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Jayce raised his iron tongues aloft, Hextech gem clasped between the prongs, above a runically altered bucket of acid and… paused.
Today marked three months since their last significant discovery. They never stopped, never slowed down or really considered that their work could hit a brick wall these days, but these weeks upon weeks of empty invention, a rejection followed by a failure followed by a dead end then a rejection again, were grinding against the both of them.
Counsellor Heimerdinger had quietly taken him aside after a meeting the other day, a tense affair, to inform him that if he and Viktor didn’t produce something… new, interesting within the next couple of weeks, they should expect their funding to disappear, and quickly. He and Counsellor Medarda had voiced their support for as long as they could, but it was beginning to feel like holding back a pack of angry wolves. They needed progress.
Viktor had his own ideas about what that meant. Jayce shouldn’t have been surprised. Viktor liked to play a little fast and loose with the concepts of ‘safety’ and ‘permission’, Jayce had known that since day one. When push came to shove, the two of them decided on a little leniency with the barriers. Viktor’s Big Idea.
“You’re sure this is safe?” Jayce asked Viktor, who shot him a thumbs up from the other side of the room, blue Hexgem light reflecting in his goggles.
“Not in the slightest.”
Jayce heaved a sigh. “Okay, then,” he steeled himself.
He was in two minds whether to slowly lower the gem into the vat, or just to drop it and run away as quickly as possible, damning the table to some acidic damage as he did. In the end, safety won out. He tried to keep his hands steady on their descent, and only when the gem was submerged entirely, visible by the light that forced its way through the surface of the liquid, did he release the grip of the tongues.
“That, uh… should be it.” He wiped sweat from his brow with a forearm. “Okay. Erosion of the membrane layer should take… well, I don’t know. I’m guessing here. Maybe an hour? Then we can scoop it out and analyse the results.”
Viktor scratched something down on his clipboard and hummed. “If it doesn’t blow up before then.”
“Why would you say that?”
Viktor chuckled, the bastard. Well, it had only been a moment, but the acid wasn’t fizzing any more than expected, the light didn’t grow or shrink in intensity, Jayce didn’t feel an overwhelming sense of impending doom, so… he supposed he should just leave it. He wondered if one of them should sit above it and keep a watchful eye, jot notes, observe, but…
There were plenty of things the two could do with an hour. Jayce took that time to tinker with a stabilisation device he’d been crafting, a delicate meshwork of mathematics that was slightly off, needing refinement. He stuck his head down over his notebook, letting his foot tap and his fingers wander through his hair, his mind buzzing through numbers, formulas he remembered precisely and others he had to dreg from the depths of his mind or consult the textbooks for.
Viktor was doing something too. Jayce wasn’t sure what, but whatever it was, it must have been stealing his concentration as well, because every time Jayce glanced over, Viktor was doing some little absent action. Twirling his hair around a finger. Biting his pen. Clicking and unclicking the latch on the trinket box he used for screws. Jayce couldn’t help but smile in a private, fond way.
…This kept happening, recently. Viktor existed and Jayce watched. Not intentionally, just, he found his eyes wandering and his eyes inevitably wandered towards Viktor. He’d been caught a couple of times; in spite of his embarrassment, Viktor only smiled and went about with his work. Jayce wasn’t sure for how much longer he could get away with it. Viktor was magnetic, Jayce had never known anyone like him before. The unique perspective he brought to their work felt like easy warmth, the kind you find in a hug from your mother or soup on a bad day. His mannerisms, Jayce had started to think of them as charming. He laughed little, but when he did, Jayce turned towards the sound like a sunflower turns towards the sun. He couldn’t help it. He worked, and his eyes wandered.
And then he noticed the smell.
It was the very basics of lab safety not to go sniffing random chemical smells. Jayce knew this. But, he was tired. He couldn’t really be blamed for forgetting himself just this once.
It was coming from the acid, it had to be. He followed his nose all the way there until he was stood before it, peering down through the surface and trying to make out the condition of the gem inside. Maybe an hour had passed already? He’d have to check. Viktor had the stopwatch, so he turned to ask.
“Hey, V, do you smell tha-”
1
This room appeared to be similar to the auditoriums where Jayce had spent many of his student hours. The coliseum arc inlaid with seats, as though they were all staring at you, was the same, as was the way sound seemed both dull and echoey where it hit the walls all the way to the back.
But some things were notably and… confusingly different. Like the carpet, made of a scratchy-looking fibre Jayce had never seen before, and the strangely perfect-edged gloss-coated papers on the wall with impossibly detailed designs emblazoned onto them. There were some strange glowing strips of what may have been a type of metal or glass dangling from the ceiling on chains. Before him stood a podium, like the ones he’d deliver speeches behind, but the thing that sat on top of it looked like a metal window on an angled base, uncannily uniform buttons lining the space beneath it and demarcated for their purpose in a language Jayce could not understand. In fact, none of the language looked familiar. Even the lettering was wrong.
This was not their lab. Somewhere between looking at the Hexgem in the acid, and turning to look at his partner, Jayce had moved. But, where? And if he was here, where was Viktor?
He tried to step out from behind the podium and found himself blinded by a light glaring down from the ceiling. This was not one of those glowing strips. No, when he stepped away from it, he could see that it appeared to be a white box with a lens, and from the lens, highly concentrated beams were being cast against the wall behind him. For what purpose? None of this made sense to him. When he glanced back at the wall, he found the same image as he’d seen in the window on the podium cast there, although the image on the wall had a ghostly transparency where the metal window’s image was clear, solid. Most notably, neither the metal window nor the wall seemed to be showing an image that corresponded with… well, anything. He had no idea what he was looking at. An image of a landscape? Dotted with smaller, again, uncannily uniform pictures?
There was a knock from the back of the room, knuckles rapping against a doorframe he hadn’t immediately noticed. He turned to face it, on high alert, and-
It- Viktor. It looked like Viktor.
It looked like Viktor, but this figure’s hair was longer, tinged blond at the end. His chin was adorned with a short, well-maintained beard. His eyes were older, more tired. The clothes he wore looked like nothing Jayce had ever seen him in, but they didn’t exactly look like something Viktor wouldn’t wear, either. A cream-coloured knitted vest. A burgundy shirt with a stiff collar beneath. Gold rings and bracelets, those may have been unusual, yes, but a cane, a leg brace. Admittedly, not the cane or leg-brace that Jayce knew. Those, he had spent hours constructing in the forge. This was different.
Ah, Jayce was looking at him again. Why did that keep happening?
This Viktor smiled down at him. “Ready to go, professor?” He clicked his tongue, fond but chastising. “Ah, you’re not even packed yet.” He sounded the same.
“S-sorry,” Jayce replied, though he wasn’t sure why. Packed? Professor?
Viktor began to descend the stairs between seats.
“Chop, chop, Jayce! I thought you said you wanted to leave on time.”
Jayce. He breathed out at the sound of his own name. It was reassuring to know that he was himself, at least.
“Right,” he said, and when he started to move, he found himself collecting a number of seemingly random belongings and shoving them into a satchel bag that had been stashed under the podium. They must have been the right items, though, because Viktor didn’t say anything untoward. It was like muscle memory, just, someone else’s muscles. One of those items was the metal window; he instinctively folded it, detaching a cable from its side as he did, and the bright light from the ceiling disappeared.
“Lost in thought?” Viktor asked, unperturbed. With the distance between them closed, he spoke more quietly. It didn’t echo around the room, no, it felt private, and suddenly Jayce felt as though he was intruding on a private moment between… he wasn’t sure. Himself? His partner? Was he dreaming?
His body reacted as though ashamed and caught out. “Y-yeah.”
“Jayce, everything is going to be fine. Your students will perform to the best of their ability. Your proposal will be considered fairly by the board. My sister is going to love you. You have nothing to worry about.”
“I- uh…”
His- what? His sister? Did Viktor have a sister? Jayce tried to picture her and was brought a vague, disturbed image of short blue hair and a wide-lipped smile, but the picture fell from his view just as fast as he’d managed to find it and he couldn’t help but think that, maybe, it wasn’t his mind that the image had come from.
Was this how his grandfather had felt, decades ago? Back in their hometown, struggling to keep a firm grasp on his daughter’s face when she visited? When he opened his mouth to say her name and somebody else’s poured out? When she’d ask him if he’d eaten, and his eyes grew distant, as though he’d always be looking and would never find the answer? Was there something wrong with Jayce’s head?
Jayce didn’t understand most of what Viktor had just said, but that first sentence? ‘Everything is going to be fine’, spoken in Viktor’s reassuring, familiar tones, ‘you have nothing to worry about’. It was enough to settle some of the tense energy in Jayce’s muscles.
“Yeah,” Jayce answered. He still felt that he was using somebody else’s words, but these were more laced in his own truth. “Sorry, I don’t know what I’m stressing over. Let’s just go, I can’t wait to meet your sister.”
“And she cannot wait to meet you,” Viktor echoed.
Jayce should have felt nauseous. His mind was rolling, synapses misfiring left and right to make sense of the, well, everything. He attempted to make connections and found himself floundering, he was a little dizzy with it. He should have been nauseous… but he wasn’t. Actually, even the dizziness he felt wasn’t much of anything. It was the mental sensation of an overload of thoughts, but not the physical sensation of blurred vision, unsteadiness on his feet.
What Viktor had said, it suggested that he was some kind of teacher. Maybe Viktor was as well? Jayce struggled to imagine a version of the world where their passions weren’t mirrored and intertwined. Their lives, at the very least, seemed to be. But this change in vocation, it didn’t explain the strange pictures on the walls or the language Jayce knew he did not speak. The lights coming from confusing places and the cut of clothes Jayce had never seen before.
He could figure this out. This room, this situation, it was just a big puzzle and Jayce was a man of science. He could apply himself to anything. His partner was right here and there was nothing the two of them hadn’t been able to-
Viktor craned up and pressed a kiss to Jayce’s cheek.
2
Jayce’s vision cleared as Viktor pulled back.
And they were in a corridor, in what looked like the Piltover Council building, or something similar. It was too dark to make out many of the details, barest light filtering in from slot-like windows and a sense of scale garnered more from how sound seemed to bounce off every surface than any intentional architecture. The hallway was empty, possibly even abandoned.
It struck him how much more familiar this place was than the last had been. He should have been comforted by it, but he wasn’t. Instead, he was overcome with a chilling feeling of wrongness he could neither place nor explain. The uncanny valley, everything just a little to the left. He might have been able to recognise this corridor in better light, but maybe not. Maybe all of this was wrong.
And before him stood Viktor, again, whose sad eyes bore into his skin’s every crevice. He looked a little different, too. A little lopsided, a little asymmetrical, a little askew. His clothes were dark in Zaunish colours. His hair was longer but in an unkempt way. Jayce’s Viktor would have never let himself become this.
Jayce’s Viktor hadn’t looked this sad since the day his doctor had informed him the cane was no longer enough. Jayce remembered the look on his face when he stepped out of the clinic room, hunched and scared and eyes stuck to the floor, until he dragged them up just to find Jayce right there, witnessing him at his lowest. Jayce, who had been worried for his friend, who’d only come to give him a ride back to his house, who knew him better than anyone.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” Jayce asked. Did he say that? The thought had been his, but the question felt involuntary.
This Viktor’s eyes searched his endlessly. “If this goes poorly, I want to remember your face.”
Without his input, Jayce’s thumb raised and stroked over Viktor’s cheek. Like being a marionette, there were no strings but Jayce felt the tug. He felt the desire to tremble; his hands did not agree.
“It’s not going to go poorly,” he assured Viktor; not his words, but the desire to soothe was something Jayce was used to. “Everything’s gonna be okay, and tomorrow’s gonna be a brighter place than today. I swear it.” He tried to drive the point home. “Viktor, I swear it.”
Viktor didn’t look convinced, brow pinched, but he nodded all the same. He tightened his grip on his crutch.
Then he closed the distance between them.
Jayce had never kissed Viktor. Perhaps in dreams and the scope of his wondering mind he’d been brave enough to take that step, but despite his intentions he was still a coward and did not perform. This body, however, knew kissing Viktor well. Jayce’s mind raced with the sparking, disorienting thrill of finally knowing his partner in this way, the perversion, the wrongness, the finality, but despite his inner turmoil his body seemed to know exactly where best to put his lips and tongue and teeth. It knew exactly when to press and when to pull away. His mind kissed like it was the first time, but his body kissed like it was the last.
“We’re gonna be okay,” he promised when he broke away and leant their foreheads together. They stood with their eyes closed, grappling at the fabric of each other’s shirts in desperation just to hold. “We’re gonna be okay.”
Those exact words had fallen from his own mouth several times over in these tumultuous few months. Every rejection and failure and dead end and rejection again, when the tense, white skin of Viktor’s knuckles pulled too taut, Jayce would place a hand against his shoulder or the ridges of his spine and give his reassurance.
But they weren’t Jayce’s words this time. He didn’t know what he was promising. He did know that he didn’t believe it.
Viktor took a deep, steadying breath, and though it didn’t seem to work, he acted as though he was ready anyway. Always so brave, always fighting things that Jayce would never understand.
“For Zaun,” he said. He shook, but he spoke with conviction. His eyes were firm.
“For Zaun,” Jayce echoed. For what, he had no idea. Nothing in his life had ever been for Zaun. As much as it pained him to admit, even his efforts to build technology that could help the people of the undercity hadn’t been for Zaun as much as they were for Viktor. He did so much for Viktor, and owed so much to Viktor.
So, if Viktor said for Zaun… was that enough? Did Jayce’s allegiances lie between Viktor’s one breath and the next? If Viktor jumped from the water drainage outlet and into the sump, would Jayce follow?
He found himself tracing the lines of Viktor’s face. He supposed that this body wanted to remember it, too.
Something exploded in the distance, knocking them off-balance.
3
The entire world shifted beneath Jayce. It tilted on its side, inducing a kind of vertigo he'd only felt when falling off the pavement, drunk past his limits, celebrating or commiserating or just trying to fit in. When his brain pieced itself together again, he could see that he was laid in bed, and his eyes were tracing the lines of Viktor's face.
“It’s early,” he heard himself whispering. As the words came out, he noticed by the room’s dim hue that what he was saying was true. Maybe it could be useful, talking without intent. Maybe he should have been looking at it as a tool, a means of gathering information. His mouth knew the truths of these… places before his mind did. It knew things that Jayce, in his limited time here, couldn’t possibly understand.
Viktor’s eyes fluttered, sluggish and heavy under the weight of the sunlight that streamed in through the window. Jayce could practically see the cogs shifting to life in his mind. And what a beautiful mind it was.
"You are too…” If Viktor had been more with it, he probably would have said cognisant, but at this early hour he settled for, “awake.”
Jayce chuckled. “I’ve been up a little longer than you, sweetheart.”
Sweetheart. So that’s what they were in this version of events? He said the word and it felt easy.
They were so utterly comfortable in this bed, and it wasn’t just because of the sleep-loosened limbs and tempered warmth. It was the whole picture. The mattress, the sheets, the pillows, Jayce could only assume they’d been chosen especially for him and Viktor, because they felt perfect. They looked perfect. They were crafted down to his preferences and he could see how Viktor’s opinions had influenced them too. He found it hard to explain why he knew that, it was just another one of those things that came to him as the gospel truth in this moment.
This was their bed.
Viktor grumbled and pushed his face into the pillow. “S’too early.” The way he nuzzled down in the pillowcase reminded Jayce of an old cat.
“You should go back to sleep,” Jayce offered, and thought it hadn’t been his suggestion, he did agree with it. After all, what reason could there possibly be to break this comfort? He couldn’t speak for this version of them, but when he considered how little rest he and his Viktor managed, breaking any hard-fought, fragile peace they had seemed wrong.
“You sh’ld go back t’ sleep,” Viktor countered, barely making sense. Jayce felt a fond smile spread over his cheeks.
“I’m perfectly happy watching you, thanks.”
One of Viktor’s eyes peered dubiously up at Jayce. “Creep.”
Then, Jayce’s head thudded and he couldn’t supress a wince. Skipping through… Jayce wasn’t sure. Universes? Timelines? Realities? A vast, potentially endless hive of worlds, each with a Viktor, and a Jayce by his side, and for some reason, himself? His disembodied consciousness flung headily about. There must be a reason for it, he was sure, but he never seemed to stay in one place for long enough to affect change, so, what? A moral mission? A lesson? A cruel cosmic joke?
Jayce was staring down a picturebook’s worth of versions of himself that seemed to have things he never could. But if this was supposed to be torment, why was this bed so soft?
Whatever his purpose here was, shifting rapidly through the stories of his and Viktor’s coinciding lives was beginning to take a toll on his mind, which in turn was finally affecting his body. This time, especially, as he tried to adjust as best as he could to the sudden and uncomfortable sensation of standing in a dark hallway one second and lying flat in bed in the early morning the next.
Viktor stirred. “Jayce?” he asked, concerned.
“I’m okay,” Jayce replied, smoothing away his wince. “Just a little headache.”
If Jayce had been in his own world, in possession of his own mouth, the very first thing he would have done upon finding himself with a new hypothesis and a startling, exciting scientific discovery, was share it with Viktor. This, what his body was doing without him in this moment, was not technically a lie, but it felt like one. And maybe the circumstances were too restrictive and time-per-world too short for any meaningful discussion, but Jayce thought it would be worth explaining his predicament over and over again if every Viktor’s eyes sparkled with passion at the thought of a new discovery like his own did.
This Viktor frowned, but resettled. “Get some sleep.”
He closed his eyes, and for a moment, it seemed as though Viktor was slipping back into sleep himself, but his peaceful stillness didn’t last long. He must have decided that being comfortable with Jayce was better than being comfortable without him, as he closed the distance between them and settled himself against Jayce’s chest. He was warm, comfortably so, and he buried his head down under Jayce’s chin in just the same way as he’d buried it into the pillow. Jayce didn’t hesitate to wrap him in his arms. Viktor, their bed. An early morning. A completely new, well-lived experience. The headache ebbed just for a moment.
“We should go out later,” he heard himself saying. “We’ll get breakfast at the café, the one you like this time. I’ll buy, and you can have extra toast.”
He stared where the ceiling met the wall. His hand stroked Viktor’s hair.
“Then the art place. You know the one. They sell those dishes we were looking at, the mugs.” Visions of a shop on a street corner with floor-to-ceiling windows; colourful, abstract paintings propped against the walls and ceramics on stools and tables flashed through his mind’s eye quicker than he could catch them. “I’ve been thinking that our kitchen looks kind of boring. It needs some colour, so maybe we should replace the plates with the colourful ones from that art shop. We can keep the ones we have now for company.”
Viktor wasn’t responding, his breath had evened out.
“Then maybe the park? If the weather’s nice. We can watch the birds… “
Jayce started to drift off without really noticing.
4
Something rapped against the metal bars of his cage, and Jayce’s eyes snapped open.
“Talis,” the guard’s voice boomed. “Visitor.”
This was a prison cell. Jayce was familiar enough with them, though he did his best to stay out of Stillwater. If the thick smell of dank dampness, the dirty brickwork and the rusted pipes didn’t give it away, then the distant chorus, the beleaguered moans of the damned, would have been enough. Jayce was inside the cell, right at the back where the shadows could eat him alive.
And there on the other side of the bars stood… Viktor. Always Viktor.
Viktor turned his head to the guard, looking as refined and elegant as he always did, in Jayce’s opinion. His hair was straighter than usual. Longer, but not as long as he’d seen in some of those other realities. His clothes were neat, but there was something about them that looked distinctly removed from the expectations Piltover had instilled in them both. He didn’t look severe, but he wasn’t smiling. He had such a pretty smile, Jayce loved his gapped teeth.
He remembered what it felt like to kiss that smile and wondered, did this Jayce know? He wished he could tell him. He wished they all had the chance.
“May we please have a moment of privacy?” Viktor asked, quiet and polite.
The guard huffed. “You know the rules.”
He did. After all, he’d been here to visit Jayce many times. Jayce wasn’t sure why he knew that, but he’d been bombarded with that same thought so many times today that he’d come to trust it.
He almost let that statement, “you know the rules”, flow over him. He almost didn’t catch the implication that he’d been here for long enough that Viktor had visited over and over again. A regular at a prison, only Viktor could end up in a position this strange. But, why?
Jayce wondered if this was Stillwater. He’d never been, not really. There was a sky ferry that carried people between Stillwater and the mainland, Jayce had only ever been on the mainline side, waiting patiently for Mrs Kiramman to disembark with a young Caitlyn tucked under his arm. The metal behemoth that hung suspended from the cables had scared him at the time, like a creature advancing along the metal lines to take naughty children away. He thought people must have done some terrible things to be carted away in there. These days he knew better. Caitlyn, of course, stood as stoic as any Kiramman.
The corner of Viktor’s mouth tugged with well-concealed displeasure, barely there and gone again, before he reached into the pocket of his coat to procure something Jayce couldn’t see and slip it into the guard’s hand.
“Just a moment,” he implored. “Please.”
The guard barked a laugh. It sent a shiver reflexively up Jayce’s spine. He walked away, satisfied, and Viktor sighed.
“I suppose it could be worse,” he remarked. When he turned to Jayce, he looked across the gaping maw of the cell with eyes so tired Jayce wondered how they stayed open at all.
“I wish you wouldn’t waste your money like that,” Jayce said. He didn’t recognise his own voice. It came out rougher than he was used to, cruder, more exhausted.
“I would pay any price just to touch you,” Viktor replied, like the answer was obvious and easy. He reached through the bars, then, and though the distance between them seemed intentional, Jayce found that his body didn’t hesitate at all to close it.
Jayce was no actor, but there was something about this whole experience that felt to him how he imagined an actor felt. Repeating the same lines, scenes, actions over and over and over until they could be recited in his sleep. He captured Viktor’s outstretched hand between both of his own. He brought it to his lips. He let his eyes fall shut for a moment when he kissed Viktor’s fingers, but quickly reopened them just to look at him, and from that moment he couldn’t break his gaze away. All of this felt familiar, as though he’d done it hundreds of times before. Viktor’s forehead pressed against the bars and Jayce’s followed suit.
Why was he here? His bone-tired weariness implied a long and unpleasant stay in this stone hotel. His unkempt facial hair and the dirt collected beneath his nails. His tarnished clothing. His muscles; some atrophied, some built, suggesting that he’d given up on cosmetic strength and now maintained his shape only out of self-preservation. Jayce would like to believe that any crime befitting of this punishment is not one he would ever commit, but… well, it wouldn’t be the first time he found himself close to the line of the law. There was a time he would have done anything, defied anyone to further his research. And he had. And some little kids from the Undercity had almost paid the price for it.
They crossed his mind, sometimes. A morbid little thought experiment. If the events of that day had played out just a little differently, who would Jayce Talis have become?
…Was it the man in this cell?
“I’ve been rereading your letters,” Jayce said. The way he spoke, it sounded like bitten-down prayers smothered into the space Viktor paid to shrink between them. “The way that you write, it’s so… you. I worried I would forget the sound of your voice if you chose to stop visiting one day, but when I read your letters, all I can hear is you.”
Viktor’s hand squeezed Jayce’s.
“Then I will write you a hundred more,” he promised. “Or, better yet, I will see you released from this cell, and you will never need to fear losing me again in your life.”
Jayce chuckled, dragged his head against the metal. “I’ll always fear that.”
Viktor smiled. “I know.” His hand between Jayce’s was the only source of warmth in the cell. That, and the puff of Viktor’s breath against Jayce’s face.
“Have you been okay?” Jayce asked. His eyes searched Viktor’s face for any kind of abrasion, aberration, distress. If you were to ask Jayce, he would inform you that there were many concerning signs to be found there. Aside from the tiredness, Viktor also seemed more gaunt, and the idea that there may be a Jayce in this universe who was being forced to watch Viktor’s life drain away from the inside of a birdcage made him feel physically sick. But his body, well, it seemed unsurprised. It seemed to know this shape. It only seemed relieved to see him.
“I am as I always am,” Viktor said by way of confirmation. “I wish you would not worry about me so much.”
“I’ll always worry,” Jayce refuted immediately. Viktor’s sad smile returned. “I wish these stupid bars were thinner.” That way, the skin of their foreheads might actually meet, rather than resting a scant inch apart. The kisses Jayce laid religiously over Viktor’s hands might meet his mouth. They might know the touch of one another past what their fingertips could graze.
Jayce might bend the bars and step through.
As they stood there, touching the only way they were allowed, Viktor breathed a sigh of brief content. In… a long, deep pull… and out… in one… long… gust…
5
The wind cleared to the sound of Viktor’s laughter, chiming like a bell and obscured only slightly by the roar coming from the burner. Jayce looked around and saw nothing but blue skies and clouds for miles.
Jayce knew this. A hot air balloon. They were so high. Viktor looked so happy.
“Jayce, look! I can see our touchpoint from here!” Viktor’s crooked-toothed smile beamed. “You must understand that I always had faith that we could do this, but,” he laughed, “a small part of me did not believe that it was possible until this moment!”
When he looked a little closer, Jayce noticed how Viktor was clinging onto the basket for dear life, hands shaking like feathers.
Jayce grinned right back. “We’re on top of the world, V!” His own hands shook just the same.
Another harsh gust came, then. It tossed the basket, vertigo-inducing. Jayce stumbled and, in his effort to avoid touching the burner, crashed right into Viktor. They wrapped their arms around each other without really thinking. When the basket stabilised, they paused to gather their bearings, then burst into laughter once more.
“I have to admit, it’s a little rocky,” Jayce yelled. “Maybe we should’ve waited for better conditions?”
Viktor’s smile grew sardonic. “You and I both know that we didn’t have the willpower to delay this test.”
No, of course not. Not when they’d just invented a new form of travel that would revolutionise trade in their country forever. Perhaps even the world. Jayce couldn’t help but be proud of this version of himself and Viktor. Of all the parodies of themselves he’d met today, these were the most like him and his Viktor. It evoked in him a sense of smug satisfaction, like a spit in the face to all the nay-sayers. Yes, they could do it. Jayce Talis and Viktor could change the world. Hand them a world, and they would change it.
So it seemed, this was a victory they would experience from the comfort of each other’s arms.
“Jayce,” Viktor said, no longer needing to shout so loud with the distance closed between them, “I feel as though I could do anything right now.”
Jayce understood. It was exactly the same way he’d felt that first night in Piltover. As his Hexgem crackled and he let unknown forces guide his hands into perfect rune matrices, as the windows shattered and glass flew, lightning creating itself within the academy walls, as Jayce and Viktor took to the air with no concern about how to get down, Jayce felt it.
But when he looked at this Viktor, at Viktor’s straying eyes slipping down towards his mouth and the accompanying nervous swallow, the squeeze of his hands, he thought maybe he’d missed out that night at the academy, because he could have been having this.
One universe backwards, a Jayce and a Viktor lived split in half by prison bars, clinging desperately to every moment. Jayce thought of them when he pressed his lips against Viktor’s. He thought about how every reality seemed to demand their union in one form or another. He thought about two professors and early morning sweethearts and defectors painted in clinging soot as his mind learned what his muscles already knew: the taste and shape of this kiss.
And most importantly, he thought of his
0
“Jayce!” Viktor called out. He sounded terrified, Jayce didn’t like that. “No, no, no, this was not supposed to happen. Jayce, by the Gods, answer me!”
Jayce came back to himself in one dizzying rush. It was as though the wind that had been roaring past his ears in that hot air balloon had changed direction in a fraction of a second and forced itself into his lungs instead. Like his body had stopped in one moment, and restarted in the next. It left a dull ache beneath his ribs.
He found that he was laid sprawled on his back, the cold surface of their lab’s floor seeping through the fabric of his shirt and into his bones. And his face hurt. His hands too. His head, oh, it was thumping something ridiculous, a rhythm better suited for Zaun’s nightclubs than Piltover’s academy.
What universe was this? One where clumsy scientists fall, quite literally, for their incredible partners? One wherein the fate of the world rested in the palms of two star-crossed individuals? One in which Viktor saw something in Jayce that Jayce would never understand? Yes, actually. To all of this.
His self-stocktaking was interrupted when Viktor’s hands found his cheeks.
“These abrasions are shallow but they must still be cleaned and quickly. Jayce, please, pull yourself together.” He was beginning to sound desperate. “I cannot carry you to the emergency shower.”
Jayce cracked his eyes open to find Viktor hovering above him, haloed by the light of the window, looking like some kind of an angel. Always Viktor, every time he opened his eyes to a new universe. He wasn’t surprised.
He was surprised, however, when he opened his mouth and the words that fell out were his own.
“Viktor?”
Oh. It was nice, being in control of himself again. Though, for once, he was anxious at the thought that he would have to formulate his own words again, rather than relying on a Jayce that seemed to have already got it all right. Hopefully Viktor wouldn’t judge him too harshly if things got tangled on the way to his ears.
Viktor’s face did something complicated, like relief and fear and exhaustion dancing but fighting for the lead.
“Yes, yes, okay,” he rambled, “you’re awake. Good, good, good, good.” He was making less sense than usual. He was never this flustered, how long had he been kneeling there at Jayce’s side? His hands… his hands were still on Jayce’s face. They lingered like they were afraid to leave.
“I’m here,” Jayce promised, as if it made any sense for him to be anywhere else. This was his universe, he was certain of it. His Viktor. His partner. It was difficult to describe, but for all of this Viktor’s similarities with the others, Jayce looked at him, the anxious turn of his mouth and the familiar pinch of his brow, and… knew. He just knew. “Sorry, V,” he laughed weakly. “Didn’t mean to scare you like that.”
“Scared? Who would be scared for such a ridiculous man?” Viktor countered, deeply unconvincing. His hands stayed put.
“Of course not. Silly of me,” Jayce laughed once more. “I’m always alright.”
“Yes.” Viktor sniffed. “Exactly.”
Jayce was struck momentarily by a simple fact. This Viktor, he was exactly the same as all those others had been. He could make an argument for scientific probability; that none of it was real, and all those silly universes had been a strange, addled manifestation of his mind, drawing inspiration from his main, frequented source.
But, and this was a far more fascinating concept, the concept Jayce expected to labour over later; that there existed an infinite multiverse of possibilities, random and startling and wild, and yet in each variation the core tenets that were stacked together to create his partner were always exactly the same. Every version of Viktor was a perfect recreation, faithful to his soul.
And every version of Viktor had a Jayce by his side. It felt so right.
“The emergency shower,” Viktor repeated. “You were caught by a strange and complex explosion, Jayce. Shards of our semi-decayed Hex crystal have cut your skin. I do not know what kind of contaminants might have been in the crystal shards or the liquid.”
Carefully, so as not to exacerbate the ache, Jayce lifted his head. Viktor was right, there was a hell of a mess right where the acid bath should be. Jayce was amazed he hadn’t come away with any chemical burns, at least none that he’d noticed yet. If he had to guess, and he really was just guessing, he’d have said that their experiment probably did work as intended. It’s just that the inner core of the Hex crystal must have been much more volatile than they anticipated. Oh well, he thought. All data is good data if it tells you something new. Science is sort of just, doing whatever and then writing it down, sometimes.
“Emergency shower, yep.”
He dragged himself up from the ground, a stiffness and ache in his muscles making itself known as he did. His head hurt, right at the back where it must have hit the floor. When he raised a hand to it, though, no blood came back. Just tenderness at his touch. He could cope with all that, but he was certain Viktor would send him to the doctor anyway.
The emergency shower was situated in the corner of the lab. It was nothing fancy, just a showerhead over a drain in an angled section of the floor. Normally, Jayce would have stripped any extraneous layers before stepping under it, but he blamed the stiff soreness in his muscles for why he didn’t bother this time. Most of his pain was dull, the blunt force trauma kind, but pricks of sharp pain came to his awareness the more he moved.
He turned it on, and the flowing water soothed some cuts he hadn’t realised he had. The satisfaction the cleansing of the water brought him sat in direct opposition to the discomfort of his now-sodden clothes. He sighed, deep and irritated.
“I’ll get you some clothes,” Viktor offered, “and a towel.”
Jayce nodded his thanks.
This was going to be hard to explain.
—
The doctor had cleared Jayce by early afternoon, no concussion and (to the best of their knowledge) no strange magic contamination under his skin. Jayce still felt like he’d been kicked by a horse, but at least he could feel like he’d been kicked by a horse at work, if he wanted.
If there was one immutable truth about Jayce Talis that spanned every universe, it’s that he would always go back to work. This was a compulsion he shared with his partner.
Jayce stopped by a deli that the two enjoyed and didn’t question for a moment that Viktor would be right back in the lab, ready to accept a lunch he probably wouldn’t eat.
When Jayce arrived, two fresh paper-wrapped sandwiches in his hand, Viktor had already swept up the glass shards and debris. Jayce looked at the spot on the floor where he’d fallen. It looked so unassuming, just a normal place for a man to knock his head. Not at all the runaway train car on spiralling cosmic tracks that it had been for Jayce earlier. Or perhaps Jayce’s body was the train car? Forgive him, his head still hurt and his metaphors were not up to standard.
Jayce’s hand flexed and the paper crinkled, drawing Viktor’s attention.
“Ah, Jayce, I had wondered when you’d return.” Of course he had. “Come, look at this. I’m interrogating the remains of our experiment.”
Viktor gestured for Jayce to approach, and, dutifully, he did, rolling a stool up to meet Viktor’s at the bench. He set Viktor’s sandwich next to him, intending to apologise for the distress he’d caused, but Viktor barely acknowledged it past a polite hum. Oh well, that was pretty par for the course when it came to either of them.
“The remains of the crystal’s interior have taken on a strange property,” Viktor explained, blue light reflecting off his goggles as he pulled them from his eyes to his forehead. “They seem to be… swirling, like a liquid. I have never seen this exact phenomenon before, however the shifting nature of the light reminds me of the runic matrices we witnessed on our first night together in Heimerdinger’s office.”
Whatever little had remained of the Hex crystal had been scrapped into a petri dish, which Viktor inspected both with the naked eye and under a telescope. He was right, it looked like a viscous fluid that emanated a brilliant blue light. It was moving by itself, though. While it stayed within the confines of the dish and its movements couldn’t be described as erratic or energetic, it was definitely creeping around in a way that no normal substance would. With its slow fluctuations, the light pulsed and changed. Runes rose and sank beneath its surface, becoming visible in the surface tension for a moment, before sinking back into the mire.
“Fascinating,” Jayce breathed. He’d capture as many of those runes as he could in his notebook before the day’s end.
“Look.” Viktor gestured to the microscope.
Upon closer inspection, the inside of the fluid was made up of hundreds of tiny interconnected branches, a network of nerves and firing synapses. Light pulsed along each little string as they contracted like muscle fibres and seemingly pulled the liquid around. Jayce couldn’t tear his eyes away.
Except, when he looked directly at one of those firing synapses, he was mentally struck with an image of another him. Someone in unfamiliar clothes, with glasses perched on his nose and an unkempt beard that this Jayce personally wouldn’t entertain. Then, with another pulse, another version of him, and another, and another, before he had no choice but to stop looking lest he end up with another headache.
He pulled back with a groan. “So it was real.” He rubbed his palm over his forehead.
Viktor frowned at him. “What was real?”
Where could he even start?
“That blast earlier,” he said on a long sigh, rubbing his eyes and wondering if the flashes of light he saw behind them were the remnants of the crystal or his own harsh treatment. “It didn’t just knock me unconscious. It… gave me visions.”
Viktor’s eyes blew wide. “Visions? And you did not see fit to mention this earlier?”
“I wasn’t sure it was real,” Jayce defended. “Plus, it was kind of a headache.”
With a nod, Viktor turned back to the petri dish. “I understand. I felt a similar sensation when I first looked into the Hex crystal under the microscope. It began as a small nuisance and grew to a near migraine with repeated exposure.”
“Then stop looking at it,” Jayce laughed, shoving Viktor’s shoulder, almost toppling him from his stool. Viktor chuckled, righting himself.
“I took a small break, during which the ache has mostly abated, but,” his eyes shone with intrigue, “I cannot ignore such a fascinating discovery as this.”
Across all those universes, Jayce was sure every Viktor felt the same. “No, of course not.”
“The fluid showed me images as well,” Viktor mused. “In conjunction with the flashing connections in its structure, I saw… visions, as you put it, of other versions of ourselves.” His eyes grew distant as he remembered them. “An uncanny mirror.”
Jayce hummed his ascent. “Yeah, I saw those too.”
“But these are not the visions to which you refer? You saw something else in the explosion?”
Something else, yeah. A gap-toothed smile. Tired eyes hiding in a pillow. Foreheads pressed to rusted prison bars. The recoil one second after a disaster. The ecstacy of discovery, swept by the wind. Jayce had seen so much more.
“Us. I saw us.” He dragged himself out of his memories, back into the current moment, and cleared his throat. “Not in flashes, and not in third-person.” His brow furrowed. “It’s like I was inhabiting the body of other versions of myself.”
At that, Viktor’s eyes widened. The creases of his forehead pushed his goggles further up into his hair. His mouth opened, and he searched for words but none appeared. He had a gap between his front teeth. Jayce remembered tasting it, but where before had sat a strange, secondhand satisfaction in knowing his partner deeply and personally, now Jayce felt like a pervert, the worst person alive.
“...And,” Viktor hesitated for a moment, “how was I involved?”
How indeed. “Well, it was different in every universe,” Jayce answered.
He wondered if he should lie, should spare Viktor from the truth of that boundary overstepped in so many versions of their lives, but all his atoms rioted against it. Viktor was his partner, sharing knowledge was a basic tenet of their relationship. Besides, there was nobody better suited to helping him understand what he’d seen than the man before him.
“In one, I think I was a professor? Everything in the room was strange, but I think I was in a lecture theatre. You showed up and you, uh… said you had a sister.”
Viktor perked up. He seemed excited and disbelieving in equal parts. “A sister?”
“Yeah, and the weirdest part was that my body just seemed to know about her.” Jayce floundered for a moment as searched for a way to explain. “I wasn’t really in control. My mouth would open with no input from me, and somebody else’s words would come out.”
“That sounds,” Viktor hummed, “disorientating.”
Jayce huffed a laugh. “You can say that again. When you-” he paused, then gesticulated a hand as he clarified, “the other you, talked about his sister, I had visions of her, similar to when we look at that.” He gestured to the Hex crystal remains.
“Oh.” Viktor straightened in his stool. “Did you recognise her?”
Jayce tried to picture her, but found it was a little bit like trying to remember a dream: right on the edge of his consciousness and yet slightly out of reach.
“Maybe? I don’t know who she was, if she was someone I know, but she did seem kinda familiar. It’s hard to remember.”
Viktor hummed again. “What of the other visions?”
Jayce played them back in his head.
“Uh, there was one where we were fighting for Zaun.” He coughed. “In another, I was in prison and you seemed to have been visiting me regularly.” Foreheads pressed to rusted metal-
“Jayce,” Viktor breathed, voice gone quiet with sympathy.
“But the last one,” the corner of Jayce’s mouth tilted with a smile, “you would have loved it.” His eyes shone, pride and joy radiating through. “We invented the hot air balloon. We were on the first test flight.”
Jayce watched Viktor’s mouth curl up slowly until he was beaming. “My,” he sighed. “To have experienced that…” He lurched forward on his stool, fast enough that Jayce worried for his back. “What was it like?”
The vast blue sky laid itself out before Jayce. “It was… beautiful. I mean, terrifying, of course. The basket was throwing us all over the place and the wind! Oh man, it was so loud, Viktor! We were screaming just to hear one another. But the view…” He sighed as he recalled it. “Do you remember when we travelled to the peak of Asher’s Hill to run experiments? That unimpeded view of all the rolling fields between there and Piltover?”
Viktor nodded fondly. “I do. That landscape was serene.”
“Well, imagine that, but there’s nothing underneath you. Nothing but you and the sky. I’ve flown in airships before but it was nothing like this. It was just you and me, and…”
And the touch of Viktor’s lips against his own. Jayce shuttered.
“And…”
Viktor waited for him to continue, but he didn’t.
“...Jayce?”
“And, uhm,” Jayce muttered, “I wish you could have seen it.”
They were closer than Jayce realised.
“From what you’ve described, I did see it,” Viktor countered. “I was there in all of these memories.”
Jayce blinked. “Yeah, you were.”
“Fascinating.” Viktor turned back to the Hex crystal and began making notes. “Such a statistical improbability must have been influenced by an outside factor. Perhaps our physical proximity at the time of the explosion? Or the presence of both our biological matter on the Hex crystal, something as small as a fingerprint, a fleck of dead skin? Our work, tampering with the arcane? These things may have tied our consciousnesses together in that brief, specific moment.”
Those were all reasonable hypotheses, as much as Jayce, against his nature, didn’t want to admit it. He had another fairytale of a theory-
“Or,” Viktor looked back at him, “perhaps we are simply destined to be partners in every reality.”
-and that was it.
Viktor chuckled as he said it. Just a joke. He had no idea, but Jayce’s chest ached with need for that to be the truth. He thought about himself and all of those other Jayces, and one question rang out: what would he have been without Viktor?
His mouth moved before he could register it. By now, he was familiar with the sensation.
“We were in love.”
Viktor’s pencil clattered to the workbench. The upturn of his mouth fell, and Jayce… Jayce felt like the biggest asshole on the planet.
For a while, neither of them spoke. It was as though neither truly believed that Jayce had even spoken, and if he had, then those must surely not have been the words he said. But the longer they stayed silent, the longer the sentence sat in the stagnant air. The room felt noticeably colder, or maybe that was just Jayce’s blood freezing in his veins.
“That is not funny, Jayce,” Viktor eventually said. The way he turned all the way back to the workbench then felt less like passion for the project and more like a safety blanket, a means to cut himself out of the conversation.
“It wasn’t a joke,” Jayce tried, but Viktor stayed closed off. “I-I’m sorry. I thought you deserved to know, but maybe you wouldn’t have wanted to. I didn’t think.” He wrang his hands together. “Viktor, I am sorry, but not telling you felt like lying. I had to say something.”
Though Viktor refused to turn, his mouth twitched unpleasantly at the corner that was visible to Jayce. His once-open expression had closed and hardened into a sadness that Jayce hated to see. It usually only made its appearances during Viktor’s worse days, when his back brought him so much pain he struggled to work, or when news of the travesties in his city floated up along the sump and became fodder for Piltovan gossip.
Jayce could only think of two things. The first, that Viktor was so disgusted by the thought of being with him that it caused a visceral reaction. But… Jayce didn’t believe that. Viktor was not cruel, not by nature, and whilst Jayce had never seen him bother with the slings and arrows of romance, he couldn’t imagine that Viktor, his kind partner whose heart was several sizes too big for his body, could ever react in disgust to anything genuine that Jayce did.
So the second thing, despite that it ached in Jayce’s chest like a bruising hug, was simple jealousy. Could Jayce imagine that Viktor wanted what those other versions of them had had? No, he couldn’t. He didn’t dare to, hope was a dangerously unrestricted drug.
But, perhaps if he stopped overthinking for just a moment, if he allowed himself the statistical comfort that if Jayce and Viktor were in love in every universe then this one was just as likely to be the same, maybe then he could lock his inhibitions away for just a moment and find out.
“We kissed.”
Viktor’s breath hitched painfully; his hand knocked into the desk. When he finally turned back to Jayce, his eyes were wide and wild.
“You might be right about those other universes,” Jayce continued. He tried to laugh in spite of how painfully constricted his chest felt. “I think we were supposed to be together in all of them. I mean, the way we met in this universe is already so unimaginable, there had to be a little divine intervention.”
He expected Viktor to argue, to toss out a sardonic remark and let the thought lie like a sleeping dog. Even if he’d just laughed and brushed Jayce off, it would have made sense. But Viktor only stared, and as the seconds passed, his look of pure disbelief twisted slowly into one of pain and that drug, hope.
He didn’t school his face into any kind of mask, he’d never been any good at that. Instead, he broke eye contact and said, “the statistical likelihood,” Jayce could’ve laughed, they were so similar, “of that being true in every universe except this one is billions upon billions to one.”
“Yeah, I,” Jayce cleared his throat. “I know.”
How ridiculous. He felt shy now, when not hours before he’d known the taste of Viktor’s mouth.
“So it’s probably not, right?” He tried to be bold but he could barely breathe.
“No, it probably isn’t,” Viktor echoed.
“I mean, if we’re in love in all those other universes, then we’re probably just in love in every universe, right?”
Viktor’s hand was shaking against the table, and Jayce wanted to hold it. Slowly, shyly, maybe even hopefully, Viktor met his eyes again. His searched Jayce’s, finding the strength he needed reflected back at him.
“Are we, Jayce?”
Jayce reached between them to tangle their fingers.
“I think so.”
They fell still as statues but for their trembling hands, skin stone with a pulsating thrum underneath. Even Jayce’s field of view had narrowed to only this.
Viktor’s grip squeezed his own. Jayce squeezed back and quirked the corner of his mouth up for a second.
“Who am I supposed to thank for this?” Viktor said, and Jayce laughed.
“I don’t know,” he answered, watching Viktor’s shy smile grow. He side-eyed the Hex crystal. “Maybe if we keep poking that thing we’ll get to meet them.”
“Maybe so,” Viktor agreed. “You should write down the contents of your visions before you forget.”
Jayce nodded. “Good idea. I wanna capture those runes, too, the ones in the surface of the crystal.”
“There is no time like the present.”
Viktor handed Jayce a pencil, and just like that they lapsed back into their usual studious mutual silence. Except, they never bothered to re-assert the space that would usually grow between them. Instead, they stayed huddled around the one microscope, taking turns to observe their experiment, scratching notes and diagrams in their respective journals. And this time, when Jayce cast poorly-hidden glances towards Viktor, he found his expression optimistic. His eyes had softened, his mouth upturned right in the corner, but his brow pinched just slightly as though there was something else he wanted to say.
“It is frustrating,” he eventually spoke up, pulling Jayce’s attention away from the gem immediately. “We’re now on uneven footing,” he tapped his crutch against his stool, “pun not intended.”
Jayce snorted.
Viktor smiled, though some nerves showed through. “There are some experiences between us that you have lived and I have not.” He cleared his throat. “You’ve kissed me.”
Yeah, technically Jayce had. Technically, he knew the taste and feel, the gapped-teeth, the bitten lips, the little sigh in the space between them.
“I can fix that for you.”
But nothing could compare to the way his heart beat straight out of his chest when he closed the last gap between his own worn-in body and the brilliant soul of his Viktor.
Jayce’s free hand cradled Viktor’s cheek, slotting together like two perfect porcelain pieces. Viktor leaned into it, and with the tilt of his head, their mouths fit perfectly. Viktor sighed, his body relaxed, Jayce loved him. They kissed slowly to remember all the details. No matter what Jayce’s memories might suggest, this was their first kiss. It rang of long-awaited finality for both of them. Those other kisses, those were stolen valour, a confusing stage direction in the middle of an in-progress show. Not true firsts, no remnants of the shy, searching naïvete that came with bridging the gap and learning one another. No, it was this long kiss, so peaceful and easy, that Jayce would hold onto forever, he was certain of it.
They broke apart with a quiet sound.
“What about now?” Jayce asked, barely a few inches from Viktor.
Viktor was blushing high along his cheekbones, and Jayce wanted to kiss it, but he settled for smoothing it over with his thumb.
“I, ah,” Viktor stuttered. “I, yes.” He cleared his throat and turned away, trying to hide his flush. “It is an improvement.”
Jayce chuckled. “Less uneven?”
“Yes, exactly.” Viktor couldn’t meet his eye. “Less… uneven, very…” he coughed, “very good.”
Jayce just stared at him, so painfully enamoured, and Viktor must have felt Jayce’s gaze on the side of his face because he eventually glanced back with wide, nervous eyes, only for the two to dissolve into laughter.
“Get back to work,” Viktor said once he’d contained himself. He tapped Jayce’s open notebook pointedly but couldn’t look his way.
“Yes, sir,” Jayce laughed.
Things weren’t going to be all that different between them, Jayce supposed. They’d still spend long, quiet days sharing the warmth of the lab and stealing little sidelong glances when they thought the other might not be looking. At least, this time, when Jayce found himself getting caught in the act, he didn’t have to look away.
