Work Text:
"Umm, Viktor, what are you doing?"
"The counter dips heavier on this side than the other. It needs levelling or the sealant will always fail. Water will run down the inside and cause a damp problem. If I secure a support along the back panel and anchor it directly to the wall, it should bear the weight well enough to reduce the angle of the counter. At the very least, any excess water will pool on it instead of running to the corner."
"No, I know that much. I mean why are you doing it?"
He hadn't expected to hear ‘Jayce, can you please tell Viktor he doesn't need to fix our kitchen?’ from his mother this winter solstice, though he was starting to think he should have. Getting Viktor to leave the lab in recent months had already been a feat in itself, and not one that he took lightly. Finding Viktor had taken his requested "quiet moment" post gift exchange and used it to slot inside the kitchen cabinet shouldn't have been all that surprising, given who he'd chosen to take home.
One long, slender leg stuck out while the other propped him up, his greyish-brown trousers already speckled with dust. Occasionally it twitched as he shifted, presumably to get a better angle. Occasional grunts of effort and discomfort broke through, littered between gentle mumbling that Jayce couldn’t quite hear.
When no explanation came, he nudged the side of his leg with his foot, trying to draw his attention.
"You invited me around," he replied. His words were hard to decipher amongst the muted clattering of some kind of tool against wood, but they carried the same flippant bluntness his words always did, whether deciding what he wanted for lunch or shortly before blowing up their lab. He made no move to come out.
"For company and food," Jayce whined in elaboration, "not to put you to work."
"It's something I can fix. As a gift."
~.#.~
A quiet moment. He knew Viktor wouldn’t brandish his walking stick at his mother like he had done with Jayce the one time, but Jayce felt he should have known him better than to think he wouldn't do... well, something; a scolding in the corridor for not preparing him for his mother's overbearing generosity, or at very least the look which promised something far more dire come the morning.
It would have been amusing to see him so quickly pacified had his face not done something complex; surprise and confusion and sadness not masked quick enough to stop irritation chasing it, they all took their turn manipulating his features. Then deliberately crafted nothing. He ran a thumb over the rows of stitches.
"It's wonderful," he had said, a quiver breaking through in his voice where all his energy was going into keeping his face natural. "Thank you, Ms. Talis. I need a moment if that's alright?"
Had Jayce followed him, like his mother's tender and knowing motion in the direction he'd left had encouraged, he might have seen him press the scarf into his nose, foolishly, hopelessly trying to chase the smell of his childhood home from between the stitches. Or seen, between his desperation and the warmth it had absorbed from being so close to the fire, the flickers of recognition when he thought he could.
Memories ignited under Viktor's skin in the solitude of Ximena's kitchen, with nothing but the gentle bubbling of something boiling on the stovetop to cover the sound of him sniffing back tears. Viktor's moment of nostalgic tenderness and profound sadness remained private. For that moment anyway; small touches of it would remain in his expression for the rest of the day if Jayce went looking for it.
He folded up the delicate knitwear with the utmost care before taking a wide-eyed and frantic look around the room. Jayce had wondered how long it took him to settle on the sideboard as his impulsive project or if he'd been ready to tear through the house for something, anything to do, but since he was not there to see it, he would be left wondering.
~.#.~
Half an hour beforehand he and Viktor had been taking a slow walk from the academy grounds to the district he had grown up in. Within that time he had silently marvelled at how smart Viktor looked. He had jabbed him in the side with his elbow and teased him about trying to make an impression, only to have Viktor bite back, nerves exposed to the open air, how he wasn’t willing to disrespect his mother’s home by looking scruffy.
And effort he had made, in all the ways a self-help book on Piltovern culture would tell someone to. He was dressed in the universities colours in place of those of his own house, with Jayce’s own added in the accents. Cream and purple, brown and blue. Despite not looking that much more rested than usual, he had tamed his hair.
In his free hand, he carried a dish that he had only narrowly stopped Jayce from diving headfirst into, and only by promising divine retribution if even a bite should be missing before it got to his mothers. With the flat smelling of such a heavenly combination of honey, fruit and almonds, it had been a valiant achievement for Jayce to resist.
None of that distracted from how nervous the other was. The hand on his walking stick wrung against the handle, adjusting and readjusting far beyond his usual amount. He plucked at already-chapped lips with his teeth until they were red and swollen and bleeding.
”She will like you, you know.” He had tried to reassure, only to have Viktor shut him up with a pointed glare. Any other time it might have been permissible for that look to send him a little weak at the knees but not then and there, so Jayce fortified himself, and tried not to think on it nor the knot of nervousness in his own stomach, slowly growing with the thought that he was taking Viktor home to meet his mother.
~.#.~
Upon Jayce’s insistence, Viktor pulled himself out of the cupboard enough to at least make sure Jayce knew how unimpressed he was to be interrupted. He gave a little grimace as he adjusted to take the pressure off his hip.
He was already starting to look dishevelled again, slowly sweating off his presentable front to reveal the gremlin Jayce knew so well. Alongside his clothing, both his hair and skin were frosted with plaster dust, and only five minutes in the restrictive space had transferred the smell of various cleaning products onto him. His breathing had developed the rasp it often did in the lab when he forgot to properly ventilate it post-experiment; years in the Undercity had destroyed his ability to detect and therefore prevent the buildup of pollutants in the air, so Viktor seemed unconcerned.
Any other time and Jayce would have dragged him out by the ankles, but despite the unexpectedly expected turn of events, he wasn't much in the mood for having the self-preservation argument again. He knew the other wouldn't be easily convinced, not with that steely look in his eyes and petulant set to his jaw. At least the air from the partially open window had gone some way to dilute it down in the five minutes he had been left alone.
Jayce lowered himself to the floor under Viktor's watchful gaze, absentmindedly pushing aside the collection of cleaning products as he shuffled closer to the other. He gave his leg another tab, this time as he motioned for him to give him some space. "Let me have a look then?"
He shifted enough for Jayce to lean in. And under the sink the air was not simply filled with dust and chemical pollutants, it was filled with Viktor, and Jayce had a good idea which made his breath catch in his throat.
From one of his pockets Viktor produced a light with the same dim, pulsating green as the lamps in his flat. He anchored his arm against the low cabinet ceiling, casting the confined space in a soft, fuzzy glow.
There wasn’t enough space for one fully grown man, let alone two. He twisted his upper body until his back was pressed into the other’s chest, and by necessity for Viktor to point out the source of the issue, his chin practically rested on his shoulder. Hair tickling his cheek, and Jayce’s knees started to feel funny all over again.
Viktor, unaware, was having that influence more and more frequently.
"Did you used to do this a lot?” he asked, anything to relieve the sudden tension. "Spend your Winter Solstice fixing things up for people?”
"We didn't have much, but we all had skills,” he responded, his breath warm against the back of his head. “This was mine. If something needed doing we would take the opportunity to do it. Between work and everything else, when would another arise?”
"So you're under my mother's kitchen counter because you saw it needed doing and thought you would get on it while you were here? Nothing to do with the scarf she knitted you, I'm sure."
“Maybe I wouldn't have to if you had fixed it yourself," he responded, plainly.
"Hold the light steady.”
Viktor huffed, sending a cascade of warm air through the hair at the nape of his neck, the slow but deep in take of breath that followed swelled against his back.
"Are you going to tell me about it?”
"Not much to tell," Viktor said. "Dad worked long hours in the mines. Mum worked longer hours in the factories. We chose the closest day they both had off. Got to eat dinner off the fancy plates; I remember the flower pattern slowly being revealed as I soaked up the meat juices with my bread. And there was always a honey-fruit pie."
After a brief pause, the small amount of amusement that had touched Viktor's voice dissolved on his tongue. "Mum and Dad were always very tired. Mum was especially tired around the Solstice. It did not occur to me at the time that she would work the night previous just to have the day off." There was gratitude in his voice then, pliancy and acceptance that didn't leave his mouth quite right. Bitterness, Jayce realised, just the faintest, most distant touches of it.
Both of them strained and twisted in tandem as they worked, Viktor’s body pressed against his own and his progressively more ragged breaths in his ear. Viktor held the light with one hand and the countertop up at an even level with the other while Jayce hand-screwed the second half of the support directly into the plaster.
Jayce listened quietly, and Viktor talked like he might drown in the influx of memories if he kept them in.
“Still found the time to make me a gift. Hat, socks, jumper... something for the coming year. She was a skilled metal worker too but she already did so much for that at work, working with fabrics in her spare time meant she could soothe her hands a little. Dad would salvage some paper and pens from somewhere, sometimes a bit of his tobacco 'to help with my crazy ideas'. In return, I would fix things around the house or build something out of scrap.”
Those times adult seem too different to Jayce's own, in a way. Food off of fancy plates and scrabbling with scrap to create something his mum would treasure. Maybe less frivolous and wasteful, but full of the same love.
“Their real gift to me was practice. I liked fixing things, improving them, creating better ways of doing things. The rest is history. Without it, who knows.”
Whatever was left unsaid sat so heavy on Viktor's face it would have been easy for anyone else to confuse it for something much less bittersweet than it was.
It took a sharp spike of pain up Jayce’s back for him to realise they had stopped working and were simply talking in that cramped, uncomfortable space, like the two children who had, had they been given the opportunity, done exactly the same thing out of resourcefulness and curiosity, or just because hiding in cupboards and telling stories was the sort of things kids did.
He had shifted towards Viktor, now no longer with his back-to-chest but chest-to-chest. Closer then than they had ever been before. So close Jayce could see all those complicated emotions play out of his face, he could see the sweaty heat on his cheeks, and he could feel the stutter in his breath against his face.
"I–" miss them, Viktor almost said, and that time Jayce couldn't assume it was anything else. He sniffed back tears once again, only to sneeze so abruptly in response he nearly concussed Jayce and himself in the process.
Jayce looked at him in the aftermath, both of them overcome with an eruption of unexpected laughter borne from shock and the nostalgia of childlike wonder. The tension and sorrow scattered.
"Boys,” came Ximena’s voice from the doorway, “if you're finished would you like to come through for some spiced cake and music?"