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Jayce didn’t notice when he woke up, smelling the telltale aroma of coffee in the air. It might have been Caitlyn or his mom, checking in after the longest and probably the most exhausting gala he had ever had to attend.
He didn’t notice after realizing he was in pajamas, chalking it up to something he had done when too tired to even maintain consciousness, stumbling to bed half drunk and completely too drained.
He didn’t notice when he reached for the bedside table and came back empty handed. He had probably just taken his bracelet off the night before, leaving somewhere between the front door and the bathroom in his slow crawl into bed.
He didn’t notice when he padded down the hallway and into the kitchen, the sunshine already filtering through the window over the countertop. He could hear the sounds of people below him, a definite sign that the window had been opened. Probably something he had done when heaving and needing fresh air after hours of smelling cologne and perfume and wealth.
If you asked him later, he wouldn’t admit that he hadn’t even noticed when he heard that telltale voice perk up as he rummaged through the nearest cupboard. Jayce was too focused trying to find something to put in his stomach, but it seemed like someone had rearranged his cabinets without his notice (or that he had and just forgotten again).
“Looking for something?” The accent was familiar, warm, and heavy like it normally was in the mornings when they both sat down to start work in the lab.
Jayce hummed affirmatively, wondering what occasion had finally prompted his partner to use the emergency key to the apartment. Whatever it was, it had to wait until after Jayce was more conscious and less hungry. Satisfied when he finally found the end slices of some bread and placed them on the counter, he finally turned to face where the voice had spoken to him.
Only then did Jayce notice what was different this morning. Viktor was sitting at his kitchen table, glasses on the bridge of his nose, and holding a copy of the morning newspaper, the headline noting something about Progress Day. But it wasn’t a Viktor Jayce could say he recognized.
The first word that came to mind was “healthy.” The normally pallid complexion had been swept away, replaced with the soft glow of life in his cheeks and eyes. His hair, usually wild and puffy in its waves, created a sort of halo around his head, assisted by the window behind him and its rays of sunlight. Grey hairs had begun to force their way through the brown, finally showing the stress the years had put on his body. The crooked, awkward and warm smile was the same, but the smile lines along his cheeks were not. Of course, the warm molten golden eyes shone back at Jayce, crow’s feet adorning their outer corners.
It looked almost as if the lines and creases of years of thinking and frustration had softened into Viktor’s face, as if he had possessed them for years and not only when his eyebrows raised in that skeptical way. Sometimes, when Jayce stared at Viktor’s face while he tried to parse an equation, it felt like that bunched look between his eyebrows was never going to go away. But it always had when the solution had been found.
This time, the soft ghost of it remained on the otherwise pleasant expression Viktor was wearing. Which problem had lingered and caused it?
He readjusted the hand supporting his head, his right hand wrinkling the paper at the same time. With the movement, a bronze ring shone on his left ring finger and Jayce’s cuff slid a little up his wrist. That’s where it had wandered off to.
Silence broke. “Are you alright, Jayce? You seem as though you’ve seen a ghost.”
Jayce didn’t know how to tell his partner that he might as well be staring at a spectre. But it wasn’t like the ghost of someone long deceased; rather, it was a haunting vision of what he knew he could never (and would never) have.
Viktor looked older, years beyond when Jayce had seen him last. Instead of his usual crutch, a cane leaned against the table, the handle only inches from the Man of Progress mug Jayce had painted for him one year. The paint looked old and the mug was stained with coffee, but it was certainly well loved.
Jayce swallowed. “Um…” his words had left him, along with any idea of what had happened after he had fallen asleep the night before.
The familiar bunch between thick eyebrows returned, as Viktor put down the paper and pushed back in his chair. Jayce moved instinctively, ready to catch his partner if gravity chose to be cruel this morning.
“Jayce,” Viktor’s voice came alongside a hand, palm out towards the other man. “I’m alright. I’m not breakable.” He laughed slightly. “I know I’m not in the newest condition, but I think I still have some years to go. Don’t you agree?”
This Viktor wore a mustard cable net sweater and tweed pants with house slippers. There was no trace of the typical Academy cravat or dress shirt. Viktor looked comfortable and safe. It was… atypical, to say the least.
Jayce heard someone clear their throat and he realized he had been staring for a moment, zoning out of the situation to try to parse what was even happening.
“Jayce,” that warm accent said again, “As much as I usually appreciate my husband enjoying my aesthetics, you’re worrying me. Is everything alright? Are you ill?”
His hand came to rest on the edge of the table to stabilize himself. There was a vase of sunflowers on the table. One of them was slightly wilted. Jayce cringed at that.
“I… I’m not sure,” Jayce responded. “I feel… disoriented.”
“I should hope it’s nothing serious. I remember when you almost fell over the time you hit your head on the edge of a desk picking up chalk.” Another chuckle. “I would have thought a Talis would be more sturdy than that.”
Jayce looked down at Viktor, realizing he was standing taller than he had in years. His back seemed straighter, his stance more even. It was obvious he still favored his left leg a little more, but it wasn’t the uneven slouch that Jayce had come to expect from his partner. There was something deeply uncanny about being able to look at Viktor— this Viktor— and see him so calm, so happy, so… not sick.
It almost made Jayce nauseous to think about, but he realized how the person standing in front of him was probably what his Viktor would have wanted to become. Not a bedridden man just barely past his thirties, but a vibrant retired scientist, who (if Jayce had to guess) had moved beyond his fifties.
The hand with the wedding ring came up to his cheek and Jayce could feel Viktor running his thumb along stubble and rounded cheeks.
“You’re crying.”
It wasn’t a question. It was a statement of fact. Combined with Viktor’s warm palm on his cheek, Jayce could only feel himself crumbling more. Viktor’s hands had never been more than icy, a result of his circulatory and respiratory problems. The winter had always made it worse, a fact that did nothing to soothe Jayce’s deep-seated fear of the ice and snow.
What’s more, Viktor rarely ever touched him other than a light gracious hand or the touch of fingers when exchanging chalk. It was simply a fact of their relationship dynamic. Jayce was the heat, the forge and Viktor was the cold, the snow. Jayce initiated and craved contact while Viktor was happy to accept it and never reached back. There was a sort of balance between the two, a sort of equilibrium that they maintained. It was familiar and mutual and what Jayce had come to expect.
But now, as Jayce felt his knees buckle as he came to curl into the floor, pajamas wrinkling and tears flowing, he felt a warm hand on his back to help guide him down. The hand turned into arms, wrapping around him, cradling his head, holding Jayce into a bony shoulder while he cried. Jayce cried for this beautiful, golden future and this loving, vibrant Viktor, both of which he knew would never come to be.
Just two days ago, Viktor had passed out again in the lab, sending Jayce into a panic attack and wishing Sky, Caitlyn, anyone would show up and help him deal with this nightmare. But Sky hadn’t come into work in a week, and Caitlyn was dealing with her own business, so Jayce composed himself as best he could and had ran Viktor to the infirmary with all the strength he could manage. The fluid in his lungs had only gotten worse, and there was a kind of hopelessness in knowing Viktor was going to die and Jayce was absolutely powerless to do anything to stop it.
Jayce could feel those warm fingers running through his hair, the ring cool against his scalp, as he leaned further into this Viktor’s shoulder. The sweater was soft. It suited him.
“Shhh, Jayce.” Viktor murmured, followed by some language in his mother tongue he quickly translated. “My mother used to tell me that all rain will come to pass and the sun will always shine again.” A soft snort of laughter. “I was such a crybaby when I was tiny.”
Jayce felt warm, safe, and stable. He could hear the city below them, feel the sun on the back of his head. Somehow, Jayce knew this couldn’t be real. It was too good to be true.
“What do you do if it never stops raining, Vitya?”
“Hmmm?” Jayce felt the hum in Viktor’s chest. “Then I suppose you dance in puddles and hope for a rainbow.”
His eyelids felt heavy with dried tears and the warmth of his partner’s words. The hand had stopped carding through his hair, but was resting on the back of his head to support it.
“It will all come to pass, Jayce. It always does. Rest now. It’s been an emotional morning. I'll always be here for you.”
Jayce wanted to protest, to say he didn’t want to sleep now when he could be spending time with a Viktor that could still laugh without coughing and walk without doubling over. But his tongue felt heavy and his body slumped further into the yellow sweater. Hands held him tight, and Jayce could smell smoke and anise and ink— Viktor’s smell.
Jayce stopped trying to fight his eyelids. He let them close to the sounds of Viktor humming a soft song. “Something my mother used to do for me,” he had once said, when caught doing so absentmindedly in the lab.
The song got more and more distant and Jayce felt his body get heavier and heavier. The warmth seemed to envelop him, wrapping him in sleep and love and sunshine.
When he awoke, Jayce felt dried tears stiff on his cheeks. He was alone in bed, laying on his back and wrapped in blankets. Swinging his legs over the side, he walked slowly, noting that his party clothes had been strewn about the floor. The gold trim on his jacket was crumpled in a heap.
Jayce made his way to the kitchen, noting the distinct lack of coffee aroma or the sounds of a paper rustling. The window was closed today, but the curtains were drawn as always. There was no vase of sunflowers on the table. At least he didn’t have to look at one wilting, knowing that they all would eventually.
Breakfast was a lower priority now. Jayce padded softly over to the window, wondering if the darkness meant it was still nighttime. He looked out upon Piltover, towards the Academy and the infirmary where Viktor was staying, and then up to the sky.
Somehow, Jayce knew it was going to rain.