Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The pain stung in divided shards behind his eyelids and through the back of his skull, the weight of it so heavy Jayce could barely blink without a sting of nausea washing over him. Any thought wouldn't stick for more than a fleeting second and fell away just as quick. The harder Jayce tried to formulate a coherent response, the worse the ache became.

What was he trying to respond to?

Someone was talking. Or—Gods, what is that? It sounded too self-resonant to be organic, layered in frequency but it had to be a voice—

Fuck, ow.

The world spun, strobing through shattered panes of glass.

Jayce wasn't sure where the noise was coming from. His senses seemed to sabotage him on purpose: balance undoubtedly shot, the light of day blinding, the sounds in his ears a garbed, indistinct mess. He tried to shuffle away from the source of noise that made his head throb harsher in time with his heartbeat, but it only got closer.

Someone—something is talking.

Ow.

Jayce put a hand to his head to cover his eyes. He was sweating. The layers of his clothes felt suffocating and Why is it so fucking hot. He struggled against the compulsion to drop to his knees as he swayed, a cloying urge to let go and sink, to allow the calm to claim him and drown.

What happened?

Fuck, that hurts.

There must have been a wall, because Jayce’s hand batted over a vertical surface as he reached for anything to steady himself. Brick, cool against his clammy palm. His eyes fluttered open, but the world was far too bright to properly make sense of his surroundings. His head ached, his limbs were sluggish in relation to his will, and Jayce continued to strain against the sweeping current that threatened to pull him under.

The noise that could have been a voice was on him, now. He was unable to process what it said.

“Help.”

Jayce heard the whimpered sound and realized, at a delay, that the broken plea had come from him. It seemed the only word he could utter, an appeal to anyone, anything, because Gods it hurts, it hurts, it hurts—

It hurt even more when his body was slammed flush with the wall he’d been trying to lean up against, pushed by his chest so his head knocked back into the brick. Sparks flashed behind closed eyelids.

Rude.

The voice was near enough now that Jayce knew the words were meant for him, but he still couldn’t wrap his brain around what was being said, only that the tone was harsh and demeaning. Why? He needed help, he’d asked—

Ouch.

“Help me,” he slurred again to whatever was holding him fast against the wall. His head felt like an anvil attached to his neck by fraying cords, so he let it drop. The shooting pain behind his eyes receded slightly—a short form of relief, as his knotted stomach churned in a sharp twist. He tasted bile in his throat, acidic, aggravating his already piqued senses. His breathing staggered into heavy gulps as he tried to keep the sick feeling at bay.

The grating noise was back, but it sounded different this time: slower, questioning. 

Jayce could not reply because he wasn’t sure what had been asked—and, in turn, was certain the next thing coming out of his mouth would not be words.

His face flushed as a thorough heat seared up his body, a cold sweat breaking out over his skin, the sudden rush overwhelming. Jayce pushed weakly at the force against his chest—it retreated, surprisingly enough—and he sank to his knees, barely catching himself over the ground with his hands as nausea overtook him.

Jayce heaved and gagged and spat out the contents that rose from his stomach. It tasted awful, his throat raw from the burn and intensive reflex. He wanted to wipe at his mouth, but the worry he wouldn’t be able to support himself with a single arm kept him from moving. The ache in his brain shifted to a lightheaded daze.

Something happened to me.

Ow.

A firm touch settled on his shoulder. It wasn't necessarily kind, but the hand gripped in a way that confirmed its owner meant to keep it there. The attempts to reach Jayce continued, a steady stream of grating resonance that rang strange and artificial in his ears, the rush of blood muffling any clarity he might have found.

Why did it sound so familiar?

Jayce stayed in the comfort of darkness with his eyes closed, lashes wet, breathing heavily. The hand adjusted over his back, and Jayce became aware of a presence knelt by his side, that voice now trained to his ear.

The recognizable accent echoed as if channeled through a deep trench of water.

“V...?” 

Jayce tried to open his eyes. The swirling hex of colour and light forced them shut again before he was able to make a proper judgement. The voice became more insistent, and the hand moved back to his shoulder to shake him, causing Jayce to sway with the movement on his hands and knees. The pain in his skull throbbed as he tried again to squint at the figure next to him.

Shit.

It wasn't a person. It couldn't be human, not looking like that, it wasn't—

On instinct Jayce tried to put distance between himself and the thing inside his guard by pulling away, but the sudden struggle made his head hurt tenfold, and Jayce knew the pitiful, animalistic whine in his ears had slipped from his own lips. He collapsed backwards onto the ground, shifting his lead-filled limbs and blindly throwing out a hand to shield himself from whatever he’d allowed to get too close.

The creature avoided his attempt at denial easily. Jayce flinched as cold hands gripped his face, turning and tilting before prying one of his eyelids up, exposing him to the light again. He only winced, too weak to fight back otherwise. Jayce let himself be guided to slump against the wall, and a chill touch roamed over his limp form. It brushed over the back of his skull, the base of his neck, his forehead and lightly over his mouth, oddly reserved in contrast to the antagonistic shove from only a moment earlier.

Some sort of commotion drew closer. More voices, ones Jayce knew he was supposed to recognize, accompanied by the jarring slap of boots on pavement. Raised dialogue caused Jayce to curl into himself; the hand that lingered on his face promptly disappeared. What followed was a series of snaps and bangs and the shrieking scrape of metal on metal.

They were being too loud, whoever it was. The ache in Jayce’s head swelled with each sharp cut of sound. He sat with his arms draped languid over spread legs and heaved dryly over the ground, nothing left to gag out. His sight faded in with blurry shapes and away to flickering darkness.

More shrill questions in the form of garbled trash in his ear, hands on his shoulders, shaking him again. He wanted to ask them to stop, but with his jaw slack and head heavy, all Jayce could do was sit, sway, and try to stay awake.

Leave me alone.

I want—

I want my partner.

Jayce didn't have any time to process the thought.

He passed out with the sounds of scattered panic ringing in his ears, succumbing to an unconscious state as a quiet means of escape.

Giopara always feinted right.

Always.

The Machine Herald topped off the contents of his chemical suppressant in an irritated haze, reminiscing over the inconclusive result of that morning’s scheduled conflict.

Their style of combat was a coordinated dance, easily calculable, the outcome so consistent after years of performance it almost bored him. If the Defender dropped his weight and turned his foot out slightly, the Herald would step back with his right to dodge the upward swing. When the Herald created distance, the Defender would deflect the incoming ray thirty degrees down and to the left, destroying the pavement in front of him. Consistent. Predictable.

Needless to say, the force the Herald had put behind his extra appendage wasn't meant to make contact. His anticipation for catching his own weight once the blow missed had been entirely for naught as his opponent took the full brunt of the strike. The Defender of Tomorrow had not feinted right to avoid the mechanical augment. Instead, the champion had absorbed the force and was proportionately thrown ten feet backwards into a waiting brick wall, unarmed and defenseless by the time his body cleared the distance. The Herald initially equated the resounding dull crack to collapsed armor, the snap of metal under strain... but with how his enemy struggled to stay standing as he stumbled away from the wall, then towards it, disoriented....

Giopara was far from a stranger to injury. Unexpected or not, the champion hadn’t bounced back from the hit like he should have. Their calculated exchange of weaving blows usually resulted in a clipped strike, the occasional fracture, a burn from a barely deflected blast; ripped and singed or crunched and sparking. Rarely did either rival take the full damage of an attack head on. When it did happen, the event was met with a pitched laugh, a predetermined lash of wit, a proportionate swap of degrading ridicule in spite of blood or splintering metal.

This time, the Defender hadn't responded with anything the Herald was ready to hear.

The last thing he'd expected was a pathetic plea for assistance.

A hiss of machinery sounded as Viktor felt a rush of chem douse his system in artificial ice.

Fighting around a man in a state of disarray would only worsen the injury, so the Herald had conceded to deflecting a few bullets and blows from the oncoming train of Piltovan reinforcements before retreating. He didn't have the time nor generosity to relay the situation. He could only speculate whether those who had picked Jayce up from the broken pavement had known the extent of care their champion required.

The chemical compound ebbed through the Machine Herald’s veins in an attempt to quell the unsolicited unease that had risen like rushing floodwaters up to his neck.

It had been a fight. Standard. One of them had been injured. Again, another standard, as the iterative altercations between their warring cities only ended with the exhaustion of one side.

And yet... Jayce’s broken request for help continued to echo in his mind.

Not standard.

Unprecedented, in fact.

Had the blow really been so intense, the crack of his skull against the wall so debilitating that Jayce readily considered asking him for something so intimate on the open battlefield? Like there was a possibility he would ever willingly turn a blind eye to their feud in the context of war? Years and years after their initial fallout, an age of bitter heat and constant resentment that drew them together just as much as it pushed them apart—Had Jayce truly expected Viktor to set it aside where anyone could have borne witness? The Machine Herald had proven himself above that kind of thing. The riding, weak sentiment that anything could possibly suspend the priority of his Glorious Evolution, what he’d worked so hard for, the manner it had been taken from him before he resolved to rely upon himself and no other...

So why, in the midst of battle, had he dropped to his knees when Jayce called out for him like that?

Unacceptable.

His own offense was worse than his former colleague’s. Whether it was a premeditated trick or momentary lapse of resolve didn't matter: Viktor had fallen for it regardless, and now, he was paying the price. The Defender had not slunk down to the fissures of Zaun to seal their contract in the ways they'd agreed to. The Herald sat idle, wasting his own time pacing his lab and seething over the unsatisfying result of their match. He'd anticipated at least the consolation of confirming his suspicions when Jayce came to see him, but Viktor was given no such clarity, no pleasurable relief scheduled in the hours post-conflict, as his unlocked door had not been taken advantage of. Giopara was missing in action. And again, Viktor found himself criticizing his own overly emotional response. He shouldn't have been nearly this strung out by a jolt away from their routine.

Truly unacceptable.

Another ripping hiss rang through the air as a sixth dosage of chem flooded the Herald’s veins with liquid suppressant, administered intermittently over the course of the day. At this rate, the drug would override his precariously balanced nervous system and poison his blood. He needed to stop dwelling on an issue he currently had no power to remedy. Rip something apart instead. Put it back together, stronger, more resilient than before. Like what he'd done to himself, over and over, an unending sequence of reiteration in pursuit of avoiding the terrible weight of emotion he now felt.

The weave of wires within the confines of the Herald’s left arm seemed a predictable choice.

He settled into his chair to unseal the bolted panel and tear at the rubber-wound tendons hidden beneath his shell of armor.

“Are you awake?”

Jayce certainly didn’t want to be.

“Unfortunately,” he groaned, a low, weak string of syllables that was met with enthused relief despite the implication he was far from pleased about being conscious.

“Good, oh, thank goodness...” 

Hands on his face.

Get off.

He stifled another moan as he blinked back towards full awareness. The face near his blurred into existence before his eyes, dark hair and pearly skin.

“V?”

“What?” The pleased tone dipped into something with more of an edge. “No—no, Jayce. It’s me.”

“Caitlyn,” Jayce confirmed in a mumbled breath. The rest of her form and the space he inhabited sharpened, enough that he could focus in on his current state of affairs.

Propped up in a hospital bed, the sheets a clean, crisp white that burned his retinas if he stared too long. His house sponsor’s child, who sat back in a chair positioned close to his side. Reality settled as he reacquainted himself with the passive weight of his body, a dull ache radiating in his skull.

“I wasn’t sure how much longer it would take for you to fully return. How do you feel?” Caitlyn asked, her tone laced with worry just as much as relief.

“Amazing.” Jayce winced as he flexed his tired muscles. The rest of his senses returned in waves: the simple garment he wore, the thin sheet pulled up to his waist, the stream of light pouring through the far window. Stale air and the way it burned his dry throat. “Never better,” he slurred into an irritated laugh.

“You’ve been drifting in and out for two days,” Caitlyn said. “We secured a medic as soon as humanly possible, and—well, you weren’t responding in any consistent capacity, so it seemed the best option was submitting you into extended care.”

Jayce pursed his lips. That sounded weak.

He tried to raise his left hand to his head, but a thread snapped taut. He looked down at his arm, the intravenous tube just barely hanging on. He let his hand drop.

“What happened?” Jayce asked bitterly. This was embarrassing, above all else.

“I’m not sure, to be honest. My line of sight was compromised, I do apologize for that... The Machine Herald cornered you away from everyone else. He retreated back to Zaun once I found you, don’t worry,” she explained with a huff. “Several medical technicians confirmed your injury. It's clear you’ve suffered a severe concussion and further rest is in order. They suggested another day in hospice under supervision, now that you're awake.”

It sounded like a forcefully contrived joke.

“The fuck is a Machine Herald?” Jayce muttered, almost to himself. He squeezed his eyes tight before forcing them open again in an attempt to recalibrate his vision. “Besides, why are you here, Cait? Are your parents paying for this stint?”

He took in the rest of the medical suite with a cringe. Pristine white accented with gold. Granite tile. Unnecessarily spacious. Expensive. The Kirammans couldn’t be happy about this, if they were indeed shelling out funds for his inpatient stay. Why else would Caitlyn serve as a witness to his condition? If his clan were covering the fee they would have sent a representative, plus a strongly worded letter condemning his many faults.

Jayce let his gaze roam over the machinery hooked up to his bed, the arrangements of flowers (they couldn’t be for him, most likely a previous patient), a clunky-looking hammer the height of the door propped in the corner. He ended his observations at the girl in front of him, who—

“Whoa,” Jayce laughed weakly. “Don’t look at me like that, kid. You’ll get wrinkles like your mother.”

Caitlyn was wearing something that looked eerily similar to an enforcer's uniform. Funny, she had recently mentioned how her sharpshooting skills had earned her a preliminary ranking, an impressive feat for a cadet so young. The getup was jumping the gun a bit, though, and that in relation to her hair being so long, the sharp angles of her face, Caitlyn looked... older.

Jayce cocked his head. “You’re growing up on me, aren’t you?”

Caitlyn stood again and put a hand to Jayce’s forehead, testing his temperature.

“Are you sure you’re alright?” she asked hesitantly.

“Cait, I’m okay, really.” The ache in his head was a bearable throb. “If I’ve been out of commission for a couple days like you said, then I’m definitely behind schedule. Call a nurse. Tell them I should be discharged.”

Caitlyn pulled away to cross her arms, hugging herself tight. Her gaze flicked over him, visibly disturbed.

“What schedule, Jayce?”

Why does she sound so nervous?

“We're on the cusp of a breakthrough regarding the articulation beam, I told you that. The deadline is coming up and Viktor wants to crack it with a couple days to spare.” Jayce sucked in a hiss as he plucked the tube from his wrist and flicked the needle away, blasé as to where it landed. He used the side of the sheet to apply pressure to the spot. “V knows I’m here, right? He’ll be livid under the assumption I just took some time off from the project.”

Jayce considered what could have possibly caused such an injury, and his mind replayed the latest experiments they’d been conducting in their joint laboratory.

“He hasn't reached out at all?” Jayce asked.

Caitlyn shook her head, but from the way she looked at him, Jayce wasn’t so sure it was meant as a response to his question.

“Whatever happened was a contained incident, yeah? The lab is still in one piece?”

“I don't...” 

Caitlyn trailed off almost as soon as she'd started, seemingly unsure how to continue. Which was incredibly irritating. Nothing about what he'd asked had been anything but straightforward.

When Caitlyn’s lips pressed firm instead of answering him in full, Jayce rolled his eyes.

“You’re gonna age so fast scrunching your face like that,” he reiterated under his breath.

With the tube untethered, Jayce ran both hands over his face and felt the unfortunate length of his trim. Damn, he needed a shave. His fingers lightly grazed his forehead and he finally realized the source of the ache, a tightly wound bandage.

He started to pull at it.

“Jayce, stop.” Caitlyn broke out of her trance to swiftly reach over and grab his wrists. “I don’t think you should leave this bed.”

“I said I’m fine,” Jayce retorted sharply as he shooed her away. “Seriously, I need this off. Botched job. It’s way too tight.”

“I’ll call for a nurse, then. They’ll adjust it for you. Please, I think it would be best to adhere to their opinion on this.”

Jayce considered the way her voice wavered, her bluebell eyes glassy with mounting anxiety. His annoyance faded in the realization her worry must be from some lingering, youthful frailty.

He didn’t want to freak the kid out.

“Make it quick,” he said, although his tone had shifted towards an amicable softness. “Every extra minute I spend here only adds to a debt I can’t afford to deal with right now.”

“Don’t move,” Caitlyn warned. “If you so much as twitch, I’ll know.”

Her eyes didn’t leave him until she had backed out of the door and shut it behind her.

Jayce immediately ripped the bandage from his head. The relief from removing the wrap cooled him instantly. He tossed the clean gauze to the floor; it wasn’t bloodied or anything, his recovery period was obviously sufficient enough to warrant his release. He hated the thought of wasting even more time just lying around.

He swung his legs over the side of the bed and flexed before planting his weight on the chill tile, the sudden movement causing air to waft under his thin gown. Jayce shivered, crossed his arms, and looked over the suite for clothes that might belong to him.

It didn’t matter if he wasn’t exactly sure how he’d landed himself in the hospital. All he knew was that if he’d been injured, it was most likely from a lab experiment, one where Viktor was involved. He needed to get back as soon as possible to confirm the truth for himself.

Jayce tested his balance by shifting his weight from one foot to the other. His body was responding properly, the ache in his head almost imperceptible as he grew accustomed to it.

The kid in a costume returned with two medical practitioners in tow before Jayce could take a step forward.

“Get your arse back in that goddamn bed,” Caitlyn snapped at him, but the aggressive command was delivered with a telling note of distress. “Do not make me strap you to it.”

“That’s rich. Calm down. I’m fit for dismissal, see?” Jayce raised his hands over his head and shook them, exasperated. “I’ve got an ungodly amount of work to catch up on. You can’t keep me here if I’m not willing, right?” he contested towards the stationed nurses.

They both looked to the girl, who glanced desperately between them.

“Repeat to them what you just told me.” Caitlyn stepped in front of Jayce, radiating authority with her hands on her hips. “What you said about your partner.”

She really had sprouted up recently.

“What, that he’s probably fucking fuming?” Jayce rubbed at one shoulder, then the other, tuning in to how his muscles felt unused. The fatigue from inactivity would only worsen if he agreed to stay in the facility. “He’ll put me right back in here if I sit on my ass for another day.”

Caitlyn had her hands on him again, pushing him back by his shoulders. Jayce hated that he was surprised enough to let it happen. “You’re not leaving, Jayce, that’s an order. I can't let you walk out of here in your current state.”

An order. Gods above.

“How many times do I have to tell you I’m fine?” Jayce batted her arms away and gestured aggressively towards the nurses. “You’re right, though, I can’t leave looking like this. You got anything else for me to put on? No offense, this cut isn’t exactly my style—”

“Listen to me,” Caitlyn suddenly steeled. “You’re not yourself.”

“Who else would I be? You're talking nonsense, Cait. Don't piss me off.”

“I'll explain. Give me five minutes of your time.”

Jayce scoffed. Like she had any authority over what he prioritized. But it seemed the only way out, so he sat back on the bed with his jaw set. “Clock’s ticking.”

Caitlyn closed the distance to stand in front where Jayce had settled, cutting off any chance of a prompt exit. “Your concussion resulted in a distinct lapse of memory. The world you mean to return to no longer exists.”

Jayce raised his eyebrows.

Caitlyn continued.

“Piltover has changed, as has Zaun. Our cities clash in a consistent sequence of matches to claim territory and supplant power.”

“Okay,” Jayce mumbled. “Things aren't great, I'll admit, but—”

“The partner you speak of has long been exiled for crimes against nature and illegal experimentation.”

That made Jayce throw up his hands and laugh, the idea absolutely absurd. Viktor?

“He might be a little odd, but V isn’t—”

“The Machine Herald did this to you,” Caitlyn cut in. “Your former colleague. He attacked the city, and this time you sustained an injury you cannot just walk off.”

Jayce considered the way his partner lashed out from time to time, if only when caught up in a passionate debate. Jayce was guilty of pushing the boundary until Viktor snapped. The last time they'd seriously fought was the week prior, ending in a heated exchange of insults and unnecessary degradation, loud enough that the inhabitants of the adjacent workspace had pounded on their locked door in an attempt to quell the argument. They had both buried the hatchet the next day with half-assed amends and gotten back to work.

Viktor, through all their ups and downs, was waiting for him. Jayce was certain of that.

“He is your sworn enemy.”

Jayce felt a throb course through his head and tried to blink the pain elsewhere.

“There's no way,” he said flatly, wincing from the sudden influx of pressure in his skull. “He wouldn't do something like this. Not on purpose, at least.”

“You fight him almost every week, Jayce. You are a champion of the people, a symbol of Piltover’s prestige. Our community relies on your strength to keep Zaunite warlords like him at bay—”

“Stop.” Jayce closed his eyes and shook his head. “I'm not in the mood for... whatever this is.”

One of the nurses took a step forward. “Officer Kiramman,” she said in an urgent whisper, “I doubt this method will relieve his amnestic state. It isn't conducive with recovery.”

Caitlyn ignored the advisory statement and bent slightly to level her gaze at the patient who would not meet her eyes. “Snap out of it. We need you in this fight, Defender.”

“I'm a scientist, not a soldier,” Jayce argued as he rubbed his forehead. “I don't—”

“You're not listening to me.”

“I am, I just... Cait, please.” Jayce was less sure of himself now that the throb had returned with a vengeance. “What you're saying doesn't make any sense.”

A hand on Caitlyn’s shoulder broke the building tension. The nurse’s second attempt at reason was amended in its assured resolve. “Monitored rest may be the only way to ensure the return of his memory isn't harmful to his already weak condition. You can't force it.”

Caitlyn turned away from the man sitting glumly on the hospital bed and ushered both nurses to the other end of the room. They began to confer in overlapping discord, one whisper far more shrill than the others.

Jayce caught bits and pieces as the ache subsided.

No way to confirm... Extensive recovery... Further complications... Delegate security... Public outcry...

“I'm right here,” Jayce said loudly over the conversation. “Could you at least get me something to wear with a little more coverage?”

Jayce left the hospital wing in a set of clothes he did not recognize, adorned by the presence of a certain headstrong Kiramman attached to his hip.

“Would you prefer an entire squad breathing down your neck?” Caitlyn asked, raising her brows with a tilt of her head. “Consider yourself lucky. We're keeping this quiet.”

“You're killing me, kid. I'm not a danger to myself, others, plague rats, nothing.“ Jayce pulled awkwardly at the fur hem of his collar. He needed to change. This look wasn’t much better than the hospital gown. “I just want to get home.”

“And where would that be?”

The housing area of the Academy that Jayce was adamant on visiting was unrecognizable to him, the slew of buildings much taller and more intricately detailed than what he remembered. Polished metals and flagged towers, glass and gold and marble. Muscle memory had guided him, and yet nothing he saw matched his ingrained recollection.

Jayce frowned. “I guess I was wrong,” he admitted, although his irritation was substantial enough to smother any sense of panic.

“Can you stand to reason your old laboratory exists in a similar state, or will you need to confirm that for yourself?” Caitlyn asked, her patient tone slightly clipped. She was clearly still annoyed with him, but possessed enough maturity to set it aside.

She wasn't the kid Jayce remembered.

He had started to accept half-truths that were only confirmed when he begrudgingly allowed himself to submit a question. Time had passed, that much was obvious, but Caitlyn was under advisement to avoid divulging any further specifics. She had risen through enforcement ranks and come into the prestige her House name commanded. Jayce had assumed a new position within the elite council of Piltover and held agency over his role.

The rest was bullshit, obviously.

“Reason is subjective, Cait. We're going.”

Jayce wished he hadn’t forced it.

He should have known from the stark restructuring of the layout that he held no presence in this area of Piltover Academy any longer. Not in practice. The placards he decided to avoid surely said otherwise, as he’d seen his own appropriated surname engraved on one before looking away. Everything inside the designated laboratory he and his partner once worked in now belonged to someone else. Odder still was the way the students looked at him, even saluted or nodded with formality, when they passed within proximity to the pair.

Jayce fidgeted with the cuffs of his jacket in a quietly contained swell of discomfort.

“Where’s my shit, then?” he asked with a forced note of humor. “Don't tell me the Academy dumped our projects in the Sump over some inane, arbitrary premise."

“It's all around you, Jayce. Hextech sustains the city in the hands of the people.” 

That should’ve been a good thing, right? But without the memory of achievement tying it together, Jayce felt as if his life’s work had been stolen and distributed without his consent. He let out a series of huffs and scoffed nothings before running a hand over his face and into his hair, for a moment entirely blank on witty responses. The idea that his ambition had been realized in what Jayce could only perceive as an overnight success had caught him off guard.

“Let me help,” Caitlyn said gently. “I’ll hail a carriage. Your current research isn't done under the supervision of any academic collective.”

“Is that so?” Jayce wet his lips as he took another glance across the grounds, uncomfortably bitter and agitated by his own lack of clarity. What else did he have left to lose? “Fuck, fine. Lead the way, Sprout.”

Caitlyn’s expression was softer now, a considerate look of sympathy. “You know you haven't called me that in quite some time.”

Jayce was unable to contend with the one-sided nostalgia. “Sheriff Kiramman doesn't exactly roll off the tongue.”

The place she steered them to couldn't possibly be his home, although one of the ringed keys in his pocket did fit in the lock. The humble mansion was cordoned off from the rest of the community by a tall gate, gaudy with designed motifs, and boasted an abundance of space unreasonable for a single occupant.

The bedroom Jayce was escorted to proved more acceptable in decoration than the exterior of the house. Years of perfectly aligned buttons on closely-tailored shirts were hidden towards the back of a walk-in closet. His uniform was too tight around his torso, pinching in all the wrong places. Even though the rest of the clothes in the closet fit better, the style wasn’t something that appealed to him. He resolved to scrap together pieces he believed looked similar enough to his outdated uniform, settling for something simple, light, and unassuming.

Gods, this jacket is a nightmare, Jayce thought, and tossed the gaudy thing into the corner of his locked bathroom (again, with much more square-footage than one person could ever fucking need). His newly selected getup was folded on the marble countertop, and he eyed the rest of the space while stripping to wash the grime of hospitalization from his skin. The glass knobs in the shower squeaked as he adjusted the temperature when the water started too cold and bumped way too hot over the span of several minutes. The experience was more akin to discovering the quirks of short-stay accommodations than the familiar conveniences of home. He avoided looking too closely at his own body as suds of warm soap slid down his skin and disappeared through the drain.

Don't think about it. If you look too long, it'll become real. Every healed-over scar. Every twinge in your back.

The internal reassurance faltered as he toweled dry and came face to face with himself in the mirror. He continued his routine by shaving off the overgrown stubble in controlled strokes and rapid taps on the porcelain sink. The bags under his eyes weren’t exactly attractive, but given he’d just left the hospital, it wasn’t anything some sleep couldn't fix, right? And if the grey in his hair had sprung up recently, Jayce could easily place blame on the stress of a major hextech deadline. Everything he saw was entirely remittable with enough mental gymnastics.

He looked through the various cabinets, curious as to what might be tucked away out of sight. Old and new bottles, pills and lotions and gels… The only aspect that threw Jayce off was a drawer of sexual items, including ones used for preparation (which he was intimately familiar with, but it wasn't like he remembered the last time he'd indulged that way).

His current self must have quite the agenda with all this, though. And the subtle feeling of heat in his gut had yet to fully subside since he'd exited the shower....

All things considered, Jayce spent a little more time in the bathroom than previously anticipated.

Caitlyn caught Jayce idling at a desk in the corner of the bedroom as he rifled through drawers and picked through the chaotic mess on the tabletop. She eyed her friend intently, fresh and clean and much more comfortable in his chosen wear, before clearing her throat.

“You look better,” she said evenly, leaning against the doorframe in a self-assured manner.

And you look old, Jayce almost bantered on instinct. But that would be an admittance to himself, and the implication was far too heavy.

“I feel better.”

“Glad to hear it.”

His private laboratory was scattered with schematics and machinery he recognized his signature on, literal and figurative, but the intrinsic feeling of proprietorship over any of it was missing. Jayce regarded the space with an uneasy sense of ignorance. Each and every project was new to him. Worse still was the evidence that this lab was used solely by one mind. No edits to his notes, no documentation with two distinctive styles of handwriting, no extra stools or sets of hardware.

It wasn't right.

It wasn't theirs.

His focus settled on a dark blue trunk tucked away in the corner, inconspicuous to anyone else.

“Is there a chance you could detach yourself from my side for, I don't know, thirty seconds?” Jayce asked his nonessential chaperone, for a moment unable to tear his fixed gaze away from the box. “Something in this dump might jog my memory.”

Caitlyn obviously considered denying him with the pause she took before responding.

“Of course.” Her terse tone suggested Jayce would be granted a few minutes at most, that she did not believe his newfound acceptance of a vehemently denied concept. “This dump is your home, after all.”

Even if it was, that didn’t mean anything else Caitlyn had stated was true.

He was under no obligation to believe anything she said.

It pained him to feel this way towards his friend and confidant, but Caitlyn was no longer the same delightful little terror he once knew. She'd grown in both stature and experience, changed for the better, and... Jayce had not changed with her.

Part of him fought to maintain the reality he’d been so sure was waiting for him, hidden behind a door he’d been tricked into skirting around. The memories were still fresh, his life was still reachable somehow, if he found the right place or the right person.

“Thanks. This whole thing has been quite the trip,” Jayce said, turning towards her. “What’s a solid reversion for ‘memory lane’? Repression trench?”

“Retrograde amnesia,” Caitlyn supplied, level and stern.

Jayce gave an exaggerated nod and snapped his fingers in her direction. “That's the one.”

“Gods, you're insufferable.”

“Most people call it charm.”

Jayce didn’t want to come off as impatient, and it took everything he had to refrain from sliding a snide comment criticizing her lack of urgency. He distracted himself by pretending to take in more details of the room with interest, looking up and over and around as he walked to the cluttered desk, planted his hands, and waited for her to leave. When he heard an even clicking of boots against marble flooring, Jayce spared a quick glance to watch Caitlyn exit the lab. The door eased shut behind her, slower than Jayce would have liked.

He waited a beat to ensure she wouldn’t poke back in.

Ten seconds of buffer.

Jayce then rushed to the trunk and tried to throw it open—the box only rocked, deftly latched shut. He fumbled with the other keys in his pocket and attempted to match one to the shine of brass on the lock. The third combination yielded the desired result, and the deep trunk yawned wide.

While the box itself was something Jayce had recognized, only a small percentage of the contents inside sparked the same feeling. Relics from his past, a barren childhood and potential-filled adolescence: forgotten prototypes, letters of recommendation, sentimental notes left to gather dust.

A bound album caught his attention, unmarked and swathed in a dark fabric cover, faded by age from an unspecified period of usage.

He pried the book from the disorderly pile, stood up, and flicked it open.

There wasn’t much to brag about preserved in the first few pages. The next held a little more promise, memorialized ceremonies and fake smiles and handshakes. Then—what he knew was organized over several pages, what he’d been looking for—photographs of completed hextech projects, of Viktor, of him, of them together.

Caitlyn had refused to talk about his partner any more than what she’d initially blurted out. Jayce hadn't pried, as he didn't want to hear it.

Not from her.

Jayce gently pulled one of the photos out from its rightful place, pocketed it, and snapped the album shut before bothering to check whether the following pages were still as blank as he'd left them. He deposited the book, shut the trunk, and glanced over his shoulder—the door was still closed, he had time.

He skirted to the desk, turned over one of the many schematics he had no connection to, and scrawled a quick note in big letters across the paper.

Getting some air. I’ll be back. Don't worry about me.

Then, after half a moment of consideration, he added:

Love you, Sprout.

Jayce found himself strangely in tune with the self he had yet to meet, thankful for his own apparent forethought in making an escape like this almost effortless. His lab was located on the ground floor, the wide window opened outward without so much as a creak, and a convenient ledge let him easily clamber over the sill. A clear wear on the grain confirmed just how often he must open it to the exact angle.

Oh, I’ve definitely done this before, Jayce mused to himself, and smirked while carefully stepping down.

He shut the window behind him and took off in the direction of the rumor, towards an entity he believed could bring him the profound understanding he craved.

Chapter Text

Jayce stared up at the decrepit, rust-mottled state of the building and passed a fair judgement:

Well, this place is a damn wreck.

The atmosphere of Zaun itself had changed, pulsing with neon and supplementary contraptions that complimented the vast array of individuals the city precariously sheltered, loud and bright in spite of the inherently dark environment of the fissures. He didn't have much to compare it to, given his intentionally limited exploration of the Undercity, but he knew enough to understand the place had expanded in both population and industry.

The strange, unconscious instinct Jayce had attempted to follow hadn't gotten him very far. His sense of direction wasn't a trait he’d ever felt entirely confident bragging about, and that in conjunction with knowing how labyrinthian the Undercity could become if he did lose his way pressured him to take preemptive measures. Swallowing his pride, Jayce had asked a handful of citizens for the whereabouts of a particular Machine Herald. Vague answers were the standard. At worst he was berated with unpleasant expletives accompanied by a hock of spit. The most helpful response had been from a well-mannered golem, which had approached Jayce while he was trying to decipher a cluster of dingy signage cobbled together on a pole.

In lieu of ambling civilians or bustling nightlife, Emberflit Alley harbored an abundance of smog, spiked railings, and a thick air of obsolescence. It didn’t look familiar, but somehow it felt right. This wreck was exactly where he needed to be, even if Jayce didn't have the wherewithal to confirm he'd ever been here before.

He steeled himself and pushed through the imposing gate to mount the crumbling steps that led to the door. Gears and cogs were fixed to it in an arrangement that might seem entirely nonsensical to some, an uncanny attempt at decoration to others… to Jayce, it seemed more akin to a visual deterrent.

He didn’t let it sway his resolve.

Jayce knocked on a small cavity of exposed wood, convinced that whatever unknown interior awaited him would be better than the eyesore outside.

After a long moment passed with no sign the door would open, Jayce knocked again.

Nothing.

He tried once more, insistent now, his patience wearing thin.

“Damnit,” he cursed under his breath. He kicked at the door frame, scuffing his boot against the reinforced brushed steel plank.

Whether the golem had been wrong, or if Jayce had led himself astray, or if the owner of the residence was inconveniently elsewhere didn't matter. Jayce hated hitting a dead end, regardless of the scenario. Retracing his steps was a possibility, but he'd already been walking for hours and the stagnant air of the fissures did nothing to clear his head. He shouldn't have come down here, but it was the only lead he had. Just as disheartening was the growing unease he felt while waiting exposed in the dimly lit, supposedly empty alley. Jayce glanced over his shoulder and surveyed the area as concern that he might have been followed, that he may be under watch, closed in.

The very real grip that closed around his collar was unsympathetic as the door suddenly swung inward. Jayce was snatched from where he stood and pulled inside before he could process his weight being lifted from the ground. His back was slammed against the plane of wood, a seamless execution in removing him from the stoop.

“Your presence is not just unexpected, but very much unwanted.” The creature wasted no time in denouncing his arrival, a grinding whir of monotonous noise edged with distaste. “What deranged impulse drove you to come here now, after the disastrous result of our most recent entanglement? You are somehow far too late and weeks too early.”

Jayce barely restrained a gasp of alarm. The thing that held him was just as indomitable as Caitlyn’s words had suggested. All grey sheen and unyielding metal, from the fist that held him by his shirt up to what had to be its face, far too close for comfort. The artificial shine of its eye sockets, tempered steel that alluded to the lines of angular features—Jayce took it all in and tried to quell the instinctual fear that arose.

It couldn’t be human.

But from the way it spoke—the accent recognizable even under layers of artificial rendering—he knew it had been once, or at least created by the man he desperately sought.

“You’re the, uh, Machine Herald, right?” Jayce managed to say even as his heart hammered in his chest. “I’m under the impression you can help me.”

The grip on his shirt did not loosen. In fact, the Herald stiffened and decided to lift Jayce, enough so he was forced to rise onto his toes so the fabric would not shred under the strain.

“You dare to mock me again.” A statement from the machine, unquestioning.

Jayce was unsure how what he'd said could have garnered such a response. “What? N-no, I'm—” 

“You seem well enough to stutter. Perhaps I should fix that.” 

The angle Jayce was forced to allowed him to look further into the interior of the space and observe the crowded mess, flayed mechanical parts and bloodied things in glass jars and—

Yeah, this might be worse than out there.

“No, that’s—Could you put me down? I’m not here to start anything, I-I’m looking for someone,” Jayce rushed out. His hands scrabbled from the synthetic arm holding him prone to his own pocket, frantically searching for what he’d stashed.

Jayce pulled out the photo and held it up near his face, where he knew the Machine Herald’s gaze was fixed.

“Here—my partner,” Jayce said, a slight waver to his voice. He wasn’t scared, he just needed to relay his intentions quickly before this thing decided its inopportune visitor would look better bound the scuffed-up worktable. “He's from the Undercity. Entresol. Brilliant to a fault. Do you know him?”

The machine couldn’t have missed the photo, not with where Jayce still held it high, yet the Herald took its time before responding. Maybe its artificial cognition was impaired and slow to process. Crossed wires… an imperfect circuit.

While it did submit in lowering Jayce back to the floor, the intimidation check continued with steadfast pressure and a perpetual grinding resonance.

“If your goal is the removal of your head from your shoulders by my hand, this method of tempting me is exceptionally convoluted,” it said.

Then, despite the arrant threat, the Machine Herald let go of Jayce (albeit with a moderate shove), releasing its firm grip and making a show of wiping the metal digits over its ratted cloak. The Zaunite champion crossed its arms and walked away with its back turned to Jayce, an obvious posture of dismissal.

“Make your exit swift." The machine's order was low and stern. “The more nonsense you spill, the less likely you will leave here on able legs.”

Jayce, against his better judgement, was fascinated.

“But you let me in.”

“And now I would like you out. I have no time to entertain this fantasy of yours, Defender.”

Jayce had confirmed a few things for certain, now.

First and foremost, the Machine Herald knew who he was. Intimately. The thing continued to debase him in a manner that suggested context, which led into the second fact: the Zaunite champion was absolutely the reason Jayce had woken up in the hospital. There wasn't a sliver of doubt in his mind on that end. However, the Herald had yet to make good on any of its newest threats, which supported Jayce’s third conjecture: for one reason or another, the photograph he’d presented had caused the machine to falter from its initial objective.

A fourth thing not yet certain was if the Machine Herald would consent to telling him anything at all.

Jayce considered the manner of his injury, the continuous promise of violence against him, and the way the Herald had suddenly decided holding him against the door was no longer a priority. If Jayce was correct—and he usually was—he still had a little room to push before the Herald resolved to kick him out or strap him down.

He took a single step forward into the room, solidifying his intention to loiter in the cluttered, unsettling hovel that was the Machine Herald's lair.

“Clearly you know something,” Jayce said. “I'll lay it all out. There’s a sizable chunk of my memory missing, and I tracked you down here because—well, you know it better than I do—you’re the reason I’m like this,” he reasoned with building confidence, although his stance was ready to bolt in case the Herald decided to snatch him up again. “In a way, you kind of owe me.”

The Machine Herald kept its purposefully established distance, but its head snapped in Jayce’s direction. An illuminated glare with sharp angles that promised to eat him alive.

“That’s a bold assertion coming from you, Defender,” the Herald said, a voice that rang in strident notes, warbling the accent into a warped hymn of lost connection.

The way it stared prompted Jayce to worry that much more about his own wellbeing; the longer he stayed in this place, the greater potential threat. But Jayce had made his way down here for a reason, and damn it all if he wasn’t willing to risk another stint in the hospital for at least a chance at convincing this techmaturgic creature to tell him anything at all—because if anyone knew what had happened to Viktor, it was the thing that had supposedly taken his place.

So Jayce steadied his nerves, took a breath, and asked again, “Do you know my partner, or not?”

The Machine Herald did not storm forward and throw the Defender of Tomorrow against the wall to induce another onslaught of merited pain.

Instead, Viktor straightened his cloaked shoulders and was reminded—by a click and a whir and a rush of injected suppressant—that he was above being tricked by Jayce Giopara.

His nemesis was here, in his home, without having shot a single demeaning remark to spark their contemptuous play. Earnest, careless, and deplorably apprehensive. Their occasional off-schedule rendezvous didn't look anything like this. Where was his armor? Where was his weapon? Where was his excruciatingly performative charm?

Why did you present that photograph like I’m not the one standing next to you?

The picture was still in Jayce’s hand. The man held it close to his chest as he took another tentative step forward, testing the boundary like he wasn’t aware of the nature of its existence. Created to be broken, over and over again. Meant to be violated, wherever their clash was initiated.

Perhaps he truly does not know.

With the last fight, how hard Jayce had dropped, it was certainly possible. The garbled plea for assistance. A lack of clear cognition. The sudden bout of nausea. And here, now, with the absence of the Mercury Hammer. The strange allusion to an Academy uniform. The way this Jayce had stood outside his home, unsure, before climbing the steps to knock.

“Hey. Machine Herald.”

Viktor was pulled out of his reveries to the sight of his not-so-aggressive adversary standing much closer than before.

“If you need someone to inspect whatever circuitry you have going on up there, I can take a look,” Jayce said lightly, and he tapped at his own temple as reference. “It shouldn’t take you this long to process a simple question. Only two possible answers here.”

Begrudgingly intrigued, Viktor did not choose either flagrant oversimplification. His response might have been less succinct, but it was closest to the truth: “As I’m sure you’ve been told, the person you seek has not existed for quite some time.”

And again, the Defender did not respond with anything the Herald was ready to hear.

“What I’ve been told is a lot of sanctimonious slander,” Jayce said as he vaguely gestured up. “Although, a half-assed explanation like yours isn’t much better.”

“You could have found clarity from any number of sources,” Viktor said slowly. The deflection came out much softer than intended. Still articulated with inorganic means, but nevertheless benign.

Jayce dropped his gaze to look down at the picture delicately held between his fingers. As hard as he tried, Jayce was unable to fully hide the shadow that fell over his expression. The look of despondence was startlingly genuine as he stared at the photograph.

“All I know is... you're the only one I trust to tell me,” Jayce said, and managed to crack a small, cheerless smile when he lifted his head once more.

If this was indeed a game, Giopara was doing an exceptional job at acting the part of a widowed lover. The man could spin webs and tell tales, conflate any falsity into his own corrupted version of truth, but this was another level of commitment to the performance altogether. And while Viktor knew every tell his longstanding rival couldn’t help but exhibit, nothing had surfaced to disclose any underlying duplicitous intention on Jayce’s part.

The evidence presented forced Viktor to accept an otherwise rather implausible notion… that Jayce was not currently attempting to deceive him with an elaborately devised plot. That he was telling the truth.

The Defender of Tomorrow was not in the room.

Jayce's Giopara's mind had been split by an inadvertent blow delivered by the Machine Herald.

“What do you remember?” Viktor asked, and turned to walk further into his lab with an unspoken implication for Jayce to follow.

“About what? Myself, my life?”

“The pertinence of any detail is at your discretion. Not mine.”

Viktor pulled two chairs towards the center of his workshop. The Machine Herald hadn’t been immersed in a project as of late (three days prior had been quite the mess by comparison), so the space shouldn't have been too horrific for someone unacquainted with his methods.

Jayce was surprisingly compliant, only hesitating for a moment before sitting down. He wanted to talk, it seemed, and for some reason he truly believed the Zaunite champion who had crippled him was the perfect confidant. However, as opposed to delving into the many achievements amassed throughout his personal years, Jayce remained entirely focused on a single lost connection.

“My partner’s name is Viktor.” Jayce didn’t take his eyes off the Herald’s plated mask of a face. “We’re pioneering magic together in the form of hextech. Our academy up top sanctioned the research under our joint ambition.”

The Machine Herald did not sit in the chair he’d brought up for himself, instead standing in front of it to gaze down at the peculiar embodiment of his estranged colleague. The Hexclaw clicked above his head as if just as intrigued.

“It’s—uh, a complicated endeavor. Configuring magic with science isn’t an easy process considering the minimal scope of research we have to build off of. Our current vision is a wearable prototype for mining purposes, something that can ease the physical toll demanded of workers, y’know? The articulated laser…” Jayce decided not to look at the thing he was speaking about as if it wasn’t already a polished feat of science. “Well, there've been a handful of accidents inside the lab. Insignificant oversights, for the most part. Before, I was sure that’s what had fucked me up. A fault in our runic calculation that resulted in a misfire. Something… relevant.”

The claw hummed with life over Viktor’s shoulder.

“But I went back, and… I don't know, everything's different.”

Viktor didn’t fill the silence. He continued to stare blankly, and the man at his incredibly patient mercy stared back.

“I don’t care how long it takes to find him,” Jayce said. “My partner is the only one who truly sees the gift our vision could bring to this joke of a society. He’s the only collaborative mind I could ever stand for this long. It’s like he knows what I’m thinking before I do, anticipates the setbacks before they can manifest. We—uh, don’t always agree on everything. Our given principles clash sometimes, but…” Jayce paused and looked deeply into the bright titian glow of the machine’s eyes, as if searching for a sliver of recognition. “I trust Viktor. I trust his judgement. I haven't ever… felt this way about anyone else. That’s why I need to find him, I’m—alone, without him.”

The Herald regarded the man in front of him, unsure whether to end the charade with a definitive denial:

Your partner is gone. Irreversibly changed. You will not see him again, not like that.

And yet, this version of his Jayce needed him in ways Viktor had never fully comprehended. He hadn’t expressed this sentiment so thoroughly prior to everything. Rude and arrogant and decisively stubborn, Viktor had always considered his former colleague's demeanor as resigned during their joint years contracted to the Academy. While they worked well together, it hadn't been particularly necessary in regard to the research they developed. Their relationship had been built on the acceptance that neither could thrive in any other partnership, not… whatever saccharine admission this was. Kinship? Janna forbid, affection?  

For the first time in a long time, the Herald’s preordained adversary sat across from him with his steadfast emotional guardrails suspended.

And in that moment, Viktor could not find the will to crush Jayce’s impassioned heart within his own augmented fist without context.

Jayce beat Viktor to the sucker punch of truth with a quiet appeal for confirmation.

“You are Vik, right? In part, at least?” Jayce asked, dreading the answer just as much as he longed for it. He thumbed at the corner of the old photograph while his gaze remained fixed on the face of the machine. “If you're what he becomes, or—if this is who you are now, I think I can accept that. Because it means he didn't just blink out of existence.”

A rush of chem stopped the Herald from kicking his willing captive off his chair right there and then just to shut him up.

“I don’t think I could live with myself if he was just gone.”

The dosage was brutal. Jayce has done well in throwing off the synthetical balance of his system, a feat given how he was supposedly unaware of the buttons he was abusing. The suppressant drug mitigated the gnawing sense of pity Viktor felt, an incredibly unfamiliar feeling when in conjunction with the Defender. But this Jayce was barely conscious of his own shortcomings, steeped in years-old memory as if it were the present state; the concept was just as tragic as it was intriguing. It must have been a terrible tempest of internal conflict, accepting the passage of time without a grace period to mourn the loss properly.

Viktor then chose to sit down in his own designated chair, metal limbs smoothly allowing the motion.

“You are correct,” he admitted simply, the grating chill of modulation hiding any sympathy that might have snuck through. “I am what is left of the man you once knew.”

Jayce stared, piercing blue eyes roving up and down the Herald's sitting form. He nodded stiffly before dropping his gaze to focus on the photo in his hands once more, glancing between the surely intimidating presence in front him and the high contrast memorialization of a man he would have to learn to live without.

“Right,” he said softly. “And we’re… enemies, now?”

“Yes,” Viktor confirmed. “Due to more faults of yours than mine.”

Jayce nodded again, slower this time in his inevitable consent. He adjusted to spread his legs as he sank deeper into the chair, as the truth he'd been so adamant on validating was clearly far from the answer he'd hoped to get. While the specific sequence of events still evaded him, reality had been laid bare by his sought out voice of reason. He had to accept it, whatever that entailed. But Jayce seemed tucked in the fractured moments he still had access to, and Viktor wondered exactly what crux of faith had guided his former partner down to his door in the first place.

“I locked these memories away to keep,” Jayce mumbled with his eyes trained on the photo. “I didn’t want to get rid of them. Because I care about you, V. I don’t know what happened between us… I don’t know why you’re like this. I don’t know what I did…”

Viktor wasn’t certain whether the gnawing feeling in his chest was righteous irritation or a strained sense of melancholy; the emotion had been muted to a point of irrecognition, by design.

“Would you like to recall?” he asked, curiosity oddly piqued.

“If it’s actually that painful, maybe not,” Jayce said with a forced, weak laugh, clearly staving off the crushing weight of loss. “I just wish I could’ve done something about it.”

The implication that Jayce would have played a different hand if given the opportunity wasn't something Viktor cared for. It meant nothing. A hollow consolation. Before Viktor could denounce the naïve sentiment, Jayce continued to press for further clarification in a gentle tone.

“Are you really not a part of my life anymore? I know we fight or something, but—we aren’t… partners?”

The question was asked so pathetically, from such a disturbing place of vulnerability, that Viktor surprised himself with the answer he chose.

“We do have sex,” he offered bluntly, “if that is any consolation to you.”

“Oh.” The slight dusting of pink over Jayce’s cheeks was an endearing thing to witness, especially in contrast to how self-indulgent he usually was when it came to their arrangement. Jayce tucked the photo back into his jacket pocket with a deliberate cough. “Not exactly what I meant. That’s… good, right?”

“It can be,” Viktor said. “A cathartic practice for us both, at least from what I have observed.”

“So we fight, and we… fuck,” Jayce decided to confirm aloud, drawn out and stiff.

“Is that so difficult to believe?” Viktor couldn't help but chuckle under the mask; the sound equated to a low series of whirs. “Given the base nature of our partnership, it seems reasonable it would evolve to such a state.”

“I guess there's still a lot I don't know,” Jayce said, compartmentalizing his ego to prioritize discovery. “You’ll have to catch me up.”

“You’ve always been one for explicit confirmation,” Viktor said. “I doubt you would believe any further claims without sufficient evidence.”

Jayce cocked his head, amused by the allegation, and smiled. He leaned forward in his seat with an open, expectant expression. “Okay. Let’s talk evidence, then.”

Viktor was wary in light of how motivated Jayce seemed concerning the shift in conversation. “You obviously have something in mind.”

Jayce all but ran with the inexplicit permission he’d been given, filtering through his claims in quick succession. “That’s a mask. The unwelded seam on the side, the button latch underneath—You can take it off, I know you can. I want to see what you look like—it doesn’t matter if you’re all wiring under there, because it’s still you, right?”

The Machine Herald tensed.

Jayce knitted his hands over his lap, clearly repressing the urge to reach out and take care of the matter himself. “I won't tell anyone,” he said, as if the reveal would induce some childish little secret between them. “I just… need to know.”

The question was there, even if it hadn’t been asked:

How much of my partner still exists in this world?

The only reason another rush of chem was not immediately injected was because of how recently the last one had registered.

Viktor rarely detached his mask when in the presence of his rival, not if he could help it. On the few occasions the Defender had seen his face over the years, the circumstance had not been in an effort to appease his ex-partner in any form. Ripped off in the heat of conflict (the bullying press of lips muddled with the taste of iron); caught off guard in the less-than-dependable privacy of his lab (too preoccupied with fending off desperate tugs at his hair to reaffix it in time).

The Herald was rightfully perturbed by the muted emotion that compelled him to show his face now.

”I will not be removing it,” Viktor denied simply.

Jayce’s expression promptly dropped into a bitchy glare, rather reminiscent of chewing on a lemon rind. “Why not?”

“Your request is not one I readily comply with.” 

“If we’re fucking, it shouldn’t be a problem,” Jayce insisted.

Viktor smirked despite himself under the mask. The Defender had said that once before, down to the expletive.

“That is not a part of our agreement.”

“We have an agreement?”

“Yes, a contract we've both consented to.”

“Signed and dated?” Jayce asked, clearly agitated by the denial enough that his shield of sarcastic flair had reared its ugly head. He crossed his arms as his leg bounced in rapid taps against the hardwood floor, a grumbling irritation seeding itself everywhere it could. “Any chance there’s a hard copy I could skim through?”

“Not physically, no.”

“Convenient.”

“We have nonnegotiable rules set in place, specifically penned for mutual satisfaction,” Viktor continued evenly, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“I didn’t agree to anything,” Jayce spat, “and for all I know, you're lying. You could’ve lied to me from the beginning.”

There you are, Defender.

It was the sharp retort from Jayce, of all things, that allowed Viktor to finally relax his guard. This was a side of his rival Viktor was overly familiar with, a riling display of annoyed entitlement that he had years of experience countering. Their virulent contention was routine. Comforting, even.

Dealing with the current mess that was Jayce Giopara would be far easier this way.

The Herald stood abruptly and planted his hands on the back of the other man’s chair, penning him in. The wooden bar creaked under the strain.

“I have not fabricated a single statement at your expense. In fact, I have been overly lenient regarding your unannounced visitation,” Viktor said, a spark of mockery present. “What do you want from me, Jayce? Reassurance that your mind will return in time? That the deeds you committed were not in truth as terrible as you fear?” His augmented third arm reached around to thread through Jayce’s hair, strangely gentle in comparison to the wounding blow it had delivered only days prior, before it gripped hard and Jayce sat up stock straight to circumvent the stinging pull. “I will not lie to appease your worries, if that is what you desire.”

Viktor finished his statement by curling forward, setting a plated knee between Jayce’s spread thighs.

Caught and temporarily stunned, Jayce shifted on his chair inside the loose cage of armored limbs, his expression bowing back and forth between shock and intrigue. The flush was deeper than before; perhaps the present air had sparked a physical recollection of sorts, the memory of their intimate entanglements so deep-seated in Jayce’s subconscious that he understood exactly how things would continue if he allowed it. Blown pupils flicked feverishly from limb to armored limb and up to the plated mask as Jayce weighed his limited options.

Viktor knew what it looked like when his former partner was ready to bolt.

This was not it.

Jayce wanted to stay, and was currently formulating the best course of action for getting what he wanted.

“If you're suggesting an alternative…” Jayce bolstered a bit of confidence back into his voice, wetting his lips and inhaling sharply. “A demonstration of what this ‘agreement’ looks like could definitely qualify as evidence.”

Viktor took his former partner’s jaw in his mechanical hand and tilted just a little further back.

The way Jayce swallowed was exposed to the Herald’s raking gaze.

“That I can do,” he said in a modulated, grating growl.

The augmented hand on Jayce’s jaw pinched just hard enough to make him flinch before the Herald moved.

The pressure of the claw on Jayce’s shoulder weighed him down; the knee wedged between his thighs ensured he was stuck in place. The arm framing his head kept him caged, yet it was the firm palming that began over his clothed cock that confirmed just how serious the Herald had been with his offer. The mechanical set of fingers slid torturously up and down the front of Jayce's slacks, slow and controlling.

Steadfast pressure from the rigid second finger following the inseam, laying off only slightly on its descent.

The thumb rubbing in slow, methodical movements around the edge of his cock, coaxing him to fill.

Jayce knew the Herald was keenly aware of his preferences when the inflexible palm pressed firmly over his tucked length, down towards the head, and squeezed too hard to be considered comfortable by most anyone else. It shouldn't have affected him so fast, and Jayce was almost embarrassed by the way he clenched and shied away from the invasive bout of obscene attention.

“Really? Right here in your… office?” Jayce asked in droll, half-hearted protest. “Even if you are a machine, don’t you have somewhere a little m-more—mm, uh—accommodating we could move this to?”

“An unnecessary relocation. You won't be here for much longer.”

“I'll stay… as long as I need to,” Jayce muttered through his attempts to stifle his own hitched gasps.

“You will stay as long as I allow,” the Herald said tersely. “Not a minute more.”

Well. Jayce would have to make the most of his time, then.

He roamed with his hands in a cyclical series of thwarted attempts: fingers that lingered for a little too long over the Herald's torso were snatched, moved to the arm rests by the claw, and released, denied the same prize on repeat without bothering to vary the method. There wasn't much else to do but instigate the challenge, as the Herald seemed set on touching Jayce without allowing a mutual exchange.

And that wasn't fair.

So Jayce tried again, this time grabbing the wrist of the augmented hand that stroked him through his trousers.

“Off,” the Herald ordered, as his persistent physical denial did not seem to instill any lasting effect.

“What are you so shy about?” Jayce said as he sneered. The look melted away when the gloved hand on the back of the chair shifted to the vulnerable expanse of Jayce’s throat. “This—this can't be how it goes every time.”

“You are correct. This occasion will be different than most.”

The Herald’s touch was controlling but otherwise light on Jayce’s neck. It drew his focus, not just from how practiced the movement was, but because Jayce could feel the difference between the sets of hands. Compared to the metal digits actively palming his cock the sensation was forgiving, soft under the leather of the fitted glove.

Jayce reached up and ran his thumb under the Herald's wrist, pressing firm. It could have been wishful thinking, it could have been in his head, but Jayce was almost certain the fingers twitched in relation to his instigation—a pull of tendons too minute for any level of machinery or techmaturgy to properly mimic.

Human.

Flesh and bone.

Jayce reveled in the sudden consideration, gaze flicking over the parts of the Herald he’d assumed were constructed of insulated copper wiring beneath a metal casing, from the arm holding him loosely to the plated face staring him down. He inhaled sharply and shifted in his seat against the efforts that meant to unwind his resolve, raising his other hand to wrap possessively around the wrist poised over his throat.

“I'm making my own set of rules,” Jayce said, willing his voice steady. “I wanna touch you. Wherever I want.”

“Not a chance.” The machine’s rejection was a low rumble. “You will come like this, once, and return to your gaudy little fortress up above. One trial run for you. No amendments. No stipulations.”

“I don't—Fuck…”

Jayce’s protest was cut short by metal digits tucking resolutely under the bulge in his pants, a firm press against his balls. His own hands clenched over the one loose around his throat, and the way it gave under his grip left him wondering the specific ratio of skin to metal. Or whether there was any metal underneath the glove at all. Or whether the reason behind the Herald's refusal to remove his mask had been rooted in an effort to hide.

“You’re more hesitant than I anticipated.”

“I'm not,” Jayce quickly shot back, and bucked his hips into the metal augment as proof. “I just—I haven't done this before. With you. Whatever you think I like—”

“I know everything you like.” The gloved hand around his throat tightened.

“I—oh, fuck…” Jayce steeled himself against a flash of heat threatened to upend his objective; he wouldn’t last if he let this go on for much longer. Then it would be over, and— “It just… won't be enough,” he gasped, and inched his fingers up the glove, around, unable to find a seam to rip through and expose the skin he knew was dotted with moles.

“I sincerely doubt that. Haven't you realized the break in routine? This body reacts in ways you cannot otherwise explain," the Herald said, and Jayce considered whether that low artificial resonance was just one more way to mislead him.

A calculated drag up his covered length and a damning squeeze around Jayce's throat had his cock twitching in the Herald’s heavy-handed palm. Jayce moaned, aware that the resultant leak had the potential to soak through at least one layer of fabric.

“Gods—”

“The timely proximity of pain to pleasure means you have not yet received the release you've been trained to expect. That is evidence enough of our intimate involvement, yes?”

Jayce tried to shake his head within the heated multi-front barrage of touch but came up short, a minute shift of his hips and tilt of his head all he could manage. “Not—n-not like that. I don't want in on whatever stupid game you claim we play, I just—”

I need more.

“I want to know you,” Jayce said in a last ditch effort for compromise, locking eyes with the illuminated hollows of the mask. He dropped his hands from the gloved wrist and settled back onto the armrests of the chair. "Just give me a chance, V."

And the Machine Herald—Viktor under all that metal, because Jayce had been right, as he almost always was—stopped.

That click-whir-hiss thing was back.

A series of sounds dampened within the confines of the machine’s armor that always seemed to draw the Herald away from whatever precipice he seemingly stood upon. Always in conjunction with something Jayce had said. 

An uncomfortable moment passed where their close-quarters proximity hovered in disuse. Jayce could only hear the rapid beat of his own pulse under his skin and the hum of some techmaturgy mastery in process. Jayce had been holding his breath, and his timid prod for an answer was a quiet exhale.

"Is that a yes?"

Viktor consequently stepped away, unraveling himself from the domineering embrace he’d instigated. He turned and began to walk towards a door in the corner of the workspace, metal soles clinking against stained hardwood flooring as he went.

With the intention to leave.

Jayce abruptly jumped up from the chair with a flash of anxiety.

I fucked up, he's done with me, I should've—

“Wait, I—”

“Another rule.” The mechanical hand pointed aggressively back to where Jayce stood, who wondered whether the metal would warm if it held him long enough. “Don't touch anything.”

Jayce let himself breathe normally again, a relieved exhale as he steadied his posture and awkwardly adjusted the strained fit of his trousers over his crotch.

“Yeah. Absolutely. Won't be an issue,” he lied easily, and nearly stumbled in his inspired attempt to catch up.

Jayce then followed the intriguing new form of his partner through the door and up the stairs, making sure to trace over each and every surface available to him as he went.

Chapter Text

“You are shaking.”

“I'm not.” Jayce wished the Herald wasn't so damn perceptive—it blurred the line he was trying to uphold. His fingers trembled only slightly as he struggled out of his shirt, pulling the fabric over his head and swaying backward when a hard yank of the sleeve over his arms did nothing but trap him. The way he flailed it off was less confident of a maneuver than he would have liked it to appear. “You're seeing things, V.” 

Addressing this new version of his partner by name as opposed to his chosen title was apparently allowed within the fine print, because Jayce was not informed of an outstanding rule when he continued to use it.

The Herald—Viktor—did not challenge Jayce any further on the topic as he stripped his layers of armor off, metal pieces revealing skin in a slow, uninspired practice from where he stood by the dingy mattress. The bedroom matched the aesthetic of the rest of the house, simple comfort in comparison to the overly grand design of Jayce’s newfound facilities. Still not familiar, but he almost preferred it. The mansion had been overwhelming.

Jayce unbuckled his own trousers and slid them off in a fog, mind elsewhere as fair skin was revealed under his watch, solidifying the presence of humanity within the steel shell. He found himself staring at muscles licked with scars and marks and bolts where metal was stitched, and while Jayce had hoped it was his partner sheathed inside, seeing the aftermath of a life he hadn't witnessed was just as disorienting as it was an invaluable relief.

He isn't gone, Jayce reassured himself. Different, obviously. A fucking mess of metal and hextech, sure. But still here.

Quick and crude calculations eased his racing mind: a wavering sixty-five percent (give or take several points depending on what was still hidden beneath the mask) was hardware as opposed to flesh. The armor pieces had made the Herald appear almost entirely composed of crisp alloys, intimidating and indestructible. From what Jayce saw now, it was partially a front. Panels across his torso, metal threaded through his spine, prosthetics in place of his left arm and parts of both legs. Each artificial addition was molded to organic matter, intricately wound in, an indisputable part of his composition but still far more human than his initial appearance let on.

Viktor carefully placed every piece he’d taken off on the long dresser adjacent to the bed, as close as he could get to folding the rigid metal neatly, it seemed.

“Did it hurt?” Jayce asked, and immediately cursed his lack of subtlety.

Stupid. You're on thin ice as it is.

“Did yours?” Viktor returned flatly with just as little decorum, unfazed by the jarring manner of inquiry.

Jayce looked down at himself, dimly lit in the modest expanse of the bedroom, and cringed. While the other’s semi-synthetic body had clearly endured more in regard to prosthetic replacement, the sheen of fibrotic tissue matched his own—a telling map of scars that Jayce refused to acknowledge.

They weren't his to bother with.

“I don't remember,” Jayce said with a shrug. “Can’t imagine it didn't.”

Viktor casually strode to meet Jayce where he was awkwardly positioned in nothing but his boxer briefs, exposed and waiting. Jayce was tense in holding himself still and watched as Viktor finally removed his glove to reveal the human hand Jayce had feverishly hypothesized still existed. He couldn't take his eyes off the sight of his partner’s fingers (a mole dotted over the back of his middle knuckle, another on his wrist) as Viktor reached out and grazed over a long scar threaded across Jayce’s chest. The first true contact of skin to skin electrified him, a pleasing pulse, and he shuddered from the mild voltage. He gingerly reached up to cover the hand with his own, to ground himself with his partner’s body—but the claw flicked him on the forehead and Jayce glared at it, distracted, before taking the hint to set his fists by his sides.

“You laughed when I gave you this,” Viktor said, tone too muddled in artificial rendering for Jayce to determine whether the memory was considered amusing or not. “You claimed I had missed the opportunity to cut deeper.”

“Seems pretty deep to me,” Jayce breathed in a shallow laugh, caught off guard by just how nervous he was. How quickly his confidence had drained away. He could put on an act, though—he'd always been good at that. “Can I attribute all of these to your handiwork?”

“Not all,” Viktor said curtly. “But most, yes.”

“What about—” Jayce cut himself off.

“Mine?” Viktor finished for him, cocking his plated head. “Do you wish to have marked me in the same capacity?”

“No. No, I...” Jayce hoped it wasn't true, yet deep down he understood that for every scar he'd earned, there must be a matching one on this patchwork body. “I can't imagine doing something like that.”

Not on purpose. Not to you.

“You did.”

Jayce’s conscious mind screamed at him to deny it, to deflect the statement with anything that could possibly defend his character. But he didn't know, and Viktor did, and above all else he still trusted the man who now ran his flat palm from Jayce’s chest down to his hip to be honest with him. A stranger, his best friend, his apparent longstanding enemy, his partner, who Jayce couldn't help but believe when the truth was a knife embedded in his gut... and Jayce knew if he asked Viktor to twist the blade, he would.

Jayce did not ask, but Viktor twisted anyway.

“I almost died by your hand.”

Jayce’s gaze snapped up. The orange hue from the sockets of Viktor’s mask did not meet him. Jayce wanted to claim it must have been an accident, that he never would have resolved to take a life in earnest, especially if that life had been Viktor’s. An excuse on behalf of the man he wasn't, the man he was, the identity that everyone saw him as first: the Defender of Tomorrow or whatever bullshit title he'd acquired in however many years had passed.

“From the looks of it, you made sure to return the favor.” Jayce's tone was cordial, measured. “Hope it was fun, at least. Paying me back.” His lips twitched into a half-aborted smirk, because otherwise it would be far too obvious his heart was currently shredding itself to pieces.

Thank the gods he didn't remember.

Jayce had made peace with a hypothetical decision, one he hoped to have jurisdiction over when the time came.

If graced with the option to choose for himself, he didn't want it.

He didn't want to be that man again.

He didn't want the memories; he didn't want the guilt.

And gods was he okay with that, no matter how grossly selfish it was, to sweep his sins under the rug of a broken mind and pretend it hadn't been his faults that had led them here. How they were obligated to inflict further harm when their temporary armistice was lifted, to etch more scars when the night was over and the light of day cast their shadows at odds.

There was a low whir that pulled Jayce from his thoughts.

“This one in particular...” The augmented hand drifted forward to squeeze, a controlling embrace to hold Jayce steady by the hip as Viktor thumbed an ugly, winding mark in the divot of his abdomen. “Could easily fall under your juvenile categorization of fun.”

“Yeah?” Jayce wished he sounded a little more self-assured. His palms settled over Viktor’s shoulders, one chilled metal, one soft and more palatable in temperature. The claw thankfully didn't deny him this time, and Jayce looked down at the mismatched hands settled over his torso. “What about it?”

“You moaned,” Viktor said, and even through the modulation Jayce could tell he meant to tease him for it. “Not in pain. Not at first. You could no longer fight after receiving it, and with your team incapacitated, I was forced to bring you here. I stitched your wound shut even as you begged for me to rip you open again. The synergistic qualities of adrenaline and lust tend to string you... senseless.”

Jayce’s breath hitched as he felt the nail of Viktor’s thumb dig hard against the spot, close enough to where his arousal was pooling that the pain pulsed into his filling cock.

“Sounds, uh, messy.” Damn, his voice was getting worse, slightly pitched and dripping in uncertainty. Like he was in over his head and he knew it. But this was his choice, and if Jayce claimed he wasn't turned on by the way Viktor chose to scrutinize his past actions, he'd be lying.

“Mm.” Viktor’s hands slid from Jayce’s waist down to the backs of his thighs, the motion forcing his head to dip over the other man’s shoulder. Jayce could swear he heard Viktor’s real voice slip out from between the hinge of his mask into the shell his ear as he lulled, “Six weeks of recovery were hardly adequate for how thoroughly I fucked you afterwards. You were ravenous for it.”

Viktor picked Jayce up, and on instinct his bare legs locked around the hips that supported his suspended weight. His grip tightened over the shoulders he held, and when the movement brought their clothed lengths together, Jayce felt his own throb against something impossibly firm by comparison. He didn't have time to think much on it, because he was promptly walked and tossed onto the waiting bed before he could properly grind into the sensation.

Jayce felt his mind race to come up with a response assertive enough to contend with the way Viktor had thrown him around so easily, mentally and physically steering the course of their intimacy. From what Jayce had gathered, he wasn't expected to just sit and take it lying down.

“S-so why are you going easy on me now?” Jayce asked, and he shot a hand out to grab Viktor’s augmented bicep. “You talk a big game but I'm not seeing any bite to it.”

“You know why.” Viktor allowed the pull to climb on top of Jayce, his prosthetic knee sheathed between thick thighs. The augmented third arm clicked and spun before catching those roaming fingers between its digits and burying into the sheets above Jayce’s head, granting Viktor access to lean in and drag both hands down his laid-out figure from chest to waist. “The Defender I engage with is experienced enough to handle it. You cannot.”

He began to rip the fabric of Jayce’s briefs apart as if the weave were merely paper.

The juxtaposition was dizzying. The heated reminiscence of what they'd done, how they had paved this schism in their relationship, accompanied by a deliberate touch just shy of marking Jayce the way his body craved. He wished it wasn't so obvious how on-edge he was, jittery and stumbling over his words like he'd taken three-too-many shots of caffeine. This kind of shared intimacy was new when it came to his partner, but only in mind, not body, which only made it all the more frustrating. If they'd done this countless times before, why was he still trembling? He wanted this, he wanted Viktor, and his own damn self was getting in the way.

“You’re just saying that to fuck with me. I can take it,” Jayce spat, and clawed with the only hand he had left at the tight swath of fabric at Viktor’s hips, barely out of reach. “Damnit, V, just—”

“Jayce.” Viktor paused to hold the other man’s wrist against the mattress in a wide berth, leaving Jayce cursing and twisting in the extended grip. “You think I cannot tell when you’re trying to deceive me?”

“I'd feel a lot better if you stopped pinning me down.”

“Old habits are the hardest to break,” Viktor said, and secured his control by leaning into the press.

“Why won't you let me touch you?” Jayce hated how the question slipped out unprompted, hated how he went limp after asking, and hated how he glared at Viktor’s masked face for denying him again, again, again.

Viktor peered down at him in supposedly affectless contemplation. The monotone resonance seemed pained in its consideration. “Would that... help?”

“Yes,” Jayce sighed, and tried to play off his shaky relief with light levity. “Gods, that metal sure is thick.”

Viktor teasingly squeezed the wrist in his grasp before letting up, and the claw shifted to allow the same. Jayce flexed his hands and meant to pull again, but Viktor pushed off the bed by means of the claw to take care of the task himself before Jayce could.

The covert buttons within the lining were something Jayce hadn't been aware of, so it might have been for the best. The undergarment came away in folds that Viktor stepped out of to reveal one of the last parts of the evolved form Jayce had yet to lay eyes on.

Huh, Jayce thought, and he could feel the resulting blush reach his ears. Sixty-eight percent.

He shimmied off his own sticky, half-destroyed briefs as a preparative measure. At this point, he was relatively sure there was a stash of his own clothes hidden somewhere within this dingy apartment, so he wasn't concerned with how badly they'd been ruined.

“Did you anticipate this kind of interaction?” Viktor asked as he selected a bottle from the dresser drawer, almost without looking. Muscle memory. This time, Viktor was much more lenient in allowing Jayce to grab ahold of his mismatched forearms and pull him closer.

“Not exactly.” Jayce’s skin was buzzing, his cock flushed between his thighs, and saw whatever mechanical induction supplanted human function had Viktor hard in a similar way. “But I had a feeling. Toys in the bathroom at my place. Prep gear. Expensive shit, too. I could only speculate how often all that gets used, or with who, so I... banked on an educated guess.”

The whir was back, and Jayce could now infer by repeated context it served as something adjacent to a laugh.

“So you are ready, then?”

“Yeah. Yes.”

“Good.”

Viktor propped Jayce’s thighs around his waist and yanked him closer, pillows tucked under and around where he laid. Jayce felt perfectly swaddled, a little spoiled perhaps, as he imagined the Herald wasn’t usually this gentle with him. Given the unique nature of their current arrangement, the change of pace seemed intentional. With how Jayce was permitted to run the tips of his fingers along Viktor’s torso, catching on the edges of plates and thumbing lightly over crisscrossing scars, he was content.

The subtle ache in his skull wasn’t a worry.

Not yet.

Viktor’s slicked-up metal fingers grazed lightly over Jayce’s inner thigh trailing excess lube, almost coaxing. Too gentle.

“I'm not gonna break,” Jayce muttered.

If it's you, I wouldn't mind, anyway.

“It is an odd thing,” Viktor ignored Jayce’s claim to muse lazily, “I know more about you than I would ever admit to anyone else. In contrast, you know very little about me at this moment.”

“I know you’re stalling,” Jayce said. “Pick it up.”

“You will appreciate my generous restraint later.”

Viktor gently teased a lubed up metal finger against Jayce’s rim, pushed inquisitively, and slipped inside. Jayce’s breath hitched in surprise not just from the cold, but because of how easy it was. He’d been tense under the assumption his pain would be something that required camouflage since he hadn’t done this in so long, and Jayce was reminded, again, that he had the capacity to be wrong.

For once, being wrong felt fucking good, especially when metal knuckles pressed firm against the swell of his ass.

“No, I—I think I can take more,” Jayce said, cautiously optimistic. “When’s the last time we did this?”

“Ten days ago. Our most recent plans were unfortunately diverted.”

The heavy metal cock was hard against the inside of Jayce’s thigh, poised for practice but not yet in use.

“Then you've been waiting. If I'm pent up, so are you.”

“Impatient, as always.”

“That can't be much of a surprise.”

Viktor leaned in to drone softly, “It never is.”

Jayce reached forward to awkwardly palm the biomechanical shaft from underneath, curious whether the material would warm just as nicely as the finger inside him—no, two fingers now, as the second had slid inside almost without notice.

“Mm, that’s... Yeah.”

He shuddered and his fingers closed up over the stiff length, anticipating how much Viktor’s plated cock would stretch him even when he was ready for it. The piece didn’t yield to his grip, and he stroked slowly along the shallow seams of welded metal. Viktor twitched under the miniscule movements and hummed loud enough for the modulation to pick it up; Jayce raised his eyebrows as he watched the head of the shaft pulse out a semi-translucent liquid.

Fucking fascinating.

As Viktor was busy kneeling between spread and bent legs, the claw made good use of its free range to do as it pleased. Jayce had every reason to believe it was a modified iteration of their joint research, but clearly Viktor had done further work in developing the technology to a semiautonomous state of intelligence. It clicked and ran fine lines down Jayce’s chest, fluttered up to tussle through his hair, taking advantage of the opportunity to roam. Jayce used his other hand to try and bat it aside, but the claw outmaneuvered him and scratched a single mark over his arm in retaliation. Not hard enough to draw blood, a featherlight stroke considering it was made from polished metal.

“What’s with this thing?” Jayce asked, mildly annoyed. He swatted again, hitting nothing but air. “It’s like a damn scuttle crab. Won't leave me alone.”

Viktor was focused elsewhere, and took his time before answering. “It’s apologizing.”

“For what?”

“The crippling blow it dealt you.”

It's a weapon?

Jayce couldn't have guessed the hand-like claw eagerly teasing him had been the specific apparatus responsible for his inconvenient injury. He wondered if it paid its dues during every post-match affair, or if it was somehow in tune to how their regular dynamic had shifted. The claw settled into Jayce’s now very unkept locks, and thankfully did not move much from there aside from twirling his hair in concentric circles.

“It’s—kind of distracting, ah—”

Viktor had taken hold of Jayce’s cock with his organic hand, pumping it slowly in time with three mechanical fingers thrusted knuckle-deep.

Skin to skin. Warm and firm.

“I am otherwise preoccupied.”

“Mm—I-I can tell.” It was the rush of unmitigated pleasure Jayce needed for everything to fall into place, and he took a deep breath to steady his building nerves. “Thought you’d be better at... multitasking...” The metal fingers spreading him open withdrew, and Jayce couldn’t suppress a small, compulsive sound of disappointment. “Oh.”

“Be still for me.” Viktor adjusted his hips away from Jayce’s reach and slicked the head of his metal shaft with the lube at his side, aided by the steadily pulsing liquid dripping from the thin seam, messy from Jayce’s inconsistent attention. “Your body will adjust. It knows this feeling well, even if you do not.”

Viktor lined himself up and sank in slowly, thumbing under the tight clench of Jayce’s balls to reroute the obligatory burn.

“V—!” Jayce flinched and clutched the sheets by his own hips, knees jerking against Viktor’s plated ribs.

Fuck, fuck, he’s inside, no wonder I’m addicted to this, gods it feels insane—

“Relax, Jayce.”

Viktor stroked up and down Jayce’s cock with a smooth hand, gliding his thumb over the rosy head at the apex. Mechanical digits massaged over the tense curve of his ass, and the claw nestled in with minute scratches on his scalp. The heat of Jayce’s blush was soothed by the cool pillow against his cheek and a gentle stroke across his forehead from the metal claw.

Every touch was productive in coaxing Jayce into accepting the stretch. He sighed out a lingering, contented moan, jaw slack, and his eyes fluttered shut.

Blissed out.

Click-whir-hiss. 

The noise made Jayce open his eyes again to see Viktor’s mask, unwaveringly indifferent, staring him down.

“It’s... uh, nice,” Jayce said stiffly. His voice sounded relatively even, considering how overwhelming it felt to be held like this—filled up, held firm, hard and soft where Viktor imposed his judgement. Rival or not, his skillset had been ostensibly honed when it came to the quality of their sexual ‘agreement’, and Jayce applauded himself for faking his composure.

“You're not fucking me, though,” he noted.

Viktor was quick to remedy that. He pressed in just a little further with each forward cant of his hips, instilling a limited but promising rhythm as he palmed his partner’s flank and milked the cock in his hand.

Jayce took a moment to savor the lovely, grounding pressure as he relaxed in full, hands passively curled into the sheets. A wash of pleasure saturated his previously taut muscles in a warm glow; the flutter deep in his abdomen kissed through his nerves and over his flushed skin.

He hummed a moan and smiled, content.

“You can—” 

There wasn’t a chance for Jayce to anticipate the sharp cut of pain that seared both cold and hot through his mind—a spiked needle of ice driven so deep into his skull it reached all the way through, gutting his bliss and dragging him down.

His startled scream didn’t fully form.

It caught in his throat and choked him mute.

Jayce wasn't sure what had caused it—the fact he’d finally been comfortable enough to let go?—but with the sudden burning sting was a flash of memory, the last one he’d been able to access previous to waking up in the hospital. While before the moment had been a hazed over dream, Jayce saw it now more crisp and clear than ever, hardly a memory at all. No retrospective dissonance to safely watch the scene from. In every sense but literal he was there—

Viktor taps his pen in an uneven rhythm across the top plate of his leg brace, propping up his head with his other hand over a wide schematic on the desk. Jayce rubs at his eyes, trying and failing to pinpoint the flaw in their design that had tanked the results of their most recent test. Both scientists continue to stave off exhaustion; a shared pride regarding their remarkable headway keeps them afloat.

They don’t argue that night. Not in the heady, tantalizing back-and-forth they both thrive in, at least. The flared heat of lustful tension is nullified by exhaustion and a mutual desire to lay waste to the world by means of progress. Gods, they’re good together. No one can deny it. Even when they clash, the resulting fire burns away uncertainty and drives their ambition forward. But it’s the private moments of companionship that are especially precious, because Jayce is enamored by just how comforting they can be.

Low, murmured conversation. A harmless brush of fingers across the desk. A lingering heat when Viktor rests his head on Jayce’s shoulder. A promising skim of lips over his neck; circumstantial, but nevertheless captivating.

It’s a feeling of easy contentment Jayce is not accustomed to, something he hadn’t realized he’d been craving. It satiates a persistent void he'd assumed would always be there. He feels the empty hole in his chest filling, slow enough that he doesn't feel the need to pull away. Provocative where it warms him from the inside.

He wants more.

“Fuck,” Jayce gasped, and his entire body shuddered beneath Viktor’s hands, eyes straining shut in a pained grimace. The claw had steadied his head when he jerked, saving him from knocking into wood with a cradling motion.

The pain flashed out just as quickly as it had come on, replaced by a tight squeeze and a pleasurable spark as pressure skimmed over his prostate. Jayce inhaled sharply and flexed his muscles, absorbing the thrill that shot up his spine and branched through his held cock, dripping onto his stomach. The seductive contact of warm skin mixed with chill metal lifted Jayce up, away from the lingering ache, and he bucked his hips into the touch. He willed the pain elsewhere, anywhere but here.

Viktor paused the shallow cant of his hips, slowed his rhythm of stroking Jayce’s half-hard length to a stop, and thumbed gently across the wet slit. “Are you—”

“I’m fine,” Jayce said quickly. “Don’t ask me that.” He hoped the curt nature of his reply would deter Viktor from attempting to confirm his stability in the future, if it did happen again. Gods, I hope it doesn't. “Keep—keep going, it feels good. Really good. That’s what you want, right? For me to—fall apart, and just... lose myself.”

Viktor regarded him for a heavy weighted moment, and Jayce took the chance to hitch one of his heels around the back of Viktor’s hips. He wasn’t successful in dragging the part-machine much closer, but it did serve as evidence of his resolve, and edged the length to the perfect angle inside him.

Jayce moaned again, laying into the sensuality of it. “Mmm, come on, V, I thought y-you were gonna show me how this whole thing works. Don't back out now.”  

Viktor reinstated the steady grind inside Jayce, his organic hand gentle where he palmed the tip of his partner’s cock. Tentative, but persuaded.

“Whatever gave you that impression?” he said, and Jayce was sure the modulation from the mask had very minimal work to do regarding the monotone delivery.

Jayce ignored the hypothetical and centered his attention on the dual sensations of heat uprooting the lingering throb in his skull. The cool, unyielding length stopped pushing forward at what Jayce assumed was hilted, but the slap of hips was notably absent when Viktor settled into an even rhythm. Jayce let his breathing rasp over his vocal cords, a thrown out moan here and there when Viktor’s warm hand skillfully twisted over the head of his cock.

He was only marginally more prepared when lightning struck a second time.

Jayce startled and grasped desperately for Viktor’s shoulders when the pain zipped through his skull again, fast and sharp, accompanied by a fleeting memory of heated intimacy.

Something breaks between them.

It isn’t the gentle press of lips Jayce secretly craves.

The sex is rough, cathartic, incredibly satiating in the manner in which it’s initiated, when Viktor decides to mount Jayce’s hips and crash their lips together instead of shooting back another witty offense. Damn it’s hot, fucking Viktor over the lab desk, continuing their argument like every other insult isn’t laced with a degenerate moan. When Jayce bites, Viktor bites back harder. Their taunts wean out into passionate cries of the other’s name. Jayce is confident that the marks they inflict upon each other will last for some time—the scratches over his shoulder blades, the bruises littered across his partner’s collarbone—and they both know it’s better to renew them early rather than let them fade entirely.

It’s satisfying. It’s real and wholly raw, this carnal desire between them, but the void in Jayce’s chest isn’t filled in the same slow, sensual way. This isn’t secure. It’s a volatile mess of antagonistic lusting, and while Jayce can’t help but delve right in, a fluttering seed of hope still sits in the back of his ribcage.

It doesn’t... hurt, necessarily, because Jayce is not yet certain. He can’t be sure, but it definitely feels... like he should say something.

The pain from physical and mental strain was interwoven, sharp then dull before settling heavy, so heavy, in his chest. Jayce barely contained his despairing cry, stifling the sound to a cut-off whimper.

Not good. Not good. Very bad, actually.

The first time, Jayce might have been able to frame his reaction as a sudden influx of wanton arousal. But if Viktor could tell when he was lying, he could surely differentiate between sultry sounds of pleasure and frantic yelps of tamped-down distress.

Jayce resolved to worm his way out of it regardless.

“Don't stop,” he demanded as a preemptive measure, because he knew it was going to happen again.

A third wave of discomfort overtook him, but Jayce was ready for it. He could brave this. The pain was bearable now that he could anticipate the drop—

The timing is heinous.

After a month of carving into each other, there’s a scrolled message waiting for Viktor in their lab. The letter is a call to action, and Viktor has no hesitation in answering it. He’s returning to the Undercity to supply aid during a time of crisis.

Jayce is anything but subtle in his disapproval. He doesn't consider it worth their time. His partner is prioritizing the safety of strangers over their own highly anticipated project. Jayce will be forced to work alone, and while the emotional slap isn't intended, it’s all he can focus on. It fucking consumes him. He sympathizes with why Viktor cares, why it's important, but the burning sting of rejection spurs the argument further than it ever needed to go.

Jayce snaps at the low, snide insinuation that he can't do it by himself. Of course he can. It isn't about that. It was never about that, and Viktor should know: it's the shared, quiet moments between their hearts and minds Jayce can't stand to lose. But their swap of incendiary ridicule barrels forwards anyway, and Jayce knows even if he says it now amidst their fight, his partner will only interpret the sincere confession as a caustic play for control.

Viktor abandons him, then, without the anticipated solace of fragmental reconciliation.

Jayce clawed his way closer over the shell of Viktor’s plated spine, frantically trying to gain some purchase over the smooth surface, tucking his head over Viktor’s shoulder so he couldn't see how he'd translated the pain into his face as opposed to crying out. His nails caught in the grooves of seamed steel and it hurt, not where his nail bent or where skin met metal but in the heat of his heart, where the violent pulse had become just as prevalent as the one in his head.

“Keep going,” Jayce groaned, but he could hear the dissonance in the whine under his breath. Cracked and frail. Breaking.

Viktor pushed back in retaliation for the tight embrace, forcing Jayce’s head off his shoulder—but before Viktor could properly shake him loose, Jayce tugged hard at the hair within range and shifted his other leg behind his partner’s waist, crossing his heels, the movement grinding the firm curve of Viktor’s length against the spot that sparked a diverting pleasure up Jayce’s spine. He moaned in conflicted delirium, looked down at where Viktor was shallowly sheathed inside him, and his own cock kicked weakly.

Overwrite it.

“I-I need you to fuck me right now.”

“Jayce...”

He knew how telling his expression must be. Jayce could feel the anxious tension in every muscle, strained from head to toe. Even so he locked his gaze with Viktor’s—or at least he tried to when the mask made it impossible, amber wells all he could reach—and begged.

“I need this, V. Please. Please.”

Three times, then.

That was a pattern.

The recollection had started and would likely continue until Jayce was caught up with every misdeed they had committed, together and apart.

Viktor—who knew firsthand just how tortuous these memories were, who preferred to dwell in the present rather than the past—could only imagine how vicious the cuts to Jayce’s heart would be from this moment on. How acutely proportionate the pain would feel once Jayce realized; when he truly understood the lengths to which their relationship had soured and frayed, until limbs were wrought off and bones were broken and blood was spilled in the years to come. Because it only got worse, before it became this. Which wasn’t necessarily better, but at least it wasn’t then.

Viktor directed the Hexclaw to peel the tensed hands from his body and pin his partner down to the bed by his chest.

“No, Viktor, please—”

He sat up and removed his hands from Jayce Giopara.

“You don’t understand, I need it now—” Jayce grabbed at the extended arm of the Hexclaw splayed over his heart, not to push it off but to grip it like a lifeline, ensuring Viktor would not pull away any further. “I need you.”

The click and rush of suppressive chem injected into the Herald’s system would be the last, for now. Viktor knew with every pitiful sound Jayce made in a context this miserable, he would be shot up again and again until his own body succumbed to dysregulation.

Viktor toggled the inhibitor embedded in the small of his augmented wrist.

“Please, I can't, I can't...”

In the privacy of his room, and in the necessity of circumstance, Viktor tried to convince himself that his intentions to comfort the pleading, desperate form of his bitter rival were permissible.

“I can't do this alone, please don't make me, please...”

Jayce’s cry was a distraught prayer for assistance, for help, and again Viktor would fall to his knees to provide it.

“Hush.”

Viktor reached up to deftly thumb against the heel of the hinge on his mask, pressing the button in and up so he could remove the plate and place it on the bed next to them. The air hit his face to cool the flush radiating from his cheeks, and Viktor did not waste any more time. He redirected the Hexclaw to the headboard of the bed and bent low, supporting himself over the other man so his loose grey-touched hair curled over their foreheads.  

“Sixty-three,” Jayce whispered, like the number was something especially sacred.

Before Viktor could question what that could possibly mean, Jayce wound his arms around Viktor’s neck and met his lips in a searing kiss to crest the wave that would drown out both the pain and imminent guilt. There was longing, there; a build up of tension and an influx of softness that Viktor had not let himself indulge in for fear of how it might shatter their contract as it currently stood.

There was a sudden flinch and a tug at Viktor’s hair, so he drew back—but Jayce hadn’t meant for his involuntary reaction to break their kiss, and he chased his partner’s lips for as long as he could. Embraced at arms length, Viktor hoped Jayce would find some solace in finally being able to meet his gaze without the physical and emotional obstruction of the plated mask. He watched Jayce’s eyes dart at close focus across his exposed features, absorbing the changes imbued by the passage of time and intentional modification alike; after a moment of palpable apprehension, his expression softened.

Alight on Jayce’s next exhale was a rare thing: a timid, shaky admission of vulnerability.

“It hurts, V.”

Oh, darling.

Viktor leaned in again. A chaste, elegant press of thin lips to Jayce's forehead. The bridge of his nose. The edge of his mouth, lingering with charity, before pulling back.

You have no idea.

“It will pass.”

His reassurance was a simple, harmless distortion in lieu of the unfavorable reality. While the torrent of rushing memory would be temporary, the consequences of each and every action taken within the flood had long been set in stone.

Jayce only nodded. His eyes remained fixed on Viktor, a glassy, pale stare that betrayed his guise of detachment.

He is petrified.

Viktor used the Hexclaw to support his weight as he adjusted the angle their hips met and pressed in, driving forward to the hilt. Jayce gasped, clamped his thighs hard around Viktor’s torso, and rutted his half-hard cock up into the metal plates adorning his stomach. Viktor did his best to maneuver within the tight grip of arms wrapped around his shoulders, Jayce’s chin tucked against his neck. While Viktor could no longer see how his expression was twisted in distress, Jayce was unable to hide the way his fingers trembled over milky skin and biomechanical augments.

Through cool metal and feverish skin, hushed breaths and purposeful reticence, Viktor hoped Jayce understood: he would be held close and deep, guided through the tragic misfortune of reliving these events for the second time in one life.

At least he pleaded no longer, partially eased by considerate reassurance.

Hearing his partner’s voice again was a relief. Such a fucking relief. The only preserved memory from a life that didn’t exist anymore.

Seeing Viktor’s face was reminiscent of the man he once knew, but time and circumstance and purposeful change left Jayce stuck in a loop of oscillation between comfort and mourning—because he knew, soon, he would understand exactly how and why this metamorphosis had come to fruition… and the undoubtedly significant role he'd played in its manifestation.

For the most part, the recreation of memory in his mind revolved around Viktor.

An unbidden display of shocked indignation on Viktor’s face before he transits the anger to the clench of his fists. Jayce says nothing in light of his partner's miraculous feat of altruistic science being commandeered and presented to the Council under the authority of their superior. Jayce justifies his inaction to himself as paying it forward. Viktor does not deserve the unshakable loyalty he might have earned, if he had stayed. But he had not, and Jayce—bitter and resentful and drowning in what he perceives as rejection from the one person he wishes to stand beside—is certain that he does not owe Viktor anything.

Every feeling washed over him and replaced the last in a cycle so consistent it became hypnotic: piercing then blunt, heat where he was touched, pleasure where he was taken, lips on his neck, and slowly warming metal kissing his flushed skin.

Diving suits. Mental fortitude. The inherent weakness of man in a state of panic.

Jayce did not panic. He breathed a weak moan into the embrace that continued to hold him tight, that rocked him gently from deep inside. Even so, the grounding sensation only served as a counterbalance to the heavy weight every following bout of unconsented remembrance threatened to crush him under.

Viktor’s face pinches taut when his motives are discredited by the one person who might truly understand, who could see the benefit. He cringes when Jayce tells him (in the heat of an argument that has already crossed the line twice over) that he is insane, that Jayce is done, that the gap between their ideology is far too wide to bridge. The self-righteous certainty Jayce clings to once he determines to instill outside judgement in an attempt to professionally put an end to this branch of thought. Because despite his instinctual method of pushing those he does not understand away, they’re supposed to work past this, as they always do; twin flames who have found each other through masses of wasted potential.

Viktor’s expression, bitter and unsympathetic, upon hearing Jayce’s confused, stilted attempts at protest when the miscalculation roots itself in unanticipated consequence. Instead of influencing Viktor to a more palatable vision, the Council strips the genius innovator of every honor and excommunicates him from the Uppercity altogether.

Jayce refuses to accept the part he’s played in manifesting this dreadful solitude. He forces himself to ignore the loss and drown in anything he still has control over—science, his craft, formulas with definitive outputs, questions that have succinct answers—to suffocate the fickle swells of uncertainty and guilt eating at his insides.

Praise does little. It's earned too easily and each hit affects him less and less, a high-octane tolerance that can't be diffused. His innovative prowess grants him autonomy, sure, but with that comes gilded strings that bind his fate to a city he doesn't care much for. And people? Mostly boring. They either want something, or are too stupid to know what it is they want. Either way Jayce can't stand the social game. The handful he allows to get close will always be a few steps behind, and Jayce solidifies his disagreeable reputation so that by the time the matches begin, they're halfway over.

It's a depressing excuse for an existence.

Nothing fully sates the void.

There's only one person who might be able to, and a self-pitying resentment fills Jayce's mind once he comes to a conclusion: without Viktor, he might not have noticed that empty space at all.

And now, the vacancy is fucking devastating.

Jayce was tuned out to the way his throat constricted in an uneven hitch around each desperate inhale and lengthy exhale. His focus was elsewhere, further back than he could have ever imagined. The pleasure and pain alike had settled into a parabolic curve of waves as each memory washed over him in even keels.

Viktor’s face when he returns different, hardened, under the assumption Jayce has achieved everything he'd hoped for in the absence of a partner. Jayce is told that the rights to this research do not belong to just him, and through Viktor’s stoic assertion and simmering animosity, Jayce feels a flicker of something warm inside himself. But their contention isn't like before, because what Jayce wants isn't what Viktor wants. There's a disconnect. He doesn't know how to fix it. Jayce wants it to disappear. It won't, no matter what he says. And that makes his blood fucking boil.

The face fuses with darkness from a sudden, unanticipated blow.

A rush of panic when Jayce comes to, which stems from fear just as much as from anger—his partner is once again steeped in something too dangerous to be ignored. He can’t send anyone else, because they might do far worse. He has to take care of this mess himself.

His long-withheld apology is not well received.

When Jayce stumbles into that house of half-dismembered, half-constructed horrors, Viktor does not look up. His expression is glazed over in blank disapproval when he refuses to meet Jayce’s belated attempt at reconciliation. The echo of his voice is haunting as he commands those terrible puppets, already of sound mind that Jayce does not matter to him anymore. This time, the rejection is unequivocal.

It’s Viktor's face—a look of utter terror Jayce knows he wears just as plainly—that is seared into his memory when the roof collapses on top of both their mortal frames, and Jayce is certain that the section of concrete crumbling above them will crush his friend’s body beyond saving.

The second iteration of loss, more grueling to stagger through than the first, when Jayce does not find his partner beneath the rubble. Not a trace. No data to sort through besides the absence of it. And Jayce knows that if Viktor has survived, he will never be the same again. Their bond is shattered. Any chance they might have had to tie their hearts back together has been snuffed out.

Jayce pores over everything he could have said clearer, done differently, but it's a fictional tale he can't fully commit to. He's selfish. Arrogant. Short-sighted. And the only person who has the mettle to push him back is gone, so Jayce can't see a path forward other than the one laid out to him by a slew of politicians: a pawn just brilliant enough to keep close and arm with the means to serve a provincial form of justice.

A dull, fuck-ugly antipathy settles in place of everything else. Bitter and jaded and desperately brooding in the idea that he is right, he’s always been right, and Jayce Giopara has no reason to challenge that concept when the Council themselves have progressed his status to a rank that proves as much. 

Jayce was sobbing.

Clinging and driving hard red marks into the already marred skin of Viktor’s back, bawling wet tears into his plated shoulder, and—whether Jayce realized it or not—mumbling slurred apologies for every memory he reacquired.

Viktor could not ask outright. He knew pausing to voice his concern would only make matters worse. With that certainty was a terrible, mad assumption that if he pulled out from the flushed and shaking body, if he stopped pressing chaste kisses into the slick curve of Jayce’s neck, if they no longer held each other chest to chest so Viktor could feel the rapid heartbeat matching his own—the man in his arms would die.

And the Herald, through every tense and sadistic match between himself and Piltover’s champion, did not wish to see his partner die.

“I’m sorry,” Jayce continued to cry, overwhelmed and gored by the intense production in his mind, years of memory flooding back in a span far too minimal to grapple with alone.

Viktor had not wanted to hear it before.

He certainly did not want to deal with it now.

“Jayce,” he breathed into his partner’s ear between one kiss and the next. “It’s over now. I promise you.”

“I’m so sorry, I d-didn’t want—I didn’t mean for—I don’t—I love you—”

And Viktor couldn’t help but wince from how unfair that felt, how fucking impossible it was to contend with that sentiment—the agreement he and his predestined enemy had established of purposeful detachment now rendered fraudulent by this lapse in routine.

“Viktor, I’m sorry, I-I’m so sorry—I love—”

And how clever the Defender was, to formulate this sequence of events so he could convey the lengths of his internal conflict without a sober mind to steer him otherwise. Because that had to be it, yes? A trick once more, premeditated, calculated so the Herald was forced to face his own level of responsibility. So he would feel something. The ache in his chest from untenable sympathy, from unresolved dissension; unmitigated pain easing tears from his own augmented eyes and raising a harsh burn in his throat. The Defender had sacrificed his own mental state to bring the Herald down with him, because above all else, he was clever.

The alternative was far too harsh.

That Jayce had always been this broken, and Viktor never would have pinpointed just how foundational the cracks were if not for this.

An accident.

So Viktor could not grit his teeth and snap at this version of Jayce: Gods, Defender, shut up. What’s done is done. Your sins and mine. You know this.

He could not bite into Jayce’s neck and drag the pain to the forefront of his mind, because there was already too much to compete with.

He could only wait, press trembling kisses against Jayce’s vulnerable throat, and lick at the tears that had tracked all the way down, salting Viktor’s senses with years of collated sorrow.

These tears did not feel earned.

They were not his to revel in.

“You’re alright,” Viktor said, even though Jayce was not. “I have you,” he reasoned, a pathetic attempt at easing his lover’s heartsick misery. “You are with me, now.” That was the truth, through it all—despite every terrible twist and turn their relationship had taken, they had consented to stitching each other's wounds closed, an arrangement that would continue to dampen their mutual pain in the years yet to come.

A whisper, then, and Viktor wasn’t sure if his partner could hear him through the endless sounds of heartbreak—

“I will not leave you, Jayce.”

Because even after everything, there was nothing else for either champion to cling onto but each other. Viktor knew this well, while Jayce was still in the process of returning to that reality.

Jayce seemed to snap out of his daze for a moment when he swallowed a sob as opposed to letting it slide off his tongue like every other cry had. He pressed his face hard into the crook of Viktor’s neck and his arms flexed, stiff enough to choke if he resolved to.

The Machine Herald and the Defender of Tomorrow, facing off for the first time—and Jayce knows in his gut, in his void-ridden heart, that beneath the plates of armor it’s his former partner that means to beat him with a novel form of pain.

Which, above all else, means he isn’t alone anymore.

Fucking finally.

Praise every sadistic god and moronic fucking celestial, because damn it all his brilliant ex-partner has worked unhinged wonders down in Zaun, hasn't he? Moral discord reaps its benefits in hellhole like that—it's insane, his ingenuity is a sight to behold, and what a name to show for it—a walking weapon to match his own and he knows Viktor can see even as slated enemies their pieces still fit together perfectly, if not burned at the edges.

Jayce discovers his body is more delicate than he’d previously thought when the bones in his arm fracture under the weight of a heavy strike he hasn't the mind to block correctly. But Viktor is touching him, breaking him, spitting lines at him in a distorted iteration of the life they once led... and Jayce screams in the form of a laugh, because that’s all he can do when the memory of Viktor's face is replaced by the Herald’s stoic mask and consistent modulation that blurs every reaction to the colourful exchange of degrading wit, fractured limbs, and burn of hextech weaponry. 

So the Defender strikes back, as does the Herald, and their play continues with shattered hearts and splintered metal. A poetic sense of satisfaction is interwoven with mutual contempt, laving wounds that would have otherwise been forever dismissed. Exhaustion will pull them apart, allegiance to a circumstantial cause will force them back at odds again—but at least they are together in this ugly, twisted rivalry.

A thrill that this mess is their future. The self-imposed conclusion that as long as Viktor is still alive, the pain will be worth it.

And Jayce convinces himself that this convoluted, deviant form of companionship will fill the ever-present hole still rotting in his chest.

I think I still love you, Jayce refused to whisper into the shell of his former partner’s ear. The insanity of the truth was rendered even more absurd with the manner he had come to terms with it, memories firing back into relative position while the man of both his dreams and nightmares held him close.

He heard it not in the Herald’s voice, but his partner’s—fading from recent memory to a ghost of a life long gone—his Viktor, soft and cloying with condescension in the darkest recess of his brain:

You know it’s far too late for that now.

And the Defender of Tomorrow continued the sob, loud and unending, into the crook of the Machine Herald’s plated shoulder.

The amber haze of the Machine Herald’s mask when Jayce, for the first time, believes he is about to receive karmic judgement at the hands of the one man who has truly earned the right to deliver his sentence. The weak kick of his own legs against plated armor, held by his throat off the ground. The blooming weightlessness of going under as his vision fades. How a perverse rendition of that easy contentment returns, and Jayce is happy to feel that grip around his throat when he knows it comes from a place of incontestable kinship.

Coming back to awareness alone in a dark alley that echoes with the sound of his own name being called by his companions.

The anxious realization in knowing he’s been spared.

The fluttering, manic joy in knowing it had been a choice.

The splintering crack in the Herald’s mask when the Defender is gifted with the opportunity to grant his predestined enemy the same mercy. The shallow cuts that burn Jayce’s fingertips as he pries the metal away and takes in Viktor’s face for the first time in years; how he’s too crazed on adrenaline to cry, and instead leans forward, low over the sparking form of the Herald, and kisses him. The jagged lines of the broken plate cut into his cheek, relief and pain and relief and pain intertwined. He startles when the Herald’s hand, not quite as broken as assumed, snaps up the back of Jayce’s skull to pull him closer.

A heated flicker of understanding between them, visible in piercing blue and black and gold and the quirk of bloodied lips, when the sounds of battle draw closer and the Defender stands up from the living, breathing, compromised body of the Machine Herald as they both resolve without words to do it all over again.

After a month passes, Jayce puts all his theories to the test when he sneaks down to the fissures. Jayce is right, as he usually is, and the rebuilt Herald minces very few words before throwing the Defender across his scuffed work table to drown him with pleasure and pain and relief, relief and pain and pleasure.

The Machine Herald’s unmasked face—changed and warped but still very much Viktor—when he tells the Defender of Tomorrow—changed and warped but still very much Jayce—that the worst thing they can possibly do is reminisce on the lives they could have lived had things been different. That their sordid past has long since calcified. Reconciliation has no place here and now. Vague rule sets and systems and lies posed as promises that will keep their arrangement balanced on the edge of a knife. While intermittent sex satisfies their mutual lingering desires, both champions will have to uphold a vow of detachment to keep this covert operation running smoothly.

And every time the Defender sinks in deep, gods does it feel good.

And every time the Herald holds him down, gods does it feel good.

And every time Jayce does not say he loves him, gods does it hurt, it hurts, it always hurts.

But it's something, and that's infinitely better than nothing at all. So in a way it's perfect, only because it's all they know.

Just tell me you love me back, Jayce did not say. Lie if you have to.

Gods, Viktor...

Please lie to me.

It was a pathetic request now out of reach for him to voice aloud, the impossibility of the words being spoken was just as unlikely as water crystallizing to ice in the sun. It would go against the very laws of nature, against his long-standing sense of justification, everything he’d built for himself, everything they’d both created within the confining walls of two opposing sides.

Because Jayce Giopara was, once again—despite his own aversion to carrying the title—the Defender of Tomorrow. An egocentric, overtaxed champion for the oxymoronic City of Progress. The Defender’s heavy-handed weapon was the amalgamation of his research, his only role to wield the hammer as opposed to challenging why he held it.

Or who he was forever destined to turn it towards.

He knew the Herald grappled with a similarly convoluted headache.

But it was Jayce who had chosen not to feint right that day, on a whim, just to see what would happen. An impulsive drive to ditch their procedural play, consequences be damned. Fuck the script. Fuck their dance. Years of service and ingrained choreography compelled the Defender to move, screamed at him to dodge—yet Jayce had loosened his grip on his weapon, lowered his guard, and resolved to ask the question he'd spent nearly a decade avoiding:

Who do you see me as first? The man who can’t figure out how to love you right, or the adversary you can punish for his unending list of sins?

The Herald had answered him with a jarring blow to fracture his mind and splinter his sense of self to a place he couldn't reach.

Viktor had answered him with gentle hands and soft lips and generous whispers of reassurance.

So in the end, despite his desperate desire for something to break, Jayce was left with little newfound clarity. No explicit confirmation to soothe the depressing notion that Viktor would always view him as a bitter rival first and a steadfast partner second. And while the resulting predicament certainly proved a change of pace from their cliché routine, Jayce hadn’t meant to bare his heart in every terrible fucking way he’d promised not to.

The wailed apologies and confessions from moments earlier were nothing but the nonsensical ramblings of an idiot who hadn’t known any better.

“V,” Jayce whispered, the name on his lips a haunting admission.

He wasn’t sure whether he meant to ask for more, or less, or some kind of recognition that his mind had shifted. Viktor only continued to hold him, bare face buried into the side of Jayce’s neck, still and thoroughly warmed by the extended embrace. As opposed to prompting again, Jayce bit his own lip hard enough to bleed into his own mouth and just barely loosened his hold, trying to relax his stiff muscles, locked up in an uncomfortable aching hum.

Yet Viktor knew his former partner better than he would ever admit to anyone—as he’d said, as they both knew—and the Hexclaw skittered across the headboard as weight was adjusted and Jayce’s upper body was lowered into the pillows. The pulse of pleasure inside him was barely perceptible, but the muted comfort kept Jayce grounded as he stretched where he could, face wet and flushed, cock soft, limbs shaking. Dried evidence of failed attempts at reaching his peak were smeared across his abdomen and down his sweat-slicked thighs. He wiped feverishly at his face with his hands and wrists, terribly conscious about how miserable he must look.

Embarrassing. Weak. Selfish, arrogant, short-sighted—

“Defender,” Viktor said, his velvety tone unmodified by machinery. “Are you—”

“Don’t.” Jayce still had a few held-back sobs left in him, and he swallowed them down with a pitchy moan. “I'm fine, I just—ugh.” Jayce covered his face with his arm; the sweat that clung to his skin stung at his eyes. “You—w-want to keep going. It’s fine. Take what you need, I’ll be fine.”

Viktor seemed to consider a multitude of options before releasing a lengthy exhale and pulling his metal cock out of the heat that barely gripped him. Jayce did not have the strength or drive to object. Viktor ran his mismatched hands over trembling thighs before sitting back on his heels.

“You are not fine.”

The tears had stopped flowing, but the tracks were still there, some evaporated to salt while others were freshly wet and warm over hot checks.

Jayce knew he couldn’t save this one.

There wasn't even a sliver of a chance he could play this off.

So Jayce sniffed, set his jaw, and decided the most convincing bet he could make at this point was to say nothing at all.

The silence laid thick over the sounds of shifting and stifled sobs, but neither resolved to break it until Jayce’s breathing had evened out as he continued the futile task of attempting to dry his face with his wet palms.

Viktor then laid down on his side in the empty space next to his partner, sighed through his nose, and closed his eyes.

“The fuck are you doing,” Jayce slurred, hands over his face as he felt the mass settle next to him.

“You’ve exhausted me,” Viktor muttered. “That was far more grueling to endure than any combinations of our past sessions.”

“How?” Jayce drew his legs up as he let himself twist uncomfortably over the sweat-soaked sheets, all pins and needles under his skin. “I didn’t get off. Neither did you. Must be getting old, V. Losing your touch.”

“Holding you for two hours in the same position—”

“Two hours,” Jayce groaned. He ran his hands over his cheeks to rub at his temples. “No wonder I feel like absolute shit. I’ve lost every ounce of hydration left in my goddamn body.”

Viktor propped himself up on his right side, his organic hand pressed against his own cheek, a reserved witness while the man next to him tried to piece his composure back together.

Jayce stared up at the now-familiar cracks in the ceiling and tongued at the cut behind his lip, wringing his hands over his abdomen.

“Okay. Cards on the table. I swear I didn’t intend for this mess to happen.” Jayce did not say he was sorry, even though the word could have easily slipped out, weathered from incessant use.

And Viktor, who was surprisingly even-tempered in regard to the whole ordeal, hummed.

“What are you referring to? Refusing to move when the script demanded it, or the consequent aftermath?”

Jayce went still.

He knows.

Of course he knows.

“If you hadn't improvised, your injury would have been considerably more manageable,” he continued. “What did you expect to happen?”

Jayce, as usual, had not thought that far ahead.

“I guess I thought... you might pull back,” he whispered, an admittance to himself just as much as to his counterpart.

“But you were not certain I would,” Viktor said. “That strike was not intended to hit you. Cards, table. You disrupted the balance, Jayce. Especially in the context of publicity....”  

“I know, I’m—” Sorry. “I won't make the same mistake twice. Everything about that was an absolute train wreck.”

“You have to be honest with me.”

“I can’t.”

Jayce continued to stare up at the ceiling, knowing he’d said too much even within the simple phrasing. Worn out and embarrassed and terribly drained, he wanted to get rid of the strange feeling of vulnerability in the air as soon as possible.

“I need you to forget any of this ever happened,” Jayce mumbled. “As ironic as that is. We can write this off as a non sequitur; a fever dream, shared psychosis. Take your pick, I'm all in.”

Viktor, who had not yet made a move to retrieve his mask from where it had fallen to the floor, did not jump to agree with Jayce’s sentiment. He chose his words carefully, it seemed, because he took a moment before responding, as opposed to the rash way he usually would have.

“I do not wish to forget,” Viktor said.

“You're gonna have to.”

“You revealed many things that have never been properly conveyed.”

Jayce had just enough energy to laugh, utterly mortified. “And whose fault is that?”

“Explain.”

“You’re giving me mixed signals, Herald,” Jayce lilted, playing down his anxiety the best he could. “Do you want me to be honest, or would you rather keep our specially sanctioned agreement in effect?”

“I did not realize the two were at odds.”

“Of course they’re—” Jayce cut himself off with a huff, exasperated, yet his heart jumped in his chest at the very thought that this could have changed something, that his idiotic resolve to let himself be wounded out of accordance to their unvaried methods had shifted the structural integrity of their relationship. “There’s a warehouse full of shit I can’t say. You told me I couldn’t.”

“I remember saying there was no reason for it.”

“You definitely told me it wasn’t allowed,” Jayce said. “I was just there.”

The conversation was incredibly fresh in his mind, considering it had taken place seven years ago.

“I see.” It was the Hexclaw that took Jayce by the hair and steered him to look, while it was Viktor who raised his tepid metal palm to cup his partner by the jaw. “Tell me, then.”

Jayce really did not like that option. He’d settled into the understanding that when he bit back his words, it was appreciated. That conversations like this weren’t just nonessential, they were actively discouraged.

Oh, gods, what had he done?

Those golden eyes rimmed with black stared through Jayce like he was made of nothing but glass, and in that moment, Jayce felt just as fragile. It wasn’t like before, when the overflow of memory had taken hold of him—possessed his body to shake and sob and sweat out all the nulled emotion that had built up over the years. This was a hushed attempt at something Jayce had preemptively accepted would never come to pass for them.

“Do I have to?” Jayce asked, and the waver was back, from nothing other than the unique fear of being seen.

“No,” Viktor said, “but I would prefer it.”

Really, now, Jayce thought. Seeing me like that is what pushed the button for you? Flicked the switch? Cranked the dial? Matched the circuit? Fuck off, V, there’s no reason for you to continue acting so goddamn casual about all this.

But Jayce was too wound up in everything that being given permission entailed to properly dish out the harsh critique—and the Hexclaw was scratching sweetly at the back of his head, and the biomechanical hand holding his face was still warm from how long he'd been held by it, and so Jayce narrowed his eyes and kept his gaze steady.

“I meant everything I said back there.” Jayce was steeled for rejection, just in case, and staggered clumsily through his sober minded truths. “All of it. How I trust you. And that I need you. And that I’m sorry, and how I—” He cleared his throat, dropping to a whisper even though the only ears that would pick it up had already heard him say it. “I love you. Think I always did. Still do.”

He couldn’t write it off now. Couldn’t talk it away.

Neither could Viktor.

“And—” Jayce grabbed the hand holding his face and squeezed the metal as tight as he could. Fuck, was he really— “I want to hear you say it back.”

A measured angling of Viktor’s head made the metal lining affixed along his jawline catch the half-light.

“Would that help?” he lulled, still way too soft to take seriously.

“Yeah,” Jayce said under his breath, hesitant with his simple response even though they both knew the answer.

He watched as Viktor closed his eyes and settled onto the pillow beside him, mirroring the temporary position of leisure.

“I do not know what the future holds for the state of our world, for this conflict,” Viktor started, low and even, as if he’d been considering this train of conversation long before his companion had returned to him with a sound mind. “Admittance of emotion will not render these uncertainties obsolete. This is why it seemed unnecessary, even counterproductive, to our current situation.”

“I get that. Trust me.”

“I do.”

One down, I guess, Jayce thought, and moved Viktor’s inorganic hand from his face to the wide expanse of his chest.

“I love you, all the same.”

Jayce felt his heart skip a beat. He knew from where he held Viktor’s hand that he might have felt it too. Through the metal. Every augment, still his Viktor.

He kept his gaze locked on his partner’s closed eyes, which featured a faint rim of red that told Jayce everything. He took in each wrinkle he'd ever wanted to kiss gently, every mole that he wished was his to cherish as opposed to marring it with scar tissue.

“You mean it?”

It's okay if you don't.

Viktor’s eyes fluttered back open again, close enough that Jayce could see the seams threaded through his gold irises.

“I wouldn't lie to you about something so precious, Jayce.”

And oh, how Jayce’s heart blossomed with passion at that, from hearing the unambiguous truth spoken aloud. No simmering doubt left to eat at him, that gods-awful voice in the back of his mind that meant to convince him otherwise finally annulled. The quirk of Viktor’s lips once Jayce sighed in relief, a mild curse and a shuffle of sheets as he curled in on himself, pulling Viktor’s augmented hand with him.

“You know you’ve never said that once.”

“I thought it was implied.”

“Maybe, I hoped, I just—You know my head, V. Fifteen years of knowing each other, I think it’s long overdue.”

Viktor exhaled a lengthy sigh and unwound his metal fingers from the ones holding his own to brush the tangled strands of hair from Jayce’s forehead.

“For what it's worth, disclosing this in private will not change much when it comes to the positions we play,” he said. “Your sheriff will not take kindly to knowing her second in command throws matches for the sake of affection.”

“Oh, fuck, I—Damnit.” Jayce bolted straight up, fast enough that the Hexclaw swerved in confusion and the prosthetic hand just holding him hovered in the air. “Not that I don’t appreciate the direction this is headed, but I should’ve been back in Piltover hours ago.”

It was common practice for the man out of place to vacate whichever home they'd ended up in post intimacy, and yet one of them appeared annoyed even through his hazy, placid demeanor.

Viktor pursed his lips. “I thought you would appreciate the opportunity to rest.”

“Cait’s probably right on my ass.”

“How do you mean?”

“I, uh, couldn't shut up about you once I came to. Might have snuck out while she was waiting behind the door of my lab. The pieces are there, no doubt she's strung them together already. Gotta get topside before she—” Jayce attempted to stand from the bed, but he immediately wobbled and grabbed the edge of the dresser. “Shit.”

“I highly doubt you can.”

Jayce, in an effort to prove otherwise, took a second step away from the bed. He promptly collapsed into the dresser, threw out an arm to steady himself against the top, and sent more than one armor piece skittering to the floor.

The whole mishap was quite loud, and Jayce flushed a deep red.

“Leave it.” Viktor patted the empty space by his side. “You’re not going anywhere, darling.”

And the way Viktor said it, coaxing and gentle and devoid of judgement, had Jayce leaning back over the side of the mattress on untrustworthy legs to peer down at the uncharacteristically tender version of the man he'd been convinced could never again convey this kind of softness.

“I’m staying?”

“Yes.”

Jayce hesitantly resettled onto his section of the bed, damp and uncomfortable at present, but he could rest with the assurance they’d both be able to rinse the salt away, ease their sore bodies, and down two glasses of water each after a few quiet minutes of mellow decompression.

“You're giving me goosebumps, V.” Jayce tucked his legs up onto the mattress but didn't yet lie back down. “You want me to be honest? This easygoing facade you're putting on is throwing me off.”

“I am... content. I enjoy when you are... eh, what is... dizzy? Flustered. Like a field mouse, this way and that, squeaking.” Viktor made a lazy clicking motion with his augmented hand, and the Hexclaw rose slightly to copy the movement. “Amusing.”

“You sound half asleep.”

“As I said, you have exhausted me.”

“I guess I need to wear you out within an inch of your sanity more often.”

“In addition, I may or may not be wading through a considerable withdrawal.”

“You turned off—” Jayce couldn’t remember the last time Viktor had purposefully disengaged his inhibitors, much less admitted it aloud. Of all the unexpected turns this night had taken, his partner’s amenability in letting his emotions chart their own course wasn’t a variation Jayce could have ever anticipated. “You're not hopped up on chem?”

“Not tonight,” Viktor said. He should have been defensive. He should have snapped a throwaway comment. Instead, Viktor squinted his eyes open for a moment and smiled. It tugged at the seams of metal lining his face, quirked his moles up, all tender and soft and just a little bit teasing. “You needed me, then. You need me now.”

More than a hint of the person Jayce had first come to love so many years ago, who had once promised to fill the emptiness in his chest with his company alone.

The Herald that Jayce knew was not present in the room. It was only Viktor laying in the bed next to him. And that, in itself, was just as terrifying as it was lovely.

With a sharp inhale, Jayce was suddenly aware of the fact he could no longer sense that ever-present hole.

The void was gone.

His heart felt full.

“You're gonna hold this over my head for the next fifteen, aren't you?” Jayce said, and gods he hoped Viktor would, because that meant his heart would stay full.

“I could. I might.”

Jayce shifted to a part of the sheets where the ratio of dry to damp was a touch more acceptable, which put him at odds with the implied barrier the Herald perpetually instilled... but the Hexclaw reached around to prod Jayce just a little closer, and in turn Viktor laid his hand over the slick span of his bare waist, and Jayce was gently coerced into a position that provided several more points of contact than usual.

He stared at the relaxed face near his own; Viktor’s eyes were still closed, his breathing even, and Jayce realized if he shifted forward just a hair, their foreheads would touch.

Easy contentment.

When Jayce finally worked up the courage to close that minimal distance, Viktor tilted his head in turn to meet him.