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“Viktor?”
When Viktor turns in his chair, Jayce is standing behind him with a cup of tea, as he often does. It’s very likely sage with a spoon of honey, Viktor knows. He’d grown to like the taste, back in a different life, when his lungs had needed soothing. Now he drinks it because it reminds him, because he sometimes longs for a taste of his past, even if it carries bitter notes. Jayce puts honey in it for him.
What he doesn’t know is why Jayce’s usual smile carries a hint of apology, of nervousness. Curious.
“Yes?” Viktor asks, as calm and kind as the tea in the cup he takes from broad, familiar hands.
“I wondered if you had a minute. I need to talk to you about something.” Jayce pulls up a chair beside Viktor’s own, as if he already knows the answer.
“Of course.” Curious, Viktor thinks again. Jayce’s voice is light, and yet there is a hidden urgency behind his words, similar to when he comes to share a new discovery with him. “What is it?”
“I—um—” Jayce turns his eyes down, shy for some reason, fingers playing with the leather band on his wrist that now carries a series of small rivets in between the stamped design. Jayce, too, has gotten used to some things.
Then he finds himself again, looking Viktor in the eye, honest, earnest.
“I’ve had some time to think since we came here, some time to figure some things out. And I—”
Jayce takes a breath, takes Viktor’s hand, the one not holding the cup. “I think I’m in love with you.”
Viktor’s mind does what it always does when faced with exciting, profoundly groundbreaking information.
It quiets, like a small child observing a butterfly, wondrous, in awe of the beauty the world decided to put before them.
Then it lights up, a gust of wind over a paper-strewn desk, his thoughts a wild, fantastical beat.
It makes sense, doesn't it. Jayce has had time, they both had, even with all the turmoil of being thrown into another universe, even with trying to better this version of the world, of this version of Piltover and Zaun without Hextech. Jayce is not famous, and Viktor is not dying, and they have so much time.
They still hurt, and they still fight, with each other, with the council. Still, Jayce is friends with lots of people, beloved by many.
Beloved by Viktor.
He startles a little at the thought. Some parts of settling into their new reality had been easy, so easy. Stinging with past but recent hurt, not-yet-scarred wounds, grief and shame and trauma. Every familiarity, every offered cup, every touch, every hug had stung like a prodding tongue in a cut on the inside of his cheek, sharp and bittersweet, and yet they kept returning, again and again.
Because it was easy—it always had been—and every single kindness was met with cautious hunger for acceptance. At every turn, Jayce had been there, like he had been before, like he should be. Like he still is.
Now things are easy again, balanced by the light and tenebrosity of the past they had brought with them, refined by who they are now, by how they have grown together.
Towards each other.
This, Viktor has learned, is how it should be. With each other. Not away from each other.
He had no idea that Jayce has learned this, too, in such a conscious fashion.
Viktor knows that Jayce does not do anything by halves. No, Jayce always puts his whole heart, his whole being into anything he believes in. He should have realised this quite a lot earlier, Viktor thinks. In fact, he should have realised it when Jayce had touched his shoulder, taken his hand and laid his life into it, for better or worse.
For worse, Viktor had known back then.
For better, he knows now.
Jayce, who once had been sought after by councilors and kings, by scientists and students and tradespeople, by men and women alike, has made a home for Viktor in his heart. Alongside his dream, once.
Now instead of it.
Fondness fills Viktor, warmth; more than he’d thought himself capable of, after everything.
He has asked himself, a lot, if what happened had broken him in ways that he can’t mend, in ways he can’t be mended. Now he feels, for the first time, that something has grown in the cracks he thought tainted him; shining warm like the bronze rooftops of the academy in the sun, golden like Jayce’s hopeful eyes.
Affection fills Viktor so completely that he feels as if his next breath could set him afloat like their first Hextech experiment did.
“Viktor?” Jayce asks, and it occurs to Viktor that he has not moved or said anything in quite some time, still holding his tea.
He sets it down on the table carefully, the joints of his hand aching slightly when their load is taken off. He cups Jayce’s face with it instead, his cheek uncharacteristically cool beneath Viktor’s tea-warmed palm.
“I think you are right,” he says, his thumb caressing Jayce’s cheekbone. Viktor breathes in and floats, his heartbeat steady, thumping into his stomach, into his throat; warm, sure, alive. Jayce loves him. “And I think my affection for you has… deepened even more since—since.”
There are knuckles rubbing against his left knee now, still holding onto Viktor’s, touching metal and fabric, sending something stirring deep inside his chest. Jayce’s other hand comes up to rest over Viktor’s on his own face, and Viktor lets his thumb wander, over short but soft beard, over the corner of even softer lips.
“I think I—” Viktor tries again, but doesn’t continue, getting lost in golden patience, intent and calm.
He abandons words in favour of touch, leans forward, gently pulling Jayce towards himself to kiss him.
He sees Jayce’s eyes widen with surprise, feels the flutter of lashes against his cheek as he tastes friendship and devotion and love. He nips at a chapped lip, carefully licks into milky coffee and wet softness, breathes in the hint of olive soap and beard oil and sunlight on linen and Jayce.
Jayce walking beside him, Jayce making him tea, Jayce sitting next to him and praising his cooking, Jayce reading aloud, Jayce laughing and dodging a playful shove from Viktor’s cane.
Jayce, lovingly trailing his fingers to the back of his leg and pulling, stretching out Viktor’s knee so it doesn’t hurt when he pulls Viktor forward and over to his own chair, into his lap to kiss him more thoroughly, and Viktor goes, breathless and with a quiet laugh.
Growing towards each other indeed.