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Light streamed through the arched windows of Piltover’s hextech laboratory, bathing the room in the fiery hues of a late afternoon sun. Faint traces of magic drifted through the air, buoyed by unseen currents. The shimmering specks settled like a thin veil of dust atop glass vials, golden contraptions, wooden tanks of fluid, piles of books, and stacks of council decrees. In the sun the dust glowed a radiant blue, and everything in the lab glittered with unearthly beauty.
Yet the sight had no witness.
There was only one in the laboratory, oblivious to all but his work. Viktor was seated at his desk, crutch leaned against the chair at his side. His amber eyes narrowed as he studied the mechanism before him. It was the fractured remnants of an explosive, crude and frail when set beside the laboratory’s own creations scattered across the tabletop. Viktor turned it over and over in his palm, studying every wire, every shattered tube, every welded seam with an intensity that said it was the most fascinating thing in the room.
“You promised me you would take the day off.”
Jayce’s voice pierced the silence of the room and roused Viktor from his trance. He set the object down with a sigh and turned to watch his research partner come striding towards him with a stern expression.
“And you told me you would be away with Councilor Medarda all afternoon.”
Jayce smiled at that, clasping his hand over Viktor’s thin shoulder. His verdant eyes shone in a shaft of sunlight.
“She was called off to an emergency council meeting. Sky was kind enough to tell me you were still here… despite my requests.”
“Some assistant,” Viktor frowned.
Jayce looked over Viktor’s shoulder at the item on the table before them.
“That’s from the attack on the cargo ship, isn’t it?”
“What’s left of it,” Viktor nodded.
Jayce’s eyes drifted across the cluttered tabletop to a crumpled handkerchief. The pale blue fabric was darkly stained in the center. His hand slid towards it. Viktor caught him by the wrist.
Their gazes met, Jayce’s concern met with an icy warning.
“Sky told me you haven’t been sleeping.”
Viktor’s eyes were dull, the hollowness of his cheeks and the pallor of his face more pronounced than when Jayce had seen him last. Even the warm glow of the room couldn’t seem to lend him any color.
Viktor turned away, back to the mechanism before him.
“I’m close to cracking this.”
“Then you can crack it tomorrow,” Jayce insisted. “Once you’ve gotten some rest. You’re spending too much time in here.”
Viktor’s fingers curled against the tabletop.
“What else do I have to spend my time on?” he said tersely. “I don’t have speeches to give and councilors to charm.”
Jayce withered at his words.
“I do those things for us. For hextech.”
Viktor turned the mechanism in his hand, over and over.
“I know that,” Viktor sighed at last. “But one of us has to do the work.”
Jayce took a long, scrutinizing look around the laboratory. His own workplace was untouched, just as he remembered it when last he had the time to use it. Viktor’s space was dysfunctionally cluttered.
“You’re right, I haven’t been around.” Jayce reached for Viktor’s crutch, holding it out to him.
“Let’s get out of here for a while. You can fill me in on what you’re working on.”
Jayce smiled a thin, hopeful smile. Viktor slowly set the object back down on the table. He took the crutch from Jayce and set it under his shoulder as he stood. His thin arm tremored for a moment as his weight settled.
“Where did you want to go?”
*
Viktor and Jayce walked side-by-side along the Sciences Building’s sky dock, suspended far above the rooftops of lower Piltover. The platform beneath them swayed, buffeted by a warm, persistent wind off the coast. They swayed with it, Jayce leading them past rows of docked airships. Their crews were coming and going, loading and unloading. Some of their eyes caught on the two scientists as they passed. They looked at Jayce with awed reverence, then their gazes caught on Viktor. Awe turned to trepidation.
Jayce stopped before an airship smaller and sleeker than the rest. Its deck was bare, gleaming wood, uncluttered by the cargo that crowded the other ships they had passed. The hull was gilded in swirling patterns. Two guards stood posted at the ship’s ramp. They nodded to Jayce as he approached and stood aside to let him pass.
“Whose ship is this?” Viktor questioned, hovering at the dock’s edge.
“Councilor Medarda,” Jayce replied, mounting the ramp to board. “She told me I’m free to borrow it when necessary.”
“This is necessary?” Viktor frowned. He set the foot of his crutch on the ramp and looked cautiously to the guards. They stared straight ahead.
“Of course it is,” Jayce flashed a teasing smile. “The future of hextech is in peril if its creators don’t get a break every now and then.”
Viktor raised his leg to take a step up the ramp. The wind gusted, and his eyes went white with fright as he swayed unsteadily. Jayce caught him by the elbow and led him aboard, face furrowed with concern. As soon as his feet touched the deck Viktor pried himself free and moved for the bow. He could feel Jayce’s eyes on his back, and his face heated with shame.
They watched the guards untether the ship and bring up the ramp. The deck shuddered beneath their feet as the ship rumbled to life and began to drift skyward. It circled the pale stone towers of the Sciences Building, and Viktor swore he spied the familiar patterned glass of the laboratory windows. Then they broke from the shadow of the building into the sun, and the whole of Piltover was laid out before them.
The City of Progress rose from sea cliffs clapped by waves to the towering heights of the hex gates, their portals glowing brightly as beacons in the clouds. Golden and glorious.
“Why did they look at you that way?” Jayce had come to stand beside Viktor, but even this close his voice barely carried over the wind. “The men on the dock.”
Viktor looked at him in surprise.
“You noticed?”
“Of course.”
Viktor looked out across the city to the burn of the setting sun.
“When I first came here an undercity insurrection had just been put down. Our differences were fresh on the minds of the noble houses, and I served only as a reminder of people’s fears. Then the city entered a wave of prosperity thanks to our work, and suddenly my origins were no longer of consequence.”
“So you were able to become assistant to the Dean of the Academy, even when you were feared by the council?”
Viktor gave his partner a sidelong glance.
“Professor Heimerdinger has always been something of an exception to his peers.”
Viktor turned his face away from the sun and crossed the deck to the opposite railing, Jayce sticking close to his side. With the sun at their back, they gazed out along the line of the golden bridges that led into Zaun, its crumbling buildings obscured beneath the tall shadows of the hex gates.
“They looked at me that way because whenever trouble brews with the undercity, Piltover’s citizens are quick to remember where I come from.”
Jayce watched Viktor as he looked out over the rooftops of his home.
“The whole of our creation laid out before us…” Jayce said, gesturing towards Piltover. “And you have eyes only for Zaun.”
Viktor’s eyes darted to his guiltily. Jayce turned his back to the shadowed city, leaning his elbows against the railing.
“If I didn’t know better I’d think you miss it,” Jayce said.
Viktor hesitated, and his fingers gripped tightly at the handle of his crutch.
“There was a time I would have said no. But when I see the inventions we’ve captured from the other side…”
His amber eyes gleamed with fervor. Jayce remembered that look. He had seen it for the first time when the pair had floated in a sea of blue runes at the moment of hextech’s birth.
“I can’t help but wonder how far the undercity has come while I’ve been gone. What wonders they’ve come up with, free from the oversight of a council or Piltover’s ethos…”
“Careful,” Jayce cautioned.
Viktor shook his head with a grimace.
“You forget it was defiance of the council that made Hextech possible.”
Jayce fell into a troubled silence.
The ship listed, turning back towards the heart of the city.
“What we created was meant to do good,” he scowled. “What they’ve come up with are weapons and drugs. Dangerous ones.”
“Anything can be dangerous in the hands of a dangerous person,” Viktor replied sternly. “Even hextech.”
The ship descended, passing beneath the shadows of towers that cast them into darkness.
Viktor set his hand softly against Jayce’s arm and managed to summon a weak smile.
“I missed these fights.”
Jayce shook his head, but he couldn’t help but grin.
“I missed you,” he confessed, and gently tangled his fingers in Viktor’s hand. Viktor’s face flushed, unseen in the shadows.
“Where are we going?” he asked at last.
“Nowhere,” Jayce smiled. “This is it. You, me, spinning circles in the sky.”
Viktor hummed in satisfaction.
Nowhere was enough.
*
When Jayce called for the airship to moor at last it was under a black, starry sky. Viktor and Jayce strolled in contented silence through the still and darkened hallways of the Sciences Building.
Viktor turned left at the forked passageway, the familiar path back to the laboratory.
“I don’t think so,” Jayce said. He pointed down the opposite hallway, the one that led to the building’s private chambers. “Sleep.”
Viktor had no choice but to turn and head the other way under Jayce’s watch. He reached the door to his bedroom and fumbled the key from his pockets, turning the lock with a click.
The navy curtains on the far wall were drawn tight, and Viktor walked the familiar path through the darkness to the lamp beside his bed. It filled the room with gentle light.
A bedframe carved with spirals and stars dominated the center of the room, piled high with pale blue pillows and sheets. There were shelves and dressers, wardrobes and mirrors, and fine plush chairs. It was a far cry from the rooms Viktor had slept in as an assistant. Even farther still from the ones of his childhood.
One thing was out of place. The sheets sank under the weight of an object resting on the center of the bed. Viktor lifted it with some effort, holding it up to the light.
It was a metal carapace mounted to a leather harness. Viktor traced a thumb over a line of ridges down the back, a metal mimicry of a spine. He turned back to Jayce, who offered a knowing smile.
“What is it?” Viktor asked.
“It’s for you. The other day I realized that after all the incredible things we’ve come up with, you’re still walking around on sticks and straps.”
Viktor shifted his braced leg self consciously.
Jayce drew close to eye his own work with pride.
“And I knew you would never take the time to build anything for yourself, so… I had to do it.”
“You didn’t have to,” Viktor murmured.
“I wanted to.”
Viktor couldn’t find the strength to object any further, not when Jayce looked so pleased with himself.
“What does it do?” Viktor questioned.
“You told me once how your back aches from so many years bent over a crutch.”
Viktor’s expression glazed, trying to recollect the confession.
“I designed this to support your spine. If we’re lucky, it’ll help you balance and alleviate some of your pain.”
“Jayce…” Viktor hesitated. “When did you have time for this?”
“I made time. Let me put it on for you.”
Viktor‘s fingers clutched anxiously at the hem of his vest.
“Another night,” he said quickly.
Jayce scoffed.
“Don’t pretend you’re tired now. Come on, I have to make adjustments to the fit.”
When Viktor didn’t reply Jayce loosened the first silver button of his partner’s vest, then the second.
“Besides…” Jayce said softly as the vest fell open. “It’s been far too long since I had the pleasure of undressing you.”
Jayce was loosening the tie at Viktor’s throat when Viktor’s hands snapped to his, halting his movements.
“What’s wrong?” Jayce urged.
Viktor’s voice was thick when he spoke. The anxious twist of his features made Jayce’s throat go dry.
“I don’t want you to see me like this.”
As understanding slowly dawned Jayce’s fingers began to move again. Viktor looked away but didn’t move to stop him, even as the buttons of his shirt came undone to reveal the thin column of Viktor’s chest.
Viktor shivered under the weight of his stare.
When Jayce reached the final button Viktor’s shirt sloughed from his shoulders to the floor.
Jayce’s eyes widened and widened as they took in the jutting ridge of Viktor’s collarbones, the carved outline of his sternum. He set his hand softly against the line of Viktor’s sharp ribs, and the warmth of his skin made Viktor’s look all the more ghostly.
“Viktor…”
Then Jayce’s arms were around him, wrapping him in a sudden embrace. Viktor dropped his gift to the floor in shock.
His chin rested on Jayce’s strong shoulder. A wide, warm hand was splayed against the flat plane of his shoulderblade.
“Viktor…” Jayce said again, and pressed so close Viktor could feel the name rumble through Jayce’s chest. “I’ve neglected you for too long.”
Fears bubbled up like a spring in his throat and welled in his eyes.
Bitterness that had formed glacial layers in Viktor’s chest suddenly thawed. Long frozen fears welled up into his throat before he could stop them.
“I’m becoming a ghost of myself.”
Their lips met, and Viktor’s anguished tears smeared between their cheeks.
Their movements were out of practice, stiff with hesitation and peppered with faltering breaths. It didn’t matter. Their bodies sang the truth. That there had been a time when without reputation or scrutiny they had worked long through the day and spent long nights intertwined, the pride of their accomplishments and the thrill of their secrecy turned to endless passion.
Viktor was sitting at the edge of the bed, stripped bare, watching Jayce kneel and make quick work of the straps and buckles that braced Viktor’s leg. When the metal crumbled to the floor he pressed kisses to Viktor’s thighs, higher and higher until they reached the place where Viktor’s breath dissolved to needy gasps. His thin fingers wove through the strands of Jayce’s dark hair and tremored.
There had been a time when they needed nobody’s admiration but each other’s. They clawed blindly for that feeling, frail and fleeting though it now seemed. They sought for it in the warmth of each other’s skin, in the sound of each other’s pleasure, in the thrill of release.
Viktor’s traitorous lungs burned with breath, and his legs ached as they yielded wider under his partner’s touch. But this one thing he wouldn’t let his sickness rob him of. This one, fleeting moment where they were alone once more, and the whole of Piltover ceased to matter.
Then it was over, and when the veil lifted all they had been fell away once more to reveal only the cruel simplicity of what they were now.
Viktor sank deeply into the sheets, eyes already heavy.
“Promise me you’ll start sleeping,” Jayce urged softly, and drew the sheets tight around his partner.
“I sleep…” Viktor murmured, the corner of his mouth twitching into a rare show of mischief. “Just in the lab.”
Jayce snorted.
“You’re impossible.”
Viktor stirred in the sheets, burying his face into the pillow. His peaceful expression faltered as his chest shuddered, and an aching cough echoed in the silent room.
“I promise…” Viktor said at last, voice barely a murmur. His eyes were already closed.
Jayce swept aside the hair that had fallen into Viktor’s face.
Jayce didn’t know if his partner was awake enough to comprehend, even to hear what he would say. It hardly mattered. He tipped his head back to the ceiling, to the peak of Piltover, to the vastness of the sky and whatever lay beyond.
“You don’t feel like a ghost to me.”