen standing in front of a woman whose ancestors had helped to found this place. He felt like a rube, wrong-footed and dwarfed by the towering nature of her legacy.

Her daughter, Caitlyn, he recalled, chirped, “Talis! The hammer company!” in response and looked pleased at having recognised his family. Mrs. Kiramman’s brow raised slightly, and for the life of him, Jayce couldn’t decide if that was a bad or good thing.

“Well, tools in general, but our hammers are top of the line,” he rushed to explain. “But, I’m looking to move outside the family business. My folks helped to build the city, now I get to help it progress.”

“And what is your brilliant plan for that?” Mrs. Kiramman asked, folding her hands in front of herself.

“Well, it’s certainly not to keep designing multi-tools forever, ma’am,” he replied, trying for a bit of cheek, if only to break the tension he was feeling. “But I’m still early in my academy career and there are limits to what is allowed. I have my own ideas of how to push us into a new future, but if my family taught me anything, it’s that you have to create a foundation before you start building up.”

He realised all at once that this might be considered a pitch—that this could be a shot at another option for his future. The unprecedented possibility of three families offering for him sent pride and excitement sizzling through his veins like an electric pulse. He hurried to continue, “With the right funding, I can pursue the future much quicker—alternate power sources, a potential to revolutionise what this city’s technology could be capable of, something that will carry the City of Progress for the next century.” He spoke with a confidence that he knew wasn’t fully bravado. He believed in himself, in his dream. He might not have had the full shape of his Hextech future yet, but he could already see the potential for it to make everyone’s lives better, easier, safer.

“If you are able to, you mean,” Mrs. Kiramman pointed out before thoughtfully glancing around the Progress Day tents. Her daughter had locked on to him though. She seemed to be taking her own measure of him now, a private smile tucked into the corner of her mouth. “Big dreams alone won’t get you anywhere, young man.”

He bore that criticism with a self-effacing laugh, straightening his tie and shifting the strap of his bag further up his shoulder to alleviate the nerves of trying to hold stock still. “Don’t I know it. It’s hard work that builds the future—hard work and people willing to give others the chance they need at success.” He hoped his insinuation wasn’t too overbearing, but also knew that he had to take a chance if he wanted people like the Kirammans to take one on him.

Surprisingly enough it was Caitlyn Kiramman who came to his rescue. “He’s right, Mother. Dreams are what make everything here.” Jayce noticed a touch of steel beneath the imploring gaze of her dreamer’s eyes.

“No, Caitlyn. Money is what makes the things here possible, and that’s what I imagine Mr. Talis is looking for today.” The words weren’t quite an admonishment, and the look she shot him was almost assuredly a challenge.

“Of course ma’am, that’s what today is all about right?” He waved a hand around at the dozens of other hopeful scholars for effect. “Investing in the future? Building a better tomorrow? Progress,” he concluded firmly, seeing that his pitch was coming to a close. He’d have to see if she thought it worth entertaining or sent him scurrying off with his first real rejection of the day.

Surprisingly, the corner of her eyes barely lifted in a tastefully subdued smile of her own. “You paint quite a pretty picture, Mr. Talis... Come along. Caitlyn and I were just about to walk the grounds. I’d like to hear a little more about this future you imagine.” She turned on her heel and adopted a swift pace he had to rush to follow. He fell into step beside her, trying not to look like the desperate schoolboy he felt.

“Impress me,” she invited, “and perhaps I’ll see if we can offer you something to tempt you away from the other hounds at your heels.”

𓊈 first chapter | previous chapter | next chapter on AO3 𓊉

an: This is chapter 8, 'Dreams of Prestige' of our fic, Lies We Tell Ourselves!! tomorrow we are posting chapter 22!! wowowow but it's so fun to look back on some of these early chapters as we post the full text on tumblr. this one was one where we introduced something i (ten) read about when learning about all the ways America has flucked over Black Americans >:(((( integrating it and other such themes into our work has been a nice way to reflect on them.

[tenderwatches]

summary: Viktor refuses to trust the people of Piltover—and that includes Jayce Talis. (someone hug that boy; he is doing his best!!)

Though Viktor sleeps well, perhaps better than he has in months, he’s still weary when he wakes. Golden light creeps into his new room, and reality sets in like a paradox in an otherwise mundane dream; the sensation is at once ordinary and disarming.

He is back in Piltover.

The council wants him working on Hextech again.

He’s argued with Jayce Talis.

Now, he’s making his way slowly around his former partner’s lab, taking everything in as if he’s on a tour. This lab is bigger than the one they’d previously shared (it has a second story with enclosed rooms and a loft, which Viktor finds excessive even without considering the below-ground forge). Along the far wall, boxes bearing various mercantile clan insignia line the shelves—evidence of funding that extends well beyond the Kirammans’ patronage.

Jayce seems to have forgotten altogether that Viktor had arrived yesterday and has taken to staring at him, as if trying to determine why he’s here. Sky Young (he recalls writing her a letter of recommendation and is pleased to see Jayce has taken her on) and a young man she introduces as ‘Thomas’ (clearly of Piltovan stock, by the way he stares at Viktor like a wide-eyed doe) have set about in a valiant crusade to carve out a space for Viktor amongst the chaos of papers and instruments.

The flurry of movement finally breaks Jayce’s stupor. He retreats to his workstation, where he begins cramming papers into a drawer. A key appears from his sleeve just long enough to turn the lock before vanishing back beneath his cuff.

Of course, Jayce would have lab assistants fretting over the mess Viktor knows damn well he made. He only just contains the urge to roll his eyes, especially when Jayce has the audacity to lean against the back of his chair in a poor attempt to look casual. “What, uh. What are you doing here?”

Maybe Jayce really has forgotten all of yesterday. “I wanted to talk to you about your work.”

Jayce’s honeyed irises glimmer with something like expectation, or even hope. The fact that this man thinks that they can reconcile so easily after everything he’d done to oust Viktor from the city that, much to his chagrin, kept him alive, indicates to Viktor just how much Jayce has always gotten his way. He’s always known this; he’s fallen into his own traps of wanting to please, to give, to see that almost boyish smile alight upon the other man’s lips.

But that grace, he reminds himself, is not to be trusted—just like any other member of Piltover’s upper caste, no matter how much Jayce likes to paint himself as the paragon of the common man.

Jayce laughs in a way that sounds a bit delirious, and Viktor has to look away. Jayce’s cravat lies on the desk, surely discarded the second he was able to remove it. The leather bracelet he typically wears sits beside it, half folded over itself, and Viktor knows Jayce must have been deep in thought, turning its length over and over, like a circle of prayer beads. These little signs of how his former partner hasn’t changed much in the time they’ve been apart begin to tug at his resolve, attempting to find frayed edges to pull apart. Viktor will not bend to this man again, just because he wears his emotions so openly.

“I can’t believe you’re using that line on me again,” Jayce mumbles, and as he does, Viktor notices his mouth fluttering through a fleeting smile.

“What line?” He sits at the newly cleared workstation that Sky indicates to him in gestures, making her way through a series of pantomimes that he interprets as her going to get breakfast. She practically shoves Thomas out of the room once he returns from ferrying a box of half-finished prototypes and tools upstairs. The doors shut firmly behind them; it can’t be any more obvious how awkward they’ve made this environment for the two young lab assistants. Well, he’s not doing anything more or less than he’s been asked, and he’s not going to let Jayce’s inability to hold a normal conversation keep him from carrying on with the work.

He has every right to be here, after all. He doesn’t need to justify himself. This thought gets forced to the back of his mind, where he refuses to give it any further attention. He has always had to make his own space, and just because this is Jayce doesn’t mean it’s any different.

Jayce turns on the spot, his erratic movements betraying his discomfort. Viktor finds himself looking first at Jayce’s rumpled clothes, then the shadow of overnight growth on his face, his tousled hair, and finally, his sleep-heavy eyes. He lingers there for a moment before clearing his throat, causing Jayce to jolt into awareness. “About yesterday—”

Viktor scoffs. “We’ve clearly said enough about how we feel.”

Jayce makes a noise that tells Viktor he’s pouting. “Look, I’m not trying to bring it all up again—”

“Obviously, you are.”

He feels as exasperated as Jayce sounds. His focus is on the tabletop, watching Jayce flatten his fingers against the surface in an attempt to keep his composure. “It’s just—that… That wasn’t how I intended it to go.”

Viktor raises an eyebrow. “Intended what to go?”

“You know—seeing—seeing each other. Again.” Jayce pauses to wet his dry lips with the tip of his tongue, and Viktor’s hands clench around the crutch he still has not let go of in spite of having sat down. “So, uh. I’m sorry.”

Viktor doesn’t respond beyond lifting his gaze to meet Jayce’s, maintaining careful indifference. They hold this moment in silence, then, Jayce releases a strained huff. A small, petty part of Viktor is satisfied.

“I’m… going to make tea.” Jayce stands, sliding his chair back with a loud scrape. “Do you… want any?” His makes his offer with hesitation, and that alone makes Viktor respond with almost a sneer.

“No. I’m fine.”

Once he’s moved across the room, Viktor finally allows himself to track the other man’s retreating back. He’s quick to dismiss the olive branch; it has something to do with how he can’t help but notice how Jayce’s coat settles across his broad shoulders, wrinkled from what must have been hours of the night spent hunched over his notes.

The effect this mental image has on him is maddening.

He focuses hard on the blackboard behind Jayce’s workstation, heart beating rabbit-fast. Fragments of calculations spill across the surface in that familiar, passionate scrawl; some notation has been viciously crossed out, others circled with aggressive emphasis. Viktor recognises the momentum of Jayce deep in the throes of inspiration and pictures him pacing between his notes and the board, brow knitted in thought.

Viktor wills himself to breathe evenly, setting his crutch aside against the table with a long exhale. This side of Jayce—dishevelled, intense, brilliant in his chaos—shouldn’t be so compelling—but this isn’t the city’s Progress Day darling. This is his Jayce, the real man behind the sculpted model that flashes up in front of the Council, crowds, and investors.

No—not his. Not anymore.

His pulse beats in his ears. His breath, superficially steady, falters. He has always possessed this deep affection, this painful attraction to his former partner, but his feelings are now much more intense than he ever remembered.

He retrieves the notes he collected from the floor following last night’s argument, stacking the papers on the desk in front of him. His motions are foreign with artificial precision as he adjusts them a fraction, aligning the corners and far edge. He places his pen along the top, then slides it to the right. He frowns at it.

“So,” Jayce starts, piercing the stiff silence. “How… are you adjusting back to Piltover?”

Viktor’s lip curls unkindly, but he keeps the ugly expression between himself and the tabletop. “Small talk, Jayce?” The words still drip with derision. Jayce either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care.

“It seems safer.” The kettle bubbles to a boil. Jayce crosses his arms, then uncrosses them. The pads of his fingers drum an anxious rhythm against his bicep that Viktor follows with his eyes. His sleeves are hastily rolled up past his forearms, and his tanned skin is a shade paler across his left wrist, where he normally wears his bracelet. His hands are strong, rippling with his movements.

After an incriminating length of time, Viktor manages to tear his gaze away. The truth is clear to him, even after less than twenty-four hours topside. Adjusting will be hard—is hard. Living in Piltover has always been difficult for him; he has to play their games ten times better whilst only hoping for the barest return, and he can’t trust anyone. Not even Jayce—not again. “I don’t see why it’s necessary.”

“I can’t do silence, V—Viktor.” The correction of his name lands like a blow between them. Viktor reels from it, even though he’s the one who insists on their distance. Jayce’s next words are soft with cautious apology. “You know that.”

Viktor wants to shake himself. “Put on a record,” he suggests dryly.

Jayce’s shoulders tense. He purses his lips into a thin line. “Let’s… just get you caught up on the work.”

Irritation flares to life inside of Viktor—of course, Jayce expects him to simply fall in line, to pick up where they left off as if the years between them were merely a brief interruption. As if Viktor’s exile had been a minor inconvenience in the great narrative of their incredible journey. As if Piltover—as if Jayce hadn’t torn away everything he’d built for himself from scraps, much as the Undercity has risen from Piltover’s castoffs.

Familiar bitterness rises in his throat, but he swallows it back with a cough as he watches Jayce fix his tea with trembling hands. Nothing in Viktor’s life has ever been so easy, so accommodating, and Jayce has always failed to see what that truly looked like.

Jayce’s betrayal was agony, certainly, but its most terrible cruelty is that it was preventable. Viktor knew better, and, despite himself, he’d let Jayce’s warm smiles, gentle hands, and scientific enthusiasm win him over. But this time, he promises himself, he’ll abide by his lessons for living amongst the wolves in Piltover.

𐡸.:𐫱:.𐡷

Autumn, 974 AN - nineteen years ago

This city was specifically designed to torment him.

The Academy Square was impossibly wide, a torturous distance stretching between him and the classrooms. Even after trekking across its expanse, there were still endless stairs to climb before reaching the gauntlet in which he would have to demonstrate that he belonged in this city. Each landing was a temporary refuge before trial, a chance to catch his breath. Lances of pain shot through both legs, never mind just the bad one, and his overused muscles quivered with the effort of maintaining dignity under the wary glances of countless passing students.

The whispers had run, lightning fast, through the student body before the end of the day was out.

“Do you think he can read?”

“Must do, right? They wouldn’t let him in otherwise, even with Professor Heimerdinger’s favour… “

“Where did the professor even find him?”

In the grand lecture hall, he cautiously approached a group of students discussing coursework in low but animated voices. The conversation died the moment he approached, sending his heart leaping first into his throat, then to the pit of his stomach. He swallowed audibly, uncertain how to proceed under their attention.

“We were just discussing Professor Wingert’s summer intensive,” one student offered, a false brightness in their tone. “Did you attend?”

“No,” Viktor answered, attempting to keep his voice low enough that his accent might not be detectable, but this felt too insufficient an answer. “I studied independently—”

One of the students in the group, a round-faced teen with an absurdly large collar, gave him an aborted little cough that failed to hide his snicker. The girl next to him elbowed him without discretion, and Viktor noticed they all now seemed to be enraptured by anything that wasn’t him.

He clenched his teeth against the sharp stab of humiliation, refusing to give them the benefit of noting his embarrassment. Instead, he swept out a chair and settled into it, hooking his cane on the edge of the table before folding his fingers atop the surface. “Please, continue. I’m sure it will be enlightening.”

The students blinked at him, obviously unsure how to take his intrusion, and he waited them out with as patient an expression as he could manage. Eventually, they turned back to their chatter. He gave the occasional hum as if he followed the thread of conversation, quietly stewing in the bitter misery of the moment. He made himself sit through the banal recounting of their fancy summer course and laughed at jokes he didn’t fully understand until it felt less like retreating when he gave his quiet excuses and left.

He realised at some point that he had faded into the scenery for them. It felt marginally better than being an open interloper in their space, and it let him breathe, stretch out his aching leg, and dig his thumb into the painful knot that had been building at the joint of his knee after a day of endless stairs.

He marked this exchange down as his first lesson learnt.

Rule number one: make space for yourself; they will not make it for you.

It was as good a thing to learn as any about manoeuvring in this city. The Undercity had its own set of rules: never look distracted whilst walking alone, haggle a merchant’s first price, and memorise the locations of hazardous vents, the times at which they release, and when they can be safely walked over. Of course there would be plenty of similar circumstances for him to familiarise himself with, but he regretted stumbling unawares into one on his first day.

Survival in Piltover was less literal than it was back home, but the swift current raged around him, close to dragging him in. The threat of drowning made his next lesson all that more painful to swallow, like gulping water instead of air.

As his first few weeks continued, Viktor found himself existing in proximity to several other students in his year. He didn’t exactly pull them into conversation, but they seemed content to let him occupy their space during meals and study at their table in the Academy library in the evenings.

He appreciated the opportunity to not be left alone. The last thing he wanted was to make himself a target here. He wasn’t exactly sure what cruelties the shining citizens of Piltover might be capable of, but he hadn’t gotten that far in life by ignoring the simple rule that those left behind by the pack were easy to pick off.

What he didn’t anticipate was how quickly that illusion of safety in numbers could dissolve when he moved from being a mildly annoying shadow to something far more sinister—a threat to the proper Pilties in his lessons.

Viktor, after all, was smart. It was the one thing that carried him through every indignity of his life, every agony and complication. His intelligence was a weapon he had forged, honed, and used to carve his path.

He, however, didn’t realise it was a blade that could cut both ways until he showed up a fellow student at a lecture. It hadn’t been meant as a slight; it was simply in his nature to act on his knowledge. Classes were the one place he felt confident that being silent would do him more harm than good.

So when he cut across his fellow first-year’s fragmented attempts to reconcile an equation with a simple, “The math you did here is wrong,” he didn’t expect the daggers that shot his way. They came from not just the boy he’d corrected, but nearly half the class. He cleared his throat, resigning himself to make himself unshakeable in this clear social catastrophe, and picked up the chalk. With his cane tapping gently, he moved to the board and made a short correction of the boy’s work. “An oversight, I’m sure,” he managed stiffly, stepping back as their professor looked over the work with a hum of approval.

His classmates moved away from him that evening when he settled at their table to work. He spared a moment to watch them walk away before forcing himself to look back at his notes and stuff down the absurd notion that rejection could hurt him. Even if it could, he would never let them see it. He had been a loner before; he would manage being one here as well.

Rule number two: never rely on their grace—it is precarious, and they will exploit your weaknesses.

So went the rest of his first semester at the Academy, and in time, winter gave way to spring after a quiet holiday break that Viktor chose to spend on campus. It was towards the end of that first school year that he learnt his third lesson.

Viktor wasn’t one to notice looks right away, but even he noticed the striking appearance of the student approaching him—olive skin, jet black hair, and sapphires for eyes. Perhaps this was why he had been utterly unprepared when this person stopped beside him, peered over his shoulder, and asked, “What are you reading?”

Their accent was one he couldn’t place—it wasn’t quite round enough to be Piltovan, but it sounded close, perhaps belonging to a nearby neighbour.

Viktor looked up, already prickling with awareness. His hard expression softened slightly at the edges, though, when he saw that those blue eyes were bright with interest. “Realms of Runeterra,” he offered finally, lifting the book to show its cover.

“Sounds… big,” they commented with an easy smile, presenting him with a hand. “Morgan.” Viktor took it in his own, giving a cautious but crisp shake.

“Viktor.”

“Viktor,” Morgan repeated, as if trying out the name as they dropped onto the emerald grass beside him. “Well, in case you can’t tell, I’m not from around here either.”

For the remainder of the school year, Morgan and Viktor orbited what one could loosely call a “friendship,” if one were being generous.

Viktor didn’t see the other student much, as they were a year ahead of him and so didn’t share but two of his classes, but he found himself growing… excited for those lessons in particular. Something about those periods made his stomach perform tight backflips, which doubled in intensity whenever Morgan caught his eye and gave him a swift smile.

One evening, as the sleepy start of winter started to nip at the air, Morgan caught Viktor’s wrist as he was gathering his things. “Hey,” they said, leaning in conspiratorially, “there’s something I want to tell you.”

Viktor fumbled one of his books, nearly dropping his cane, but Morgan’s next words were not what he’d expected. “You’re brilliant, Viktor—but if you want to succeed here, you need to… adjust.” Their thumb traced circles on the back of his hand. “The way you speak—I know you can’t help the accent; I can’t do much about mine either, but—the way you present yourself? Like you have something to prove.”

“I do.” The words burst forth more insistently than he intended. He faltered, trying to justify them. “I… I know they don’t think I belong. But I can do the work just as well—better than any of them.”

Morgan sighed. “I’m only telling you this because I care.” They let go of his hand, standing back to fold their arms over their chest. “You worry too much about what others think. It keeps people away—I mean, you don’t see anyone other than me, do you?”

Viktor looked askance, burying the wellspring of discomfort that was beginning to burble in his chest. He didn’t answer, but he didn’t need to.

Later that week, Viktor heard Morgan’s lilting laugh from around the corner of one of the Academy’s sunlit halls. “It’s sort of cute how he’s more confident than anyone from the Undercity ought to be,” they were saying, eliciting snickers from their captive audience, “but he really ought to know his place.” Light flashed in his vision in a way that didn’t have anything to do with the crystalline window panes.

Viktor turned sharply down the hallway towards the voices, his cane stabbing the floor with each step. Something in him had gone cold and still; he didn’t even take satisfaction in the way the clack of his cane clipped off the group’s laughter when he passed by. He could feel their stares landing all over him but kept his own gaze firmly fixed ahead. He no longer remembered where he had been heading, but at least they knew he wasn’t going to lie down, clueless and naive, for their cruel humour.

Rule number three: they will lie to you. Their kindness is an instrument made of ice and mirrors instead of steel.

He spent that night, and each one after it, alone. Much like home, you couldn’t trust anyone topside. But at least in the Undercity, people bared their fangs so you knew they’d tear out a chunk of your flesh if you let them. Here, they flashed their pretty teeth like anglerfish, beckoning you in to be devoured before you knew it. Viktor refused to let himself be consumed by this city. He would learn everything it offered him, and even from what it did not. If their kindness was a weapon, so too would be his perception.

It wasn’t until the next week that Morgan attempted to approach him again as if nothing had changed. Viktor didn’t look up from his work as Morgan greeted him, but his voice carried just enough for those nearest them in the library to hear. “Here to offer me more advice about fitting in?”

“Viktor, I—” He could hear Morgan’s smile faltering in their words.

“You want to help me pull people in instead of keeping them away? Like you?” He fixed Morgan in his gaze, trapping them there, each word a pin to hold them down. “To tell them about who I know, what my family does—all so I’ll be worthy of my confidence?” He snapped his notebook shut, placing it carefully into his bag. “Are you going to teach me how to tell six different versions of the same story, depending on who is listening?”

Morgan wasn’t smiling now. Their hands clenched into fists at their sides, shoulders straining the perfect cut of their starched academy uniform. Viktor took this in, tracing the style of their hair, coiffed in the latest fashion without a single strand out of place. Despite their obvious mortification, their posture was still Piltovan perfect. Viktor wondered how long they had practiced in the mirror, turning to examine their pose from every angle. How many versions of themselves had they tried on before finding one that Piltover would accept?

In his periphery, he could see the nearby students pretending not to listen, but their pens were frozen in mid-air. Viktor leaned into his cane to push himself to standing and started for the door. He paused next to Morgan, letting his words fall softly, perhaps mercifully, over his shoulder.

“Before you mock someone for not minding their place, make sure you know yours.”

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AN: thanks for reading chapter 5, 'Defiance' of our fic, Lies We Tell Ourselves! We're posting twice weekly on AO3 and sharing previously posted, full chapters on tumblr each day before update day 🎉 Our next update (ch. 18!!!) is coming up tomorrow if you want to get caught up!

[tenderwatches]

summary: Viktor and Jayce get a little too close in the lab + a look at how viktor learnt the rules of surviving in Piltover as an Undercity transplant cw: this chapter contains ableist language (canon, self-referential) and descriptions of medical suturing

When Viktor first became aware that he’d die early, he’d been angry.

It hadn’t been pretty. He’d yelled at his mother, at his father, had thrown things—his cane, books, half-assembled inventions. He’d cried and screamed until he’d worked himself up so badly that his father had needed to sprint to a breathing station with Viktor on his back in hopes that the cleaner air would dampen his desperate wheezing.

After that, he’d been listless for days, lying in bed, trying to conjure up the motivation to work for anything when his time would be so short, so inconsequential.

And then he remembered Rio.

The waverider was a huge creature he visited where a strange man in a strange place beyond the ravine kept her. She was like a salamander glistening in shades of blush and blossom, with big eyes full of curiosity and a tongue that craved sweet nectar. Such a simple creature, but he still thought of her, even years after he’d last seen her. He still thought of her and of the man who was so determined to keep her alive that he had not cared if she lived.

He thought of infants, cold in their cradles, their lives snuffed out, breaths robbed by the Gray. He thought of children wasting away, disfigured by the slicks of toxic chemicals oozing from chemtech seams deep in crevasses, and how he, at least, knew sunlight.

Since then, Viktor has done his best to ensure that every moment of his short life contributes to something greater than himself. The people whose lives he’s saved in the Undercity will go on to have families; they’ll impart their knowledge upon others who will do the same, who will do the same, who will do the same.

Life, like an object in motion, stays in motion.

Energy can neither be created nor destroyed—it can only be transformed.

Viktor hopes that after his death, the energy that was once heat in his body will permeate into the ether, atoms ricocheting into the endless universe.

Until then, he’s resolved to stay in motion.

This determination presses his lips into a thin line of concentration as he makes minute adjustments to the dials on the microscope before him. Crystalline structures resolve into sharp focus, forming wild geometries that defy every principle of natural formation. Unlike genuine hex crystals with their orderly lattices, the synthetics’ birefringent patterns are irregular, and the arcane’s response is unlike anything he’s ever seen.

Viktor pauses to scribble a few words alongside one of Jayce’s diagrams, adding to the existing maze of their notations. They’ve managed to offset interference caused by the unexpected new compounds identified in their lab tests, but there is still residual output to deal with. He takes this moment to rest his forehead in his hand, momentarily closing his eyes. The urge to surrender to sleep swells slowly, like a building tidal wave, and he forces his eyes open before it can break over him.

One of Jayce’s hexscopes (an adaptation of one of his early designs) sits open on the table, tracking arcane energy as it moves through the crystal matrix. He stares hard at the pen attached to the end of its thin metal arm, scratching softly on continuously rolling paper as it records the waveforms. The resulting bonds are irregular with equally unpredictable chemical reactions—

Chemical reactions! Viktor straightens up so quickly that the momentum almost carries him over backwards. Head reeling, he stumbles to steady himself against the desk, pulling the diagrams in for a better look before jamming the microscope against his eye again, squinting hard at what he sees under the lens. These erratic bonds must be the cause of the arcane’s volatile reactions and inconsistencies. They’re brittle instead of strong, releasing energy in unexpected spurts. They’re illogical, full of contradictions. Only chemtech can force such incompatible combinations to hold.

Simultaneous thoughts fire off in all directions—what this means for the outputs they’re attempting to handle (harness? Eliminate? Neutralise?), the tenuous nature of these bonds, the undersized reactions sustained by the crystals—and the nagging feeling he’s seen this all somewhere before. Somewhere in Zaun, near the seams, where, in his youth, anger at the injustice of his life had gotten the better of him. Somewhere he'd nearly gotten buried in collapsing pipes, flashing fuchsia and green in the darkness of the sump.

He drops away from the microscope and back into his chair. Perhaps he should consider bringing some of this work back to the lab Heimerdinger had set aside for him. It’s closer to his Academy-issued apartment than Jayce’s lab is, and with the constant travel across the city, he often finds himself exhausted before he’s even really gotten started. Today, just like many other days, his leg aches as if he’s been standing for the entire morning, though it’s only been a couple of hours since he arrived. The considerations of the crystals, his small inconveniences, the way they all still stagger him, make the walls begin to feel oppressive. The clean lines and polished brass are a far cry from the corrugated metal and improvisation he was used to in the Undercity, and yet—he’s now facing the same kind of problem. These synthetic crystals with their arcane violations bear toxicity here, whilst below, poison is a by-product of unholy greed.

In both places, they stand to lose so much, and yet the eyes of the elite are perpetually closed.

Viktor’s teeth grind as he grips the edge of the workbench to pull himself up again, ignoring how his muscles protest. He begins recalibrating the containment field to account for an array of chemical reactions, instead of only the ones they’d adjusted for earlier in the week. If he can just isolate the unstable compounds, maybe apply some of the principles he’d developed during his academy years, they can counteract or capture the arcane fluctuations.

He’s so deep in focus that he almost jumps when Jayce walks in, chatting before he’s even crossed the threshold. “I thought you might want to see the latest stability readings from—” He breaks off, and Viktor knows his eyes are fixed on the modified containment field setup. “What are you doing?”

“Testing a theory.” Viktor doesn’t look up from the controls. The crystal’s glow intensifies, casting flickering shadows across his hands. “The synthetic crystals are made with chemtech. The instability isn’t a flaw—it’s a signature.”

“Testing a wh—wait, chemtech?” Jayce’s footsteps quicken across the floor. He unceremoniously drops his papers onto the desk, knocking the pen of the hexscope out of alignment. It continues to dutifully work through arching waves, up and down. “Hold on, you can’t just—we don’t even have protocols for working with—”

“We don’t have time for protocols,” he hisses, sharper than he intends. He forces patience into his voice. “It’s like Councillor Medarda told you—every day, Clan Ferros grows more restless—”

“Viktor, wait—”

The crystal flares with brilliant lances of blue-white light, shattering into shards that streak across the lab, acid green and electric purple tails in their wake. Viktor recoils from it and finds himself crashing first into the chair behind him, then the ground.

His breath leaves his lungs without being replaced by another—it’s a second too long before he can gasp again, sucking in air that smells of Jayce’s aftershave. Sandalwood mingles with the smell of sulphur and iron. Stars shrink and grow in his eyes.

“Are you—” When Jayce speaks, Viktor slowly becomes aware that he’s caged by a pair of smooth, sturdy forearms. His former partner is propped above him, but not so much that their bodies aren’t pressed flush together. Heat grows between them. Jayce’s chest heaves as his own gives, and for a moment, Viktor can’t speak.

A gentle furrow forms between Jayce's brows as he quickly pushes himself up onto one palm, the other coming up to cup Viktor's cheek. The motion is gentle and unthinking, fraught with the effortless care these kinds of gestures bore in their past. His eyes search Viktor's face with worried intensity, thumb brushing along the angular line of his cheekbone and coming away bright red and wet. “Hey, V—” he soothes, voice soft with an intimacy that makes Viktor's chest tight. “V-Viktor—hey.” The feeling dissipates.

Viktor pushes Jayce’s touch away and tries to sit up. He slides his hand back to support himself as he does, successfully forcing Jayce back on to his heels. Viktor finds the resulting breadth of air between them too cool on his skin, and wheezing feels like a flurry of knives in his chest. “I’m fine, Jayce,” he dismisses, muffling an accompanying cough in the crook of his elbow. He winces at the taste of copper in the back of his throat, hot embarrassment coursing through him. He can’t meet Jayce’s eyes; they are too bright with concern, honest anxiety spilling forth, unguarded. “You did not have to—” But both the words and his irritation die in his throat as dark droplets begin to dot the tiles at Jayce’s feet. “You’re bleeding.”

“Oh.” Jayce twists slightly to look over his shoulder, but immediately relaxes his posture when the movement elicits a wince. “It’s nothing. Besides, you are, too,” he points out, vaguely indicating Viktor’s cheek.

“A scratch.” Viktor feels nauseous. Not only did Jayce need to protect him like a helpless child, but he’d gotten himself hurt in the process. He leans forward, breath escaping him in a frustrated huff. “You’re bleeding on the floor. Let me see.”

“Viktor, really, it’s—”

“Take off your shirt.”

Jayce’s amber eyes turn into burning discs, his dark brows lost in his messy hair. Viktor feels the back of his neck flush with heat. “Your back, Jayce. Let me see,” he repeats, mortification sharpening the edges of his demand.

Viktor tries to ignore the inherent eroticism of demanding that Jayce turn around and strip—only to immediately fail when Jayce simply does it. By the time the two of them settle again (the lab’s robust first aid kit to one side of Viktor, Jayce sitting cross-legged in front), Viktor is dizzy. He wishes he could say it’s purely due to the sheer amount of bronze skin on display, but the headache blooming up from the base of his skull tells him otherwise. He concentrates on applying a local anaesthetic to the scattering of gashes across Jayce’s broad shoulders, then dabbing each with an antiseptic. “Well, the good news is you’ll live,” he jests, managing to thread a thin, curved surgical needle. His movements are slow but steady, and when he leans in closer to begin his work, the room rocks by only a small margin.

“Thanks, doc, what a relief.” Jayce turns his laugh into a soft snort, presumably so as to not disrupt Viktor’s stitching. Though he hasn’t needed to exercise this skill in months, the repetitive motions return to him with ease. They sit in stillness a while longer before Jayce hesitantly raises the question, “What… were you saying about chemtech?”

In spite of himself, Viktor smiles. What he wouldn’t give for the world to have the kind of insatiable curiosity that Jayce Talis has.

He walks his former partner through the process of his discovery, naming the impossibilities, the idiosyncrasies, and the ways in which he suspects the arcane clashes with the chemical compounds. Jayce is just as intrigued as Viktor, and Viktor can’t help but think that, had Jayce been in his position, they might have ended up in this same situation despite the other man’s usual adherence to safety precautions. Words of science, math, and discovery pass between them with the easiness of butterflies on a breeze, punctuated by an occasional excited exclamation from Jayce.

His progress on Jayce’s back is clean and methodical—habits formed from years of treating injuries in the Undercity, where wounds proved you couldn't stay out of trouble and seeking proper care marked dependency. He uses a pair of forceps to guide the needle through each wound, stopping only to tie off each suture as he moves from one cut to the next.

“When did you learn to do this?” Jayce has never been good at silences.

“Long ago.” Viktor keeps his eyes fixed on his work, feeling perverse as he notices the warmth radiating from Jayce’s skin, even through the sterile gloves he’s donned. “I have always fixed things. Mending clothes or skin, it makes little difference to me.”

His hands have moved now, lower down, from the broad muscle of the trapezius. He rests his fingers there for a second too long, and the name of the muscle floats through his mind, 'latissimus dorsi', as if the words are a subconscious effort to pull him from other thoughts.

“I had to learn some of this too, actually. In the forge—hot metal doesn't always go where you want it to,” Jayce offers, and Viktor’s hands still, his thoughts returning to the present.

The differences in their circumstances are not lost on him, but he recognises Jayce’s attempt to… relate to him. “I suppose we both learnt through trial and error,” he acknowledges.

“Not that—not that it’s, uh, the same.”

Viktor hears the uncertainty in Jayce’s hurried addition, as if he’s waiting for a sign from Viktor to indicate he’s irritated that Jayce has drawn the comparison. “You can relax, Jayce.”

Viktor pulls the gloves from his hands and sits back to survey his handiwork. He’s stitched four lacerations in total, covering each with neat squares of gauze taped down over Jayce’s tanned skin. The damage, thankfully, wasn’t worse than any of the other countless accidents they’ve had in the lab, but Viktor still feels that curl of shame at being impatient enough to have caused this one.

Silence expands to fill the gulf between their differences—Viktor’s skills hard-won through necessity, Jayce’s forged with the security of his family and promises of a bright future. And yet, an uncanny symmetry has brought them to this point, just as it had years ago; one extraordinary moment in which their paths converged.

“Why would you risk this?”

Back then, he’d told Jayce that he hadn’t aspired to be an assistant for the rest of his life—and that was true. But beyond that, he’d known he was running out of options.

Every action, every movement, all the things he’s ever contributed, has an impact, however imperceptible in the long line of the universe. But it’s not enough for him to simply have been; he wants to be remembered.

Though energy can neither be created nor destroyed, human legacies are far more fragile things.

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Summertime, 978 AN - fifteen years ago

Nothing tasted as bitter as cruel irony, Viktor thought, as he made his way up what had to be the seventh staircase between him and the first stage on which he’d have to parade himself like a show dog. Progress Day in Piltover arrived with fanfare, as always, and the usual thrum of city life had become more of a coursing roar.

From Glasswell Street to Sidereal Avenue and Incognia Plaza, crowds gathered around vendor carts and at the colourful merchant tents, blissfully caught up in the spirit of innovation and promise.

Not one seemed to remember that, centuries ago, this day had not been marked by celebration but by terror and half a city being swallowed by the sea.

In the four years since his arrival at the University of Piltover, Viktor had marked each Progress Day by lighting a candle in remembrance of those Zaun had lost in the disaster. Earthquakes, resulting from the blasts detonated to clear the way for the Sun Gates, had thrashed the streets of the Undercity, sacrificing thousands of lives to the ocean—all in the name of progress.

Now, here he was, prepared to submit himself to the judgement of those who had so greatly benefitted from the influx of trade the Sun Gates had ushered in. He had only two destinations in mind, but the journey to the merchant families’ tents was already enough to send pain lancing up his leg. Maybe it was his penance walking over those watery graves to attend their school, study their sciences, and pretend like he was one of them.

He felt that he was doing a rather shoddy job of it, by the way the artificers peered at him with narrowed eyes that flicked between him and his papers. This overt display of suspicion made him curse Professor Heimerdinger for forcing him into this lavish ordeal. Auditioning had never been in Viktor’s plans—he knew better than to fool himself into thinking he could join the ranks of Piltover’s apprenta.

Rule number one: They will not make space for you.

He could build bridges upon bridges over the work his classmates created, but the city’s artificers, ruled by the wealthiest of the merchant class, would sooner retrofit their workshops with last year’s scrap metal than take on a cripple from the Undercity, even when the dean of the academy and head of the council himself had singled him out.

Graduation loomed ever closer, and despite his time at the academy, the future felt uncertain. Piltover’s clean air and bright sunlight had undoubtedly improved his health (incredible what being able to breathe did for a person), and the prospect of returning to the Undercity daunted him. He needed an apprenticeship probably more than anyone else stood waiting in the chamber, and yet, he was certain that he was the least likely to receive one, no matter how sound his work was.

“Name?” One of the artificers asked as she handed back the paper that clearly bore his name. He tightened his grip on his invention in an effort to hold his tongue.

“Viktor.”

“Full name?”

“It’s… just Viktor.”

She treated him with the kind of disdain that only someone with a meagre amount of power could manage. He hated her for it, and then hated that he did. It was too petty to warrant such a response from him, but his entire body was sore now. He’d pushed himself through the uneven cobblestone streets faster than he should have dared. He’d even risen with the sun, well before he’d needed to. He wanted to give them as few reasons to dismiss him as he could manage, thinking his dedication to punctuality might also communicate his regard for their time and win some small amount of their favour.

From the placid way the artificers looked at him, he could see that was not the case.

Of course, he’d known this and had even explained such to Heimerdinger when the dean had urged him to take on the auditions. How difficult it would be for him to simply make the physical journey in a process that was designed to showcase resilience and determination; how his accent would immediately mark him as ‘other’, and how the inventions he was proudest of were things that would not sparkle and flash the way Piltover expected. His progress was for the Undercity, and thus, it might as well have been invisible.

Already, their attention drifted, and other hopefuls surrounding the tent seemed to bear down on him. He grimaced as he set up his contraption of pipes and dials that looked out of place within the sleek lines of the tent. It wasn’t until his machine began hissing shrilly and emitting puffs of Gray that the artificers paid him any mind. One of them started shrieking, making it very difficult to explain that he’d also released an aerosolised alkali to neutralise the toxicity—the whole point of the showy demonstration.

Rule number two: their grace is precarious.

Whilst he’d never been foolish enough to think that the artificers might like what he brought to the auditions, he’d not been expecting their fury. With stomach-piercing fear, he realised that they, in all their self-aggrandising glory, seemed to think that his audition was an assassination attempt of the mercantile family. The absurdity nearly made him long for simpler days, when people merely saw his mistakes as proof of unworthiness, and his greatest lament was how they judged his errors more harshly than his peers' mere learning experiences.

He’d packed his machine in a hurry and practically fled the tent, almost tripping himself like he’d not done since he was a child in his haste to slip into the crowd.

Rule number three: They will lie to you.

By the time the day ended, he’d attended only one more audition, though he was hardly sure that it counted. He hadn’t spent very much time at the Holloran tent, but the experience still clung to him like a stubborn mood, even as he sat in the safety of his favourite haunt in Piltover. The mechanical oasis overlooked the promenade level of the Undercity, waters running through the ravine below, where he’d played as a child. He’d always appreciated the serenity of this place, finding even in his youth that its quiet tranquillity suited him.

“Viktor, my boy,” called a reedy voice from behind him, and he lifted a hand off his cane in greeting without turning to look at Professor Heimerdinger. “How did your ventures go today?”

“I don’t believe it really ‘went,’” he responded wryly, easing himself into a seated position in the arch of the open-air window, legs relaxing over the ledge. “Can you say it ‘went’ if one family thought I was attempting a murder, and the other refused me at the door?” Heimerdinger’s poro scurried over his lap and around his back, which he found both ridiculous and… cute. It made his bitter remark come out with a slightly amused lilt, even if there wasn’t much to find amusing in being turned away, only to almost be knocked over by the next hopeful student when the Holloran family admitted them mere moments after.

The professor gave a soft hum, a gloved hand at his chin in the perfect pose of refined thought. “What will you do?”

Viktor rolled his shoulders in a noncommittal shrug. “I still have some time. I will need to finish the year, of course, and then… Well, then, probably the, ah, how do they say? ‘Crunch time’? Comes?”

Heimerdinger’s moustache twitched in a smile that didn’t quite meet his eyes, even though Viktor thought that his use of the colloquialism had been rather apt. When the professor spoke next, his words were soft and cautious, as if he thought that Viktor might snap. “Why don’t you consider being my assistant, lad? You could stay on at the academy, and though I’m sure you’d rather be doing something more ambitious, you’d have time to pursue your own projects.”

Silence hung in the air between them for a moment. Viktor tried to read the expression in Heimerdinger’s eyes but only saw a soft sorrow there. “I appreciate your offer, Professor,” he started, the words tasting of defeat even before he’d spoken of any decision.

Heimerdinger seemed to sense Viktor’s aversion and interjected before he could continue. “So you’re aware, Viktor, this isn’t mere charity.” The professor turned inwards, eyes downcast, a slight droop to his large ears. “I was… perhaps hasty,” he admitted, still looking at the cement floor, “in urging you to audition.”

Viktor had never known Professor Heimerdinger to be prideful, but the dean’s guilty posture struck him, even so. His kindness still burnt; Viktor’s stubborn independence made him reactive to the idea of being handed anything out of pity, particularly given the assumptions of other students who already believed his mere presence was an excess of anything he had any right to. “Thank you, Professor.” He found that he meant it. Heimerdinger had always believed in his potential, even when doing so set him at odds with the rest of the faculty. “Perhaps… give me some time to think it over,” he relented, looking back out at the city below. The streets still bustled with the activity of Progress Day, even as the sun began to cast warm, dusky shadows amidst the revelry.

“Take the time you need, my boy. The offer stands.” With that, the professor retreated at a quick trot, his ever-present poro shuffling along behind him. Viktor sat in the wake of their departure, contemplating the glint of mechanical contraptions dotting the landscape (so far as he could tell, they were only constructed as decor for the day, which was an awful waste, considering what you could buy in the Undercity after selling parts of just one). Perhaps it had been a blessing that he’d not managed a successful audition. Being the assistant to the academy's dean would mean he would have access to lab spaces and materials that most others would not, including unusual things that would need to be assessed for danger.

That could be interesting.

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an: this chapter was SO fun to write - definitely one of the ones we were most looking forward to when we were posting on AO3!! i'm so bad at these tumblr updates im going to try to get a bunch of them scheduled at once and see what happens haha anyways tho we just posted chapter 23 yesterday on AO3! 🙌🏽 fic come so far 😭

[tenderwatches]

Ch. 38 of Lies We Tell Ourselves is up!

𐡸.:𐫱:.𐡷

chapter teaser

𐡸.:𐫱:.𐡷

chapter excerpt

Chapter 38: We Were Never Made to Run Forever

Jayce blinks awake to the light outside his window bleeding from the cool serenity of night into the frantic orange of dawn. Sensation returns to him in waves: his body cradled in his soft mattress, then the warmth of being swaddled in blankets. There is a presence of another in his arms; pressure against his chest, a weight settled against his hips.

Viktor.

His mind resolves this physical feeling with the same wonderful sense of revelation it always does when he remembers they have this now. He wonders if that awe will ever fade. In some small way he hopes not, but yet, there is a peace in imagining a future in which this is his every day. His partner is far from lost in gentle sleep currently. Instead, Viktor’s lips have found an ambling path across Jayce’s collarbones, teeth skimming like a rock skipping the surface of a pond in sharp little snaps of contact. The attention is unexpected enough that Jayce can’t help but let out a shuddery broken sound in response. His nerves spark past the hazy fog of sleep, encouraging in him a base, instinctual reaction. His brain comes alive with lazy pleasure, even as his awareness struggles to catch up.

Viktor acknowledges Jayce’s rousing with another sharp scrape of teeth up the tender side of his throat. His breath pants gently against the skin there with almost animalistic urgency. He sounds quite worked up, like he may have been lying like this for hours in the darkness of their room, wanting. The mental image is enough to spur Jayce into action, suddenly eager to make up for the time he’s lost whilst asleep. Jayce’s arms still feel heavy, giving this moment a dream-like quality as he moves them to cage Viktor’s frame against his own. He parts Viktor’s thighs and presses himself closer. Their bodies shift until they’re flush together, only the thin layer of their undergarments between them.

The heat of the contact shocks them both. Viktor’s body shudders into him, hips jumping forward to seek delicious friction. As suspected, he finds Viktor aroused already. Again, he imagines Viktor heavy with need, a bolt of fire to his rising desire. Heat and hardness move against him as Viktor treats them both to another glorious roll of his hips.

The noise that punches out of Jayce is low and rough, and he feels Viktor’s lips curve against his skin in a smile.

“Good morning,” Viktor whispers, his breath a caress that sends a wave of want careening through Jayce’s body.

Jayce can’t help but to laugh at the innocent greeting. He’s missed this—them—the lazy, perfect carnal desire between them. In these last few weeks, trials and the unpredictable progress in their work have consumed them both. Viktor has been sullen, quiet and focused. The doses of shimmer make him edgy, cold and more frustrated than ever.

Touches between them are always common; Jayce can’t help but reach for the other man, but the simple intimate pleasure of having Viktor in his arms has been noticeably absent.

This, of course, hasn’t been the end of the world. In the hectic race to find solutions, there are more important things to consider than sex. With the ever-present political shadow roiling behind them and constant roadblocks in their work, it’s no wonder they’ve both found themselves far too exhausted and distracted to do anything each night except exchange lazy kisses and fall asleep together.

But waking to Viktor, warm and interested, his thin hips now softly moving in desperate rolls devoid of any rhythm or intent, is enough to drive Jayce mad. There’s no denying how desperately a part of him aches for closeness, contact, and release.

Viktor too, he knows, must be frustrated by the distinct absence of physical intimacy. Jayce has started to recognise the shape of desire on his partner’s face, but acting on it has been unthinkable. The aftermath of their trials has left Viktor burnt out and hypersensitive. With no small reluctance, Viktor has reported even gentle contact sometimes feels like pressing a finger to a blade. This has only made Jayce, already acutely aware of their physical differences, more afraid he’ll hurt his partner as his body struggles to accommodate the increasing intensity of their work.

He’s just begun to ghost fingers along the line of Viktor’s spine when, in a fit of coughing, Viktor rips their morning intimacy apart. The shock of it is like plunging into ice-cold water. Jayce’s arms fall away, his breath stopping short. Viktor makes a furious noise and moves to the side of the mattress as his hands rake back through his hair, his chest heaving.

Viktor sits, curled into himself, striped by the orange burn of the sunlight as it spills in through the window and glints off the metal rivets of his spine. In the starkness of daylight, Jayce can see now how illness is ravaging his partner. He can nearly count Viktor’s ribs, and his skin is pale and waxy with illness, bones pressing against his joints so tightly that Viktor’s skin is bruised blue.

The sight makes him desperate to reach for the other man, to draw him back into the simple bubble of time they occupied just seconds before, where they could pretend they were just idle lovers, starting their day with simple delight, and not two men spending their time sparring with death for the precious prize of more time.

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