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“Do you think life is better in a world that is uncomplicated by magic?”
“Leave you alone with noblemen for half an hour and you reinvent Piltover,” Viktor scoffs.
“No I don’t… I don’t mean banning magic we know is out there being used by so many others. I mean a world where it doesn’t exist at all. Where it isn’t an option. Do you think life would be easier? Better?”
“That would depend on whether you believe easier and better are the same,” he responds, “but right now what I believe is that you need to sleep before you fall into a pit of philosophical despair. You are a scientist, Jayce.”
“Oh V, I love the philosophical despair,” he teases, “It makes me feel like there’s something to strive for.”
“The problems men of privilege make up,” Viktor rolls his eyes, “Go home.”
●・○・●・○・●
Viktor startles him, placing a warm cup in front of him, steam billowing like a dancer’s scarf.
“Thank you,” he murmurs.
“I thought we agreed not to sleep in here,” Viktor responds.
“I didn’t do it on purpose,” he smiles into his cup, “just like you didn’t do it on purpose twice last week.”
“I see so we are only bound to our agreement if we don’t do it on purpose,” Viktor practically drawls.
Jayce lifts a shoulder, “Works for the businessmen with lipstick on their collars.”
“Mmm, except they suffer from a lack of loyalty to their commitments whereas we as scientists have an overabundance of the stuff.”
“Think we can make an argument for a better couch?”
“I’m certain we can, but wouldn’t that very much be doing it on purpose?”
“Our work needs us,” Jayce points out.
“No, Jayce. We need our work. Our work doesn’t give a cold hard damn about us.”
“How masochistic,” he laughs, “to love something that cannot love you back.”
Viktor hums, “But it is a sweet suffering, to love something so perfect that it cannot love you back.”
“Careful Viktor, that sounds a lot like philosophical despair,” he teases.
“Not at all, it is something much worse, in fact. Let’s get to work.”
●・○・●・○・●
“In a world where magic is fact, not rumor or legend, is it not another force of nature?”
Viktor groans lightly, “I am sorry Jayce; I had no idea that recalibrating delicate equipment was such an easy task for you that you can ponder the mysteries of the unknown universe. Would you like more work?”
“V.”
He sighs, “Yes, I suppose it is. I am sure many in the more open nations of the world see it that way. Just another fact of life.”
“So, is it still magic? If it is a fact?”
Viktor drops his instruments and his forehead onto the desk, the kind of dramatic irritation that makes Jayce feel inexplicably understood and … known. Finally, he raises his head and turns his stool toward Jayce.
“Have you ever cried about a sunset?”
Jayce frowns, “A sunset?”
“Yes,” Viktor insists, “Has a sunset ever brought you to tears?”
Jayce ponders that for a moment, “I suppose a bit yeah, a sunset has made me emotional once or twice.”
“But it is only the fact of the movement of our planet, it is a fact of life, is it not?”
Jayce nods.
“So there. If magic is a fact or a legend or a love song, it doesn’t matter, save for what meaning is assigned to it. Do you hold it in awe, or contempt, or do you disregard it as an everyday thing. It cannot be answered universally, philosophically.”
The last word seems to taste sour and disgusting in his mouth.
“What is your problem with philosophy, V?”
“It is the pastime of men with too much time on their hands and not enough real problems to solve,” he declares, turning his stool back to his work.
“Pity,” Jayce says, grinning as he turns back to recalibrating the equipment, “you are very good at it.”
●・○・●・○・●
“I’m tired,” Jayce declares.
Viktor shoves himself away from the desk, his chair rolling smoothly toward the main workstation where he checks the time.
“Ouch. Yes, probably time to head home.”
“We missed the sunset,” Jayce says as he stands, and starts packing Viktor’s things when the other man seems to have paid no attention to his own assessment of the late hour.
“What?”
“I just think it’s probably been months since we’ve seen a sunset, if you think about it,” he says casually.
“Yeah, I… guess so. Aren’t you at seminar during that…time of the day?”
Jayce shrugs, “I can miss a seminar.”
“Sure,” Viktor says, his brow furrowed slightly, “if you wanted to.”
“Would you want to? Miss seminar with me?”
“I don’t have seminar anymore, Jayce,” Viktor reminds him, “just this never-ending torture which is our lives’ work.”
“Right,” Jayce laughs softly, handing Viktor his bag and cane, “then. Would you want to see the sunset with me?”
“We’ve missed the sunset,” Viktor argues, but it is more a confused statement than an argument.
“Sure,” Jayce shrugs, “but there will be another tomorrow.”
“They make me… I might embarrass myself,” Viktor coughs, “they make me unnecessarily emotional.”
“Oh, I think emotion is probably necessary,” Jayce smiles softly, “watching the movement of our planet paint the sky like a canvas.”
“You should have been a poet, Jayce Talis,” Viktor laughs.
“Or a philosopher,” he offers.
Viktor scrunches his nose, “No not that. But alright, we’ll… set an alarm. Tomorrow. To see your sunset.”
●・○・●・○・●
He breathes a sigh of relief to see that Viktor got himself to the overtly plush couch before passing out instead of wrecking his spine at his workstation.
The light in the lab is the strange blue of too early dawn and he shouldn’t, because it is unreasonable to do so, but he wakes Viktor gently. His eyes blink open, just as gently as Jayce touched him, no startle reflexes or confusion.
“Mmm,” he hums softly, “I made it to the couch.”
Jayce smiles, “Yeah. Wanna see the sunrise?”
“What,” he huffs as he sits up, “to start the day in tears?”
“Maybe it’ll make you happy instead.”
“Sunset tears aren’t sad,” Viktor says, all too clearly for someone who has just been woken. He stretches slowly and takes his cane in one hand, running the other through his ever-lengthening hair, “Well? Sunrise?”
●・○・●・○・●
“What are sunset tears if they aren’t sad?”
Viktor looks up from his book, his posture relaxed and eased in a way it never is in the lab. Here in their tiny room with the one good reading chair and the thankfully functional radiator, Viktor is never tense, and he doesn’t seem to hate Jayce’s heartfelt questions as much.
“You said the tears you cry at sunsets sometimes aren’t sad, so what are they? Happy tears?”
He opens his mouth to answer and then closes it again, as if to consider it all more carefully.
“Not quite, but closer to those than to sad tears,” he declares as an extended silence.
“Explain,” Jayce demands from his curled-up position on the bed.
“One cries happy tears at momentous things. Reunions, weddings, the birth of one’s child.”
Jayce nods in agreement, urging him to continue.
“Well, there is nothing momentous about a sunset, Jayce, it happens every day.”
“But it’s you know…”
“Magical?”
“Yes! It’s like evidence of magic in the world, even if it is casual. Maybe even because it is.”
“The Magic of Everyday Things?”
“Yes, exactly like that,” Jayce grins, “unless you think you’ve outgrown it.”
“I’m the one that cries, aren’t I?”
●・○・●・○・●
“Do you think tragedy is lesser, in that world without magic?”
“Hmm?”
“I mean, the wars, the tragedies that Piltover was built on – they were… the magnitude of it. Do you think if there weren’t magic anywhere, the tragedy would be muted?”
“No,” Viktor says, without much hesitation at all, “no I think our anguish is like a gas. It fills the shape of its vessel.”
Jayce presses himself back, trying the impossible in making himself small, feeling Viktor’s heartbeat against his shoulder blade, “Do you think love is like that too? Or is it lesser, if the thing you love is not perfect — and loves you back?”
“The sweet suffering of loving something perfect does not fade and dissipate with the knowledge of its imperfection,” he says, as if he had been well versed on the subject, “it transforms, molds into the shape your love takes up in the world. Like a sunset, magic, warm coffee I never had to ask for. A fact of life.”
Jayce turns to look at him, his hair much longer than it has ever been before framing his sharp features and the intense gaze of his eyes.
“Careful Viktor, that sounds a lot like philosophical despair,” he teases.
“Not at all, it is something much worse, in fact,” he says against his lips, “the mind ravaging romanticism of a scientist in love.”