#older jayvik

[jayvik-lover]

the path of wreckage that I cut by sulkybender

5 chapters, 12K words. Angst. Cried a few times (come at me, I’m a sensitive gangster). Loved every minute of it 🥺 quick read!

@periwinkleseafoam just making me ugly cry with this rec.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/63176962/chapters/161803111

[chaos-is-neutral]

https://archiveofourown.org/works/64897015

I come with some soft, older t4t jayvik dads for your lovely Monday!

[undercityviktor]

Hey there! How about Divorce-Era angst? Maybe Jayce is hurt and ends up needing Viktor's help? n/sfw if you like. BTW I love your modern au on AO3 and it's how I found you on here

Thank you so much! This was supposed to be a drabble but it's 1.6k words of angst and soppy fluff...

Warning for a potentially fatal injury and blood at the start. Rated teen for a saucy smooch at the end.

AO3 | Tumblr writing masterlist

___

It really wasn’t his fault. He just couldn't catch a break.

This latest turn of unfortunate events saw him stumbling from a back alley in the Sump level with a deep gut wound that would turn fatal if he didn’t make it — make it where? There was no way he could reach the lifts back to Piltover, or the Bridge from here. Not before he bled out.

His thoughts, as ever when he strayed down into the depths to test his new side-projects on the filthy, putrid air down there, turned to his former partner. Would Viktor finally finish off what the twitching shimmer-addict had started?

Only one way to find out.

Jayce didn’t have his hammer or his fancy clothes, but he knew he still stood out from the rest of them all the way down here. He left a bloody handprint on the slime-coated rock face as he staggered upwards towards the Entresol level, and Viktor’s home.

“If you ever come here again, Jayce Talis, I will not hesitate to kill you.”

The bite in Viktor’s words reverberated through his memory like the closed door they had been, but Jayce clung to the hope that he’d said it with his own voice, and not in that awful, modulated tone that came through his mask. Jayce had been flat on his back in the street outside, winded and slightly concussed though, so he’d not had the privilege of seeing Viktor without it.

“Please, Vik,” he prayed aloud, lurching along like a drunk while his blood spurted out through slippery fingers. “Please…”

The iron gates to Viktor’s house were shut, and Jayce’s vision blurred where he stood, sagging against them, clutching his hand to his stomach. “Viktor?” he rasped. When had his voice grown so small? He rattled the gates like a new prisoner, still full of hope and begging for freedom.

Last time he’d been here, he’d smashed them in with his hammer, sending wrought iron buckling inward like it was made of matchsticks. Now Viktor’s gates held fast against his clenched fist.

“Vik…” he wheezed. He was cold now too. So cold.

When had it got so dark? He blinked, trying to keep his eyes open.

So tired. So heavy.

A shadow shifted in the depths of the entrance alley beyond the gates, and he tried to push himself upright again at the glint of moving metal. His legs gave out and he slumped sideways into the filth.

The gates opened with the raucous yowling of rusty metal, and he heard a familiar, modulated voice. “What —? What happened?”

“Vik…” Jayce smiled, dizzy and suddenly nothing in the world seemed to matter anymore. “Love you, you know?” he slurred, still smiling. “Always have. Always will.”

“I told you I would kill you if you returned, Jayce,” the flat, hard voice said.

Was he floating? The world seemed to rock steadily from side to side. “Just wait five minutes and I’ll save you the bother,” he mumbled.

A soft ‘tsk’ that was intimately familiar to Jayce from days spent in their joint laboratory reached his ears and he huffed a laugh before darkness swallowed him up and claimed him.

A dull pain in his abdomen woke him, and the first thing he thought was that he was surprised to be thinking anything at all. The dull pain grew to a sharp throb and he looked up to find himself in what looked like a mechanic’s workshop. It was Viktor’s lab, he realised; rebuilt completely after their last devastating fight in here, though the materials were of considerably poorer quality than they’d been before. The thought crossed his mind that he could have a load of stuff shipped down here in a heartbeat to make up for it. Then he frowned.

There, sitting slumped in a battered and slightly burned armchair on the far side of the room, was Viktor. He appeared to be asleep, his long slender limbs glinting softly in the low light, with that menacing hexclaw looming awkwardly overhead like an unlit desk lamp. He had his head cradled in one hand that glinted with a purple, metallic shimmer, and his mask lay in his lap like an empty saucer. His face was as beautiful as ever, his skin pale and almost translucent, though it had been years since Jayce had actually seen it.

“Viktor?” he croaked, and his former partner twitched awake in the chair. Viktor had ever been a light sleeper.

“Jayce. You’re awake,” he stated. His voice was rasping and thin, his consonants clipped and economical. He didn’t make a move to put the mask on though, and Jayce stared openly. “It took quite a lot of stitches to patch you up, and I should stress that I am not a medical doctor.”

“With what you’ve done to yourself over the years, I’m pretty sure you’re more qualified than most of the Piltie surgeons,” Jayce said with a wry smile. He looked down at himself and realised he was bare-chested, and a patch of gauzed bandage had been secured to his lower abdomen where that git had stabbed him in the gut.

When he looked back up at Viktor, he saw the familiar dark shadows under his beautiful eyes, the melancholic downturn of his lips — now shaded slightly purple from the lingering effects of the shimmer he’d taken all those years earlier to support the mutations — and the slight upward pinch in the middle of his brows that made him look perpetually quizzical. “You look good, Vik,” he said honestly.

Viktor turned his face away and heaved himself to his feet. He still walked with a slight limp, but unless someone knew him well — the way Jayce did — it was easy to miss. He moved easily though despite it, and there was no cane or crutch in sight; no bitten-off winces; he no longer held himself like he was expecting every movement to be an effort, to hurt.

“What were you doing that got you stabbed down here, Jayce?” Viktor asked. “And without your usual… protection?”

“Not jealous, are you, Vik?” he grinned. The pain of the wound was still keen, but bearable now. “You’re the only Zaunite who gets to stab me to death, is that it?”

“That’s not — I wish —” Viktor faltered and turned away sharply. He was clad from neck to toe in his impressive armour, but for once it seemed to swamp him rather than adorn him. “I can’t do this, Jayce,” he said. “You need to leave.”

“Yeah. Sure, ok,” Jayce sighed. He swung his legs off what he now saw was a scrubbed wooden workbench, slid gingerly off, and took a moment to catch his breath. “Thank you, Viktor,” he said quietly. “For… not letting me die. I wasn’t sure where else I could go.”

Viktor still stood with his back to him, and the three ‘fingers’ of the hexclaw were clenched tightly together, as though holding a single grain of sand between them. Jayce wondered idly what would happen if they let that last grain of sand fall to the floor.

If Jayce were a gambling man, he would have bet that Viktor wasn’t about kill him now; not after going to the effort of patching him up. So he pulled on his ruined shirt — freshly rinsed out, he noticed — and crossed the room to where Viktor remained motionless. He was taller than Jayce now, but his presence after their last encounter seemed… diminished. The slant to his shoulders reminded Jayce of late nights in their lab at the Academy, when Viktor should have been abed hours ago; when Jayce would sometimes wander through the corridors in his pyjamas, much to Viktor’s chagrin, to drag Viktor out of the lab and into his bed.

“I miss you,” he said, standing right behind him. “I hate this. I hate what we’ve become.”

“I couldn’t do it,” Viktor hissed.

“I know. I know you couldn’t keep pretending that what we were doing was for the good of —”

“No,” Viktor interrupted and turned abruptly to face him, eyes blazing with all the natural fire Viktor possessed. “No, I couldn’t let you die. I couldn’t be the reason you stopped existing, Jayce.”

Jayce stood there, wide eyed, and stared up at him. He had to crick his neck a little now that Viktor had a couple of inches on him. It shouldn’t have been as attractive as it was, but he couldn’t help the way his body reacted.

Viktor watched his eyes dilate and blinked.

Jayce smiled and dared to step a tiny bit closer. He brought his rough hand to Viktor’s cheek, surprised to find him warm. Viktor had always run cold. “I never stopped loving you,” he whispered, and watched Viktor swallow hard, eyelashes fluttering. “They say you removed your own heart when you became… this.”

Minutely, Viktor shook his head. “I left it with you,” he said, his words delicately enunciated as always by his lilting accent. “I left it with you a long time ago.”

Jayce didn’t hesitate. He pulled Viktor down and crushed a kiss to his lips, melting into the old familiarity of it even as his brain struggled to process the difference in height and strength between them now. Jayce loved it. He chased more and more, giving and demanding in equal measure until Viktor pulled back, chest heaving. His golden eyes had blown dark, and his voice was wrecked and unsteady as he hissed, “Be careful with your wound, láska.”

At the sound of the old endearment, Jayce whimpered and bowed his head, resting his forehead on the cold metal plate of Viktor’s breastplate. “Vik…”

“Rest,” Viktor said quietly. “Rest. We will talk more when you’re rested.”

Quiet and docile as a lamb, Jayce let Viktor lead him through the house he’d once nearly ruined, and tried not to read too much into the fact that it was still standing, and so was he.

___

Thanks for the prompt! More on the way :)

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[undercityviktor]

Excitiiiing, i love your stuff! If any of these interest you: jayvik at some kind of informal party, like a club or houseparty - can be modern au, yknow, the classic americal college alcohol fest at some rich kid's house. Like, standoff-ish viktor, jayce very poorly hiding his interest in this handsome stranger, tipsy flirting, caitvi cameo, you get it. OR! Roomates! Wherever and however you like them, arcane universe, modern AU, academy classmates AU....post divorce....(the classic we-hate-each-other-but-the-lease-still-has-three-months-to-go...) No pressure if not! Just throwing some ideas hehe

So many good ideas, Anon! My brain saw “party” and “post divorce” and ignored all the rest for now though, and 1.9k words of pining and fluff was born. I hope you like it!

Content: very brief racism against Viktor being from another country with a perceived language barrier, pining, so much pining and lack of communication, Caitlyn’s somehow supportive zero-tolerance of Jayce’s pining bullshit, and a couple of olive branches exchanged between two idiots clearly still in love. Oh, and a modern no-hextech au feel/setting.

AO3  | Tumblr writing masterlist

___

“Jayce, don’t,” Caitlyn growled, grabbing him by the shirt sleeve and yanking him bodily back into an alcove. It shouldn't have been possible for someone of her stature to man-handle someone of Jayce’s size, but he moved willingly enough under her hands like a wooden puppet on fraying strings.

Across the room, Cait’s wife raised an eyebrow in amusement and was answered with a roll of searing, sky-blue eyes and a shake of the head. “You’re a pathetic, pining drunk, Jayce Talis. What are you?”

“A pathetic, pining drunk,” Jayce mumbled, flopping down onto the flimsy antique chair behind him and groaning. “I’m not even drunk, Cait,” he said. “Almost wish I was. I’ve only had the champagne from the toast earlier. Fuck, he’s so beautiful.”

“Jayce,” she warned, smacking him none-too-gently up the back side of his head with the flat of her hand, and he nodded and waved a vague hand in her direction.

“I know, I know. ‘Beautiful ex-husband is off-limits during fundraisers’. Gods, why did he have to be here though?”

“Because he’s Head of Engineering at the Institute of Technology?” she said. “Duh.” She’d picked up more than a few mannerisms from Vi, including That Face.

“I know, but…” Jayce cut himself off, knowing full well how pathetic he sounded. He dropped his head into his hand, and Caitlyn gently removed his empty champagne flute from the other to set it lightly onto a passing waiter’s tray.

Jayce sat up and tried desperately to look anywhere that wasn’t Viktor, but as ever, his ex-husband drew his attention like an open flame to a doomed moth. Just then, as if he could feel the weight of Jayce’s gaze on him, Viktor looked up sharply. What Jayce hadn’t expected was the oddly soft look in his face that lingered there for just a moment before he schooled his features into a mask and focused his attention away from Jayce and back to the small knot of investors around him.

“I’m fucked,” Jayce mumbled. “I need some air.”

This time, Caitlyn didn’t stop him.

In the hallway beyond, he heard the name ‘Ivanovich’, and halted. Jayce immediately recognised the retreating mop of white hair belonging to Professor Heimerdinger as he vanished around the corner, having evidently just departed from a conversation with three smartly-dressed academic types. They gave each other the side-eye while Heimerdinger trotted off, and then one of them smirked. “Please, the only reason Professor Ivanovich had any standing here at all was because he was married to Dr. Talis,” one of them said.

“I heard he had to leave because his visa expired after the divorce, and the university wouldn’t sponsor him any more. After that he could only get ZIT to sponsor him!” They all broke off into a bout of cruel, guffawing laughter at the nasty acronym the Zaun Institute of Technology had garnered over the years.

“He doesn’t even speak English properly, so I can’t see how he even contributed to any of —”

Jayce saw red.

It didn't matter that they were no longer together. This was Viktor they were insulting. “Do you have any idea how brilliant he is?” Jayce roared, charging up the corridor and grabbing one of the unsuspecting academics by his ugly tweed collar and shoving him roughly against the plasterwork panel behind him. “How lucky the Institute is to have him? How lucky those students are to benefit from everything Viktor has to offer? He’s a fucking genius, you snivelling piece of shit, and you couldn’t even dream about half the stuff his mind can grasp!”

The other two goggled at Jayce in shock while he glared down at one offending little shit-stain, chest heaving with emotions he didn’t know he still had.

A voice in the corridor behind him drew his attention and he found Caitlyn glaring at him, arms folded.

With a final shove, Jayce released the stranger and stalked off down the staircase to barrel out into the courtyard.

“Fuck,” he hissed, trying to still his thundering heartbeat. When simply breathing didn't work, he drew out the little brass cog that he still kept on a cord around his neck. Over the years it had tarnished to a dull brown against the natural acids in his skin, but the edges bore a perpetual shine where they rubbed on his clothing or, more commonly, he ran his fingertips over them. He traced his thumb over the engraved date on the flat of the little cog and his vision blurred as tears formed and his chest tightened.

With watery eyes and a heart as heavy as the earth itself, he stared up at the night sky and wondered how it had all gone so wrong. Three years after the divorce had been finalised, and he still missed Viktor acutely every day. Every single day. It was like there was a hole in his chest that had been blasted out with a shotgun, leaving tiny pieces of his former self scattered to the wind, irrevocable and irretrievable.

Did Viktor ever feel the same way? He looked as good as he ever had; lean, ethereal, unobtainable. Had the divorce even fazed him? Did he even care? Did he think about Jayce when he made his morning sweetmilk or did he just make it and get on with his day? Was he truly as heartless as everyone said he was? He was beautiful, so it was only natural that people had tried to seduce him after their separation — romantically as well as academically — but he had garnered something of a reputation for politely but ruthlessly shutting anyone down who even attempted it.

“Jayce?”

Jayce yipped in surprise and spun to find the very object of his musings standing in the doorway behind him. Viktor leaned his weight elegantly on his cane, his hips listing ever so slightly sideways as always. Or maybe that was Jayce. It was hard to tell which way was up and which was down when he felt so lightheaded around Viktor.

“Uh, yeah?” he said for the second time that evening.

Fuck me standing, he thought. In the soft lamplight of the courtyard and the moonlight gleaming down from the night sky above, Viktor didn’t even look real. Did Viktor’s eyes drift down to Jayce's open collar where the gear dangled in plain sight?

“That was gracious of you,” Viktor smirked. He adjusted his hold on the grip of his cane with a subtle wave of his fingers, and Jayce found it suddenly impossible to look away.

“Huh?” Somehow, despite having two PhDs and numerous other qualifications, patents, papers and inventions under his belt, Jayce always managed to feel dumbstruck and stupid around Viktor.

“Coming to my defence like that…” Viktor purred. “Most chivalrous of you.”

“Well, they were rude,” he shrugged.

Something soft and almost fond played once more around Viktor’s golden eyes, and Jayce’s heart cracked right down the middle. Unable to keep looking at him, he turned his face away and bit back something that was half-sob and half-grimace.

“Jayce?”

“What, Viktor?” he snapped over his shoulder. “What do you want? What more do you want of me?”

Viktor blinked. “I don’t want anything from you, Jayce. I never did.”

“Right,” he breathed. “Of course. Well, I’m going home now. Enjoy the rest of your evening. I can’t… I can’t do this, Vik.” It hurt too much.

And with that, he stalked off, scrubbing a hand over the stubble that had built up over the day. Viktor had used to love the feel of that stubble on his soft inner thighs, the scrape of it on trembling muscle when — no. “Not going there, Jayce,” he snarled, kicking half-heartedly at a pebble as he left the courtyard and headed out into the city beyond.

He walked for hours with his hands in his pockets, barely paying attention to the beautiful city around him. Everything had lost its sparkle in the last few years. He still strove for perfection in his academic work, but without Viktor working beside him in the lab, there was no point to anything. Viktor had been everything, and suddenly it had all fallen apart. Jayce had had sponsorships and private tech and aeronautical companies outbidding each other for the rights to his inventions, and all Viktor had wanted was to heal what society had left broken for far too long.

And Jayce had lost sight of all that. It had been what had brought them together after all.

He was still thumbing the gear pendant around his neck when he drifted back to his miserable little apartment. He trudged up the stairs, working finger and thumb over the notches of the cog, twisting it round and round like a fidget toy, when he ground to a halt at the top of the staircase. There, outside his door, leaning his weight on the wall behind with arms folded and cane resting idly against his hip, was Viktor.

He looked simultaneously like the twenty-something year-old that Jayce had fallen head over heels for within a five minutes of meeting him, and the just-shy-of-forty year-old he currently was, and the overlap between the two made Jayce’s vision blur. “Viktor?” he hissed when Viktor looked up and met his eyes.

“I think…” he began in his musical tenor, “I think we may have made a mistake, Jayce.”

“Oh? And what brought you to that conclusion?” he asked, nearly tripping up the final step and joining him on the landing.

“We are both miserable,” Viktor stated. “And…” he softened and sighed. “And your light has gone out.”

Jayce scowled, his eyes tracking up to the perfectly-functioning light bulb in the hall ceiling above them. “What —”

“Not that light, you literal —” Viktor cut himself off with a huff of breath. “Your light. Piltover’s Golden Boy is… no longer shining.”

“I’m tired, Vik. Just say what you mean for once.”

“I would like for us to be friends again,” Viktor said. “Maybe more.”

“Friends?” He shook his head. “I can’t do that Vik.”

Hurt flashed across Viktor’s face and he pushed himself off the wall. His shoulders took on a defensive tension and his eyes hardened from honey to hammered bronze. “Very well. Though after seeing that you still wear yours, I had hoped we were past the pettiness, but —”

“—Wait, let me finish,” Jayce interjected gently. “And ‘wear my what’?”

“Your gear,” Viktor said, digging into his collar and drawing out a small gold chain, at the end of which dangled a delicate brass cog, engraved with the date of their first success.

Jayce teared up and stepped towards him. “You still…? I thought…?”

“I was rash,” Viktor said, letting go of the necklace and allowing his hand to fall limply to his side. “I wanted to change the world overnight, and I didn’t stop to think what I might leave behind. I sacrificed patience for progress. Understanding for achievement.”

“You didn’t lose me, Viktor,” Jayce hissed. “And it’s always been hard to keep up with you.” After a long pause he said, “I could have tried harder to understand. I didn’t. I thought I knew everything, but… I obviously didn’t.”

Finally, blessedly, Viktor laughed. Just the faintest little chuckle, but it had been years since Jayce had heard it, and his body flushed with undiluted joy at the sound of it. “You… You want to come in for a drink?” he asked, as though it was the most unremarkable thing in the world to ask his ex-husband into his apartment for a drink as though it were the end of their first date. In a way, he supposed, it was a first date, after a fashion. “Think I’ve even got some sweetmilk.”

“Yes,” Viktor smiled. “I think I would like that very much.”

___

Thanks for the prompt! One more on the way at some point soon :)

AO3  | Tumblr writing masterlist

[undercityviktor]

Im the anon who requested the party thing and....anghhhhhhh my HEART!!!!!!!!!!! The little cogs on the necklaces i CANNOT do this it was amazing!!!!!!!! T____T Ugh i ADORE miserable divorcee jayce. (also lmfao idk but the "your light has gone out" bit made me laugh - i'm usually terrible at visualising scenes i'm reading, but for some reason i saw that one in perfect clarity lmfao)

Thank you so much for this! I'm so happy you enjoyed it!!! I also seem to like making Jayce extremely miserable, only to have Viktor come in at the last moment to relieve him just a little... The scene with the light did make me giggle a bit when I wrote it because I just think Jayce is so literal that he would react like that while Viktor is like "??? really???"

Anyway, thank you! (Sorry I took a while to respond to this)