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The thing about Jayce is that he’s very obvious.
Viktor knows Jayce is sweet on him. Anyone who’s been in a room with the two of them for more than ten minutes knows Jayce is sweet on him. In fact, anyone who’s been with Jayce alone has probably realized it. He wears his affection like a nametag: Hello, I’m Jayce, I have a crush on Viktor, I’m from House Talis. He’s woven Viktor so thoroughly into his own identity that it’s impossible not to notice how much he likes him.
The point is: Viktor could put a stop to all of that. But he doesn’t mind. In fact he almost likes it. Thinks he could grow to like it very much, if he gave it time.
So when Viktor, out of the corner of his eye, sees Jayce staring at his ass, he barely registers it. It’s hardly the first time, and it’ll hardly be the last. Viktor just side eyes him, half-fond, and then goes back to the grant application guidelines he’s reviewing.
A few moments of silence. Then Jayce takes an audible breath and says, “Um, Viktor?”
Viktor sets the papers down, still faintly amused. “Yes?”
Jayce flushes. “You’re.” He gestures strangely with his emphatic hands. “Bleeding.”
Both of them are often bleeding in the lab; this isn’t an extraordinary experience. “Yes. I know.” He checks the bandage on his wrist; it isn’t staining the grant application papers, so he doesn't see why it’s a problem. “Is something the matter?”
“Not your wrist.” Jayce clears his throat, looking hesitant, then says, “I meant to say, your period leaked through.”
Viktor blinks. “My… excuse me?”
Jayce stands up hurriedly and shoves his chair back under the workbench. “I have your spare brown pants from the laundry. I can go get those for you.”
“Jayce, wait.”
Jayce grinds to a halt and looks at him expectantly.
Viktor hesitates under his gaze. He’s always been like that—he’s so all-or-nothing, so intense. Like Viktor’s word takes precedence over everything else. It’s nice when they’re experimenting with something and Jayce follows his directions; it’s different when Jayce listens to him about things like this. Jayce, wait. Jayce, come here. Jayce, sit. Jayce, stay. Good boy.
Viktor’s mouth feels dry. He should have put a stop to this months ago, back when they first got the lab together. And yet. And yet.
Jayce is still looking at him, wide-eyed.
“That can’t be right,” Viktor says, quieter than before. He leans against the table. “I haven’t had a regular period in years. Not since—” Not since he was first in Piltover. Not since he realized it wouldn’t be easy up here, either; that there was only more hard work awaiting him topside.
Jayce’s eyes flicker down, then back up at the ceiling like he can somehow make up for the sin of looking at Viktor’s ass by looking as far away from it as possible. “Either that, or you’ve hurt your hip really bad this time, and I’d be pretty worried if that were the case.”
Viktor frowns at him minutely. But he’s probably right, so he goes to the lab bathroom and yanks on the zipper of his pants until they come free.
Oh.
He stares down at his own underwear in disbelief.
That’s definitely a period, and it’s definitely his.
Viktor hardly thinks about the logistics. Doesn’t think about the visible bloodstain that Jayce apparently noticed, or about the lack of period products in his apartment, or about the fact that he’ll have to eat properly for the next week if he doesn’t want to subject Jayce to the ill-temper of a lifetime. He just thinks: This hasn’t happened before. This wasn’t supposed to happen.
His hormones have been solidly imbalanced for… well, probably his whole life, but if not that, at least the better part of the last ten years. He’d always been irregular, and the slurry of medications and inconsistent doses of on-again off-again HRT only made it worse. When he stopped getting his period entirely, it wasn’t exactly a surprise. His body evidently decided it had better things to spend its energy on. It made sense, he figured at the time. It was efficient. Viktor would deal with it, like he dealt with everything else.
Now he fastens his pants again in a daze and washes his hands. He drags himself out of the bathroom with shaky hands and blinks into the lab lights.
Jayce is still standing there. He looks relieved when Viktor emerges again. “Oh, good. Okay, I got your pants out, and you probably have whatever menstrual products you like so I’ll just let you deal with that. I’m so sorry for, like, being weird about it, I didn’t mean to be weird about it, really. Um, if you need help with anything…?”
“Jayce.”
His rambling comes to a stop. Jayce looks almost relieved to heed his command again. “Yeah?”
“I last had a regular period five years ago.”
Jayce blinks. “Okay…?”
“I don’t have menstrual products,” Viktor continues, trying not to convey his anxiety. He has to be strong; Jayce is the soft one, Jayce is the one who can fall apart. “I don’t have anything. I am not prepared for this at all.”
“Oh,” says Jayce. “That’s all?”
Viktor stares at him, baffled. “That’s all?” He’s never known Jayce to belittle his problems, not like this, at least.
“No, no, I mean—God, V,” he says, laughing a little. He turns around and rummages through something. “I only meant that you don’t need to worry so much.”
Easy for him to say. He’s never been caught off guard by his own menstrual cycle, which he thought was dead and gone for five fucking years. “Just—”
“There!” Jayce says brightly, pulling out a box. Tampons. “I have these, and I already told you I have extra pants. And I can heat up the hot-water bag if you want. I know it’s designed for your hip, but it’ll probably work.”
Viktor stares at the box. He hasn’t had to use menstrual products in so long that he forgets what brand he even used to use. But these—these he remembers. Organic cotton tampons with fucking all-natural applicators. Very nice. Expensive.
Jayce’s hand hesitates on the box. “Oh. Sorry, do you not use tampons?”
“I don’t use anything,” Viktor says, still reeling. He takes one of the beautifully-wrapped tampons out of the box. “Why do you have these? Why the expensive kind?”
Jayce laughs. He finally sits down again. “You forget I used to have Cait over almost every day.”
“Cait?”
“Caitlyn Kiramman. You know, my sponsor family’s kid. Fifteen—or I guess she’s sixteen now. She used to hang out with me in the lab. Talk to me about girls, make me help her with math homework, you know.”
Used to, Viktor notes. He remembers the explosion; how could he forget? “That explains the price,” he says, instead of bringing up the past tense, the missed birthday, the sadness trapped in Jayce’s posture instead of making its way to his face. “Can’t give a Councilor’s kid anything less than, eh, one hundred percent cotton.”
Jayce snorts.
Viktor smiles a little. He takes the change of clothes and the box and for a moment everything is normal.
They wrap up work in the lab just before midnight. Jayce walks him home. His hand twitches like he wants to reach out, but he doesn’t, because Viktor asked him not to, months ago, and he remembers.
That odd satisfaction swells in Viktor’s chest. Good boy, he thinks. I’ve trained you well.
“Is there anything I can do?” Jayce asks at his door. “I mean, to help you out. I can bring something to the lab for you tomorrow.”
Viktor usually would say no. But he’s tired, and Jayce is waiting. “Bring me discs instead. They last longer. And, if you don’t mind, something to eat, so I do not bite your head off.”
Jayce nods. “Of course, V.”
He waits for just a second longer, like he thinks Viktor will change his mind and demand more of him. He always does that. He lingers at the door every night until Viktor tells him to leave. Often he gets the sense Jayce is waiting for something. Waiting for Viktor to ask for it.
“Good night, Jayce,” Viktor says.
Jayce’s mouth twitches up into a tiny sliver of a smile. “Good night, Viktor,” he says, and then he’s on his way again, disappearing into the soft night.
***
When Viktor arrives at the lab in the morning, it’s empty. This is unusual, but not unheard of, so he shuffles through the grant applications again and rubs the sleep from his eyes.
And then Jayce bursts in.
There really is no other word for it. He bursts in like an anxious spring gale, warm and smelling like laundry soap, and plunks down an enormous bag on the designated break table.
Jayce, as Viktor has learned, does not do things by halves. This makes sense when it applies to their work; Viktor doesn’t do Hextech by halves either, because what scientist isn’t devoted to their studies? But Jayce is like that with everything. He walks across the city to carry his mother’s groceries home for her. He roasts his own batches of coffee beans to get the flavor he likes best. He forges tools and notches gears and even built custom shelves and drawers in the lab to give everything a place to belong.
Of course he wouldn’t do as Viktor asked. Of course he’d want to do more.
“Good morning,” Viktor says pointedly, amused.
Jayce gives him a bright, if guilty, smile. “Sorry. I meant to just buy the discs, but then I got distracted. Am I late?”
He isn’t, not really. They’ve got no actual lab hours; they both just agree to work together whenever they can, and that happens to be most days from about nine to nine. When they work later they both sleep in. Viktor himself only arrived about half an hour ago.
“Mm,” Viktor says anyway. He looks at the wall clock—just past eleven—and then at Jayce again. “How will I ever forgive you?”
Jayce gestures vaguely at the bag on the table. “I hoped this might help a little.”
“Show me what you’ve got, and I will consider it.”
He’s expecting Jayce to pull out something ridiculous. Maybe he’s bought every variety of menstrual product under the sun. Maybe he’s gotten a giant bouquet of flowers, Viktor thinks, for some ludicrous reason. He thinks Jayce would do that. Two dozen roses for him, or some other Piltie nonsense, and Jayce would blush red as petals as he handed them over. Even the thought is charming.
But that doesn’t happen. Instead:
“Here,” Jayce says, pulling something out. It’s a bottle, almost like painkillers, printed with a blue label.
Viktor turns the bottle over between his hands, perplexed. It’s full of tablets, but they look strange. He picks one up and tries to put it in his mouth.
Jayce’s hand shoots out to stop him. “Viktor—!”
Viktor sets down the tablet. Jayce’s hand hesitates mid-air, just before touching him, and he lets it fall again. He remembers, Viktor thinks, his heart warm. Remembers that Viktor doesn’t like to be touched without warning. He’s learning.
“God, V,” Jayce sighs, scrubbing his hand over his eyes. “Don’t just eat things. What if I’d given you poison or something?”
Viktor smiles. The very idea is laughable: Jayce, killing him. “You would never. If I were gone, you would not know what to do with yourself.”
“Damn right I wouldn’t,” Jayce agrees, like he’s proud of it. He sighs again and takes the bottle back. “I’m gonna go grey twenty years early at this rate, V. These aren’t even pills. It’s an electrolyte thing. You put it in your water and drink it and it’ll help your body retain nutrients.”
He looks at the bottle, which he now notices is printed with a glass of water. Ah. Yes, that would do it. “I was not under the impression that most people need electrolyte therapy on their period.”
“Probably not,” Jayce says, shrugging. “But it might help you.”
Viktor’s heart does something strange in his chest. Instead of rejecting it, he says, “I will try it.”
Jayce smiles.
“Keep going,” Viktor says, looking away from him too fast. “I know you’ve got much more than that.”
Jayce has the decency to look bashful. “I might have gotten carried away.”
It’s been a long time since someone got carried away on Viktor’s behalf, and even longer since it was as sweet as this. “I don’t mind. You’re only doing as I asked, like a good partner.”
This makes his shoulders fall, like he’s finally relaxed again. Poor, predictable Jayce. Poor, predictable, wonderful Jayce.
“Well, this one’s classic,” Jayce says, setting down a bar of chocolate. “Cait likes this brand. She’s got a sweet tooth too. Uh, I got seventy percent, because dark chocolate is supposed to be better for you. Sorry. I know you like fifty-two.”
Viktor blinks. He didn’t even know he liked fifty-two percent. “I do?”
“Yeah.”
Somehow Viktor believes him. He slides the chocolate to his side of the table.
“Okay, well, next up,” Jayce says, and without preamble he pulls out a strangely-shaped heat pack, bigger than the one they use for his hip pain.
“I already have a heat pack.”
“But this one will wrap all the way around you,” Jayce says, with that pathetic little expression. “In case your back hurts.”
“My back always fucking hurts, Jayce. This is why I take oxycodone every day.”
Jayce’s eyes grow more pathetic. He holds it out.
Viktor makes a show of sighing when he takes it. He examines the fabric between his hands. It doesn’t look like it’ll fit perfectly with his back brace, but he’ll make it work. He can use it over his clothes, and have Jayce help fasten it in the back.
“Uh, and—” Jayce looks a little embarrassed about this one. He slides something across the table.
Maybe this is what people feel like on their birthday. Viktor opens the package. Compression socks, designed for people who spend all day on their feet.
“For your circulation,” Jayce explains, quite unnecessarily. “And I thought it might help your leg too, if your feet didn't hurt as much.”
Viktor takes them quietly. His fingers are warm, like his circulation has somehow never been better.
“Oh, and this is for both of us, but…”
And Jayce pulls out a fucking pressure cooker, what the fuck? Viktor has been keeping it together so far, but this is just overkill. “Jayce,” he says, his voice weaker than he might like. “I meant you could remind me to eat. Or you could order for me too when you get yourself lunch.”
“Oh.” Jayce flushes. “Well, I made soup. And it’s even pretty good this time! I know you said I’m shit at cooking when I tried to bake for my birthday, but I’ve been working on it. Uh, it’s got potatoes and sausage and kale and chili oil.”
Viktor doesn’t know what to say. He watches Jayce carry the pressure cooker to the counter he built with his own hands and find a perfect place for it. Jayce is funny like that: always finding places for things to belong. Leaving the empty space when they’re gone, so that he’ll always remember what should be there.
Sometimes Viktor wonders if Jayce sees him like that, too. In Viktor’s sweetest dreams it happens just like this: when he leaves the lab, Jayce carefully outlines the place he’d been and brands it with his name, and the next day he sees Viktor there and thinks, Yes, this is where I’d put you. This is where you belong.
Abruptly Viktor realizes Jayce has been talking the whole time. He blinks himself back into awareness.
“And it’s not too heavy,” Jayce is saying, his hands fumbling with the extension cord, “because I know your digestion is weird, but the tablets should help with that. There’s extra chili oil but it’s on the side. And I made rice too, but you have to pour the soup over the rice, because it can’t go in the pressure cooker for too long or the texture gets really weird, trust me, you do not want to—”
“Jayce,” Viktor interrupts.
Jayce stops talking.
“You can tell me about it when we eat.”
Jayce looks relieved. “Got it. Guess I should do actual work now, huh?”
Viktor rather likes that expression on him. He nods.
“Oh! And these, of course. They had two kinds,” Jayce says, pulling out the final two boxes. “Didn’t know if you wanted a reusable disc or the disposable ones. I got you both.” He sets them down on the table.
Viktor smiles, for real this time, a smile that breaks through the confines of his face and makes him feel like he’s more than himself. All this, for him, and all he had to do was ask for it. “Jayce,” he says. Then, just to taste his name again: “Jayce.”
“Yeah?”
Viktor looks at him, his gaze thick with fondness. “You are not so bad,” he says. “I could have done worse.”
“You could still do worse,” Jayce points out, looking a little confused.
Viktor feels like laughing. “No,” he says, because he’s stuck with Jayce for the rest of his life, however long or short that will be, and he knows it well. “I will not be doing any worse. I will not be doing any better, either. I will be with you.”
Jayce looks very pleased. “Well,” he says, flushed. “That’s alright, then.”
“Mm,” Viktor agrees. He takes the disposable discs into the bathroom and fixes his hair and puts on the compression socks, which take some getting used to but are quite comfortable after about ten minutes.
“Good?” Jayce asks when he emerges again.
Viktor nods. “Good.”
They get to work.
***
That evening Jayce heats up his soup and offers Viktor a too-full bowl. Viktor takes the electrolyte tablet and drinks all his soup, although it is more than he’d have served himself. Jayce breaks him a piece of chocolate and looks at him pitifully until he eats it.
Jayce walks him home again. He stands at the door with his big eyes and that little slant to his mouth. He waits.
“Good night, Jayce,” Viktor says, like he does every night.
Jayce’s shoulders fall minutely, like a great burden has been lifted. “Good night, Viktor,” he says, and then he’s gone again.
***
It gets worse.
The pain is okay—pain is a constant, and he knows how to live with it. But it’s not just the pain. It’s that his instinct is to let his spine curve in and compress his organs to alleviate the pressure. And that’s not just painful; that’s impossible. Every ten minutes he has to remind himself to sit up straight again, and his brace creaks, and the heat pack dislodges from his back, and.
And.
Sometimes working with Jayce is a blessing. But sometimes—
“I really think I could fix it,” Jayce says eagerly, sitting on top of the table like he’s some kind of schoolgirl gossiping with him over their lunch break. “The problem is that the heat pack is catching on the brace, but I could re-sew the fastenings and make it catch on purpose to stay upright. Feature, not a bug, you know?”
He’s drawn the whole thing out. A whole notebook page filled with a diagram of a hot water pack that attaches to Viktor’s back brace and wraps around him like a sweet embrace.
He’s signed the page at the bottom, too. V. & J. Talis. It makes Viktor’s stomach churn.
Jayce drags a finger along the fastening element. “So this would work into the laces, and I was thinking we could even put a valve in the back to put fresh hot water in it without having to take it off and on again, and—”
“Jayce.”
“And then if you’d let me alter the back brace a little, or just make you new eyelets and laces, I can make them work together as a set, and you won’t have to—”
“Jayce.”
Finally he stops. He takes his hand off the notes and stands up from his silly, overeager position on the table. “Yeah?”
“You know I do not need this.”
Jayce’s expression crumples. “I thought it’d be nice.”
Viktor’s eye catches on the signature at the bottom again, V. & J. Talis, nothing separating them but that obnoxious cursive ampersand, and he shuts the notebook too harshly. “Do you think me incapable of dealing with my own body?”
Jayce looks floored. “I—of course not, but—”
Viktor stands up from his chair without the cane and looks at him, eye-level. His leg sears against the dull-edged painkillers, but it’s worth it for the sick satisfaction he gets at seeing Jayce’s expression. “But what?”
Jayce’s jaw clicks when he shuts his mouth. “Nothing,” he says softly. “But nothing, V.”
Viktor sighs through his nose. “I’d appreciate it if you put your lab hours toward the work we’re trying to do, instead of designing things I don’t need for problems I don’t have.”
Jayce looks like he wants to say something. Instead he disappears into the breakroom for a while.
As soon as he’s gone Viktor feels terrible. He knows perfectly well that Jayce admires him, maybe admires him too much, and that he’d never do something he didn’t think Viktor would want. He left in such a hurry that his notebook is still there on the table. Viktor sits back down and takes it. It falls open to the same page, dog-eared and well-worn, like Jayce has spent hours thinking about it.
The brace fastenings are perfect. He’s got the right number of eyelets, the right spacing for the laces to tighten properly, even down to the precise curve of Viktor’s back. Jayce must have spent a long time observing them. Observing him.
Viktor stares at the intertwined laces until the heat pack goes cold.
***
An hour later Jayce puts something down on the table and silently sits down across from him.
Viktor looks up. It’s a mug—sweetmilk, because Jayce is charmingly predictable—but he’s also set out a glass of water with the electrolyte tablet next to it, and a plate with crookedly cut cubes of melon.
Quietly, Viktor puts the tablet in the water. It dissolves in a fizz of white and red and golden-orange, like the family seal Jayce paints on all their notebooks and the last name he signs for both of them.
Viktor drinks the whole glass. Then he picks up a cube of melon and turns it over between his hands. He says, “You still haven’t learned.”
Jayce looks up from the table. His eyes are a little red.
“The melon,” Viktor says, suddenly feeling odd. “I meant—I meant you haven’t learned how to cut melon.”
Jayce breathes out something halfway to a laugh. His face softens like it’s a field of dandelions and Viktor is a spring breeze. “Yeah. Yeah, I’ll keep practicing. Knife keeps slipping in my hands.”
“I thought you were some master forger, hm?”
Jayce ducks his head. His cheeks are pink. “I do my best.”
Viktor doesn’t doubt it. The melon juice clings to his fingers, resilient. He likes the crooked melon pieces and he likes the flush on Jayce’s face. He likes this. “Bring it to me, next time,” he says. “I will cut it for us.”
Jayce smiles.
***
It’s a long night. Or—it’s not that long, but Viktor hasn’t been sleeping well, and his body needs the rest more than ever right now, and so at midnight he sits down on the lab couch to rest for a bit and then he closes his eyes and passes out.
He wakes with his back absolutely killing him and the sunlight green in the windows.
Viktor groans and drags himself to sit upright on the couch. It must be nearly five in the morning; he’s supposed to take his pain meds every twelve hours, and usually that’s midnight and noon. Fuck. He didn’t take them before going to bed. And now he’s in the damn lab in a shit ton of pain and Jayce won’t be back until—
Wait. Jayce.
Viktor blinks down at himself. Usually when he falls asleep in the lab, Jayce carefully drapes a blanket over him when he leaves, like a calling card. And yet he has no blanket on. Which either means Jayce has decided that he suddenly doesn’t care for Viktor’s comfort, or…
Viktor sighs and steadies himself. He plants his good foot on the ground below the couch.
It… is not the ground.
“Fuck,” Jayce wheezes.
Viktor yelps and pulls his foot back up. The rapid movement sends pain spiraling down his back. He grimaces. “Jayce,” he says, a little dizzy. “Why in the ever loving fuck would you lay down below the couch?”
“Because I wanted to get stepped on,” Jayce mutters. He drags himself onto his elbows. He’s been sleeping on the blanket laid out on the floor. He’s also shirtless. Viktor notes, almost clinically, that he’s very handsome, even with dark circles printed beneath his eyes and his stubble unshaved. “Sorry. I wanted to sleep. Didn’t want to leave you alone, in case you needed something.”
Viktor’s chest feels strange. “You could have gone home.”
“What, and wake you up to take you home with me?” Jayce rubs the sleep from his eyes and half-laughs into his hands. “You think I’d stop you from resting when you need it?”
Point taken. Jayce is far too considerate to wake him, and far too respectful to try picking him up in his arms, even though he’s certainly strong enough to. “You could have slept in the chair.”
“Too far from you.”
Ridiculous man. Viktor looks at him sleepily, half-fond.
“Well,” says Jayce, stretching his arms above his head. He yawns as he stands. “You want breakfast, V? Not much in the lab, but I guess we have oatmeal and stuff.”
“I do not want oatmeal,” Viktor says petulantly. “I want opioids.”
Jayce isn’t put off by his tone even a little. “I don’t have those here,” he says good-naturedly. “But we can go to your apartment to get your oxycodone.”
“Mm,” Viktor says, closing his eyes again. “You go get it.”
Jayce makes a strange sound in his throat.
“What? You know where my key is,” Viktor says, motioning vaguely with his hand. “What do I have a partner for if not to retrieve my medications?”
Jayce laughs through his nose. “I’m pretty sure I’m helpful for other things, too.”
“Very much so,” Viktor says, smiling at him faintly. “Because you are helpful, you will also get me rice porridge. With, eh, green onion and boiled egg and all the other Piltie shit in there.”
Jayce goes quiet.
Viktor blinks his eyes open. Maybe this was too far. “Jayce?”
Jayce is looking at him with a strange, syrupy thickness in his eyes. “Yeah,” he says, his voice a little weird. He clears his throat. “Uh, sure. I can do that. Whatever you want, V.”
Viktor watches him go. Jayce, fetch, he thinks, and he smiles.
***
Jayce really does bring him the rice porridge with the green onions and boiled egg. He also gets youtiao and a large cup of milk tea with sugar. He sits with Viktor and eats imperfect melon cubes as Viktor swallows his pills, and together they wait for the meds to kick in.
Twenty minutes later Jayce falls asleep with his head on the table. Viktor watches his hair flutter in front of his face. The pain is manageable again. Before him, Jayce’s mouth shimmers with melon juice.
Viktor puts the blanket over his shoulders and brings his notebook to the table. As he works he signs the page at the bottom: V. and J. Talis.
***
On the fourth day Viktor gets himself a new disc and goes into the bathroom to switch it out and finds the old one empty. He blinks down at it. Shouldn’t a period last more than three days? He doesn’t remember how long they used to last. He thinks it was longer than that. Then again, he was never exactly consistent. He leaves the new disc in its packaging and goes back into the workroom.
“Oh, you’re back,” Jayce says, beaming up at him. “Come look at this, I think I did the math wrong. I was always shit at arithmetic.”
Viktor smiles. “Jayce Talis, shit at arithmetic,” he says drily, sitting next to him at the table, too close. “God help the rest of us, then.”
Jayce ducks his head, amused. “You know what I mean. I just want you to look at it.”
He looks at the work Jayce has been doing. It’s not even anything new; he’s just reworking the stabilization equations to account for different altitude pressures. It’s all very obviously correct. Jayce has even written in much nicer handwriting than usual, like he’s trying to show off. Viktor looks up at him knowingly. “You are, eh, hunting for compliments.”
“Fishing,” Jayce corrects.
Viktor raises an amused eyebrow at him.
Jayce sputters, caught in his trap. “I—I was just correcting the idiom! It doesn’t mean you were, like, right, or anything.”
Viktor pauses for just a second longer, and then he says, quiet and deliberate, “You did well.”
Jayce blushes.
Viktor laughs at him fondly. He throws the unused disc back into the box on the shelf; it lands perfectly inside.
Jayce glances over at it. His expression changes again, back to something more solid. “You prefer the disposables?”
Viktor tilts his head.
“The disposable discs,” Jayce clarifies, motioning vaguely at the box. “You’ve only used those. Not the reusable one.”
For the first time, Viktor remembers the reusable disc sitting in another box next to the disposables. He hadn’t even considered it; the reusables were designed to last years, and he wasn’t sure he’d get another period ever, let alone often enough to make it worthwhile. “You can return it. I do not think I will get another period. Not consistently, at least.”
Jayce looks a little lost. “Isn’t it supposed to be, like, every twenty-eight days?”
“Twenty-eight days for people with regulated hormones,” Viktor corrects. “The testosterone is supposed to stop it.”
“But you’re on T. You do your shots every two weeks. I’ve seen you.”
Viktor looks at the two boxes positioned next to each other. He thinks vaguely about the inconsistent T doses of his youth, the triple-strong shots to make up for missed ones, and sighs. If only his fifteen-year-old self had known he’d outlive his expiry date long enough for there to be consequences. But he doesn’t want to explain that to Jayce, or to anyone really. “Sometimes I forget them,” he tries.
Jayce’s expression twists, like he wants to call Viktor’s bullshit but can’t stand the thought of arguing with him. “Well, we’re gonna be working together for a while still,” he says weakly. “Call it a long-term investment.”
“The long-term investment is not worth it. Not for me.”
“It is,” Jayce says, his voice stronger.
Viktor glances at him out of the corner of his eye.
Jayce makes a strange noise in his throat and looks away quickly. “I mean, if you don’t want to use it, that’s fine. Do what you want. But I wouldn’t have gotten it if I didn’t think it was worth it.”
Viktor gets the sense they’re not quite talking about the same thing anymore. He looks at him and smiles his slanted smile, thick with strange, heavy affection. “No need to be so sentimental about it. It’s your money. Spend it as you wish.”
“Our money,” Jayce says. “It’s our money.”
Slowly, Viktor’s grin widens. “Careful, or I might start billing my rent to House Talis.”
Jayce’s expression flickers. For a moment he looks like he’s going to say something ridiculous, something life-changing. Something like Am I interrupting; something like Our Hextech dream. Viktor holds his breath, waits for it. His chest hurts. He isn’t sure if he’s ready to hear what he thinks Jayce is going to say, not yet, not yet, not yet.
But the moment passes, and he doesn’t say it.
Jayce takes the notebook with his perfectly-written calculations back. His voice is a little breathy. “I’ll return it if you don’t want it.”
Viktor doesn’t trust himself to speak. He nods.
Jayce visibly swallows. He looks strange, like a longtime dream has been crushed before his eyes and all he can do is watch.
Ridiculous man. Viktor sighs. “Jayce, you fool. I am not saying I will leave. I only think it is unlikely I will get much use out of it, so I am budgeting our money more appropriately.”
Something softens in Jayce’s posture. “Well, I didn’t think you’d leave anyway,” he says, but he doesn’t move from the spot right next to Viktor at the table, even though there’s another perfectly good workspace across the room, where they could be far apart.
***
There’s some more bleeding, which is light enough that the fabric of Viktor’s boxers stops it before it can stain his pants. There’s more pain, probably, but he doesn’t notice it too much. In fact, Viktor wakes up on the fifth day feeling better than he has in months. Maybe years.
When he walks into the lab, Jayce is once again missing. Viktor doesn’t mind; they’ve both had a long few days, and though he hates to show it, Jayce is probably tired. He deserves a break. Viktor will try to be extra nice to him.
They’ve been carving a new rune into a gate to see what it does. Viktor’s hands are too shaky to work on carving alone, and he doesn’t feel like writing anything, so he pours himself a glass of water and adds the electrolyte powder without thinking. It tastes faintly sweet and it makes his stomach churn. He doesn’t need to be doing this, not anymore.
Viktor stares down into the glass. His reflection is warm-skinned, painted in sunset colors by the dissolved electrolyte powder.
In the water’s reflection, he looks healthier. Like he’s gotten some sun, eaten something. It’s a lie, of course; he’s just as pale and gaunt as he always was. He tips his head back and downs the rest of the glass like it’s liquor, no chaser.
Fuck. He wants a cigarette.
He washes the glass in the sink and leaves it out to dry. He had smoked his last cigarette on the balcony with Jayce maybe a month ago; Jayce had looked at him with this strange, weighty emotion in his eyes, half thick interest and half deep sadness, and Viktor would have kissed him but he had the filter of the cigarette in his mouth.
Viktor stares at the wall and smiles vacantly. It was a good cigarette. Maybe his best.
He’s just daydreaming about exhaling smoke into a wide-eyed Jayce’s mouth when the keys scratch at the door.
Viktor blinks himself out of the fantasy. Must be Jayce; no one else save administration has the key, and they all have to give courtesy notice if they want to visit. “It’s unlocked,” he calls.
More shuffling. Something scuffles outside the door. Then a muffled, “Fuck,” and a sound like Jayce groaning in pain. The door does not budge.
Viktor stares at it, baffled. But he’s not in much pain today, so he makes his way to the door and opens it, smiling in preemptive amusement at whatever bullshit Jayce has been up to out there. “Good morning,” he says, raising an eyebrow. “Care to explain?”
Jayce grins at him sheepishly. He’s holding two large travel mugs, one in each hand, and he smells like he’s taken a bath in fresh-brewed coffee. “Uh, hi,” he says, waving awkwardly with one of the mugs. “I made coffee.”
“I can see that,” Viktor says drily. “I can also smell it.”
Jayce blinks. He looks down at himself. “Is it that bad?”
“Not bad. I am quite partial to the smell, myself.”
Jayce makes a sound halfway to a laugh. He comes into the lab and sets the coffees down on the table. The two mugs are matching: one carmine red, one dark green. Viktor instinctively reaches for the green one but stops in his tracks when Jayce makes a pathetic sad face at him.
Viktor huffs and retracts his hand. “Don’t tell me you brought two travel mugs of coffee for yourself, Jayce.”
“No, I just—” He fumbles with his bag and throws it onto his chair. “Take the red one, okay?”
Viktor raises an eyebrow at him.
“The red one’s yours,” Jayce says, quieter. He clears his throat. His cheeks are pink. “It’s, uh, special. For you.”
“For the record,” Viktor says, taking the red mug with a grin. “There are much better ways to roofie me than this.”
Jayce blinks. “To—what?”
Viktor looks at him, baffled. “You do not know what a fucking roofie is?”
“Like, on a building?”
Viktor feels the urge to roll his eyes at him, and close on its heels, the urge to wind him up like an heirloom watch and keep him in his pocket forever. He takes the red mug and opens it. Beautiful coffee-scented steam comes billowing out.
Viktor takes a sip.
The first thing he notices is that the coffee is fucking black. Black coffee. Jayce must actually hate him. What did Viktor ever do to him? Is it so bad that Viktor enjoys all the Piltie fixings in his coffee? All the sugar and the milk and the fucking hazelnut syrup and whatever?
The second thing he notices is that he… doesn’t actually hate it, somehow.
“Jayce,” he says slowly. “This is… black coffee? But…?”
“I’ve been working on this one for a while,” Jayce says eagerly, sitting down across from him. His bag is still on the chair; he must be sitting on the edge. “I know you hate my black coffee. But there’s this thing with coffee-brewing aficionados where they try to achieve natural sweetness in the brew. Temperature control in the roasting, certain water temperatures, grind sizes, whatever. Uh, and the end goal is to make the black coffee taste sweet.”
Viktor slowly takes another sip. It’s… not the worst. He doesn’t mind it.
“So?” Jayce asks anxiously. “Is it okay? I tried my best, but I still brought everything you like, just in case.”
Viktor looks up from the mug. “You made this?”
Jayce tilts his head. “Yeah. Been working on it for a while, but I figured now was a good time. Uh, coffee’s good for—you know. Energy levels. Probably bad for cramps, but you should just drink equal amounts of water and it’ll be fine, I hope.”
Viktor’s stomach suddenly fills with lead. “Jayce,” he says, a little sharper than he intends. “I am no longer on my period.”
Jayce’s expression brightens. “Oh! Okay, great. Then the coffee shouldn’t be an issue.”
“I mean that you no longer need to do things like this for me.”
Jayce looks at him blankly.
“I asked you for help,” Viktor says, and doesn’t it sound terrible, now that he says it out loud. “You no longer need to do as I say. I am done.”
And Jayce laughs.
“V,” he says, a little breathless. “You know I’ve been working on roasting the perfect coffee for you since, like, three months ago?”
Viktor blinks, baffled. That’s—way before Viktor asked him for anything. He’d just barely started allowing Jayce to walk him home every day. “You have?”
“You know I roast my own coffee. That’s not new information.”
It isn’t. Viktor knows that about him; it’s one of those perfectionist things that Jayce likes to be in control of. But that’s not the surprising part, not at all. “You told me you already found your perfect, eh, brew parameters.”
“Yeah,” Jayce says, easy as anything. “And now I’ve found yours.”
Viktor looks at him for a long, measured moment. Suddenly, it hits him: everything’s already changed. He’s been waiting, waiting, waiting, and he realizes, as he sits there drinking Jayce’s specially-designed sweet black coffee, that the change he was waiting for has long since passed.
Jayce holds his own mug a little nervously. “Uh, V?”
Viktor thinks about the matching mugs, the electrolytes in his water, the drawing of his own back and every eyelet on his brace, the stupid ampersand between their initials on every paper Jayce writes, and makes his decision.
“Jayce, how presumptuous,” he says, smiling a little. “You cannot claim to have found my perfect coffee when you’ve only run one test. What kind of scientist are you?”
Jayce’s eyes flicker.
Viktor looks at him, and he takes a sip.
And Jayce finally looks like he gets it.
“A shitty one, I guess,” he says, through a breathy laugh. “But if you want me to keep trying, I’ll be more than happy to keep tweaking your roast.”
“I will try every coffee you make for me, then,” Viktor says. “Until it’s perfect.”
The smile Jayce gives him could power their lab for weeks.
“Yeah,” he says. “Until it’s perfect.”
***
That night, in front of Viktor’s door, Jayce stands on the top stair and looks up at him hopefully like he always does.
Viktor laughs through his nose. “Sometimes,” he says into the evening air, “I think about rolling you up like a cigarette and lighting you on fire.”
“Yeah?” Jayce says.
“Mm.”
They stand there in silence for a moment, just looking at each other.
“Mostly I think about brewing coffee for you,” Jayce says at last. His face is red even under the pale streetlights. “Trying to make something you like, until I finally get it right. And then I’m the only one who knows how to make it for you, so you’ll never be able to leave.”
Viktor smiles crookedly at him. Sweet Jayce. Sweet, simple, brilliant Jayce.
“Uh, I also think about setting out your meds for you every morning,” Jayce adds, a little faster. “And sometimes I think about stitching my last name into all your clothes.”
Viktor says, “I think about this,” and then he kisses Jayce square on the mouth.
Jayce gasps into his mouth like he’s scandalized. Viktor thinks it’s so cute that he laughs, and then Jayce laughs because he’s laughing, and then they don’t get much kissing done and instead Viktor just stands there with his hands on Jayce’s warm shoulders and his eyes crinkled from joy.
Jayce looks up at him, wide-eyed. “I think about that too,” he breathes, still laughing. “I think about that a lot.”
Viktor looks at him, his ridiculous blush and his dark circles and his wonderful mind, and can’t keep it together. He laughs again, and then Jayce tries to kiss him quiet, and it’s unsuccessful right up until the moment that it’s very successful, when Jayce’s hands tangle into his hair and there’s not enough air in the whole world to fill their lungs.