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Jayce hadn’t been thinking.
He’d been holding the door open for Viktor, who had been cursing under his breath after traversing a patch of ice in the academy square. Maybe Jayce had been too busy with trying and failing, as usual, not to notice the flush at the tips of Viktor’s ears and nose. Maybe that’s what had caused him to look to the ceiling as Viktor came up beside him and paused in the open doorway to shake snow from his boots.
Jayce had looked up and seen a plant with white berries suspended there above the doorway. If he had been thinking, he might have had a good idea. Maybe something like, Ignore it, continue on to Heimerdinger’s office for the meeting. Or maybe, Point it out to Viktor and see how he reacts, you can just have a laugh about it together. Or, Run very far away.
But Jayce hadn’t been thinking. He would do that later, and obsessively, as if somehow that might balance it out. He’d turn over in his mind the mild scent of anise carried on Viktor’s surprised breath. He’d think about how the severe angles of Viktor’s face had seemed to soften as it was tilted up and towards the light. Towards Jayce. He’d think about how Viktor’s sharp chin looked when it was caught between Jayce’s thumb and forefinger.
Jayce must have leaned in, but he didn’t remember moving, so in his recollection it seemed almost like space must have bent around them. Later he’d try to run a set of calculations, wondering if somehow the unpowered hex-gate prototype he’d been carrying in his pack may have been jostled in a way that had collapsed the distance between two points. He’d get stuck every time he tried to determine whether Viktor’s mouth was Point A or Point B.
He’d think about how technically, by the barest of margins, he hadn’t kissed Viktor full-on.
It had only been the corner of Viktor’s lips that he’d pressed his own to.
Thinking about that would later bring Jayce equal parts relief and agony. Relief in that what he had done could have been, just slightly, worse. But knowing that he would never touch Viktor again, part of him shamefully and desperately wished that he’d been just slightly more stupid.
Jayce had seen a lot of Viktor, and knew intimately that the man was a master of micro-expressions. Between a professional necessity for communication with his lab mate, a drive to understand someone he considered a close friend, and a profound inability to not constantly stare at one of the most beautiful people he has ever seen, Jayce had catalogued most of them. A slight change in the elevation of a brow, a downturn of his lips, the angle of his lashes, the hesitation before words, the set of his shoulders. Jayce knew what Victor looked like amused, frustrated, confused, angry, exhausted, determined, relieved.
In that doorway, under the mistletoe, Jayce kissed Viktor and pulled away to discover a new expression. Viktor’s eyes were massive, his mouth parted, his brows lifted high. One hand was half raised between himself and Jayce, palm outwards, and the other was white-knuckled around the grip of his crutch. Where it hadn’t been brushed on from the cold, the color had drained from his face.
Viktor looked fucking terrified.
The reality of what he’d done crashed into Jayce. He opened his mouth to try to explain, to apologize, to swear at himself. Maybe to scream? There were a thousand of things he had to say, immediately, but the words all crashed together and lodged in his throat. He found himself two steps he did not recall taking away from Viktor, pressed into the opposite wall, pointing up at the ceiling.
Viktor’s wide eyes darted up to the sprig of mistletoe before snapping back to Jayce’s, confusion sliding in to war with the new expression on his face.
“Mistletoe,” Jayce said.
There was a pause, a moment that stretched out curiously long. Jayce did not breathe, and in the silence he realized he might have actually shouted it. Viktor was frozen.
A yordle popped his head out of a doorway down the hall and interrupted the absolute nightmare Jayce had created for himself with a cheerful, “Gentlemen!”
Jayce turned in that direction, and felt his face shift through several gears in an attempt to land on something normal. Unfortunately his hand was still pointed at the ceiling.
“Ah!” Heimerdinger sounded delighted, “Caught under the mistletoe, are you? It was a favorite winter tradition of a dear old friend! Such fond memories!”
“Tradition,” Jayce heard Viktor say, quietly. “What tradition?”
“Kissing under the mistletoe! No appeal for myself, of course,” Heimerdinger said. “But it seemed to bring a good deal of joy to my friends. I decided to hang up one or two sprigs this year, it seemed fitting with the snow.”
Jayce looked over to find Viktor’s gaze directed at him, expression shuttered.
“A Piltover tradition?” Viktor asked, quietly.
“Yeah,” Jayce responded. “An older one. Sort of uncommon.” Viktor took a deep breath through his nose and his shoulders straightened.
“I see,” Viktor said. “I was not familiar.”
Jayce thought about what little Viktor had revealed about growing up in the Undercity and realized he should not be surprised.
Viktor turned to Heimerdinger.
“We have brought the new prototype to demonstrate the second possible structure configuration, professor. If you have a moment.”
A few weeks had passed and a few things had become clear to Jayce.
First: They don’t talk about it.
Second: Heimerdinger’s “one or two sprigs” was a count off by an order of magnitude.
That, or it had caught on with the students. Either way, traversing the academy with Viktor now had become akin to walking around a Noxian mine-field. Almost all of the routes they had commonly walked together daily had at least one sprig tucked away.
By some miracle they had not yet wound up together and in proximity to one. Likely aided by the fact that Jayce had made a habit of scouting alternative routes ahead of meetings to ensure a clear path.
It was not uncommon to see students draw one another into doorways under the plants for brief laughing kisses or hugs on their way to and from class. The scattering of mistletoe did seem helpful in spreading some cheer to melt through the chill that had settled over Piltover during one of its rare snowy winters. As such, Jayce did not feel comfortable destroying them, but he had relocated an improbable amount of mistletoe to less hazardous locations.
The alternative would have been to avoid Viktor, which Jayce was determined not to do. His friend was deeply magnanimous in moving past Jayce’s transgression, and Jayce would not take it for granted. Viktor actually seemed to make more time to spend with Jayce, halting projects and walking with him to get coffee or attending meetings he would otherwise have left to Jayce. Jayce was deeply grateful for Viktor’s efforts to show he was willing to move past what had happened.
Jayce studiously avoided any form of physical contact as they worked together, and he stayed awake at night imagining scenario after scenario where he had held himself back from the moment where he learned what fear looked like on Viktor.
But always, guiltily scattered among the fantasies in which Jayce was a better friend to Viktor, there were the fantasies where he was different than a friend altogether.
Some were imaginings that Jayce had conjured long ago, now painfully sharpened by the memory of Viktor’s scent and softness. There were some that were new, achingly simple curiosities: what it might have felt like if Viktor had shifted until their mouths were fully aligned, or if he’d pulled Jayce back in afterwards, or if he’d breathed “I’ve waited for you to do that for a long time.” Jayce was haunted by what might have been, in a different world. One where Viktor wanted him back.
Someone had been removing Viktor’s strategically placed mistletoe for weeks.
It had started with one, innocuously placed on the path to Jayce’s preferred coffee vendor on campus, near enough to Heimerdinger’s building that it would be a believable sibling to the one they’d encountered initially.
When Viktor had been hanging it up, he’d been forced to admit to himself something that he’d been avoiding. He’d been avoiding it by launching into the presentation of their prototype in Heimerdinger’s office. He’d been avoiding it when walking home afterwards, he’d been avoiding it in the vulnerable, private dark of his small apartment. In the following days in the lab, maneuvering around the space with Jayce, he’d been avoiding it.
But he’d not done a very good job of avoiding it.
Long ago they had both started keeping basic hygienic equipment in the lab bathroom, in case they were pulled into a meeting with one of their funders following an all-nighter spent in the lab. Viktor had never found that particularly notable, but two days after the mistletoe Viktor had finished washing his hands and after a brief hesitation found himself reaching for Jayce’s bottle of aftershave, like a man possessed. He opened it near his nose and inhaled so that the scent of Jayce crowded over him almost like his body had in that doorway.
On the way home to his apartment, Viktor had stepped into a florist and asked if they had mistletoe. He’d been told they didn’t have any prepared, but that they could probably get some the following day.
He had nodded and left.
He had returned the following day.
He had slid money across the till without meeting the eyes of the florist.
He had stuffed the bundle into his bag.
He had walked to a specific location.
Viktor had known for a long time that he was in love with Jayce. But it was only after he’d spent five minutes affixing a strange parasitic plant to an archway that Viktor had been forced to admit that he’d likely already been as close as he would ever get to satisfying the starving singularity within himself that had directed itself at Jayce Talis.
Jayce had kissed him. Viktor’s amorous feelings were not reciprocated, and Jayce had wanted nothing deeper than to share a genuinely bizarre custom with his lab partner, but Jayce had kissed him. And it was not enough. Not even close.
Even so, Viktor wanted it to happen again. And he wanted it badly enough that he had not left it to chance.
When Jayce had made to go for his coffee that day, Viktor had offered to join him, and walked alongside him discussing their projects. As they neared the archway Viktor’s palms started to sweat in response to the imminent potentiality. Maybe he would point it out himself, offer a wry, “ah, that plant again, remind me the name?” Maybe he’d ask if Jayce would be interested in joining him beneath it.
They rounded the corner. As the mistletoe came into view, so too did the two impassioned students occupied beneath it. “Oh,” Viktor said, with some trouble hiding his irritation. Jayce indicated and started down a detour, immediately and without comment.
Jayce bought his coffee, Viktor his sweetmilk, and Jayce led them back to the lab along a route that avoided mistletoe both physically and conversationally.
The same time the next day, walking for coffee with Jayce, Viktor discovered that the additional bundle of mistletoe that he had placed earlier in the morning along the second route was simply gone. Returning back their usual way, he discovered the original missing as well. The day after that it was the mistletoe that Viktor had dangled from the bridge they often pass by. Gone. The day after that it had been the sprig he’d pinned directly between the lab and Jayce’s forge.
Somehow, impossibly, there had been weeks of this.
When Viktor walked home, alone, he would find himself beneath mistletoe in places he had not put it, in all number of locations around the academy that he and Jayce somehow never happen to encounter in their day-to-day wanderings.
Viktor had started keeping bunches of mistletoe in his bag.
Viktor had drawn maps. He had made a timetable.
Viktor was now on a first name basis with the florist, Emma.
“This is bewildering,” Viktor said, standing in the doorway to the lab.
“What?” Jayce asked, looking up at his partner. Viktor was looking up at where there would have been mistletoe, had Jayce not recently stuffed it into the trash bin in the corner of the lab. This had been the closest call so far, and Jayce had needed to act fast. This one must have been placed by someone that he knew, with keys to the building. Jayce had wondered if it might have been Sky. Perhaps she’d become bolder in her pursuit of Viktor, and was hoping to encounter him here later in the day. Maybe Jayce should return it to her, tell her to place it elsewhere but wish her luck.
Viktor met Jayce’s eyes, and his expression shifted.
“Ah,” he had said, waving a hand dismissively. “I find myself looking at every doorway for that infernal plant.”
Jayce’s stomach feels suddenly hollow. His shoulders flinch forwards, but he tries to hold his grin in place.
“Right, yeah. It seems the students are really taken with it. Heimerdinger must be happy,” Jayce says, before he allows himself to exhale.
Viktor must notice something brittle in Jayce’s expression.
He pauses on the way to his desk and looks intently at Jayce.
Jayce’s eyes betray him, and flick towards the bin in the corner.
Jayce’s attention refocuses back in time to watch a series of expressions flicker across Viktor’s face. Jayce doesn’t know why, but Viktor looks like he is nearing the end of a solving a complex equation and is rapidly approaching an unpleasant understanding. Viktor looks, briefly, devastated. Then angry. Then his expression closes off. He walks to the bin, opens it, and lifts the mistletoe out.
“It’s you,” Viktor says, clipped.
“No,” Jayce says, quickly. “No, Viktor I would never. I didn’t put it there.”
“You didn’t put it in the bin?”
“What? No, I mean- I did put it in the bin. But I didn’t put it up, I swear, I don’t know how it got there.”
“You don’t know how it got there?” Viktor scoffs.
“I have guesses! Sky, maybe!” Jayce says. He’s grabbing at his own hair. Viktor looks taken aback.
“Jayce,” he says, and he jabs out the plant towards Jayce like it’s accusatory. “You know that I put this there.”
“What? Why?” Jayce has never been more confused. Horror dawns on him as he realizes what he’s done. “Oh my god, for Sky?” he says, and his voice is breaking and he’s not crying but it’s close. “Viktor I’m so sorry, I didn’t know. I’ll pack up.”
“What,” Viktor says, voice flat, “the fuck are you talking about?”
“I didn’t know,” Jayce is saying, looking around for his bag because it’s not where he thought he left it, but he spots the shape of it in between their desks and takes a few steps to lift it up off the ground, loading his notebook and the random wrench he’d been fiddling with into it. “If I’d known you’d put up this one yourself I would have just left, I’m sorry.”
“Jayce,” Viktor is bracing himself against his desk across the room. “How many have you taken down?”
“So many,” Jayce says quietly, and he sounds exhausted, even to himself. He’s been keeping outlandish hours to keep the surrounding areas clear of mistletoe. And today it had been inside their lab.
“Why?” Viktor asks, almost soft. “To avoid kissing me?” Jayce wheels around and stares at him.
“That’s not funny, Viktor.” Jayce says, pointing at him. “I know we’re not talking about it, but that’s not fucking funny.”
Viktor looks offended, throws his hands up and says, “Well at a minimum, we can agree on that.”
There’s a pause. Jayce takes a deep breath.
“I’m sorry,” Jayce says. “I shouldn’t have kissed you.” Viktor’s gaze shifts to the ground. “I feel awful for doing that, and I should have said so a while ago. I figured the least I could do was prevent us from being in that situation again, so I’ve taken down loads of these. I didn’t know you’d placed that one yourself, but if I had, I would have left it for you and Sky.”
Viktor is still staring at the ground. Jayce fiddles with the fastenings on his pack. It’s not closing quite how he expects it to and he needs something to do with his hands.
“Right,” Viktor says, chokingly, after a while. “Okay.”
Jayce exhales in relief. “Right,” he says. “You don’t have to accept my apology, but I am really sorry, and I’ll go now. Have a great night, Viktor.”
He starts heading towards the door, throwing the bag over his shoulder.
“Jayce,” Viktor says. Jayce stops, and turns back to look at him. Viktor looks broken. “That’s my bag.”
“Fuck. Right, sorry, I put my things in here, so I’ll just,” Jayce stammers, and he digs around for his wrench and he can’t find it but he needs to get out of this room so before he’s thought about it he’s crossed back over to his desk and is dumping the contents of the bag out on it to separate his things from Viktor’s.
He’s looking for his wrench in the mess when he sees the map. It’s hand-drawn, but clearly the academy, and there are ‘X’s scattered across it in a lot of the places that have become familiar thanks to his regular mistletoe removal. He lifts it out from under his own notebook, sees the location of their lab marked with a furiously drawn, underlined, circled ‘X’. There’s a timetable.
Looking down Jayce finds that Viktor’s bag had contained more bundles of mistletoe. An almost-understanding slots into place.
“Viktor,” Jayce says, without turning around. “Have you been putting up all of these?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Viktor doesn’t respond immediately. When Jayce turns back to him Viktor is leaning back against his desk, expression shattered, eyes fused to a random point in the ceiling. The plant that Viktor had hung up in their lab, where they worked every day together, that he’d pulled out of the trash bin, is crushed in his hand.
Jayce watches him, and thinks. And hopes.
“For Sky?” Jayce asks, working on a theory.
Viktor actually snorts.
Jayce’s heart soars. He steps, slowly, cautiously, across the room towards his partner.
“V,” he says, as soft as he can, and he can’t keep the hope from his voice. “Please tell me why.”
Viktor takes a deep breath. His eyes are golden and shining and immensely sad when they unfix themselves from the ceiling and lock onto Jayce’s.
“I wanted you to kiss me again,” Viktor says. Jayce is close to him now, less than a full step away, but he pauses, hand fisted where it had begun to reach for Viktor.
“Do you still want that?” He asks. Viktor looks wounded.
“I don’t want your pity, Jayce,” he says. “And I’ve no interest in adding to your regrets. It would seem I’ve provided you with enough already.”
“Hold on,” Jayce says, and takes a step back. He closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose. Collects his scattered thoughts together. “First, you’re out of your brilliant, beautiful goddamn mind if you think that pity is even one of the thousands of reasons that I have spent years wanting to kiss you.”
Viktor makes a choked noise.
Jayce opens his eyes, looks at him dead on, and continues: “Second, there is only one, singular situation in which I could ever regret kissing you, and it’s the one in which you did not want that to happen.”
Viktor’s eyes are wide.
Jayce steps in close again and brings up his hand, stops just short of resting it over the curls near where Viktor’s sharp jaw meets his ear. “Please,” Jayce begs, and he notices that he’s breathing hard, “please tell me if we are in that specific situation, V?”
“No,” Viktor admits, looking briefly down at Jayce’s mouth. “No, I’m actually quite in love with you.” The way he says it is soft and frightened. It sounds less like a confession and more like he’s trying to give Jayce a warning.
But Jayce feels his reality shift, like a gear has turned, like something full and wonderful suddenly clicks into place where all of his longing and uncertainty had been. He runs his hand into Viktor’s hair, pulls him forward, and kisses him on his forehead, softly, once.
“I love you too, Viktor,” he says, voice thick enough that he notices himself crying, just a little bit.
Jayce finds his face wrenched downwards, and before the small bundle of mistletoe that slips from Viktor’s fingers has time to hit to the floor, Jayce’s arms are wrapped around him, bracketing him in as Viktor kisses him, thoroughly.