Chapter Text
“How do I look, Peach?” Viktor held out his arms, his cane’s handle balancing in the crook of his elbow. Peach was watching him from atop a precarious pile of unfinished prototype sketches, blinking once slowly in reply to her owner’s inquiry. Viktor assumes she has no idea how to reply; Viktor never asks her about his appearance, and he was not entirely sure why he’d even sought out her input anyway.
The only extraneous variable is Jayce. All of it felt odd to Viktor—to have consented to a rare accompaniment to his dear The Stars and You; at the time it felt practical, the most rational solution, but now Viktor wondered why at all Jayce needed to join him specifically. In fact, this had plagued him for the entire afternoon while he was sitting in his closet mid-outfit deliberation. If the purpose was the film, Jayce could attend alone. If the purpose was conversation, a cinema was, naturally, hostile to it. Therefore, the premise failed under both stated justifications.
Viktor regarded Peach one more time, adjusting the cuff on his sweater yet again. “You are a terrible consultant,” he told her. The cane slid into his hand, and he turned to leave. He locked the door and checked it once, then again. Viktor was humming Shostakovich when the key turned for the time.
On his way out, Viktor kept turning it over in his head: the accompaniment added no functional value, unless there was some factor beyond a simple interest in the film. Perhaps Jayce despised being alone. Yes, that must be it. Viktor had remembered clearly how the anchorman looked positively stunned to learn his coffee proposition was impracticable; Jayce must have placed an absurdly high importance on what Viktor was indifferent to at best: companionship.
And his enigmatic man had already arrived alongside luxury materialized.
When Viktor initially saw the car, his words were, "I cannot decide whether you are reckless or simply keeping up appearances... or both." And Jayce laughed.
While those were his words, his tone being of mild irritation, they hardly matched how, inside, he was trembling with anticipation. The car looked fast. Its black matted body lay close to the pavement, long and deliberate seams tracing the length, every contour and curve suggesting the intention of prestige.
And its driver, looking exasperatingly smug, leaned against the body, his smirk decisively asymmetrical but achieving perfection: Jayce looked unrepentantly charming, broad shoulders clad in an aviator’s jacket and quality denim jeans that emphasized his length of leg.
Viktor resumed his airs of self-possession and approached with a controlled pace. Jayce reached for the passenger door, but he waved him off. “I have a bad leg, not a bad arm; I can open a car door.”
“Of course,” Jayce smiled; he was much too eager in his reply. That sort of eagerness, Viktor felt, was more likely to have origins in pity or fault.
Inside, Viktor blinked to perceive the smooth leather seats that complemented perfectly his inconsequential frame. And the way the blue lights lining the dashboard, the dials, consoles, and all, breathed awake once Jayce had entered. Let there be light. Viktor noted the tight tolerances, the minimal play in every dial and lever, the restrained travel of each control surface, and how everything flowed so, so well.
“How much do you make a year?” Viktor asked, tracing a finger along the illuminated seam in the door panel.
“Oh.” Jayce’s laugh was awkward. And this laugh was as decipherable as his smile; it could only mean Jayce made an absurd amount of money, an amount hardly coherent with the average person in his field. Viktor was not so surprised. After all, all of Piltover and even Zaun were familiar with his broadcast; he was the celebrity of an idiomatic piece of media: one that employs charm and good looks to palliate the seriousness of everyday living.
“That’s okay; your bike and your car give me a fair idea,” said Viktor, inwardly amused. “Fret not, I do not hold any animosity towards the wealthy, that is, if they are not full of themselves and inflated with ill-earned ego.”
“Ah, yeah…” Jayce shifted in his seat, drumming his fingers on the hand-sewn leather wheel. “Plenty of those where I’m involved. You know, media moguls.”
“Mm,” Viktor exhaled. “Well, shall we go now?”
Jayce nodded quietly and turned on the engine. There was that smooth hum, a perfected vibration as it fluttered to life. Viktor allowed himself a small smile, his driver sharing a similar expression.
The car pulled out of the parking space smoothly; Viktor felt that he had been experiencing a sensation close enough to flying. The wheels on the asphalt moved like skates on fresh ice—no friction, no inkling of there even being a ground beneath. Viktor wondered if Jayce had gotten used to luxury and if his standards in all matters had, consequently, lifted to match his income. But what did it matter anyway?
A good five minutes had passed in silence, and while Viktor might be more comfortable, even so far as preferring it, his driver was exhibiting behavior correlated with an acute unease. Jayce’s hands were clenching and unclenching the wheel; a small huff of breath would escape him as he opened his mouth to say something, but indecision seemed to take hold because Jayce would close his mouth again and tilt his head to begin his internal consideration.
“You maintain your equipment well,” Viktor said at last. “No rattle on ignition. Most vehicles at this price point still fall victim to neglect.”
“Thanks,” Jayce said, looking directly toward him as he did so. “It’s only right to take care of the nice things you have. I’ve always dreamt of having a car like this and the bike since I was a kid.”
“Ah,” Viktor nodded. “Yes, young boys love to stress out their mothers with dreams of motorcycles.”
Jayce laughed. “My mom would always call them death machines; every time there was an accident on the news, she’d shake her head and announce to me that those people had no mamas at home to warn them about motorcycles.”
“I take it she was not at all thrilled to see you’d purchased one.”
“No, not at all. I swear I saw her hair completely go gray,” he said. “I didn’t hear the end of it for three months; she still gives me hell for it even now. When it’s windy, she’ll call me just to tell me, ‘Drive the car.’ Nothing else.”
“A sensible recommendation,” Viktor said, amused.
“I take it you’re Team Safety above all else?” Jayce glanced his way, wearing his anchorman smirk.
Viktor quickly looked down at his hand as he gripped the handle of his cane. “Mm, generally yes. But I do not doubt the thrill of risk, nor do I find it at all absurd that some people, such as yourself, prefer to be a little reckless every now and then.”
Jayce smiled.
“To find it absurd would be to deny scientific reasoning,” Viktor went on. “These risky behaviors produce an addictive reward-after-stress sensation; it makes the experience feel intensely alive. Isn’t it a little contradictory? And to answer that question, I believe it might be interesting to consult a philosopher or a writer. They often have a lot to say about this paradox…”
They drove under an overpass; shadow passed through the cabin and cleared again. Viktor started to pick at the loose leather on his cane's handle. He’d spoken too much, perhaps.
“You know, it’s really interesting the way your mind works,” Jayce said at last. “You talk like everything needs to justify its existence.”
“Most things do,” Viktor replied evenly. “Including riding insanely fast vehicles and invitations to film screenings.”
The driver chuckled. “Ah, yes. I was anticipating you circling back to that. Is it so bizarre that I might want to watch The Stars and You?”
“No, not at all. It’s a divine piece of cinematic storytelling; I would wonder more if someone might not want to watch it. My curiosity merely stems from with whom you chose to view it. I have not yet made a conclusive judgement, but I am beginning to suspect you are not very selective with your time.”
Jayce’s chuckling became laughter, and Viktor felt inexplicably foolish, though he could not pinpoint why or how.
“Yeah, I’m not selective. I’ll go anywhere with anyone.”
“Oh, I see,” Viktor mumbled.
“Wow, that came out wrong.” Jayce glanced his way again. “What I meant was, I will always say yes to good company. You’re good company.”
Viktor’s mouth twitched. “A bold statement to make for someone who’s never been in my proximity for longer than half an hour.”
“I don’t need more than half an hour. Do you?”
“Hm. I do fall victim to premature judgment from time to time, but I tend to take my time before solidifying convictions; there are usually a lot of factors to consider.”
Jayce momentarily tightened his grip on the wheel. “You have that special way of making me feel like I’m on thin ice. I might fall through if I displease you.”
Viktor frowned. “That is not my intention. Perhaps it is residual. You are a public communicator,” he went on. “Approval is integrated into your occupation. It is unsurprising you would seek it.”
“Maybe, but I’m usually hard to rattle. I guess you’re an outlier, to put it your way.”
Viktor looked away toward the window, angling his knees toward the door; he acknowledged it and filed it as tokens of his tense disposition, though he felt he was not so opposed to feeling it again. “You are minding the road, I hope.”
The Portside Cinema might have been the only place in Piltover Jayce had yet to visit. There were other cinemas located around the city; he usually favored Éphémère Theater: glass frontage, velvet seats, a place he might take a nice girl his mother suggested. It never occurred to him that this brine-beaten building could function similarly. The single-story building stood neighboring dry docks and warehouses full of sidelined shipping containers, and the only proof it was a cinema at all was the bulb-lined sign overhead—of which eight remaining lights still functioned—reading: Port—de Cinema.
Jayce tilted his head curiously.
He wondered what had happened to the s and the i and how long no one had bothered to replace them. Port de Cinema could read as French, and, in a way, might frame the building’s condition as an artistic decision.
The passenger door opened. Viktor stepped out carefully onto the brick pavement, adjusting his footing and tightening the scarf around his neck. The sea wind caught his hair, lifting the uneven brown tufts away from his face.
Jayce had only been making sure Viktor didn’t stumble—the curb here was steeper than most in the city center—and that was reason enough to look. Still, he noticed how naturally Viktor fit the setting: all sharp lines and pale angles against weathered brick. There was a kind of prettiness there his industry would never label conventional—severity softened by those amber eyes, fixed on the theater with a fondness Jayce did not yet understand.
Jayce felt the strange, familiar interruption in his thinking and quickly detached himself from it altogether. He opted instead to adjust his jacket and put his hands in his pockets.
“How’d you discover this place anyway?”
Viktor walked several paces before answering. “My mother took me here once when I was young.”
“Oh yeah? What film did you watch?”
“The film we are watching today.”
Jayce smiled. The sentiment of the statement had nearly been lost in Viktor’s customary matter-of-fact delivery. But he could picture it somehow: Viktor as a young boy, smaller and thinner, hand in hand with his mother, eyes wide to perceive film for the first time. Jayce smiled.
Inside, the Portside Cinema carried the smell of dust and warmed fabric; the lobby was narrow and dim, lit by amber bulbs caged in wire fixtures along the walls. With a concessions stand at the center, Jayce noted that the glass popcorn box was completely empty, and at the far end, the drink bar held a pewter samovar that served only hot coffee.
“A little underwhelming than what you’re accustomed to?” Viktor said, half-turning to him.
“I guess you could say that,” Jayce agreed. “So? Where do we pay?”
“With Glenda.” Viktor gestured with his cane toward the lady at the stand. Hunched over, she’d been half covered by the absurdly large register.
“The Stars and You?” said Glenda; she immediately recognized Viktor and began pulling a roll of tickets without acknowledging him fully. “And boyfriend?”
“No,” Viktor blurted, his grip tightening on the handle of his cane. “No, this is simply a mutual acquaintance; he has never seen the screening and wished to do so.”
“But, sweetie, you deserve someone nice. All the time frowning like that; you get lines, you know? So young right now, but in five year and you look old. You agree, right? Look, Viktor, your friend so handsome. Big man.”
Viktor glanced at Jayce as if he, himself, had forgotten what he looked like. In turn, he offered him a smile, and Viktor immediately turned away.
“You the morning man?” Gloria studied Jayce closely, adjusting her cat-eye frames higher on her nose. “Ay! You are! Minnie, Minnie, come look! It’s the man from the television!”
Another woman with bleached hair poked her head through a curtained opening—Jayce hadn’t noticed it and had startled when she made her sudden entrance—and gasped loudly. “I take picture! Can I take picture?”
He’d felt embarrassment before upon public recognition, though it never surpassed that of mild inconvenience. But now it was horrifying. It was not the women’s reactions but Viktor’s clear discomfort. He watched Viktor shrink back to give space for the eager women and pulled back his sleeve to check his wristwatch. Jayce wished, hopelessly, that Viktor could hear him without words; he wanted to tell him, "Sorry! I’d love to run off with you into the dark, quiet cinema right now. I want you to see your movie on time more than anything in the world right now!”
But he could not. Instead, Jayce was forced to lower himself to match the heights of the two ladies and pose for the camera that Viktor now held.
After the photo was taken, Glenda resumed her position behind the table. Slowly, she tore the tickets and looked between them again decisively. “So handsome, right? Good shoulders.”
Leaning against the counter now, Jayce offered her his characteristic smile. “Aw, Glenda, I might have to switch from Éphémère to Portside just to see you.”
She cackled loudly and waved her hand in the air. “Éphémère has pretty girls—go there!”
Jayce glanced sideways at Viktor. “Depends on what you consider pretty,” he said lightly.
Glenda slapped the counter. “Ay! You talk like that, and Viktor will keep you!”
Jayce accepted the tickets properly this time, fingers brushing the paper from her hand. “That’s what I’m hoping,” he said warmly. “But we’ll need these first. Gracias, querida.”
Viktor slid the money onto the counter, but Glenda did not so much as move to collect it. Her laughing intensified, and she scurried off to the room behind the curtains and began speaking with Minnie in a rapid foreign tongue.
Jayce turned to Viktor and held up the slips of paper triumphantly.
“Okay,” was his reply. “The introductory reel begins five minutes early. We should go now.” Viktor then turned and moved toward the ominously darkened corridor; Jayce followed quickly after.
There is a sort of odd feeling one gets when they step into a theater whilst the house lights are still on; maybe it's the mind's funny little way of being disillusioned of the cinema's magic of immersion. Viewing Room 3 did not benefit from that honesty. Magic or not, it was not a room Jayce wished to be in for long.
It was smaller and narrower than expected with no more than 40 seats total—five rows of eight—and the chairs, not cushioned velvet, were wicker with cracked foam padding. Overhead, paint peeled in thin curls with wires strewn haphazardly toward the projector room. Only two other patrons occupied the room: a man asleep, spread across the front row at the very front, and an elderly woman who was reading a novel illuminated by a clipped-on book light.
"Are there never many people here?" Jayce asked Viktor quietly, though the others seemed to pay no mind to them.
Viktor simply shook his head and moved slowly up the stairs, choosing the second row from the back. He sat himself in the second seat from the aisle and, oddly enough, gestured for Jayce to sit beside him, not by the aisle, but in chair three. He did not want to question it. The entire thing, the same theater, the same film, the same seat (he assumed), must've had some sentimental significance and not been entirely just an eccentric ritual.
The brittle chair gave out a loud, woven crackle when Jayce lowered himself onto it; the sleeping man at the front twitched violently.
"Sorry," he muttered.
Jayce tried again to fit, but with his legs unable to fit, he tried pushing the chair back, their legs scraping abrasively on the floor. "Shit, sorry." He could feel Viktor begin to perceive him; he had stilled in his quiet stationing of his cane, and Jayce wondered if the eyes on him were amused or annoyed.
"If you'd like, you can move this chair." He tapped the one in front of them with his cane. "I guess there are some disadvantages of having attained such a height."
"Some?" Jayce laughed and picked up the chair in front, placing it on the other side of the aisle. "I think besides being able to reach a high shelf, there's no other benefit from being this tall."
"You do not consider it advantageous socially? Taller men are statistically favored."
"Yeah, that tracks." Jayce stretched out his legs and let out a satisfied exhale. "By the second date it's pretty clear if my only desired trait was height."
"Has it occurred often then?"
Jayce shrugged. "Hm, four or five times."
"That is a substantial amount. What percent would that amount to?"
"I guess, only around five percent of dates."
"Five percent of all of the dates you've been on in your life?" Viktor wondered.
"The last three years."
Viktor's eyes widened. "You are either terrible at math, or you go on a lot of dates."
"I'll have you know, Professor, that I did very well in all of my math courses," Jayce chuckled.
Viktor nodded to himself and did not speak again.
The house lights dimmed just a fraction; Jayce's assumption it was a malfunction was soon disproven when the projector sprang awake and showed a brightly blank screen.
The film was starting.
Viktor adjusted again in his seat, positioning his knees forward instead of toward Jayce as they'd been moments earlier—he noticed this.
In fact, the dark, quiet environment gave Jayce the opportunity to notice the little things. The way Viktor froze for half a second when his brace made a sound, the taps he gave to his cane's handle every now and then to make sure it was still there, and the way the screen's light sent dark shadows into every contour of his face.
Whenever something occurred on the screen that made the orchestra swell, a sweet glow would spring from his eyes; they'd lower a fraction so that his long lashes cast silhouettes there. Jayce thought it might make a good painting, and it would be one of those paintings whose meanings are indecipherable.
"Do you intend to watch the film through my eyes?" Viktor mumbled, keeping his eyes ahead.
Jayce turned quickly, the wicker chair creaking again, and watched the film; the on-screen artillery blast woke up the snoring man in the front.
Viktor did not speak about the film afterwards, nor did he ask for Jayce’s opinion or seem at all curious about how it was received. Once the credits rolled, he reached for his cane, stood slowly, and shuffled down the stairs. And Jayce followed after him.
But he wanted to talk about it. He wanted to talk about the color scheme: how the blind woman only wore pale blues and muted greys, then eventually yellows and pinks after she met the soldier. He wanted to talk about the many times he cried and how there was no music at all when the soldier made love to her in the field, but only music when a bullet tore through his throat. Jayce wanted to tell Viktor to close his eyes and explain in his way what the night sky looked like, just like the film, and Viktor would then correct every inaccuracy.
For now, Jayce remained silent. He walked beside Viktor, matching his pace again, listening to the percussion of cane against brick, and becoming fond of the shape of him.
The last of the harbor lights fell away behind them, conquered by the bend in the coastal road. It was late. Piltover seemed to have closed up shop—windows dark and crosswalks blinking pointlessly for maybe one or two souls. And there was Viktor, knees toward the window, cane resting between his legs, and his scarf a little loose now. The space he occupied seemed more than it was before.
In the car, Jayce was looking at him again, then at the road ahead; four empty lanes pulled forward. The dry docks were generally unpopular at night.
“Do you want to go fast?” Jayce asked suddenly.
Viktor turned.
“No traffic,” he continued. “No lights either. I can go a bit fast if you’d like.”
Jayce could practically hear the thought turning itself over and over in Viktor’s head. Then, he straightened in his seat and gave one nod. “Okay.”
With his foot, Jayce pressed the accelerator. The engine note rose gradually to a high hum, beneath a zip of asphalt as the car surged. Viktor’s head tipped slightly back against the seat, and there appeared a faint smile fully becoming, and escaping was no sardonic comment but a quiet, breathy laugh, almost a gasp.
Jayce eased off gradually; he could not continue into the city center without trouble, but he was entirely occupied with the sound of Viktor’s laughter and how it sort of hung in the air still above him, unsure of what to do with itself. Jayce looked at Viktor fully once stopped by a red light.
“How was that?”
Viktor nodded, his mouth rouged with residual laughter. “I like that.”