Archive of Our Own ^beta

1.

The humid heat of the coastal summer has just begun to fade, leaving behind a creeping autumn chill and a looming sense of dread. 

This dread that comes with autumn is something Viktor has carried with him from the undercity and up into Piltover—the reasons for it different in some ways but the same in others. It’s flu season both topside and bottom; the little annual bugs that Viktor inevitably catches that used to shake down his immune system and leave him primed for the annual pneumonia outbreaks. 

Now that he’s living topside, autumn brings with it not the threat of pneumonia, but the annual dread of begging for funding. 

When Viktor was working as assistant to the dean, that meant he had to wade through the ocean of grant applications for the few scholarships Heimerdinger doled out personally. Now that he’s back on the other side of that process with he and Jayce constantly fighting an uphill battle to keep hextech funded, it’s become less of a hassle and more of an ordeal that keeps them both up late into the night, writing and rewriting Jayce’s presentation speech. 

This is their second autumn working on hextech together. The past year and half, they’ve presented their work and gotten renewed funding from the council quarterly, and funding from the academy annually. While the council flings their money around whenever they want to, the academy’s Board of Finance only doles out grant money in the fall, at the beginning of the school year. This fall, both of them are determined that the highest grant will go to hextech. 

The main issue is that no one on the board seems to truly grasp what it is they’re trying to do with hextech beyond the novelty of creating magic. This is a flashy sounding concept that they have leaned into heavily, of course, and having both Mel Medarda and the Kirammans backing them as patrons helps boost their perceived legitimacy, but the word magic does tend to cause some skepticism in academics. 

Last year, they had shown off the anti-gravity field they created that first night in Heimerdinger’s lab. This year, they’ve decided to focus on the idea of hextech as a self-generating and self-sustaining source of energy. Which is what it is, in the most basic sense, when the crystals are introduced to any sort of external system. It’s essentially a forever-battery—if there are limits to the arcane’s power, they haven’t found them yet. 

“Make sure to mention the broken electrostatic generator,” Viktor tells Jayce the night before the presentation. They’ve stayed late in the lab—a slightly bigger shoebox than the room they were graciously offered at the beginning of the project—to finish rehearsing the fine details.

Not that Jayce needs much rehearsing, in truth. He’s a natural born public speaker—charming, with just the right amount of self-conscious fidgeting and a charisma that most of the board members eat right up. Viktor mostly just wants to make sure he slips in their request for more lab space and the very rudimentary plans for a large scale hextech-powered water filter they’ve been dabbling in.  

“Of course,” Jayce says, reading over his speech again. There are a few notes scribbled in the margins beside crossed out lines, Jayce’s well-educated looping scrawl and Viktor’s chicken scratch. Viktor knows Jayce will likely copy the whole thing into a clean sheet of paper so that he doesn’t get confused. “But y’know, you could always mention it yourself.”

Viktor sighs. They’ve had this conversation a few times. He knows Jayce means well, and it is touching how eager he is to include him.

“Jayce,” Viktor says, not unkindly. “You know I’m not suited to be the face of this project. You are much more—“

“Both relatable and aspirational to the academics,” Jayce interrupts, rolling his eyes a little. “I know, I know. But you’re my partner. None of this would be possible without you.” 

“That is true,” Viktor agrees, fiddling absently with a pen so that Jayce won’t be able to clock how much he enjoys Jayce’s unadulterated praise. “But I care more about getting a bigger lab than being acknowledged by the board of finance.”

Jayce frowns down at his speech, scribbling out another word or two. “Will you at least stand up there with me?”

Viktor sighs again. “I suppose so.” 

He did last year. Viktor has been part of the academy for many years now, and as long as he doesn’t have to do any of the speaking, he doesn’t mind standing in front of a crowd of students and academics quite as much as he hates the quarterly council meetings. And someone has to flip the switch on the hextech-powered toy blimp, which previously could only stay in the air for about twenty seconds despite being advertised otherwise (apparently a widely-known disappointment amongst topside children) but can now hover in the same place, undisturbed, for as long as they’d monitored it (which was three and a half days).

Whatever Jayce is about to say is cut off by a loud, echoing sneeze—from Viktor, of course, who has spent the last few days working through a seasonal cold. 

“Salud,” Jayce murmurs, passing him a tissue from the box on the table behind him. “You feeling any better?”

Viktor shrugs vaguely, leaving it up for interpretation. The truth is that he has been feeling much worse than he did yesterday, but he’s decided to ignore this. 

“Maybe you shouldn’t come tomorrow…” Jayce trails off, concern in his pretty eyes and the slant of his brow. 

Viktor scoffs lightly. “I thought I was your partner , without whom you couldn’t survive a single board meeting.”

Jayce quirks a small smile, warm and fond. It somehow catches Viktor off guard, even a year and a half into their partnership, how openly affectionate Jayce is towards him. 

“We should call it a night soon, then,” Jayce suggests, flattening the messy paper against the table with an air of finality. “We’ve both got to rest up for tomorrow.”

“It’s a twenty minute proof-of-concept presentation for five ancient professors who think you are the best thing since the invention of electricity.” Viktor snatches another tissue up right before he sneezes again. “I am not too worried about it.” 

But the thing is: Viktor is kind of worried about it. 

Not because he thinks they won’t get the funding for the hexgate project, but because the board might not care for their water filter plans. Especially with Viktor standing right there, the obvious author. For all of the academy’s talk of progress and inclusivity, it’s no secret that undercity-focused projects rarely get the funding they need. There’s a reason they’re trying their luck with the academy before taking the proposal to the council, but they may not fare well either way. 

Viktor falls asleep to vivid fantasies of breaking back into Heimerdinger’s lab to forge checks of exorbitant sums and the huge, sprawling lab space they could use to change the world. 

He wakes up to a pounding headache and a deep, full-body ache. 

When he sits up, his stomach rolls with a nausea so strong that it steals the breath from his lungs, and he has to just sit there for a moment, sucking in air in small gasps. 

His forehead is hot, he feels when he presses a clammy palm against it. Not quite fever-hot, but on its way there. Eyes heavy in his skull, limbs heavy in their sockets, the effort it takes to swing his legs over the bed and reach for his cane is monumental. 

Viktor knows, even as he drags himself up out of bed and stumbles half-blindly to the bathroom, that he will probably not be making it to the presentation. The awful-looking reflection that greets him in the bathroom mirror only confirms this. He looks well and truly ill. More than usual. He’s pretty sure that if he tried to walk into the grant building like this, alarms would start blaring and he would be forcibly taken to the hospital or something. 

“Shit,” he croaks, the slow-creeping autumn dread crashing over him in a grand crescendo. He sounds as terrible as he looks. “Shit.” 

He cannot go like this. Even if he insisted on just sitting in the crowd, it still might reflect badly on hextech to show up in such a condition. It might also reflect badly on him to not show up, but it’s not like anyone but Jayce will be missing his presence overly much. 

As a last resort, Viktor splashes some water in his face, trying to scrub the sickness from it like it’s something layered on top of his skin instead of buried beneath. It does nothing but make the flush on his cheeks that much more prominent. 

His stomach twists in a swirl of guilt and irritation—guilt at leaving Jayce to fend for himself in front of the panel, irritation at his stupid weak immune system and the asshole professor from the chemistry department who probably passed the flu along to him by hacking all over the place in the dining hall the last time Jayce had dragged him to dinner. 

Colorful spots dance in the dark behind his eyelids when he squeezes his eyes shut. He breathes deeply. The breath stutters in his chest and he coughs once, twice, all wet and thick with congestion. It’s the kind of cough that used to mean the winter pneumonia was on its way, the kind of hacking that used to make his parents grow fretful and cautious about letting him outside. 

He doesn’t really fear the cold leading to something worse anymore, not up here, but the echoes of those years of dread still linger. 

When he opens his eyes again, he meets his own resigned gaze in the mirror. 

At least it’s not the pneumonia, he thinks bitterly, and then putters back to the bedroom to pull on the single, thick robe that he owns so he can go find a way to let Jayce know he will not be making it to the meeting. 

When Viktor was working as assistant to the dean, he was given lodgings at the academy as one of the perks of the job. Since he continued to teach a class for the first year of the hextech project, he had been allowed to stay in the provided rooms. He decided this year to drop the class and focus on hextech full-time; because of this, he’s technically supposed to be all moved out of his academy dorm by the end of the month. 

As it stands right now, he’s very glad he hasn’t relocated yet. All the apartments he can afford are on the outskirts of the city, close enough to the bridge to be undesirable for most topsiders and therefore cheap. 

The academy has full time messengers to carry information back and forth between departments, and Viktor only has to go down a few hallways, medial mask secure on his face, to find someone he can send to Jayce. If he’d been all the way out near the bridge, he probably wouldn't have been able to get a message to Jayce at all.

Once he knows Jayce won’t think he just decided not to show up, Viktor prepares himself for a long day of restless boredom. 

All of his current projects and prototypes are in the lab. He has plenty of books here, but it’s hard to focus on fiction or crossword puzzles when all he wants to do is try another rune combination for separating toxins from water. 

He puts the kettle on the stove for tea and settles down on the couch he found at a second hand store on the fringes of Piltover two years ago. It smells like salty sea air and licorice and is one of the most comfortable pieces of furniture Viktor has ever experienced. 

His cold settles down over him like a weighted blanket, sinking his limbs into the cushions and pulling his eyes shut. 

He doesn’t realize he’s drifted halfway to sleep until the shrill whistle of the kettle shocks him awake. The sound pierces his skull with all the delicacy of a hammer breaking glass. He’s nearly dizzy with pain as he heaves himself to his feet and hurries over to take the screaming kettle off the stove top. 

The whole ordeal makes him feel too nauseous to really want tea anymore, but he fishes a mug out of the cabinet and makes some anyway. He leaves it to steep on the workbench in his living room that doubles as a coffee table, and collapses back into the couch. 

The world spins dangerously around him as his stomach rolls—for a moment, he wonders if he is getting pneumonia somehow—and he has to squeeze his eyes shut and count backwards from twenty until it passes.

Viktor sighs deeply, which turns into another light bout of coughing. He sighs deeply again, cursing that damn chem professor for getting him sick for about the hundredth time in the last hour. 

His life is very hard.

Again, Viktor isn’t aware that he’s fallen asleep until something very loudly pulls him out of it. 

This time, it’s a bout of knocking on his front door. Blearily, he pushes himself up and blinks around the room. The slant of light through the windows tells him it’s long past midday, and a quick glance at the clock in the kitchen tells him it’s past six in the evening. 

He blinks at it, shocked. He seriously slept all day? This uncharacteristic discovery is interrupted by another volley of knocking. 

Viktor sighs in irritation, grabbing for his cane so he can limp his way to the door, feeling not quite as terrible as he did this morning but still not good. He wrenches the opens the door, fully prepared to snap at whoever the fuck wants to bother him, but all his complaints die in his throat. 

“Jayce?” Viktor asks, blinking in the sunlight. 

And it is: Jayce, still in his fancy, crinkled suit, panting in light exertion and straightening up at the sound of his name. Maybe he shouldn’t be that surprised to see Jayce in his doorway; he’s not sure who else would be giving him a house call right now.

“Hey,” Jayce says, eyes darting up and down the length of him. 

Viktor’s sure he makes a sight, all ruffled and sleepy-eyed and fever damp. He feels a twinge of embarrassment at Jayce seeing him like this, and considers shutting the door in his face. 

“What are you doing here?” he asks instead, voice crackling and terrible. “I told you I’m sick.”

“I know. I just wanted to see how you’re doing.” Jayce says, sounding a little nervous. When Viktor doesn’t answer, he lifts up what looks like a big thermos with a bashful smile. “Plus I brought a gift? And good news?”

Viktor can’t help the relief that bleeds through his annoyance. “We got the grant?”

“We got the grant!” Jayce’s grin is as blinding as the summer sun, lighting up the gloomy sky. “So are you gonna let me inside so we can celebrate?” 

Viktor considers him for a moment.

“You’ll catch my cold in here.” he warns. “Maybe even a fever.”

“I have a good immune system.” 

This is annoyingly true. Viktor doesn’t think Jayce has gotten sick once since they met, save for a springtime fever that tore through the academy last year. He steps back to let Jayce inside. 

His place is a bit cluttered, but Viktor is too ill to care about appearances. Besides, he’s seen Jayce’s apartment. This is nothing compared to the impressive pile of dishes Jayce has in his sink at any given time. 

Viktor sits on the couch in a slow and dignified manner instead of falling into it like he wants to. He’s not sure why he’s so self-conscious about Jayce seeing him sick, but he is. He knows that Jayce doesn’t see him as weak or lacking, knows that coming down with a cold won’t change that, but he can’t help his bone-deep instinct to curl up like a stray and hide his soft underbelly. At least he isn’t delirious with fever at this point. 

“Are you feeling any better?” Jayce asks, setting his overly large thermos on the table next to Viktor’s cold, over-steeped mug of tea.

Viktor shrugs listlessly. “A bit, but not much. I’m sorry I missed the panel.”

Jayce dismisses his apology with a good-natured wave of his hand. “Don’t worry about it—our speech and your demonstration did all the heavy-lifting.”

“I don’t think it counts as my demonstration if I was not there to demonstrate.”

“You’re the one who thought it up and then put it together. I just flipped the switch. But anyway,” he hurries along before Viktor can argue further, “the point is that we got the funding! They were super interested in the power supply thing, and your plans for reinforced window panes for the academy.”

Viktor feels his enthusiasm wilt at what Jayce is unsubtly avoiding mentioning. “But not the water filter.”

It isn’t really a question, since he already knows the answer. Jayce’s wince confirms it.

“I’m sorry, Viktor. We can use some of the money to buy the supplies for a prototype. They can’t actually control how we spend it unless they check our bank statements.”

Viktor no longer feels as nauseous as he did before his very long nap, but his stomach twists unpleasantly at the news—bitterness, disappointment, but no surprise. 

He shrugs again, not wanting to look at Jayce and his sympathetic eyes. “Like you said, we can just work on it anyways.”

“Maybe we’ll get more funding next year,” Jayce offers. “Once we have a prototype to show them. Or the council.”

“Maybe,” Viktor says, not much believing it. He eyes the silver thermos on the table, noticing for the first time that it has the Talis crest engraved into the side. “What’s in there?”

“Oh!” Jayce exclaims, like he forgot he’d brought it with him. “I made some hot chocolate. For you.”

At Viktor’s blank stare, he continues. “Or, well, my mom helped me make hot chocolate—she makes the best I’ve ever had, heats it on the stove with cinnamon and stuff. She used to make it all the time for me when I got sick growing up. It always made me feel better, so I…I thought it might help you feel better, too. Plus, we have to celebrate another year of grant-winning.”

He’s lost a bit of steam by the end of it, that charismatic fidgeting, a smidgen of nervousness in his smile. Viktor is unduly charmed by the mental image of Jayce heating up hot chocolate on his mother’s stove and then hurrying all the way here without even changing out of his fancy suit. 

“Hot chocolate…” he echoes, just to see Jayce squirm in his seat a little. “I’ve never had hot chocolate before.”

“What, seriously?” Jayce asks, aghast.

It makes Viktor crack a smile. “Seriously.”

“How?”

Viktor shrugs. “When I was sick, my mother would make me tea. Or soup. Or warm milk with honey. Or sometimes just warm water. Chocolate was hard to come by.”

Jayce, to his credit, doesn’t apologize for Viktor’s lack of childhood chocolate, hot or otherwise. All he does is stand up and stride over to Viktor’s kitchen.

“Well, we’re gonna fix that right now,” he declares. “My mom makes the best hot chocolate. It’s gonna change your life, V.”

Viktor snorts, leaning back against the couch cushions and clearing his throat so he doesn’t start coughing. 

“I will raise my expectations very high, then.”

“It’s gonna meet them all,” Jayce promises, returning with two mugs in hand. “Surpass them, even.”

Viktor watches with some interest as Jayce unscrews the top to the thermos and cracks it open. The warm scent of chocolate, with enticing hints of cinnamon, floats up and fills the room, slow and sweet. Viktor is suddenly aware of how hungry he is; he hasn’t eaten since last night. 

Jayce fills both mugs, taking care not to spill onto any of the various books and papers strewn about, and then slides one of them down the table to Viktor. While Viktor is gathering the strength to lean forwards and grab it, Jayce wordlessly picks it up and offers it to him. Viktor takes it with a small smile.

“It’s hot,” Jayce says unnecessarily. “I burned my tongue earlier.”

“You sampled your gift to me?”

Jayce shrugs, unrepentant. “Had to make sure it was yummy enough.”

“I suppose I will be the judge of that,” Viktor says, and raises the mug to his lips. 

The sweet, rich taste of chocolate explodes in his mouth—hints of cinnamon and nutmeg and something else, slightly spicy but not enough to be overpowering. The drink is thick and creamy, and he feels it warm him up from the inside out, sliding down his throat and settling pleasantly in his stomach. 

It makes Viktor think of home, the chocolates his father brought home for them one day, the fever-ridden nights that his mother would tip his head back to help him sip at thick tea clotted with cream and honey. 

He must make some kind of noise, because when he looks up again Jayce is grinning all proud and self-satisfied.

“Do you like it?” he asks, eager as a child trying to impress a crush. 

Fondness fills Viktor’s heart all up, as warm and pleasant as the hot chocolate. “I do,” he admits, and swallows more of it down. “Tell your mother she is very talented.”

“I helped, too,” Jayce insists, making Viktor smile into his mug.

“Really? And how exactly did you help?”

“I did all the stirring. And mixed in the cocoa powder.”

“Couldn’t be trusted with the cinnamon, hm?”

“The ratio of the various spices is an intricate art, okay? I didn’t want to send you into cardiac arrest because I added too much cayenne.”

“I appreciate the thought,” Viktor says dryly. “Though if we’re truly celebrating, I have some rum here somewhere we could spike it with.” 

Jayce snorts an undignified laugh. “That nasty stuff we drank on Progress Day? I think I’m good.”

“I warned you it was strong,” Viktor teases, recalling how eager Jayce had been to prove himself able to handle undercity liquor, and how completely he had failed in that task. 

“You said it was ‘a bit stronger than you’re used to’. That’s a pretty understated warning.”

“I didn’t want to bruise your ego.”

“So you bruised my liver instead?”

Viktor shrugs an unapologetic shoulder, taking another swallow of his hot chocolate.

Jayce looks unreasonably pleased with himself as he sips at his own drink, gazing at Viktor fondly over the rim of his mug. There’s so much open affection there that Viktor has to cast his eyes away, hoping his mild fever will hide the way his cheeks go strangely hot. 

He feels a sneeze coming on, and brings his arm to catch it in the crook of his elbow. The force of it rattles his brain around a little, and he almost drops the mug. Jayce’s warm fingers steady it, curling around Viktor’s and then pulling back when he’s caught his breath. 

Jayce plucks a tissue from the coffee table and Viktor takes it. He doesn’t thank him, though he is grateful, because he doesn’t have to. Jayce understands him, much of the time, even when he doesn’t speak his thoughts aloud. 

Which is an anomaly in Viktor’s life. He wouldn’t consider himself a purposefully mysterious or cold person, only a private one. But Jayce never seems daunted by his habits or his walls; just adjusts himself accordingly and keeps moving forward.

They truly are friends, true and equal partners. Viktor has never had a friend quite like Jayce, never grown so close to anyone so quickly. And he’s never had a partner before. 

He thinks of Jayce’s warm hand on his back that very first night in the remains of his crumbling apartment, the easy way he opened up his lifelong dream to Vikor, called it ours. Now, Jayce sits across the couch from him, with his back against the other armrest, shoeless feet up on the cushions. The couch is a small thing, so Jayce’s calf and knee graze the length of Viktor’s folded legs. Fingers on his ankle in silent question; Viktor lifts his bad leg and lets Jayce fold it over his lap. The fingers return to his ankle absently, the easy way Jayce often touches him. 

Something about having Jayce in his living room, sprawled out on his furniture, feels strangely intimate—more than even the single, slightly awkward shoulder massage Jayce had talked Viktor into allowing him to give near the end of a seventy two hour long stretch in the lab. 

“Were there any other interesting proposals this year?” He asks, mostly just for something to say. 

Jayce lights up, slapping a hand down onto the couch cushion. “Oh, right! I was gonna tell you—you know the guy from the engineering department who said our anti-gravity field was a ‘silly gimmick’ and had ‘very little scientific value?’”

Viktor nods—he does remember. He was one of the students competing for the grants, and had said this to Viktor, quite loudly, when they had retaken their seats after their presentation.

“Well this year, he showed up with plans for what was basically a mini blimp or hot air balloon or something. Like, it’s supposed to be wearable via backpack and let people fly around without being in something else. Literally our anti-gravity gimmick without the hextech.”

Viktor quirks a brow. “He certainly changed his tune on the scientific value of solo-flying.”

“I know! And the best part was, the panel actually called him out about it. Professor Urri said that…” and Jayce continues on, repeating what Professor Urri said and the look on the engineer’s face and all the poorly stifled laughter from the crowd.

Viktor relaxes back against the couch cushion, sips at his hot chocolate and listens to Jayce talk. He makes little noises of intrigue at the right moments, but mostly just listens. Jayce moves his hands when he speaks, moves his eyebrows a lot, embodies the story in every part of him. He understands why the board members are so taken with him, why he turns heads and has gotten a plethora of love letters both springtimes that Viktor has known him. 

Not that Jayce ever draws attention to it, the attention that he gets. Viktor has had his own few dalliances and sort-of relationships, all of them unserious and short lived. He’s never really asked about Jayce’s dating life, never asked if he ever takes up any of his many offers. The idea of Jayce out with some faceless suitor, charming them with his smiles and his nervous hands, makes him feel…strange. He blames it on the cold.

And besides, he thinks as Jayce switches topics to talk about some of the good proposals he heard, it doesn’t matter what Jayce may or may not do with other people. He’s not out somewhere with someone else. He’s here, in Viktor’s living room, even though Viktor is ill and contagious, bringing him hot chocolate and telling him stories. 

Viktor finishes his drink. Sets his mug on the table. Settles back into the cushions and props his cheek on his hand, elbow on the back of the couch. Jayce gives him another small, fond smile, and keeps talking. It’s warm and comfortable and all of Viktor’s dread and pain wash away in the current of Jayce’s bright voice.

For the third time that day, Viktor slips into sleep without even noticing that he’s falling at all. 

2.

Autumn is in full swing, leaves brown and temperature dropping, bringing with it cloudy skies and a sense of losing time. 

Viktor isn’t sure why he feels this way. By all intents and purposes, they’ve been making great strides in hextech. The hexgate prototypes have all been successful on the small-scale. They’ve cracked teleportation, the ability to bend space around two points, and have successfully transported a variety of inanimate objects—a pile of nuts and volts, a scrap-metal toy boat, their Distinguished Innovators Competition trophy, multiple mugs with Jayce’s face on them, an entire desk chair—across their lab. Living things have been a bit more tricky, something in the changing density of their blood, but they’re well on their way to figuring that out, too. 

Maybe it’s something to do with the approaching winter. Maybe it’s something to do with his aunt’s passing, which happened this summer, just before the weather turned. Although she was as sick as everyone else who grew up eating, drinking and breathing Piltover’s waste, she had always seemed an immovable, unkillable woman to Viktor. Now she is one more statistic among thousands. 

He never did get around to visiting her again. He managed to write a semi-decent letter in the spring, and promised to visit once he was a little less busy, which he had never gotten around to being. Too much to do. Pushing the visit back later and later, with the assumption that there would be a later, when in reality they are all of them running out of time. 

Whether or not they finished the hexgates while she was still alive, it’s not as if his aunt would have had any use for them. They would bring no direct improvement to her life. They would do nothing for her—nothing for the undercity—at all. And yet, he gave up time he could have spent with her to continue his work on them. And here he is now, in the lab, still working.

For all that he is a private person, Viktor feels things deeply. His parents’ deaths he has been carrying since he was a child. His aunt’s makes a place for itself among them. All she had done for him, and he left her down there alone, for years, because he couldn’t drag himself away from the lab long enough to visit the woman who saved him from starving to death on the streets after his parents died. 

Jayce has been very kind about the whole thing. Viktor told him very little other than the reason he took a few days off last month—funeral arrangements, the barebones funeral itself—and Jayce was all sympathetic and accommodating. He told Viktor to take as much time as he needed. Viktor, not one to dwell on things like this, was back in the lab two days later.

All he can do now is try to do better. To do more. Once the hexgates are done, they can move on to other projects, projects that will do real good for the undercity instead of only benefiting topside. There is so much he wants to do—so much that is within the realm of possibility, clean air and clean water and sustainable living—if they can only get the damn funding for it.

Viktor has steered clear of the dining hall this year, not wanting to catch anyone’s illnesses, and lets Jayce attend the Finance Board presentation day alone. It’s not healthy, the hours he’s pulling, but they need to crack the blood density issue. The last thing standing in the way of the construction of the hexgates and their next project. 

“Hey, V,” Jayce says one day, two coffee mugs in hand—Viktor’s own badly painted face staring down at him as Jayce offers him one. “How do you feel about a potluck?”

“A pot—what?” Viktor asks absently, eyes on his notebook. He sips at the coffee; hisses as he burns his tongue.

“It’s like a dinner party where everyone brings something. Like a picnic or something, but inside. Well, I guess a potluck could be outside, too…”

“You’re asking me how I feel about communal meals?” Viktor scribbles out a rune on one side of the equation, substitutes another.

“Well, more like I’m asking how you’d feel about me hosting one.”

Viktor finally tears his eyes away from the page. Jayce is standing much closer now, leaning against Viktor’s desk with one hand braced on top of it. 

Viktor squints up at him. “I thought you hated hosting,” he puts emphasis on the word, which Jayce had used profusely when he was complaining about the (very few) times he’d hosted his patrons back before his old apartment blew up. 

“I’m not gonna invite Mrs Kiramman,” Jayce laughs. “And it won’t be anything fancy. I’m just…grateful. For you and for—everything. Things are going better for us than I ever could have imagined. Plus, you’re the one who said doing things outside of work is healthy. Might as well put my baking to good use.”

Viktor smiles a little at the memory of springtime, the constant three-week stream of baked goods that kept appearing in the lab. 

“And I assume I am invited to this—potluck?”

Jayce gives him a look that says obviously. “You’re at the top of the guest list. I mean, it’s not a very long list, but you’re at the top of it.”

“I’ve never been at the top of a guest list before,” Viktor suppresses a wider smile, “With such a prestigious honor, I suppose it would be rude of me not to come.”

Jayce shifts in place a little. “I mean, if you are busy you don’t have to—”

“Jayce,” Viktor interrupts softly. “Of course I will be there. Thank you for inviting me.”

“Of course,” Jayce grins, unabashedly relieved. “Are you gonna make more stew?”

Viktor shrugs enigmatically, turning back to his work so Jacye won’t see how pleased Jayce’s constant praise of his cooking makes him. “Maybe. Anyway, for the next trial I think we should try adding a Balance rune on top of Precision.”

And that’s the last Viktor hears about the potluck for a while.

So long of a while, in fact, that Viktor completely forgets about it until the day before, when Jayce reminds him by asking what sort of dish he thinks Heimerdinger might bring. Viktor does his best not to let his realization—and ensuing panic—show, saying something about two hundred year old recipes lost to time. 

He spends the rest of the day racking his brain for anything that he both knows how to and has the time to prepare for the dinner tomorrow. He could just do the stew again, but is for some reason resistant to the idea. He wants to do something new, something Jayce has never tried. He wants to see that same awed twinkle in his eye that Jayce had when he took Viktor by the shoulders and told him he should quit hextech and open a restaurant. 

He leaves early that evening, once he’s decided what to make, bidding a flustered goodbye to Jayce and Sky and heading straight for the shopping district. 

They have most of what he needs. He has to substitute caraway seeds with fennel seeds and almost fears he’ll have to ferment the sauerkraut himself, but is saved by one of the few undercity-style food carts in the whole market, owned by a tiny old woman who, like Viktor, was able to claw her way out of their hole in the ground and dig her claws into topside. The baker—his last stop—seems bemused when Viktor asks if he has any days-old bread instead of fresh loaves, but obliges him. 

He ends up with three bulging bags of groceries—double bagged, so they don’t tear on the long walk home—and check his watch on his way. A little under twenty hours until the party. He quickens his pace, though it makes his leg ache in the chill air. 

With all the ingredients laid out before him, it seems an overwhelming number of tasks he’s given himself. As in most areas of his life thus far, he doesn’t let these odds faze him. Smaller tasks first, he decides. He can marinate the pork overnight. Start with the bread dumplings tonight, finish the rest during the day tomorrow. 

As he’s kneading the dumpling dough, the little cubes of nearly stale bread in a pile off to the side, he finds himself wishing he’d thought to ask his family why they never wrote any of their recipes down. It was like that with many things his mother had brought with her from her homeland when they were forced to flee—stories, songs, history, family recipes. Their community passed these well-worn memories back and forth in word alone. A way to keep their language alive, perhaps. A reason to use it. 

Viktor never understood it, the hesitance to put history to paper. The scientist in him, maybe—the Doctor had given him his first quality, leather-bound notebook back when Viktor assisted him in his studies, and Viktor had loved how it felt to record their test results, dutifully writing down Rio’s dosage of medicine, her reactions, her behavior. 

How helpful it would be now, if his mother or aunt had possessed the same desire to record. He wouldn’t be here, second-guessing how long he needs to let the dumpling-bread-cube-yeast concoction sit and rise, or wondering if fennel seeds are actually something he can substitute for caraway.

With the stew, the most he had to worry about was balancing a passable ratio of spices. But he’s never been one to falter in the face of a challenge. When the bread dumplings are finished and secured in the icebox alongside the marinating pork, it’s nearing midnight. Viktor carefully stores the rest of the groceries and heads to bed.

Tomorrow is the weekend—though that means little for Viktor and Jayce, who often can’t stay away from the lab for the whole two days and often don’t even try. Viktor wakes up as early as ever. 

Jayce’s potluck is at seven in the evening tonight. The sauerkraut likely won’t take too long—only a few ingredients to prepare, mostly stirring things in a saucepan and making sure it tastes alright. The pork roast will take the most time, and will be the most essential thing to not mess up. As long as he gives himself enough time for a bit of trial and error, it should be fine.

Mind made up, he makes his usual weekend lab appearance. Jayce isn’t in, but Viktor assumes he’s preparing for his party. Time flies as Viktor gets lost in the runes, and when he finally remembers to check the time, it’s long past noon. Another hour passes before he’s actually managed to drag himself away from his desk and out of the lab, and by the time he reaches his apartment the afternoon is turning to evening. 

The sauerkraut takes a bit longer to pull together than he planned. The first batch, he braises at too high a temperature and the consistency is all wrong. As well as the taste, overly sour and lingering in the back of his throat. The second batch, he balances the brine and water at a more pleasing ratio, and remembers to lower the heat on the stove.

The pork roast stands before him as the final hurdle to success. He pictures the pleased awe on Jayce’s face when he told Viktor he should open his own restaurant as he preheats the oven. Thinks of his warm hands and his easy smile as he chops onions. He looks at the clock: four and a half hours until the party. 

Once the pork is safely roasting, covered on the stove, Viktor busies himself with a bit of cleanup. He’ll make the gravy from the remains of the onions and juices from the meat once its finished roasting. Then, he’ll have to figure out how to best transport everything across town to Jayce’s mother’s house. Which is probably something he should have considered before committing to a three-piece meal. Maybe he can send a message to Sky for some assistance?

Once the counter is mostly clean, he putters over to his bedroom to figure out what he should wear. He’s sure Jayce will be forgoing the academy uniform, so perhaps Viktor should as well. He also doesn’t want to embarrass himself by attempting to overdress, so he leaves the single suit he owns hanging in his closet and pulls out a well-worn sweater and slacks instead.

Viktor sits down on the bed beside his sweater with a sigh. The strain from being on his feet for the last few hours has taken its toll; his breath escapes him in a whoosh as the tension bleeds from his leg. He closes his eyes and breathes through the worst of it. 

Against his better judgement, he leans back into the mountain of pillows at the head of the bed. He got as little sleep last night as he usually does, and it’s been a long day. He glances at his watch: three hours until he needs to take the pork roast out. For lack of anything else to do, he reaches for the latest of Mel’s recommendations—a fictional novel about pirates, of all things, which he’s about a third of the way into—and cracks it open to pass the time.

The smell is what wakes him—pleasant and savory, and then, creeping into the edges of his awareness, the pungent, acrid smell of something burning. 

Viktor’s eyes snap open. 

He’s scrambling up and out of his bedroom faster than he’s moved in a long while, but the damage is done. Smoke fills the still air of the kitchen, drifting about in lazy tufts. His smoke alarm likely needs to be replaced, considering the lack of beeping. He throws the nearest window open to start to clear it out. 

Viktor slips the kitchen gloves on and cracks the lid of the roasting pan. The puff of black smoke that explodes outwards makes him cough, and he bats at the air before reaching blindly for the stove dials. He nearly grazes his arm on the side of the stove-hot pan, but manages to avoid getting burned. 

The lid clatters against the countertop when he sets it down. In the warm kitchen light, Viktor observes what’s left of his pork roast. 

It’s burnt charcoal-black on top, which says nothing good about the state of the rest of it. It smells terrible. A glance to the side, and Viktor realizes he left the side dish out on the counter instead of storing it away—and that in his messy panic he had knocked the uncovered bowl onto its side, spreading thick sauerkraut down the length of the drawers and onto the kitchen floor.

Viktor’s heart sinks. He slumps back against the counter in unreasonably despair. 

Hours of work—almost an entire day!—with nothing to show for it. All his painstaking labor turned burnt and inedible, because he decided to sit on his bed. 

The clock reads a little after five. Jayce’s party starts at seven. Even if the pork roast didn’t take half an hour of preparation and almost three more in the roasting pan, there’s no way Viktor could rustle up more sauerkraut on top of it and still make it across town in time. 

To his dismay and embarrassment, Viktor feels for a moment like he might burst into tears. He feels so stupid: putting in a ridiculous amount of work into an overly-complex dish his mother had made only twice in his whole life, just because he wanted to impress his partner again. Just because he wanted to revel in his awe and surprise and that blinding affection, wanted to hear his praise and tuck it away into himself to revisit later, turn it over and over in his mind like a silly child with a crush. 

He could have just made the stew again and Jayce would have been happy with it. Instead, he wasted a day of his life, worked until he was too tired to stay awake and then let the whole thing burn. He’s ridiculous. 

Instead of crying over burnt pork roast, Viktor presses his palms hard into his closed eyes, counts backwards from twenty, and then looks at the clock again. Ten minutes have passed. 

He surveys the sorry state of his kitchen. Cracks open the icebox to see what remains, racks his brain for some simple meal or treat he could throw together—if he shows up empty handed, he might as well just not go at all. Bringing the bread dumplings by themselves is a possibility, but would be rather bland without anything to accompany them. 

For the slightest moment, he considers faking sick and sending an apology in lieu of a half-baked contribution, but quickly decides against it. Jayce invited him. Jayce is grateful for him, and cares for him, and Viktor won’t hide scared home from the party just because he overestimated his cooking abilities. 

He has eggs, milk, flour. Yeast left over from the bread dumplings. Butter and sugar. A mishmash of various fruits the old undercity merchant had talked him into buying (despite the fact that fresh fruit has never been sold in the undercity for anything less than the price of a kidney and should not be sold at an undercity-inspired food stall). Apples, pears, strawberries, blueberries. 

Viktor glances at the clock again. An hour and a half until the party starts. Not enough time for sweet dumplings and custard but, if he hustles, just enough for a kolache or two. 

Bracing himself, Viktor scrapes the burnt pork roast into the trash can, rolls up his sleeves, and gets to work. 

The air is cool but not unbearable; leaves crunch beneath his feet, the sunset a pretty orange over the sprawling city.

Jayce’s mother’s house is lit up in warm yellows, steaming out the open windows and onto the street. It’s not a huge house, not compared to the mansions in the innermost parts of the city, but it’s certainly bigger than the one Viktor grew up in. 

He feels oddly shabby in his well-worn sweater and secondhand longcoat. House Talis is the topside equivalent of a scrappy, lower class underdog, but even a minor house is a far cry from Viktor’s nameless family heritage. 

These vast differences in upbringing have never overly bothered him before—it’s fun to tease Jayce about it whenever he says something unintentionally snobby or piltie-like, but Jayce has never lorded his status over Viktor’s head in any way—but right now it makes him shift in place on the fancy welcome mat. Standing there with his last minute, crumbly mini fruit pies and the stitches on the inside the seam of his pant leg. 

Shaking off these odd insecurities, Viktor raises a hand and raps on the front door in three sharp knocks. 

A few beats of silence, and then the door swings open to reveal Jayce, tall and golden in a sharp suit in the reds and golds of his House. He beams at Viktor, nearly blinding. Viktor can do nothing but smile back.

“Viktor!” Jayce says loudly. “You made it.”

“Of course,” Viktor says, all of his silly worries melting away in the face of Jayce’s welcome. “It was a perilous journey, but I somehow survived.”

Viktor is not the last guest to arrive, but it’s a close call. Heimderdinger shows up about ten minutes after Viktor gets there, a comically oversized cake tin in his hands, which he immediately hands to Jayce the moment the door swings open.

“Sorry for my tardiness, my boy!” He says in that chipper way of his. “I hope I didn’t delay dinner too badly!”

“Not at all,” Jayce says graciously, leading the way to the dining room of his mother’s house. 

“Viktor!” The dean says when he sees him standing in the threshold. “Hello, hello. It’s been too long.”

“I saw you at the hextech progress report a few weeks ago,” Viktor says, bemused. 

“Work meetings don’t count,” the professor chides. “I miss our late night talks, you know. My new assistant does a fine job, but she can’t brew a pot of tea quite like you can!”

Viktor takes the compliment with a hopefully not too bland smile. He’s forever grateful to the professor for the job and opportunity he gave him, but he does not much miss being his assistant. 

The potluck itself is actually pretty small—only seven people in total, including Jayce and his mother. Viktor ends up seated across from him, in between Sky and Heimerdinger. The table is large enough for everyone, and full of food. Viktor recognizes a few of the dishes, but some of them—the professor’s, for example, which is some sort of very tall cake-adjacent dessert made with purpleberries native to Bandle City, which he spent many years visiting in his youth—he’s never seen before. 

His own tray of kolache seems a bit underwhelming compared to Mel’s warm farro seed salad, tossed with pumpkin and spinach and bits of bacon, or Caitlyn Kiramman’s meatloaf, made with imported beef and local fowl she shot herself. He laments the death of his pork roast, and vows not to tell anyone that this was his second, thrown-together-last-minute option.

The dinner is private enough—and full of people that Viktor actually knows—that Viktor doesn’t feel the usual discomfort that he does at the formal parties Jayce occasionally talks him into attending. The food is delicious, the conversation light and pleasant, and Viktor feels himself relax somewhere around his second glass of wine. He doesn’t feel out of place like he thought he might. Jayce’s steady, warm gaze on his from across the table might have something to do with it. 

Viktor keeps a subtle eye on both his tray of kolache and Jayce’s plate, so he might catch his reaction when he tries it. He didn’t actually get to see Jayce eat his stew last winter, though the look on his face when he realized what Viktor had gifted him with is something Viktor’s mind replays often.

This time, he sees. He catches the moment Jayce lifts a forkful of sugary dough and fruit to his mouth. His brows furrow thoughtfully as he chews, and then raise in surprise. He makes a soft noise of interest, of enjoyment, and then lifts his own eyes and catches Viktor staring. 

Viktor refuses to look away; he makes an expectant sort of gesture with his eyebrows— what do you think?

Jayce swallows. “This is great, Viktor. This is the best—what is this, actually?”

Viktor feels a fond smile tug at his mouth. “It’s kolache,” he says softly, not wanting to draw attention to it, even though he can feel Sky’s curious gaze. “A small fruit pastry—though they can be as big as a wheel of cheese if you like. My aunt used to make them for my birthday sometimes.”

“Can you make it for my birthday?” Jayce asks, and takes another bite. He makes another noise, exaggerated this time. Viktor fights a laugh. “I’m serious, V. This is delicious. Best kolache I’ve ever had.” 

“It’s just a dessert,” Viktor deflects, feeling the slightest amount of heat rise to his cheeks. 

This is the very reaction he was hoping for, but now that it’s happening, he feels uncharacteristically shy. In the middle of dinner, no less. 

“It’s not just anything,” Jayce insists, as earnest as ever. “You made it.”

As if the act of Viktor making it is what makes it special. As if it’s worth something simply because it came from his hands. Viktor has to look away, busying himself with his wine glass, nearly empty. 

Viktor has never cared much what people think of him—he had to develop a thick skin early on in life—and he has always been unbothered by the judgement of others, especially the judgement of topsiders, so long as it didn’t interfere with his goals. 

Until Jayce. Who is one of the most generous people he’s ever met, and who has never said a bad word against Viktor (outside of their occasional, overblown arguments about experiments or lab safety), to his face or otherwise. Who has an easily inflated ego and an unfortunate habit of people-pleasing. Who spent an entire month on a baking spree just to pay Viktor back for his winterfest gift. This is the man whose opinion Viktor apparently values above all others. 

A troubling development, to be sure. And one he can never, ever let Jayce become aware of. 

He shrugs a casual shoulder. “Yes, well. It was not my first choice, but the entree I would have prepared…fell through.”

Breaking his vow not to tell anyone within an hour of making it. Viktor chides himself internally for being so weak to Jayce’s warm, sincere eyes.

“If it makes you feel any better, this is my second try,” Jayce gestures to the tray of sweet bread, his contribution to the meal. “I dropped the first batch before I even got them in the oven. It got dough all over the kitchen. Even on the ceiling.”

Viktor smiles, thinking of their ridiculous attempt of making homemade ice cream this past summer. “Strange how you always manage to get your food on the ceiling,” he teases.

Jayce grins back, clearly thinking about the same thing. The splat of the under-churned ice cream against the ceiling of Jayce’s apartment, the way they had both stared at it until it eventually unstuck and fell back down into their nuts-and-bolts ice cream maker.

“Jayce got something else stuck to the ceiling?” Caitlyn asks, propping an elbow on the table and leaning forwards curiously.

“No,” Jayce says, at the same time Viktor laughs and says: “Yes, he did.”

He recounts their summertime field trip and the whole fiasco of building the ice cream maker and then the laborious effort of using it, Jayce occasionally pitching in to disagree or embellish. He’s made it to the bit about Jayce begging to switch jobs when he notices that he’s got the attention of the whole table. For once the many eyes on him don’t make him uncomfortable; instead he shifts his focus to the whole of them, props an elbow on the table, and continues the story. 

When he tells them about Jayce accidentally flinging the whole chunk of ice cream up at the ceiling, there’s a round of laughter and light ribbing at Jayce’s expense. 

“Was it any good?” Caitlyn asks, about the ice cream.

“No,” Viktor admits with a chuckle. “It tasted like cheap vanilla and something that I assume to be ceiling residue.” A beat. “Jayce had two bowls.”

“I was hungry,” Jayce defends. “All that churning wore me out.”

Viktor gets a few more compliments on his dessert, including from Jayce’s mother. He’s met Mrs Talis a handful of times over the last three and a half years. He knows Jayce has a few lingering issues with her about her actions at his trial, but she’s always been polite and welcoming to Viktor. Plus, she helped Jayce make that lovely sweetbread for him in the spring. 

When plates have mostly been cleared and the feasting has devolved into chatter, Jayce clears his throat and stands. No need to tap the champagne glass to get such a small group’s attention, but he does it anyway. 

“Sorry to interrupt,” Jayce says. “I just wanted to say a few things. First, um, thank you all for being here.”

“If I hadn’t come, you’d complain about it for ages,” Caitlyn teases. Jayce rolls his eyes, but doesn’t disagree.

“It means a lot to me that you’re taking time out of your busy schedules,” he looks at Heimerdinger and Councilor Medarda in particular, “to share a meal with me. I know this season is a time for reflection. For considering the past year, and preparing for the winter, and…”

“Begging for grant money?” Viktor offers when Jayce pauses, collecting his thoughts. 

Jayce gives him a wry smile. “And begging for grant money. It’s a season of giving thanks. Of being grateful. And I am so, so grateful to each and every one of you for the ways that you’ve touched my life. I wouldn’t be here now without you.”

He looks at Viktor when he says this final sentence. Viktor looks steadily back.

“All of this to say, thank you. And, um, cheers?”

“To dear friends,” Mel says, raising her glass. “And a bright future for us all.”

Viktor raises his nearly empty wine glass, clinking it with Sky’s, and swallows the rest of it down. It tastes like sweet plum and the honey of Jayce’s eyes.

Everyone lingers for a while after dinner, sipping warm cider by the fire in the parlor. Heimerdinger is the first to leave, citing a morning class he has to teach tomorrow (though Viktor knows he has no such thing). Sky is next, yawning a little as she says her goodbyes. 

Eventually, only Viktor remains, even Mrs Talis retiring for the night. He blames the fire for warming his cold bones so nicely. 

“Viktor,” Jayce says from his place beside him on the small couch. They’re sitting so close that their shoulders brush. Viktor turns to look at him. “Thank you for coming tonight. I know you don’t like parties and stuff.”

“Mm,” Viktor shrugs, “Tonight’s company was not so bad.” And then, more sincerely, “Thank you for inviting me.”

“Of course. I meant it when I said I’m grateful for—for everything you do. For me and for hextech and—well, just in general. I’ll never be able to thank you enough for…for stopping me, that night.” 

Viktor knows very well what night he’s talking about. They rarely speak about it, but they both remember it vividly. The night that changed both of their lives forever.

“Jayce…” Viktor says, and stops, unsure of what to say to the reminder of Jayce’s near-death. 

“You saved my life,” Jayce says, looking him in the eye. Viktor could melt in them. “You believed in me when no one else in the world did. I’ll never be able to repay you for everything you’ve given me.”

Viktor shakes his head, a bit overwhelmed by the sudden display. Jayce is so close, and his eyes are so tender, that it’s hard to think for a moment.

“You already have,” Viktor says truthfully. “Before I met you, I was stuck in a dead-end assistant job because no one else in Piltover would have me. You’re the first person who…saw me, truly. I have never had a…you’re the first…” The words best friend seem too juvenile. The words research partner too clinical. “That is to say, I care for you very much. And I’m grateful to have you in my life as well.”

He stares at the fire as he says this, so that he can’t stare at Jayce too intently and lose his nerve. Viktor is many things, but he wouldn’t consider himself a cowardly person. And yet, he is gripped by a strange, muted fear at the thought of saying everything else he feels— I care for you more than I’ve ever cared for another person and I don’t know what that means for us, but if it will ruin our partnership then I don’t want it to mean anything at all.  

A warm hand atop his own startles him briefly, pulling him back into himself. He looks down to see Jayce’s hand resting tentatively over Viktor’s, folded on his lap. The sight of it makes his heart race like he’s a teenager again, holding hands for the very first time with an older boy who lived down the block from his parents’ house. 

“I know it’s late,” Jayce starts, voice low. “But I was—um, I was wondering if you’d…”

“Yes?” Viktor prompts.

Jayce looks up at him, his eyes shy and questioning. He leans the slightest bit closer. Eyes darting down to Viktor’s mouth. For a wild moment, Viktor wonders if Jayce is going to kiss him.

But all Jayce does is clear his throat and say. “Um. I was wondering if you’d teach me how to make that stew? Your mother’s, I mean. The one you made for me last winter.” 

As if he needs to clarify. Viktor finds himself taken aback, even though Jayce has mentioned it before. It feels like he’s asking him something with far higher stakes than teaching him how to make what is a very uncomplicated slow-cook meal. There’s meaning here that Viktor is either reading too much into or that he doesn’t understand at all. 

“Right now?” He asks.

Jayce shrugs bashfully. “If you’re not too tired. Like I said, I know it’s late, but—I have all the ingredients.” 

Viktor blinks at him. Jayce had planned this, then. Waited all night to ask him. Waited all night to get him alone to ask him to make stew with him. 

Inexplicably, he feels his cheeks go warm. He knows it must be terribly obvious even in the comfortable firelight.

He clears his throat. “Do you have a slow cooker?”

Jayce stills. Winces. “Shit, I knew I was forgetting something.” 

Viktor cracks a smile, the odd tension between them breaking and sliding away. “Even after our slow cooker hexgate model, you still forgot how the stew was made?” 

“I’ve been busy, okay?” Jayce defends, but he’s smiling, too. “I guess we’ll have to do it some other time, then.”

He sounds casual enough, but Viktor can feel his disappointment. Suddenly, he doesn’t want the night to end. Doesn’t want to go home alone, or leave Jayce alone here. 

“I have one at my place,” he offers. “If you’re not too tired to take a walk.”

Jayce lights up like Viktor has just offered him the largest possible grant the academy hands out. 

“Let me go grab everything,” he says, with a brief touch to Viktor’s shoulder before he hurries out of the room. 

He returns minutes later with three bulging paper bags in his hands, which he hauls around with ease. Viktor can picture the way the muscles of his arms and back must flex beneath his suit as he shifts the bags to one hand and opens the front door for Viktor. Viktor is so taken aback by the direction of his own thoughts that he lets Jayce do it without complaint.

The night air is brisk but still—no wind, which is a small mercy considering how quickly the temperature has begun to drop after dark. The walk is pleasant despite the chill; they toss a few ideas for their blood density conundrum back and forth as they go, because they’re, as always, incapable of not talking about work for very long. 

Viktor turns the heater on when they finally reach his apartment—he only runs it in short bursts in the autumn, mostly when he’s sleeping, until it eventually gets too cold to keep it off—shuts the kitchen window and helps Jayce unpack the various ingredients and lay them all out on the counter. 

He really did get everything. Potatoes and carrots and beef and mushrooms, flour and broth and a generous amount of onions. They’ll only need one or two, but Viktor appreciates the commitment. 

Jayce hovers on the edges of the kitchen like he’s not sure if he’s allowed, as if Viktor didn’t invite him over specifically to be in the kitchen together. 

“Alright,” he says, injecting authority into his tone. “First we prepare the vegetables. You can chop the carrots while I peel the potatoes—if you think you can handle such a difficult task.”

In reality, Viktor is starting Jayce off with the simplest task. He might make him dice the onions afterwards, but not before he tests Jayce’s ability with a kitchen knife. Jayce seems relieved to be told what to do, stepping into Viktor’s small kitchen and washing his hands in the sink before taking the offered knife. 

The slow cooker sets down with a clink upon the counter, and Viktor turns the dial to the lowest setting for it to heat up. He pours half of the broth into the basin and sets the rest of it to the side. 

Then, Viktor digs another knife out, pushes up his sleeves and starts in on the potatoes. 

In Jayce’s fancy, wrinkled suit and Viktor’s finest sweater, they stand there at eleven-thirty at night and chop vegetables together. The smell of smoke and burnt food has long since aired out. The heater makes small clangs in the background as it whirs on. 

Snip-snip-snip goes the knife against the wooden cutting board as Jayce’s steady hands work. He stares down at the carrot with the fixed concentration he employs in the middle of an experiment. It makes Viktor smile to himself. 

Despite the limited and slightly cluttered space, they work together as seamlessly in the kitchen as they do in the lab. Jayce puts a hand on Viktor’s lower back whenever he passes behind him, and seeks Viktor’s approval for every carrot he chops. He watches Viktor cut a slab of beef into small, square pieces, and then repeats the motions himself with the second slab. Viktor lifts the spoon to Jayce’s mouth so he can taste the differences that the various spices make to the broth. Jayce flicks flour in his face; Viktor sprinkles some in Jayce’s hair in retaliation. 

Jayce knicks the middle finger of his left hand on his first onion-dicing attempt. He seems equally as bewildered by the blood clotting on his finger as he is by the onion-based tears pooling in his eyes. Viktor swallows a laugh and winds a small bandage around it, careful fingers. 

“Be careful,” he chides. “Though, if you were to lop the whole thing off, I’m sure we could make you a better replacement.”

Jayce leaves his hand there for a long moment, caught between Viktor’s, until Viktor pulls away and returns the knife to him.

It’s all so startlingly domestic. Viktor feels like he should maybe be taken aback by it, the easy domesticity of having Jayce in his kitchen, but he isn’t. Jayce fits perfectly into every other part of Viktor’s life. Why should this be any different?

The whole scene brings to mind slivers of childhood memories—his parents both exhausted from long shifts in the mines, swaying softly in the kitchen as steam rose from the pot on the stove, Viktor caught between them with both feet set atop his father’s sturdy boots. His aunt’s cool hand on his, showing him how to chop and dice. Cold nights that were stoked warm through hearth and heart. 

Jayce’s hands are warm. Jayce is warm, the whole of him like a portable fireplace, a personal space heater. There’s no need for him to be standing so close for these final few touches—a bit of diced garlic, some paprika, truthfully more embellishments than he’d thrown into Jayce’s gift last year—but Viktor doesn’t step away.

The heater in Viktor’s apartment makes a sudden and terrible clanging noise—so loud it nearly startles Jayce off his feet—but Viktor waves it off. 

“That just means it’s working,” he says, and it’s true. He’s fiddled with it enough to know as much. 

Jayce huffs a relieved laugh and relaxes, but the sound seems to have broken the strange spell between them. Jayce stands up straighter, clearing his throat and looking at the full-to-bursting slow cooker with renewed interest. 

“That’s it, then?” he asks.

“That’s it,” Viktor agrees, and covers the bubbling stew with the glass lid. “I told you it was not a very complicated dish. The slow cooker does all the work.”

“The slow cooker did not just chop all those carrots,” Jayce argues lightly, flexing his fingers. 

“I am sure the carrots will be the best part,” Viktor teases. “Now help me clean up.”

The clean up mostly consists of scraping everything into the trash can. Jayce raises pointed eyebrows at the charcoal-looking mess at the bottom.

Viktor sighs. “I tried to make this…three-part dish,” he explains. “It takes a long time to cook. I…underestimated the amount of time I needed. And overworked myself to make it happen, and then fell asleep and—” he gestures at the burnt remains in the trash can. “So I had to improvise. That’s why I was late. Honestly, this kitchen has seen more action in the past twenty-four hours than it has since last winter.” 

Jayce has an endeared, tender sort of look on his face, soft around the eyes. Viktor feels oddly exposed, even though all he’s done is admit he is not a master chef and is in fact only a physicist with a penchant for cooking simple meals. 

He doesn’t feel silly, though, or foolish, for admitting how much work he put into his failed pork roast. They’re scientists, after all; they’re used to failure and readjustment. He tried to cook something for Jayce. It didn’t end up working out, so instead he cooked something else. 

“Do you think you could show me how to make it?” Jayce asks softly, leaning further into Viktor’s space. He has to shuffle around the trash can between them. Viktor can’t stifle the smile that pulls at his mouth as he tilts his head upwards to look at him. 

“Not tonight,” he says lowering his voice so Jayce has to lean in further. Eyes darting to his mouth again. Viktor resists the urge to wet his lips. “I’m exhausted.”

“Some other time, then. The, uh, kolache, too. And I could show you how to make sweet bread.”

They’re close enough to the window that Viktor can feel the autumn chill seeping through the cracks—but it hardly touches him. He is so warm and full of something he might call joy, if he was pressed to put it into words. Might call it something else, something heavy and real, if he didn’t think it might shatter this careful precipice they’ve found themselves on.

Viktor knows that Jayce has a scattering of feelings for Mel. He knows that Jayce likely feels something for him as well. Their vague, nebulous relationship might not survive romantic entanglement. But it also might. There is already love here, so much that it threatens to overwhelm him if he looks at it head-on. 

But it’s late, and it’s cold outside, and it’s warm in here. It’s two in the morning and Jayce walked all the way to the edge of town so Viktor could show him how to chop vegetables and put them in a pot and now Jayce looks like he wants to kiss him. And Viktor has never been one to shy from taking a risk. 

Slowly, he brings a hand to rest along the curve of Jayce’s strong jaw, the other exchanging the handle of his cane for Jayce’s shoulder. Jayce doesn’t pull away; his eyes are wide and curious. Viktor leans up slowly, slowly, and presses a soft, chaste kiss to Jayce’s lovely mouth. 

He feels Jayce inhale sharply; broad hands on his waist, on his back, that mouth parting for him and kissing him back with an enthusiasm like a tidal wave. He tastes like paprika from the broth, and the faintest tinge of sweet plum wine. A strange but somehow not terrible combination. 

Viktor breaks the kiss. Leans back against the kitchen counter to steady himself, and smiles up at Jayce’s shocked, flushed face.

“I think I would like that,” he says, surprised by the gravel in his voice. “Very much.”

And then he tugs Jayce down by the tie to kiss him again. 

3.

The summer is long-past, rooted out by the cool chill of almost-winter, but Viktor cannot feel the change in recesses of the fissures. 

He cannot feel the annual dread so much either, though he isn’t sure if that has more to do with his new state of mind or his new state of body. Maybe the weather has turned, even this far below the surface, and he just can’t tell the difference anymore. 

The thought would have troubled him even a month ago, when he first woke in his new, changed body. Thoughts like that had troubled him very much. When Jayce had first hugged him and his touch had been nothing but a faint, warm charge against the whole of him, a resigned sort of horror had taken root deep inside his changed, hexcore-heart. 

But he is used to it now. The changes. This new, strange version of himself, this thing that had died and come back as something else. What else could he do, but get used to it? 

Before he moved topside all those years ago, Viktor had rarely ventured this far down into the fissures. The Entresol was already toxic enough to dirty Viktor’s very genes; there was no need to go looking for anything worse. But now, the idea of returning to whatever is left of his home—shrieks of children splashing in the water, the ramshackle village of shared language and tradition, his aunt’s long-empty house—feels wrong and sort of frightening, in the distant way he feels most things these days. 

There is no reason to go home. Facing Sky’s family is too terrible to consider. There is no one else waiting for him. Even if his aunt was still alive, she might not recognize him as he is now. 

Viktor has always been a small and lonely thing, made for places dark and buried; the city is built on top of the bodies of countless others like him. He had stepped over their bodies himself on his hardwon climb out of the fissures. It’s only fitting that he should use this unfair chance at a second life to seek out his atonement somewhere more befitting his station.

It’s certainly looking better than it was when he first arrived. The hexcore that is now keeping him alive and also, in ways he doesn’t fully understand yet, is him, has done wonders for the ambience. Magic flows from him like sand through a sieve. It sinks into the dirt, into the very air. It has healed broken limbs and hacking lungs and bodies ravaged by shimmer, and it has turned the acrid soil fertile and twisted metal into great, spiraled houses.

There is a wild beauty to the shapes the arcane takes in the physical world. Something forever dazzling about the endless stretch of stars that exist inside his head—inside of him. Of them, he and the hexcore and Sky, who he carries with him now. 

He exists both in the stars with Sky and here, in the undercity, walking through his commune wrapped in the extravagantly folded blanket Jayce had given him. Huck, the first person Viktor was able to heal, had insisted on doing something with it other than letting it hang around his shoulders. Viktor had obliged, only if so he would look less strange and off putting to people who came to him for help.

There were many offers of new clothes—finer fabrics, thicker robes—but Viktor has no need for anything fancier than this. It’s not as if he has anymore cocktail parties to be coaxed into attending. And, if he is being very honest with himself, in the most private recess of his brain, he doesn’t want to give up the last thing Jayce will ever give him. 

This is silly, so he doesn’t really think about it directly. He tries to think around it, the space that Jayce has left. Tries to ignore the lack of him. But his traitorous mind, over and over again, keeps thinking things like: Jayce would love this or I can’t wait for Jayce to see this. Keeps wondering what Jayce would think of this or that, what he would do if he were here, the breakthroughs they could be having together. He would find every piece of this place fascinating, Viktor knows. Would find every piece of Vikor fascinating. 

It’s silly and irrational to think these things, because Viktor is the one who left. But he does miss Jayce. Despite the betrayal, despite the way things had ended, Viktor misses him terribly. 

It’s this constant ache in him—hollow and faint instead of the heavy, bittersweet thing it used to be. Part of him regrets leaving so quickly. If he had stayed a bit longer, talked things out, maybe Jayce would be here with him now.

Part of Viktor is surprised—disappointed, maybe—that Jayce isn’t here anyways, hasn’t already tracked Viktor down to try and convince him to come back to Piltover. But there’s no use in daydreaming about it. Viktor doesn’t have time to daydream. 

He has work to do, endless work. His home has been suffering needlessly, the people sick and dying and hopeless, violence and pain and addiction and worse, while he had been topside, playing academic and fighting the endless, uphill battle of begging for the slightest scraps of Piltover’s resources.  

How much time has he wasted? How many of his people had suffered and died while he did so, reaping none of the rewards of Piltover’s progress? 

No. There is no time to daydream at all. 

Summer has melted into fall. It will be winter soon. 

Today, the commune has decided to celebrate the turning of the season. Their crops won’t be affected by changing weather—Viktor will see to that—but everyone agrees that there is much to be grateful for before the bitter cold returns to the world. 

There is no fancy kitchen equipment to use here in the commune, so most of their meals are fire-cooked. Soups and stews of all sorts are easy to heat over a fire, in big pots that can be covered all day, added to and stirred when necessary. Viktor himself never ventures to the markets to buy the few things they can’t grow themselves—he knows his new body is strange to behold, even down here in the land of prosthetics—but he followers always return with the exact items he asks for.

They’re making great pots of stew today as their main dish. For the rest, Viktor encourages his followers to look to their own pasts and families; though he can’t eat any of it, he enjoys seeing the joy that tradition can bring. Many of them have no such things, orphaned at a young age or so destitute that they could not find joy in the filth they had to eat to survive. For those, Viktor hopes that the food they grow and fashion themselves will come to fill that empty space with meaning. 

When the evening draws near, his people gather in the open courtyard to feast. Large, spiraling tables scatter the grass. Big pots of stew, cuts of steak, fish covered in thick sauces, two sweet smelling pies. Enough food that ten year old Viktor and his parents would have wept for joy at the sight of it, enough food that they wouldn’t have been able to fit it all in their table or icebox.

It brings him joy, whatever faint traces of it he can still feel, to see the fruits of their harvest laid out like this. A thriving community of people Viktor has finally, finally done some good for, all gathered to eat together. Viktor wants them to eat well. He wants the undercity to eat well. Starvation is no longer an issue for him, but his fallible human followers are still at risk. 

He stands to speak. His people all look to him, falling silent. Speaking to his commune is much easier than public speaking ever was in Piltover, though he still doesn’t love to do it. It helps that these people see him as their herald instead of Jayce Talis’ superfluous undercity assistant. 

“I thank you for this meal,” Viktor tells them, sincerely and from the bottom of whatever is left of his human heart. “We have taken the polluted dirt from the bowels of the fissures and turned it to fertile soil. You should be proud of yourselves.”

The beaming faces of his followers fill him with something akin to contentment. The arcane hums within him.

“I wish I could join you all for dinner. But it will bring me great joy to see you partake on my behalf. Please, celebrate not me, but yourselves, and this place that we’ve built together.”

There is a round of cheers, clapping, and then Viktor waves a hand and his followers break into a busy hum of chatter and clanging utensils.

He can feel their reverence and happiness through the bond they share, the pieces of him that have now taken root inside of them. A steady stream of them come to speak with him, sharing pieces of their days or expressing their thanks. Viktor waves the latter away as often as he can. He didn’t do all this for thanks, especially not from people hextech has ignored for so long.

I don’t deserve all this, he thinks, after a girl whose legs were shattered by a collapsing mine and restored by his hands had pressed his palm to her cheek and said thank you, thank you, thank you.

You do, Sky says to him in the metaphysical space they both inhabit. Vitkor looks inward, to her face warm with compassion and affection. You’ve helped them all so much. You deserve all of this and more. 

I don’t, he thinks again, to himself this time. You are dead because of me, and your killer is the only thing keeping me alive. You are dead and trapped here with me because I wanted to live. 

Sky seems to hear all this anyways, or can maybe see it on his face, because she gives him a sympathetic, slightly pained smile. 

I’m sorry you can’t eat anymore, she says, changing the subject. And that I can’t eat. That steak looks really good.

It does, Viktor agrees. 

He can smell it from here, the savory swirl of cooked meat and spices. It nearly makes his mouth water, though he doesn’t need to—and physically can’t—eat anymore. This body, fueled by the endless energy of the arcane, has no use for food. 

It would probably make him sad, if he thought about it for too long. He’s never had an overly large appetite, but he thinks fleetingly of all the times a meal has brought him joy. His mother’s goulash. His aunt’s overly-spiced honey cake on his thirteenth birthday. Jayce’s sweet bread, the candy shell crunching in his mouth. Hot chocolate, thick and creamy, warming him from the inside out. Jayce’s big, steady hands slicing carrots with careful efficiency in Viktor’s kitchen. Those big, steady hands on his waist. Jayce peeling a dozen potatoes in the middle of the night to make Viktor hotcakes even in the midst of their slow and steady falling out. 

That dull ache inside of him clenches, tightens in a brief spike of nostalgia. An ancient, deep-rooted loneliness. He is surrounded by everyone he’s helped, Sky a constant presence within him, and he still feels very far away from them. As alone as he’s ever been. 

He looks at his comune, at all he has built—the swirling buildings and the thriving crops, the gaps of sunlight fighting their way through the fissures’ toxic air—and is filled with a longing so sudden and overwhelming that it startles him. 

He misses Jayce more than anything. More than sleeping, more than eating, more than feeling. He misses Jayce so badly it aches. So badly it makes him want to run all the way back up to their lab just to hear his voice again, to feel those big hands on him, that easy affection. 

He never wanted to do this alone. When he used to picture finally helping the undercity in a meaningful way, Jayce was always there beside him. 

Viktor sits with that longing for a moment. Feels it. Breathes deeply, and then lets it pass through him and sink into the ground below. 

He forces himself to remember how it felt to wake up, the shock and betrayal of learning what Jayce had done to him despite his promise. Reminds himself why he’s here. Reminds himself why he left. 

He misses Jayce deeply, but he can’t regret leaving. Not when he already regrets staying in Piltover for so long. Not with everything he’s trying to build here. 

He puts Jayce from his mind and instead looks out at his people, who are feasting and smiling and talking happily amongst themselves. 

If he sinks far enough into himself and out into them, he imagines he can almost taste their feasting on his own tongue. If he truly wanted to, he could slip fully into one of them, or all of them, and revisit how it felt to be wholly human. 

But he does not. He doesn’t like to inhabit them needlessly. If he were to voice his desire to eat, he knows they would all clamor to let him in, so he keeps it to himself. 

He tilts his head back to look up at the sky. It’s bright despite how far they are below ground—Viktor’s doing, the hexcore’s doing—with none of the neon glow of the Lanes. Like the stolen sunlight streaming down over the river on the Entresol. 

He wonders if he should dim the sky a little bit, to reflect the state of the world above. If he should turn the tree leaves green, yellow the grass. It doesn’t quite feel like autumn down here. 

There's no need for seasons here, Sky says in the endless stars they both share. Not too cold, not too hot. This place is perfect as it is. Why change it if they’re happy?  

Yes, Viktor agrees, because she’s right. It would be silly to fix what isn’t broken—and a waste of his magic, besides. 

Instead, he listens to the happy chatter of his people, feels the echoing clamor of their cheer, and is satisfied with what good he’s finally done. 

Faintly, in the very back of his mind, he wonders what sort of sky Jayce is seeing right now.