Work Text:
The moment stretched.
One beat, then two.
Viktor waited for the sound of the chalk against the chalkboard once more and tightened his hold on the crutch. His chest burned as he held his breath, waiting, waiting, waiting.
One day, one day Jayce would notice.
One day, Viktor would not be able to stop himself.
One day, Viktor would not be able to do the right thing and pull his fingertips back at the last moment.
The viciously insidious thought that continued to roil in his mind, even as he sat back down at his work and picked up his pencil, determined to make more progress didn’t fade. If anything, it got louder, a siren growing louder and louder between his ears that someday, he would reach too far, as for too much, and then this dream, this ‘HexTech Dream’ would shatter like the fragile thing it was.
It was simply a matter of time.
Time that he didn’t have. That he would never have.
Better to keep it buried and to himself, then he wouldn’t have to-
“Are we both going to keep sitting here with our backs turned to each other, pretending to work?”
Jayce’s voice cut across his musing and Viktor shook himself, glaring at Jayce over his shoulder. “Some us are working-”
“You haven’t written a single word, number, or rune in the past four minutes,” Jayce countered.
Viktor stared down at the empty line in the notebook he had left open and glared at it. It should have been filled by now. He knew better than to get this distracted, he didn’t have any time to waste and needed to make the most of every possible moment.
“Was there something wrong with the equation?” Jayce asked. “You certainly have never hesitated to tell me when I’m wrong before.”
Viktor felt the weight of that teasing smile hit his chest with the force of one of his worst coughing fits, threatening to cut him off at the knees. He made a show of lifting his attention up to look at the blackboard. A quick scan showed everything was in order, so he shook his head.
“It all appears to be very much in order, Jayce. Well done,” Viktor praised, and turned back to the notes in front of him. He would need to refocus.
Viktor managed to write precisely two sentences before he registered the lack of writing on the chalkboard and turned, bringing his attention back to Jayce with a singular raised eyebrow. Jayce was watching him with the strangest expression on his face, and it was best not to think too hard about what it meant.
He knows. He knows. He knows. He knows. He knows. He-
“Viktor,” Jayce started and paused with a frown. “You’d, you’d talk to me? If you needed something, really needed it, right?”
Viktor put down his pencil and turned to face Jayce properly. “What does that mean, Jayce?”
Jayce swallowed and took a deep breath, putting the chalk down. “That if you were upset or hurt, you’d tell me.”
“I’m in pain every single day, Jayce. You know this.”
“That’s not what I meant!” Jayce snapped, glaring at him. “You just, you get this look on your face sometimes and I don’t…” he frowned and shook his head, sighing. “Forget it. Forget I said anything.”
Viktor watched Jayce pick up the piece of chalk and turn back to the blackboard, clearly ready to drop the conversation once more.
I don’t have forever. I don’t have forever. I don’t have forever.
But.
But.
“What look?” Viktor challenged, staring down at his pencil. “What look do I get?”
Jayce put the chalk down with what felt like a deafening noise and turned back to Viktor once more. “Regret. Almost… agonized regret. Like you want something so badly it’s going to rip you apart with wanting it, but you can’t let it.”
In another world, another lifetime, another universe, Viktor would have laughed at the sheer inaccurate accuracy of the guess. Here though, like this, there was-
“What, what do you regret that badly?” Jayce asked, taking a step closer to Viktor’s desk.
Viktor tightened his hand on his pencil. He could feel the words forming on his lips, threatening to burst free. That he regretted not kissing Jayce as they floated in Heimerdinger’s office that first night, and every discovery that followed? That he regretted not telling Jayce that no one had ever dared to care for him the way Jayce did when he’d run dozens of errands while Viktor recovered from his spinal surgery. That he loved-
“Yeah, that look,” Jayce said, his voice low and subdued. “I, I’m sure I can help Viktor. If you tell me what it is. I’ll do what I can.”
Viktor met Jayce’s eyes, the earnest worry in them, the care in them and felt his heart tremble and stutter in his chest. It would be so easy, the product of a single moment to just admit it, to say it aloud to at last be free of it.
“Nothing I can change,” Viktor answered instead, his mouth as dry as the ash he could almost taste on the back of his tongue, threatening to choke him. “But thank you for wanting to help, Jayce.”
Viktor waited.
Waited for Jayce to turn around.
To pick up his piece of chalk and return to his equation.
To let the conversation move away onto other, safer topics.
To not talk about regrets, the pain in his aching heart, the pain that he’d long learned to live with aside all of the other-
“I don’t believe that,” Jayce said.
Viktor’s eyes snapped up and he frowned. “What?”
“You’re bringing magic to the world, Viktor. You can change everything, no matter what it is,” Jayce insisted, stepping closer. “And I won’t hear you saying otherwise. Now, tell me what this thing is.”
Viktor’s mouth went dry as Jayce went to go bring the second stool closer to his, sitting next to him, all of their work abandoned as they stared at each other.
Tell him. Tell him. Tell him. Please tell him. Just tell him. Tell him.
“Viktor?”
Jayce’s voice was soft, probing, and Viktor wanted to know what it would taste like, swallowing the sound from his lips. He wanted, he wanted so badly, just for a moment, just for a single fucking moment, he wanted to let himself try to have it, to try to be happy-
“I regret every day,” Viktor said.
Jayce frowned, pulling back a fraction, tilting his head. “What do you mean?”
Now that he’d started, there was no stopping the words. “The days. Every day. I regret every single one of them. All of them. They were chances I wasted. That I continue to waste!”
Jayce leaned back, taken aback and confused. “Viktor…?”
“Every day is a chance, and I keep wasting it, until I will have none left, and I-” Viktor felt the pencil in his fingers snap under the weight of his hold on it. “I am so tired of wasting them,” he breathed. It was an admission of weakness, and he abhorred it, it made his stomach roil and his limbs ache.
“Well, there’s an easy solution to that,” Jayce countered.
Viktor glared at him, fury filling him in an instant. How dare Jayce make light of it. “Oh?”
Jayce smiled faintly. “Yeah, Vik. Stop letting them go to waste. Easy.”
“Easy,” Viktor scoffed. “Only a fool would think that.”
Jayce shrugged. “Either you suffocate under the regret that you’ve wasted these chances of yours, or you take one of them.”
Viktor gave Jayce a side eye. “Even if it ruins everything?”
“Especially then. Because at least you’ll know.”
That… was true. He would know. And Jayce would not be cruel. Jayce was never cruel. He would be unflinchingly kind, and they were perhaps be able to joke about it, and Viktor would… would at least know.
“You are right,” Viktor said, reaching for his crutch to stand upright slowly, his whole body aching. Jayce was standing too, was smiling at him again, that sunshine smile that told him everything would be well in the world if he just believed in his partner.
Jayce spread his arms wide and gestured to the lab with a grin. “Take your chance, whatever it is, Vik. I’ll be here cheering you on the entire way.”
Somehow Viktor doubted that.
But at least he would know.
Viktor reached out with his free hand and grabbed for Jayce’s academy tie, tangling his fingers in it as he tugged, hard, pulling Jayce to him. He savored the sight of Jayce’s wide and shocked eyes for the briefest of instances before he pushed himself up on his crutch and pressed their lips together.
Soft.
Jayce’s lips were soft, and Viktor memorized the feel of them in the few instances he was sure he’d be allowed before Jayce pushed him back, pushed him away and-
“Feel better?” Jayce whispered against Viktor’s lips, dropping his hands to Viktor’s waist, tugging him closer, helping to support his weight. “Or do we need to take multiple chances before you’re sure?”
A laugh, something giddy and entirely unbecoming of the moment bubbled out of Viktor, as Jayce leaned down to kiss him again.
And again.
And again.
He’d known. He’d known. He’d known and-
“Vik?” Jayce whispered against his lips.
Viktor opened his eyes (when had he shut them?) and found Jayce staring at him so fondly it made his heart threaten to trip straight into Jayce’s palms. “Yes?”
“Stop thinking for a minute, would you?”
Viktor kissed the smile off of Jayce’s lips. It tasted how sunshine felt. “Never,” he promised, and swallowed the laugh the followed, wrapping both of his arms around Jayce’s shoulders.