Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

There’s a silverwing in their lab.

Jayce is tangentially familiar with the creatures. Once, as a child, he and his mother passed by one of their aeries, nestled upon a high crag where the southern border of the Freljord bled into Demacian territory. His mother had cautioned him out of their sight, spinning up fearsome visions of immense, sharp-beaked raptors with talons as sharp as Nashor’s teeth that could swoop down and snatch him up in an instant.

This silverwing is nothing like the ones he’d beheld upon a time. It’s a baby—of that much Jayce is sure. Larger than a housecat, but still slight enough for Viktor to cradle in his skinny arms, pressing the creature tight to his chest and gazing down at it with the melancholy of a parent beholding their ailing child.

It’s a small, sickly thing. Too gaunt, too dull-eyed, too feeble. The cream-colored feathers that coat its body have begun to go bare in sparse patches, leaving only wrinkled down that clings together in sticky clumps and rubbed-raw skin. Each breath punched from its lungs is a sad, stuttered warble; a passerine death knell.

Jayce’s stomach turns when Viktor adjusts his hold, allowing him to see the worst of the damage. One of the silverwing’s front limbs has been mangled and rendered useless. Its leg hangs at a limp, unnatural angle, the bone snapped and the tendons and ligaments wholly severed. Nearly all of the creature’s primary flight feathers have been broken or plucked out, the skin and muscle beneath them marred by swollen gashes. Bits of thin metal wire––some sort of pliable mesh, Jayce surmises––are snarled around the wounds, biting into flesh and feather and constricting blood flow.

“What happened?” he asks, incredulous.

“I found her like this earlier, while I was assisting with maintenance at the northern hexgate. She—she must have escaped from one of the docked ships,” Viktor says.

“We have wildlife smugglers now?” Jayce scrubs a hand down his face, exhausted. They’ve dealt with traders bringing in illicit goods since the first fleet of ships had docked in Piltover after the installation of the hexgates. He’d expected enterprising merchants to snake their way around the city’s heavy-handed import taxes and goods bans but hadn’t anticipated animals would be among the contraband brought in.

“It would seem so. An unfortunate byproduct of becoming a global commerce center, I suppose.” Sadness laces Viktor’s words. “It looks as though she managed to break out of her cage, but… She ran afoul of one of the glue traps at the docks.”

Vague images flit through Jayce’s mind of synthetic boards covered in a thick, opaque adhesive. He’s seen a few during routine inspections, tucked away in the corners of the hexgate docks to catch errant rats and whatever chem-plagued creatures seek to crawl up from Zaun and spirit themselves away upon visiting merchants’ vessels. Admittedly, he hadn’t thought much of them at the time; none of the traps he’d chanced upon had actually caught anything.

“Poor thing. Must’ve taken a lot of effort to get her out.”

Jayce hadn’t thought it possible, given how deep-set Viktor’s frown has been this entire time, but the other man’s lips tug even further downward. He gives a curt, rueful shake of his head.

“I didn’t...” Viktor begins, eyes darting between Jayce and the creature he cradles. “I remember, back when I was a child—they started setting these traps out by the Bridgewaltz to keep pests out of the stalls. I stumbled upon one tucked near some chemtech artisan’s booth. I thought at first that a… twig, or something, had gotten stuck in it, but then I saw the smear of blood that led a few feet away. There was a dead antlermouse at the end of it with only three legs.”

Jayce’s gaze sweeps over the silverwing, lingering on her mangled limb. “You think she..?”

“Chewed her own leg off to escape? Almost certainly. That’s something creatures like this and people from the undercity have in common.” A wry smile alights, for a moment, upon Viktor’s lips. “The will to do whatever is necessary to survive.”

The silverwing shudders in his arms and croaks in pain, the claws of her single remaining forepaw digging into Viktor’s shirt and clinging to him.

“It doesn’t look like she’ll be surviving for much longer if we don’t bring her to someone that can help,” Jayce murmurs.

Viktor’s eyes snap to meet his, knife-sharp and resolute. “No. I will take care of her.”

“You? Viktor, you—look,” Jayce begins, palms raised in gentle deference. “You’re brilliant. I’ve never, ever doubted that, and I never will. I know you’ll try your best to save her, but do you really want to gamble with her life instead of turning her over to someone more equipped to help her?”

“You look, Jayce. Look at her. Whatever more equipped person we bring her to in this city would take one glance and decide she’s not worth the effort. Putting her out of her misery would be far easier than trying to save her. I would rather gamble on her life than condemn her to death because she committed the sole crime of crossing some despicable trapper’s path.”

Jayce opens his mouth to retort, but he can’t find any fault in his partner’s words. He’s seen the enforcers dispose of smuggled goods; a near-dead animal wouldn’t be any different.

“I acquired some medical experience in my youth when I served as an assistant to an alchemist in Zaun,” Viktor continues. “He often experimented on creatures, created chimeras. My knowledge in the area is not comprehensive, but… it will be enough. Enough to give her a fighting chance.”

A silence yawns between them. Viktor gazes up at him with a guarded expression, lips pressed in a thin line and brow furrowed as he waits for a response. Like he’s already bracing himself for Jayce to offer some contrary argument or dismissal of his plea.

Instead, Jayce crosses the room. He takes a seat next to Viktor, placing a hand upon his partner’s shoulder and giving it a comforting squeeze. He reaches out with the other to stroke a gentle finger over one of the feathery tufts that protrude from the silverwing’s forehead.

“Let’s do it, then,” he replies. “Whatever you need, however I can—I’ll help. We’ll save her.”

Viktor’s smile is one of relief. Bright. Beautiful, some part of Jayce’s mind whispers. “Together.”

In the end, despite the odds stacked against them, they manage to save her. Together.

Aided by implements scrounged from one of the Academy’s surgical theatres, Viktor’s medical know-how, and sheer determination, they successfully amputate the mutilated limb. They take shifts through the night, watching her for any signs of potential complications, but she sleeps soundly under the lull of anesthetic, swaddled in a nest of old blankets. By the time Jayce’s shift has come to an end, he promptly nestles his head in his arms and falls asleep upon the workbench beside Viktor.

He awakens to the tantalizing scent of lukewarm coffee, a desk covered in draft sheets with complex schematics for a mechanical wing rendered upon them in smudgy grease pencil, and the sound of soft snores drifting over from the window alcove.

He glances over to find Viktor curled up atop the alcove bench with an arm crooked around the resting silverwing, temporarily dead to the world. Jayce winces at the sight of his bad leg splayed out at an awkward angle in an attempt to make the position work. With practiced ease, he undoes the straps of the brace digging uncomfortably into his sleeping partner’s leg—top, middle, bottom, gently, don’t want to wake him up—and sets it aside within Viktor’s reach.

Jayce folds up his uniform vest and his overcoat, tucks one beneath Viktor’s bad knee and the other under his head, and idly wonders if they should invest in more blankets now that they have a third lab occupant hogging all of their current ones.

By the time Viktor awakens, the noon bell has long since rung. Jayce’s stomach is begging him to nourish it with more than a fifth cup of coffee; he’d had no luck scrounging up any snacks Viktor’s usual squirreled-away hiding spots.

Jayce flicks a stray lock of hair out of Viktor’s eyes as his partner slowly blinks awake. “Rise and shine.”

Viktor turns his head to stifle a yawn against a shoulder, stretching both arms above his head and arching his back in a catlike fashion; rapid-fire popping fills the air between them as he cracks more joints than Jayce even knew existed.

“Mnnh,” is Viktor’s semblance of a reply to his greeting.

Jayce snorts. He swipes Viktor’s mug—a chipped and stained old thing, hand-painted with a four-legged blob that looks somewhat poro-like from the right angle—and fills it with fresh coffee.

Still slowly awakening from his stupor, Viktor accepts the cup from Jayce, fingers brushing as the handle passes hands. “What time is it?” he asks.

“Afternoon.”

Viktor scrubs an exhausted hand down his face. “Why didn’t you wake me up?”

“Between work and this,” Jayce says, gesturing emphatically to the still-slumbering silverwing, “you’ve barely slept the past two days. You needed the rest.”

“So many hours wasted. I could have continued working on my schematics,” Viktor grouses, words muffled around the lip of his mug as he takes another sip.

“Speaking of—what’s your plan with these? Talk me through it.” Carefully, Jayce gathers the scattered sketches and equation-covered pieces of draft paper and holds them out to Viktor.

“It’s still conceptual, at this stage, but I want to design a prosthetic to replace the amputated limb once she’s had more time to heal. Something more functional and organically integrated than just a false fourth leg.”

It’s… new, but doable, Jayce thinks. They’ve built all manner of things together since their research began (admittedly, most of them infrastructural improvements at the behest of the council). A foray into the realm of prosthetics, even for something like this, could produce valuable research and results.

“How long do you think it will take to create?”

Viktor shrugs. “Once the schematics are finalized and we’ve acquired the requisite materials? Not long at all.” He glances down at the silverwing and trails a finger over the gauze binding her wound. “The healing process, though—it could take weeks. Months. She’ll have to adjust to the new limb, as well.”

Jayce cards a hand through his hair. “Gods, what do we even tell Heimerdinger? ‘Hey, Professor—so, we picked up an injured stray and did some scuffed surgery and decided to cyborg-ify it for good measure. By the way, it’ll be living in the lab for a few months. Hope you don’t mind!’”

The gentle peal of laughter that Viktor lets out sends a pang of longing straight to Jayce’s gut. “We’ll just tell him that she’s our… pet project. I will show him my designs, explain the plan. He’ll understand.”

“Pet, huh?” Jayce can’t help his undignified snort at the double entendre. “If she’s going to be living here, we should probably name her.”

“Careful, Jayce. If you give her a name, you might get too attached to let her go,” Viktor says.

“I think you should do the honors. You saved her, after all.”

“With your help.”

“I wouldn’t necessarily call passing you scalpels and trying to keep my dinner from coming back up all over the operating table ‘help.’”

“Don’t discredit yourself. You made a wonderful surgical assistant. Perhaps it’s not too late to consider a career change?”

“Yeah? You that eager to get rid of me?”

Viktor’s lips quirk up in a smile that toes the line between teasing and genuine. “Mm.. no. I’d miss you too much, I think. With you gone, there would be nobody to wake me up with fresh coffee.”

“Heimerdinger?”

“Eugh.” Viktor’s face scrunches up in disgust. “I’ve tried the sludge he believes passes for coffee. I don’t think he knows what it’s supposed to taste like.”

Jayce chuckles. “Well, glad to know you consider me an integral part of this lab for my… coffee-making skills.”

“Among other things, of course.”

Viktor sets his now-empty mug aside. The heavy clink of ceramic on wood finally awakens their new charge from her peaceful slumber. A pair of glassy blue eyes blink up at them, regarding Viktor and Jayce with sluggish curiosity.

“A name for you, hm?” Viktor murmurs, chewing on his lower lip as he looks down at the creature. A small, sentimental smile blossoms upon his lips. “How about… Rio.”

The silverwing lets out a small chirrup, tail thumping drowsily against Viktor’s thigh.

Jayce grins. Rio. “I think she likes it.”

Chapter Text

Between late nights in the lab, new supplies to acquire for their various projects, and Rio’s voracious appetite, Jayce finds himself frequenting the Boundary Markets far more often than he used to.

Every day he grows more astounded by the sheer volume of food Rio is able to cram inside her little body. The Demacian bestiary he’d nicked from the library on campus to learn the insides and outs of silverwings and their needs had neglected to mention their nigh-insatiable appetites. Thankfully, Piltover’s coastal location furnishes the city with a steady supply of fish and other marine delicacies for Rio to gorge herself on.

Market trips are a welcome addition to Jayce’s routine; a breath of air from his seemingly endless daily cycle of tinkering, caring for his smallest labmate, and trying to muzzle his inconvenient infatuation with his partner. Sometimes, when she finds moments to slip away between enforcer training and familial obligations, Caitlyn tags along on his excursions, perusing the stalls and pointedly spending her parents’ wealth on odd trinkets and imported bric-a-brac she knows they’ll dislike.

“Ooh—what do you think of this?”

Turning away from the jeweler’s wares she’d been skimming, Caitlyn thwaps a hand against his bicep. She holds up a gaudy, faux-gilded locket that looks like something straight out of a Targonian fairytale book. Jayce’s eyes flit down to the tag fluttering from it—far too expensive for a lump of pyrite embellished to look like real gold, but he doubts that ‘price’ tops Caitlyn’s list of concerns.

Jayce quirks a brow at her. “For…?

“Wearing, of course.”

“Cait, you never wear stuff like… this.”

Caitlyn shrugs flippantly. “I could start.”

“You’d hate it.”

“But my parents would also hate it, which means their hate would cancel mine out and I’d be happy as a lark.” She tilts her head, a cheshire grin upon her lips. “Wrong plus wrong equals right. Basic math.”

Jayce snorts. “Might want to run through those calculations a few more times. I think there’s a flaw in your formula.”

With a huff of exasperation, Caitlyn puts the flashy locket down and walks to the next stall, eyes keened for more interesting curios while Jayce idly casts a glance down the line of vendors hawking their wares.

A dizzying constellation of colors catches his eye. Beneath a crimson canopy intricately embellished with gold thread designs and floss tassels is an array of weaver-wares: richly hued textile scraps, elaborate tapestries depicting fierce heraldic beasts, embroidered shawls and gloves and tunics. A new addition to the Market’s boulevard of shops.

He thoughtfully trails his fingers down a long knit blanket made of elnük wool that has been dyed a tasteful blend of cream and chestnut. It looks warm. Feels even warmer, the wool woven into thick, fleecy chevrons. Maybe…

“Is your comforter not cutting it anymore?” Caitlyn pipes up, standing tip-toed and perching her chin atop Jayce’s shoulder to look at the blanket.

Jayce gives the side of her head a gentle flick. “It’s not for me.”

“Oh-h-h, I see.” Caitlyn waggles her eyebrows at him, a you-can’t-hide-anything-from-me-Jayce smile on her lips. “For Viktor, then, is it?”

“It’s not like that!” Jayce retorts, the flush that rises to his face definitely belying his words. “I just—it’s almost winter, you know? It’s getting chilly in the lab. Plus, our little resident pest laid claim to anything remotely soft and warm for her nest. It’s hard to nap between work when you’re cold and blanket-less.”

Caitlyn raises a single, unimpressed brow, her pointed expression poking unspoken holes in Jayce’s flimsy excuse. “You know, maybe if you two didn’t treat that lab like a second bedroom, you wouldn’t need to invest in extra blankets.”

“Too late for that. I think we’ve spent more nights in there than we have in our dorm rooms, at this point.” Jayce pauses, tapping his chin contemplatively. “Do you think we can sucker your parents into getting a couch or something for the lab? Call it a… necessary cog in the machine of progress. Workbench naps are becoming hell on my back.”

The mischievous grin that Caitlyn flashes him is all the answer Jayce needs.

By the end of their outing, Caitlyn has acquired a handful of oddities and a new bottle of gun oil, while Jayce’s arms are laden with sacks of raw and dried fish, a new blanket, and more antiseptic and gauze for Rio’s healing wound.

He drops by a few food stalls to snag some snacks for the la for good measure. It’s merely a coincidence that they just so happen to be Viktor’s favorites, he insists.

Caitlyn, as always, sees directly through his bullshit. “You are so in over your head, Jayce Talis.”

Rio, as always, is ecstatic when Jayce returns with bags full of fish for her to eat. As soon as the pungent smell of the day’s catch hits her, she chirrups and tumbles out of Viktor’s lap, tottering up to Jayce on three legs and butting her head against his shins. He’s resigned himself to a fate of never being seen as little more than the Designated Food-Bringer in her eyes.

Jayce habitually pawns the bag of food off on his partner. He’s never enjoyed the act of feeding her—the fish is too slimy, the smell clings to his hands and clothes, and Rio finds some twisted pleasure in nipping at his fingers with her sharp little beak—but Viktor seems to enjoy it immensely.

It’s like he has a natural affinity with animals. The way his eyes light up when Rio dozes off atop their workbench with her legs tucked beneath her like a one-winged loaf of bread, the determined scrunch of his face when he’s teaching her a new skill, the care with which he treats her healing wound and steadies her when she’s close to toppling over. Viktor’s unguarded tenderness when he’s caring for another life is mesmerizing; Jayce didn’t think he could fall any harder, but it seems he was wrong. He is in over his head.

Viktor is methodical about the process of feeding Rio, as he is with all things. Jayce, for his part, is content to sit and watch from afar as Viktor takes a filleting knife and carefully slices strips from one of the fresh cod. He holds a piece up in front of Rio before making her run through a gauntlet of tricks: sit, spin, bow, give paw (Jayce’s favorite—he loves to watch her tilt back on hind legs and daintily put her paw in his partner’s palm so Viktor can give it a gentle little shake and say thank you).

“I taught her a new trick while you were out,” Viktor says, holding another strip of cod in front of a wide-eyed Rio.

Jayce takes a seat next to Viktor, bumping their knees together. “Oh? That was fast.”

“Mm, she’s become quite a quick learner. Very… food-motivated.” Viktor bobs the piece of fish up and down; Rio’s head bobs with it. He points a finger at Jayce. Then, he taps the finger against his own cheek. “All right, Rio—give kiss.”

The silverwing clambers up to Jayce, hops into his lap with practiced ease, and presses her beak against his cheek with a happy trill. Jayce lets out a bark of laughter and gives her a scritch on the head. Beside him, a slip of a sly smile tugs at the edges of Viktor’s lips. He tosses Rio her reward, and she stretches up to snatch it out of the air.

“What else did you get?” Viktor asks, inclining his head toward Jayce’s haul.

“More medical supplies, mostly. A few other things. I, ah, also got you this.” Carefully, he grabs the largest parcel among them, the butcher paper wrapping crinkling under his fingers as he passes it to Viktor.

Viktor quirks a brow, taking the parcel in his hands and unwrapping it. “Oh? What’s the occasion?”

“No occasion. Uh—winter, I guess. I don’t know. I just thought you could use it, maybe, since it’s been getting kind of chilly in here lately and you always seem cold no matter how many layers you’re wearing and—y’know, if you don’t like it or don’t want it or whatever we can just give it to Rio and pretend this never happened and I’m. Talking. Too much.” Jayce clamps his mouth shut before it keeps running like a keyed-up motor.

Viktor, thankfully, doesn’t comment on Jayce’s embarrassing attempt at fumbling out an explanation. He gazes down at the blanket, running a thumb over the material with a soft, contemplative look upon his face. After a moment, he looks up. Meets Jayce’s eyes. Smiles. “I see. Thank you, Jayce. I appreciate it.”

Later that night, Jayce drifts off in the midst of tinkering with an alternator prototype. He awakens to the blanket tucked fondly around his shoulders, Viktor soldering bits of metal together nearby, and Rio curled up soundly upon their table.

Something warm and bright and aching unfurls in Jayce’s chest and catches his breath in his throat.

Rio’s healing progresses remarkably fast. Within two months, she looks like an entirely new creature. Her patchy feathers grow back and leave her looking like a quill-covered hedgehog for a few weeks until they fill in, covering her body in rich cream plumage with steel blue tips; her beak sharpens by the day and begins sprouting small, fang-like notches; her tailfeathers fan out into a beautiful plume that sweeps across the floor (and often collects cast-off metal shavings that he and Viktor end up having to pick from it).

Once Viktor has deemed her ready, he and Jayce sit down to discuss the next steps. Talking about the practical details of Rio’s proposed prosthetic opens some sort of tucked-away mental door within his partner, Jayce thinks.

“We’ll have to approach this with a delicate touch,” Viktor mumbles around the wooden end of the pencil currently tensed between his teeth thoughtfully. “She still needs to be capable of flight, which means her body won’t be able to accommodate a heavy alloy like steel or iron.”

Jayce nods. “Normal prosthetic materials are off the table, then.”

“Correct. We’ll need to use something lightweight, but durable. Biocompatible. Like, ah...” Viktor trails off, tapping his lower lip with the pencil’s tip and meeting Jayce’s eyes.

The charming little furrow between Viktor’s brow suddenly smooths, his lips pursing in an ‘o’ of realization. “Tita—”

“—nium,” Jayce finishes, their exclaimed epiphanies overlapping.

Something glints in Viktor’s gilded gaze. Happiness. The burst of exhilaration that accompanies each kink leveled out in a prospective design. It’s intoxicating; Jayce can’t help but lean into it, taking a seat astride the workbench and leaning his elbows on the table to examine the new diagrams Viktor has furiously begun to scrawl upon his drafting paper.

“The other consideration is her size. How big do these creatures grow, did you say?”

Jayce scrabbles through the deluge of papers and books that have inundated the table until his fingers meet the cracked spine of the Demacian bestiary. Old vellum whispers past the pad of his thumb, page after page flipping by until he once again finds the entry on silverwings. “Approximately nine meters, lengthwise. Their wingspan can get up to sixteen.”

A low whistle sounds beside him. Viktor cards a hand through his tousled hair, fingers clenching around his locks. “Sixteen meters. All right. Okay.” He exhales, resolute. “We can work with that.”

Pencil scritching is the only sound that permeates the silence as Viktor sketches out three separate diagrams side-by-side: a baby, a middling adolescent, and a fully-grown silverwing.

“Our priority should be creating an attachment that will adhere to her shoulder joint. ” Viktor charts an ovular outline over the shoulders of each silverwing, delineating small tabs where support screws could theoretically affix the attachment to the joint. “If we use plates, layer them correctly… She’ll be able to grow a significant amount before we have to re-fit the prosthesis entirely. All we’d have to do would be routine maintenance to ensure everything adjusts correctly as she matures.”

As he speaks, draws, fills the air between them with the hypotheses of a passionate inventor dogging an uncharted trail, the pieces of Viktor’s cerebral jigsaw fall into place before Jayce’s eyes. He snatches a pencil and begins outlining a rough concept.

“It’ll be tricky, but if we can recreate the skeletal structuring of the leg and wing and hook it up to her nervous system, maybe utilize an actuator somehow.” Jayce worries his lower lip. Taps the tip of his pencil against the table. The fragmented image in his mind, broken down into individual components of a whole, is slowly realized on paper. The only thing missing, Jayce thinks, is…

“A power source. We need a power source—something to regulate the actuator,” Viktor says, finishing Jayce’s unspoken thought. His chair rasps against the floor as he abruptly stands, tucking his cane beneath one arm and limping over to the sideboard where the bulk of their experimental machinery rests. Jayce watches him open a familiar gilt-inlaid box, a glint of blue refracting light between his fingers.

The hextech gemstone is carefully deposited onto the table between them as Viktor returns to his spot. “We haven’t had success stabilizing a whole crystal for common use—”

“—Yet,” Jayce interjects.

Viktor snorts. Nods. “Yet. But perhaps we’ve been going about it the wrong way. What if we start smaller? Just a stable sliver will be more than enough to power something like this.” He takes the imperfect crystal between his fingers, smooths the flat of his thumb over one of its jagged edges, and makes a cutting motion. “If we’re able to nail down the process for a fragment, we’ll be able to work our way up in size and tweak things as we go.”

“That’s… not a bad idea, actually.” Ideas flit rapidly through Jayce’s mind: equations, data, visions of runes, all of which he needs to extract and analyze soon. Immediately. Yesterday, ideally.

He reaches for another sheet of paper, fully intending to untangle the knot of thoughts by laying them out on paper, and—stops. Looks at Viktor, who is looking at him—no, past him, eyes glassed over as he beholds the splendor of the paint-chipped and soot-stained lab wall while in the midst of whatever realization he’s having—with Jayce’s favorite little lopsided smile dancing upon his lips. The one that seems to be reserved for rare moments like this, where they’re both in sync and thinking circles around the room. Viktor’s breakthrough smile.

“If we can make this work, we can revolutionize prosthetics. Not just for—for animals, for situations like this, but… For everyone. Just part of a crystal will be enough to stimulate severed nerves with pulses of energy, allow us to graft organic and inorganic together,” Viktor rambles, eyes ablaze with the bellowing flames of inspiration.

One of his hands darts out, slim fingers curling into Jayce’s shirtsleeve like he’s Viktor’s grounding point. There’s a tug on the material, slight but emphatic, as Viktor continues to gush. “Lost arms, legs, even optic nerves and internal organs aren’t out of the question. Titanium is such a cheap and abundant metal, too, so the cost would be negligible and we could—we could help so many people, Jayce. So many. We’d be able to give them back their lost quality of life, restore them, improve them. The possibilities are endless.”

Caught up in Viktor’s current of excitement, Jayce instinctively covers his partner’s balled-up hand with his own. For a moment, Viktor stiffens; his breath hitches in a way that would be imperceptible to anyone that hadn’t spent nigh on fourteen hours a day for the past several years occupying the same space as him. Jayce resists the compelling urge to lace their fingers together when Viktor’s hand relaxes beneath his, easing up his vice grip on Jayce’s shirtsleeve.

“This is it. This is the potential, the power of what we’ve created,” Jayce murmurs. He feels breathless. Weightless.

Viktor’s hand turns beneath his, warm palm curling against Jayce’s. “Our hextech dream.”

In the end, he and Caitlyn manage to sucker the Kirammans into furnishing the lab with a couch.

They’re almost too happy to grant a piece of furniture in the name of Piltover’s progress. Jayce has little doubt that their generous donation will become an ego-stroking talking point in the inner circles of high society for all of a day. If they could have Made possible by a generous donation from the Kiramman Family engraved upon a plaque and hung over the couch, Jayce is fairly certain they would. (He really hopes they don’t.)

Long, late nights spent tinkering with hextech and fine-tuning Rio’s prosthetic become more tolerable. More than once, Jayce finds himself having to carefully pick a sleeping Viktor up and lay him upon the couch. More than once, twice, thrice (really, Jayce begins to lose count) Caitlyn teases Jayce about his little crush and asks him if they’ve made good use of her parents’ donation yet with a suggestive up-down of her eyebrows.

It all feels a frightening, in-too-deep sort of domestic. The prospect of the future—of Rio leaving, of Viktor returning to a more withdrawn version of himself—looms before Jayce. For the first time in his life, he wishes he could halt the steady clip of progress in the name of tomorrow and simply savor today.

They decide to celebrate the successful completion and installation of Rio’s prosthetic by taking a night off from work, investing in some imported Ionian spice-spirit, and getting rip-roaring drunk.

“It’s been far too long since we’ve been able to do this,” Viktor remarks. He’s already several glasses in and beginning to lean back precariously on the hind legs of his chair, heels propped up on the table and a flush dusting his cheekbones.

Jayce nods. Nights like these where they can step back from being architects of the future and just be simple university students are few and far between.

“Gods, once construction has been completed on all of the hexgates we should just… take a week off. Do whatever we want. Go on a bender.” Jayce swirls the rich drink around in his tumbler contemplatively. “I’ll be so thankful to just breathe for a second.”

A small chuckle slips from Viktor. “A bender, hm? I do not think your stomach lining will be as thankful as you.”

Jayce takes another sip. The liquor scalds all the way from down, from throat to gut, and simmers in his stomach for a few seconds before dissipating. “You might be right,” he chokes out, thumbing a stray drop from the corner of his mouth, “I think it’s preemptively warning me off the idea.”

They kill the rest of the bottle slowly, drawing each drop out late into the night and chatting companionably about everything and nothing. The past. The future. The weather on the quay; recent murmurings about Noxian politics; the improvements they envision making, someday, to the undercity. Eventually, conversation peters out into companionable silence, both men content to simply savor fine liquor and finer company.

As he gazes at Viktor, red-faced and lax and drunk on happiness and spice-spirit, Jayce considers the breadth of their world.

Considers the myriad atoms that comprise a single scrap of matter, the incomprehensibility of infinity, the millions of souls that mill about from Glaserport to the Shadow Isles that will never cross paths.

Considers the enormity of the universe and how infinitesimal he is, how time means nothing and everything, the way long-dead stars still light up their night sky. How his legacy—their legacy—could have ended as nothing more than a dishonorable expulsion, charred research, and a broken body on the pavement.

Jayce considers the improbability of their meeting, of Viktor limping into the ruins of his life’s work and calling out to him mere milliseconds before he stepped off that ledge.

As a man of science, he’s always placed his faith in reason and facts supported by solid evidence over nebulous concepts like fate and fortune’s ever-spinning wheel, but there’s nothing else to call this. Destiny. Kismet. Divine decree. Whatever it is that entwined his life’s path with Viktor’s, ensured their meeting despite the impossible number of split-second decisions that could have diverged either of their courses from each other—Jayce is eternally grateful to it.

A clink draws him out of his tipsy reverie. Viktor knocks the bottom of his glass against Jayce’s one more time, for good measure, lips drawn upwards in a smile. “You think any harder, that big brain of yours might pop like a honeyfruit.”

Jayce lets out a huff of loose laughter. He palms the side of his glass, sips absentmindedly at the dregs of liquor left. “Sorry. Zoned out for a minute, there.”

“Something on your mind?” Viktor crosses his arms over his chest, regarding him with a half-lidded gaze.

“It’s, uh. Nothing.”

Viktor leans closer, elbow perched on the table and his chin cupped in a hand. Eyes narrowed, he peers at Jayce. The edges of his lips tick upward. “It’s never ‘nothing’ with you,” he murmurs. “We are partners, are we not? You can tell me anything.”

But not this, Jayce thinks. Never this. If Viktor knew how he felt, it would be the end of their partnership. Of their friendship, wholly. He wouldn’t blame the man if he turned tail and refused to ever see Jayce ever again.

Even if Viktor will never feel for Jayce the way Jayce feels for him, at least he has their friendship to hold onto.

“It’s nothing, really. I was just thinking that the couch looks really comfortable right now,” Jayce says. It’s not an entirely false statement.

“I think you are onto something, there.”

Viktor stands, crutchless, and begins attempting to limp his way to the couch. He nearly makes it there before his leg hitches; Jayce dashes to catch him, tucking the other man’s body to his chest as they fall into a tangled heap on the cushions.

And then—palms are pressed to Jayce, flat against his pectorals. Legs bracket either side of his hips. A face hovers just above his, lips parted and breath curling against his skin, warm and liquor-laced and Viktor. Jayce draws a sharp breath in and holds it, frozen. Waiting for Viktor to roll off him or push him away or something.

But Viktor doesn’t. He leans down, just a fraction. Swallows. His fingers curl into the material of Jayce’s shirt. Jayce raises a hand up, gently cups Viktor’s cheek and tilts his face downward and—

—the clatter of a glass toppling over jolts them both out of their combined stupor. Sitting atop the table and preening with catlike pride is Rio. She bats Jayce’s empty tumbler back and forth between her flesh and mechanical paws.

“Ugh.” Jayce scrubs a hand down his face. “She always manages to find new and unconventional ways to make a nuisance of herself.”

Viktor rolls off of him and faceplants into one of the couch pillows, letting out a tired, drunken yawn. “Just don’t give her any attention. It’s what she wants.”

“Noted.”

Jayce grabs the blanket folded over the backrest of the couch and makes to get up and tuck it around Viktor. A hand grabs his wrist, stopping him.

“Stay,” Viktor mumbles sleepily. He pries the blanket from Jayce’s grasp and throws it over the both of them. “Mm. Warm.”

Tucked against Jayce’s chest, Viktor is out in a mere moment. Jayce lies there, wide awake, re-playing the scene from just minutes ago on loop in his mind. Viktor’s hands against him, his gaze, his lips. He was just drunk, Jayce’s mind whispers. It didn’t mean anything. He won’t even remember it in the morning.

He sleeps in fitful bursts, Viktor’s body pressed against his a reminder of his foolish, unrequited infatuation.