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It’s wrong. It’s all wrong. It’s not what Jayce wanted at all.
He didn’t want Viktor to get expelled. He didn’t want to lose Viktor.
Jayce tries to argue with the ethics board, with the dean — Viktor didn’t actually hurt anyone, the punishment is too harsh, unreasonable.
Argue that it does more harm than good, that what Viktor needed is monitoring, not to be pushed into the arms of chembarons of Zaun who’d find use for his talents.
Jayce’s pleas fall on deaf ears.
He doesn't know what to do. He could keep trying to reason with the Academy, send more formal complaints. He's not delusional enough to believe that it’ll work, not as long as Stanwick is on the board.
But he can’t lose Viktor. He can’t. Viktor- Viktor is too important.
Jayce takes a bag out of the closet and starts packing.
***
Standing in front of the door of Viktor's lab — the same address Viktor left a few years ago in case Jayce would ever need to reach out when he was stuck in Zaun — Jayce feels nervous. Viktor can just turn him away. Probably punch Jayce in the face too. Still, Jayce pushes through and knocks.
Viktor doesn’t look happy to see him, but-
“What are you doing here?”
That's better than just shutting the door in front of Jayce’s face, so with the fakest smile Jayce tries his best.
“See, those idiots in the academy were wrong. Expelling you? More like letting you go! So I'm here to make sure you’re not doing anything evil. You aren’t getting rid of me, V.”
Viktor can easily get rid of him, but just shrugs with quiet “whatever” and goes back inside. Jayce follows.
Viktor lets Jayce crash on the couch and even gives him a blanket — nights in lower levels of Zaun can be cold after all. The couch is hell to Jayce’s spine, but it’s worth it. Seeing Viktor's face every day is worth it.
Breathing the air much heavier than Jayce is used to. Figuring out the food — something Jayce always struggled with, the texture is so often just wrong — and ending up living off mostly plain bread with jam. Sleepless nights. Headaches.
It’s all just small inconveniences.
For the first few weeks him and Viktor don't really talk much, maybe a few words in the morning and evening. Viktor is busy with a personal project — nothing dangerous, just a better air filter and an energy generator for his place — and spends most of his waking time locked in the lab part of the house.
Jayce doesn’t have anything to do, not really. There is some stuff to make for Gioparas, but there aren't the right tools on hand to go further than messing with blueprints.
So Jayce wanders around Zaun sometimes. It’s not as nightmarish as Jayce was told it is, not a cesspool of crime and violence, but he can see people struggling. People surviving.
And Jayce wants to help, so he tries to.
A broken radio that just needs contacts cleaned. A child’s mechanical toy. An old man’s prosthetic arm. An engine.
It’s in the middle of Jayce’s third week in Zaun he answers the door to a woman asking if he could fix her fridge, to which Jayce of course, agrees. She tries to pay him too, but Jayce declines. He still has enough money from Gioparas, and besides it’s not like it was any trouble for him.
It feels nice, helping people. Seeing how his engineering talents can change someone’s life for the better — not in theory, not in numbers some accountant provides, but in other people’s smiles.
That feels nice too, people smiling at him and him awkwardly trying to smile back.
***
As days go by, Jayce's relationship with Viktor slowly shifts. They talk more. Argue about dishes and Viktor eating the last of Jayce’s strawberry jam. Viktor asks Jayce's advice on generator modifications.
Viktor still doesn't touch him.
It’s always been Viktor initiating the touch, not Jayce — a slap on the back, a nudge on the shoulder, light kick in the shin if Jayce was particularly annoying. Standing behind so close that Viktor’s chest collided with Jayce’s back on the inhale. Hugs, warm and comforting.
There is no physical closeness between them now, and when Jayce awkwardly tries to reach out Viktor pulls away.
Jayce is stubborn though. He can fix this. He still can fix this.
***
It’s been over a month since Jayce chose to stay in Zaun when Viktor asks him:
“Why are you doing this? Why are you still here?”
The answer is obvious to Jayce, so how can Viktor, such a brilliant man, not see it? How could Jayce not see it before?
“Because I can’t imagine my life without you in it.”
It's true, it’s been true for so long. Jayce doesn’t even know when he fell for Viktor that hard, but he did. He needs that man more than anything.
Viktor just laughs bitterly.
“What next? Going to say you love me?”
“I do, V,” why is it so easy to say now? Why couldn’t he say it before? “I love you. I want to be with you, I swear.”
“It's not going to work,” Viktor shakes his head, “it just won’t. Not with us, not with how we are.”
Those words sound like rejection, but they aren’t. It’s deflection — reasons why he should say no without saying it.
“Do you love me back or not?”
“I do, but it doesn’t matter.” It does. “Love isn’t enough.”
Maybe Viktor is right — Jayce has never been in love before, not like that. But it’s worth a try. Viktor always, always worth a try.
”I don't care if it’s enough or not. I'll make it enough.”
Viktor’s smile is a sad one — Jayce learned to read Viktor’s expressions well enough to know that — but he isn’t protesting.
“Alright. It’s not like I could ever dissuade you when you already made up your mind. Make it enough then.”
They don’t kiss but when Jayce lays his hand atop of Viktor’s he doesn't pull away and in that moment it matters more than any of the kisses they shared before.
That night, Jayce sleeps in Viktor's bed — only because the couch is too bad for his spine of course. No other reason.
***
Jayce knows he’s not coming back to Piltover. He still needs to finish the last project for Gioparas — at least leave the prototype their other craftsmen could work with — but after that he’s cutting ties.
It's mostly done, but some parts are only easily found in Piltover itself and he’ll need to present his work- hopefully it won't take long.
Jayce tells Viktor he needs to deal with some business topside and sets out.
He forgot how different the air up there feels, clean and light; how people are, distant and too prim and proper. Jayce could never belong here, couldn’t he?
Finding the right mechanical parts doesn’t take long, nor does finishing the prototype. The real issues start with Gioparas.
Bureaucracy after bureaucracy, needing to present his work to five different people, signing papers voiding the sponsorship, confirming passing rights for his inventions for financial compensation and dealing with even more bureaucracy from the Academy next — it takes Jayce two full days to finally finish with all of that bullshit.
It’s quiet when Jayce returns home — it’s home now — Viktor sitting on the floor next to the couch, curled on himself, expression empty. Jayce has seen Viktor blanking out like that ever since he got expelled, but it was getting rarer lately, so why now?
”You’re back?” Viktor’s voice is almost flat, with the tiniest hint of surprise in it.
Oh. Oh, he thought-
“Of course I'm back,” Jayce rushes closer and wraps himself around Viktor's form, "I'm not leaving you. I told you, remember? You’re not getting rid of me.”
“But you left me,” Viktor barely whispers, voice shaking and growing louder, “you left me. You left me. You left me!”
Viktor is screaming and crying, hitting Jayce on the chest as Jayce holds him — those fits of rage aren’t new either, and, if Jayce is honest with himself, they probably have been happening since much longer than he knew. He just hasn’t noticed. He makes an effort to notice everything now.
After a few minutes Viktor calms down, only quietly sobbing and apologizing. Jayce just holds him tighter.
They will be okay, they have to.
***
Jayce gets sick. It’s the air — even with their home having a filtering system, toxic gasses affect Jayce's body unused to the heavy atmosphere of Zaun. It's surprising it took him more than two months to succumb to the poison.
“You should return to Piltover," Viktor says to him, but Jayce refuses. He'd rather die here, staying with the man he loves, than live a life with half of his soul missing. Now that Jayce knows what love feels like he can’t let go.
The treatment Jayce gets from a local healer — one whom he and Viktor helped just a week ago with, ironically enough, replacing air filters — works well, and the damage ends up being minimal. Jayce will have to take medicine and be short of breath for the rest of his life, but nothing more.
Jayce still can feel Viktor blaming himself. Can see it in unfinished crumbled sketches of artificial lungs. It’s not Viktor's fault that the air is poison, but that stupid man always makes everything about himself. They both are like that, really, so Jayce gets it, he does.
He still wishes for Viktor to be more easy on himself — he can’t save everyone. No one can.
***
As Jayce's remaining money from his deal with Gioparas are about to run out, Viktor manages to find them a job.
Working for the College of Techmaturgy is not exactly the same as working for the Academy — they’ll actually have to do some teaching as well for once — but the position is pretty nice.
Viktor does take more classes while Jayce manages to mostly stick with working on projects he pitches for the College with only occasional lecture or two — Jayce never liked public speaking.
Not that Viktor ever showed interest in it either, but he is more at ease in public — as long as said public isn’t piltovan, it seems. And it’s really fascinating how different Viktor is among people who don’t look down on him — the man is almost glowing.
Viktor was always meant for Zaun, Jayce realizes, not only is it his home but it’s a place he actually belongs. Jayce hopes that he can belong here with Viktor.
And maybe, Jayce thinks as one of the assistants sits with them at lunch and starts telling about her terrible date as if they’re her friends, maybe he can.
***
“You really are staying,” Viktor says one evening, as if it’s a revelation. Perhaps for Viktor it is, but for Jayce that’s been his resolution for the last five months.
“I am, and I plan to be for as long as you’ll have me.”
Viktor kisses him then, their first real kiss since forever. Maybe their first real kiss that matters. It's soft and slow, gentle. Loving.
They are still learning how to love each other, and maybe it’ll take forever for them to get there — Jayce can wait, he’s too stubborn not to.
***
Jayce isn’t nervous. Not at all. He’s just meeting Viktor’s parents for the first time and has to make a good impression. Jayce. Making a good impression.
Yes, he is considering finding the closest sewer hole and accidentally falling into it, so what? Can’t a man have some whimsy in his life?
Viktor knocks on the door of the old apartment and a sound of heavy footsteps with loud “coming, coming!” follows in response. A woman opens the door, short and heavy, with streaks of gray in her dark hair, face with sharp features strikingly similar to Viktor’s.
“Vitya!” She shouts in surprise and hugs Viktor tightly. “Not even a half a year has passed and you decided to visit!”
“Hi, mom. Sorry for being away so long.”
“Come in, no need to chat on the doorstep,” Viktor’s mother, Raisa — if Jayce remembers her name right from catching it on one of the letters ages ago — says as she goes back inside, “your boyfriend too.”
The “boyfriend” comment makes Jayce flush. He and Viktor never quite labeled their relationship and it being put into such a simple word feels- a bit weird, but not in a bad way.
Family dinner passes surprisingly fine. Viktor’s father, Mikhail, is lovely if just slightly terrifying man from whom Viktor clearly inherited both build — tall and lanky — and a slightly morbid sense of humor.
There’s lighthearted teasing and familial banter intertwined with the sharing of the latest rumors — which Raisa calls pointless but participates in anyway, to her husband’s clear amusement. At some point Jayce gets into an argument with Mikhail over logic of scaling a clockwork mechanism, which he somehow looses.
Viktor tells about his expulsion and how he and Jayce work for the college now, and his parents don’t judge him at all.
As the dinner is coming to a close, Viktor gets sent to feed the cats — an obvious excuse his parents use to stay alone with Jayce. Which is definitely not making Jayce feel nervous. Definitely.
“Don’t worry, Jayce, we’re not going to eat you alive,” Mikhail jokes. “At least not yet.”
Jayce can almost hear Raisa rolling her eyes.
”What Misha is saying, you’re a good kid,” Jayce is definitely not a kid at his almost twenty five years of age, “and you’re good for our Vitya.”
If Jayce is honest with himself, he isn’t so sure if he is good for Viktor. He knows he wasn’t, he knows he fucked up more than once. But he tries to do better now.
“It’s obvious to anyone with eyes how much you two love each other. You have our parental blessing. Just don’t break our son’s heart — I promise you will regret it.”
”Misha!”
Jayce can’t help but smile. These people — Viktor’s family — they accepted him.
“Thank you. For trusting me.” he tells them, but it feels so intense he can’t even look up at them. It’s too much. It’s just too much- and then Jayce gets enveloped into a hug, soft and warm.
”You'll always be welcomed in this house, son.”
Jayce knows they mean it.
Viktor returns to the kitchen soon after, acting like he knows nothing about the talk that just happened even though he probably heard everything. Bastard. His bastard.
As they leave, Jayce keeps thinking, surprisingly enough, about all the teasing about them getting married. He never considered marriage, not really, not since he was a child with stupid impossible dreams. And he already feels like he belongs with Viktor anyway, like he’s already part of this family, but- but maybe.
Maybe.
***
Jayce didn’t expect to get a letter from Piltover, let alone from the Academy’s ethics board. It’s been almost a year since he sent the complaint, over half a year since he cut all ties with them.
Yet there’s a letter. Saying that his complaint is officially recognized and that the Academy is willing to restore Viktor’s status as its member.
It doesn’t take a genius to put two and two together — his and Viktor’s work for the College got enough attention for the Academy to want them back.
“Do you want to return to Piltover?” Viktor asks after Jayce tells him about the news, and Jayce doesn’t need to think long to know the answer.
“No, I don’t.”
They don’t belong up there, they never never did. But here? Here’s their home.
Here, they can be happy.
***
Jayce wakes up in the middle of the night from a scream.
Someone is screaming.
Viktor isn’t in the bed with him.
Viktor-
Jayce rushes to the lab. Viktor has to be okay, whatever happened Viktor has to be okay, he has to-
Viktor is sitting slumped on the chair, on the table next to him is a bonesaw, red from blood. Viktor’s left arm- Viktor’s left arm is- below the elbow where his wrist and hand should be- a stump, bloody, skin wrapped around it and stapled back crudely.
A dismembered hand is lying on the floor in a pool of blood.
“Vik?” Jayce comes closer on the shaking legs, “Vik, what happened?”
Viktor raises his gaze as if he only just noticed Jayce’s presence. He looks tired.
“Go back to sleep.”
His voice hoarse, must be from all of the screaming- Why? Why did Viktor do this? They were doing so well, so why did he-
“Please, talk to me. Please.”
Viktor sighs, and only now Jayce can see a little tingle of purple in the sclera of his eyes. Drugs, probably the best mix he could get to dull the pain without loosing clarity of mind.
“My last project, prosthetics with a better feedback loop,” Viktor nods his head towards the table and Jayce sees the artificial hand lying there. Viktor’s work. “I’m concerned that the neural connection can backfire. So I decided to test it.”
He decided to-
“On yourself?!” Jayce shouts, unable to keep his- what even does he feel? Shock? Anger? Helplessness? All of it?
”Would it be better if I experimented on other people instead?”
The right answer, the morally correct answer is no. Jayce knows it, but-
”Yes!”
Jayce feels like a horrible person saying this, yet he’s unable to deny the truth. He can’t see Viktor being in pain like this, he just can’t. Viktor simply shakes his head.
“No, it wouldn’t be. You would hate me for it, I would hate me for it. Just-” Viktor exhales, fight leaving him, “if you’re not going back to bed, just help me with installing the prosthetic. Please.”
And Jayce does. He has to be there for Viktor, no matter what.
***
“Do you hate it?”
The question catches Jayce off guard — they’re just having dinner like always, so he doesn’t understand what Viktor is even referring to.
“Hate what?”
“Part of my arm being metal. Do you find it disgusting?”
There’s a certain look on Viktor’s face, a resigned one, as if he knows the answer already. He is wrong though.
“I don’t,” Jayce takes Viktor’s hand, prosthetic one, in his and brings it to his lips, leaves a soft kiss on the knuckles. “It’s your work, it’s a part of you. How could I ever hate it?”
“But you wish it still was flesh.”
Not a question, just a statement. And Jayce isn’t going to argue with that — of course he does. Of course he wishes that his lover didn’t cut off his limb, didn’t put himself at risk of who knows what, hadn’t been in pain.
“Does it even matter what I might wish? We can’t change the past. This is your body now and I love it all the same.”
Viktor smiles, barely there upturn of the lips.
Jayce knows that this conversation is far from over, that they will come back to it many times more in the future — so he just needs to keep showing Viktor that he means it.
That he loves all of him, flesh and metal alike.
***
The silver pendant lies heavy in Jayce’s hand.
He’s ready, he’s finally ready.
Jayce spent the last few months preparing for this day. Spending hours in the college’s library reading on zaunite traditions, talking with the priestess. Asking advice from Viktor’s parents. Learning from Viktor’s mother how to forge, how to craft a small ingot into a jewelry piece.
Jayce needs it to be perfect. He’s proposing to the love of his life, after all.
They’re having a date today, one of their small outings to a dinner place not so far from the college — but that’s not where Jayce asks the question, no. It’s after that, when he drags Viktor to the rooftops to watch fireworks Piltover sets off to celebrate the Progress Day-
Under that colorful sky, on the day marking six years since they’ve met, Jayce asks the person most important to him:
”Viktor, will you marry me?”
There’s surprise in Viktor’s eyes, in the way he gently traces the rough edge of the pendant that Jayce holds.
“You’ve made this?”
“I know it’s not great, but I wanted-” it’s hard for Jayce to convey everything he put into the small piece of silver, he has always been shit with words, “I wanted to do it right.”
Viktor smiles at him softly, oh softly.
“Oh, Jayce. It’s perfect.”
And so is the kiss they share, their love taking physical form. Jayce can’t have enough of it, even as his lungs start to burn from lack of air. He can never have enough of Viktor.
“You haven’t answered the question, by the way,” Jayce teases very well knowing that Viktor has. “Will you marry me?”
“Yes!” Viktor laughs, “yes, you foolish man. Of course I will.”
“Which one of us is more foolish if you’re the one marrying me, huh?”
Viktor shuts him up with another kiss.
***
Jayce never thought he'd get married.
Well, that’s a lie — as a very young kid he dreamt of standing at the altar and exchanging rings, of saying the vows and meaning it. Of sharing his life with someone who wouldn’t leave him.
Part of growing up was realizing that he’d never have it, never get that person who would care for him, not even a little. That he was too broken, unable to love and thus unlovable.
And then Viktor happened.
Viktor, who did care. Viktor, who was there for him. Viktor, whom he loved.
Even then, Jayce could never imagine him and Viktor to be wed — they just weren’t made for this. No matter if Viktor loved him back or not, why would’ve he ever wanted to tie his life with Jayce’s? Ridiculous. So utterly ridiculous.
It still doesn’t feel real, even as Jayce walks towards the altar of Janna with Viktor’s mother guiding him, Viktor himself standing next to the priestess.
He looks beautiful in the warm candlelight — hair tied in intricate braids strung by thin copper ribbons complimenting his amber eyes perfectly, suit draping perfectly over his lean frame, its sleeves short and not hiding his mechanical hand at all.
The priestess’s voice is loud and steady as she talks about union of souls, of winds and breaths, but the only thing Jayce can hear is his own heart beating. This is happening, this is really happening.
Two glasses, filled to the brim by the moonshine Jayce made and tincture from Viktor in equal amounts. Viktor is first to pick his and say the vows:
“Jayce,” he starts, smile gentle like his soul, “I never thanked you for not giving up on us when I did, for leaving everything behind and choosing to stay by my side even when I pushed you away.
I thought my heart was too broken to repair, that I was too broken to be loved, yet you proved me wrong — you were the only one who could. I thank you for that.
And I vow that I’ll do the same for you, that I’ll never give up on you ever again. That I’ll be there for you, no matter what future holds.
I love you, Jayce, more than I thought it is even possible to do. And I accept you as half of my soul, as my breath, as my husband.”
And with those words Viktor downs his glass, breaks it on the stone floor of the temple — wastefulness reserved for rare occasions in Zaun.
It’s Jayce’s turn now, his hand shaking just a little as he picks up his glass.
“V, you know I’m shit with words, always has been. But that’s the thing, isn’t it?” Jayce laughs. “You know me. You actually bothered to know me when no one else did. You changed my life, Vik, you made me feel alive, made me feel human.
You’re everything to me, more than I ever could ask for. I love you and I accept you as half of my soul, as my breath, as my husband.”
Strong alcohol tastes bitter and the sound of breaking glass rings loud, so does the voice of the priestess proclaiming them married.
Viktor is smiling at him. His husband is smiling at him.
How did he get so lucky?
The kiss they share feels just like all of the others — love, love, so full of love — yet different. It is their first kiss as husbands after all.
There are so many more kisses to come.