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The breakthrough had been a large one, but that was not what Viktor was thinking of.
Now was the time for closed curtains, shuttered windows and cool dripping darkness as Viktor was lulled to sleep by the tempo of the throbbing in his weary skull. Cloistered in reclusive, blissful solitude.
But, that was not what he was doing either.
When they had cracked the symbology they had been working with, ‘Progress Viktor, it’s like a rune for progress!’, Viktor had smiled tightly at his excitement.
Nothing quite existed to him when he was working. Nothing except the work itself, and Jayce. He liked it that way. His mind and soul had been consumed by Jayce’s Hextech theory the moment he had opened his journal in the poorly flickering oil lamp glow of Heimerdinger’s spare storage closet. It had sucked him in like a black hole, immediate and eternal. And now Viktor was left to ponder whether Jayce must own some part of Viktor too.
It wasn’t the kind of thing one could simply take back.
“Stay with me,” Jayce had said, pressing his heavy palm into Viktor’s shoulder, “Let’s watch the sun come up.”
Viktor smiled at Jayce’s spun-out sentimentalist tendencies but found himself unable to decline. Jayce was often irrefutable, in his own right. Besides, a weak yellow glow, like spread daffodils and butter was creeping up the blank canvas of cloud outside of the lab windows. Piltover had such a soft beauty compared to the Undercity.
Who was Viktor to waste such a view?
A warm breeze carried heady notes of fresh baked bread up to where they say on their tower top. Viktor didn't mention it because he didn’t know if he was hallucinating or not. Viktor had always liked bakers.
When he first heard about a baker’s dozen it was around the same point in time that he had learned how any .9 recurring decimal was equal to 1. He thought that maybe if twelve could be thirteen and point nine over and over was the same as one, maybe for two things to be equal they just needed to be so close to one another that their lines fuzzed. Pressed in so tight they blurred, with no clear distinction between beginning or end. Stood so close that people lost the difference in the space between them.
Jayce was never out of arm's reach.
Especially not now, as Viktor gingerly manoeuvred himself near the ledge. He carefully slid his weaker leg off of the side of the balcony. Jayce hinged at the waist beside him, a deep bow, as he held out his arm for Viktor to grasp for balance. There was some quiet intimacy in the action. Not holding Viktor, never one to presume, instead waiting steadily nearby for Viktor to reach out, should he need to. The even-keeled knowledge that with Jayce, Viktor would.
Viktor could hear the shrill call of seagulls at the dockside. Groups circled high in the air as little fishing boats moseyed their way out the Sun Gate like a marching parade of ants.
Everything was so small up here. It didn’t seem real. Nothing but the press of Jayce’s warm thigh next to his keeping him tethered to the moment.
“It’s Lovers Day,” Jayce said, sitting down with grace and turning to face him.
The orange glow of the lazy sun was making his skin glow. Golden hour, Viktor thought absently, with the golden boy.
Orange made him think of his mother’s summertime marmalade. Sticky fingers and pots scraped clean. It was cheaper to make it than buy in the shops, and it kept well with time as so little in the Undercity did. The oranges were too expensive to buy, of course. So his mother would ask the neighbours' kids to do a run topside where the hanging branches were plentiful with them. They’d scale the walls, and shake some loose, sprinting from house to house filling their bags. Viktor had tried not to resent that he couldn’t go with them.
“Have you ever made marmalade?” He asked Jayce, and paused, leaning into the silence that lapped over them like a tidal broken wake.
“No,” Jayce smiled in the curious placating way one did when they were questioning another’s sanity, and by proxy one’s safety, to be sitting on a high ledge in such a moment, “would you like us to go and get some?”
“No,” Viktor said, surely not helping his case for lucidity by any margin. He wasn’t worried. Jayce could understand the woozy brain sway of a post elation comedown better than anyone.
“What plans?” Viktor asked, because of course Jayce Talis must have some sort of plan on how to celebrate a day like this. People would’ve paid for the luxury of spending it with him. Good money too. Though thankfully their struggles with funding was a long since thing of the past.
“Nothing,” Jayce said, reclining back on one arm. He let out a long sigh and surveyed the unfolding sunrise in front of them, “I had thought that it would take us longer.”
Viktor hummed appreciatively. He and Jayce were both brilliant, of course, but that didn’t mean breakthroughs like the one they had came around often. If anything, it was as unexpected as a hex-curved moon in full glow, eclipsing their work for the last several weeks.
Quiet pink was seeping in at the edges now, chasing watercolour lavender out, bleeding like a river out to the infinity of space. Viktor couldn’t help but think of the rose of lips, soft hues babies breath, the light under closed eyes in the late of night. All things soft and safe and warm.
“I believe I shall sleep well today,” Viktor said, for a lack of any other honesty.
“Me too partner,” Jayce looked over at him and laughed.
It should have been charming, but Viktor was struck with the sudden realisation of how Jayce was as equally delirious as he was. Heavy bags pulled like tow-lines under his eyes from lack of sleep, and Viktor could just make out where sleep had caught in the corners of his eyes.
It almost wasn’t fair how the man could look so handsome sat there like that, but Viktor didn’t mind.
He found himself smiling back at Jayce, for want of anything else to say.
Looking back at the view Jayce pointed out at a nondescript roof in the distance.
“See that one,” he said, “that’s where I went to school after we moved to Piltover.”
Viktor leaned in close to him, seeking the same angle of Jayce’s gaze, craning his head to look.
“Next to the clock tower?”
“Yeah,” he said with a curving smile in his voice
“And over there, I used to walk that route home every evening, because it passed the science museum and I could go and see when the exhibits had changed,” Jayce said, his finger trailing lazily through the sky.
Viktor followed his finger around the city. He had never experienced a tour like this. Like opening the passage of Jayce’s life, and stepping carelessly from page to page. There he was a toddler, then a teen, then a baby. Visiting his aunt, his friend, his father’s grave. And all Viktor could think of was a half blasted apartment out there somewhere, covered in sheeting and scaffolds, marking the date Viktor had stepped into the story, pulling his mud-stained shoes over the pages to follow Jayce’s path.
Viktor must have missed the exact moment when the sun rose. All he knew was that suddenly, behind Jayce, the sky had turned to a toppling baby shell blue, and the heat of the sun beamed radiant on his swaying legs.
“Time for sleep?” Viktor said. His tiredness strained through his voice, deep overtones passing through a broken colander, stretching downwards with open arms towards rest without asking for his thoughts on the matter.
“Five more minutes,” Jayce asked, looking contentedly back out towards the view.