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Viktor is kind of like the old cupboard door in Jayce’s kitchen; almost fully unhinged but still working well enough not to be worrying.

That’s also, probably, the worst analogy Jayce has ever made in his entire life, but he has always been a scientist, not a linguist. A language scientist? Is there such a thing, on its own? Possibly, there are sciences for everything, some more…. scientifical than others. Jayce has never cared much for anything other than his own research, which sometimes makes him forget that there is anything else at all.

Eh, a little egotistical, don’t you think? a little accented voice lilts from the shadows of Jayce’s mind with annoying clarity, as if Viktor were whispering directly into his brain. Jayce does not know if that is going to be a reoccurring problem, or if it’s just the spill-over of poorly repressed hysteria over the last two hours finally catching up to him. Both. Neither. The three hours of sleep he has gotten in the past three days, or a manic episode creeping up on him, or the left-over adrenaline from almost throwing his life away draining out of him. There are more than enough excuses that aren’t His voice is lovely, and I could listen to him talk about nothing at all for hours. Even if it were about linguistics.

Ironically enough, hearing Viktor’s voice inside his head has also made him miss what Viktor’s said in real life. He shakes himself out of it, physically; like shaking his head would make the somewhat frantic thoughts about Viktor’s intonation disappear.

“What did you say?”

Viktor gives him a look, and Jayce suspects this will not be the last time he is graced with it. How he can be sure of that, he doesn’t know, but the look seems to be lived in on Viktor’s face, residual and habitual, as if he’s used to having to repeat himself. “I asked if you were aware that your math is incorrect.”

This, at last, manages to grate against Jayce’s pride enough to make a truly horrid sound inside his head, overriding everything else.

“Which part,” Jayce says and goes over to where Viktor is leaning against the remains of the blackboard.

“All of it,” Viktor says, snapping the notebook shut. The resounding clap of it sounds a lot like failure and it feels like being gutted with a spoon. “Don’t look at me like that.”

Jayce does not know how he’s looking, but he’s sure it’s warranted. How could he not look like whatever he is looking like right now, after being told – by a complete stranger, no less – his math is wrong? How would he even know–

“How’d you know the math is wrong?”

“How long have been trying to make your theory work,” Viktor asks, and he doesn’t make it sound like a question, which in turn makes Jayce think he should know the answer already. But he doesn’t. He doesn’t think he knows anything at all, at the moment.

“My whole life,” he says truthfully, because he cannot follow what Viktor is thinking.

“And has it ever worked before?” Viktor asks again, with the thin patience only teachers have, and Jayce remembers shortly that Viktor is the assistant of the dean, of the Professor. At the same time, Jayce realizes where Viktor is going with it, and feels ridiculous for letting himself be steered, as if he were a child.

“No,” Jayce says, petulant and ground out through gritted teeth, because he despises feeling stupid more than being treated like a child, and Viktor has managed to do both. “How can you be sure it’s the math, though?”

Viktor gives him the look again, as if it were apparent and Jayce should realize how absurd the question is, only for half a second, before it’s replaced with some sort of half-grin tugging at the corners of his mouth, and – Jayce liked the look better than the grin. The grin is positively terrifying.

“Because I’m very good at math, and I will correct it, of course.”

Of course.

“Be my guest, then.” Jayce makes a grand gesture towards the blackboard, where all of the most important equations of his work, of his life, are written, and torn out pages with diagrams are taped to, and Viktor… erases it all. With his shirt sleeve.

xx.

Viktor is right. Jayce’s math was wrong. And Viktor corrects it, like he said he would, with handwriting that is so illegible, Jayce has trouble following. It’s the handwriting, not the speed with which Viktor writes down the most complicated and seemingly nonsensical series of numbers, of course.

Not the existential crisis of not being the most intelligent person in the room, for once, looming over him, that brings both deep discomfort and immense, irrational relief. Because, Jayce is aware of his intelligence and the deep-rooted arrogance that comes with it, is the thing, he is aware, but it is justified, in most aspects of his life. Now there is Viktor, who has looked at his notes, years’ worth of knowledge and research and failure, has merely glanced at it, and has pointed out every mistake. He might as well have ripped out Jayce’s soul, it would not have felt much different.

Viktor doesn’t seem to mind that very much; disassembling his life’s work and to dissecting every little failure ever presented, which feels like he's dissecting Jayce. And then making it better, filling the spaces, without having dedicated a considerable amount of time to it. It’s nothing short of frightening, the casually open display of intellect and skill and superiority, without having the suffocating aura of someone who knows how good they are. Perhaps, that is where the relief is coming from; standing next to someone equally intelligent, someone who does not just trail after Jayce’s thoughts, but contributes and corrects, someone aware of their abilities, without the inherent academical urge to compete with him. Probably because the need to compete with others directly correlates to the need to prove oneself.

Viktor, so nonchalantly confident in his capabilities, almost dismissive of it, does not strike Jayce as a person who would crave affirmation like every other person Jayce has met in the years at the Academy. Maybe Jayce should have disregarded the notion that Viktor is anything like any other person from the moment he almost startled him to death, both metaphorically and literally.

As soon as, if not even before, Viktor has finished up writing, he turns towards Jayce with that absolutely horrifying but delightfully crooked grin, which is a combination that leaves Jayce more than slightly discombobulated, and there is chalk on his shirtsleeve from where he erased equations Jayce worked on for months, and the flickering light makes his jaw look sharp and his cheekbones cutting, and those are definitely normal things to notice on the person’s face who interrupted your attempt at self-murder, just to mock you for signing your notes right after.

And then, Viktor drags him along to break into Professor Heimerdinger’s lab with the insouciance of someone who risks exile every other week. Maybe he does, Jayce wouldn’t know.

(“You seem awfully comfortable breaking into your boss’ workplace,” Jayce says, because it’s the only thing there really is to say without sounding prejudiced and generally like a fucking asshole, or, alternatively, in Jayce’s very specific case, awestruck and impressed and a little more breathless than strictly necessary.

“After living in Piltover for so long, I have started to miss committing crimes,” Viktor says, accent mockingly thick, and he says it in a way that doesn’t say anything at all, and Jayce thinks that maybe he doesn’t want to know. He thinks, instead, of the old cupboard door in his kitchen, for the second time.)

xx.

There is still some electrical residue sparkling on his skin and pale blue light behind his eyelids and a crooked, unguarded smile in his mind long after gravity let them drop back onto the ground.

“I told you the math is wrong,” Viktor says, as if Jayce needs any kind of reminder, and pokes the tip of his cane into Jayce’s side.

“No one’s ever said that to me and was right,” Jayce says, although he wants to say Thank you or Fuck you, for being right or maybe even I think I fell a little in love with you.

“Honoured to be your first, then,” Viktor says, and there is not a single trace of humour in his tone, and Jayce almost chokes on air.

xx.

If someone ever asked, Jayce would say the notes started somewhen during the first few months of working with Viktor. No one will ever ask. Probably. Because no one has access to said notebook, except maybe Viktor himself, and even if he is ever found out, the question of when wouldn’t be as pressing as the why. Jayce hopes no one will ever ask, because he can’t answer either of them without lying, or completely embarrassing himself, and he is not particularly fond of either option.

It started the very same night they floated in Heimerdinger’s lab, long after they parted ways, and Jayce couldn’t sleep, which he thought to be reasonable, so he started… drawing. Viktor, specifically. With a decent amount of accuracy, as well, for he was only working with mental images. Sketching the person who, if very rudely and somewhat unconventionally, saved your life, ridiculed your paranoid tendencies of signing every page of your notes, then gave you new reason and will to continue your life with an astounding amount of faith, in such fast succession that it almost gave you whiplash, is not weird.

Taping it into his notebook with a Viktor – I don’t know his last name. Ask for his last name was not weird. Dedicating a few more insignificant pages of it to Viktor, due to the glaringly obvious lack of information was not weird. Continuing to pen down questions and every bit of information about Viktor is not… Well, maybe it is a non-zero amount of unusual.

It's gotten worryingly bad, the quantity of sketches and lists and questions that never really get answered, but Jayce refuses to get a separate notebook, because that would be bordering on obsessiveness, and although he may not exactly be acting normally, he is not quite there yet.

In the same manner of his notes about crystallography and thermodynamics and everchanging designs for the prototypes of the Hexgates they are working on, whatever bits of information Jayce has assembled about Viktor are unorganised and all over the place. Similarly chaotic to Viktor himself, which is so very fitting as it is worrying.

Next to old and crossed out equations, there is the exact amount of sugar Viktor takes his tea with (which is measured in ungodly and a shitload), what tea Viktor prefers (which is cheap and disgusting and so very bitter, and that explains the sugar) and what kind of coffee Viktor likes (which does not matter, as long as it’s strong enough to burn; Jayce has seen Viktor brew coffee with more coffee, instead of water, and has since made sure to make his own cup).

(“Unbelievable,” Jayce says, unable to hide away the mild look of disgust as he watches Viktor shovel so much sugar into his tea that it will probably not even count as a solute anymore in the end. “Why don’t you just eat the sugar with a spoon?”

“Because I’m thirsty, not hungry,” Viktor says, with all the stoicism of someone not committing a crime against his palate. He heaps another spoonful of sugar into his cup, all the while maintaining direct eye contact with Jayce, before breaking composure and huffing out a laugh at his answer. That’s also the exact moment Jayce realizes He laughs at his own jokes and fails not to be endeared by it.)

Under the first immature design of a miniature Hexgate is a recipe of a Piltovian meal Viktor likes, adapted to appeal to Viktor’s, admittedly, peculiar tastes; double the amount of salt and half a cup of random spices that are, together, absolutely overwhelming to anyone that isn’t Viktor. Generally, Jayce learns, Viktor prefers tastes to be strong; sickeningly sweetened or burningly spicey or nauseatingly bitter.

(“I fell into a toxic river when I was ten and swallowed, eh, a shit ton, you would say?” Viktor explains after laughing at Jayce’s obvious disapproval of his food preferences, like he always does whenever he catches Jayce staring at him with disbelief. “Of acidic water. It burned a significant amount of receptors on my tongue.” Jayce does not know if that’s true, but it would certainly make a whole lot of sense, considering how Viktor dries out his drinks with sugar and how he can drink the strongest of liquors without as much as wincing.

Jayce cannot take most of what Viktor tells him at face value, because, although he has never put as much trust in another person as he does him, Viktor is a liar. Never out of particularly malicious intentions, only for his own entertainment. He seems to have made it into some sort of personalised game only he knows the rules of; to tell Jayce anecdotes of his childhood, some true and some not, and sometimes so outrageously creative, Jayce has to wait for Viktor to laugh until the tension seeps out of him. Or, alternatively, when Viktor doesn’t laugh, try not to be too shocked about it.

One time, around the Solstice, Viktor told him about Zaunish traditions, every one of them more ridiculous than the ones prior, and Viktor held up his usual neutral seriousness, and Jayce believed him with the naiveté of someone who had no way of knowing better. Until Viktor told him about baptizing babies with alcohol, where he very conveniently also broke out in laughter so violent, he almost fell over if Jayce hadn’t been there to hold him upright. Jayce couldn’t find it within himself to be very angry with his partner lying to his face for a whole week when he’d gotten to see Viktor’s golden eyes bright with tears from laughing so hard.

Jayce has learned to take everything coming out of Viktor with enough seriousness to be cautious and enough humour not to be concerned.)

Other than the rare, almost nonexistent pieces of random information, there are also little sentences scribbled down in between research, endued with quotation marks and a cursive – V. Direct quotes Jayce has heard Viktor say, as arbitrary in context as all other things he’s learned.

Viktor is brilliant and so bright, Jayce has to resist the urge to write everything he mutters down, because that would be insane, but it would also be deserved. Viktor has the disadvantage of being blessed with a mind that is sometimes faster than his mouth, and a never-ending stream of genius, and a non-working brain-to-mouth filter, which results in every single thought being spoken into existence, whether under his breath or muffled into his hand or yelled towards Jayce across the room.

Of course, Jayce writes down the newest theories and ideas, however improbable they may seem, but that’s not what his private, hopefully-never-to-be-discovered notes are about. Instead, the quotes he’s written down are… linguistical mishaps, one could say, on Viktor’s part.

For all the eloquence Viktor has, all accented grace and verbal refinement, he doesn’t seem to fully understand certain expressions. Which leads to hilariously incorrect usage of proverbs and taking way too literal to metaphors. It’s sweet and relieving, knowing that Viktor is not perfect in every single facet of his existence.

(Jayce said that out loud, once, “Good to know that you do have flaws.”, and he sounded too sincere even to himself, and Viktor halted in his movements before very slowly and deliberately turning towards him and then use his cane to whack Jayce over the head.

“Obviously,” Viktor said, “I have flaws. One of them was stopping you from jumping.”

That was also the day Jayce learned three new things in under a minute: despite how Viktor looks, he has a surprising amount of strength, no qualms in misappropriating his cane, and he doesn’t like being complimented.)

Viktor says Look what the rat dragged in because rats are more common in the Undercity than cats, and he says Let’s burn some bridges when he wants to disprove a theory, and he says Cry me a river when he wants Jayce to talk about what bothers him. Once, Jayce told him to hold his horses and Viktor said, “What horses?” and Jayce explained that it meant to be stable and holding on, and Viktor said, “I’m never stable and always holding on, Jayce.” with a demonstrative click of his cane against the floor.

Sometimes, Jayce cannot be too sure if Viktor is genuinely confused or if he is just messing with him, but Jayce remembers that he laughed at him misinterpreting a commonly used expression one time, and Viktor got angry. Or, displeased, mostly, but it looked furious on him and his face that never really expressed anything more than mildly, and he snapped “How many languages have you taught yourself, Jayce? I’m at four, now.”

So, Jayce doesn’t laugh at Viktor’s misuse or misinterpretation of linguistic inanities, anymore, but he writes them down, and hopes Viktor will never find them. He doesn’t think he could explain, and Viktor certainly wouldn’t understand.

xx.

“This is a biohazard waiting to happen,” Jayce says, and he has rarely been more serious in his life. Perhaps, it isn’t the politest thing to say when stepping into someone’s living quarters for the very first time, and he almost hears his mother scold him, but it’s true.

Viktor’s apartment looks exactly like Jayce anticipated, but so much worse. The impressive and also absurd quantity of books scattering the floor is expected, but having to weave through hip-high piles of them seems a little much, even for Jayce. Some of the books lie butchered and gutted under the table in the living room, single pages of them pinned directly onto the walls, together with handwritten notes and diagrams and equations. And the kitchen – Jayce doesn’t want to think about why Viktor has beakers and Bunsen burners and vials filled with dubious liquids littering his kitchen when he could do whatever he’s doing at their lab. Much less does Jayce want to know what Viktor is doing in his apartment that he cannot do at their workplace.

“A chemical biohazard, at the very least,” Viktor agrees, in the same tone he says everything, which doesn’t tell Jayce anything at all. “Don’t look in the fridge.”

Jayce has not been planning to, and Viktor probably knows, but that is another thing about Viktor; he is well aware of Jayce’s, admittedly not extremely mature, habit of doing the exact opposite of whatever he is told, like he did with his illegal research and trips to the Undercity for materials, and he uses it to get Jayce to do things he would not do otherwise, just because it’s amusing to him, like looking into the fridge, and now Jayce is both curious and terrified, and – damn Viktor for understanding him in a fundamental way, seeing all the characteristic flaws he is made up of and using them against him.

Jayce goes to open the fridge.

“Viktor,” he says, because it’s better than throwing up. Viktor is somewhere in the living room, or maybe his bedroom, or wherever he keeps his notes, but he laughs loud enough for Jayce to hear anyway.

“I told you not to look into the fridge,” Viktor says, and his accent curls around the laugh-breathy words, like they always do, every single day since Jayce has known him, probably longer than that, because things usually exist before Jayce has started to perceive them, that includes Viktor’s accent lacing his words, and he should really stop overthinking Viktor’s voice. “Ask me where I got them.”

Jayce has been planning to, up until now. Viktor telling him to, however, tells him enough not to, gracefully accepting the fact that he’s being steered exactly where Viktor intends. Again. Jayce will take it, if it means not having Viktor explain to him where the ever-loving fuck he got eyeballs and other questionable body parts in his fridge that may or may not be human. He can live without that knowledge.

Jayce closes the fridge and goes to help Viktor search for whatever he is searching.

xx.

Viktor is genuinely insane. Not that Jayce ever thought, even once in their acquaintance and their friendship and their partnership based solely on mutual respect and a truly dangerous amount of trust, that Viktor is normal, in any capacity. They probably would not be working so well together if he were; no sane man has ever willingly tolerated Jayce Talis and his crushing arrogance.

He is reminded of the lunacy that is Viktor every time when he is working with temperatures so high, they could liquify steel, and the man is not wearing any safety equipment. Viktor will be soldering at his desk, and the goggles will be pushed up into his hair instead of guarding his eyes, and he won’t be wearing gloves because fine motoric, Jayce, and sometimes, he will not step back from an experiment that has proven to blow up in their faces because where’s the fun without maybe-deadly experiments, Jayce.

“You will kill yourself one day,” Jayce says, most times, while already looking for the first aid kit they keep in the lab, because Viktor hurts himself so often, as though he can afford it.

“It will not kill me any faster than I’m already dying,” Viktor says back, most times, before cursing loudly and in a language Jayce doesn’t understand, has either burned or cut himself, and then he fights against being treated like a patient because I’m not fragile, Jayce, before relenting and letting Jayce do whatever he wants, anyway.

Jayce laughs at the responses he gets, all variations of I’ll die, anyway, Jayce, because if he doesn’t, he will cry or scream, and Viktor would not appreciate him crying, nor screaming. Would beat him up with his cane, probably, because Viktor does that, sometimes, when he finds Jayce to be particularly annoying and overbearing. Which is often enough that Jayce has learned to sidestep it.

Viktor’s humour is one of the numerous things Jayce still has to get used to – or, force himself to accept and laugh about because, otherwise, he would just lose it. It is nothing less than morbid, the indifference with which Viktor will jokingly comment on his deteriorating body, will say the most abhorrent thing, and then laugh right into Jayce’s face, as if the whole situation isn’t tragic and depressing.

(“I like your face,” Jayce said, once, when they were out drinking after a day that could only be described as gone to hell and back, and that still would have been an understatement. So, drinking it was, and he would probably regret it in the morning, and then he would be wondering why Viktor was already in the lab and probably looking the same as ever, although they drank the same amount.

“Do you, now?” Viktor said, and he had one eyebrow raised in that infuriatingly attractive manner that reminded Jayce that he was drunk and better off to shut his mouth. Self-preservation had never been one of Jayce’s specialties, was the thing, though.

“Yeah,” Jayce said, and leaned in, towards Viktor, who didn’t lean back and let him look, which was the only sign that he, too, was more inebriated than visible. “You have a very – sharp face. Your cheekbones, your jaw. Like you’re made up of beautiful geometry; sharp and angular and defined. Makes me want to calculate the angles.”

“Ah, yes,” Viktor said, and Jayce could smell the liquor in his breath, and wondered briefly, and slightly hysterically, if he would taste it if he leaned in some more. Probably not. They had been drinking the same disgusting whiskey, and Jayce would only taste what he already tasted in his own mouth. He'd like to try, anyway. “The results of severe childhood malnutrition. If it is to your liking, then starving was worth it, I suppose.”

Jayce laughed, and Viktor laughed with him, though they both knew it wasn’t a joke, necessarily.)

xx.

“You’re going to poke out one of my eyes, one of these days,” Jayce says, leaning back and away from Viktor as far as his centre of gravity allows him to, just to convey a point. He’s exaggerating, of course, though it would not surprise him in the least if it did happen. Because Viktor gesticulates. A lot.

One of the first things Jayce noticed when they met, right after His voice is lovely, still blissfully unaware that there would be many more habits and behaviourisms mentally noted and crammed away in the little space in his mind for all things Viktor, was that Viktor is very expressive, when you know where to look, and he talks more with his hands than his words, at times, which is both distracting and very amusing to watch. Or dangerous, apparently, when he sits too closely and almost stabs you in the face with the pencil in his hand.

“You could use a disability, would deflate your ego,” Viktor says, rolls his eyes for good measure, but drops the pencil down onto the table in front of him. “Would make you less, hm.” Viktor looks at him, golden eyes flickering all over him; makes a vague but pointed gesture towards him. “Perfect. You’re painfully perfect. However, it will probably take more than a missing eye to make you less charming.”

Jayce’s breath hitches, just a little. It has no reason to, like his heart has no reason to skip a beat, and the room feeling too hot, suddenly. Because Viktor has no filter, and he has no reserve at all in calling Jayce beautiful and pretty and looking like you’re crafted by some otherworldly creature to appeal to the human eye, specifically; made to perform and to attract and to fall in love with and then calling him stupid and egotistical in the same breath. Viktor does not mean anything with it, except exactly what he says, which is purely observations and his objective opinion – no matter how many times Jayce argues that an opinion cannot be objective in any way. If any opinion could be objective, though, it would be Viktor’s, because the man is right so often, Jayce gets angry at the universe sometimes.

(“You have a,” Viktor said, once, and he leaned across their shared work desk, cluttered with half-finished machinery, failed attempts of prototypes; over a soldering iron, and his hand was too close to it, and Jayce already thought of fetching the first aid kit. Viktor’s words, however, held him there, too close and too still, like they often did. “Scar. In your eyebrow.”

Jayce blinked, brain stuttering to a halt from the sudden change of topic, still hung up on the miscalculation he’d tried to correct before Viktor leaned in, over the table, too close in a single heartbeat. For someone whose personal space was half of Piltover, Viktor didn't seem to mind getting into Jayce's. “I… yes. When we were younger, Caitlyn shot me with a training rifle.”

“Huh,” Viktor said, reaching out with the hand not used to prop himself against the tabletop, brushing a thumb along Jayce’s eyebrow. “Didn't think you could have an imperfection.”

“Thank… you,” Jayce said, because his mother raised him to be polite, and also because he didn’t know what else there was to say. “I think.”

“Not a compliment, just an observation.”)

That’s not the point. Point is, Viktor calls him handsome and perfect, and he doesn't mean anything by it, because Viktor spares no mental capacities towards trivial matters like that, and Jayce… cannot get used to it, not really. Cannot force himself not to enjoy the compliments, either.

“There’s a reason they call me the Golden Boy of Piltover, and it’s not because of my intellect,” Jayce says, and it’s not even a lie, with how the Academy likes to parade him around on a silver platter. It makes Viktor huff out a laugh, and then the conversation diverts back to the previous topic. Viktor picks up the pencil again and Jayce needs to concentrate as not to lose an eye in the process.

You’re painfully perfect floats around in the back of Jayce’s mind, in the darkest corners that cannot be closed off completely no matter how hard he tries, and it follows him home and into his bed and haunts him in his dreams.

xx.

Viktor is cryptic, at the best of times, ambiguous with what he says and how he says it, and completely obfuscating on average. Tone of voice unchanging and flat, and there’s no disparity when he curses or recites passages of useful textbooks – the accent curls around everything the same, voice vacuous of anything that could reveal what he’s thinking. Doesn’t disclose anything, even when asked directly. Jayce has tried, being direct, discreet, something in between, but Viktor is smart, and, apparently, a master of redirection and deception. Jayce doesn’t know if it’s just a Viktor thing or a Zaunite thing.

(“Zaunite thing? As if you Pilties don't plan out strategies before you even open your mouths,” Viktor says, and he clicks his tongue derisively at Jayce, and he is not wrong, not really.

“How should I know,” Jayce says, and clicks his tongue right back. He’s not annoyed, not really, though he likes to pretend as not to feel so out of depth whenever Viktor is. Because, contrarily to Viktor, Jayce does not know how to dissipate genuine irritation in his partner. Pretending to be upset and hoping Viktor will deescalate the situation is cheap, and cowardly, to an extent, but it is effective.

“Are you still mad about the baptizing babies with alcohol thing?” Viktor asks without a trace of the previous frustration which only showed itself in his eyebrows, not his tone, and already starts laughing. And Jayce starts laughing, because, well, how can he not?)

Viktor’s tendencies to lie harshly contrast his usual honesty, which is brutal and confusing and borders on uncomfortable, at times. It’s no easy task to discern the two, as Viktor does not bother to make it sound like it’s either. Viktor only speaks in statements or sarcasm or a language Jayce doesn’t know, and it all sounds the same. He will tell Jayce about ridiculous Zaunish traditions and he will tell Jayce how attractive he is and he will curse unimaginably creatively, and Jayce won’t know… anything. Anything at all. Because Viktor is cryptic, and he enunciates everything the same, and it’s either on purpose or unconscious. Jayce wouldn’t know.

Knowing what Viktor’s thinking was sheer impossible, at the beginning, and it’s only marginally easier now. Through close observation, which is not at all creepy, because what else is there for Jayce to do, he’s learned to read between the lines. Specifically, the lines on Viktor’s face.

There’s a line for everything, Jayce has found; that one faint line above Viktor’s mouth when he doesn’t want to smile, the one between his eyebrows when he is slightly displeased, which can turn into multiple when he gets truly irritated, and the little ones around his eyes when he’s amused and holding back a laugh he thinks is inappropriate for the situation – or because it would blow his cover when he’s lying.

Expressions are vast and diverse and many, and each one means something else, and they usually don’t say what they would on other people. Viktor frowns when he’s lost somewhere in his mind, and the corner of his mouth twitches up into an almost-smile when he’s repining, and his head tilts to the side when he’s patiently waiting for Jayce to catch up to his thoughts, and he rolls his eyes when he’s amused. Those are all normal things for Jayce to notice; essential, if he wants to understand Viktor.

Why he wants to understand Viktor to the point words aren’t necessarily needed between them anymore, Jayce doesn’t let himself think about too hard.

He blames everything – the unhelpful interest, the obsessive observation, the scribbling in his notebook; the memorizing and cataloguing and compartmentalizing – on Viktor being… Viktor. An enigma. A game of chess against someone so much smarter. A whole universe of unknown stars hidden behind an accented voice, eccentricities and unexplained habits. Because that’s what Viktor is, in the end – silently challenging and unperceived and an unresolved force of nature. As a scientist, Jayce cannot sit by and let a seemingly unsolvable conundrum with countless unknown variables be.

It's an excuse, he knows, but it’s good enough, anyway. Better than acknowledging the underlying shame whenever Jayce catches himself staring at Viktor’s moles and wondering how many there are he cannot see, or Viktor’s hands that are elegant and graceful and capable and would feel wonderful in Jayce’s, surely, or Viktor’s lips that are always bitten red and chapped and so very enchanting.

Fortunately, Viktor has the kind of concentration that is unbreakable, always dissolving into his work, and he never notices Jayce’s wandering eyes, which spares him the embarrassment, though it doesn’t erase the feeling of guilt gripping his organs and sticking to the back of his throat.

xx.

For all the carefully practiced disinterest, or purposefully trained ignorance, in anything other than their research, Viktor seems to have learned some things about Jayce himself. It’s inevitable, really, with the hours spent together over work and experiments, sharing both crushing failure and alleviating success.

It still feels like Jayce is going into cardiac arrest when Viktor says, and, coincidentally, makes Jayce realize he’s been staring again, “You can do it, if you want to.”

There’s a litany of things Jayce wants to do, flashing through his mind immediately, unprompted and utterly unhelpful. Half-formed mental images, aborted attempts of suppressing desires and indulgences Jayce only ever allows himself at the dead of night, when darkness swallows the feelings of shamefulness, flaring up in an uncanny clarity. For a terrifying moment, Jayce fears that Viktor can see everything he’s ever thought, all the pathetic and delicate little things, read them directly from his mind, although that’s bullshit; Viktor knows many things, but he is not omniscient, even when it feels like that sometimes.

“Huh?” Jayce says, and it’s not the most intelligent he’s ever been, but it’s infinitively less incriminating than the shame of being caught burning under his skin.

“How eloquent you always are,” Viktor says, but he doesn’t look annoyed at having to elaborate. “You can hug me. You want to. I can see it. Your hands do this…” He motions his hand shapelessly towards Jayce’s. “Thing. When you want to touch me.”

Realisation slices through the confusion, before it returns with the power of an airship hitting him over the head. Because Viktor doesn’t do hugs. He barely tolerates Jayce’s tactile habits as it is, will allow the occasional shoulder touch, or Jayce’s hand on his lower back for support, but has not given up on vocalising his displeasure about it to this day.

The first time Jayce turned towards Viktor and tried to hug him, adrenaline and endorphins washing through his veins right after a breakthrough, small as it was, not unlike the one right now, not even fully conscious of what he was doing, Viktor ducked out from under him, out of the way, with an unexpected display of grace, as if avoiding physical contact was his lifelong profession.

“Do I?” Jayce asks, clenches his fists at his side to stop whatever they’re doing that has apparently given him away. The notion of Viktor knowing exactly when he wants to touch him, and the implication of it all – of having been watched without having noticed, so much so that he’s become calculable – doesn’t escape Jayce, and it makes pure horror uncoil beneath his sternum.

“You’re doing it right now,” Viktor says, and he cocks out his hip from where he is leaning against the blackboard, probably only to shift his weight to palliate the pain of his leg, and there is no reason for Jayce to focus on his lab partner’s hips. Viktor’s eyebrow twitches in that particular way that always makes Jayce feel asinine and off-kilter.

“Then you know more than me,” Jayce says, and forces his hands to relax. The motion is not lost on Viktor, his eyes flickering down and dragging agonizingly up Jayce’s body.

“As I often do,” Viktor’s voice lilts, and his eyes glint, and there’s that little line around his mouth when he refuses to smile, and Jayce feels unbalanced.

“I was under the impression you didn’t like,” Jayce begins, and stops, and doesn’t know what to say. Viktor has that effect on him, sometimes, though usually it isn’t caused by him being as distracting as he is right now. Usually, Jayce doesn’t give himself any opportunity to be distracted. Maybe the anxiety induced insomnia of the last few days is catching up on Jayce, chipping away at his brain and, therefore, his grasp on the terribly misplaced thoughts about his colleague.

“Being touched?” Viktor finishes for him, and Jayce shouldn’t think about Viktor finishing. “You’d be, eh, partially correct. I’m not used to… your kind of touching.”

“My kind of,” Jayce repeats, and licks his lips, more out of habit, “touching.”

“Yes,” Viktor agrees. “Touching for, what, comfort, I’d guess? For the sole purpose of touching. Without any sexual connotations. It’s not something I’m accustomed to.”

It’s getting supremely difficult not to think about sexual connotations, when Viktor says he isn’t used to anything but, which is a whole thing Jayce cannot afford to think about with Viktor still standing there, only a few steps away, looking at him with such intense interest, Jayce can taste it behind his teeth and feel it under his tongue.

(Something clicks, and makes sense, like finding a missing variable in an equation, and Jayce remembers Viktor coming into the lab after him, which was strange enough for Jayce to notice, and his hair was wild – wilder – and his vest was open, as were the three first buttons of his dress shirt, and Jayce assumed Viktor had overslept. It was bound to happen, really, with the dark circles carved into the skin underneath his eyes, and the absence of a healthy sleep schedule.

Jayce assumed, because Viktor does not pay any mind to anything other than their research, their projects, their dream they’re working on tirelessly. Clearly, Jayce assumed wrong.)

When Viktor pushes himself from the blackboard, opens up his arms in one fluid movement – exaggerated and grand and theatrical –, eyes challenging and provocative, something sparks under Jayce’s skin, in his fingertips, like magical residue, bright and almost painful, and his nerves almost overload with the feeling when he steps closer to Viktor.

The feeling of… something grips Jayce by the rips, by his heart, brutal and unrelenting, and it makes his bones lock up as soon as he has his arms around Viktor. There’s a small crack from Viktor’s spine, like whenever he stands for the first time in a small eternity spent hunched over the worktable, and briefly Jayce wonders if he’s hurting him.

“I’m not made of glass, Jayce,” Viktor says, amused and mocking and soft, and Jayce presses in closer and pretends it’s because they made the miniature Hexgate work and not because he has been yearning for it ever since they floated in Heimerdinger’s lab.

xx.

Jayce knows more about Viktor than any other person, but he doesn’t know the ridiculously ordinary things like his last name or his birthdate, but he knows about inanities that aren’t unimportant just because it’s Viktor. In no universe is anything Viktor unimportant, at least to Jayce. His notebook is filled with things that have nothing to do with research, and Viktor would probably beat him with his cane if he knew, because that’s a thing Jayce knows.

First, Jayce learned about Viktor out of a detached sort of curiosity, out of necessity because they were strangers and they would be working together, and Viktor was interesting, like a difficult problem to solve. And then Jayce learned because he wanted to, with a worrying urgency, and the notebook isn’t being used anymore, because he puts everything about Viktor neatly away into his brain spaces, the unoccupied crevices and whatever room he can clear out.

Viktor is like the old cupboard door in Jayce’s kitchen; almost completely unhinged and beyond repair, utterly insane, at times, and he doesn’t care about lab safety, and he laughs at his own jokes, however bad or depressing they are, and he lies because it amuses him, and he likes to pretend to be socially inept, although he is far more versed in societal patterns than Jayce is, but pretends he isn’t, anyway, and he doesn’t like being complimented, which is a damn shame, because Jayce could go on for days about Viktor, and–

Jayce didn’t have another choice than to fall in love with him, since day one, did he? That’s where it headed, from the very start, from that very first meeting that almost felt fateful, although fate is bullshit, and Jayce really should’ve seen it coming.

The pale mimicries of excuses were thin from the beginning, transparent, really, used as the most useless carapace for his ill-contained and very fragile emotions, and Jayce, for all the observational skill of a scientist, still hasn’t seen it coming until it slaps him across the face one evening with a resonating Oh, fuck me.

They haven’t left the lab in four days, and on that fourth day, Viktor changes a ridiculously small part in their equation, and their nth prototype of a medium sized Hexgate is working, suddenly – it’s controllable, it’s stabilized, and of course it’s Viktor who provides the missing piece, and he laughs echoingly into the lab, and the blue incandescence of the crystal makes his face sharp, sharper, and Jayce wants to cut himself on the edges of Viktor’s face, on the strident bones of his hips, wants to taste them piercing through his skin.

Eyes that are an undiscernible shade of gold, like whiskey in sunlight, or honey dripping into tea, eyes that turn Jayce, with all his distaste in linguistics, into a poet, apparently, lock with his, and Jayce falters in his contemplations. It is not the first time the intensity of Viktor’s gaze makes Jayce’s cognitive capacity minimal and useless, and it certainly isn’t the last.

Viktor shifts his weight, just so, grabs his cane, and hooks its handle around Jayce’s neck, and pulls. And Jayce – Jayce gives into it, into that pull he has felt ever since he met Viktor, which he first mistook for curiosity or even a bizarre interest in someone so utterly unconventional; gives up, completely, on the useless hold, the barely even there restraint he has on himself.

Viktor kisses like he is experimenting – headfirst with an absolute disregard for himself, harsh and direct and thorough. Militant, almost, in his urge to implore, impossible to stop, once he starts. It’s so very fitting, for Viktor, feels so very right, but Jayce is overwhelmed, anyway. Can’t really be blamed for it, he thinks; everyone would be – should be –, with Viktor so close, kissing away breaths and sounds and the ability to think like it’s all he’s ever done in his life.

“Thought you’d be a better kisser,” Viktor says, moves along Jayce’s jaw, moves downwards. Breathes against Jayce’s throat, and it feels wet and hot, and Jayce is willing to give up on everything just to keep Viktor near his pulse point.

And that’s a dangerous thought, isn’t it. Having Viktor anywhere near a vital artery is nothing short of perilous – the man who, after Jayce had made an off-handed comment about his declining weight, You begin to look like the wind could knock you off your feet, tripped Jayce over his cane, pushed at his chest with an unnecessary force, and had him on the ground in fifteen seconds flat without breaking composure. Pushed Jayce down onto the floor with a foot on his chest, pressed the tip of his cane into Jayce’s clavicle, and smirked, which had been terrifying and hot, and Jayce had been both scared and into it. It had also been very confusing, though Jayce chose not to think about it.

“Sorry to disappoint,” Jayce says – pants, gasps, heaves.

“You never disappoint, Jayce,” Viktor says, and then sucks at his collarbone, hard and unforgiving and so very unfair to Jayce’s liminal space of a brain. “You’re perfect.”

Viktor’s cane is still hooked around his neck, holding him steady, bent down, because of course Viktor would not be bothered to lean up. It’s uncomfortable and thrilling, being forced into whatever position Viktor sees fit, and… Jayce might need to reconsider everything. Might need to go within himself and ask, Since when do I like this or, perhaps more urgent, Why do I like this. The answer is glaringly obvious. Since Viktor. Because of Viktor. Always Viktor.

Jayce should have seen it coming, and maybe he has – he has never been good at repressing feelings, desires, anything at all. But he has turned away from it, however unsuccessfully, because he is a coward, in the end, and there is too much to lose, Viktor is too much to lose, but they end up around each other, pressed up against each other, breathing the same air, sharing feelings, all the same. Coalesced, interlaced, agglutinate.

Suffused with each other.

Jayce doesn’t believe in fate, but he also doesn’t believe in coincidences, and there have been so many of them already, and maybe… this is where it’s been heading. Maybe he can give into – this, into Viktor. God knows he’s been trying not to for long enough, denying himself something he’s been desperately wanting for so long.

When Viktor detaches from his skin to lean up, Jayce meets him half-way. Digs his fingertips into Viktor’s waist, his hipbones, his back. Loses whatever little capability of logical thought left. Surrenders himself, all he is made of, in favour of tasting Viktor – finally.