Archive of Our Own ^beta

art for this fic by the wonderful Heather✨

Jayce says, “I think we need to do some field research.”

Viktor pushes his lab goggles up into his hair and looks over to where Jayce is sitting at his own desk in their lab. It is late afternoon, and Jayce has been unusually quiet since the morning. 

He’d put down Viktor’s coffee at his desk, as he always does, and he’d asked about Viktor’s evening, as he always does. Viktor had made his usual noncommittal sound, and asked how Jayce’s dinner had gone with Miss Kiramman the night before. 

Jayce had said, “Good.” 

Then Jayce hadn’t said anything, for hours. 

Jayce spins his chair, now, to face Viktor directly, and continues, “For the Hexclaw. I was thinking it might be good to go do some behavioral studies of creatures who have claws. See how they use them.”

Viktor blinks. He says, “There are more accessible ways to study crustaceans than field research, Jayce.”

“Yeah, but we can only learn so much about their behavior in a lab,” Jayce says. “They could act entirely differently in a natural environment.”

Jayce runs his hand up through his hair. Viktor notices that Jayce’s leg is bouncing. 

Jayce clears his throat. He goes to say something, and then seems to stop himself. 

Viktor watches him. Then, gently, he says, “Jayce, you’re acting strange. Are you—”

“I think we should go to the beach together,” Jayce says, in a rushed sentence. 

Then Jayce adds, “To study.”

And then, after another beat, Jayce concludes, “Crustaceans.”

Viktor stares. Then clarifies, bewildered, “For the Hexclaw?”

“Yeah,” Jayce says, gripping the back of his neck. Viktor notes that Jayce is not far off from the color of a steamed crustacean himself, at the moment. “For the Hexclaw.”

Viktor considers, for a long moment.

It is… a deeply irrational suggestion. 

The feature of the Hexclaw that is most potentially useful is not the claw itself. It is the embedded laser which sits at the claw’s center. Viktor is sitting in front of a partially constructed prototype of the directional remote controller glove now. He stares down at it as he contemplates the current situation further.

Jayce is acting strange, as Viktor had stated. 

Jayce has also given what context he seems willing to provide in the way of an explanation, and he is now too busy staring at his feet to provide more context unprompted. Viktor could attempt to prompt him. He could, in fact, ask a number of his many follow-up questions. Viktor would, if not for the fact that Jayce is acting strange, and also seems to be suddenly rather incredibly uncomfortable.

So it is up to Viktor to read between the lines, now, and determine why Jayce has asked him to do something… Not useless, exactly. Nothing Jayce suggests could ever be useless. However, Jayce has suggested that they go to the beach in order to accomplish something patently unnecessary, and so the utility of Jayce’s proposal must be something that lies beneath the suggestion on its face. 

Viktor knows that Jayce does think they should study crustaceans, at least a little. Jayce lies only through omission when he can help it, because Jayce is a tremendously bad liar. It is a trait that Viktor had discovered very early in their partnership; almost at the same moment as its inception, in fact. The instant they had been captured by Mel Medarda whilst breaking into Heimerdinger’s office, Jayce had said, truthfully, “Councilor, what a surprise to see you!” and then launched into an earnest plea for a chance to prove themselves in which he declared Viktor was his new partner.

At the same time, Viktor had been trying to sell a lie structured around a partial truth; he may have only known Jayce Talis for a short time, but Mel Medarda would undoubtedly understand there was a considerable degree of veracity resting within idea that Viktor might lose all sense of direction in his rush to get this man into his bedroom. 

She would never have bought it, of course.

She might have pretended to, though, if Jayce hadn’t… been Jayce. 

Viktor wishes that he found his partner’s ineptitude with deception less charming, because it is almost a problem for their enterprise. However, despite some close calls, it has not yet tipped into an actual problem. In years. Viktor has been forced to concede that the fact of the matter is that Jayce is charming enough that he doesn’t seem to need deception at all, really. Jayce exudes a wide aura of earnestness and passion. Viktor takes some solace in knowing that it affects everyone who steps into its radius, so Viktor himself is not weak-willed, exactly. He’s just very much not immune to Jayce Talis’ far-reaching charm. 

So, Viktor knows that Jayce is not lying. Viktor also knows there’s something which Jayce is not lying about because Jayce is not actually saying it. There must be an underlying reason behind this suggestion, excused by the reason which has been provided, because field research to study crustaceans for the Hexclaw is not something that makes enough sense on its own.

Viktor isn’t certain what that underlying reason is, but it does not take him long to land on a theory.

 
Viktor’s theory is this: Jayce is tired. 

Jayce has good reason to be. Together they’ve been working almost non-stop on the suite of devices to unveil alongside the newly stabilized hex crystals. At the same time, they’ve been refining and validating the stability of the hex crystals themselves. They’ve been working around the clock for months on these efforts, now that the Hexgates are in full-scale operation and they are finally at liberty to direct their attention to their other projects. These projects are ones that can make a difference, in the Undercity as well as above it.

Before that, they had spent years on the Hexgates. Refining, testing, building, prototyping, collecting grants, scaling, rescaling, reworking concepts, finding rune combinations. In a five year period they had gone from a proof of concept that had left them suspended mid-air in Heimerdinger’s office to a full-scale operational instant world-wide teleportation system installed in the heights of Piltover. It seems almost as if they’ve been in non-stop movement ever since their feet touched back on the ground, when Viktor took Jayce’s proffered arm in lieu of the cane he had used to barricade the door. 

Of course Jayce is tired. 

In the five years of their partnership, Viktor has seen Jayce worn down. Physically, mentally, socially. He’s seen Jayce absolutely overworked, he’s observed the shadows of deep dark circles beneath Jayce’s eyes, he’s heard the weariness of sleep deprivation curling around Jayce’s words as his ideas veered into the absurd, he’s noted the stiffness in Jayce’s shoulders that always seems to linger after a gala or news event. 

However, Jayce has always reached deep. Somehow, inexplicably, always, Jayce has been able to draw up another draft from a well of passion that had seemed, by all of Viktor’s estimations, literally endless.

Together they are making magic a reality. They are putting it in the hands of people whose lives it may improve. Jayce knows this, but more importantly, he believes in it, and he’d made Viktor believe in it too. 

Viktor also knows—theoretically, practically, and intimately—that even the magic of the hex crystals is depleted over time, with use. 

This is the first Jayce has ever expressed needing a break from the work they do together.

If Jayce is tired, it is Viktor’s role as a partner to make every accommodation necessary for Jayce to rest so that he can return to their projects recharged. For the sake of their partnership, and for the sake of their work. 

There is another layer, as well. Jayce is not just Viktor’s partner. He’s Viktor’s friend. As Jayce’s friend, it also falls upon Viktor to encourage rest for the sake of Jayce. 

There is something else surprising, beyond the sudden understanding that Jayce Talis is a man who does, on occasion, need to fuck off to the beach for a while. 

Viktor is both surprised and genuinely moved that it seems like Jayce, in his need for rest and respite, has not only informed Viktor, but extended an offer to include him in it as well. 

Viktor now needs to consider whether or not this is an offer he is meant to accept. 

Jayce would not have extended it as a joint venture if he did not mean it. But that does not mean Jayce has fully considered the implications of what he’s asking. 

At least, that’s what Viktor thinks, until Jayce starts talking once more.

“The Kirammans have a seaside cottage, and Caitlyn was mentioning—” he says. 

Then Jayce stops.

Then he says, “Cait had the idea that—” 

He clears his throat.

Viktor realizes that Jayce is not acting strange.

Jayce is acting very strange. 

Words usually fall out of the man, often in a steady stream connected by a loose thread of unnecessary conjunctions. When he really becomes animated, it’s like his words start overflowing, bursting out directly from that deep well of passion. 

Jayce does not, as a general rule, stammer. 

Accordingly, Viktor realizes Jayce is not just tired.

Jayce must be exhausted. 

Jayce inhales, exhales, and then says, “I asked Cait if she thought you and I could use it, for a while, and she said her parents would be thrilled to have us stay there.” 

Viktor parses through this, and realizes that Jayce has not included him as a considerate afterthought to his agenda.

Jayce has structured this such that Viktor is an integral component.

Perhaps that is something Viktor can attribute to the reason that Jayce had provided. If Jayce is depending on the field research to study crustaceans for the Hexclaw excuse in order to justify rest to himself—which would be quite like him, Viktor thinks—then of course Jayce is going to ask his lab partner to accompany him. 

All of which Viktor considers, catalogs and compiles into a thought in an instant, because Jayce needing him as a means of validating his excuse for rest is a reasonable enough idea that Viktor can use it to dispute and disparage the part of his mind that has kicked his heartbeat into a racing rhythm because it has landed on another thought, a hopeful one, which Viktor must not think.

That thought is this: Jayce wants us to spend time together. Alone.

It must be cut off, by whatever means necessary, because that thought is not reasonable.

Or, at least, that thought is not based on reason. It’s based on something else, which Viktor needs to control, because he’s made it five years already and he’s not about to ruin their lives by losing the fight to hide how deeply in love he is with Jayce Talis in this specific moment. 

So, things stand as follows: Jayce is exhausted. Viktor is Jayce’s partner. Viktor is Jayce’s friend. Jayce has built Viktor’s presence into his plan to get the rest he needs: a trip to a seaside cottage to study crustaceans for the Hexclaw. 

Viktor says, “Good idea. When will we go?” 

Once the plans have been made, Viktor decides the most effective way of ensuring that their excursion to the beach to “study crustaceans for the Hexclaw” will serve its true purpose is if Viktor preempts their two-week trip by learning everything that there is to know about crustaceans.

Hopefully once Viktor has delved through the existing literature, there will be relatively little remaining for them to learn at the beach, which means Jayce will be forced to abandon the facade of research and focus on actually relaxing.  

Which means that Viktor needs to ask Sky for some help in acquiring research materials around a subject that is somewhat beyond their professional purview with Hextech, so when she comes into the lab while Jayce is down at the forge, Viktor turns to her and says, “Sky, I was hoping I could confer with you about a personal matter.”

Sky drops her notebook, and papers flutter to the floor. 

Viktor begins to stoop to help her pick them up, but she bats him away, and she says, “I’ve got it. I’m sorry. You surprised me, that's all.” Once she has collected her notes, she stands, and adjusts her glasses. She says, in a sort of squeak, “A personal matter?” 

Viktor blinks, and he notices the flush on her cheeks. And she had just fumbled a notebook. So he asks, concerned, “Are you well, Miss Young? If you are ill I will encourage you to take time to recover. Do not overexert yourself here. In the pursuit of progress, it is ultimately a setback.”

He is a hypocrite to say so. He could not count the number of times he and Jayce both have neglected that advice, but Viktor will not see someone under his employ follow his own poor example. 

Sky clears her throat, and she says, “No, I’m well, Viktor. What personal matter?” 

“I need to gather all the Academy’s available research on crustaceans.” 

Sky blinks. She nods, slightly, and she says, “Okay. Crustaceans. On it.” 

She turns and begins to step out of the room. 

Then she turns back. 

She says, “Why?” 

Viktor stares down at his desk. Sighs. 

“Jayce,” he says. 

Sky stands in the doorway. It takes her a minute, and a deep breath, but she says, eventually, “Viktor, I don’t follow. What does Jayce have to do with crustaceans?” Then, in a smaller, confused voice, “How is this… how is this a personal matter?”  

Viktor brings his fingers up to rub at his temples. He says, “He and I will be going to the beach in two weeks. To conduct field research for the Hexclaw.” 

“... and that is a personal matter,” Sky says, slowly. Some sort of sadness settles across her features.

Viktor realizes his mistake immediately. “Miss Young, your contributions to Hextech's development have been invaluable. We would not have made it to this point without you. It was not my intent to imply that the Hexclaw’s development is beyond your purview. It is a personal matter because it is an excuse,” he says, to clarify. 

For some reason, she looks more sad for his explanation. 

She says, “I had always wondered if you and Jayce were… romantically involved.”

Viktor blinks, and he laughs. Sky looks taken aback. He holds out a hand, attempting to convey that he needs a moment. Because while he is laughing, he is also hurting, somewhat. 

When he recovers, he clears his throat. He says, “Miss Young, Jayce Talis will want to be romantically involved with me when Piltover slides into the sump.” 

Sky stares at him, with wide brown eyes. At a point, she squints. Then sighs. She says, “One moment, Viktor. I am going to pull up a stool.”

She does, and the sound it makes as she scoots it across the floor is rather painful, echoing in the loud, otherwise quiet laboratory. Viktor eyes her, warily, as she sits in front of him.

“I am a decent scientist,” she says.

“Do not undersell yourself. You are an excellent scientist,” Viktor corrects, immediately. 

She smiles, just a little, and she says, “Very well. I am an excellent scientist. Allow me to reiterate to you the data you have just provided me: You would like to to discuss a personal matter with me. You and Jayce Talis are going to a beach to study the Hexclaw. The Hexclaw is an excuse.” 

“Yes.” 

“I would like you to explain to me what I should infer from those data points, beyond an understanding that you and Jayce are romantically involved. Because, Viktor? It sounds incredibly romantic.” 

Viktor shrugs. “It is not.” 

Sky hesitates. She says, very gently, “You do not sound happy about that.”

Viktor clenches his jaw. 

She looks away, fiddles with the uneven pages of her notebook. Says, “I wouldn’t ask, as your assistant. And I shouldn’t ask, even, because that is what I am. But I am also someone who has come to… Care for you. So I am going to ask, because I want to know if I have a chance.” She inhales. Exhales. Steadying. Viktor braces himself, but still isn't ready for her soft, “Are you unhappy about that?” 

Viktor stares at her. He asks, instead of answering, “You want to know if you ‘have a chance’ at what?” 

Her expression combines exasperation with something pointed. Viktor parses through it, slowly, until an understanding dawns on him. 

“Oh,” he says. Then, looking at his own hands, trying to hold them steady, “A chance with Jayce? You likely do. More so than myself, at least.” 

Sky stares at him. The lab is quiet except for her inhale, which she breathes deep before she says, “You’re fucking kidding me, right?”

Viktor is a very intelligent man, but he does, in this specific moment, put enough together to realize that he should potentially narrow the scope of that assertion. A very intelligent man when it comes to science, perhaps. Not in other matters. Matters he now needs to correct.

“Miss Young, I am not attracted to women. Allow me to apologize. I assumed you knew.” 

She inhales. Nods. She adjusts her glasses, sets her shoulders. “I wondered. I didn’t know. Thank you. I’ll go pull up everything I can on crustaceans, Viktor.”

Before she steps out the door, she leans back into the lab. She says, “As your friend, then? You may want to reflect on what else you might be missing.” 

Viktor is one week into his project, and one week away from the beach, when he realizes that he has forgotten something important about scientific research and the pursuit of knowledge in general.

The more one learns, the more one discovers the vastness of their ignorance. 

Viktor had wanted to learn about crustaceans, in order to reduce what they had left to learn while on a trip to study them.

Viktor has become somewhat of an expert on crustaceans. 

Viktor has so many questions about crustaceans. 

“Are you familiar with carcinization?” Viktor demands, stepping into Heimerdinger’s office. 

The yordle looks up from his desk, blinks, and says, “Viktor! I can’t say I am. Come in, lad! May I make you some tea?” 

“There are several convergent paths of evolution which have all led to the same shape,” Viktor says, striding to the chair across from the Professor’s desk, collapsing into it, propping his crutch against it, and running his hands over his face. 

Heimerdinger looks concerned. He sets a pen down and steeples his hands over his notes. 

“Over and over and over again,” Viktor says, pinching his nose, “nature finds a way to create a creature shaped like a crab.” He scoffs. “Like the conditions of life are such that a crab is some sort of…” Viktor waves his hand, “...final form of evolution.” 

Heimerdinger stares, with wide bright blue eyes. “I was unfamiliar with that particular concept,” he says, gently. “It seems to be causing you some distress?” 

Viktor groans and tilts his head back and says, quietly, “Evolution, a tool of nature that carves a path to perfection. Its destination?” Viktor hunches over, props his elbows onto his knees, and drops his head back into his hands. “Apparently, a fucking crab.” 

When Viktor collects himself somewhat, he realizes he’s just said fuck in the Professor’s presence, which is something Viktor has, quite carefully, never done before. 

He runs his hands over his face again, up into his hair. He sits up straight, before he risks another glance at his old mentor. 

Heimerdinger looks very concerned. 

“Viktor, my boy,” he says. “When was the last time you had a vacation?” 

“I have some paperwork for you to sign off on before you go, Viktor,” Sky says, sliding a form onto his desk, on top of the research notes he is in the midst of compiling on crustaceans. He only has one more day until they are due to head to the beach. He needs to winnow down his sources, or buy a bigger suitcase for the books.

Sky had learned long ago that her patience will not be rewarded if she waits until Viktor directs his focus to her. Not while he is in the middle of a project.

Viktor had once held the role of assistant, along with the keys to Heimerdinger’s office. He knows it is a role which could, theoretically, grant Miss Yong the tools necessary to undo him, but the risk is worth the convenience. Also, he trusts Sky’s judgment. In the event she ever decides to interfere with something he is doing, it is likely that he is the one who is doing something without proper reflection. 

So Viktor had learned long ago to sign anything she sets in front of him without asking. 

However, at the present moment, Viktor is frustrated enough with his ongoing project that he actually reads the paper she has put in front of him. 

“Oh, thank you, Miss Young. This is a good idea,” he says, and then he adds his signature. It holds less weight than Jayce’s, not backed by a House or a signet, but it is serviceable for authorizing Sky to grant workers entry into the lab for some maintenance while he and Jayce are away.

Sky smiles. “Thank you. How goes the crab thing?”

Viktor rubs his temples. “Poorly. Given my attention has been devoted to Hextech, it has been some time since the subject of my studies was organic. I have, regrettably, neglected keeping up to date on some of the newer publications in the biological branches.”

“Oh?”

He hums. “The terminology has shifted. It is frustrating.” 

“I might be able to give you a hand, if you’d like? When you’re back?” Sky says, cautiously. Viktor glances up at her. She adjusts her glasses. Inhales. Exhales. 

She says, “I’ve a personal project I’ve been working on. It’s given me some recent experience in bio-engineering, but it might not be the most relevant? My focus has mostly been botanicals.”

Viktor stares. 

She continues, “It’s not… I haven’t let it impact my work here, in the lab, sorry, it’s just—”

Viktor realizes he’s making an expression, one which she has misinterpreted. “Miss Young, I do not disapprove. I am only surprised. How long has this been going on?”

“... a while.” 

Viktor nods. “I would be very interested in hearing more. Is there anything I can do to help? To facilitate your project?”

Sky looks shocked. “You don’t even know anything about it, yet.”

Viktor shrugs. “I know you. As we have established, you are an excellent scientist.” 

Sky looks, suddenly, like she might cry. Viktor almost panics, but she cuts him off by smiling, wide and bright and watery. Genuine.

Viktor exhales his relief, then says, “To be clear, I am offering on behalf of myself and Jayce. At this point, our lab has excess resources. If you are pursuing something you believe would be valuable, we might be able to put some of those resources at your disposal. I would not need to know anything more to offer this, but I would of course like to know more. Do you have anything written up?”

“I do,” Sky says, blinking rapidly. She clears her throat. “I’ll put some notes together, I guess? But you’re about to go to the beach. It can wait until you get back.” 

Viktor glowers down at his notes on crustaceans. He sighs and rubs his eyes. “Perhaps you could bring them tomorrow? I may find myself in need of fresh reading materials.”

Sky smiles, still a bit watery, and nods. Before she leaves, she turns back, and she clears her throat. She asks, “Did you talk to Jayce?”

“About what?” Viktor asks. 

Sky laughs a little, under her breath. She says, gently, “I gave you some friendly advice. Do you remember it?” 

He does.

The evening before he and Jayce are set to leave for the beach, Viktor follows Sky’s advice. He decides to reflect on what he’s missing. 

In order to do so, he goes to his usual place to reflect, above the cave networks where he met Rio. Looking down onto the river where he first met Sky. Sitting where he had met Heimerdinger, in what the Professor has occasionally referred to as Viktor’s steel oasis.

The Pump House. The geography of the city of Piltover, its elevation, its nature as an isthmus between Guardian’s Sea Conqueror’s Sea, means that this loud, steady heartbeat of the Undercity, working industriously, tirelessly behind him, is constantly protecting what was once Viktor’s home from becoming an underwater city, home only to leviathans.

Piltover cannot slide into the sump. It is too high up.

The Undercity can. One day it will, if The Pump House heartbeat stops, if industry and mechanistry fail. If Progress moves too far ahead and Piltover forgets its own vital organs, left in the saltwater and river toxins to rust.  

It wasn’t always like this. And Viktor is reflecting on what he’s missing. 

But he’s also reflecting on crabs.

So Viktor remembers, while he sits in The Pump House, an old cannery on the water; not far from where he is. He remembers, as a child, looking up at a sign.

A crab. With two sets of claws.

Marketing only, perhaps, but now Viktor wonders if it was potentially a mutation. One that might be of interest, seeing as how he and Jayce are stretching their research from laser prosthetics to marine life because Jayce is too prideful to admit he needs to lie down in the sun for a time. 

Not all data that is valuable is held in the libraries of Piltover’s Academy. So Viktor goes to the old cannery on the water. 

It is late but not quite night, by the time he arrives at the cannery. It is not at all as he remembers it. 

In part because it had, at some point in the distant past, exploded. 

The sign is improbably upright, and displays, just as he remembers, a crab with four claws. 

Viktor stares at the husk of a building, eyeing the structure warily. It seems like it has been this way for some time. Long enough, certainly, that he can trust, to a reasonable degree, that whatever portion of the building has not collapsed already is not exactly at risk of doing so now. 

Something nudges at his memory, looking at it. Something about Jayce. 

However, Jayce unhelpfully crossing his mind is not exactly unusual, so Viktor dismisses the thought without dwelling overmuch as he considers how he will approach entering this building. 

Viktor ducks under a beam and finds himself in a place that may once have been relevant to crustaceans. Long ago, by the looks of it. 

The cannery had clearly been repurposed, at a point. Before it exploded. After it had been repurposed, likely around when it had exploded, there had been a fire. There is a mural on the wall, the same four-clawed crab, barely visible beneath soot and scorch marks. Viktor finds himself placing his crutch and his shoes carefully to find his footing atop a floor filled with shattered glass. Each crunch brings him closer to… something. 

There is some matter on the walls, on the floor. Vaguely organic looking, like a creeping purple mold. 

Viktor draws a light from his pocket, the same one he’s carried since he started at the Academy. 

He clicks it on, and regarding the bombed-out space in the blue glow, something stirs again; an old but well-worn memory, a night Viktor turns over in his mind like a fond token. Viktor remembers, clearly, the night he and Jayce had broken into Heimerdinger’s office, and Jayce had held this same light over the locks when they’d been caught by Mel Medarda. He remembers the windows of the office exploding outwards as the crystal stabilized.

Viktor turns and looks upwards, at the mostly collapsed second story of the cannery. At the hole blown through one of the walls. He lifts his light high, and blinks in shock when he finds what he’s looking for. 

A small glint. Glitter-like. Intimately familiar and reflected back to him, as he stands in the wreckage. 

There’s Hexstone fragments embedded in the rubble of this cannery. 

Viktor clicks the light off. He takes a deep breath, and he lets it out slowly. 

They had never determined what happened to the crystals stolen from Jayce Talis’ exploded apartment. That’s the memory that clicks into place here. A memory of walking into an exploded building, eyeing chalkboards and the man who would become Viktor’s partner. It seems hard to imagine now, but for a brief moment, Jayce had been nothing more to Viktor than a mystery.

Much like then, Viktor stares around the darkened room. The looming, scorched mural of a four-clawed crab, now an ominous shadow in the sudden absence of light.

This time, however, when Viktor mutters, “What happened here?” Jayce Talis is not with him to say, Science, I guess. 

Viktor considers it anyway. He hums and steps through the glass on the ground, looking closer. The glass is shattered but the shapes indicate they must once have been vials, beakers, tubes. He draws closer to the purple substance on the walls. 

It leads him to a stairwell, which leads down. Viktor holds his light aloft, clicks it on again, and steps lower. Until he can’t. His light falls on rippling water filling the stairwell, covering the remainder of the descent. This part of the cannery had been built beneath the waterline, and it hadn’t stayed that way after the explosion. It had flooded.

Viktor resolves to find a way up. If he can get a closer look at the Hexstone fragments, maybe then he can work out… something.

He finds a staircase that might allow him to accomplish that objective, theoretically. Unfortunately it is in a state that he wouldn’t be able to trust even if he were feeling optimistic. 

It’s in a side room that Viktor looks around curiously. It is small, likely once a foreman’s office in the days this building had been a cannery. It had once contained a desk and a chair, of which there are only remnants. But there’s a metallic safe of some sort, embedded in the wall, that seems to have survived whatever happened here. It has a four digit combination lock, digits zero through nine. 

Viktor stares at it, checks a watch from his pocket, and sighs. There are ten thousand combinations.

Viktor slides open the hidden compartment which Jayce had built into his crutch, and withdraws a mildly corrosive acid. He would prefer not to use it, because preparing it again is a hassle, but it will save him some time here. He adds a powdered chemical which turns it into a moderately corrosive acid, and then he pours it carefully onto the hinges of the safe door and waits. 

The safe, he learns, in a matter of minutes, has sparse contents. Only two books. He flips one open, a leatherbound journal of some sort, and discovers straight away that it’s encoded. There is another book beneath it that looks similar. 

Viktor thumbs through the first, idly, and finds nothing of note. But he does scoop both up to deposit into his bag for further investigation. He also decides, quite suddenly, that he will not be sharing what he learned here with Jayce. 

Not until they are back from the beach. 

Viktor had been hoping for information on crustaceans. Something to help Jayce justify his excuse to rest. 

Whatever Viktor has discovered here involves the Hexstones that were stolen from Jayce years ago by children, a mysterious substance, and an explosion. 

Viktor is quite familiar with his own curiosity. 

He is also familiar with Jayce’s curiosity. 

This information is newly discovered, but it is also old. Viktor tells himself, firmly, that sharing it with Jayce can wait. It must wait. The last thing Jayce needs, when he has just come to terms with his need to rest—even that admission barely justified by a bizarre excuse—is the knowledge that his early work on Hextech had destroyed another building. 

A building in the Undercity. One that looked like it had been used for something. 

One that, unlike Jayce’s workshop, had probably not been uninhabited. 

So Viktor takes the books from the safe, and he leaves. 

“That everything?” Jayce asks, once he stashes Viktor’s bag in the back of the carriage which will be taking them out of the city. 

“I believe so,” Viktor says, looking back into his apartment. It is unnecessary for him to. He knows he has not forgotten anything; he had left his apartment almost entirely barren as a result packing his belongings into a bag. His possessions are not exactly numerous, outside of their laboratory. 

Other than the bag, there had been the chest of research materials on crustaceans, which he had decided not to winnow down, and the research notes Sky had brought over this morning. Also, the two books he had retrieved from the cannery.

Jayce had already stacked that chest in the back of the carriage, waving away their driver. His muscles strained, slightly, in the effort. Viktor had allowed himself to observe a precisely normal amount for a person concerned about the contents of a heavy box that their business partner is handling. 

So Viktor locks the door, and turns to Jayce. 

“Toiletries?” Jayce checks. 

“Yes,” Viktor says, rolling his eyes and climbing into the carriage.

“Extra socks?” 

Viktor raises a brow as Jayce climbs up beside him. “For the beach?” 

Jayce shrugs, laughs, and says, “Yeah, okay. Fair.” 

The driver walks around and closes the door behind them, and the engine rumbles to life.  

“I saw you packed some sort of stringed instrument?” Viktor observes, once Jayce settles in opposite him. “I did not know you played.”

Jayce raises a brow, this time. He says, “You must have seen it in my apartment at some point.” 

“I assumed it was for decoration,” Viktor admits, letting his smile tilt.

“It pretty much is,” Jayce says, grinning back. He says, proudly, “I’m terrible with it,” and then he shrugs. “Thought I might get some practice in, maybe. Brace yourself.” 

“Wonderful,” Viktor says dryly. 

Jayce nods, winks, and offers, “It’s also a defensive strategy. If any sea monsters come for us I can probably chase them back into the water with my awful playing.”

“We are going to the beach to study the sea monsters, Jayce,” Viktor reminds him. “Please refrain from frightening them off.”

Something complicated flickers across Jayce’s expression. 

“What?” Viktor asks, pointedly.

“Nothing, sorry,” Jayce says. He shifts, clears his throat, says, “I brought some notes, ideas on some methodologies we can try, but I’m not exactly an ecologist. Did you have any time to think it over? Any ideas?”

Viktor sighs, considers the trunk in the back, rubs his eyes, and says, “Many.”

Jayce chuckles, low and light. He lifts his hand, settles it on Viktor’s shoulder, and says, “Good thing you’re coming with me, then.” 

Viktor hums and pats the hand on his shoulder in a precisely friendly fashion, in spite of how it is warm and broad and he wants nothing more than to lean into it. Jayce pulls it away, clears his throat, and meets Viktor’s eyes intently. His gaze is hazel, shadowed by dark lashes, intense and focused. Like he can see not just through Viktor, but into him. 

Jayce says, “Thanks for agreeing to this, Vik.” 

“Of course.” Viktor keeps his breathing steady, his flush managed. It is not quite second nature, but he does have years of practice. He glances out the window again, and confesses, “This is my first time leaving Piltover.” 

Jayce’s mouth falls open. 

The motor carriage passes through a gate bearing the Kiramman crest and veers down a winding path. Viktor looks out the window and waits for the ocean to roll back into view. The road they had travelled down the past few hours had been one which cut inland through a forest of tall trees. Viktor had been looking out the window regularly, in between outlining his ideas about how to conduct their research, but the shoreline they’d followed from Piltover’s docks had only occasionally been visible through dense ferns and foliage. 

Now, the carriage follows a gentle slope down an otherwise jagged rockface as they move out of the treeline towards the water. The shaded environment gives way to the sun. Viktor lets his eyes sweep over and adjust to the light glinting off the endless expanse of ocean, shining down on the white sand that stretches along where the edge of water meets the rockface. 

There are sandstone formations on either side of the small stretch of beach. On one side, Viktor spots a small darkened cave worn into the rock, the current high tide crashing through it in a steady sound. He also spots the cottage on the sand, tucked against the short rocky cliff face that hems in this secluded cove.

A teal roof atop a sandstone cottage cuts a curved shape against the cliffside. Window shutters and a stark red umbrella sit in the sand before a stairway which leads up to a terrace. A balcony on the second floor, which must allow its inhabitants to look out over the ocean. 

It is idyllic. It reminds Viktor of one of the many landscape paintings hung in the Kiramman’s estate, which always seem to draw his attention in the rare instances he has been welcomed into the home of one of Hextech’s primary patrons. Often he is only subject to their welcome during a social event Jayce insists Viktor must attend. Jayce is, fortunately, sparing with those declarations. 

Jayce inhales a deep breath before he settles further into the seat of the motor carriage with a contented sigh. 

Viktor hums in agreement. 

The carriage draws out onto the sand, and Jayce and the driver make short work of bringing their belongings up a short flight of stairs to pile up in front of the door. After Jayce takes a key and works it into the lock to swing the door open, he tips their driver and sends her on her way back to Pilover.

Viktor lifts his bag, steps over the threshold, and takes a look around the room.

It is furnished beautifully, but unlike the Kiramman estate, it is not particularly lavish. It is also very compact. The furnishings look comfortable, and all match in a verdant tone. The room they step into has a couch and armchairs sitting before a table, accentuated by house plants that indicate there is someone who usually stops in to look over the property when it is not in use by a Kiramman or the guest of one. 

“Go ahead and drop your bag in the bedroom, yeah?” Jayce says, nodding to a door to the left as he hefts the chest of research materials and brings it inside to sit beside the coffee table. “Then we can maybe figure out dinner. Cait said they’d have the kitchen fully stocked up for us.”

Viktor hums, nods, says, “I hope they passed on to whoever had the task that you do not eat meat.”

“You do, though,” Jayce shrugs, making his way to the archway that must lead to the kitchen, through which Viktor can only see a window and a small two-person dining table. “And this close to the ocean it should be mostly seafood, if anything. So we should be good either way.” 

“Have you been here before?” Viktor asks, curiously, as he bends to lift his bag. “I don’t recall you mentioning it before a few weeks ago.”

“Once. Only for an afternoon, though,” Jayce says, pausing and turning to offer him a grin. “Cait comes out here sometimes when her parents are pissing her off and she doesn’t want to talk to anybody. She invited me out a few years ago so she had someone to complain to.”

Viktor smiles a bit, because apparently Caitlyn doesn't include Jayce in her definition of anybody. It is something Viktor and the Kiramman heir have in common. Viktor doesn’t exactly spend a large amount of time with Caitlyn, but her visits to the lab are regular enough and always leave Jayce in such good spirits that Viktor can’t help but be excited to see her. She is also a strange bastion in those specific social events thrown by her parents which Viktor is obligated to attend, as she seems to dislike being in the midst of idle chatter and Piltoven finery almost as much as he does. 

Viktor goes to the door Jayce had indicated, opens it, and stops short. 

This cottage has, from what Viktor had been able to ascertain, three rooms on the ground level and a loft that overlooks the ocean. The last of which he assumes houses painting supplies, because Jayce had explained on the carriage ride that this cottage had been a gift from Cassandra to Tobias when he’d taken up the hobby. The kitchen and dining room, he had seen from the living room.

Viktor is fairly certain that this cottage has only one bedroom. 

He’s not sure how long he stands at the threshold of it. He distantly registers the sound of Jayce rummaging through an icebox in the kitchen, then moving more of their things inside behind him. Eventually Jayce must notice that Viktor has frozen in place, because he says, “Uh. Everything okay?”

Everything is not okay. 

There is only one bed. 

Which is very much a problem, because Viktor would like to survive the week. 

He inhales, turns, and looks at Jayce standing in the living room, all their belongings now stacked inside. 

Because he is expending considerable effort, Viktor’s voice does not waver, when he lifts a brow and asks, “Are we sharing?” 

Jayce’s expression shifts, eyes wide, and he says, quickly, “No! Shit, I should have—Sorry, no.” He grips his forehead with one hand, uses the other to jerk his thumb towards the furniture near him, “That’s a pull-out couch. I just figured you’d want the real deal.” 

“That’s thoughtful, Jayce,” Viktor says, reflexively, because Jayce’s eyebrows have drawn together to form a worried expression, and Viktor’s entire being orients itself such that the soft declaration can force itself out of the jumbled pile of his thoughts. He did not mean to make Jayce uncomfortable, and Viktor cannot allow that discomfort to continue. He follows it, more intentionally, with an earnest, “Thank you.” 

It works. Jayce’s brows smooth out. 

He says, “Yeah, of course. I’m glad you—yeah.” 

He huffs a small laugh, and smiles like the sun. Viktor feels warm and worried about burning, in roughly equal measures. 

Jayce runs his hand up through his hair, and he says, almost bashfully, “I just want you to be comfortable, Viktor.” 

The icebox and pantry had contained ingredients for a week of meals. Mostly seafood, as Jayce had hypothesized, and which worked with both of their diets. There had also been a container with a pre-prepared vegetable noodle dish, cold but spicy. Jayce had decided they should eat that on their first night in, so that they had more time to think over what to make for dinner the following nights. 

They’d brought the containers outside, settled them onto the table that overlooked the water as the sun began dipping into the horizon, followed by an entourage of vibrant colours cast over the distant clouds rising from the surf. 

They’d eaten quietly, both staring out at the water. 

Viktor is more than accustomed to the companionable silence that they settle into. It is common in the lab where, often, they both work independently on different parts of their joint dream. Viktor loves that silence, almost as much as he loves its opposite; the moments when he and Jayce are tripping over one another’s words in their rush to lay out ideas where they can both see them, pausing to laugh or argue or build on one another's theories. 

Talking with Jayce Talis is one of Viktor’s favorite things.

Sitting quietly next to him is somehow its equal. 

“I’m going in,” Jayce declares, suddenly, and when Viktor looks over, his partner is already undoing his tie, and the buttons on his vest. 

Viktor looks quickly back out to the water, to the sun in the midst of its setting, and he predicts, “You will freeze.” 

“Probably,” Jayce grins, as he whips his shirt over his head, chucks it in the direction of the door. “You wanna come?” 

Viktor hums. “I will wait to brave the sand until the morning,” he says. He taps his brace, and he reminds Jayce, “It is rather treacherous for me.” 

“Oh! I totally forgot, hang on.” Jayce, now shirtless, dives back into the cottage. 

Viktor is not sure what he is meant to hang onto exactly, but begs Janna for help hanging onto his sanity. Normally, Viktor is able to avoid being confronted with Jayce’s statuesque musculature, so long as Viktor avoids going to the Talis forges while Jayce is in the middle of a project. He realizes he will have no such luck here. 

“Here,” Jayce says, when he returns, something held in his hand. “Can I see your crutch?”

Viktor hands it over, immediately. It is Viktor’s, but it also bears Talis colors and a maker’s mark, because Jayce had been the one to construct it. At first it had been a simple replacement for the cane that had been broken when Viktor had used it as a barricading instrument on the door to Heimerdinger’s office. But over the years, as Viktor’s condition and body had changed, Jayce had continuously updated Viktor's brace and cane, bending the metal into shape in the heat of the Talis forge, molding it to Viktor’s measurements and specifications.

Viktor might, if he were a different man, feel somewhat chagrined at having what amounts to someone’s signature on something he essentially considers part of himself. But the fact of the matter is that Viktor’s mind has belonged to Jayce Talis since he first read the man’s notes, and Viktor’s heart has belonged to Jayce Talis since the man said “Crank it”, so it’s not too alarming that some of the rest of Viktor’s parts have followed suit. He mostly feels fortunate that Jayce had taken an interest in repairing and improving Viktor’s aids; Viktor has very little interest in them himself. He is of the opinion that he needs to think about the limits of his body quite enough.

“I made a new base,” Jayce explains, unnecessarily. It is already evident, because Viktor is watching him attach it to the crutch. It is rounded, and flat. “It should distribute your weight across a wider surface area. Ideally that will prevent it from sinking into the sand. You don’t have to test it until the morning, if you don’t want.” 

He pushes the crutch back into Viktor’s hands. Viktor stares down, watching their fingers brush as he does. Viktor lets the affection crash through him like usual, he lets it meet the rockface of his resolve not to ruin their partnership, and he stands sentinel against the tide of his own adoration. 

By the time Viktor goes to say, “Thank you, Jayce,” Jayce is gone.

The man has launched himself towards the surf, somehow sprinting in halting steps as he sheds his trousers. Viktor watches, bemused and helpless, as Jayce hits the water with something like a shriek and continues forging ahead, diving directly and immediately into the waves. He emerges a moment later, tossing water from his hair, throwing his arms into the air, letting out a loud whoop. 

Viktor tries not to notice the way the fading sunlight casts the edges of Jayce’s silhouette golden. He tries not to notice how the idyllic view is vastly improved with the addition of the man he loves. 

Viktor worries, suddenly. He worries he might not be able to continue hiding his feelings from Jayce when there is no work to distract his partner’s brilliant mind. Viktor worries that he will reveal too much. He worries that his desire for more will be exposed and ultimately leave him with less. He worries that the rockface of his resolve will crumble here, worn away to fine sand at the beach. Viktor wonders, in a small and hidden part of himself, if Jayce would rise to meet the challenge; if he would craft something to help Viktor navigate the changed landscape. 

Dangerous thoughts. 

But the cool breeze carries Jayce’s laughter back to him on the shoreline, in the setting sun, and Viktor lets the worry wash away. There is risk here, certainly. But it is not new, and it is worth it. 

Jayce seems happy. He will be able to rest.

Viktor remembers him explaining that the Kiramman heir comes to this location when she doesn’t want to be around anybody. Jayce had asked Viktor to come along. 

Jayce is not just anybody to Viktor. Viktor is not just anybody to Jayce.

They are partners. 

They are friends. 

Though Viktor is forced to evaluate the limits of the last, rapidly, when Jayce approaches out of the water, dripping, holding his arms wide like he’s coming in for an embrace. 

“Do not,” Viktor threatens. 

Jayce laughs, but he lets his arms fall, pivots, and collapses into the chair next to Viktor. 

“How was it?” Viktor asks, smiling, looking him over. Jayce is breathless, soaked, but his grin is wide. Not his intentional one designed to charm, just earnest glee and readily apparent euphoria. He looks over at Viktor, eyes hazel and bright. 

“Freezing,” Jayce confirms.

Viktor hums, and stares out at the water for a moment. 

Then he sighs, stands, and says, “I will go get you a towel, you maniac.”

His crutch settles into the sand, and does not sink. 

Jayce says, “Actually,” so Viktor stops, and turns to regard him. 

Jayce is looking down at his hands now, like he’s mulling something over. 

He turns to look at Viktor after a moment, and says, carefully, “I was gonna ask if you wanted to dip your feet? Before we turn in?” 

Viktor considers, and realizes, to his surprise, that he does. 

“Yes,” he says. “Stay near me? In case—” and he indicates his crutch, makes an expression. 

“Of course,” Jayce says, smiling and standing. 

Viktor sits back down to remove his leg brace, then his trousers and the shoe that sits beneath the metallic housing of his brace. Then he straps his brace back on over his boxers, hissing slightly at the chill of the metal pressed against his skin. Though it is not uncomfortable, once it warms. Jayce had designed it to be as comfortable as possible. The absence of footwear makes it somewhat loose when Viktor goes to stand again, but he is not unsteady. 

Jayce does stay close, walking beside Viktor to the surf, though it turns out it is not necessary. Jayce’s engineering is, as usual, inspired. Flawless. With the new addition to his crutch, Viktor has no more trouble navigating the sand than he would a paved road. 

The sun dips fully into the horizon while they both stand at the edge of the water, frigid waves lapping at their bare soles.

They linger for while after the sky goes dark, hovering on the boundary between the ocean and the land.

The silence between them is broken only by the steady rush of the waves, until Jayce says, “Remember when you first told me your name?”

Viktor hums.

Jayce says, quietly, “This feels similar, somehow.” 

Viktor agrees that it does. Different. But similar.

It’s not until later in the evening, after they return inside and unpack their things, after Jayce starts up a small fire in the living room fireplace because he is, as predicted, freezing, after he converts the couch into a bed, after he tells Viktor, “Night, Vik,” after Viktor climbs into an empty room and lies down, after Viktor stops listening for Jayce’s breathing and instead turns his attention to the steady rush of the waves outside, that Viktor realizes why.

It’s alarming, in its simplicity. 

It had felt similar, because it had felt magical. 

Viktor wakes up in an unfamiliar bed, and his first reaction is one of momentary panic. 

His second reaction is the release of that panic, and a deep satisfied sigh as he curls into the most comfortable bedding he has yet encountered in his life, as the realization of his whereabouts rush into him like the waves he can still hear lapping at the shore. 

He listens closer, and hears another steady rhythm, intimately more familiar due to long stretches of time in the lab: Jayce is snoring, lightly, in the next room. 

Viktor grins to himself. He turns and regards the space beside him. The bed is massive. In the quiet stillness of the morning, he allows himself to imagine what it would be like to wake up here with Jayce stretched out beside him. He entertains, briefly, ways he might destroy the bed tucked away in the living room couch in order to get that to happen. 

Then he remembers that if he were to create a scenario in which he actually needed to fall asleep lying in a bed with Jayce Talis, Viktor would be, in effect, torturing himself. 

So he sighs, stretches, and he pulls on his leg brace, his back brace, and then the shorts he’d brought along. He seldom has the occasion to wear them; only on the hottest days do those living in Piltover deign to permit shorts as a socially acceptable fashion. The ease of pulling them on gives him a degree of frustration, because it would cut his morning routine down substantially to have his brace attached to his leg under his trousers, but with the scale of support he needs at this point, that is no longer fully feasible. 

However, they are at the beach, so Viktor can dress more casually. It is a relief. He considers if he should ask Jayce if it would be an affront to his Piltovan sensibilities were Viktor to wear shorts in the lab on occasion after they return. 

Then Viktor remembers that Jayce regularly works a forge without a shirt on, and he realises Jayce actually has no right whatsoever to take issue with Viktor wearing shorts on days it would make things easier. 

He pads through the living room as quietly as he can, so as not to wake Jayce. Viktor is an abysmal cook, but he is somewhat decent at making breakfast. He prepares a pot of tea, makes some toast, scrambles some eggs pulled from the ice box, slices some fruit, finds a jarred jam in a cupboard that smells incredible. 

At some point, Jayce stirs, pokes his head in, and says in a sleep-heavy voice, “Breakfast?” 

Viktor nods and silently indicates the eggs in the pan. “A few more minutes,” he says. 

“Thanks, Vik.” Jayce’s smile is soft and sleepy. He promises, “I’ll handle dinner tonight, then.” It is a relief, because it is exactly what Viktor had been banking on. Jayce is not a bad cook. He is, after all, the son of Ximena Talis.

“Got enough time to stretch my legs?” Jayce asks, peering out the window. 

“As I said, you have a few more minutes,” Viktor repeats, with a lifted brow and a wry grin. 

Jayce snorts and heads outside.

He returns as Viktor is plating the eggs, and Viktor turns to find the small dining table with two table settings placed out. He blinks, because as far as he can tell, Jayce had teleported the silverware, which would strain credulity if not for the fact that Viktor had been focused. He is prone to missing things, when he is focused.

Also, teleportation is possible; the pair of them had invented the Hexgates, after all. 

What catches Viktor’s attention in particular, though, are the few flowers that have been set at the center in a tiny vase. 

“Those were not there before,” he observes. 

“They were not,” Jayce nods. “They were up on the bluff. Figured they might want to join us, though.” 

Jayce almost seems bashful about it, a blush dusting his cheeks and ears. Viktor decides to soothe a potential vulnerability, so he notes, “You are a sweet man, Jayce Talis,” because his partner should not feel emasculated by the desire to place botanicals in the cottage. 

If Jayce likes flowers on the table, there should be flowers on the table.

It is somewhat out of place, to Viktor. Growing up in the Undercity, there hadn’t exactly been plants to go around, let alone the bizarre and gendered rituals which seem to plague Piltovan society topside surrounding their reproductive blooms.

These ones are pretty. Some purple, some white.

“Is it a kind of yarrow?” Viktor asks of the latter, because while he might not be familiar with topsider rituals, he does have an abundance of familiarity with medicine.

Jayce blushes further, and says, voice strained, “Yep.” 

Viktor hums, and gestures to the plate for Jayce on the counter. Then he carries his own to the table. 

Jayce carries chairs from the edge of the cottage down to find stable places for them to rest amidst the rocky pools while the tide is low. Viktor peers out at the waves as he shuffles through the sand to join him, notebook tucked under his arm. The ocean in the morning sunlight looks different than it had during their afternoon arrival, the shadows casting out into the ocean from the cliffside. The shade is pleasant, down by the pools, and helpful for observation. Viktor knows from his reading that the refraction of the sun on the water will hide more from his gaze than the shadows cast over the clear water; observing aquatic creatures from outside of the water is one of the instances where light can obscure more than it reveals to an untrained eye.

Viktor isn’t sure what he expects to see when he first settles into the chair and casts his attention into the pool, but it isn’t what he finds. 

Initially what he finds is nothing. 

Which is a stark disappointment. Some measure of that disappointment must show on Viktor’s face, because Jayce says, gently, “It takes a second to spot them. Look for bubbles.” 

Slowly, Viktor finds he is not looking at nothing after all. Slowly, incrementally, creatures re-emerge, or shift and reveal themselves from their surroundings. He is looking at a pool of seawater that is teeming with life. Life that had, likely as a result of Viktor’s shuffling, hidden itself into the cracks and crevices of the rockface. Viktor finds himself looking down into a pool with so many things to look at that he’s uncertain where to begin. 

But he opens his notebook, and he starts taking down observations. 

Jayce sits next to him, quietly, pencil flying over his own notebook. 

When Viktor glances over, half an hour later, he finds that Jayce had been sketching out mechanical diagrams for some sort of clawed automobile. Viktor finds himself smiling. 

Jayce groans, after another ten minutes, tilts the notebook up to Viktor, and asks, “Is this a bad idea?”

It is a ridiculous idea. But Viktor shrugs and says, “No bad ideas. We are here to approach our work from a different angle, yes?”

Jayce says, quietly, “Right.”

Viktor looks closer at his partner, and notes the line of tension that has set in the corner of Jayce’s eyes. 

Which had been the opposite of his intent. So Viktor considers, hums, shuts his notebook, and says, “It is quite warm, today.”

“Yeah,” Jayce says. 

“This might be a more reasonable time to swim,” Viktor observes. 

Jayce huffs a laugh. He says, almost playfully, “What an interesting theory, Viktor.” 

Viktor opens his notebook again, picks up his pencil, flips to a blank page, makes a note in the margin, and tilts it towards Jayce. He says, quietly, “Go test it for me?” 

Jayce smiles wide and bright. He stands out of his chair, stretches, and he makes his way down to the water. But he drops his hand on Viktor’s shoulder as he goes, squeezes it tight. 

Viktor returns his attention to the tide pool, and his own observations, because the alternative is staring.

He keeps his attention there, for as long as it takes for Jayce to return. Another half-hour, perhaps. Viktor had left his watch in the cottage. 

“First experiment’s a success,” Jayce says, with a smile in his voice. “I’ll have to try again tomorrow. Make sure it’s replicable.” 

Viktor snorts, but allows, “Possibly tonight, too. Control group.” 

“How’s it going over here?” Jayce crouches down next to Viktor’s chair to stare into the tidepool. He sounds somewhat out of breath from his swimming.

Viktor had written a description of an observed behavior, and drawn a small sketch of it. Underneath both, he had been writing:

• survival - possible symbiotic defensive strategy from predators
• sustenance - unlikely. other consumptive actions usually immediate 
• social - 

He tilts the notebook to face Jayce.

Jayce squints over at the notebook, shielding his eyes from the sun with one hand.

“Social?” he asks, reaching over to tap on the notation. He is still damp from the ocean, so his large finger leaves a watermark on the page.  

Viktor stares down at it, shrugs, and closes the notebook to protect it from his dripping partner before he peers over at him again. Jayce’s hair is damp, tousled. The shirt he’d been wearing this morning is nowhere to be seen.  

It takes Viktor a moment to remember Jayce had asked a question, so there is a pause before Viktor explains, “Hats.”

Jayce stares down into the pool, his hazel eyes flitting. So Viktor turns, reluctantly, because the view facing Jayce had been better, and he points until Jayce spots the crab that matches the sketch. It still has the waving purple anemone that it had maneuvered atop its shell using its claws. Viktor and Jayce watch it crawl around the pool, passing by another crab before it tucks into a shadowed corner.

“Shit,” Jayce says, suddenly. 

Viktor startles, because Jayce does not swear often. He looks to his partner and waits for Jayce to shift his hazel eyes from the tidepool to Viktor’s perplexed expression. 

When he does, Jayce explains, petulantly, “I really liked seafood.”

Viktor says, as gently as he can, “No one is asking you to stop eating shellfish, Jayce.”

Jayce gestures into the pool, despairingly.

He says, “Viktor, they’re wearing hats.”

The return to the cottage is paired with a trip to the kitchenette, and an assessment and discussion of how many food items in the icebox Jayce can consider eating without edging into despair. 

Eggs are safe, apparently, as is cheese, so Viktor does not need to be overly concerned with breakfast. For lunch they had planned primarily to eat sandwiches, and there are cucumbers and cheese, which Jayce reports will sustain him without compromising his newfound restrictions. For dinner, other than the seafood, there are noodles, rice, and fresh and tinned vegetables, and fortunately, tinned beans. Jayce looks over the range of items, and says, confidently, he can make this work without eating the seafood in the fridge, which he says he is still happy to prepare for Viktor. 

Viktor shrugs, because this veers into dinner territory, and as such falls firmly in Jayce’s domain. When left to his own devices, Viktor’s evening meals are utilitarian, utterly routine, and under three ingredients. 

“Can I help?” Viktor asks, as Jayce starts drawing out ingredients and setting them on the small counter.

“Chopping?” 

Viktor nods, relieved. Chopping is a manual task, requiring precision without any sort of evaluation of flavors. It is not Jayce’s kitchen sorcery, so Viktor takes to it happily, and in the process he picks Jayce’s mind. 

It starts with a teasing, “What might be accomplished by a motor carriage with claws?” 

“It was an aesthetically driven design,” Jayce confesses, rinsing beans and smiling. “I couldn’t think of a use case.” 

Silence falls, for a while, as Jayce fires up the stove and starts layering ingredients in a skillet.

Viktor says, eventually, when the chopping is finished, and the vegetables are handed over, “Perhaps if it were subaquatic…”

He doesn’t finish the thought, passing it instead to his partner uncompleted, as a token. Jayce silently mulls it over as he cooks, adding flavors, spices, his permutations and evaluations. 

Visibly lost in his thoughts, Jayce eventually jolts and then begins muttering to himself, and at Viktor's raised brow, confesses, “Burnt the zucchini.” 

Viktor sets the table, opens the wide window that faces the ocean as the setting sun streams in.

“I am but one man,” Viktor observes, when an idea occurs to him. “I will not be able to eat all of the seafood in the icebox. Should we share it with the subjects of our research tomorrow?” 

Jayce huffs a laugh, says, “Good plan.” 

Before they dig in, Jayce selects a bottle of wine from a tall cupboard, glasses. He sets out a candle on the table, beside the yarrow and purple flowers from the bluff. Viktor strikes the match to light it. 

“Most engines can’t be safely subaquatic,” Jayce opens, after he sits in the chair across from Viktor. His features in the setting sun and candle light make Viktor yearn to go into the upstairs studio, to mix Tobias Kiramman’s paints until he can find the right colors—green, golden, honey hues—and spread them on a blank canvas so he can keep them. Jayce’s eyes are a hazel that makes Viktor want to learn art.  

Instead, Viktor responds, “Most engineers don’t have Hextech.” He lifts his wine glass, sips, says. “I believe that the sorcery rune could reinforce airtight components…”

“...with that precision formulation that can change the density we used for the gate’s liquid core for buoyancy control," Jayce nods. His grin and his joy suffuse the space, as he looks at Viktor, hazel eyes dancing, and says, “I was thinking the same. How about if we…”

It’s not until much later, when the sun has dipped beneath the horizon, the flavorful food barely tasted in the wake of their conversation, that Jayce leans back and runs his hands over his face, cast in candlelight. He asks, sounding like he is on the verge of laughter, “But why claws?” 

Viktor shrugs and says, “That is for the crabs to share with us, in the coming days.”

Jayce laughs, loud. Viktor feels it settle in his chest.

Jayce settles into a smile, eyes flickering with mirth and firelight. “Well, good thing we’ve got half an ice box to bribe them with.”

The following morning’s survey of the tidepool reveals new behaviors over the hours Viktor scrawls notes in his small book. Jayce dips in and out of the activity they are ostensibly at the beach to accomplish; occasionally he swims instead, or goes for walks on high points of the bluffs and shouts Viktor’s name until Viktor can spot him and wave. He does occasionally settle into the chair near Viktor, and perched on the rocky outcropping they theorize about the behaviors of the crabs and discuss their theories about sub-aquatic engineering. Occasionally Viktor hands over his notes, requests Jayce’s help in rendering sketches more fully, or he asks Jayce to retrieve source materials from Viktor’s giant chest of research materials on crustaceans from the cottage.

It is no surprise, then, in the midafternoon, when Jayce leaves once more, and Viktor finds himself drawn into observing the rippling pool and its inhabitants for nearly an hour in solitude. 

It is, however, a surprise when Jayce’s shadow falls over him, and Jayce’s voice asks, “Are you at a stopping point, Vik? I could use a hand.” 

Viktor peers up, and sees that Jayce is standing nearby, hand extended out like he’d stopped himself from touching his partner’s shoulder. 

“Yes,” Viktor says, closing his notebook. “What with?”

He expects Jayce to fall into the chair beside him once more and lodge some theory for Viktor to pick apart, but Jayce gestures over his shoulder. Viktor looks, and blinks. 

“Sandcastle,” Jayce says, which does explain the small tower of and piles of sand that Jayce has pointed out behind himself. 

There is a blanket from the cottage laid out near it, and a small plate of sandwiches.

Viktor smiles and tucks his pencil into the pocket of his shorts. “A castle?” 

Jayce grips the back of his neck, bashfully, and admits, “It started out a castle. It’s turning into more of a tower, though.” His eyes skate over the pool, then rest on Viktor’s, as his mouth tilts into a grin. “You wouldn’t happen to know anyone who might have had a hand in designing one of those?” 

“No one comes to mind,” Viktor lies. He lifts his journal, raises a brow. “I am, as you know, an amateur marine ecologist. Unfortunately the engineering behind urban infrastructure is not my area of expertise." 

Jayce laughs, rolls his eyes, and quips, “Darn. Looks like I’ll have to work out my magic tower alone, then.”

“Nonsense.” Viktor collects his crutch, stands from his chair, and pushes past Jayce to make his way over to the pile of sand. “On a project of this scale? You will need a partner.” 

“I’m lucky I’ve got one,” Jayce declares, quietly, and for a moment, the playfulness drops from his tone, leaving it bare. He falls in step beside Viktor. 

Viktor turns to regard him. There’s a particular bend to Jayce’s shoulders, and an unfamiliar look in his eye. Its novelty leads Viktor to spite his initial impulse to handle Jayce’s sudden earnestness in the fashion he usually handles Jayce’s sudden earnestness: ignoring it, twisting it back into banter, anything, really, which allows Viktor to avoid revealing the impact it has on him. 

Instead, before the waves, feet bare in the sand, Viktor lets himself consider something different. He grips his crutch tight, as if it has the capacity to support both his body and the weight of his emotions. Viktor tries something new.  

“As am I, Jayce.” 

Jayce’s eyes widen. For a moment he just looks lost. Then overjoyed. Then overwhelmed.

For another moment, it looks like he might say something.

Then, instead, Jayce grins, and launches himself towards the pile of sand and the blanket as he begins rattling off measurements calculated based on his intended scale conversion, adjusting the memorized schematics of their Hexgate. It’s the beginning of a somewhat familiar process; they’d made many models of the Hexgate. None had been sand, however, and none had been of the scale Jayce is suggesting as he points out the various piles of sand, arranged around the blanket, noting the results of his experiment where he’d begun testing the “stickyness” of sand hydration ratios and the limits in order to work out volumetric strain. Viktor settles down near him, turns to a blank page in his notebook, and begins taking notes. 

He allows the earlier moment to wash away. If Jayce’s vulnerability works anything like the waves here, it will return, later, in a new shape. Viktor can collect more data, then. Continue his other experiment, the one involving Jayce and earnestness. 

Viktor’s not sure yet what he intends to prove, but it is an experiment which Viktor can conduct even without a firm hypothesis, because it is not exactly science.

“Eh,” he says, in the meantime, when Jayce turns to him, expectantly. “There is driftwood, no? If we use that as a support, we can perhaps make it somewhat larger.” 

Which he regrets, several hours later, when faced with the fact that the sand castle, which had actually been a sand tower, is in the process of becoming something closer to a sand city. 

“The Medarda Theater is not that large, is it?” Viktor asks, bewildered. 

Jayce considers the small pile of sand, brow furrowed. “Maybe not,” he allows, carving away a portion. He laughs, looks up at Viktor, and admits, “I was a kid when I went. It seemed big, but I was smaller then.” 

“I’ve never been to a performance there,” Viktor says. “What did you see?” Jayce pauses in the shaping of the sand.

“A ballet,” Jayce says, quietly. “My parents took me for Winterfest.” 

Viktor visualizes it, then. The young Jayce Talis from the photos hung in Ximena’s home. Smaller. Eyes filled with wonder, sparking from the audience to land on the graceful movements of dancers. 

Viktor watches Jayce let the excess sand flow from his fingers as he considers their small sand-theater in their sand-Piltover. With the angle of the sun, it is cast in the shadow of the sand-Hexgate Viktor is attempting to engineer supports for in his notebook. 

“It was beautiful,” Jayce says. “My dad cried, actually.”

Viktor blinks. Clears his throat.

Absent an easy alternative, he offers an observation. “You don’t speak of him often.”

Jayce looks to Viktor, his brows arched high. Surprised. He claims, “I talk about my dad all the time.”

Which is not true, technically, but Viktor doesn’t wish to dispute it. So he hums, turns back to his notebook, and charts another line on the paper.

Out of the corner of his eye, however, he catches as Jayce’s brow furrows. 

Jayce asks, quietly, “Don’t I?” 

Viktor shrugs, eyes still on the page. “No. Not directly.” Another line. “You talk about your House. The Talis hammer business. Sometimes, you do not speak of them as if they are your own.” Another line, forming a circle, this time. Then a calculation for a radius. “You speak around your father often. You rarely speak about him.” 

Jayce hums. He says quietly, “You’re probably right.” Viktor doesn’t look, but he feels as Jayce’s focus shifts from the sand, directed out towards the vast ocean. “Remembering hurts.”

“I know,” Viktor offers. 

Viktor doesn’t often talk about his own parents.  

Jayce offers his recognition, softly. Simply says, “I know you do.” 

They focus, after that, on the sand, on the notebook, on forming familiar shapes. 

“Did you cry at the ballet?” Viktor asks, to fill out the imagined scene of young Jayce sitting in his theater seat, eyes on the performance. Viktor indulges himself by imagining a younger version of himself seated beside him. It is not uncommon, strange as it may be; it had been unnerving to discover the depths of Jayce’s isolation as a child. Viktor reflects on his own often enough to wish, rather whimsically, that things had been different: it might not have been easier, but he wishes their minds had gifted them with one another before they’d learned loneliness. 

“No,” Jayce says, mouth set in a small line. “I didn’t understand what moved him so much back then. I asked him afterwards, and he just said I’d get it one day.” A shrug. “I’m almost as old as he was. Still don’t get it.”

“Perhaps you need to see the ballet again,” Viktor suggests.

“Maybe,” Jayce says, head tilted. “It runs most years.”

Silence, again, but for the rushing of waves lapping at the shore, the sound of Viktor’s pencil.

Jayce seems to gather himself, and then asks, “If I do go again, would you want to come?” 

Viktor glances up, surprised. “I would. If you would welcome it.”

“I might cry,” Jayce warns. 

“I own handkerchiefs,” Viktor shrugs, “and if you are concerned about appearances, we could likely solicit a box from one of our patrons for an evening.” 

Jayce stares, for a moment, the ocean sprawled out behind him. His smile is smaller than his usual one. Softer. Viktor wants to keep it, somehow. He finds himself thinking once more of Tobias Kiramman’s paintings. He finds himself gripping his pencil tightly, stopping himself from starting a formula to calculate the curve of Jayce’s lips. Jayce’s eyes flick down, and he nods to Viktor’s notebook, and asks, “You land on the diameter?”

“No,” Viktor says, sighing. “We fucked up.” He tilts his notebook towards Jayce, who looks closely, suddenly grinning. For whatever reason, Viktor’s swearing has always delighted Jayce. So Viktor swears more often, now, than he once had. In Piltovan, too, so that Jayce can be aware of when it’s happening. 

Viktor watches Jayce’s eyes trace over the calculations, and he explains, “The sand will not support a spherical shape at this scale.”

Jayce’s smile grows, eyes wrinkled in the corners. “Not sand, then?” 

“It will also collapse under the weight of a stone,” Viktor says, flipping the page, pointing out another calculation, then gesturing to the small pile of stones nearby. He’d been testing.

Jayce laughs and falls back onto the beach. “So not rock, either. What’s that leave us?”

“Failure,” Viktor declares grimly, closing his notebook. 

Jayce chuckles and casts his arm over his eyes. Viktor, unobserved, lets his gaze wander over his partner’s form, lingering on the novelties of the familiar figure. Exercise shorts. A sleeveless undershirt. The absence of gel in his dark hair. Grains of sand stuck to his skin. A slight sunburn kissing Jayce’s shoulders.

Viktor should offer him sun balm, but the silence is too comfortable. Viktor digs his toes into the sand just off the blanket, listens to the waves, and stares. 

After a while, Jayce lifts his head and suggests, “Organics?”

Viktor considers the base of the sand tower. He opens his notebook again. “Feasible,” he allows, after a moment. “Something lightweight. Circular.” 

“Seashells,” Jayce says, nodding to himself. He starts to stand, sand cascading off of him. “There’s some near the mouth of the cave. I can probably grab one, with the tide this low. Be right back.” 

“Good,” Viktor says, closing his notebook again. “I will add details to the Academy.” He shifts off the blanket towards the center of their sand city. 

It is mid afternoon, and there is a seashell atop the sand-hexgate, when the tide rises high enough for the ocean to reclaim it. 

It starts with one precocious wave, a harbinger that crests over the sand city and surprises them both. Viktor yelps and scrambles back as Jayce launches himself to shield the sand hexgate with his body. As the wave recedes, their eyes lock, and they both laugh, hard. 

Jayce helps Viktor to his feet and drags the blanket away from the city. They settle on it together, and from a safe, dry distance, they eat their rescued sandwiches and watch the work of the early afternoon get dragged into the sea.

Watching Piltover’s skyline get swallowed by the ocean, a thought occurs to Viktor. He’s startled into a breathless bark of laughter as the scallop shell at the top of their hexgate topples into the waves.

“What?” Jayce asks.

“There is a saying in the fissures,” Viktor confesses. “When Piltover slides into the sump.” 

“How’s it used?” Jayce asks, drawing up his knees and resting his chin atop them. 

“You use it when you are trying to say that something is extremely unlikely to happen,” Viktor explains. “When the isthmus erodes and there is no barrier to maintain the different sea levels, and when Sun Gates stop holding back the ocean, the Undercity will be washed away. It is below the median sea level. Geologically, it is an inevitability.” Viktor shrugs. “Northside sits higher. Piltover will be safe.” 

Jayce blinks, and he looks out at the ocean. 

“We didn’t make a sand Undercity,” Jayce realizes. 

“We did not,” Viktor confirms. 

They have somewhat less experience with that, after all. Their architectural involvement in the Hexgate’s creation had been limited to the Topside. 

“Should we?” Jayce asks.

Viktor hums, and looks out at the sea. “Tomorrow, perhaps.”

“Good plan,” Jayce says, stretching. He nods over at the tidepools. “Back to work, then?” 

Viktor considers. He says, “I think I’d like to sit inside, for a time. I brought a secret project of Sky’s, and I’d like to take some time to look it over.” He glances at Jayce, who is already nodding. Viktor observes, belatedly, “Also, you are getting burnt.”

Inside, Jayce makes his way to the kitchenette and busies himself with something as Viktor digs through the trunk to withdraw Sky’s notebook. He settles onto the cottage’s green couch with Sky’s journal, shifts a pillow under his leg. 

He realizes, abruptly, it’s likely the pillow Jayce had slept on, when this couch had been folded out into a bed the night before. It likely smells like Jayce’s hair. 

In an utterly unrelated coincidence, Viktor decides to shift how he has positioned himself on the couch. He positions the pillow under his head, instead, and breathes in deep. To relax. Then he opens Sky’s journal, and begins flipping through her research. 

He is only a few minutes in, but Jayce has to call his name multiple times before Viktor notices. 

“What was that?” Viktor checks, lifting his head.

“I asked if you wanted a drink at all? I’m trying my hand at some beach classics.”

Viktor smiles, soft. Marks his place. Observes, “You do not sound confident in this.” 

“I’m very confident,“ Jayce argues. “They will be great cocktails. I’m just not confident you’ll like them.”

Viktor hums, grinning. He looks over to where Jayce is opening a high cabinet. “Ah. A critique on my taste, then?”  

“Your taste in drinks is bad, Viktor,” Jayce says, nodding sagely, withdrawing a few bottles, and closing the cabinet.  

Viktor scoffs. “I have excellent taste.” 

“Bullshit,” Jayce says, sharply. “The role of a beverage is to disguise the flavor of alcohol. Your words. ” 

Viktor laughs. It is always amusing to encounter the exceedingly particular exceptions to Jayce’s near-universal politeness. 

“This is no laughing matter,” Jayce says, with deeply exaggerated sternness. 

Viktor leans his head back into the pillow. Sandalwood, smoke. Jayce. He notes, “You are such a kind man, in everything but this.” 

“In everything but this, you are a smart man,” Jayce retorts, turning and shooting a grin in Viktor’s direction. 

Viktor scoffs, still grinning, and returns his focus back to Sky’s journal. He adds a note on the sheaf he had used to mark his place. 

It is some time later that Viktor accepts the glass Jayce presses into his hand. Faceted crystal kaleidoscopes the complimentary colors of an orange peel and swirling red liquor. Viktor takes a tentative, wary sip, and looks up into Jayce’s expectant expression.

“It is very good,” Viktor says. 

Jayce smiles down at him, exasperated. “I can see your face, Vik. You don’t have to pretend to like it.”

“I did not say I liked it,” Viktor corrects. “I said it was very good.”

Jayce’s eyes crinkle at the corners. He crosses his arms in front of himself, and prompts, “Oh?” 

“The role of a beverage is to disguise the flavor of alcohol,” Viktor reiterates. Jayce rolls his eyes, but once he’s done with that, Viktor lifts the glass and continues, “This accomplishes that objective quite thoroughly, given it mostly tastes like I bit into a very gross plant.” 

Jayce laughs, loudly, as he snatches the glass from Viktor’s hand. He takes a sip for himself as he turns back to the kitchen.

“What is it?” Viktor calls after him.

“Delicious,” Jayce mutters, under-his breath. Then, less aggressively, from the other room, “Gin, vermouth, bitters. Zest.”

He returns a few moments later, another glass in hand, and says, “This one’s for you.”

Viktor grins, gratefully. He sips. Sugar, mint, sweetness. Light, refreshing, cool. 

“I like this one,” he says. 

“Of course you do,” Jayce scoffs. He reaches towards the trunk in the corner, pulls out the topmost book, and collapses onto the other side of the couch with his disgusting drink.  

They settle into a quiet stillness, the passage of time marked only by the steady sound of nearby waves, and the occasional turning of pages. 

“Jayce,” Viktor says, only moments after he realizes Sky Young is not only an excellent scientist. Sky Young is a fucking genius. “You need to see this.”

He looks up from her notebook and glances across the couch, and suddenly the fact that Sky’s research will open the door to a technology that might accomplish, in a matter of years, what Hextech could not have accomplished in a decade, and do so organically, does not matter an iota. 

Jayce is crying. 

His eyes are still fixed on the book he’d pulled from the chest, but he clears his throat, looks up and wipes them. He chokes, “Sorry, Vik. What was that?”

“It can wait,” Viktor says, surprising himself. “Are you…” He reconsiders, pivots to, “What are you reading?”

Jayce lifts a brow, lifts the book to regard its blank cover. He frowns suddenly, flips to the first page, and reads, “Felicia? I’m sorry, Vik, I just realized I really ought to have asked if I could read this. At first I just figured it was something about the crustaceans? You said that’s what was in the trunk.” 

It is one of the journals from the safe in the cannery, Viktor realizes. His mind shifts through a series of excuses, explanations. The steps to dance around an answer. 

Viktor would not keep things from Jayce. 

He would never. 

He would, however, hold some things back a little while. It can wait.

Sky’s research, for one. The knowledge that Jayce’s stolen hex crystals had blown apart a second building, for another.

Jayce is exhausted, Viktor reminds himself. It is why we are here. To rest.  

Accordingly, Viktor shrugs, and admits only: “I had not yet gotten around to decoding the cipher. What is it about?” 

Jayce’s brows raise, then furrow, apologetically. Viktor can decode that well enough; he knows, intimately, his partner’s penchant for runic recognition, decoding, and translations. He knows cracking the cipher likely hadn’t taken Jayce long enough to even notice there had been a cipher in the first place, let alone the time to consider Viktor couldn’t read it. 

Jayce regards the book, runs a hand over the cover. “I’m not sure, exactly? It's beautiful, though. Poems, mostly. Maybe lyrics?”

Viktor hums, curiosity piqued. “The subject?” 

“It varies,” Jayce says, sounding perplexed. “But they’re all written to someone, I think. Someone the writer lost.” A shuddering breath. “Someone they felt responsible for losing.” 

Viktor hums. “Felicia, you said.”

Jayce nods. “It’s haunting,” he says. He looks up, into Viktor’s eyes. “Can I ask where you got this?” 

No sidestepping, then. A direct approach.

“You can ask me anything, Jayce,” Viktor says, sighing. “However, if you don’t mind, I would prefer not to answer this question just yet. Not until we are back.”

Jayce nods. Jayce also looks just crestfallen enough for Viktor to append, carefully, “I would like us to focus on enjoying our time here.” 

Jayce blinks, and his expression shifts. Soft, bright, a smile like a dawning sun. Says, “Me too, Vik. I’m sorry again that I read it without asking.” 

Viktor scoffs, and waves a hand dismissively. “I have doomed myself in this. Don’t ask for permission, no?”

Jayce huffs, still grinning. “How about an apology,” he checks, bashfully. “I’d say that’s pretty distinct from permission.” 

“I will allow it,” Viktor says, nodding. “You are forgiven. There is another tome, in the trunk, if you would like. In the same hand as the first." 

Jayce glances to the trunk. “I’m really curious, but I don’t know if I can read another one,” Jayce says. He lifts the book again, says, “This is gorgeous, but it’s heartbreaking? I feel a bit wrung out, for a beach read.” 

Viktor looks over Sky’s research, turns it over in his hands, and considers mentioning it now. He wonders if it is an antidote to more than just the toxicity that plagues the Undercity. It might be an antidote to Jayce’s spirits. 

He wonders if he should save it, also, until after he tells the truth about the cannery. Jayce might need it more, then. 

However, Jayce has other plans. After a long stretch on the couch, a glance at a clock on the mantle of the small fireplace, and as Viktor tries not to notice how the stretching has caused Jayce’s shirt to rise to reveal the planes of his stomach, Jayce says, “Plus, I need to make dinner. Pasta?” 

It can wait.

Viktor closes Sky’s notebook, and declares, “I will chop.” 

They prepare food, set out candles, and settle into a quiet meal inside, looking out the cottage window at the setting sun and the waves rolling ashore. Viktor finds himself thinking of the creatures in the tidepools, now fully submerged, exploring a realm wider than they can in the low tide. The inverse of his own relationship with the shifting sands. He wonders about the fate of a specific anemone, of the crab which wore it as a hat. 

For a moment, he worries for the crab. Not for a rational reason, not out of fear it had been eaten, or been swept out to deeper waters. 

He worries that the crab might feel cold tonight, in the coming absence of the sun. 

Then he reminds himself it is a crab, and not endothermic. It likely cannot feel the surrounding temperature of the waters. 

He huffs to himself, and he looks to find Jayce watching him, eyes soft in the candlelight. Viktor tastes the lingering sweetness on his palate from the drink earlier, the warmth from the fire he’d lit in the living room of the Kiramman’s seaside cottage. 

“Why did you agree to this?” Jayce asks, eventually. 

Viktor sips his wine, takes a bite of his pasta, and says the only thing he can say which is truthful and does not reveal too much. “You are my partner.”

After dinner, Jayce looks torn on settling back in to read the second book, or starting in on Sky’s research. 

Viktor tries to steer him in a more restful direction. 

“Let’s hear it then,” he prompts. 

From where he’s still bent from having rekindled the flames in the small fireplace, Jayce glances up and raises his brow. Viktor gestures towards the instrument propped in the corner, and Jayce turns to regard it.

“I am really quite bad,” he warns, smiling.

Viktor doesn’t doubt it. Jayce is very confident in those things in which he is competent. Egotistical, even, as Viktor had once pointed out. 

Viktor is interested, regardless. 

“I do not believe you are bad enough at this instrument to do lasting damage to me sonically,” Viktor says, settling in.

Jayce shrugs, says, “Lasting damage to your impression of me, maybe.” 

Viktor smiles, says, “Unlikely. I see too many of your positive traits, some flaws may finally allow me some balance.” 

Jayce sits down, pulls the instrument into his lap, and begins to play.

He plays haltingly and objectively quite poorly.

However, Jayce’s brow furrows in concentration and his hands trace up the neck of the instrument to find his chords. The sound of the waves and the popping of the fire fill in the gaps of the song as he stumbles. His hair, absent gel, falls in a sweep over his forehead. His hazel eyes lock on a middle distance, and his features are cast in flickering firelight.

Sonically, it is unpleasant. 

The visuals more than make up for it.

Occasionally a combination of chords absent a misstep squeaks its way out of the composition, and Viktor does eventually recognize what the song is meant to be. He huffs a laugh, and leans further into the couch. It is one of his own favorites, often played on the phonograph in their laboratory, primarily to break up Jayce’s monopoly on the device. 

Viktor finds himself lulled, amused, and besotted. Fortunately this performance is something which requires enough of Jayce’s attention to prevent him from noticing Viktor staring. 

Jayce eventually does fall quiet, after the final chord of the song is strummed, loudly and audibly incorrect. He glances up, eyes sparkling, and he threatens, “Another?” 

Viktor laughs softly. He draws his legs onto the couch, curling close to himself, and stares into the fire. 

Viktor says, “Please,” and motions for Jayce to continue playing. 

The morning sun glints off the ocean, and the tidepools of their secluded cove.

“Can I ask something?”

“Of course, Jayce.”

Jayce nods towards the tide pool. He says, “You seem kind of… mad at them, sometimes.”

Viktor pauses. Observes, “That is not a question.” 

“That’s because I’m not really sure what I’m asking,” Jayce admits. Then, “Why, I guess?”

Viktor flips his notebook closed and tucks his pencil away. He steadies his breathing, matching the pace of the waves rolling onto the shore, up onto the beach. 

He stares out at the water.

Then Viktor says, quietly, “They can regenerate their limbs.”

Jayce stills, next to him. Viktor knows him well enough to be ready for the large hand that drops onto his shoulder. It is a comfort. But it is not a solution. 

Viktor says, “I had made some degree of peace with the knowledge that things might have been better for me, if I had been born in Piltover. Just a little bit higher, perhaps my mother would have breathed less toxins. Perhaps I would have been seen by physicians early enough. Pointless hypotheticals, yes, but true in that they are important. Because they are a reminder. A motivation to improve lives for those in need. For those in the Undercity.” 

Jayce doesn’t say anything. Viktor watches the water roll in, and out. He looks down into the tidepool. 

“But to discover that my life might have been better, if I had been…” He trails off, grunts. He gestures into the pool. “If the gods had placed me in one of those instead of this?” 

“Viktor,” Jayce says, his voice soft and shattered. 

“I am not mad at the crabs. I am not mad at you. But I have always been upset, Jayce. I always will be. Oftentimes I am upset only with the circumstances, by the fact my intellect is hidden and my body is not. I am upset that I cannot often overcome presumptions. That in the eyes of many, I will always be…” he gestures to himself, his leg. His brace, forged by Jayce’s hand. The hand which is gripping Viktor’s shoulder.

Viktor chokes out, “But I am, occasionally, upset with my body’s limitations. They are frustrating. I am occasionally upset that it hurts. Normally I can comfort myself with the fact that my mind is unconstrained. But now? I find myself upset with my mind.” 

Jayce squeezes his shoulder, tight. 

Viktor continues, bitterly, irrationally, “Even with all of the intelligence that’s been granted to me, even though you have given me magic, I cannot do something which can be done, mindlessly, by a crab.” 

Jayce is quiet for a very long time. 

Viktor watches light glittering off a rippling surface. He watches as beneath it, a sea snail maneuvers around the tidepool, narrowly missing the reaching tendrils of an anemone. He watches a barnacle appear and then slide back into its shell. He watches a crab shuffle into the light, then duck back into shadow. It’s the same one he had been staring at before. Red, small. An odd number of legs. 

“How long does it take them to regrow?” Jayce asks. 

Viktor sighs. Then he shrugs, and says, voice raw, “I cannot recall. Perhaps a year. I can check the notes in the cottage.” 

“And during that time?” Jayce prompts.

Viktor asks, tiredly, “What do you mean?”  

“What do they do during that time? While it’s regrowing?” 

Viktor doesn’t answer. Mostly because Jayce has asked it in a specific tone that means it’s one of his hypotheticals. It’s not a question for Viktor to answer. It’s a question to make Viktor listen.

Jayce says, to the wide ocean, “They continue being crabs, right? While they’re missing that limb? They forage, feed, some lay eggs, some fertilize them. They scuttle along like the rest of them. Some probably get eaten before their leg regrows. Some probably don’t. Some wear hats.” 

Jayce says, to the open sky, “I know you have a harder time than you might, if things were different. I wish things could be easier for you. I wish things were made easier for you. Hextech? Our technology? Maybe it will help make things easier. Maybe it will improve lives, like we pledged. But even if it helps make things easier, it's not going to fix all of the things some might consider weaknesses.”

Jayce says, turning to Viktor, “You’re a human. And you’re a really fucking good one, Viktor. And your imperfections have beauty in them, because they make you who you are. You’re a part of all of this,” he says, and he gestures to the world around them. 

Viktor looks into Jayce’s eyes. Wide, open. On the verge of tearful. Water. Salt. They are hazel, yes, but oceanic, somehow. Beautiful. Jayce looks back, and somehow he looks at Viktor like he means what he’s said. Like he believes Viktor is beautiful, too. 

Viktor asks, “Why are you saying this?” 

Jayce says, “In case you need to hear it. You don’t need to be fixed, Viktor. You are not broken. You never were.” Jayce turns to the ocean again. “You’re you. I… I really admire that about you.” 

Viktor stares. Jayce blinks back some moisture, and looks down into the tidepool.

“And,” he says. “I’m really glad you’re not a crab.” 

Viktor snorts, but doesn’t say anything. His throat is too tight. 

The swell of the ocean reaches towards them. It edges away. Viktor closes his notebook, stands, and clears his throat. He declares, “Sandwiches. Then sandcastle.” 

The ocean stands sentinel as they dig the shapes of the Undercity out of the sand of the beach. 

Unlike the model of Piltover, they are working less from technical experience and more from memory; the depths of the Hexgates had been constructed miles away from the main fissures, deep into the rock on the Piltovan side of the River Pilt. They start with the boundaries; a trench for the River, positioned to fill when the tide rises. Over it, a sand and driftwood Bridge of Progress. The Sun Gates. Viktor notes the location of the pump station, the waterworks. 

Jayce is at least superficially familiar with that location as well. He had found Viktor there once, when Viktor had gone to solicit some comfort from the familiarity and the view. When Jayce had arrived, he hadn’t said anything, or offered an explanation. He’d sat near Viktor, silently, and they’d looked out towards the city at the edge of the drop. The gears turned behind them, a rhythm steadier even than waves here, and Viktor had been lulled into a sense of peace that had almost broken through his dread. He’d never appreciated another’s company more.

It had been the night before the operation which would embed bolts in Viktor’s spine. 

“How did you find me?” he asks, years later, as he scoops out the sand to create space for the reservoir.

Jayce hums, but needs no further elaboration. He says, “Heimerdinger.”

Viktor nods.

“Why is that where you go?” Jayce asks. 

The iridescent reflective sheen off the surface of the water. The toy boat, rushing away down the stream, the rush to chase after it. Rio. 

She’s dying. The almost purr-like rumble of her trilling.

Can I help? The fear in Rio’s bulging eyes. 

Viktor takes a deep breath, and he looks out to the sea. He says, “When I was a child, there was a creature that lived in the caves under the pump station. A waverider.” 

Jayce reinforces a slump in the sand bridge with another piece of driftwood. 

Viktor continues, “She was sick. She was one of my only friends. To my mentor, she was a specimen. I asked to assist him in helping her. Instead I learned sometimes death is a mercy.”

Jayce’s hands stop moving. 

“It was the last time the subject of my research was a living being,” Viktor says. 

Jayce looks over to the tidepool. 

Viktor looks as well. Hums, and corrects, “Until this week.”

Jayce meets his gaze. Asks, “What was she dying of?”

“Toxins,” Viktor says, shrugging. “Waveriders are amphibious. They respirate cutaneously. We could not filter the water, so the Doctor attempted to combat the toxification through cleansing her blood, which had already processed out what she could naturally. The output was…” 

Purple. It was purple, like the organic mass that crept along the walls of the… 

The cannery. A crab with four claws looking down on shattered glass; beakers, vials. 

It can wait, Viktor reminds himself. 

He takes another deep breath, and pushes it away a while longer. 

It’s not just that Jayce isn’t ready to hear it. Viktor is not ready to share it yet, either. Not even with himself.

“The output was more valuable than the specimen,” he finishes. “He destroyed her. Turned her into a sort of machine to produce the substance.”

Jayce is staring, Viktor discovers, when he glances upwards. 

“Why not move her to a non-toxic water source?” Jayce asks, brows furrowed. 

Viktor reels. He stares out at the ocean again. Swallows. 

Viktor says, as softly as he can manage, “There is not a non-toxic water source in the Undercity, Jayce.”

Jayce looks shocked. Devastated. “But the Kiramman airways— I thought—”

“The toxins were cleared from the air, Jayce. They were put in the water. The people of the Undercity can breathe, but the… You did not know this?”

“I had no idea,” Jayce says, eyes massive. 

Viktor blinks, and asks, incredulously, “How is that possible? How old were you, during the uprising?"

Jayce looks floored. He asks, “What uprising?” 

Viktor stops breathing. Reorients. He looks at Jayce, his strong jaw, his hazel eyes. Viktor’s partner, yes. But a Topsider, too.

Viktor reminds himself to continue breathing. 

“On the bridge,” he says, voice tight.

Jayce looks confused still, so Viktor takes a deep breath. He supplies a date. 

Viktor watches Jayce’s expression change. A dawning recognition. Viktor realizes Jayce likely knows it by another name. Knows it as a riot. 

Jayce’s brow furrows, and he says, “I didn’t realize there—”

“Jayce,” Viktor interrupts, heart hammering. “Not about this.” 

Jayce’s mouth snaps shut. Viktor takes a deep breath, releases it, and explains in as few words as he can. 

He says, “I can only talk around this. As you said, with your father. It hurts to remember.” 

Jayce’s eyes fill with understanding. Sudden. Horrified. He looks out to the ocean. 

Jayce says, voice rough, “I didn’t know.”  

Viktor swallows, tight. He says, “I know you did not, Jayce.”

“I’m sorry,” Jayce says. 

Viktor rests his chin on his knees, looking at the waves. He clears his throat. 

“Mining released the Grey,” he says. “It… I grew up under it. The people of the undercity can breathe, now, but our primary industry before mining was maritime, Jayce. There used to be a lane of seafood plants along the docks. Fishing boats. Canneries.”

Viktor shrugs. “They are now ruins, mostly. The bay of the Conqueror’s Sea is polluted. Toxins flow from the Pilt down into the Undercity,  and the wealth from the Sun Gates flows upwards into the pockets of the Houses.”

“Viktor,” Jayce says, voice tight. “Hextech… do you think…”

Jayce looks lost. The Kiramman’s seaside cottage, Viktor remembers. Jayce who has just learned that his patron’s famous airways function only in a fashion. 

Do you think, Jayce means, that Hextech will just change the shape of the world’s problems? That we might be making new ones?

Viktor glances up, into Jayce’s eyes. Then to the sky. 

His answer would have been different, years ago. When he’d been stronger. Before he’d watched their work become embedded in and dictated by the council, discovered how demanding they could be after they’d nearly sent Jayce to his death by outlawing his research, his dream, his mind. If Viktor hadn’t been party to the decision to push aside their pledge to improve the lives of those in need in order to build the Hexgates, to gain the resources for future developments.

He remembers, bitterly, his own hopeful reminder over the past few days: It can wait. 

Something he’s been telling himself for years.

Can it wait? 

Are there not people who need their help? Now? 

Can he wait? Does he have the time? 

Viktor falls back into the sand, sighs, and says, “We can make it better, but if you are asking me if we fix the world with Hextech?” he hums, rolls his wrist, and intones, “When Piltover slides into the sump.” 

Jayce looks heartbroken. He chokes, “What if we—”

“Jayce,” Viktor interrupts. He sighs, pinches the bridge of his nose. “You need to read Sky’s proposal.” 

Jayce blinks. 

“Also, I need you to write down the key to the cipher. Those tomes come from an old cannery. I found something strange.” 

The cottage looks, hours later, somewhat like there has been an explosion. 

In the absence of a chalkboard, papers and tomes abound alongside sketches torn from notebooks. There are half-formed ideas scattered about, laid across the floor, couch, and coffee table. Sky Young’s research dominates one section. 

Her outlined theories are pre-validated by her extensively-documented home experiments. A flora that can clear the Grey from the air. It will take many specimens to clear it from the Undercity entirely. Thousands. But it’s possible. 

The reaching blooms pull the toxins, convert it through biological processes as a resourceful compound, and deposit it through a root system. They inject it as nutrients back into the soil. It cleans the air while it paves the way for new growth. It paves the way for itself. It’s miraculous. Complicated to create, but simple to reproduce; self-reproductive, in fact. Very unlike Hextech, which is constrained by access to either an incredibly rare raw material, or access to a material synthesized with great effort and cost in one of their Hextech refineries. 

It’s also based on a principle that is modifiable. If these plants can clear the air, there might be a variant that can clear the toxins from water. So Jayce and Viktor have been postulating and outlining those potentialities in a section of the Kiramman’s seaside cottage living room, tests to conduct to see if the effect can be reproduced in a plant that grows on the seabed, supplemented with ideas of how to engineer mechanisms to plant it (a subaquatic vehicle, perhaps, with something not unlike claws). There are rune combinations, potential modifications of the Hexclaw’s beam prototype that might prevent heat emission and shift the light to a wavelength that can allow plants to photosynthesize in the event there is not enough light in the toxified water to allow seabed-plants to grow.

There is another section where they’d gone back and forth, based on the provided materials, on whether it might also be possible to create other forms that can accomplish a similar approach; cleansing protists, rather than plants. 

They need more than a chalkboard; they need their laboratory, and to discuss Sky’s research with its expert in order to narrow down the scope of the potential here. None of which they have, at the beach, so for the time being their joint meanderings are sprawled across the seaside cottage. 

“This is starting to look like Cait’s bedroom,” Jayce mutters, as he contributes to the mess with a note pinned atop a stack of reproductions of one of Sky’s diagrams. His note reads: toxin-consuming algae, overabundance?

Viktor reaches for his pencil, jots down, embed in ecosystem? crabs omnivorous, in the margins of Jayce’s note, as he asks, “How so?”

“She has this Grand Conspiracy,” Jayce explains, as he reads Viktor’s note and starts digging through the chest to find the library’s book on the ecological niche of crabs local to the Conqueror’s Sea. “She has this theory that there's a single mind behind the undercity's violence. You should see it. She's obsessed. Got this whole layout: string, photos, the works.” Jayce shrugs, then shudders, says, “She sleeps next to it."

"You sleep in the lab," Viktor notes, brow raised. "Often. As do I. We hardly have room to cast judgement on an obsession, Jayce."

"But one mind?” Jayce waves in the general direction of where they had constructed the undercity sandcastle. “It’s... a stretch. Right?"

Viktor shrugs. "I once heard a man say he believed he could harness magic through science. He thought nobody believed him, either. They call him the Man of Progress, now."

"Nobody did believe me,” Jayce says, quietly. “Nobody but you.”

Viktor glances over, but by the time he is focused on his partner, Jayce is clearing his throat and adding, “Not until I had proof. She needs something concrete."

Viktor hums. 

He thinks of the crushed vials underfoot, the purple rot creeping on the walls of an old cannery. He thinks of Rio, of crabs, of waterways, strings tied on a board, veins. Viktor stares at the sprawl of paperwork and thinks of the ways in which things connect.

He says, "It is a curious theory."

Jayce nods.

"If she were correct," Viktor hedges, quietly, "what would that mean?" 

"Corruption," Jayce says, simply. "Lots of it."

"It is not hard for me to believe in that," Viktor confesses. "Not at all."

"I just don't see why," Jayce says.

Viktor shrugs. "Topsiders think the undercity is dangerous. They think its people are dangerous." 

Viktor opens his tidepool notebook, flips to a page on an observed behavior, and passes it to Jayce. 

Jayce stares down at various theories, scrawled in a tidy hand. Potential explanations for why a crab raises its claws.

• intimidate rivals

• defend territory

• attract a mate (?)

• survival

They both look to the side of the room that contains a deciphered poem, in a journal they’ve dubbed Vander.

But then, there’s this thing in your head

And it’s raging

Lighting every nerve with madness

To fight

To survive

Viktor takes a deep breath, thinking of the words of the Doctor. The mutation must survive. Rio. The substance. Shimmer. 

“We should discuss it with her,” Viktor says. “When we return.” 

Jayce looks over the room, and he asks, in a low tone, “Are we going crazy?” 

“Perhaps,” Viktor says, shrugging. He looks at the clock, winces, and says, “It is nearly dawn. We should attempt to sleep, at some point soon.”

A lesson learned, regretfully, through ample wasted time; they’d spent a number of sleepless nights in the lab coming up with brilliant additions or applications of Hextech, which, after they allowed themselves to succumb to their exhaustion, their well rested minds had pulled apart in moments. 

Jayce surveys the room, nods, and deposits the book on the couch before he reaches his arms above himself in a languid stretch. Viktor would like to stare but regrettably finds himself occupied releasing a yawn so wide his jaw clicks. 

“Food,” Jayce remembers, suddenly, and stands and moves towards the kitchen like he’s been yanked. 

Viktor watches, at first, then releases a, “Wait,” and he stumbles forward to hook his crutch around Jayce’s hip. “Would this be breakfast? Technically?”

Jayce looks at the clock, then at the sky out the kitchenette window, and he says, “Technically, I suppose so.” 

“Then it is my duty,” Viktor says, nodding, and he pulls Jayce back, and pushes past him. He makes a shooing motion towards the front door, says, “Go. Collect more flowers.” 

Jayce laughs. Says, voice soft, “Any requests?” 

“I leave it up to you,” Viktor responds, reaching for the eggs in the icebox. 

Jayce brings a handful of flowers back with him. Yarrow again.

He says, “It’s nice outside. Sun’s rising. Want to get some air? Eat on the sand?”

Viktor hums, nods, and plates eggs, toast, sliced fruit. Jayce picks them up and brings them out to the chairs settled in front of the cottage, and Viktor follows. Jayce presses the stems of the flowers into the sand, to stand between them. 

They sit in the beach chairs, plates in their laps, and together they watch as the sunlight crests from the forest behind them to spill out over the sea. They eat breakfast slowly. Methodically. Quietly. 

In the wake of the rapid-fire back and forth from the hours of near-frantic collaboration, the calm settles less like quiet, more like a buzz under Viktor’s skin.

He says, quietly. “I am beginning to feel like we should pivot the aim of the next era of Hextech.”

Jayce only nods, sets his empty plate down. He says, “Me too. It’ll make it harder to sell to the council, maybe, but Hextech should help people. Now.” Jayce shrugs. “I know the Atlas gauntlets were meant to help the mining colonies. Starting to wonder if that’s even a good idea. Maybe we scrap that, repurpose the hexclaw and the gauntlets into something else.” 

“They’d make a decent basis for a prosthetic design,” Viktor notes. 

Jayce nods, shrugs. “We should do more research, I think. Consult with minds from the Undercity. See what people need. Consider the potential impacts more carefully.”

Viktor sighs, pinches his nose, and nods. He looks out at the waves. The surface of something vast and unknowable. In its depths, monsters. 

Also crabs, who wear hats. 

“Do you think the Hexgate might be causing knock-on effects? Like the vents?” Jayce wonders, his expression guarded. Vulnerable. 

Viktor frowns, hums. “It seems unlikely. Our research was extensive. But it might be worth evaluating the hexheart again.” 

Jayce exhales, nods. “The gates are operational. Other than maintenance. The council is dependent on them, and we’re the only ones who can keep them running.” He takes a deep breath. “That’s leverage. Maybe we put Hextech research on pause for a bit. Shift to help Sky with her project; give her all the resources and manpower we can.” 

Viktor exhales, relieved. “Yes. I agree.”

“Cool,” Jayce says, grinning. “Guess we’ll see if that plan holds up to scrutiny when we have some sleep?” 

Viktor huffs, and nods, because he knows from experience that some of their sleepless plans do not hold up against a light breeze, let alone scrutiny. He remembers, once, freshly awoken himself, rousing Jayce from one of the cots in the lab to point over at a densely-marked chalkboard. Viktor had let his raised eyebrow do all the speaking, so Jayce had blinked blearily at the chalkboard and then eventually huffed a soft laugh. Jayce had stood, stretching, and then he’d gone for the eraser and taken it to a diagram where they had, the night before, quite literally reinvented the wheel.  

On the sand in the sun of the beach, Jayce leans back, like he’s remembered something, and groans. “Gonna have to rearrange all of our notes to pull out the couch bed.”

Viktor looks out at the ocean. Takes a deep breath.

“We could share the real bed,” he says, shrugging one shoulder, voice carefully measured. 

Jayce is silent, for a moment. Viktor watches the waves roll in and out, the shoreline receding incrementally in their wake. As the seconds pass, Viktor finds his confidence similarly crumbling, cascading away. He keeps his breathing even, his eyes on the water. 

Jayce asks, eventually, “You would be comfortable with that?” 

“Of course,” Viktor says, in a too-cavilier tone that is a deflection in itself. He scoffs, adds, “It is a massive bed, Jayce. We could likely maintain a similar distance as when we sleep with our cots positioned at separate ends of our laboratory.” 

“Right,” Jayce says, after a long moment. An exhale, like a sigh.

Jayce shuffles forward, reaching to the ground between them, and Viktor hears him ask, “Would you want this?” 

Viktor looks, then. At Jayce’s guarded expression. At the yarrow, held out in Jayce’s hand.

“If you would like me to have it,” Viktor says. He shrugs, confesses, “It holds little meaning to me.” 

Jayce’s expression does something strange. Viktor watches it closely, and finds that it holds little meaning to him as well; he cannot tell what it means. 

He goes to ask, but Jayce looks away, and he places the stems back in the sand between their chairs. He stands, gestures towards the door behind them. Still wearing that same strange expression, he asks, “Shall we, then?” 

Viktor realizes what’s about to happen, and his heart drops into his stomach. He and Jayce are going to share a bed. 

Which means Viktor is not going to be able to sleep. Not with Jayce that close to where Viktor’s always wanted him. It is, however, as close as he will ever get. So he stands, and he follows Jayce up the steps, into the waiting chaos of the living room.  

Jayce pulls his sleepclothes from a bag near the couch, and then follows Viktor into the bedroom. The bedroom of a seaside cottage. Where they are alone. Where they will sleep together. In the same bed. 

“You have a side you prefer?” Jayce asks. Viktor nods, not trusting himself to speak. He moves, instead. He sits down on his preferred side of the bed, which is answer enough anyway, and begins to unclasp the fastenings on his brace. 

Somewhere nearby, Jayce changes into his sleep clothes silently. Viktor only lets himself glance up when Jayce crosses in front of him, to lift an empty pitcher from the nightstand. Jayce walks it out of the room with it, and returns a minute later. The pitcher is full of water, and in Jayce’s hand is another cup. He places them both back upon the nightstand, crosses back around the bed, and pulls back the covers to slip beneath them.

Viktor stays seated. Still. Barely breathing. 

Then he lies down, lifts the covers as well, and he stares at the ceiling. 

“If… If you need me to go, at any point, I will.” Jayce’s voice. Soft. Vulnerable. Nestled in the sound of rushing waves outside.

“Unnecessary,” Viktor forces himself to say, quickly. The curtains are closed, the light from the dawn hidden in the small room, but the sounds of waking gulls and the rush of ocean waves which had lulled him to rest the previous nights make their way in. Very much muted, under the roaring of Viktor’s heartbeat in his eardrums. 

The crabs are stirring in the pool outside, in the morning. Viktor forces himself to think of them, instead of his current predicament. 

Sandalwood, smoke. The smell of Jayce’s hair, a scent recently stolen from a pillow. A detail that is only pleasant until Viktor realizes he has shifted from hazy dreams to a dream even his subconscious mind wouldn’t think to torment him with. 

He barters, internally, for ignorance from himself. For the ability to pretend he is not awake. For an excuse not to recognize reality. The reality that he had fallen asleep, after all. The reality that Jayce had as well. 

The reality that their bodies are wound together inextricably, like the boundary of tide and shore. 

To be this close… To have it mean nothing…

Waves in the distance, waves within himself, and a tide rising he cannot hold back. Salt. Water.

It spills out of him, sudden as a crash, as incomprehensible as the ocean.

When Jayce wakes up, the line of Viktor’s body is pressed against his, which would be a dream come true, except for the fact that Viktor is fucking crying. 

Jayce wakes up because the man in his arms—his partner, his best friend, his reason for being—is crying. He wakes up because within the circle of Jayce’s arms, Viktor’s shoulders are shaking. 

For a delirious moment, Jayce wants to pull him closer, run his hands up his back, cup Viktor’s face. For a delirious moment, Jayce’s first words after waking are almost, Vik, what’s wrong? 

Then Jayce remembers the way of things, and he knows what’s wrong is the fact that Jayce is holding Viktor at all. 

What’s wrong is that Jayce has taken this too far. What’s wrong is that he’s stolen too much.

Jayce launches himself away from Viktor, and in a sleep-rough voice, says, “Vik, I’m so sorry.” 

Viktor doesn’t say anything at all. He rolls onto his back, takes a shaking inhale, and is silent. He’s silent as he cries. 

So Jayce says, “I didn’t mean to… I wouldn’t have ever—” 

Viktor sobs, then. 

Jayce shoves further away, trying to give him more space, and in the process, he tumbles off the bed, all while muttering, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’ll go.” 

Then he’s stumbling outside the cottage, flinching in the light of the sun, which he realizes abruptly is setting. The rotation of the cosmos graciously closing out the day Jayce Talis fucked up the best part of his life.

Jayce finds himself running to the water, falling to his knees in the surf, like he’s praying for the sun to turn around, to go back, to start the day over. Like he’s begging the ocean to spit the sun back out. 

Anything. Anything to stop him from losing the man he loves entirely because Viktor finally got around to noticing Jayce wants more. 

Cait had been wrong. 

“Viktor is in love with you,” she’d said, profoundly exasperated, a few weeks ago. She hadn’t added idiot after, but her tone had placed it in the absence of the word anyhow. “He’s just frightened.” 

And when Jayce had opened his mouth to protest it, she’d continued, “Jayce, even if he doesn’t love you, how long can you let it go on like this?”

Jayce had let his answer stick in the back of his throat, because the answer was forever. And that would always be true. So long as he got to be around Viktor, to create with him, to work towards their shared dream together? He could let it go on forever. 

He wouldn’t risk what they had for more; Viktor had given him everything already.

And Viktor had never shown any interest in Jayce. In anyone, really. 

But Cait thought differently, and Cait’s answer had been different. A few weeks ago, in her bedroom, she had put her hand on Jayce’s shoulder, and her answer had been, “By my estimation, Jayce? You can let this go on for the duration of exactly one more impossibly long and very sad soliloquy about how beautiful Viktor’s eyes are before I might genuinely kill you.”  

Jayce had hung his head between his knees, and he’d said, “They are so beautiful, Cait. But he’s not in love with me.” 

Cait had sighed, and picked her way through the remnants of their lunch and the scattered notes dominating her quasi-floor, quasi-conspiracy-board in order to collapse on the couch opposite to him.

She’d said, “You are a scientist, aren’t you? Don’t you need to test your hypotheses?"

Jayce had shrugged. “Not this one. Look, Viktor is confident. Brave. He doesn’t give a shit about what anyone thinks of him. That includes me, Cait. If he wanted that with me, he would have said something by now.” 

“No, he wouldn’t,” Cait had spat. “Because you’re both idiots.”

Jayce should have known she’d been wrong then, really, because Viktor’s very much a genius. 

But when Cait had told him they needed a change of scenery, to spend some time with one another outside of their lab, and when she had outlined a plan, Jayce had listened. And when she’d offered up her family’s seaside cottage, Jayce had let himself hope. He’d come up with an excuse, and he’d pitched it to Viktor almost entirely certain he’d be rebuffed. Then Viktor had agreed. 

Jayce had spent the following weeks in a near-constant state of panic. He’d thrown himself into the Atlas Gauntlets. The prototypes were weeks ahead of their sechedule. 

But Cait had been wrong.

Very wrong. 

Viktor is his friend, yes, and they are close, absolutely. But the sun disappears beneath the waves, and Jayce has overstepped, and he can’t take it back.

He’s seen Viktor on days where the pain is bad enough that he actually asks for Jayce’s help getting home. He’s seen Viktor furious, biting back his sharp humor at stupid parties hosted by their patrons and members of the council. He has seen Viktor frustrated, stuck on a problem with hextech development. Sleepless. 

Jayce has seen Viktor in distress, but he’s never seen Viktor cry before. 

And he’d made Viktor cry, somehow.

By being too much. Touching too much. Not reining it in. 

Stupid. Stupid. 

Jayce had stolen a night wound up in the man he loves and he’s going to lose him for it.

Jayce sobs, before the ocean, as if it might make a difference. The shifting waves say nothing, offering only the same chorus as before. They will continue their song, the rush of ebbing and flowing; the ocean will sing it forever.

Jayce realizes he needs to breathe right. Forces himself out of gasping breaths by inhaling deep, runs his hands over his face, forces himself to release it, slow. He grabs a fistful of sand, lets it run through his fingers. Does everything at his disposal. 

The roaring in his ears dulls. The ache in his chest lingers.

Maybe he can apologize, if he goes back inside. Maybe he can make this right. 

Maybe he can tell Viktor it was a mistake. That Jayce loves him, but he meant to hold it back. That he can hold it back. That he will hold it back. Forever. 

That he’d do anything. Anything. 

He pushes himself off his knees. He looks up the beach towards the cottage. 

A light is on. 

Viktor is… Viktor is okay. He’d turned a light on. 

Jayce stares at it for a long moment, sighs, sits in the sand, and looks back out to the waves, propping his chin on his knees.

The sun is gone, the stars appearing. The moon rises over the waves.

Jayce tries to change gears, tries to come up with the right words, the correct apology. He’ll make this right. Somehow.

He’d thought Viktor had been indifferent. Same as always. That maybe that meant he wouldn’t mind if Jayce… if Jayce slept next to him, at least. And maybe that was true. Viktor had been the one to suggest it, after all.

But Viktor clearly didn’t want Jayce holding him. And Jayce hadn’t meant to step that far, he’d just… He’d been asleep.

So Jayce just needs to never do that again, and maybe they’ll be fine. 

Viktor had been uncomfortable. Uncomfortable enough to cry. 

So Jayce really doesn't want to hold him. Jayce doesn’t want the smell of Viktor’s sunbalm or auburn hair tickling his chin, he doesn't want to touch, or kiss, or make love to Viktor. 

He would want to. Gods would Jayce want to. But only if Viktor wanted it too. Really wanted it. 

Indifference wouldn’t be enough. Viktor indulging him wouldn't be enough. And sleeping next to Viktor, in the same bed, under the guise of practicality?

That felt worse than having nothing, actually.

Jayce is surprised he’d been able to fall asleep at all. He’s not surprised that while dreaming he’d tried to fill his arms with everything he can’t have while awake. 

Jayce will tell him, then, that… That he fucked up, and that he didn’t mean to, and that he’d keep his distance, and that…

He’d tell Viktor that he only wants whatever Viktor will give him. 

And maybe it would be helpful to know what that is, because there’s a kinda hazy boundary between what Viktor is clearly comfortable with in their partnership—their friendship—and whatever sleeping in a bed wrapped up with someone means. 

But Jayce has overstepped, so maybe Viktor doesn’t even want to be friends anymore. And maybe that would be fine, so long as—

It hits Jayce, then.

They also had just put forward the idea that they stop working on Hextech for the time being.

So maybe Viktor wouldn’t actually want to be partners anymore. 

At all. In any sense of the word. 

And suddenly Jayce can’t breathe again. 

He’s in the middle of working his way up to a full-blown full-body kind of panic when he hears the door open. 

He looks up to see Viktor on the terrace of the cottage. Viktor’s silhouette, really, backlit in the door. 

“Jayce?” his voice calls, soft. 

“Here,” stumbles out of Jayce, in between rapid breaths. And then, louder, choked, “I’m over here.” 

Viktor doesn’t say anything, for a long time. Then he pulls something out from his pocket. He’s dressed, then. He flicks on the lighter, and a blue glow casts over the cottage, over the slope of the steps. Viktor steps down, then starts making his way across the sand. 

He settles beside Jayce, places his crutch down between them. He clicks the light off. 

It is quiet then, only the rushing of waves, only the light of the moon glinting off their crests.

Jayce stares at Viktor, chin still propped on his knees. He hadn’t figured out what to say yet, so he’s stuck on whether he should try saying something or just wait. 

Viktor sighs, like the breeze that blows in off the surf. He says, after, “I am sorry, Jayce.”

“What?” Jayce blurts, before he works out that he's going to say something after all. “Viktor, what?” 

And in the light of the moon, bare as it is, Viktor seems like he means to continue, but that doesn’t make fucking sense.

So Jayce interrupts, “This was clearly my… I obviously... Viktor, what would you possibly be sorry for?” 

“For being in love with you.”

Viktor sounds hurt. He sounds like Jayce had made him say it. Like he didn’t want to. Which makes even fucking less sense. 

“That’s not true,” is what Jayce says. “You don’t.” 

Viktor laughs, wet, teary, and he croaks, “What the fuck do you mean I don’t?”

“Do not lie to me,” Jayce snaps. Then he winces at his own voice, and says, softer, shattered, “Please don’t lie to me, Viktor. Not about this.” 

Viktor sobs, again, and wipes his eyes. He says, tears glistening under the moon, a humourless laugh in his voice, “Why would you think I am lying?” 

“I picked you yarrow,” is what Jayce says. It’s not the most relevant piece of information, maybe, but it’s what he says, anyway. “I gave you yarrow, and you said it held little meaning.”  

Silence, waves, moonlight. A furrowed brow, a scoff. 

“Jayce, it does not hold any meaning to me. What the fuck does yarrow mean?”

“It’s…” Jayce says, stumbles. “It’s yarrow.”

He watches Viktor inhale, deep, and he exhales. Viktor grips his hair, and he stares out at the moonlit waves. 

“I am not from Piltover, Jayce,” Viktor says, quietly. “What does yarrow mean?” 

“It’s… I want to court you, Viktor.”

Viktor’s eyes flash to him. 

“I wanted to,” Jayce corrects, quickly. “I don’t want to anymore. I only want that if that’s what you want, but I don’t need it from you; I don’t need anything. Viktor I can… I’m so fucking in love with you, but I won’t be, somehow, if you… if you stay, I’ll figure it out. I promise, Vik, I’ll figure it out, I’ll hold it back.”

Viktor’s mouth does something strange. 

Jayce promises, “Zaun can hold back the fucking ocean, Vik, it doesn’t have to slide into the Sump, I can… I can fix it. I can fix this.” 

Viktor stares.

“Please don’t leave me,” Jayce whispers. “Please, Viktor.” 

Motion, unseen beneath the surface. A tectonic plate shifted, continents crashing together, buckling. 

Something deep in Viktor must give, because suddenly Jayce is swept into him. 

Viktor shifts, surges. Hands on Jayce’s face, nails clawing into Jayce’s jaw, lips and teeth at Jayce’s chin. Jayce’s hands fly to hold him steady, hold him closer, like he’s dreaming, a reflex, not a thought. 

“You fucking idiot,” Viktor snarls, hot against Jayce mouth.

Jayce doesn’t have much time to wonder which of them he’s talking to before Viktor’s mouth is on his. And at that point, Jayce can’t wonder about anything else. 

A lifetime of gnawing curiosity, sated in an instant, because Jayce can’t feel more wonder than this. Apparently, there is a maximum. 

And maximum wonder feels something like Viktor’s tongue pressing behind his teeth, something like the vibration of Viktor groaning into his mouth, something like being pulled from an edge, something like being lifted from the ground of a trespassed office, something like magic, something like… Something like Viktor loving him. 

Viktor hadn’t been lying, then.

Piltover Academy Publications

“Field research indicates omnivorous scuttle crab may be possible ecological stabilizer against biomass spread from grey-capturing organics in underwater-systems”

by Sky Young

Shocking no one, field research also indicates that the founders of Hextech are deeply romantically entangled.

-- Sky Young's Private Journal