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Office parties aren’t really Viktor’s scene.
Well, office party doesn’t exactly describe what this is, he concedes to himself, eyes skimming over the milling crowd. The hospital has rented a venue, and everyone is dressed slightly nicer than usual; though, with usual being scrubs for a lot of them, that’s not a hard bar to surpass. It means he had to dress up as well, though, with his messy hair brushed for once and pulled back into a ponytail at the base of his skull. He’s gotten out of the habit of wearing a tie since he became the head of his department, and it’s already feeling tight across his trachea.
His cane taps across the annoyingly fancy tile floor as he crosses to the bar, his annoyingly fancy shoes tapping alongside it. He dreams of being back in his office in tennis shoes and a white coat. He almost feels a little naked without it. At least there isn’t a cash bar this year -- the least Piltover General can do for its staff is swing for a few drinks to take the tension off.
“A Tom Collins, please”, he says to the man tending the bar, leaning against it to take some pressure off his leg. It’ll be a long night of standing around until he’s been here long enough to politely leave. He wouldn’t have come at all if not for Sky, the newest doctor in his department. She’s a sweet girl fresh off her residency, and when she asked if he was attending with those big puppy-dog eyes, he couldn’t help but agree to accompany her. She’s grown on him a surprising amount for the brief time she’s worked under him, no doubt in part due to the fact that she seems to think he’s a genius who built the hospital’s orthopedic department from the ground up.
Well, more accurately, she knows he’s a genius. He also pulled the orthopedic department up from the dregs it was in when he was hired, which is basically building it from the ground up, so she’s right on both points. She’s a smart girl.
When the bartender returns with his drink, Viktor takes it with a nod of thanks, pushing off the bar to make room for Sky to order. He recognizes most of the doctors here, but most of them don’t like him much, and he rather prefers it that way. They’re mostly dull, and exceptionally shallow. They don’t look at the bigger picture -- anything outside of their specialty is not just a mystery to them, but they seem to think it entirely unimportant altogether. They’ve all got medical degrees, but he questions if some of them could pass high school with the critical thinking they exhibit. Yet somehow, they all think they’re the smartest one in the room.
Well, Viktor also thinks he’s the smartest one in the room, but he’s at least right.
Sky joins him with a martini glass between her fingers, which Viktor idly notices are painted a night-sky blue to match the color of her shimmery knee-length dress. It looks nice, but he’s not really sure how to compliment girls on their nail polish coordination, so he doesn’t.
“So,” she says, voice low and conspiratorial, “give me the who’s who.”
Viktor hums. “Well, I suppose we should start at the top.” He gestures with his glass towards one of the taller women in the room, with an icy glare and salt-and-pepper hair that falls to her waist. She looks as dapper as ever in a white pants suit and a cane of her own, though Viktor has doubted for years that it serves the purpose of a cane, since she never seems to be putting any weight on it. Maybe it’s got some other purpose. He doesn’t have enough proof to share this particular theory with anyone, but he’s always watching.
She’s nodding stoically in a conversation with a woman a few inches shorter, who’s draped in gold and white from the jewels in her curly black hair to the tips of her high heels. “Doctor Glasc and Mel Madarda, the two main investors of the hospital. The former a pharmacist, the latter bringing all the business sense to the equation.”
“They’re both beautiful,” Sky comments. Viktor hums.
“They hold basically all the power in the hospital. If they say jump, the only correct answer is to apologize that you didn’t think to jump beforehand. Now, do you see the almost comically short man approaching them?”
Sky makes a face at the description. “I think I see who you mean, yeah.”
“That’s Professor Heimerdinger.”
“The director of the hospital?”
Viktor nods. He’s not sure if her surprise is that he’s here at all, or that he looks like that -- everyone knows his name, from emails and paperwork and administrative nonsense, but if you’ve only ever read his writing one wouldn’t assume that he’s barely 5 feet tall, with hair and a beard so wild it’s questionable if there’s a man in there at all. “I think some of his cousins or something work in different parts of the building as well. They all have a similarly... eccentric style. And stature.”
“Should you be talking about the director of the hospital like that?”
Viktor shrugs. It’s not like anyone can hear them. He gives a little wave for Sky to follow as he picks his way across the room towards the hor d’oeuvres.
“As far as I know, everyone else here should just be a doctor from some department or another. I’m not sure who you know and who you don’t, so just... tell me who you want to know more about?”
He picks up something skewered on a toothpick and scrutinizes it while Sky scans the room of people herself. It looks like a scallop, wrapped in bacon. A hospital event should probably not be serving shellfish, with how common an allergen it is, but these parties are mostly for show anyway, as far as Viktor figures. It’s not one of his own sensitivities, so he pops it in his mouth and picks up another.
“Are the other department heads here?” Sky asks, startling him a bit. He’d almost forgotten she was there already. In his defense, all he’s eaten today has been... Maybe some oatmeal in the morning? It’s been a while since then.
Turning towards the crowd again, he uses his now-empty toothpick to point. “Most of them are not, but there are a few.” It takes him a few moments to pick each face from the crowd, but Viktor successfully goes down the list of departments, giving Sky the names and pointing at them if they attended the party. He counts them out on his fingers, to avoid forgetting any.
As he gets to the end of the list falling one short, he pokes at his pinky with the toothpick, thinking. “Oh, Emergency is the last one. Sometimes I forget they’re a department, because I try not to go down there. The head of ER retired earlier this year, but the acting head and, if hospital gossip is to be trusted, likely replacement is...”
Almost as if on cue, a laugh carries across the room, above the quiet and inoffensive non-denominational holiday music that’s been playing all evening. Viktor feels his eyebrow twitch as he points to its source. “Dr. Talis.”
He is, as always, surrounded by people who are utterly charmed by whatever he’s saying. He’s in a white suit jacket with a dark vest underneath, paired with a bow tie and a red flower tucked into the breast pocket. One of the female doctors has a hand on the crook of his elbow as she laughs along with him, leaning forward in a way that’s probably meant to give him a flirtatious eyeful of her low-cut dress, but he doesn’t seem to notice.
“Oh, wow,” Viktor hears Sky gasp, and he rolls his eyes.
“You might have seen him before, he’s a bit hard to recognize when he doesn’t have on scrubs covered in little rainbow rubber duckies.”
Sky seems too distracted to hear his scathing commentary, so Viktor goes back to surveying the overpriced finger-foods, wondering if they plan to serve a meal at this party or if it’s more of a cocktails-and-snacks affair.
----
Sky, it turns out, is a much more gifted conversationalist than Viktor is.
Not that that’s saying much. Some people would say a rabid raccoon is a more gifted conversationalist than Viktor is.
Either way, Viktor finds himself riding Sky’s coattails very quickly once they integrate themselves with the crowd. She’s polite, and respectful, and good at getting people talking. Viktor stands beside her and nods like he’s listening, but the conversations are mostly about who’s getting married or going on an international vacation or summering on someone’s yacht.
After a few hours of this, Viktor feels justified in peeling away from the group, which seems to be moving and shifting around Sky at its center. She’d said she came to network, after all. He had no idea she’d be so good at it.
Back on the outskirts of the party, Viktor can see the attendance has thinned out a bit. Those who came to schmooze are still doing so, but anyone who came just to make an appearance or to get some of the free booze has already taken their leave. The party has been going on long enough that the hor d’oeuvres are mostly depleted, and most everyone still there has at least two or three drinks in their system.
He’ll have one more drink, Viktor decides. He’ll give Sky some time to make sure she’s comfortable flying on her own, enjoy one last cocktail, and then call a cab home. There’s a scientific journal he hasn’t had time to read for about a week, and it and his fuzzy slippers are calling his name.
The bartender is at work combining ingredients for him when Viktor realizes he’s not alone by the bar. There’s a man leaning against it, staring sullenly into the bottom of a tall, empty glass like it’s offended him personally -- one of the ones he pointed out to Sky earlier, from the ER department.
“Dr. Talis,” he greets, to be polite.
The man looks up at him, seeming surprised. Viktor isn’t terribly quiet when he walks, but maybe hadn’t been paying attention. There’s a moment where there’s no response, and Viktor is about to be a bit offended when one finally comes.
“Jayce,” he says. Viktor blinks. “Just Jayce is fine.”
“Right.” No one can pronounce Viktor’s last name, so he doesn’t really have the opportunity to decide if he wants to extend the same courtesy. Everyone just calls him Dr. Viktor, so he doesn’t have to hear them struggle through.
The bartender returns with his drink, and Viktor is glad to escape the awkward conversation. He only makes it a step or two away before he stops again, though, hearing the conversation behind him--
“Can I get another--”
“No, sir, I think you’ve had enough.”
A noise one might almost call a whine, in another setting.
“Just one more?”
The clink of a glass on the counter. “Here’s a water, sir.”
Viktor sighs, turns on his heel.
“Dr. Tal-- Uh. Jayce?”
Jayce looks up from his glass of water with big, dewy amber eyes, and Viktor has to avert his own from the discomfort of the eye contact.
“Who did you come here tonight with? Where are they?”
“Well, I came with Cait, but she left early.” Viktor is familiar enough with the hospital’s staff roster to know that Cait is likely Caitlyn, one of the paramedics. “I was hanging out with some doctors and the one kept bringing me drinks, which tasted like soda, so I figured it was fine? But I guess they weren’t just soda. They were good, though.”
“Right. And where did they go?”
“...I drank ‘em.”
“No, the people you were with.”
Jayce shrugs. It’s a bodily kind of shrug that knocks his bow tie askew. “I’unno. They all usually get bored of me after an hour or two. I guess I didn’t say the right stuff?”
He’s looking down into his glass again, and Viktor feels a pang of pity. It’s an unfamiliar feeling. That seems like a good opportunity to leave Jayce to his wallowing.
Viktor is leaning a bit more heavily on his cane as he walks, after standing for most of the night, so he finds a table a bit away from the crowd and flops into a chair. He has a good enough vantage point to watch Sky mingle through it, without being dragged back in or having someone trip over his cane. He takes a slow sip of his drink, and hears someone sit in a chair near him.
Apparently inebriation turns Jayce Talis into a lost puppy dog, and he chose Viktor as the one he would follow. Viktor looks around, wondering why it’s on him to take care of the idiot who got drunk at the holiday party this year.
He can feel Jayce staring at him for a few minutes, so he keeps his gaze forward, watching the woman Sky is in conversation with wave the investors over. Hopefully she makes a good impression on them -- at this rate, she’ll be Viktor’s boss, soon. He’s not sure how he feels about that.
“Who are you watching?”
Viktor jumps a bit, hand tightening around his glass. Finally turning to look, he sees Jayce sitting in a chair backwards, arms folded over the backrest to pillow his chin. He’s left an empty one between them, so he has some personal space, at least.
“The girl in the dark blue dress, over there. Talking to Miss Medarda and Doctor Glasc. She’s in my department, so I accompanied her here tonight, but she seems to be doing well enough on her own.”
Jayce looks a little sad at the answer, and Viktor isn’t sure why. He doesn’t have to wonder for long.
“She can’t screw up with them worse than I did,” he grumbles. Apparently he takes Viktor’s raised eyebrow as encouragement to continue.
“The professor introduced me to them, like, talkin’ me up about how I’m in line for the head of my department, or whatever. Which is a good intro I guess, but it’s a lot to live up to! And so I’m talking to ‘em about their hospital management stuff, and Mel’s like, how do you think we could improve the ER department. Which is, like, an interview question I was totally not prepared for.” He gestures with his water glass, spilling a little over the side.
“So I’m like, well, I guess we spend a lotta time waiting around for drugs, y’know, so maybe the pharmacy limits are too tight. Lotta... red tape. I get limits, but we gotta keep things movin’!” More water lost. At least Viktor is out of the splash zone. “Then Doctor Glasc gives me that scary look, and she says, oh, the limits I put in place. ‘Cuz she’s pharmacy. Which I totally forgot, like an idiot.
“So I’m trying to backtrack, like no, no, they make sense, of course, totally, right, it’s not the main source of backed-up admin paperwork! And--” he hiccups. “And that’s when Mel is like, oh, what would that be? And you know there isn’t a good answer to that question, and... ugh.” He drops his head so his forehead rests on his forearms, sighing dramatically.
Viktor winces. No wonder Jayce had started drinking. Medarda and Glasc are intimidating women, even to someone who isn’t in Jayce’s precarious position.
“...Drink your water. It’ll help you feel better.”
Jayce grumbles, which sounds a bit like he’s saying I feel fine, but takes a sip as he’s told. He’s obedient like this, at least.
Viktor finds himself studying Jayce, while Jayce passes the water glass from one hand to another, idly watching the crowd. There’s no denying he’s an attractive man -- broad-shouldered, tan-skinned, with biceps likely too big to fit a hand around. Viktor had always assumed he was using it to his advantage, schmoozing the people who tried to flirt with him, but tonight has him doubting the notion.
His face is open, guard entirely down. His teeth rest on his bottom lip, showing off the little gap between them. There’s also a little scar in his eyebrow that Viktor’s never looked at him long enough to notice. It’s interesting how he rides the line of handsome and cute. If only he wasn’t so damn irritating...
“Hey, can I ask you a question?” Jayce slurs, looking up suddenly. His gaze is intense, piercing, which is surprising for someone whose eyes won’t quite focus.
“Um, sure?”
“Did I do somethin’ to make you mad?”
Viktor blinks. Some part of his brain scans through the memories of all the interactions he’s had with Dr. Talis.
Most of them before tonight were incidental, in the cafeteria line or receiving a patient who had been stabilized in the ER. When you work in a mid-sized hospital for as long as Viktor has, that tends to happen with everyone. Jayce is always polite at those times, nothing out of the ordinary.
But there were also times where Jayce would seem to almost seek him out, just to brag about some new accomplishment or ask if Viktor had seen the newest research or something of the sort. At first Viktor had thought he was showing off to try and put himself on the same level of doctors a few years his senior, but as the years went on, it didn’t seem to stop. The only logical conclusion Viktor could make was that Jayce is like that with everyone, inherently braggadocious and looking for chances to prove everyone wrong.
“Eh, no,” Viktor answers eventually, because he hadn’t done anything in particular. He’s just an offensive, annoying person in general. But he’s still not sure why Jayce is asking. “Did I, you?”
“No, no, I just. We’ve been workin’ together for years, right?”
Viktor wouldn’t say together, but he doesn’t interrupt.
“And, like, you’re cool, and pretty, and smart, and confident. And I always try to impress you, y’know? With papers, or stories about cool stuff that’s happened, or whatever, but you always seem... irritated.”
He’s blinking at Jayce in a downright owlish manner now, he knows, but Jayce is too engaged with his rant to notice.
“Like with most people they just, like, smile and nod and pretend like they like you. And they do that, because they think they can get something from you, and as soon as you can’t do everything for everybody, they leave. And I’ve, I’ve come to expect that, you know? But you’re not like that.” He points at Viktor, and he feels pinned like a bug on a mat.
“You don’t pretend, you’re not fake. Everyone knows where they stand with you. But I dunno how to... change where I stand with you. I figured, hey, he doesn’t like anybody, doesn’t want friends, I guess. But then you’re here tonight, bein’ social, and... so maybe it’s me? Like I did something?”
His eyes are getting big and watery again, and Viktor really doesn’t know what to say, so he does what he does best and shoves all the emotional thoughts in his brain aside. Instead, he pulls out his phone. “Let’s... call you a cab.”
“It’s okay. I walked here. I’ll just... walk home.” Jayce dejectedly puts his glass of water (almost full, save what was spilled) back on the table, clumsily pushing his chair away as he stands. He wobbles noticeably, catches his balance, and takes three more steps before his path veers again.
With a sigh, Viktor gets up to intercept him, putting one of Jayce’s meaty arms over his shoulders so the man could rest on his free side. “I don’t think you’re in a shape to be walking through the city alone at...” a glance at his watch. “Nearly two a.m.. Where do you live?”
“I’m good, really,” Jayce hums, gestures. “It’s just, like, a fifteen or twenty minute walk that-a-way.” He tries to pull away a bit, but Viktor keeps a firm grip on his hand.
“What’s the address, Jayce,” Viktor presses, walking them towards the door.
Jayce winces a bit, wiggling his fingers. Viktor’s grip doesn’t relent. “Apartment 4A. Across from the bakery.”
Viktor closes his eyes and takes a deep, calming breath through his nose. “What bakery?”
“The one with the little pastries my mom likes.”
“The address, Jayce!”
“I don’t know the bakery’s address,” Jayce answers, as if it’s a stupid question.
Well, so much for loading him into a cab and sending him off. But Viktor doesn’t feel right leaving a weepy drunk to his fate on a cold winter night in the city, either. And he sure doesn’t trust anyone else to notice what’s going on over here.
“Alright,” he sighs, loading Jayce into the cab. “My place it is...”
----
Jayce is awoken by a dull, throbbing pain in his head. He squeezes his eyes tighter in a vain attempt to ignore it, but as minutes tick by it only gets worse, and he slowly becomes aware of more ways he’s uncomfortable. His mouth is dry, his eyes are crusty, his back aches from the lumpy mattress he slept on and he’s still wearing a dress shirt and slacks--
Wait. Dress shirt and slacks... lumpy mattress? He slowly opens his eyes to confirm his fears: this is not his bedroom.
He springs forward, but once he’s sitting up his head starts to spin and he has to stop to quell the queasiness. The room he’s in is messy, but it seems like a controlled chaos... most of the piles of things seem to be books and papers. There’s a bucket lined with a plastic bag on the floor next to the bed, which he is very much hoping not to need. There’s also a glass of water on the bedside table, and three little pills sitting on a piece of paper. It just says ‘aspirin,’ in crooked, doctorly handwriting, with an arrow pointing to the pills.
Downing the pills and water, he racks his brain to dredge up memories of the party. Cait had ditched him, then he’d put his foot in his mouth talking to the investors. After the professor praised his progress at the hospital, too. Hopefully he hadn’t fully tanked his chances at the promotion. Then... one of the female doctors had been talking to him, buying him drinks. That’s where his memories go fuzzy.
She’d definitely been flirting with him, but he wouldn’t have gone home with her, would he? At least he’s still fully dressed, albeit missing his tie and shoes. His shirt had a few buttons open as well, but not enough to be indecent, especially with an undershirt on. He scans the room for his shoes, trying to remember her name... if this is her house, not remembering who she is would only make things worse.
About fifteen minutes is enough time for the aspirin to take the edge off his headache, and to determine his shoes are not in this room, but not enough time to retrieve the woman’s name from his memory. Oh, well. He stands with a sigh, opening the door as quietly as he can to pad down the hall.
He’s in a decent sized apartment, which is homey, but just as chaotic as the bedroom. The floor is clear, though, with surprisingly few tripping hazards for how much stuff is piled on the available flat surfaces. He passes a bathroom, and a dining room, before turning the corner into the kitchen, and freezing in his tracks.
The kitchen is small, with a little bar separating it from the living room. There are a few chairs lining the bar, and sitting in one of them is the head of the orthopedics department, Viktor, with a mug in one hand and a messily-bound pack of papers in the other. Over his shoulder, through the window to the living room, Jayce can see a pillow and blanket draped over the sofa, and a pile of things in a nearby armchair that looks like it includes his shoes.
Viktor looks up at him with an inscrutable expression, but if Jayce had to put a word to it, he’d choose bored. “Help yourself to coffee,” he says, gesturing with his mug towards a half-empty coffee pot. Then he goes back to reading like nothing is out of the ordinary.
“Um. Right.” Maybe he does need that bucket after all, with how his stomach is fluttering. Everything in him wants to just grab his things and run, but one thing everyone can agree on about Jayce is that he’s polite. So instead, he shuffles across the kitchen to make himself a cup of coffee. Viktor even left the sugar and creamer out, so he doesn’t have to drink it black.
Once it’s made, he slides into one of the chairs, leaving an empty one between himself and Viktor. He blows the steam off the top, trying not to look up at Viktor, who isn’t looking up at him at all. “Thanks for, uh. Taking care of me last night. I don’t know what got into me...”
“A lot of cocktails, if I was to hazard a guess,” Viktor says, deadpan. His eyes track across three more lines of text on his papers before he sets them on the counter, taking a sip of his own coffee. Then he finally looks up at Jayce, eyes scanning his face. “You don’t remember much, do you?”
“No,” he admits, feeling his cheeks flush a bit. “I don’t usually drink that much...”
“I can tell.” It almost seems like there’s a bit of humor in his voice, the hint of a smile on his face. Maybe Jayce is imagining it.
“I hope I wasn’t too much trouble for you...”
Viktor waves a hand. “You were very agreeable, though you did fight me in getting your shoes off. Very talkative, too.”
“Oh, God.” His stomach flips again. “I’m sorry. I hope I didn’t say anything too embarrassing.”
Viktor says nothing at that, just giving a little shrug. Jayce would swear the little smile on his face is bigger, though. He focuses on his coffee to distract himself. It’s a surprisingly good roast.
They sit in minimally-awkward silence, sipping coffee, for a few minutes; long enough for Jayce to believe the topic of last night to be dropped. Viktor finishes his coffee, dog-ears the page he’s on and flips his papers closed. From the front page, it seems to be a medical journal, printed out and stapled together. Jayce can see the words robotics and prosthesis, but he’s trying not to be obvious about looking over Viktor’s shoulder.
“You did say one thing,” Viktor says suddenly, and if Jayce’s coffee wasn’t already half empty it would have spilled.
Viktor drums his nails on the ceramic of his mug, a staccato pattern of clicks signifying the gears in his mind turning. There’s something graceful about the movement of his long, thin fingers moving in a rhythmic wave. Almost hypnotic.
“You said,” a pause. “You said I’m cool?”
Okay, that’s not that bad.
“And smart. And that you wanted to impress me?”
Jayce feels his face burn with embarrassment as he opens his mouth to reply, but nothing comes out.
There’s silence for a few moments, and Viktor’s next words are almost too quiet to hear. “And... pretty?”
Maybe he died of alcohol poisoning last night, and this is hell, actually.
Viktor’s tapping slows to a stop, and Jayce can hear his heartbeat in his ears. He says “I can--” at the same moment Viktor says “Is that--” and they both stop speaking, staring at each other with a similar mix of anxiety and scrutiny.
Silence is an awful sound, Jayce decides. He just wants to go home, shower, and go back to the hectic insanity that is his everyday life in the ER.
Viktor picks up his sentence first. “Is that true? Or was it just, eh...” He gestures with his mug, free hand spinning a curl of his hair between two fingers. “Drunk ramblings.”
“...Both?” Jayce puts down his coffee so Viktor doesn’t see his hands shaking. “I mean, it’s true, yeah, but I also wouldn’t have said it if I wasn’t drunk. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable, I’m so sorry.” He stands, straightening his shirt -- to little effect, since he slept in it. “I’ll--I’ll get out of your hair. I’m sorry, again, I really--”
“Would you want to, uh. Have lunch, sometime?” Jayce is startled out of his panicked rambling, and looks up to see Viktor looking away, chewing on his bottom lip. “I could tell you about this journal I’ve been reading. If you’d like.”
“--Uh. Yeah. Sure, yeah, that... sounds cool.”
----
Thankfully, Jayce has the day after the party off work, so he can sleep off his hangover and pour over everything that’s happened in the last 32 hours. But working in the ER, two consecutive days off in a row is a rare occurrence, so the next morning he puts on his festive reindeer scrubs and heads into the hospital.
The hectic nature of the Emergency department distracts the part of Jayce’s brain that wants to fret, which is a bit of a relief. It’s a busy day, but things will only get busier as the holiday season drags on.
He receives a patient from the ambulance bay, scribbling notes on their condition on a clipboard as the paramedic lists them off. Drunk, got in a fight, probably needs a few stitches but nothing life-threatening. Once it’s all written and clipped to the bed, he leaves the nurses to get things set up and steps out for a breath of air.
The paramedic is there, and on second glance, it’s Caitlyn, looking a little sheepish. He gives her a smile, which she returns with a little wave as he approaches. “Sorry for ditching you at the party. Vi hurt her arm...”
She’d just said girlfriend emergency when she left, but Jayce had assumed that was probably the nature of the emergency, knowing Vi. He waves a hand. “No big.”
“I take it you got home safe?” She’s got an odd look on her face.
“Yeah, I got a cab.”
“I’ve heard some weird rumors. They’re probably nothing, but... I figured you should know.”
He cocks his head. “What kind of rumors?”
“Well, people are saying you left with Viktor, the head of ortho.” Jayce doesn’t get a chance to respond, the blood rushing to his face giving him away. “...You didn’t.”
“It was nothing!” His arms cross over his chest. “I got a little, uh... I drank a little more than I meant to, and he got me a cab.”
“A cab home?”
Jayce looks away. He never wishes for more people to get hurt, but an emergency that would pull him away from this conversation would be really helpful right now.
“Jayce!”
“Apparently I wouldn’t tell him my address,” he admits, arms falling to his sides as his shoulders slump. “So he took me to his apartment to sleep it off. He slept on the couch! No funny business, nothing rumor-worthy.”
She looks smug, like she does when she thinks she’s connected the dots. “So that’s why he’s in such a weird mood,” she hums, tapping her chin with a finger.
“...Weird mood? What do you mean, weird mood?” He’s speaking too fast to sound normal. He clears his throat. “I mean, uh. Not that it matters. To me. But is he upset?”
“I was in the ortho department yesterday with Vi-- she had a pin put in, so we came for a consult on if it would affect her boxing.”
“Oh, shit. Is she alright?”
“Yeah, she’ll be fine. She broke her elbow on a dare. He told her to just lay off it for a few weeks. Somehow she never hurts herself badly enough to have any lasting consequences, thankfully...” Caitlyn rolls her eyes. “Anyway. Viktor was smiling at people. I asked one of the nurses and she said he’s been acting funny since the party. He even laughed at one of Vi’s terrible jokes.”
Jayce isn’t sure what that means, but it’s giving him that weird fluttering in his stomach again.
“I don’t think anyone has ever been to his apartment before -- at least, no one who works here now, anyway. He’s not exactly known for going out of his way for people like that.”
“Yeah, I guess not...”
“Dr. Talis?” The nurse pulls him back to earth. “We’re ready for you.”
“Right-- right. See you around, Cait.”
Caitlyn waves him off with that smug little smile, and he tries not to overthink.