Archive of Our Own

and the sky heaves a breath so sudden his coat blows open like the sails on a ship. Jayce yanks it closed and wraps an arm about his middle, pulling from out of a pocket a gold-gleaming watch on a thin golden chain, prying the lid open and glancing down—once, twice—to see the seconds escaping him. The sun catches in the glass and blinds him momentarily, like a needle in the cornea; he shuts the lid and slides the watch back into his pocket, hoists his bag up from hip to lie perpendicular along his back, sweat-slick hand keeping it in place, and picks up his pace.

Jayce passes through the maelstrom of bodies moving in the opposite direction, backward, forward, sideways, slow, with strollers and children and purse-sized dogs, crouching to find train tickets in overfull suitcases and standing in doorways

The whistle signaling his train’s departure sounds shrilly through the air, half lost in the thump of the wind. He watches the last door fall shut, hears the engine rumble to life, and the wheels begin to move, so, heart pounding in his ears, he picks up his pace, messenger bag nearly afloat like a piece of thin fabric flapping behind him, his legs moving so fast he barely touches the ground.

One leg still on the ground and the other mid-air, his hands extend for the metal railing at the back and he hoists himself up just as the last car exits the platform. He stumbles and rights himself and sinks down against the outer wall, thumping his head back against it, catching his breath, and laughing deliriously with relief.

Above him the thick quilt of clouds breaks open to reveal a sliver of blue, cerulean, hextech-blue—the color of success, crystallized magic, the future, progress; of floating feather-light in the deans broken-into laboratory ten months earlier. God, he can still feel it in the soles of his feet, the palms of his hands, in his blood, in every cell of his body; that beautiful moment when dissonance became harmony.

That fish-hook tug in his gut, like falling without end, flying without moving, happiness without the desperate incessant tug of despair awaiting its moment, unfettered, rain after drought and sun after rain. No speed to gain, no ground to reach. His apotheosis. Sometimes he wants to live his life in that moment right before the doors burst open, that very first instance of elevation, elation, magic pouring through his blood like oxygen.

He peers down at his wrist, slides the pad of his thumb along the rune-carving on his bracelet, rises to his feet, and enters into the quiet and comparative dark of the train car.

Out of an inner pocket on his thin white coat he retrieves his train ticket, and, checking the compartment number, moves slowly from car to car, until he finds it, and Viktor within through the small window in the door, head in elbow-propped hand, flit of fingers on the table. Jayce’s heart slams so hard in his ribcage he feels it everywhere. He pauses briefly to breathe deeply through his nose, to settle his nerves, and reaches for the handle of the door which sends a faint electric current through his finger.

“Hey,” he says, stepping into the small, hot, airless box, the door falling shut on rusted wheels behind him.

Like a rusty stutter of mechanical gears Viktor lifts his head to peer at him, tourmaline, light-caught eyes tired and mouth thin. Immediately Jayce reaches into his bag for a bottle of water, hands it over and sits down opposite him, sinking slightly down on the soft time-worn burgundy cushion.

“I was almost afraid you wouldn’t make it,” Viktor says.

“Yeah,” says Jayce. “Me too. You okay?”

Viktor hums, “Yes.” He moves between his hands the bottle of water, before setting it on the table.
Two paper cups stand brushing elbows on the table. Viktor lifts one of them to his face, sets it back down, picks up the other and gives it to Jayce.

“Coffee?” He takes a sip, hot still. Bitter and earthy precisely how he likes it. “Thanks. Did you have lunch?”

“Did you?”

“I’ll get us something from the restaurant. Preferences?”

Viktor shrugs. “You know what I like.”

And he’s up again, hand passing over Viktor’s shoulder. Instinct, reflex, muscle memory. If he lost all his senses but touch he’d be able to single out Viktor merely by the shape of that shoulder. Again the door falling shut, again the hallway, hand half outstretched towards the wall for balance when the train lurches suddenly forward, backward. Passing windows where trees and fields blur past, and, in the distance, Piltover. Getting smaller and smaller, glorious with its gilt-cranium buildings erected tall and gleaming in the sun.

Before attempting to find the dining cart, he ventures towards the nearest bathroom, and locks himself within. He stands before the stainless steel mirror observing his reflection, flings a hand through his wind-mussed, tangled hair, getting his fingers caught and systematically loosening each knot until his hair flops forward over his brow, ungelled and uncooperative, wishing he’d brought his bag, wherein he keeps a tub of hairgel. Upon having washed his hands, he loosens the cravat pristinely knotted at his throat and unbuttons the top three buttons on his dress shirt—his waistcoat he altogether removes, folds neatly and holds between his knees since he does not entirely trust the counter to be clean—and shoves wads of tissue paper into his sweaty pits to dry them.

He fans his face with a hand, a tepid breeze drawing up about him, but the repetitive motions counteract it, and so he breaks out in another sweat crawling down the sides of his face, pearlescent in the white of the overhead light. So quits, dries it by dabbing paper lightly about the skin, and, having buttoned up his shirt, readjusts his cravat, cards again a hand through his hair, and leaves. Upon the door to the restaurant car a sign saying no food purchased within can leave. He turns back towards Viktor, tells him about the sign, and before he can rise, to wait a moment.

Drawing across the small window in the door a thin burgundy curtain for some privacy, he unearths out of his bag the tub of gel and a stick of deodorant which he applies meticulously.

“Can you hold that?” He extends to Viktor a small circular mirror.

“You could have performed your rituals of vanity in the bathroom, no?” says Viktor, but takes, all the same, the mirror, lets Jayce steer his hand right.

“You don’t mind do you?” asks Jayce.

Viktor tilts the mirror so the sun pierces Jayce’s eye; in retaliation, Jayce kicks him lightly against his left calf beneath the table. They settle, Jayce fixes his hair, pretends not to notice Viktor’s staring.

“Thanks,” he says, unsticking his fingers, pouring some water in the cap, and pouring that on his hands.

“You’re welcome,” says Viktor.

Jayce squints his direction, wipes his wet hands on his pants, the sensory turmoil he’d been in before getting on the train surging back in, intestines tying themselves in a knot.

“What?”

“Nothing.” Jayce shakes his head. “Lunch?”

“May I borrow that a moment?” He’s tilted the mirror his way, is gazing down into it, a hand extended palm up on the table; Jayce sets the tub in it, holds the mirror for him as he adjusts stray strands of hair flung out at his sides, flattening them against his head, pretends, every time Viktor’s eyes flitter his way, that he’s not paying attention to the way his hands move, smooth, fluid, graceful.

“You missed a spot,” he says, when Viktor’s already screwed the lid on, slid it back across the table.

“Smells nice,” replies Viktor.

Jayce hums, hands him the water, drinks the rest of his coffee. Then to lunch.

They sit facing each other over the dark-wood tabletop, each with a red tray before him. His with a bowl of chicken salad; croutons and garlic sauce. Viktor’s with a plate of potatoes and fish; cherry tomatoes and cucumber quadrants. Knife, fork, and glass of water each

Jayce peers out the window, where past they go trees with autumn's senescent-browned leaves yet cling to some, and others spotted green with fetal sprouts.

“How did your meeting go?”

Eyes all tangled up in sunlight, watering. “Oh. Um.” Jayce says. “We should, um, talk about that, actually.” He picks tepidly at his food, spears a sliced tomato and brings it to his mouth, working his jaw until it’s mush, incapable of meeting Viktor’s eyes. He swallows audibly and shovels a piece of stringy chicken into his mouth.

The request for his presence hadn’t even arrived at their lab until this very morning. Jayce had just come back from a breakfast run, balancing precariously in his hand two cups of coffee, one black, unsweetened, the other with sweetmilk and sugar, two raspberry croissants in a paper bag, to the letter lying on the table, the red, wax council emblem torn, so not bothering to look at it, asked Viktor instead, who, accepting as he passed it along their breakfast, told him they had requested an audience with him.

The two of them both with the chalk-scratch outline of sleep deprivation about them, hunched in their seats scarfing down their meagre breakfast, his leg bouncing like a jackhammer until ten fifteen when he left, a promise to meet Viktor at the train station, hurried across the flagstone courtyard, taking the steps up to the council room in an attempt to soothe his stupid frazzled nerves. His body half-convinced he was still in shackles, hands bound behind his back, could not stop it, even almost a year later, the feeling that he was always in trouble when they requested his presence.

In the chamber, light spilling through tall windows, he looked from one to the other like hours on a busted watch. Councilor Kiramman, for whom he still harbors some lingering anger; councilor Medarda, gleam of gold-freckled visage, loose petal sleeves falling on the almost gear-shaped blank, slate table, the only councilor for whom he retains some respect, since she was the first of them to truly offer him a second chance and so established the path for the rest of them to follow upon, next to her the dean, solemn and monologuing in his indigo uniform, gloved hands gesturing. Annoying at the best of times, Jayce has learnt over time to filter out the unnecessary noise, but, tired and more than a little stressed, he missed most, and so barely caught the end, when a paper was thrust into his hands.

Then it seemed as though they were all talking at once, moving at once, hands gesturing and elbows wide and heads moving back and forth about the gear, breathing as one; one body, and, at once, of a singular mind. Though it was not possible, not loud enough, nor wild enough—could not have been more than one or two people talking at once—he was looking only at the paper, wondering how Viktor would feel about it, and it felt, all the same, to him as though he was not standing before eight separate people, but rather, simply, one. A singular person for whom Hextech was, is, merely a brand, a tool by which to access more wealth.

To Jayce it is his whole life. Only Viktor understands that, because it’s his too.

“Okay…?” says Viktor, at large, hesitating, looking up from his lunch.

Hands on the table, cracking his knuckles against the gilded edge. Viktor’s fork clatters against his plate. There’s blood trekking down his philtrum which he surreptitiously attempts to hide behind his cupped hand, as somebody more polite than either of them when eating and asked a question requiring an expedient response might do.

As he moves to stand, a hand round the handle of the cane Jayce made him—details in red, the Talis insignia—Jayce shoves a napkin towards him.

“You all right?” he asks, concern fluttering between vowels and consonants.

Viktor takes the napkin and lifts it to his face, nods faintly, just a downwards motion of his chin, and swiftly walks out of the car. Jayce watches him through the circular window in the door, anxiously realigns Viktor’s fork and knife to lie parallel on the tray.

Jayce lifts his watch out of its pocket, watching the seconds skip merrily on ahead, and, restlessly, gets up to follow him. He stops at the nearest bathroom, closer than their compartment, before which a two-person line has accumulated, bypasses it, and knocks on the door. One of the line’s occupants says, obviously peeved, “There’s a line.”

“I can see that,” replies Jayce, not bothering to turn and look at them, and then, to the door. “Are you in there, V?”

It unlocks, a faint click of gears. He pulls it sideways, steps into the room, and shoves it shut behind himself, turning the lock.

“I hope you were done with your meal because I don’t think it’ll be there if we go back.”

Head tipped back, a wad of red-blotted tissues held up beneath his nose, Viktor just watches his reflection in the mirror, follows it as Jayce comes to stand beside him.

Jayce rubs his back a little. “You okay?”

“Just a headache.”

“You should lean forward—better to let it out, or you’ll probably be nauseous for the rest of the day.”

“I wasn’t aware you have a degree in medicine.”

“Just saying.” He shrugs.

“I can handle a bit of nausea, Jayce,” says Viktor. “Did you want something?”

“Thought you could use some company.”

“Kind of you.”

Jayce shakes his head, sits down on the seat of the toilet, crosses his legs, uncrosses his legs, leans forward, elbows on knees, looking up at Viktor in the mirror.

His wan face; his tired eyes. The light is sharp, artificial fluorescents severing the windowless dark, bright white like moonlight. He shucks the wad of paper and peers at his nose, leaning close to the stainless steel mirror, reflection slightly warped; wets a napkin and wipes the dried flakes of blood away.

“Is there a line out there?” Viktor asks, removing the tissue paper, lowering his head, shadows elongating beneath his eyes.

Jayce shakes his head. “Nope.”

A red ribbon of blood unwinds down to Viktor’s lip, hangs like a bead until his tongue darts out to capture it, and, returning to his face the napkin, says, a little muffled, “You make a very poor liar.”

A shrug. “There’re other bathrooms.” He stands, suddenly, begins to pry loose the topmost button on his pants. “I have to pee. Look away.”

“Are you taking advantage of our partnership to cut in line?” Viktor moves so his back is to him, facing the wall.

Jayce grins.“Yes,” he says. “Could you tu—” before the full sentence’s out, Viktor’s turned on the water, swirling into the chromium sink. “Thanks.”

He does up his pants, flushes and washes his hands. Side by side in the mirror, twin expressions of exhaustion. He leans a little against Viktor, pressing his upper arm to his shoulder.

“You said we should talk…?” says Viktor, removing once more the napkin.

“Um.” Jayce raises a hand to the back of his own neck, cold, a little damp still, averts his eyes from Viktor’s smoldering gaze in the mirror. “It can wait.”

“It seemed urgent.”

He unhooks the cane and extends it to Viktor who sets it on the ground.

“We’re stuck here for the next—what, three and a half hours. It can wait until we get back to our compartment.”

“Jayce.”

“I’ll tell you—just, don’t wanna do it in here with the… putrid air of old piss and all.”

Viktor laughs softly, wipes the blood from his philtrum. A speck of blood still beneath the tip of his nose, and, instead of telling him, Jayce reaches for a napkin, wets it, and tells him to lift his chin.

“I can do that myself,” replies Viktor.

“I know,” says Jayce. “I want to, though.”

“Fine—if you tell me why.”

“I just want to.”

“Odd thing to want,” says Viktor.

“Weirder that you care so much. Will you let me do it?”

“If you insist.”

“If I insist are you going to ask me why?”

“Well?” Viktor says, lifting his chin. “I don’t have all day.”

”Impatient.” Jayce fights the smile corrupting his purposely neutral face, loses, and holds him by the back of his head to wipe the blood from his nose. “There,” he says.

Viktor squeezes his elbow, flushes and looks away. Jayce does not, nor does he cease his hold on him, wants to fit his fingers to the base of his skull until the bone shapes to them, until the skin remembers the other’s so well it confuses it for itself, tries to knit the two together.

“It was about hextech, yes?” says Viktor softly, after a moment.

Jayce meets his gaze in the mirror, hand falling to his side. “Uh-huh.”

“Bad?” He worries the handle of his cane between both hands; Jayce replaces one of his between Viktor’s shoulder blades.

“I don’t know yet,” confesses Jayce. “I’ll tell you.”

On they go, to squinted, peeved looks, arms folded over chests and feet tap-tapping on the dark linoleum. They meander back to their compartment, the train stuttering past on old rails. Jayce steps aside once the door’s open, reeling a little from the shock it gives him, to let Viktor through first, sits opposite and undoes the buckles on his bag and pulls out of it the single sheet of paper which had been thrust into his hands.

“They really liked, um, what we presented at the distinguished innovators competition last week.”

Viktor’s face softens a notch, recollecting, no doubt, the events, the silvery flashes of cameras, the metal of the trophy warm beneath their hands, arms slung around shoulders for the photograph; before that, the big, sun-lit room with its tall, arched ceiling, wine-red curtains drawn aside the typically darkened concert hall. Him at the south and Viktor the north, each with half their teleportation device, the distance unspooled between them merely for show, they could have been side by side, a world apart, it would scarcely matter, the marble, the small iron marble he’d made himself in the forge, would move from Viktor’s side to Jayce’s in the span of a second, less, and did.

Afterwards, they’d footed it out of there, taken a carriage back to their laboratory, only moderately larger than the one he blew up, ten feet of ceiling and gilt-latticed windows along two walls, getting drunk on champagne they’d stolen from the afterparty they’d only attended long enough to shake hands with some important people he couldn’t recall the names of, stuffing their faces full of bite-sized appetizers and desserts they’d enfolded in napkins and put in the bowl of their trophy, shrimp and salmon on square rye, chocolate covered berries melting and staining their fingers and mouths, chocolates with pure untainted rum like a bad surprise, running smooth down his throat whilst the chocolate stuck in his teeth.

To re-perform their experiment over and over, changing from marbles to more precarious objects; watching the arcane distort wrenches and screws and gears, a potted plant which came back with the plant the color of the pot and the pot lost, so had to shovel dirt out of the contraption and decided that was it, for the day, passed back and forth the bottle, and then another, the sun setting through the west-facing window. Half-delirious and nearly convinced it was all some kind of phantasmagoria, that he’d spent too long alone and lost it, or taken that final step and cracked his head on the pavement and was now eternally lost in some world his broken mind had conjured up. Because it didn’t and still doesn’t feel entirely real. Because he had been alone for so long, and kept it all secret for so long, and he’d almost died, and would have, if not for Viktor.

Since that moment when the mage had saved him and his mother he had so longed for somebody to understand, to feel the magic the way it felt to him, as something beautiful—only he understood the truth, everybody who ever told him that magic was something dangerous was wrong—that out of shadows and strands of light he would conjure up the faceless mage to sit beside him on the rug on the floor of his bedroom filled with magic paraphernalia. Posters and wizard’s outfits, hat and flower-sprouting wand, decks of cards, and books on teaching oneself sleight of hand, how to make coins disappear into the fold of his thumb, pull endless napkins out of his closed fist. He learned, eventually, not to steer conversations in that direction, since no one outside his immediate family could scarcely seem to feign interest—and even that wore thin, at times—, acquired normal hobbies, guitar-playing and choir singing and acting in school plays; he tried archery and was good at it, but thought too often about jamming the arrow in his carotid out of pure childish boredom; tried running and hated it. Team sports and could not for the life of him figure out how they made it work, how a shout from somebody on the field made their movements fluid, every single player a crucial piece in the same smooth-running machinery.

Nothing stuck except magic, because he had understood from the very first moment that it was something not meant for only him—that it had saved his mom’s life and so could save a whole lot of other people who needed it too. Help even more. His sole purpose: nothing else truly existed, nothing else could even begin to measure itself with magic.

It was, and still is, utterly insane to him that no one else had ever thought of this, that when he spoke about it, to the dean, in front of the council and half of Piltover’s richest, they were angry and frightened and most of them borderline idiotic.

But not Viktor. Who, without ever having experienced it or even seen it from afar, trusted Jayce, was so captivated by what he said, what he’d written, that he was willing to risk everything in order to complete it, to create magic. Viktor, who not only understands and believes him, but can keep up with him, his mad steam-engine ramblings which tend to collapse around the over-stuffed middle and burst into a myriad directions before winding towards the knotted close. Keeps up so well, in fact, Jayce has to be always on his toes lest he be the one to fall behind. It’s a part of it he never could have conceptualized before the fact, that he would find someone whose idiosyncrasies matches his own, whose intellect does, who’s as dedicated to the work as him. When he dreamt, when he thought, of that close yet ever far-off moment of success it would always be alone he stood, alone he would present it to the council, alone in an empty laboratory.

Once in thought he likened it to his primary discovery of the hexcrystal—not so much its volatile qualities but rather the feeling in his bones that he was in the presence of something extraordinary, that he was staring down the road of his future and what he saw was beautiful and terrifying and glorious in all the ways which so entice him.

At large, Viktor unfolds the sheet of paper, eyes moving, skimming each sentence, moving further and further down the page, flipping it over, then back upon realizing it’s one-sided.

He looks up at Jayce. “What is this?”

“A system for teleportation,” says Jayce.

“Yes,” says Viktor. “That much is evident.”

“Our new project—if we agree.” And, tentatively, touching the back of his neck, prickly with goosebumps,“It needs to be unanimous—has to have your signature on it too.”

Viktor doesn’t look up, but his expression changes, a twist of his mouth. “No it doesn’t,” he says. “They will proceed without me.”

“I won’t,” says Jayce sharply. Even the notion is nauseating. “But… it’s, um, I don’t know that there’s a way—”

“When do they want a decision?”

“They wanted it on the spot, at first. But I told them I couldn’t,” he says. “Councilor Medarda gave us until tomorrow morning.”

“This will take years.”

“Yeah,” he replies, squeezing the tense muscle. “A decade, I estimated. Less with help. Maybe.”

“You cannot seriously be considering this,” says Viktor.

“I just—I don’t see what other choice we have!” says Jayce, voice rising a decibel or two without his intending it. His legs move beneath him, unfold until he’s standing, walks over to the door to peer through the window, and back, wishing he had space to move around, to pace.

“There is always a choice.”

“Like what?”

He shakes his head, prolix quiet; the stutter of the train, somebody with a suitcase passing in the hallway, then, “The undercity.”

“No,” Jayce says, and fast. He presses two fingers into each eye socket. Flashes of white, spectre image of the window floating in the dark. “This is our—Piltover’s our home.”

“Yours, perhaps.”

Jayce looks up, blinks away the blurry blister his fingertips left. “It’s yours too,” he says.

Then Viktor does look at him, for the first time in what seems a very long time. Jayce walks back to sit opposite him, lowers his head into his hands, messing up his hair, gathers the pieces, says, weakly, “They’ll set us up in a new lab. A bigger one—which’ll be closer to your—”

“How could we possibly deny such a benevolent offer?” Viktor rises, face mildly contorted in the brief instance he gets a look at it before he turns from him. “I need to think.”

“Okay,” replies Jayce, out of breath. As the door falls shut behind Viktor, the sheet of paper avalanches to the floor. He drops his head between his knees.

The compartment darkens, grays. Jayce scoops up the paper, refolds it, puts it back in his bag and shoves the bag into the space beneath his seat. A kick for good measure.

He lowers his head into sweaty, tremulous hands, listening to the echo of the door sliding shut, of Viktor leaving, return again and again and again, without end. His retreating steps; the click-clack of his cane. He gets up and moves onto the opposite bench and looks through Viktor’s bag, before rising back into the room to go through the pockets of his coat, finding in there the oblong tin box he was looking for, rolls a cigarette, poorly, Viktor’s hand overlaid his own in memory, observing him do it, dispersing the tobacco, rolling, folding, licking. His hands, long and slender—at least more so than Jayce’s. Pale, a mole between his pointer and middle finger on his left. One on the side of his right pinky. Rolls another one for good measure, this one better, more even, cylindrical.

A voice falls tinny through a speaker on the wall, he tries to ignore it, but feels it grating on his eardrums regardless. The train skitters to a halt, and Jayce, lifting the edge of the burgundy curtains, peers out the window at neptune’s gray-blue sea, waves crashing against a rock-laden shoreline; small moons of light glittering reflected on its surface.

A quaint little station, a red-brick building, a handful of patrons scattered about the platform. Jayce closes the lid over his pathetic attempts at handrolls, goes to find Viktor. Moving through the corridor, he steps aside to let a family pass as the train begins to move again, walks through aisles of seats, glancing through compartment windows and checking every toilet. He finds one occupied and knocks on the door and says, “V, you in there?” just as it slides open. His eyes downcast and he sees only shoes, yellow ones; yellow ones with golden clasps. He moves his hands behind his back, and hurries away. The next one vacant, and some process in his body he was only half aware of a moment earlier trudges up to the surface, rears its wild head and he works his sore jaw, feeling saliva pool in his mouth, swallows thickly, and proceeds further down, the needle-prick of fear burrowing home in every cell of his body.

He ambles back to their compartment in case he’s happened to miss him, but it’s empty. He clasps his neck, falls out of himself and doesn’t return until he sees him through the rectangular window in the door leading to the back where Jayce first got on.

The door falls shut behind him, dull and distant compared to the roar of the bogies underfoot and the wind. Viktor doesn’t even notice him until he’s right beside him. Overhead of them gathers a wooly mass of gray storm-clouds, downturned and low. The air is dense with yet unshed rainfall.

He flicks his wrist out sideways, tin box in the center of his palm. Peace offering. Viktor takes it carefully, pries it open, glances within, then looks up at Jayce, pathetic-looking cigarette between pointer and thumb.

“That one was practice—give me that. The other is good. Better.”

“Not bad,” says Viktor, tilting his head sideways, and, “At least.” He digs out of a pocket his old beaten up zippo, lights them both up.

“Thanks.” Jayce takes two drags of his first attempt and then it bursts open at the swollen center, wind scattering tobacco; flicks it. Watches it soar.

Jayce slides a little closer, bumps his forehead against Viktor’s shoulder. After a while Viktor lowers the cigarette to his side, lets Jayce take a drag, the paper a little damp, soft where Viktor’s mouth had been, which makes his stomach wrap itself inside out. He breathes out tremulously a thin stream of smoke, lifts, leans on the rail, imagines he can feel his veins widening. A small buzz in the back of his head. Pressure he hadn’t known he felt relieved.

He bumps his elbow against Viktor. “Lift thy drooping head,” he says. Viktor raises an eyebrow in his direction. “Please talk to me.”

Viktor’s cheek twitches. He looks towards the horizon, miles of rail, tufts of greenery and thatches of brown. Fields on one side, the sea on the other. “A decade,” he says, and there’s something so desperate in his eyes, his voice terribly soft, quiet, despite the roar, for a second Jayce wonders if it’s this that bothers him most. The fingers holding his cigarette are picked-red, freshly bled. Cuticles and hangnails torn. Then: “This is not what Hextech is supposed to be.”

Jayce stares at him. “Don’t you think I know that?” Wrapping both hands tight around the cold railing he tips forward, peering down at the rails below, thinking about his skull breaking open against the metal, friction-warmed, blood pouring like water let out a drain, gooey brain-matter splattered upon the gravel and weeds, has to shake his head to rid himself of the image, and, backing away, collapses on the bench against the wall. “I can’t give this up.”

“I would never suggest that,” says Viktor.

“They want us, V,” says Jayce. “They want Hextech. You have no idea how—” He bends to his knee, thinking about the courtroom and the sleeve of light falling on him, his mom calling him crazy before the council; thinking about the erratic incessant demented bug stridulation of voices and the pressure building inside him until he burst; thinking about the ledge and Viktor talking him off it. “I don’t even know why it’s still bothering me like this. It’s been almost a year.”

Eyes downcast, he observes arbitrarily Viktor’s feet as he turns to face him, his right leg catching behind in a manner that looks painful, a hand moving down to adjust it, and his eyes flitter up to his face. Two lines parallel between, the brows, so worry, not pain. Stubborn pout of mouth. With all his face, his whole body, saying, I do know.

Jayce continues, “Just imagine it, for a second. Try, please.” He closes his eyes, thumbing the sky-blue gem, the sharp wind thumps against his ears, the car rattles. It’s so vivid in his mind: a tall cylindrical, dome-headed building erected at the center of Piltover, as tall as the tallest mountain, disappearing amongst the clouds, the hextech-blue like lightning constantly crackling across the sky. Airships disappearing out of thin air; reappearing half a world away.

With a single press of a button entire fleets will be able to travel intercontinentally—from Piltover to Noxus, Damacia, Shurima, Ionia—in mere hours instead of days, weeks, months. Will travel through the arcane same as he did, break apart into their smallest components and reemerge half a world away, fitting themselves back in their previous images.

He wants so badly for Viktor to see that there’s beauty in this too, in just the act of creation, in getting to be a part of the vast and complicated tapestry of progress. But more than that he needs him to arrive at the same conclusion Jayce has, because there is no decent way out of this, not with the sort of power the council wields, not when they so adamantly want this. And he needs him to agree and he needs his name on the proposal beside his own. Because he can’t do any of this alone, is breaking apart at the seams at the mere notion.

“We knew when we created the device that it could be something more—we even talked about it, remember?”

“We talked about using it for people—not… this.” A flourish with his hand, towards the door, like he’s gesturing the paper, several cars away, now, crumpling the distance, and turns from him again. “It’s not our ambition to aid the,” quits abruptly like he doesn’t even want to think about it, and so certainly not talk. Shoulders moving with breath. “Hextech should be for the people who need it.”

“It can still be! It will be,” says Jayce, standing up, suddenly, dizzily, his body unspooling, miles and miles of skin peeling from his bones. “This isn’t the end—I have to. I’m going back to our compartment.” Thinking it is, stumbling through the door, crumbling through the floor to the same gravelly stratum he’d been heading towards ten months ago. He sinks, he falls. And then he’s inside again, in the relative quiet of the car, peering down the long, winding, window-faced corridor.

They’re standing at the frontier of a new world and Jayce knows he cannot go back, that to give this up will be tantamount to letting all his life wither to dust, waste away. Here is a clear path set out before them—not to say it will be simple or easy, but clear, all the same—here the funding and the material and the pre-approval; and the sure knowledge that when they succeed in bringing this about they will be renowned. And then perhaps they will get to do what they set out to do.

Though he knows already which cargo will be prioritized, how these devices will primarily be used: boxes upon boxes upon boxes of fine linens and smooth cold silk; of gold-embossed leather and fine china; dry, fruity wines from the finest of feet-trampled grapes; jewelry: gold-choked emeralds and dainty headpieces, rings with fist-sized diamonds, any one of which could feed a family for weeks, months, cover rents and water-bills, could, in theory, fund an education, except the necessity of pawning it would not the academy look too fondly upon.

For and from the people he’s spent most of his life parading before, polishing his epaulets and flossing his teeth; practicing before his reflection in the mirror bows and polite phrases, how to tie his cravat and shave without nicking his skin, because the sheer notion that he should in any manner, regardless how minor, appear to them unappetizing, unappealing, would, and will, set him back, if not altogether destroy everything. Because he did, and still does, need their money, their acquiescence if not outright permission for what he, and, now, they set out to do. That in order to be great they first need to lay the foundation for being decent, capable, trustworthy, and willing to do for the council what they ask of them to do.

Oh, but he loves it still, hypocrite that he is, despite the years of complacency and janus-faced cordiality; that grandeur which he finds so titillating. The magnificence. Progress days and graduational ceremonies, the seasonal festivities, winter solstice and midsummer, vernal and autumnal equinoxes, never a dull moment, never nothing but extravagant. The city with its marble statues and pearlescent fountains gushing water, gold-latticed windows and violet-lined walkways. Where every moment of his entire life has been recorded, where his parents moved to give him the chance of a better life, still little more than an oblong cantaloupe fetus, where he met Viktor, where they created Hextech, where they shared his shoebox apartment for two months with the lingering sensations both of being strangers and of having experienced something no other person has.

He so vividly recalls the night they met, has spent hours in the memory, Viktor’s words as clear to him now as they were then. To seek discovery; to make the world a better place. And these, later on, when night had drawn close to morning and they had left the dean’s laboratory, arms swung about the other, him to aid Viktor home, and then to stay, upon his offering the sofa for him to sleep on: This can help a lot of people. The pledge they’d written up on a sheet of paper at Viktor’s kitchen table, and which sits on the blackboard of their lab, in clear, easily decipherable handwriting, half his own, half Viktor’s, to help through Hextech those who need it most.

Air evades him; his breath comes shallow and quick until he’s dizzy and folds against the wall; picks himself back up and rushes towards the nearest toilet, occupied, and the next likewise so. There’s tears gathering on the precipice of lid and sliding down his face and Jayce can do nothing about it. Next occupied too. All of them. He goes back to their compartment and finds Viktor there, sitting where he had been sitting before, in the same manner, head in elbow-propped hand.

Jayce closes the door behind himself and sinks to the carpeted floor, worn thin with age, leans against the door with his legs drawn up against his chest, his last breath knocked clear out of him; the world blurred to a gleam of bright sun-red behind his eyelids; his hands trembling, sweaty and warm against calves as he frantically wipes them down the length of his pants.

“Just have to catch my breath,” he says.

“Were you running, or—ah.”

He thinks he should have noticed, heard it, felt it, but he didn’t, doesn’t: when he opens his eyes again Viktor is right there, beside him, above him, and takes his hand—when he reaches for it an electric current passes visibly between their fingers. He slots their fingers together, presses the back with his other hand.

Fear pours through his limbs, undecipherable and complex, confusing—at the forefront, that Viktor will leave; that this is the end of his dream. That it’ll never suffice as anything more. Bile rises in his throat, he goes through the primary motions of puking but nothing comes of it, just a tenseness in his jaw, something obstructing esophagus and trachea.

Viktor calls his name and begins theatrically to move his shoulders up and down, thumbing Jayce’s erratic, jumping, pulse. Jayce mirrors him, attempts to, doesn’t realize he’s scratching his arm raw until Viktor takes that hand too, holds both of them between his own, not warm—his hands are rarely warm—but drier than Jayce’s, firmer, steadier. Calms him; soothes him. Steadies his breathing and his trembling. Asclepius with his healing herbs. A wave gently rocking him. And shifts to let their knees touch.

“All right?” asks Viktor, squeezing his hands, moving his thumbs hypnotically round and round over skin; he lets go one of them to reach the bottle of water on the table, passes it to Jayce, who nods. “Well, better. At least.” He tilts his to the side, smiles a little, softly.

Jayce thumps his head against the door, sets the bottle on the floor to wipe with his vacant hand the treacherous tears spilling from his eyes, and says, when he feels he can work his mouth and jaw and throat without puking, “I don’t think there’s a way we can decline to do this without the repercussions being fatal for Hextech.” He watches without intervening the bottle tip over and roll beneath the seats, waiting for something, Viktor to argue, to dismiss his point. After all, he’ll be right to. But he’s still holding his hand, two fingers against his pulse, still close, still, for a long time, quiet.

“I know,” says Viktor eventually. “It makes sense.”

Jayce looks up at him. Pout of lip and brows drawn, nearly connecting in the center. “Can you just, um, just tell it to me plainly. Like I’m stupid—I certainly feel like it.”

”If you were stupid what would that say about the rest of Piltover? The city would collapse beneath the weight of its poorly-structured—everything.”

”Go on,” says Jayce, feeling a smile on face.

”I will sign my name to it,” he says. “I agree it is our best option.”

Soberly, “Yeah? You’re sure?”

“Our choices are—limited,” says Viktor, softly, carefully. “If you leave you will never be allowed to return. Piltover is your home.”

“It’s yours too,” says Jayce, again. “It is. The lab—”

“A different lab, now, didn’t you say?”

“You know what I mean,” he says, and, for an instance unable to look at him, adds, “None of this would’ve even been a possibility if not for you.”

Viktor’s eyes gleam softly amber. He blinks, turns slightly from Jayce a moment. Jayce thinks briefly he sees tears in his eyes, a glazing over, a shimmering blister forming over sclera, iris and pupil. A strange unease settles over Jayce’s shoulders, indecipherable. He moves his foot out, presses the shined toe of his black brogue against the inside of Viktor’s left.

Viktor says, “I don’t want us to lose our way, Jayce.” He looks back, eyes clear, dry.

“We won’t,” replies Jayce, and fast. Steadier, “We won’t let that happen.” He wipes at his face again, let’s go Viktor’s hand to get at both his eyes, misses intensely the anchor it provided, but doesn’t reach for him again. “We build this for them and it’s—they won’t have anything to say. We’ll have amassed the reputation necessary to—” He breathes out, slowly, carefully, focuses on the technical aspects: “I think we can figure out a way to speed up the timeline.”

“I do too,” says Viktor, and, a few beats later, “It’s, ah—” He shakes his head, begins anew, tentatively, “I trust you—even if, you know…”

“To do what?” he says. “Mess it all up?”

“To make decisions,” says Viktor. “On behalf of Hextech.”

“I don’t wanna do that, though,” Jayce says. “It’s yours as much as it’s mine.” A couple stray tears crumble down his cheek; he wipes them away with the back of his hand. Rises, and drops down beside Viktor, close, touching from shoulder to knee.

“You understand the politics of all this better than I do,” Viktor continues, shifting a little, though not away.

“Only because it doesn’t put me to sleep.” He fiddles with Viktor’s hand, halfheartedly thumb-wrestles him, loses. Both their hands mirror-images of picked-red and recently bled cuticles. Twinned souls of nervousness. The train, slowing an instant however brief makes a high shrill noise. Viktor’s eyes fall shut, his mouth drawn thin. “You okay?”

“Yes,” says Viktor. “Why do you ask?”

“Just—you look a little, not bad, but, um…”

“Bad?”

“Pale.”

“I’m—fine. I just have a headache. I told you that.”

“Is it a bad one?” asks Jayce. “Because if you’re letting on—maybe you should take a nap. We still have a while left.”

“I don’t need a nap, you don’t have to fret so much about me,” says Viktor, never sharp in his intonation, but the words, all the same, with their own edge to them. He wraps a hand around the handle of his cane as though intending to leave, but then doesn’t. “I’m perfectly all right.”

Jayce sighs, rubs at his face. “I’m not fretting. I just care. Sorry.”

Viktor’s shoulder sinks a little with a single deep exhale. “Don’t apologize,” he says, turning his head sideways. “It’s, ehm, kind of you.”

Moving onto the opposite bench, he retrieves out of his bag the sheet of paper, his notebook, a pen. “You wanna have a look at this?”

“Do you even have to ask?” says Viktor, and they get to work, straightening out the details.

At approximately fifteen minute intervals, Viktor would move about, rise to walk back and forth over the small space, or else to stand with his hands on the table, leaned over, Jayce slipping a finger through the ribbon on the side of his waistcoat to keep him upright when they skitter to a sudden halt; back down, and, yawning, Jayce looks up at him across the tabletop.

The heel of Viktor’s hand shoved into an eye socket, the other squinting. Rising, Jayce pulls from the hook on the wall his coat and draws it across Viktor’s shoulders.

“How about a break?” he says.

“You can take a break if you’d like,” says Viktor, still bent over the table.

He nudges lightly Viktor’s arm with an elbow. “We have the whole train ride back tonight to figure this out. And the night. Plenty of time.”

“Fine.” Viktor sighs, glances sideways at Jayce, fastens his pen in his notebook, and leans back in a manner that makes something crack, pop—hip or back—; sighs again, this time with more weight behind it, like it’s loosened him up some. He touches the fabric of Jayce’s thin coat, as though noticing for the first time.

Increment by increment the air about them grows somnolent, calm, quiet. They lean on each other, too tired for conversation now that the pace is slowing. Jayce says, “Take a nap.”

“You take a nap,” says Viktor.

“Can’t sleep on command like that. Not like you. I’ll take the whole ride just trying to get comfortable enough to pass out.” He palms briefly Viktor’s neck, feels him shiver—a beat, then he looks at him. “We’ll figure it out,” says Jayce.

He flips his hand to look at the gem, glinting in the light.

Viktor thumbs the carving of the rune. “I know,” he says. “But I can’t, eh, dilute the fear that we will be doing this for the wrong reasons.”

“No, I know. But I don’t know that it’s that clear-cut.”

Viktor nods, twists his mouth. “What about you?” he asks.

“What about me?”

“There seems to be some—minor disparities between your words and your actions.”

“Right,” says Jayce.

“Tell me.”

Jayce’s head thumps back against the cushioned headrest. “I thought it would be easier,” he begins. “I thought—they’d see what magic could do and just give us the go ahead on anything we set forth to do. I thought they’d understand. I thought they’d even want to make the world a better place. Because I did, do—we do—and I couldn’t conceptualize somebody who wouldn’t. But their world is so small, most of the council I don’t think have ever even spent any considerable amount of time in reality. I don’t know how to widen their scope of vision. I don’t know that it’s possible. But I do know for certain we can’t do it from where we are now. We need influence and trust. We need to prove to them that we’re serious people, that they can rely on us.”

“I did too—in a way. I’d presumed we’d be more independent. A little, at least,” says Viktor. “Perhaps there is no such thing.”

“Yeah,” says Jayce, and, suddenly, seeing Viktor once more pressing the heel of his palm into his right eye socket, adds, “Can I try something? The pain—it’s on the right side, yeah?”

Viktor says, suspicious, “Why?”

He slides sideways along the bench, says, before he can chicken out, “Lie down,” and, “Please.”

Viktor looks at him; Jayce makes a face like, hurry up. A sigh. “Hand me my coat, then.”

Jayce does, then watches him roll it up, lie down, place the rolled-up coat between his knees. Lying towards the backrest, so that his face rests almost against Jayce’s hipbone. Right side up. A little startled, though he supposes he should have expected it; but his face is so close, his breath almost tangible against the fabric of his shirt. He lifts the coat back onto Viktor’s shoulder, moves his hand up, intent on placing it upon Viktor’s brow, but before he can, Viktor clasps firmly his elbow.

“I used to get stress migraines a lot,” begins Jayce, voice low. “Something to do with the blizzard, I think. Residue of fear. Aftershocks. My mom would put this, um, weighted heating pad on my forehead. The heat helped some—but what I think really did it was the little bit of pressure on my eyes. Can I try that? It might—bring you some relief.”

Viktor lets go his elbow, hesitating briefly, and nods. “You may.”

Tentatively, Jayce skirts a finger over Viktor’s brow, watching his eyes flutter shut, and slides his thumb over his right eye, resting it with a bit of pressure where eye meets brow bone. Viktor sighs.

“Is that okay?”

“Yes,” Viktor presses, briefly, Jayce’s wrist, and goes slack, tension visibly leaving him, heavier against the side of his thigh. “We’ll figure out a way,” he says. “To make it right again.”

A moment or two and he falls asleep. Jayce leans back against the cushioned backrest, gazing down at Viktor, his slightly parted lips, his sleep-smoothed brow, feeling his own body relax, untense, his breath come easier, and his pulse stop fretting. He can't, however, shake that faint leach-like notion that perhaps Viktor is right, that the reasons he’s laid out for himself and for Viktor—foundation and trust and money and reputation—are merely fragments of figmentation, a dream. Phantasmagoria. Rationalizations he’s manufactured for the sake of keeping himself moderately sane, keeping at bay the notion that perhaps this, all of it, won’t move quite in the direction that they intend it to, want it to; that stepping towards what they’re stepping towards will only serve to drive them further from their goal.

Viktor shifts against him, sighs in his sleep, buries his face in Jayce’s hip. Jayce adjusts his thumb over his eye, uncurls his fisted fingers and smooths them down over Viktor’s forehead and hair.

But he has to believe that it’ll get better, that this is their proverbial foot in the door; that the day will arrive when after they have built this device, these gates, they will be able to do the what they consider the important work, what they pledged: portals for ease of movement, of access to tall buildings where elevators don’t go all the way up, of cliffs and hills and staircases without ramps, to move between distant places in a single solitary step; air filters and water purifiers for the undercity, machinery to clean up the chem-spills, to aid the workers in the mines.

He can feel through the fabric of his pants against his hipbone Viktor’s faint breathing; wonders, as they approach nearer and nearer their stop, how he’ll go about waking him. By saying his name or shaking him or squeezing his forearm or perhaps all three for maximum efficiency should one of them happen to fail, but then the train comes to such a sudden screeching halt he wakes without Jayce’s intervention.

For reasons he can’t quite decipher, Jayce feels his face flush, heat crawling to his ears and all the way down his throat like an infection spreading, untangles his hand from the mess of Viktor’s hair, drops it at his side.

“How long is it left?” asks Viktor, blinking, trembling with post-nap shakes, pale and sweaty. Pant-creases on his cheek.

“Quarter hour,” says Jayce. “About.”

Viktor smears a hand over his face, sits up, flush-cheeked, and stretches. Jayce’s coat slips like water off his shoulders, falling between his back and the backrest.

“Better?”

“Yes,” he says, briefly knuckling an eye, squinting at the light. “It worked like, eh—what do you say—a charm.” Viktor unwinds his coat, shakes it out and puts it on. He looks a little thrown off kilter, like his brain’s not calibrated properly yet, but the purple bruises beneath his eyes are less severe, and his brow undrawn, like the pain has decreased some. “Thank you.”

Like magnetism, or gravity, Jayce lists sideways and hooks over Viktor’s bony shoulder his chin. “Good,” he says. “I’m glad.” After a little while, Viktor leans his cheek against Jayce’s forehead. “We’re okay, though, right?” He pulls his lower lip behind his teeth, yanking at a flap of dry, dead skin.

He feels Viktor’s hum against his side, his shoulder and arm. “You had no part in the council’s machinations.”

“Few do.”

“Yes,” Viktor says. “We’re okay.”

“Yeah?”

“It’s, eh, a little excessive, no?” says Viktor. “You ask it quite a bit.”

Blood wells and drips back into Jayce’s mouth. “I just, you know, worry.”

“You could make a career out of it.”

“Hah.”

“Well,” says Viktor. “You can erase that—particular notion from the ledger.”

“It’s erased.”

Viktor turns sideways, fast, his chin hitting Jayce’s nose, and his mouth skipping across his brow. “Eh,” he says. Out of his periphery, Jayce notices the blush crawling up his cheeks. “Sorry.” He pats Jayce’s face, grimaces, laughs a little awkwardly. “What if we remove the second part of the apparatus?”

Whiplashed and miffed, Jayce touches his eyebrow where Viktor’s mouth so very briefly had been. “Could work,” he says. “With precise coordinates, a better navigational system. How would we get them back, though?”

A faint carnelian gleam in Viktor’s eyes. “I’m not sure yet,” he says, and Jayce knows he’s caught in it, that it intrigues him, that probably even in his sleep he was working out the details. So often when he falls asleep on the cot in the lab he will wake up, and, in his half-asleep, delirious, state, scribble something incoherent on the nearest slip of paper, fall prostrate for ten to twenty, get up, and shove a tablespoon of instant coffee down his gullet like honey, chase it with sweetmilk, as though he’s running out of time. Like the five minutes it would take him to boil some water is too much time wasted which could be spent better elsewhere, like trying to make sense of his own inchoate writing.

“What does it feel like?” asks Viktor.

“What?”

“You were teleported, no? When you were little.”

“Disorienting. Do you remember the way the magic felt when it coursed around you? Like it’s a part of you. Like something that’s been missing from you.”

“Yes,” Viktor says. “Hard to forget.”

“It’s kind of like that, and it’s kind of like falling. But I wasn’t aware I had been falling until I was on solid ground again. It’s, um, hard to explain. I’ll show you.”

“You will?”

“Yeah. After the—I assume there’ll be some kind of ceremony, or whatever. After that. We’ll sneak onto one of the airships and you’ll get to feel it for yourself.”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself. We’ve barely begun.” But he’s smiling, and, reaching for his cane, holding it by the end, attempts to push his notebook closer to the edge of the table so he can reach it without moving; pushes too hard so that it crumbles with a thud to the floor, and he has to move regardless, bending to pick it up. Jayce leans back, then when Viktor settles beside him, he lowers his head to his shoulder, shuffling down, and the hand which had been holding the pen shifts along Jayce’s shoulder, dips towards clavicle, neck, settles on his head, fingers tangled in the gelled mess of his wind-swept hair. Diffused in Viktor’s scent. Laundry detergent, faintly citrusy. Cigarette smoke.

The scritch-scritch of Viktor’s pen fills the compartment, an occasional word or sentence moving in the air between them, to add to those on the page—two distinct bodies but their minds briefly one, thoughts weaving together on the ink-smudged page into intricate patterns.

Then, a second or a minute later, a hand shaking his shoulder, the last strands of a voice distant and tinny, on the intercom. “What—?” he says. “What happened?”

“You’re slobbering on my shirt,” says Viktor. “Perhaps I should retract my statement that you are a poor liar. Or else I’m losing touch.”

“I wasn’t asleep,” says Jayce, wiping at his mouth and chin, voice skipping like a scratched record. “Was I asleep?”

Viktor thumbs the damp spot on the collar of his dress shirt.“That or a fainting spell.”

“Huh.” Utterly bewildered, Jayce scratches the back of his neck. “For what—four minutes?” He tries to decipher the pout on Viktor’s face but finds he can’t. A new one, an odd one. Huh.

“We’re almost at our destination,” says Viktor, beginning at once to collect their belongings, passing Jayce his notebook, his pen, the sheet of paper, the bottle of water, his body-warmed coat which he puts on, dropping his head to the lapel to smell Viktor on it. Out into the corridor, Viktor a step ahead of him, and Jayce with a hand between his shoulder blades, get to the doors and cling to the rail as the train jams the breaks, metal screeching. Doors sighing open, a steep, narrow staircase falls down towards the platform.

“We can find—” begins Jayce.

“It’s a low platform. It’ll be like this the whole way. It’s fine, I can manage.”

“I know.”

“You first.”

“Like the idiom.”

“What idiom?”

“Shit before the shovel.”

Viktor huffs a short-lived laugh, which was the point, the gap behind his left canine showing. “Precisely that.”

Jayce moves down, turns back towards him, leaning on the rail, and peers sideways down the platform towards the conductor pacing it back and forth, hoping he’s patient and doesn’t blow the whistle before Viktor’s on the ground. When he swivels his head back, Viktor is a step or two ahead of him, waiting.

An echoing peel of thunder rolls roaring carelessly over the dove-gray sky above; lightning flares like a great lamp suddenly flashing; a sudden strong gust of wind yanks them sideways on the platform, pulling at their thin coats, making a wiry mess of heads of hair, roaring in his ears. At once, the sky cracks open, sending down bucket-fulls of cool rain upon the narrow platform.

Jayce ducks near to Viktor, shoves his coat wide open, and