Chapter Text
Jayce - 7:30 p.m. (Thirty Minutes Late to Progress Day Gala)
Hextech Research Wing, Laboratory 6C – Academy Institute of Arcane Sciences – Piltover
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If Jayce had his ear pressed to the lab door, he might’ve found the sound of their huffy little getting-ready symphony kind of funny. If he weren’t still so pissed off, that is.
A sigh; the scratch of a knot; the snap of Viktor’s pocket watch and the creak of his knees, bending for his laces. Aftershave slapped onto a freshly shorn face; and silence. Silence. More silence. Requiem for a Piltie Gala, in Rage Minor.
Jayce had stormed out after the fight, long enough for the night air to blunt the most serrated edges of his fury without sanding them down entirely. The door hissed open when he returned, but Viktor didn’t even look up. Jayce used the opportunity to take stock.
Of the clipped way he combed his hair; the manual, almost mechanical rhythm of his breathing; and the hives rising along his neck, red enough to make Jayce wonder, dimly, if he might be feverish.
Thirty minutes later they straighten at the same time, mutually assessing each other’s work. Jayce tries valiantly to school his expression into something more neutral.
Because Viktor looks—well. He looks sort of devastating.
Jayce hadn’t meant to peek at the suit when it was dropped off earlier; but he had and it impressed him, even on the hanger. Now that impression mutates into something closer to awe.
The cut is high-collared and distinctly Piltovan, tailored so perfectly it makes Viktor seem taller and sturdier and frankly, impossible to ignore. Jayce wonders, vaguely, if that might be the point. Viktor doesn’t attend these events often, and when he does, it’s mostly ceremonial — his presence at Jayce’s side met with polite indifference at best; at worst, thinly veiled disdain.
He smooths a non-existent wrinkle.
In the almost two years they've worked together, Viktor has never once struck Jayce as sloppy or unhygienic. If anything, he’s almost fastidious. The kind of guy who’ll sterilize unused equipment, and scrub his hands until they bleed just to make sure no trace of reagent remains. It used to drive Jayce a little nuts.
But despite the circles under his eyes, he can’t imagine Viktor has once lost sleep over his physical appearance — gods forbid fashion.
Day to day in the lab, it’s the same rotation of muted separates, taken in the bare minimum to fit his increasingly gaunt frame. Sometimes, when the workload is light and they sneak away for an after-hours drink, he'll even tease Jayce about his own grooming habits.
Peer slyly at him over the rim of his glass — at Jayce, whose tie is loose and sleeves rolled up — and say cutting things like, “This is new.”
“What’s new?” Jayce will mutter, not looking up from whatever schematic he’s reviewing in the low bar light.
And Viktor will raise his eyebrows, gesturing at his unusually relaxed appearance. “Sometimes I think you polish your cufflinks more than you calibrate your equipment.”
The drink will be settling pleasantly into both of their skulls by this point. “That’s because my cufflinks are more likely to impress the Council.”
“I see. And the hair product? Council bait as well?”
That'll get Jayce laughing — a startled, breathy thing. Gods, Viktor’s funny when he’s drunk. “It’s called being dashing, Vik. You should try it sometime.”
Viktor will hum, as if weighing the idea. “I’d rather be underestimated than overdressed.”
“That’s because you’ve never been overdressed in your life,” Jayce will point out.
“And you,” Viktor will say, dry as ever, “have never once been underestimated.”
Tonight, it’s Jayce’s turn to do the discerning, both of their faces reflected dully in the brushed surface of the atmospheric stabilizer. They’d shelved it months ago, and since then it’s morphed into a kind of makeshift mirror, used in the morning after all-nighters and in the evening before things that matter: dinners with the Dean; guest lectures. Galas.
In it now Viktor fusses with his hair again, trying one last time to smooth down that stubborn little wing of it. Jayce wishes he wouldn’t. It’s one of the only things about him that still feels unguarded.
He waits his turn impatiently, eventually stepping up to dab cologne behind his ears. The spicy scent makes Viktor’s eyes water. Jayce says nothing. Thinks good without much conviction.
When he leans in and catches his own reflection beside Viktor’s, he cringes. He looks…tired. In a different way than his partner does.
Where the shadows carving up Viktor’s face are almost ethereal, Jayce’s just look like bad lighting. Less the fatigue of a scientist, more the clumsy costume of someone trying very hard to look like one. Under different circumstances he would’ve felt immensely proud of his friend for upstaging him; tonight, he just feels like a fraud.
There's something familiar as well about Viktor’s clothing, though Jayce is lost to what it might be. A vest, blacker than midnight, cinches him in at the waist, fastened with a neat column of hexagonal buttons. Over it, a matching velvet tailcoat, worked through with filigree: circuit-like embroidery twining in schematic patterns across the front, over the shoulders, and down the sleeves. Bronze piping, articulated like jointed wire, encircling his slender wrists and throat. And beneath it all, a crisp, storm-gray silk shirt, fastened at the neck with a banded cravat. Folds pinned in place by a live-ticking gear-clasp.
Jayce digs a short nail into his hip bone as his eyes flick down, quickly taking in the rest of the look: tailored trousers, slim and flattering and subtly reinforced with embossed pinstripes. Boots polished to a mirror sheen, the metalwork at the toes gleaming like teeth. He can’t even begin to imagine where he'd had it made — one of those old houses along the harbor, maybe, that dresses half the Council.
And he had had it made; it was far too precise to be anything but bespoke. Which meant he’d spent money on it. Their money, technically, but still. The Viktor he knew didn’t spend money. Not like this.
The only recognizable piece is the cane, an unapologetic streak of red against the otherwise moody palette.
Viktor had waved away the breaking of his old one as a worthwhile loss at the time, but Jayce hadn’t missed the way he looked around the room after they touched back down on that fateful night. Like he was suddenly aware of just how far away everything was. His leg didn’t bother him quite as much back then (he could even manage mild stretches unaided); but the trek to his apartment after the night they’d had would’ve been near impossible, even with his cane intact.
So Jayce offered him an elbow and an escort home. Then he spent the next two weeks at the forge.
When the time came to gift it, he almost backed out, embarrassed by the audacity to cast it in his own house’s colors. He expected a quip of some sort. But Viktor seemed genuinely touched when he gave it to him, passing a reverent hand over the aluminum.
“I…thank you, Jayce,” he said, a little shy. “Truly. No one has ever made me—ah.”
“A very stylish cane?” Jayce said lightly.
“Anything.”
A strange pressure settled in Jayce’s chest at that. He slapped Viktor on the back, a little too rough. “’Course. It’s really no trouble. I mean, the last one pretty much died for the cause so. I owed you.”
Tonight, that old ache returns. Jayce rubs his sternum and studies their reflections, unsure, for a moment, which of them looks more like a stranger.
“What?” Viktor spits. “Never seen a Trencher in silk before?”
Jayce’s mouth snaps shut with an audible click. He hadn't realized it was open.
Viktor tilts his head. Then, infuriatingly, smiles.
Just a little.
Jayce - 5:00 p.m. (Two Hours to Progress Day Gala)
Hextech Research Wing, Laboratory 6C – Academy Institute of Arcane Sciences – Piltover
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He should be working. There are still finishing touches to be done on the model — tune-ups, mostly, but critical ones.
Instead, Jayce is pacing.
For twenty minutes he wears a path in the floor, until the toe of his boot rams into a stray caliper, sending it skittering. The metallic clang yanks him out of his trance, but it isn’t enough to calm him down.
Viktor is missing. And Jayce, apparently, is losing his mind.
Tonight’s unveiling won’t just be for bragging rights; it’s their first, real proof of concept — public validation of the entire underlying Hextech system, strategically designed to show that what they’ve built can operate reliably at scale. If it holds…it won’t just win them another round of funding. It will roll out the carpet for the Hexgates themselves: the infrastructure, the expansion, the patents — the entire future of the project. Unsuccessful, and the research is unlikely to survive another year.
Either way, half the merchant houses in Piltover will be celebrating tonight. The other half will be panicking.
Apparently, they were always expected to present it together. Not just as co-inventors, but as a unified front on everything: theory, application, vision, execution. It’s the kind of alignment investors look for according to Mel, before pledging their wallets to something this large.
The whole ordeal has taken weeks of preparation, days of refinement, and hours of lost sleep. And no minor effort on Jayce’s part, convincing Viktor to join him onstage for it.
Now, with only a couple hours to go, the man himself is nowhere to be found.
Nearly five o’clock, and he hasn’t shown up to the lab all day. That alone is cause for concern. Viktor’s notorious for refusing to take time off unless physically forced to. Even on his healthiest days, in the earliest phase of their partnership, it was Jayce who had to drag him away — remind him to eat, to sleep, to go to his appointments.
Lately though...he can’t deny that his friend is growing frailer.
To an outsider it may not be obvious; but to Jayce, who spends upwards of twelve hours a day with the guy, the difference is more than a little troubling.
For several months he tried simply not to notice, out of respect for Viktor’s privacy. But there's no denying it anymore. Even his clothes no longer sit right on him, his coat starting to swallow his wrists. And his complexion — Jayce had never known that a human being could be blue, until he saw Viktor under the lab lights the week after a lung infection. Like marble left in the cold too long.
Still, Viktor himself refuses to acknowledge any of it.
In mid-July, Jayce arrived at the lab early after a restful weekend to find the door cracked. Surprised Viktor had beaten him there, he pushed it open with a reprimand already loaded, fumbling for the light switch before it registered as strange that it was off.
Then he froze, alarmed, at the sight of a hunched figure near the back window, outlined in the wan morning light. ”Viktor?”
No response.
For a split second he wondered if they were being robbed. He set down his satchel, lights crackling on, and waited for the intruder to be illuminated. Gradually, a silhouette slid into focus. The breath Jayce had been holding whooshed out of him. He clutched his chest dramatically, barking out a laugh. “Janna, Vik. You nearly got your ass—”
A tiny moan cut him off, the rest of the sentence dying in his throat. Jayce squinted, frost blooming in his gut. “What…”
Shit. Not again.
Half-seated, half-slumped against the desk, Viktor was holding himself like he was trying not to jostle a broken bone, hands locked tight around his thigh and panting shallowly.
Jayce was across the room in three strides before stopping short.
Something was off, aside from the obvious. The sounds he was making, maybe…Viktor usually rode these things out so stoically.
Jayce hovered briefly in the remaining space, unsure where the line was that morning. They had an unspoken rule about this sort of thing. Viktor’s body was his business. Jayce had learned that early.
But then his head sagged, hard, and Jayce’s mind was made up for him. He lunged the last step and caught it before it could drop any further, fingers gentle as he tipped it back.
A tactile person by nature, he’d learned early to hold himself back around Viktor, who flinched at almost any sort of unexpected contact. But right then, he didn’t dare give an inch, determined to make himself into something solid his partner could brace against in the relentless storm of pain, pain, pain.
One hand brushed sweaty hair from his eyes, while the other circled his waist, keeping him upright against the desk. “Viktor,” Jayce demanded. “What is this? You’re scaring me.”
Another whimper. His grip tightened, thumb digging into collarbone.
It was just pain, Jayce would later come to realize, that kept holding Viktor captive like this. Undiluted and debilitating, but technically harmless in itself.
In the moment though, fear of something medically far worse fortified his paranoia, as well as a fierce protectiveness. The way he was guarding the limb…had he hurt himself?
Had someone else?
Once, in a rare instance of vulnerability over yet another late night drink, this time at Jayce’s ruined apartment, Viktor had made an offhand comment about being attacked more than once in the Undercity as a kid. His condition, he'd said, made him a target in a city that feasted on deficiency the way the one above it did on beauty.
The image it conjured, of child Viktor shoved into a wall while bigger boys laughed and kicked his cane out from under him, did something unpleasant to Jayce’s heart. It also made him want to ask for names.
As if stirred by the discomfort of the memory, awareness broke suddenly across Viktor’s face. Jayce pounced on it. "Talk to me, V. Show me, um. Show me where it hurts. Did someone—did you hit your head?”
Nearly a minute passed, Jayce continuing to tap insistently at Viktor’s cheek, before he gave a thin laugh, eyes rolling a bit.
“No,” he slurred. “No I—” A grunt. “Merely…gravity…being unkind.”
Jayce looked past him at the floor, the overturned stool, the lip of the desk. “You fell?”
“I...sat down too quickly.”
“With your knees. From standing.”
Viktor winced, trying to bat him away. “It’s nothing serious.”
Jayce stayed put. “Nothing…” He nodded at the violent trembling holding Viktor’s right leg hostage.“This is your definition of nothing serious?”
“Jayce,” Viktor groaned, massaging his temple before non-answering. “I told you. These — occurrences. They are manageable.”
Jayce studied the strain around his eyes. “Funny. You said that last time. But you also didn’t almost black out then.”
“I’m okay,” he said feebly.
Jayce crossed his arms. “I need you to tell me exactly what happened.”
At that Viktor wilted, hugging himself like he’d rather endure the episode all over again than the scorching intensity of Jayce’s careful attention. “The lights were off,” he said. “The pain struck rather suddenly. I couldn’t find anything to sit on.” A grimace. “So. As you already said. I fell. Entirely my own fault.”
Jayce waited. Viktor lifted his chin, as if to say well? His face had gone scarlet. “I was clumsy.”
“That’s it?”
“That is it.”
Jayce pinched the bridge of his nose, a headache starting to form in the place of adrenaline. “Right. You know I have to ask. Do I need to get you to a doctor?”
Viktor bristled, pulling away.
“Okay, okay, just…” Jayce held his hands out, palms up, placating. May I?
Viktor hesitated, then gave an almost imperceptible nod, clearly without another option. Jayce could feel the shame practically radiating off him as he hoisted him under the armpits, planted his feet, and eased him into the nearest chair in one swift motion. Then Jayce melted away, trying to give him some air.
Viktor, apparently, read the distance differently. “I’m sorry, Jayce,” he mumbled, neck red.
Jayce blinked, genuinely confused. “Sor—why are you sorry?”
Viktor didn’t answer. They stayed like that awhile, silent and awkward save for the hum of lab equipment and the ragged sound of Viktor’s breathing.
Then: “I will do it, by the way.”
Jayce inhaled, jarred out of a thought. “What’s that?”
Viktor latched onto a spider taking a journey across the tile. “The Gate demo. Progress Day.” He refastened a button that had come undone in the tangle. “I’ll do it with you.”
Jayce just stared, too taken aback by the timing of it to argue, let alone say thank you.
What he couldn’t see was that Viktor had already made his mind up about something else, too.
A plan that had been turning quietly in the background ever since Jayce and Mel first floated the whole joint presentation idea. Eager eyes begging him to put his nerves on the shelf for a night, and put on something nice instead.
Viktor - Noon (1 Week to Progress Day Gala)
Hall of Progress - City Hall - Piltover
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The dais has already been assembled, the single row of seats stretching out beneath it for the Council only. The rest of them, heiresses and entourage alike, will have to take in the showcase from their feet.
Jayce is explaining something about ventilation to the event coordinator when Viktor notices the stairs. He tugs on his sleeve.
“We will be entering from backstage, no?” he whispers, when the little man waddles away to deal with a stubborn podium microphone.
Jayce bends down, trying to hear him better. “Backstage?”
“The speakers’ entrance.”
Jayce frowns slightly, then follows his line of sight to the modest flight. Comprehension dawns. “It's only a few? And I'll help you. Yeah?"
Yes.
They practice it anyway.
Jayce hooks the cane over his forearm, links his other arm with Viktor’s, and walks them right up. It can't be more than eight steps, maybe ten. They do fine. No problems. Still, Viktor has to catch his breath at the top.
“Hey,” Jayce says, low enough that their nearest fellow participants — a pair of Heimerdinger’s recently acquired prodigies, with their miniature clockwork courier prototype — can't hear.
“It is fine,” Viktor snaps, already aware of the heat in his face.
Jayce scratches his jaw, clearly trying to understand. He needs a shave. “No one’s going to care.”
Oh, Jayce. "There will be a spotlight."
Jayce turns in place, surveying the hall and the balconies where Piltover's oldest trading families will soon stand shoulder to shoulder with its wealthiest upstarts. He locks onto the northeast corner, eyes lighting up.
“Alright, here’s the plan. I, uh…found us a spot earlier.” He points at it. “If it gets to be too much, we duck in there right before. Maybe have a quick drink? Sit for a minute at least. No one will even notice. And then, just—” He puts an arm around Viktor’s shoulders and gives him a reassuring squeeze. “Just keep your eyes on me, okay? Not them.”
It's spoken so earnestly, and Jayce's expression — it’s so kind; Viktor can't help but nod and let himself be steered toward the center of the stage, relaxing incrementally as they dive back into the blocking and mechanics of the model.
Viktor - 4:00 p.m. (Three Hours to Progress Day Gala)
Bridge of Progress – Piltover
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No one’s going to care.
Except they will won't they?
Because up here, people save weakness for later, rather than doing the decent Undercity thing of snuffing it outright.
A chair dragged over during a lecture, while everyone else remains standing. A flight of stairs, climbed too slowly with the help of a much sturdier man. Those are the details they remember.
And for almost the entirety of his life in Piltover, Viktor has managed to pretend his body didn’t supply them in abundance.
No more. These days, he can no longer promise it won’t betray him during a shower, let alone the most pivotal hour of his and Jayce’s entire careers.
It is a risk they cannot afford. Not tonight. Not with the fate of the Gates — and Hextech — on the line.
Not when Jayce is always looking at him like…that.
Things are moving faster now; there’s no denying it. New money, new temptations, new cavernous rooms, full of new people who speak his partner’s language fluently before Jayce can even finish translating the dream for them. He's already beginning to move more easily there — than he ever has in Viktor’s cramped apartment.
And Viktor...
The pain, at least, can be dealt with.
But the solution will have to come from somewhere he hasn’t been in a very long time.
Somewhere, he hopes, Jayce won't think to follow.