Chapter Text
Jayce knew he hated Viktor the moment he laid eyes on him.
Okay, that wasn’t exactly true. When he first saw him walk into the lecture hall dressed far too nicely for how early it was, his initial thought was damn, this guy is hot.
Jayce was a curious person by nature, and a few hushed whispers with those seated nearby confirmed his suspicion that the unfairly attractive student wasn’t previously in the class. Jayce wondered where he came from. Whether he was actually interested in engineering or just taking the class to fulfill some requirement.
He forgot about the new guy after that as the professor began to lecture, Jayce taking down his usual half-legible notes. Not to be a dick, but Jayce was pretty sure he was killing it in this class. They were only a few weeks in, but Professor Heimerdinger always seemed interested in his ideas. And if he could get some sort of assistant position to work on Hextech with him…well, he’d probably be set for life.
When Heimerdinger asked the class a question, Jayce’s hand was the first to shoot in the air. Honestly, he didn’t care if the other students thought he was a teacher’s pet (because, let’s face it—he kind of was).
Then, to his embarrassment, he proceeded to get the answer wrong.
It didn’t matter that literally none of his classmates cared. (He was pretty sure a good third of them were asleep, anyways.) It made him feel stupid and, even worse, like a fool in front of Heimerdinger.
He thought that would be the worst experience of the day that had only just started. But that was when the new guy opened his mouth and corrected him.
“That’s right, Viktor,” Heimerdinger replied, sounding pleased.
And so their rivalry was born.
Viktor. What a stupid name. Who did he think he was, anyways? Clearly, this was just some sort of fluke. Next time Heimerdinger asked a question, Jayce would get it right. Or, even better, let Viktor try it first and then outdo him.
He was too heated to wonder why the interaction bothered him so much. It was far from the first time in Jayce’s life that he’d been shown the error of his ways; that was how education typically worked, after all.
Maybe it was because Jayce was supposed to be good at this, and now some rando had shown up to upstage him. Maybe it was because there was something about his accent that intrigued him—in a scientific way, of course.
Hopefully Viktor would drop the class within a few weeks. He’d missed the initial mass exodus, but Jayce knew it would be far from the last.
Jayce didn’t bother sticking around to chat up Heimerdinger after he dismissed them. He needed some time to lick his wounds in peace.
It was just his luck that there was a sock on the door when he reached his room.
“Goddamnit, Ezreal,” he muttered.
Who in their right mind decided to fuck at ten in the morning? They’d be having words later whenever his indecently vocal bed partner left.
(Sometimes he questioned the sanity of his decision to room with Ezreal for a second year in a row. Then he thought about the horror stories he’d heard, and decided that the devil he knew was better than the one he didn’t.)
Jayce figured he might as well kill time at the library before his lab, opening up his laptop to the mountain of edits Mel had left on his history essay. They’d met their first semester in a philosophy class, and she was without a doubt the only reason he didn’t fail it. (It wasn’t his fault that none of those stupid old men could say what they actually meant, though!)
She had a knack for it—for all humanities, really—and told him she had ambitions to be on the Council one day. She certainly possessed the diplomacy for it.
They’d dated for a few months, then broke it off after Jayce’s fixation on his studies took over the majority of his time. It was the same thing that doomed most of Jayce’s relationships, romantic or otherwise.
He was currently helping to tutor her in biology in exchange for her expertise in the history of Runeterra—unsurprisingly, an actual Noxian knew more about the place than the dusty textbook—which was a veritable godsend. Unfortunately, the stereotype about science majors being horrible at writing had its merits.
He groaned as he saw the amount of crossing-out she’d done on the section of his essay on Zaun, which was supposed to provide context or something equally as stupid on its separation from Piltover. He knew his grammar was atrocious—it was why he greatly preferred to work in numbers and chemical equations—but this had to be overkill, right?
He went through her edits until his eyes crossed and his brain threatened to leak out of his ears. It would have to be good enough for now.
His sour mood slowly dissipated as he headed to his chemistry lab. The whole experience this semester had drastically improved when his partner had decided he actually wanted to study theater instead of fumbling around the table and inadvertently making Jayce do all of the work.
There were an odd number of students in the class, and the professor had offered to add him to a different group or let him work with a TA. For the sake of his mental wellbeing, Jayce probably should’ve agreed. But he knew for a fact this professor was friends with Heimerdinger, and there was a non-zero chance that she’d tell him about how hardworking and intelligent he was. At the very least, she’d probably be willing to write him a nice letter of recommendation.
The problem was, when he changed into the appropriate gear and made it to his lab station, there was someone already there.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”
Viktor, perched on one of the stools—the one, as a matter of fact, that Jayce usually sat on—with his cane leaning against the nearby wall, arched his brow. “I was told this seat was not taken.”
“It’s not,” Jayce said through gritted teeth.
“You appear angry,” Viktor noted. “Are you still upset you forgot to factor in torsion earlier?”
Jayce rolled his eyes and straightened out his materials. He refused to give Viktor the satisfaction of knowing he’d read him so transparently, though he got the sense he already knew.
He busied himself with buttoning his lab coat up all the way and slipped his goggles over his head. Viktor’s own rested on his forehead, making his hair stick up all over the place. Jayce hated that he somehow pulled the look off.
He tapped his pencil impatiently, ready to get this over with.
“You know, you still have not told me your name.”
Jayce wanted to scream. “It’s Jayce.”
Viktor hummed. “It appears you already know mine, seeing as how you’ve written it on our report.”
Jayce glanced down. He was so in the habit of signing his name everywhere that he hadn’t even realized he’d done it.
“If you read that, how come you bothered asking me?”
Viktor smirked. “Maybe I just wanted to hear you say it.”
Jayce’s pulse thrummed. He wanted to pummel this infuriating man so badly.
He was given a brief respite from Viktor when the professor appeared to instruct them on the day’s experiment. It wasn’t the worst they’d had to trudge through so far, but it wasn’t particularly interesting, either. It gave Jayce way too much time to think; and when he thought, he talked.
(Jayce couldn’t count the number of times his teachers had reprimanded him for his chatter. He’d tried to explain that he wasn’t trying to be disruptive—that it was just how his brain processed things—but they always refused to hear it. At least at the Academy, it was far from the strangest habit among the student body.)
“So,” he said as Viktor worked silently at his side. “Where did you come from, anyways?”
It came out ruder than Jayce intended, but there was nothing he could do about it now.
“The College of Techmaturgy,” Viktor replied, nonplussed.
Jayce…wasn't expecting that answer. Not to sound elitist, but he didn’t realize the University of Piltover even accepted students from Zaun. Knowing Viktor had somehow broken this unspoken rule only made Jayce hate him even more.
“Why did you leave?”
Why did you come here and was it just to annoy me, more specifically.
“It’s a good school, but even its namesake program cannot compare to the Academy’s. Besides, I am quite intrigued by Professor Heimerdinger’s work with Hextech.”
Of course Viktor had the same major as him. The same interests. Of fucking course.
They worked through the rest of the lab in stiff silence, Jayce too busy stewing to be able to make conversation that would be considered even slightly polite. Viktor didn’t seem to care, intently focused on their work instead.
Because Jayce had absolutely no desire to spend more time with Viktor than absolutely necessary, he suggested they each work on a portion of the lab report and then review the other’s part later.
Selfishly, Jayce hoped there would be some errors for him to point out, even if it did mean more work for him.
“If you need help, you can just say so,” Viktor said.
“I don’t,” Jayce replied. “I just don’t trust you to get everything right.”
Viktor snorted. “You think you will be correcting me?”
Jayce hated Viktor and his stupid smug face. He practically threw his phone at him to add his contact to once they left the lab, half tempted to immediately block him out of pettiness.
He sent Viktor a message once they parted ways.
To: Viktor
Send me your half by Thursday. I want to have enough time to fix any mistakes.
Viktor replied ten minutes later, not that Jayce was counting or anything.
From: Viktor
In that case, send me yours by tonight.
Okay, now Jayce was really pissed. He was tempted to skip out on dinner with Mel and spend his evening taking out his anger on a lump of metal that he imagined Viktor’s face on.
But he’d already canceled on her once this week to work on a project, and he couldn’t afford to piss her off. She was, embarrassingly, his only real friend. And also, as previously mentioned, the sole reason he wasn’t failing every liberal arts requirement.
They met at a restaurant just off campus, one that Mel claimed served the most authentic Noxian food. It wasn’t Jayce’s favorite cuisine, but he really wasn’t in any position to complain.
Mel looked flawlessly elegant as always, the gold on her face glistening under the low lights. Jayce was sure he looked like a literal trash heap in comparison.
Jayce, because he simply couldn’t make it through the rest of the day sober, ordered the strongest drink on the menu. When the waiter returned with their cocktails—though Jayce was pretty certain his was 95% booze—he downed half of his in a long gulp.
Mel arched a manicured brow. “Bad day?”
“Understatement of the century.”
“What happened?” Mel asked, stirring the straw in her drink.
“There’s this new guy,” Jayce said. “Viktor. He’s an asshole and I hate him.”
“What did he do?” Mel teased. “Insult your muscles?”
“He corrected me in front of Heimerdinger,” Jayce said, well aware of how stupid that sounded. “And you know I need him to like me.”
“You’re being dramatic,” Mel said. “Just ignore him.”
“I can’t,” Jayce replied bitterly. “He’s my fucking lab partner.”
Mel snorted.
“It’s not funny!”
Mel took a long sip of her drink and didn’t retract her patently untrue statement.
Jayce groaned and picked at his food once it arrived. It was rare for him to not have an appetite, but this Viktor thing was really bothering him. Maybe he could try to switch lab sections or something and never have to deal with him again. That could work, right?
Mel gave him a scathing look when he shared his genius plan.
“That’s ridiculous,” she said. “You can’t rearrange your whole life just because someone annoys you.”
“Yes I can,” Jayce replied petulantly.
Mel sighed, clearly exhausted with him. “Consider it this way. If Viktor sees you suddenly switching classes right after he joined them, he’ll probably know it’s because of him.”
“So?”
“So,” Mel said, “he’ll probably see that as you conceding to him.”
“I’m not conceding to him,” Jayce huffed. “Just freeing myself from having to see his stupid face.”
Mel hummed thoughtfully. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you have a crush on him.”
“Mel,” Jayce said flatly. “What part of me literally wanting to murder the guy says ‘crush’ to you?”
“I said ‘if I didn’t know better,’ didn’t I?”
For some reason, Jayce could swear she was lying to him. But that was even more ridiculous than the absurd notion that he had any feelings toward Viktor other than deep, immense hatred.
“Whatever,” he muttered.
He didn’t change his schedule.
Viktor’s portions of his lab reports were perfect every week without fail.
Jayce’s were…nearly perfect, which was pretty impressive when you considered the difficulty of the class and all the very important and distracting things he was juggling.
Viktor never failed to catch Jayce’s mistakes, highlighting them on the shared document in an obnoxious red and leaving condescending comments that Jayce immediately deleted and definitely didn’t ruminate over.
He was honestly shocked when Viktor didn’t show up for their lab one day. At first he’d thought he was just uncharacteristically late—which would be super satisfying to tease him about—but then he just…never came.
Come to think of it, the lecture this morning had been particularly peaceful. And now he knew a certain someone’s absence was the reason why.
Jayce completed the work on his own and then opened his phone to find a single text.
From: Viktor
I cannot leave my room today. Send me your notes and the results so I can write my part of the report. Please make sure they’re legible this time.
It was just like Viktor to be rude while asking Jayce for a favor. Well, okay—maybe asking for the tools necessary to avoid making Jayce do all of their homework wasn’t exactly a favor, but it was still ridiculous.
He could probably just send him a picture of his notes, but a part of him was curious to see what Viktor’s room looked like. Maybe it was full of wires and batteries and grease because Viktor was actually a robot, which explained why he was so infuriatingly smart.
So he asked Viktor for his address and made the trek over, feeling oddly nervous and more than a little uncomfortable. But hey, if Viktor didn’t want him to know where he lived, he wouldn’t have told him.
(Or maybe this was some sort of sick set-up, and Jayce’s GPS was actually going to lead him off the edge of a cliff.)
He found himself outside a dorm that he had to pass at least fifteen times a day, though he didn’t think he’d ever really spared it a thought.
When he knocked on what he hoped was the correct door, it wasn’t Viktor who answered it.
The person in the entryway looked vaguely familiar, a braid of dark pink hair resting on their shoulder.
“Hi,” Jayce said awkwardly. “I’m looking for Viktor.”
“Come in,” came a tired voice from inside.
The person—Viktor’s roommate, he assumed—walked back to what was presumably their side of the room. It was practically overflowing with personality. Posters with inspirational quotes and pictures of mountains were plastered to the walls, and small figurines decorated the top shelf of their desk. A flag with yellow, white, purple and black stripes hung on the wall over their bed.
Viktor’s part of the room looked, by comparison, like a prison cell. The only things on his cinder block walls were sticky notes covered in frantic scribbles and diagrams, all of them too small for Jayce to make out from this distance.
Viktor himself was laid up in bed on a mountain of pillows with his right leg slightly elevated. He didn’t get up to greet Jayce, just sort of stared at him.
“Jayce,” he said eventually, “meet Tyari.”
His words were more accented than usual, and his voice was lacking its usual scorn. Jayce silently noted an open pill bottle beside his bed.
Tyari, who had taken a seat at their desk, waved at Jayce.
He squinted at them, half-convinced he knew them from somewhere. They were much quicker on the uptake.
“You’re Mel’s ex, right?”
Ah, yes. He remembered now. “So are you.”
He wasn’t sure why he said it so defensively, seeing as how dating Mel Medarda was nothing short of a privilege. It probably had something to do with the weird look Viktor was giving him.
“You were the, uh, rock climber, right?” Jayce said.
Tyari smirked. “That can’t be all she said about me.”
Jayce really didn’t think this was the time to mention Mel’s praise about their oral skills.
“As you can see,” Viktor interjected, voice taking on an unusually rambling quality, “the administration does not know what to do when faced with anyone who is trans.”
“Preach,” Tyari echoed.
“If you use this information against either of us,” Viktor continued in the same tone, “I will make you regret being born.”
Tyari chuckled. “You’re so dramatic when you’re high. Besides, Jayce is chill. Mel said he let her peg him.”
Jayce’s eyes widened and his face grew hot. He and Mel were going to have words later.
Tyari glanced between Viktor and Jayce, then, seeming to come to some sort of realization.
“I can go study in the library if you, you know. Want to use the room.”
Jayce felt his face burn even hotter.
“I assure you, there is nothing of the sort going on between us,” Viktor said with such a surety that Jayce almost felt insulted. At least he didn’t mention the very intimate detail about Jayce’s sexual preferences that was just revealed.
Tyari raised their hands in innocence. “Yeesh, I was just asking.”
“Go back to your…whatever it is you’re doing,” Viktor said dismissively.
“Reading about the Empire of Shurima.”
“Yes,” Viktor said, waving his hand limply. “That.”
Tyari rolled their eyes but turned back to their book, slipping a pair of headphones over their ears.
“You’re high,” Jayce said after a minute.
Because that’s what he should be focusing on right now.
“They’re called painkillers,” Viktor tutted. “It is not illegal.”
“So when you said you couldn’t leave your room…”
“Yes, Jayce. I meant it literally.” He rolled his eyes. “Your powers of observation are truly something.”
“Hey!” Jayce protested. “I came here because you wanted my notes!”
“Blaming the cripple for not making it to class,” Viktor huffed. “Classic Piltie.”
Jayce bristled at the insult. Viktor’s high on painkillers, he reminded himself. He doesn’t mean it.
Oh, who was he kidding? Viktor definitely meant it.
“Here,” Jayce said bitterly, pulling out his notebook and slamming it on Viktor’s desk.
“Now you are just being dramatic.”
Jayce grit his teeth. “Just let me know when you’re done.”
Viktor hummed noncommittally and didn’t reply. Jayce tried to convince himself it wasn’t intentional.
“Well,” he said after a solid twenty seconds of silence. “I guess I’ll go, then.”
“Mhmm,” Viktor said, making a wobbly shooing motion and letting his eyes slip shut. “You do that.”
Jayce stared at him for another moment before forcing himself to leave. It felt too intimate, to be in Viktor’s room when he was sleeping. Vulnerable. It was such a deviation from the norm that it left Jayce off-kilter.
He walked back to his dorm in silence and forced himself not to think about Viktor’s lax face.
It was far harder than it should have been.