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It had started, like a depressing number of Mel’s stories, at Veil, the little bistro that she defaulted to for business lunches. It was close to her office, the food was edible (rather against the prevailing headwinds in this gods-forsaken backwater) and it had a reliably available balcony with a breathtaking view of the ocean.
The two men she had brought with her on this particular occasion had started evenly spaced around the table with her, but somehow migrated their chairs towards each other and were staring mutely at a single menu that both of them were holding like a life preserver. They looked up at each other, exchanged a silent conversation with their eyebrows, and looked back at the menu. Their party had been seated for about seven minutes. This was not shaping into the discussion of the future of the newly-minted Hextech Co that she had had in mind.
“I planned to treat you,” Mel explained, pinching the stem of her wine glass to avoid pinching the bridge of her nose. So, this was the price she would pay for the chance to talk about something new. All the table manners and high society sophistication of a toddler. And he had insisted on bringing that academy bureaucrat who was definitely the reason this meal had already devolved into a siege situation.
They had another eyebrow conversation that seemed to turn out in her favor. Talis even looked at her and, almost timidly, said, “Swordfish piccata?”
“Anything you’d like,” she started. Seeing the panic flash in her guest’s eyes, she amended it to, “But yes, the swordfish is an excellent choice. This place does have the best seafood I’ve found in town.”
Viktor rolled his eyes at her and snorted audibly, as if completely unaware that she had not planned to invite him at all… or rather, as if he was extremely aware that she had not planned to invite him at all and didn’t feel he owed her basic politeness. Well, she didn’t owe him any subtlety, either.
“You don’t need to look at me like that,” she told him, “I’m aware the bar here is low. Now, gentlemen, let’s talk brass tacks-,”
“The bar for what?” Jayce asked.
“Seafood. The seafood in this city is…” Mel knew better than to have this conversation. Piltoverans were bizarrely patriotic about… well, everything. She hedged. “Well, I’m from Noxus, so we have different standards. Like I said, the swordfish is decent.” She took a sip of wine and set the glass down with a definitive tap. Controlling the narrative through body language, that was the ticket. “So, your first big breakthrough with teleportation. Very exciting.”
“Oh, yes!” Jayce immediately lit up. Finally. Some damn conversation. “It’s actually a funny story, see, we know some common runes but what they actually do-,”
But that bony-faced little sycophant interrupted, leaning so far over the table that he was in danger of knocking over his wine, “I’m sorry- did you just say you don’t know where to get Noxian seafood in Piltover?”
Mel sighed, audibly. “Just close your eyes and pick something off the menu at random, Viktor.”
“No, I’m getting the filet mignon, you said you were paying,” he said bluntly, “Answer the question, Councilor.”
Jayce hissed something under his breath at Viktor, undoubtedly telling him to at least pretend Heimerdinger had taught him a social skill at some point.
Mel waved him aside. “It’s fine, Talis. I stand by it. There’s no decent seafood in Piltover and I have given up entirely on getting anything authentically Noxian until we can invent some sort of instantaneous magical travel. Which brings me to-”
“What are you talking about,” Viktor burst out. “This city has fantastic seafood.”
“You’ve lived here your whole life?” Mel asked, feigning curiosity.
“Yes.”
“Well, then how would you know?”
“You’ve tried every restaurant in Piltover, have you, Councilor?”
Jayce cleared his throat and put a hand on Viktor’s shoulder, “I think maybe we should change the subject-,”
“Every one worth trying, yes.”
“Ah, I am sorry, then,” Viktor said, clearly not sorry at all, “I didn’t realize you had already found the moqueca at Angel’s to be inauthentic.”
Mel almost dropped her complimentary roll into the butter dish. His pronunciation left something to be desired but she had never heard a Piltoveran who even knew the word. “Somewhere is selling moqueca?”
Viktor looked at her with the most unabashed scorn she had seen out of him yet, “Has a single one of your restaurants ‘worth trying’ been across the canal?”
“Will you take me?”
“I-“ He stopped mid-snarl as he realized she had not said anything inflammatory about the south side of the city, and re-calibrated. “I could.”
“Tomorrow night?”
Thoroughly disarmed, Viktor had little choice but to agree. To the man’s credit, he didn’t take too long to admit that he had been defeated. “Alright. Wear something… that won’t get us mugged.”
“Excellent, that’s settled, then,” she said, “Now, you were saying about your research plans?”
Mel had the car bring her to Viktor’s promptly at 5:30, with just enough time to make it to where-ever this restaurant was and have a cocktail or two at the bar before being seated. She wasn’t shocked, however, when he answered the door in an undershirt and a half-buttoned leather vest.
“Did you not think I was serious?” she asked.
“Did you not think I was?” he asked back, staring at her chest, and, she realized after a moment, her walking dress. “I told you to dress so you wouldn’t get us mugged.”
“I’m not wearing any jewelry,” she said, “And this buttressed monstrosity is the most common style of dress in the city.”
“Most common-,” Viktor looked back into his apartment, like he was hoping someone would appear to back him up. “Your buttons all match, you have silk trim, that dark blue wool is a first or second dye, and there’s three or four pairs of pants worth of fabric in the outer pleats alone, not to mention the petticoats. You couldn’t run away or fight if someone chased you… you look like a lost Topsider.”
He paused at the end of this barrage as if expecting her to run off in a huff, which went to show how little he had bothered to understand her. Mel was perfectly capable of dealing with rudeness, if it was interesting rudeness. “What do you suggest I wear instead?”
Viktor narrowed his eyes at her, trying to figure out what her angle was, before throwing open the door. “You’re about my size. Come in. I’ll find you something.”
So, Mel found herself seated at a dented and worn booth, in badly-patched and worse-fitting work trousers, an undershirt, and an intentionally (probably) asymmetric canvas vest that didn’t fasten around her chest but that Viktor assured her was fine to wear open.
“I thought I would be spending more time telling you not to stare,” he admitted as he flagged down a waitress in the crowded dining room.
“I have some wits about me,” Mel said. She had kept her head up and avoided eye contact with everyone they passed on the way there. A few people had stared after them but lost interest quickly. Mel was willing to bet that Viktor had kept just as careful a watch on those people as she had, for all he hadn’t looked up from positioning his cane over each crooked cobblestone the whole way over.
“Well, that makes what, one of you?” he said with a wry little grin, and the waitress slid two beers at them before she had a chance to make him elaborate.
“What’ll you have?” the woman asked in the strongest Noxian accent that Mel had heard since her mother’s last messenger. The place smelled like actual spices. Burnt, smoky, greasy, but actual spices. She could have cried.
She actually did cry a little when the first shrimp out of the steaming bowl of moqueca passed her lips. That was fine, their booth was well-sheltered and what was Viktor going to do, tell people she was homesick? She’d have him skinned alive.
Maybe he hadn’t noticed her eyes misting up. It was smoky enough in here to provide some plausible deniability. Viktor just held up his beer and said, “Cheers.”
“Cheers.”
“So, the seafood meets your exacting standards?”
“It’s wonderful.”
“Wonderful? Now I am starting to suspect that you are being sarcastic.”
“I am capable of sincerity. The food is perfect.” Mel took a long sip of her beer. “You seem to have a very specific preconception about who I am, you know. I’m not sure that it’s accurate.”
Viktor watched her over his stew for a moment. The outfit really did transform him from the buttoned-up, smarmy secretary she was vaguely aware of in Heimerdinger’s orbit into just another guy at a divey bar. She wondered, idly, if her own transformation was as dramatic, and if that was why, when he finally spoke, he sounded almost friendly. “I know that you are a woman who commands a great deal of power and does not want anyone to know it. You cannot blame me for being suspicious of you. And your intentions.”
Mel didn’t love the idea of someone noticing her careful management of the Council, but she gestured to her bowl lightly. “Powerful women don’t eat seafood?”
“Not in Piltover, they don’t,” Viktor said, with a gravity that she had not been expecting in response to her attempt to change the subject. When she looked startled, he elaborated, “The bay here is polluted, especially close to the city. And what can be caught by fishing off the docks or trawling near the canal… is caught by people who have limited options,” he gestured with his spoon at the patrons near the bar. “Fish is Undercity food. You won’t find squid or shellfish at nice Topside bistros. Honesty, what you’re eating now is probably not safe, strictly speaking.”
She nodded as she ate another shrimp. “Hmm. What else have I been fruitlessly searching for in Piltover that’s been over here the whole time?”
“Well, what have you been fruitlessly searching for?”
Mel considered, and flagged down the waitress again. “Two vodasmirties.”
The waitress nodded, but Viktor just exclaimed, “Good god” under his breath and called after her, “Just tequila for me.”
The waitress turned around. “You still want two, love?” she asked Mel, who nodded.
“I already believed you were from Noxus, you don’t have to prove anything to me,” her companion said, lip curled, when she knocked back her first shot. The cheap liquor burned with exactly the same metallic aftertaste as the bottles she and her brother used to drink straight out of, hiding on the castle roof, pretending they were getting away with something.
Her eyes teared up, this time not from nostalgia but from the fumes. “I’m sure I’ve demonstrated many times that I don’t feel the need to prove anything to you. You’re the most judgmental man the academy’s ever hired.”
Viktor opened his mouth to protest, but Mel cut him off, “You think the students are juvenile, you think the professors are unambitious, you think that the council is full of self-serving fools, you think that our laws are toothless and our meetings are pointless-,”
“I mean, am I wrong?”
“And I just recently learned that you think your employer isn’t fit to lead. Which is a surprise, I always thought you were at least loyal to him.”
Viktor went as red as his moqueca broth. “I quit to go back to research, it doesn’t mean I think-“
“No, but letting me lead him around by the nose for years when you could see what I was up to certainly paints your relationship with him in a different light.”
“Heimerdinger has some… limitations. As a ruler.”
“Well, at least we agree-,” Something twanged behind her and Mel’s head swiveled around to the front of the bar, “Is that live music?”
Viktor shrugged, glancing over at the corner where a man was tuning a guitar. “For a given value. I think he’s the owner’s cousin.”
“I’m so tired of string quartets and piano,” Mel said. The vodasmirte was acting a little faster than she’d planned; blame the soft living of council party bubbly. “Have you got anything with some soul?”
“Hmm. Jazz or electric?”
“Yes.”
It had never, before this morning, occurred to Mel that there was a serious design flaw in the floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall window framing her desk. No curtains. No blinds. They would ruin the aesthetic. Mel laid her head down on the cool leather top of her desk and waited for death to take her.
“Um. Councilor Medarda?”
“What is it, Elora.”
“Your 8 o’clock with the HexTech-,”
Mel peeled her head off the desk with a sigh and reached for her glass of curative tomato juice. “They’re not coming.”
“He’s uh,” Elora smiled apologetically, “actually already here.”
Mel closed her eyes and just kept them closed, savoring a world without visual input for just a moment. “Send him in.”
Jayce came slinking in, fresh-pressed suit practically crinkling with starch, a portfolio clutched in his hands. “Um, good morning, Councilor. I’m um, my partner isn’t here but, I’m sure that he’s had something very urgent come up.”
“Yes,” Mel said, moving slower than usual in her efforts to not wince or otherwise reveal how hungover she was, without freaking out this young man on whom she had hung so many hopes. “Well, we can reschedule if you would prefer-”
“I’m here! I’m here!” Viktor skidded into the room, using his cane as a parkour aid as he rounded the corner. He was still pulling on his leather vest from the night before, which was hardly the attire for a pitch meeting with the city’s wealthiest woman. Of course, he had also entered from the back entrance that lead back to Mel’s living quarters.
It was clear from the look on Jayce’s face that, even if he didn’t know the exact layout of Mel’s office, he was getting some ideas about how the night before had gone.
“Vik?”
Viktor, either too hungover or too wired from his dash to the office, did not notice Jayce’s bright red, shocked face. He ran a hand through his hair (which only made it stand up at an even more extreme angle) and settled his expression to the impassivity that used to make Mel want to slap him. “Yes, should we get started? We have a budget proposal outlined for our initial set up costs-,” He gestured to Jayce, and only broke his stride when Jayce did not step forward on cue. “Jayce? The budget?”
Jayce held up the portfolio to shield his mouth as he whispered in his partner’s ear, which was adorable of him, since his whisper was easily loud enough for Mel to hear from across the room. “Viktor, what are you wearing? You look like a streetwalker.”
Viktor looked down at his outfit, a crumpled combination of the clothes he’d lent to Mel and his own ensemble from the night before. “No, I think prostitutes are much better coordinated, usually,” he said without bothering to whisper. Jayce winced.
“Gentlemen, may I propose you leave the budget with me and I will contact you with questions?” Mel suggested, trying to keep her voice controlled. It was a terrible situation to put Talis in, trying to get his first big project off the ground with a hungover investor and a hungover partner. It wasn’t funny. It wasn’t. He looked almost pained as he glanced between the two of them.
“Councilor,” he said finally, with the gravity of the last honest enforcer in the city turning on his commanding officer, “I want you to know that I was not involved in whatever… deal… you made with Viktor last night, but that I will not remain silent if there was a quid pro quo-,”
“What are you talking about?” Viktor yelped as Mel gave up and started to laugh.
“No, I just-,” Jayce sputtered, turning to Viktor, “I’m not judging or anything! I know that there’s a lot of corruption, you know, that you’re used to with your history, but I don’t want anything to do with a sponsor who would take advantage like-”
“My history?”
“We just went out for drinks,” Mel said, when she was able to speak again, “And it got a little late, so I let Viktor stay over instead of walking home.” That made the end of the evening sound a lot more intentional than it had actually been, but she didn’t think that Jayce could handle the scandal of his newly minted partner passing out in her bed.
“Nothing… happened?”
“Nothing,” Viktor assured him. “The councilor wanted to get some seafood.”
The gears whirred in Jayce’s head, and he rounded on Viktor. “You didn’t take her to the Undercity!”
Viktor shrugged. “She wanted Noxian food. Where else would we have gone?”
“Viktor! You can’t take a lady to the Undercity.”
Viktor raised both his eyebrows all the way up to his disheveled hairline. “Why not? Angel’s is maybe not a first date location but Ms. Medarda is just a friend.”
“It’s… It’s not that, it’s that… it’s not safe.”
“If you’re worried about my intentions, you’re welcome to come chaperon tonight,” Viktor told him, all wide-eyed innocence. It seemed that both he and Mel had noticed in the past few weeks that Jayce was not good at telling when someone was winding him up.
“You’re not going back!”
“No, we are going to The Foundry tonight. They have music on Thursdays.”
“Viktor, it’s…” Jayce lowered his voice and said, with a momma’s boy earnestness that Mel had to admit was endearing, “it’s different for women. I know you’re used to it-,”
“I am certain that Mel Medarda can handle herself,” Viktor said, with an emphasis on her name that Mel understood well and that flew over Jayce’s head with an audible whoosh.
Mel could feel the bass thumping somewhere at the base of her spine and it like getting a deep-tissue massage for her brain. She wasn’t entirely sure that she liked the music, or even that the band was that skilled, but they were enthusiastic and the songs were new, at least to her. It was making her feel pleasantly punch-drunk, despite her resolution to avoid the hard stuff tonight.
“You can go dance, if you want. I’ll hold the table,” Viktor told her. They were smooshed next to each other in a booth at the back. There was plenty of space, but they were still chatting intermittently over their beer and by necessity had been inching closer and closer together.
Mel smiled and shook her head, but she couldn’t help watching the dance floor wistfully . The Foundry wasn’t huge, and had clearly started life as some sort of factory, so the acoustics were not perfect, but the dance floor was crowded for a weeknight. She was dressed not-unlike the other patrons (although there seemed to be a fashion for asymmetrical leather shoulder pads that Viktor had not provided), but the others were here straight from their work shifts, maybe a nice jacket or a choker thrown on last minute. And they all seemed to know the words.
“I’m not much of a dancer,” she told Viktor.
“No?”
“I’ve never been clubbing,” she admitted. “I’m more recognizable at home than-,”
Mel waved her hand vaguely at the club and tried to ignore the concerned look Viktor was giving her. She was not going to do some poor little rich girl routine here, of all places. The Undercity wasn’t doing nearly as poorly as some parts of her mother’s territory, and Mel was used to the mental gymnastics of privilege, but she knew when she was about to say something insufferable.
“Oh, so you’re a glass-tower prisoner sort of princess,” Viktor said, even though she hadn’t said anything. “Fascinating.”
“Mother was always insistent that we get our hands dirty, but it doesn’t matter how hands-on you have to be during the day. Nobody is taking the commander’s daughter to the after-party.”
“Well, I’m sorry I can’t go make a fool of myself with you.”
“Someone’s selling party favors over by the bathroom, if you just need a little chemical courage first,” Mel said.
“Really? At the Foundry? Guess I don’t get out here as much as I thought.” Viktor’s brow furrowed in the direction of the bathrooms, despite his light tone.
Mel didn’t want something like this to ruin the evening. She was having fun. (Real fun. In Piltover! Will wonders never cease?) So she interrupted, teasing, “What happened to ‘Mel Medarda can take care of herself’? We do have drugs in Noxus, you know.”
Viktor laughed. “You have drugs in the council chamber. I just… wasn’t expecting this place to change.”
“You don’t like change?” Mel probed, throwing behind the question the full weight of the circumstances of their new friendship, the absurdity of this sentiment, coming from him.
“Change isn’t often for the better, down here,” Viktor said, suddenly guarded. There was something behind his eyes that Mel was used to seeing in the snooty bureaucrat version of him that she had written off years ago. They were tiptoeing around something that he didn’t want to show her. Which, in Mel’s ample experience, probably meant something vulnerable.
As if she could resist, now that she saw it. The current song was winding down, the perfect opening. “What about up… top-side? Is change ever good there?”
“Trick question. Nothing changes up there.” Mel stayed silent. Viktor said, “At least, I thought nothing did. Until he came along… and it just felt like- he just feels like-,”
She nodded. There was something stirring just in hearing someone else articulate it . “Like possibilities.”
“A catalyst,” Viktor said, gold eyes locking onto hers as the next song started with a chord pushed the air out of her lungs.
Mel awoke in a sparsely-decorated bedroom, to the smells and sounds of someone making scrambled eggs in the next room. She pulled on the very masculine dressing gown hanging from the door hook and, after a moment to consider the impression she wanted to start with, tied it closed with a reasonable amount of skin still showing.
She stopped short just as she was about to drape herself over the door jam of the kitchen. Viktor was not the man cooking cooking breakfast.
“Rise and shine! We’ve got a long day ahead of us!” Jayce chirped from the stove, turning around to see her only after he had shoveled a generous spatula-full of eggs onto the plate next to him. He shrieked and almost dropped the skillet.
“Councilor Medarda!?”
“Mr. Talis,” Mel said, more coolly than she felt. It was easier to act unaffected when you had someone flustered to play off.
“What are you doing here?”
“I would be well within my rights to ask you the same thing.”
“I have a key. How did you-,”
Probably summoned by Jayce’s shriek, Viktor stumbled into the kitchen, holding himself up by pushing off the wall with one hand, holding a towel around his waist with the other, and leaving a trail of puddles behind him. “What’s going on? Jayce, what are you doing here? That key was for emergencies-”
“I’m making my business partner breakfast!” Jayce shouted, affronted. “What are you doing here?”
“I… this is my apartment?”
“I mean what are you doing here with her?”
Mel coughed delicately. She did not opt to pull the robe more closed; it seemed like Talis might need the extra context clue. “I feel like that’s fairly self-explanatory.”
Talis glanced at her, looked down, realized almost instantly that a nice boy shouldn’t look down, and instead turned his entire body to be angled more towards Viktor so he couldn’t make that mistake again. “I thought you said not to trust her!”
Viktor squeezed his eyes together as if he could will Jayce to un-say something so indiscreet. Jayce seemed wholly preoccupied with figuring out how Viktor’s loyalties had shifted since the day before, and had not quite realized what he had just said. Mel didn’t say anything; the whole pageant was the most entertaining breakfast show she could have hoped for, and she still expected to be served those eggs when the dust settled.
“Ive changed my mind,” Viktor said, and then turned to Mel. “I do trust you.”
Mel was about to say something snide to the effect that damn right he had better trust her at this point, but Jayce looked so relieved, so immediately, and said, “Really? Does that mean she can join us?”
He turned to Mel without waiting for an answer from his partner. “I brought all my notes, we’re figuring out how to set up the lab space. Have a seat, we can get started-,”
Viktor caught her eye as she allowed herself to be ushered to the kitchen table. “ Catalyst ,” he mouthed at her.