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“...why am I led in two directions, now by anger,
now by love? My double inclination tears me apart.”
‘Medea,’ in Six Tragedies, trans. Emily Wilson
What Viktor notices, immediately afterwards, is sensation. The wind around the high tower of the Hexgates, touching his skin; a creaking pain in his knees where they touch glass and metal; the searing heat of Jayce's arms around him. He always did run hot. In the lab, Jayce had always worked by an open window while Viktor had hunched beneath his coat on the other side of the room.
Jayce is whispering something in his ear. At first, Viktor thinks that Jayce is speaking a different language. But no: it's simply been so long since Viktor has heard real speech, real words. The act of listening feels so…organic. So fleshy.
You're the only one who could show me, Jayce is saying. You're only one; you're the only one, the only one.
There is so much mundanity in the aftermath. Cleaning up the city, doing a headcount, naming the dead, organising a memorial, finding rooms and beds for Zaunite refugees. Everywhere Viktor goes he expects people to stop in horror; to point at him in accusation, to scream and run or spit in disgust. Here's the man whose ego nearly killed us all; whose desperate longings for peace were deluded into a horrible, cosmic uniformity.
The first night, lying on a makeshift bed in a spare empty room in the academy, Viktor stares at the ceiling in the dark, imagining stars.
How do I live with this shame? He asks Skye, who doesn't answer.
The next day, he glimpses Jayce in a crowd. He's with Caitlyn, the two of them directing a cleanup effort. Enforcers fan out around them, efficient and brusque. Viktor moves slowly into the crowd, still astonished by the sensation of bodies against his own; still jumping out of his skin when someone brushes by him.
Jayce spots him. Smiles as a reflex. In a stab, in yet another overwhelming sensation, Viktor thinks: that's what I came back to myself for. To see that. To make that happen. All this time, and it was so simple. Did I have to see the whole potentiality of the endless universe to finally realise that what I truly desire is right there, in that moment, in this face?
Jayce makes his way towards Viktor. Viktor tightens his grip on the head of his cane. When he came back to this body—when the form of the Herald unfurled like a horrible cocoon, revealing him at its centre—he’d hoped, stupidly, to have been repaired. Did the realisation that imperfection was acceptable really need to be accompanied by such a constant reminder?
Jayce smiles at him again. “Viktor,” he says, not spitting out the name with disgust which he’d be well within his rights to do. “Viktor. You’re here. Listen; can you give me a minute? I want to talk with you.”
I gave you all the time in the world, Viktor thinks. I gave you every horrible, twisted version of myself and you turned around and fixed them all. “Of course,” he says, and finds a wall to lean against while he waits.
He watches idly as Jayce moves away, says something quietly to Caitlyn, and begins issuing more instructions. Jayce doesn’t move with the same easy strength he once did—he, too, has come out of this war bearing scars—but the grace is the same. Has Jayce ever truly known how he seems to other people? Does Jayce know that everyone is at least a little bit in love with him? Viktor suspects he doesn’t. What other man could be made the posterboy of the future and everyone’s sweetheart and not become an insufferable idiot? Only Jayce, he thinks. Perhaps it was better that nature gave Viktor such a broken body, such a disgusting strangle of bones and flesh. What would he have been like, if he’d had Jayce’s strength, height, beauty? More cruel. More cruel, and less forgiving.
Jayce comes back over to him. Once again, he doesn’t punish Viktor as he should. Doesn’t spit on him. Doesn’t beckon the crowd over to begin the drawing and quartering. He just smiles again. Viktor knows he’ll never earn that expression. No matter what he does, he’ll never, ever earn it. Every time he sees it it’ll be another penny in the bank of Viktor Having Things He Doesn’t Deserve.
“Walk with me?” Jayce asks.
They make their way slowly through Piltover. Jayce chats idly about the cleanup efforts; he stays away from sensitive subjects, like headcounts and death tolls. When they are further from the crowds, Viktor realises that Jayce has been leading them to a small grassy spot shaded by a tree. It releases blossom into the gentle wind like a handful of confetti unfurling. Jayce sits heavily on a white marble bench and pats the spot next to him, which Viktor takes, as he takes everything else.
The heat coming off Jayce’s body is incredible. Viktor's never met anyone as alive as Jayce, never. He swallows. “I am sorry…not to have found the time to speak with you earlier.”
It sounds lame, even to his ears. He winces. Hangs his head, which seems to grow heavier and heavier with each passing day.
Jayce places a hand between Viktor’s shoulder blades. That’s another thing unique to Jayce—the easiness of his touch. In early days, Viktor had wondered whether…well, he’d wondered. He’d watched Jayce’s eyes to see if they flickered, sometimes, in his direction. He’d held his breath when Jayce touched him in case Jayce touched him…more.
But it turned out that Jayce touched everyone. He was just a kinetic person; a tactile person. If he and Viktor encountered the same tangle of cogs and wires, Viktor would stare at it until its solution relieved itself in his mind; Jayce would pick it up and turn it over in his hands. Viktor twisted his own hands in his lap, shaking off a single petal that had landed on his wrist. He’s still taken aback by the sight of his own flesh; its…vulnerability. He’s grown unaccustomed to being skin.
“It’s not like there’s been time to speak properly. And besides…I still don’t know what to say.” The arm Jayce had on Viktor’s back is now slung around his shoulders. Viktor feels the heat of it like a stole.
“There’s only one thing I want to say, and it will never be enough. Not after everything I have done.”
“I know you’d be all…flagellation-y. I knew you’d be all knotted up inside your head. That’s why I wanted to talk with you earlier. There’s no point looking back, Viktor. You gotta keep looking forwards. Don’t dwell on what’s happened. Hey?”
Viktor looks up at Jayce, who’s got a half-smile and a hopeful shine in his eye. Viktor makes an expression of disbelief. “Looking forwards? Are you still trying to be the man of progress? I’ve left a wake of dead bodies, Jayce. I’ll be looking at the past forever.”
Jayce’s fingers tighten.
“Sorry,” says Viktor, and stands. Or tries to, at least. Jayce yanks him back down onto the bench and fixes an arm around his shoulders again. Viktor lets out an involuntary yelp.
“No way. Sorry. No way. I didn’t risk every possible future to get you back just to lose you to being president of the Viktor-Hating Club. I’m disbanding the club. Officially. With all my power as…whatever I am, now. Something high up in government, or something. You’re officially banned from Viktor-Hating. Viktor-Forgiving only, from now on. Got it?”
How strange. Viktor had forgotten what laughter felt like. He touches a hand to his own chest and feels the foreign sensation of a smile on his face. Jayce’s hand reaches further down Viktor’s shoulder and touches Viktor’s fingers. Viktor stills. Holds his breath.
Jayce lets out a rueful laugh. “How long have we been partners? Which we still are, by the way. I meant to tell you, but Dictatlyn—I mean, Caitlyn—has some serious building projects planned, and she wants engineers. I kind of volunteered us. But anyway, how long? Years, right?”
“Years,” Viktor agrees. He still feels the phantom sensation of Jayce’s fingers on his own. How can everything be so beautiful; how can it all present itself to someone so undeserving of beauty? The slow shedding of the tree’s petals, the sunlight glancing off each mirror-white branch, and Jayce’s sun-bronzed skin beside him, releasing heat.
Jayce grins, showing the small gap in his teeth, which Viktor realises—with a twist in his gut—he wants to touch with his tongue. Which explains things, he supposes.
“You know,” Jayce says, rubbing the back of his neck with the hand which isn’t around Viktor. “I had a bit of a hero-worship thing for you, in the beginning. I don’t know if I ever mentioned it. But like, I was at my absolute lowest, and then you swooped in, and believed in me, and stood up for me…yeah, I kind of had a bit of a crush on you. For embarrassingly long, actually. Hey, remember that time we got caught breaking in to try the Hextech and you pretended you’d just been taking me to your room? Man, I thought about that for ages.” Jayce laughs and stands. “Listen. I’m just trying to say that nobody’s perfect. But we’ve got something great, between us. I’ll see you tomorrow in the lab? No time like the present.” He winks.
Viktor watches him leave, torn between two emotions: first, a mixed-up, cosmic sort of emotion which makes him want to weep and scream and turn the blossom tree into a purple husk with the force of his mind. The second emotion is a kind of…what-the-fuck. What the fuck.
Viktor is there the next morning. So is Jayce: braced on a low table, shirt sleeves rolled up to his elbows, back muscles perfect and expansive. He turns. “Morning,” he says with a grin. “Déjà vu, or what?”
Viktor swallows. “Buildings,” he says. “Am I to be trusted with engineering buildings? What if I build…”
“A super evil building that causes the second end of the world?” Jayce pulls up a stool for Viktor to perch on and touches his hand—oh god, oh god—to the back of Viktor’s neck. When he takes his hand away again, the sensation remains as a prickling heat. Then—fuck—he takes Viktor’s face in his hands. His eyes are clear. “Then I’ll be there to stop you. I promise, Viktor. It’ll be okay. This is where you’re meant to be.”
That night, Viktor undresses and looks at his body. He doesn’t have mirrors in this small, dorm-like room he’s set up in, so he sits on the ground and spreads his legs out in front of himself, then his arms out above them, staring at his skin. The grey-purple had not upset him, necessarily. It had felt right to lose bits of himself; to change. He feels now like he’s wearing a lie, or a very old suit. His skin is really skin, though it seems as though some moles and freckles aren’t quite where they were. But he’s what he was. Outwardly.
This is the body Jayce had a crush on, he thinks, and then thinks what a colossally stupid thought that was to have. He was nearly single handedly responsible for the end of life-as-we-know-it, and he’s worrying about crushes like some schoolboy.
Jayce would find that funny, he thinks, and that makes him think about Jayce’s smile, which makes him think about kissing Jayce, which gives him a hard on so persistent that he ends up lying face-down on his bed trying to suffocate himself to sleep.
He wakes. Unfortunately. Does the same thing the day after, and the day after that. Jayce is cheery and efficient in the lab. He only mentions Mel once, fondly, like an old friend. Caitlyn drops in, as does her scary pink-haired girlfriend. Ekko comes by, and he and Jayce strike up a weirdly intense conversation which ends in them pledging to get a drink together every week until the day they die. Viktor stays quietly in the corner of the workshop for that one. Jayce deserves a life, he thinks. I do not deserve a life, he also thinks.
“If you’re sitting over there thinking bad things about yourself, then stop. I can smell your self-hatred from over here. Now: give me some thoughts about ventilation and structural integrity. Stat.”
The first time Jayce heads out to meet Ekko for a drink, he invites Viktor along. Viktor declines and leans heavily on his cane so that Jayce will think he’s in too much pain and won’t push the matter. Which he doesn’t. Viktor should get a spike of success from knowing Jayce so well, but he doesn’t.
He heads slowly back to his room. Undresses slowly and lies back on the sheets.
I don’t deserve this life, he says to Skye, who once again does not answer.
You don’t answer because I killed you. Or because I resurrected you and made you party to my mass indoctrination of my brainless zombie army. Damnit, Skye. I just wanted peace. I just wanted an end to pain. How can I have wanted that so badly that I created something so horrible? That I became something so…not-human?
And how can I deserve this life? He thinks about Jayce, Jayce’s smile, the light inside their lab, the way he feels as though someone’s handed him a ticket back to the happiest days of his life. I’m waiting for it all to be yanked out from under me, he thinks. I’m just waiting for it all to go wrong. Again.
After a couple of hours, he sits up, dresses, and heads back to the lab.
Halfway there, in the corridors, a shape. Dark, fumbling; feeling its way along the wall. Viktor imagines the worst: one of his brainless army, come back to finish him off. An assassin.
It’s Jayce. A very, very drunk Jayce. He collapses onto Viktor, who groans under Jayce’s weight: all muscle, all heat, all closeness.
“Viktor,” he says, alcohol a cloud on his breath. He takes Viktor’s shoulders in his own and looks into his eyes. “Viktor,” he says again. “Fucking hell, I am so…man, I am absolutely smashed. Sorry. Fucking hell. That guy can drink. He’s crazy, man. Time shit. I’ve gotta tell you, only…shit. I hardly remember. Walk me to my room. Please. Haha, do you remember when we were breaking in…what were we doing? Anyway, you pretended…”
“That I was lost on the way to my room, yes.” Viktor has slung one of Jayce’s arms around his shoulders and is walking him slowly to his room. He loves Jayce’s weight. Loves it. It’s the best feeling in the world, he thinks. Jayce has no idea the greed with which Viktor is taking that sensation and holding it close to his chest like a miserable, stolen treasure.
“Fuck, did I already say that? Fuck. Shit. Well, listen. Did I tell you, way at the beginning, I had a huge crush on you? Huge. You hung the moon, man. I wanked over you like crazy. Your face…I mean, do you even know what you look like?”
Viktor feels as though his knees as going to buckle. Jayce is so heavy, his skin is so hot, and he’s absolutely overwhelmed. He wants to walk off into the dark, cool corridors. He wants to kiss Jayce. He wants to not want what he wants. “You have mentioned that, yes.”
“Did you…I mean, did you know?”
Viktor thinks. Did he? No. He’d been too busy thinking about equations; too busy being convinced that nobody in their right mind—or their wrong one—could look at him and want him. Not when there was even a single other option in the world. And certainly not someone like Jayce—someone so perfect, so beautiful, so brilliant. Viktor knew someone would have to be crazy to want him.
But then—Viktor glances sideways at Jayce, who’s feeling his way along the wall with his free hand and a very focused expression on his face. But then—wasn’t Jayce a little crazy? Hadn’t he always been? His drive, his conviction?
They’re at Jayce’s room. Jayce fumbles for his keys. Viktor takes them from his hand. Jayce covers Viktor’s hand with his own and looks at him, his eyes clear and wide. “Viktor,” he says.
Viktor feels his face fall. “Don’t. Don’t you dare make me think you might still want me. Not when I am...this. Don’t you dare.”
He opens Jayce’s room, forces the keys back into Jayce’s hands, and limps away down the corridor.
Viktor packs one small bag and sets off for Zaun. He thinks: Jayce will wake up disappointed. Scratch that: Jayce will wake up hungover. He’ll go to the lab and realise I’m not there. He’ll wait for a while and then come looking for me. Or not. But if he does, he’ll soon realise I’ve left, and he’ll heave a sigh of relief. And then I really can grant some peace: I can let them forget me.
“Going somewhere?”
Viktor jumps. The scary pink-haired woman—what was her name? Fi? Di?—peels herself off a wall and stands in front of him. They’re on the very edges of Piltover, where its architecture starts to get that Zaunite grime. The alleyway they’re in is narrow enough that the woman fills the exit, her arms crossed. Viktor freezes. Then he relaxes.
Actually, this is the best thing that could happen. This is righteous retribution. He can let the woman beat his head into a soggy pulp of brain cells, and everything will be set to rights. Viktor steps forwards. Tries to think of something inflammatory to say, to set her off. “Did anybody you love die? During it all?”
“Jesus. A ‘yes’ would have been fine. But yeah. My sister. Others, too. Why?”
“It was my fault.”
The woman leans against the wall again. “Nah.”
Viktor frowns. Tilts his head. “It was. I was the Machine Herald. You were there, at the camp.”
“Oh, your little cult? Yeah, creepy as fuck. But hey—I’ve killed people too.”
Viktor lets his bag drop to the ground. “You don’t understand. I’m responsible for your sister’s death.”
“Nah.” She shrugs. Viktor feels like tearing his hair out. “That was the result of a whole mess of factors. Besides; not even totally convinced she’s actually carked it. She’s not the dying type. Like a cockroach, you know? Anyway—you’re trying to run away, yeah?”
Viktor looks the woman—Vi, that was it—up and down. Her arms are still folded and she’s got one boot up on the wall. There’s a small, bite-shaped bruise on her neck. When she sees Viktor looking at it, she touches it lightly. “Caitlyn,” she says, by way of explanation. “You know, I had a wobbly too. Escaped back to some old haunts. Caitlyn got me back. It’s normal to freak out. It’d be weirder not too. Want to know what she said to me?”
Viktor acquiesces and leans against the wall too. Looks up at the sky and wishes that he could see the stars. Maybe that’s something he and Jayce could work on for the new improved Zaunite-Piltover renaissance. Streetlight that doesn’t block out the starlight; something with the wavelength of red light, but somehow…not red? Surely there’s a way.
Then he shakes his head once, sharply. “What?” He asks.
Vi laughs. The sound is fond. “I was expecting some great, meaningful speech. Something about what we owe the future, blah blah. Something like your boy toy would say in one of his big white-coat microphone speeches about the glorious future, you know? But she just said…hey, what did you say to me babe?” Vi calls out the last few words through a door on the other side of her, through which the thumping sound of club music sounds. Evidently she can decipher an answer from the garbled shout she gets in response.
She laughs and looks at Viktor through her hair. “Sorry about her. We’re doing a celebration night before the week of mourning. Celebrating life, you know? Anyway, when she came and got me from the hole I’d crawled into, she said two things.” Vi holds up two fingers and folds them down with each point. “One: there’s stuff to do here to fix things, and crying fixes nothing. Two: not all of us were lucky enough to survive, and no one ever came back to life because someone else spent theirs tied up in guilt and regret. You get given life? It comes wrapped in the responsibility to live.”
“And then everyone clapped, and Vi fell to her knees and pledged her life to the worship of my body and mind.” Caitlyn appears from the doorway limned in violet light and slings her arms around Vi’s shoulder, laughing.
Viktor pauses. "He’s not my boy toy," he says, and then turns around and heads home.
So Viktor goes back. Goes to his room; sleeps for two hours then washes himself, wishing for the first time that he had a mirror. Then he goes to the lab.
Jacye is there. Of course he is. The light is on him, limning him in gold. Viktor stands in the doorway for a while, stunned. How can he seem so new every day? Looking at Jayce is like seeing an idea made flesh: it’s exciting, it’s impossible. It’s his.
“Can you close the door? My head’s killing me and I don’t want anyone to come in. Anyone except you, I mean.”
Viktor closes the door and crosses the room. Stops an arm’s length from Jayce. “You do not need to match him pint for pint. This way you are feeling is your own fault. But anyway; apparently it is a week of mourning starting today. No one will be shouting in jubilation. You and your hangover can relax.”
Jayce touches the back of his neck sheepishly and leans on his elbow to look at Viktor. They face each other. Viktor’s heart beats so, so fast. “Did I, ah…say much? Last night? I think I bumped into you. I’m pretty sure I nearly knocked you over, actually.”
Viktor smiles, and Jayce smiles in return. He’s always been reactive, that way. “You encountered me. Then you…propositioned me.”
“Ah, shit.”
“And then I left Piltover, heading for Zaun.”
Jayce freezes with his forehead resting in his hands. Distantly, Viktor remembers the last time he left Jayce to go back to Zaun: remembers the metal-like weight of his own body—the stretches of purple tendons where there should have been flesh. But Jayce had loved him, even like that. He hadn’t even seemed to notice Viktor’s wrongness; had only noticed Viktor.
Viktor stretches out a hand, glancing only briefly at his own skin to verify that it is, in fact, just skin. “And then I encountered someone who changed my mind. Convinced me to stay. I am sorry I have been so uncommitted to our efforts for change, for improvement. From now on…I promise I will try and look to the future the way you do. I will try.”
His hand has landed on Jayce’s forearm. Jayce’s hand comes over to cover it. His palm is very dry, and very warm. His eyes are pointed down at the point where their skin meets. “I propositioned you?”
“That is what you take from my speech? I am promising myself to Piltover’s future. I am promising myself to—I am saying that I will work for good. That you have me totally, instead of just…partially.”
“I have you totally?” Jayce repeats the words like a question. Tightens his grip on Viktor’s hand and uses it to pull Viktor closer.
Viktor’s heart is so loud in his chest that he is sure Jayce can hear it. “I am promising myself to you, Jayce. I will do anything for you. Anything. I will even believe in the future again. Even that.”
Jayce look at him finally. It’s like a physical twisting sensation in Viktor’s gut. Then Jayce yanks him forwards, hard, his huge hand cradling the back of Viktor’s skull.
Viktor lets his cane fall to the floor. Returns the kiss, which is brilliant, which is hot, which is surprisingly wet. Jayce keeps opening his mouth too wide to do anything with, finally settling for scraping his teeth down Viktor’s neck. It’s as though he wants to eat part of Viktor, as though the kissing isn’t enough to say what he wants to say. “Say it again,” Jayce asks.
“I will do anything for you.”
“No—the other bit.”
Viktor thinks. Or tries to, as Jayce’s shaking hands undo the buttons on his shirt but keep coming back to his face to stroke along his cheekbones and touch the mole on his lip. “I…ah…will believe in the future again?”
Jayce groans. Presses his thigh in between Viktor’s legs so that Viktor’s knees go weak and he braces himself on the lab bench his one hand, using the other to work Jayce’s shirt up and over his head. He lets himself feel Jayce’s body, the compact muscle of him and the long scar across his back. He doesn’t want to stop touching; he could touch Jayce forever. He wants to find the words to tell him he’s perfect, he’s beautiful, that Viktor loves him.
“You’re perfect,” Jayce says, the words coming out as a gasp as he ruts against Viktor’s hip, his cock hard and hot. “You’re beautiful, I love you…oh fuck, Viktor. Yes. Yes. Please.”
Viktor had reached down and taken Jayce’s length in his hand. “I…you want this?”
“Yes, please. Please. Not just this…I know what you’ll be thinking—I want you, Viktor. God, I mean—look at you.”
Unbearably, Jayce takes Viktor’s face in his hands and holds him in place. Viktor flushes. “Don’t…you don’t need to do that, Jayce.”
“I know. I don’t need to do jack shit. But believe me, Viktor: you’re brilliant. Perfect. And mine, god. You’re mine.” Jayce presses back into Viktor’s hand and Viktor resumes motion. Jayce’s hands keep moving up and down Viktor’s body, undecided, unable to settle anywhere, as though he wants to do and touching every part of Viktor at once. Eventually, they land on Viktor’s hips and Viktor flinches as Jayce’s thumbs trace the bones there. Against Jayce’s body—his miraculous body, like a glorious evolution—Viktor feels ridiculous. Sickly. He twists away from Jayce’s hands and tries to keep the movement of his own hand going from a distance.
“What, you’re going to jerk me off at arm’s length because you don’t like yourself? Get back here, Viktor. Actually, no. Up.”
Jayce lifts Viktor up onto the lab bench, and Viktor feels himself slide on papers. “Jayce—”
“This okay?”
“Yes, but—”
Jayce kisses him again. Climbs up onto the bench himself and lays himself over Viktor’s body. He leans back only to look at Viktor’s face as he reaches down and joins their hands together over their cocks in a fleshy parody of their hands joined over Hextech in that lonely, cosmic realm. His face is flushed, his mouth partly open. Viktor licks the gap between Jayce's teeth and Jayce laughs in surprise, then comes on his own wrist. Viktor follows a moment afterwards, turning his head to the side so that Jayce can kiss along the line of his neck.
“I…”
“Yeah?”
Viktor looks up at Jayce again. Above him, a skylight: beyond the glass, sky. “I had this idea…about streetlights. And stars. Wavelengths.”
Jayce pulls a piece of paper out from under Viktor’s head and pins it still awkwardly while he scribbles on it. “I think I’m with you,” he says.