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In the grand hierarchy of problems Mel Medarda has faced this quarter (elderly envoys with bathwater fetishes; Jayce Talis overindulging and carving a hexhole in the lab floor again; Viktor falling into said hole), this should not rank.
And yet, fourteen hours before she's due to serve as a guest judge at the most consequential Distinguished Innovator’s Competition of her career, here she stands: with her two riskiest investments looking like they just crawled out of the city's most overeducated sewer.
Jayce’s Academy-issued vest bears a not-insubstantial singe mark on the collar, as well as several Talis-sized handprints down the front. There's soot on his cheekbone, and a thin line of solder along his forearm, like a burnished scar.
Viktor, for his crimes, has what looks like dried flux crusted on his forehead, as well as a pair of purple circles from goggles lifted and lowered one too many times. His tie has been repurposed as a makeshift cable wrap.
Somewhere, far across the ocean, someone is laughing, and it sounds suspiciously like Mel’s mother.
The sturdier of the pair is currently halfway up a ladder, holding a coil of fluorescing cobaltwire above his head. The other waits below, bracing the bottom rung with his foot — just enough to suggest help, while actually doing nothing.
“It’s wobbling,” Jayce hisses. “Why is it wobbling?”
“Because you have the center of gravity of an infant moose,” Viktor says. “And because you refused to let me stabilize it properly with the cart clamps.”
“Because last time you used the clamps you welded them shut! You had to saw my boots off.”
“You are exaggerating.”
“You literally sawed my boots off.”
“Which proves I am very handy in an emergency.”
Jayce starts windmilling. “Okay, I’m going down,” he says. “I’m going down, can you just — grab the wire?”
“Which part? The live part, or the part that is magnetically attached to your trouser buttons?”
“Both. Just. Gently!”
Amidst this ridiculous exchange, Mel opts to zoom in further on two particularly offensive points of interest.
Namely, their hair.
Viktor has what can only be described as an “academic fringe." And at some point over the past month, Jayce has evidently concluded that facial hair might lend him the advantage of age. In actuality, it only serves to make him look like a first-year, overcommitted to an experiment no one asked him to run.
“Fix it,” she says, voice pinging off the metal in the room. "Now."
They both look up, and that’s when Jayce loses his balance for real.
“Mel!” he yelps, one hand flying out as the ladder rocks wildly. Viktor seizes the frame at last — too late — as Jayce tips backwards.
“I told you it was not stable,” he says mildly.
“You said it would probably hold," Jayce groans.
“'Probably' does not equal stable.”
Jayce sits up. “Mel. Hello." He rubs the back of his head sheepishly. “Fix what?”
She flings her hand between them. "All of it," she says.
“Clothing. Attitude. Rapport." She circles the pair. “But hair, mostly, head and facial. Especially whatever that is on your face, Jayce. Elora genuinely thought you were part of the janitorial staff.”
“That would be my job,” Viktor grumbles.
Mel ignores him. An hour later, she orders a barber to the lab.
She will come to regret this.
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Viktor has never once concerned himself with hair.
It's an organic overgrowth of keratin. Something that sprouts too fast from his scalp, and falls in his eyes, and, if neglected long enough, invites remarks from the type of people who believe a person’s grooming habits says anything about their intellect.
His own routine is perfunctory at best. He once used the same bottle for his hair, his face, a panel of sheet metal, and a puddle of floor grease and saw no discernible difference in outcome.
But lately, over the past six months or so, he's become marginally more aware of its function as a business tactic. Mostly before affairs of importance — occasions where, without warning, Jayce will slick his hand with some pomade that costs more than Viktor’s entire wardrobe and, after tending to his own tresses, push the remainder through Viktor’s with the confidence of a man smoothing blueprints.
Frankly, Viktor has never known what to do with himself in those moments. The touch itself isn’t unpleasant (“disorienting” is the word he reaches for in private), but it leaves his hair feeling strange and stiff and distinctly Jayce-like for the rest of the night. Which is destabilizing. And for reasons best left unexamined, something he actually looks forward to now.
The man Councilor Medarda sent has no business wielding scissors. His hands, though gnarled enough to betray his experience, have neither the spindly precision of Viktor’s own nor the steady warmth of Jayce’s.
He arrives mid-afternoon, introducing himself with a sweeping bow and a name like “Roderique,” which Viktor cannot for the life of him pronounce despite a sincere attempt. Moments later he takes a straight razor to Jayce’s cheek without warning. Jayce flinches. The blade slips, and a shallow line of red blooms along his jaw. Viktor is at his side in an instant.
“You made him bleed,” he says, utterly serious.
“It’s a nick,” the old man protests.
“Get out.”
“V, it’s fine,” Jayce sighs, starting to stand.
The barber reaches for him again. “Just let me—”
Viktor steps between them. “Touch him with that again and I will ensure your license is reviewed by every regulatory body in Piltover by dawn.”
“Viktor.”
The man freezes. “Surely you are not serious.”
“I can assure you I am.”
That does it. The man flees, leaving behind his dignity and, crucially, his clippers.
Jayce pinches the bridge of his nose. “What’d you go and do that for?”
“He hurt you,” Viktor says, as if it's the most obvious thing in the world.
Jayce touches the cut on his cheek. “It’s barely a scratch.”
“That is hardly the point,” Viktor huffs, scuffing the tile with the toe of his boot.
Jayce sits back in the chair. “So what do we do now?”
“You can't expect me to believe you have never shaved your own face before, Jayce.”
“Not about that. This," he says, shaking the too-long mess of his hair. "And that,” he says, pointing at Viktor's.
Viktor offers no reply. Instead, he picks up the abandoned clippers and examines them the way one might a live grenade.
“I could try,” he says, tone deceptively neutral.
Jayce, still shirtless — now with an oil cloth pressed to his jaw — regards Viktor like a man being prepped for experimental surgery with a butter knife.
“You let me fall off a ladder this morning.”
Viktor shrugs. “Your landing was exceedingly graceful.”
“I bounced!”
Viktor chooses to ignore this. He turns the device over instead, moving between the dial settings. They click with the less-than-promising sound of nickel and plastic. He flips it on. It whirs to life with a high-pitched squeal. Viktor frowns, adjusting the blade guard before shutting it off.
Jayce watches from a distance. He's perspiring now, dark hair unfurling from its gel in that telltale way it does when he's anxious or overheating or both. Viktor approaches with the clippers as he would a feral animal cornered in the lab.
He circles the chair.
“Short on the sides, long on top. Functional.” He gives an ironic little punch at the air. “Aerodynamic.”
“I’m not a glider,” Jayce says.
“Stop moving,” Viktor says, and begins.
It's the kind of delicate work Viktor usually reserves for intricate repairs. He follows the curve of Jayce’s skull like he's tracing a schematic, hesitating only when met with the slight asymmetry of his cowlick. Arguably charming, though Viktor refuses to assign emotional value to a hairline.
He adjusts the blade, focus narrowing entirely to the equation in front of him.
Snip.
Angle.
Glide. Repeat.
Jayce stays perfectly still through it all, gripping the seat like he's waiting for something sharp to slip again. His breathing is deep and manual — in through the nose, out through the mouth — just like Viktor taught him.
It isn't until twenty minutes later, when Viktor finally steps back and turns the clippers off, that the nerves hit. He sets the tool down gingerly.
Jayce blinks up at him. And?
Viktor hands him the piece of scrap metal that doubles as their mirror. He tilts it back and forth, squinting at his reflection.
“Holy shit."
“Yes,” Viktor says. “Holy shit indeed.”
Jayce runs a hand through his hair and whistles. “You’re wasted in academia.”
Viktor beams.
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Jayce thinks about hair constantly.
His own, obviously — he’s bought basically half the inventory from Mel’s prescribed grooming boutique by now. Serums, hydrating pomades, exfoliating rinses. The works. His mother hammered it into him: dress for the job you want. And don’t stand in front of the Council with a flyaway.
But Viktor? Viktor’s hair is different.
Where his is dense and mostly stick-straight, Viktor’s is silky and bendable. Like a moth's wing. Chestnut brown and perpetually unruly, especially at the nape of his neck where — when it grows long enough — it curls. In such an engaging way that the sight of it sometimes leaves Jayce feeling like he’s licked a nine-volt battery.
He’s fantasized more than he’d ever admit about touching it. And on sleepless nights, bent over his partner's shoulder, memorized the smell too: coffee beans and that raw, industrial-grade soap you can only buy in bulk at mining outposts. Jayce hunted for it, obliquely, for months, at open-air mercantiles and on field trips to the Promenade for parts. Like if he could just track it down, he’d only need one chance — smear it along his collarbone in private, breathe it in— and after that it would be in him forever
So when Viktor hands him the shears, still clogged with the remains of Jayce’s new “functional, aerodynamic” look, he feels the full weight of destiny settling in his palms.
“Your turn."
He looks down at the device. “Are you sure about this?”
“Of course not,” Viktor replies. “But you already insisted. I believe your exact words were, ‘it’s only fair.’”
Oh, yeah. Jayce had said that. Right after Viktor casually performed savant-level hair artistry with a tool he’d never even touched before.
Now he sits in the chair Jayce recently vacated, gazing out the window with a flat, patient expression. He's prepped thoroughly with the spray bottle, hair beaded with tiny water droplets. He chose to leave his undershirt on, but shrugged out of the vest and tie. Jayce, for some reason, hurries to put his own back on.
“Right,” he says, fussing with a piece of lab canvas until it resembles something like a barber’s cape. He loops it around Viktor’s neck, absurdly considerate. “We’ll protect your collar at least.”
“Very solicitous, Jayce.”
Jayce ignores him and picks up the clippers again. Then he frowns. It feels sort of criminal, bringing something that cold and rudimentary near something as fine and gossamer as Viktor’s hair. Like trying to prune a rose with a hacksaw.
“Uh, don't move,” he says. “I’ll be right back.”
"What is it you think I am going to do, the waltz?"
Jayce finds the scissors where he left them, lying open on the floor — forgotten in the scramble to collect himself after that morning's ladder incident. They're a bit greasy, a lot rusty, and most recently used on cobaltwire, but they're sturdy and well-made, and Jayce can wield them far more dexterously than any set of clippers.
He returns with his confidence restored and promptly wheels the chair in close, adjusting the height until Viktor's head sits level with his waist. Then he rakes a hand through his mop, plotting his next move while relishing the cool slip of water over his overheated wrists.
Somewhere beneath the hum of the lab, he thinks he hears a little sigh, but ultimately decides he’s imagined it.
Then he gets to work.
Thirty minutes in and Viktor’s patience has become theoretical. “Jayce, what are you chiseling back there, the Archon of Progress?”
"Hush. This masterpiece deserves my full attention.”
“It deserves an actual mirror.”
Jayce pinches a dewy lock between two fingers and trims it very, very carefully. “Do you want it to look like mine?”
Viktor doesn't dignify that with a response.
By the time he finishes, Jayce is sweating through his shirt, vaguely lightheaded from the effort. Viktor, too, is grimacing; guilt twists in Jayce’s gut as he realizes just how long he’s made him sit still.
When Viktor moves to swivel the chair, his leg stays put, stiff and uncooperative. He drags it into place manually, with the kind of practiced motion that speaks of routine discomfort, handled too often and too alone.
Finally, he looks in the "mirror."
There's an excruciatingly long pause, during which Jayce has enough time to wipe Viktor's hair from the scissors, clear his throat awkwardly, and start rearranging the already-neat line of tools on the counter.
Then, Viktor lets out a sound Jayce has never heard from his partner before — somewhere between a whoop and a veritable cackle. He jumps, hard enough to send the whole tray clattering to the ground.
“It’s not that bad,” he says immediately.
“It's worse than that bad,” Viktor says, absolutely delighted. “You have given me a — what is this? What do you call it here, eh, a mullet?”
“It’s not a mullet. It’s a…a textural taper.”
“Congratulations, you have invented an entirely new crime against geometry.” His smile is positively wicked. “One that might have earned me a brick to the head even in the Fissures.”
“It’s not that bad,” Jayce says again, quieter this time, even though it is. It's so, so bad.
The back is hollowed out, the sides horrifically lopsided. Jayce spins the chair around and punishes himself by taking his time cringing at it from every angle.
“I look like I lost a fight with your nose hair trimmer.”
Jayce wipes his mouth, utterly exasperated. “I really did try.”
“I can tell,” Viktor says, that same funny little smile on his lips. “I think that's what makes it worse.”
He reaches out and scratches at Jayce’s freshly shorn scalp, ruffling the longer strands on top and sighing wistfully.
“If you were truly so worried about me upstaging you this evening, Jayce, you could have just said so. You did not need to take such drastic measures.”
Jayce traces one of the neat lines carved into his own hair, so crisp it makes Viktor's disaster look like vandalism.
“I’ll fix it,” he blurts. “Or — I’ll just buzz the whole thing, if you want. You can go full…dolphin.”
He physically recoils from the word before it even leaves his mouth.
Viktor gestures at his leg brace. “That sounds interesting. I never have been particularly streamlined.”
Jayce lets out a strangled sound. “Right, okay. Yeah. This is fine. I just completely butchered your head before the biggest presentation of our lives, but sure. It’s fine. Everything’s fine.”
“Jayce,” Viktor says, still smiling. “It is fine.”
“It’s not.”
“I promise you it is. It's hair. It will grow back. That is the biological purpose of hair, yes?”
Jayce scrubs a hand over his face, some of the panic ebbing. “I guess. I just—I wanted to get it right.”
“You did.” Gentler now. “I mean it. You tried so hard. That is worth more than any decent haircut.”
He practically deflates, looking at Viktor like he just folded something precious into his hand. “That’s…thanks, V. I’ll make it up to you, I swear.”
“I am certain you will.”
Jayce stills at that, his heart jumping up into his throat for a second.
“I’m an idiot,” he says at last, with a self-conscious laugh. “I seriously just wanted you to look good.”
Which, of course, is absolutely not the thing to say to one's colleague.
“That is very sweet,” Viktor says, unfazed. “But rude as well, implying I did not before.”
Jayce whimpers at his complete and utter inability to say the right thing. “I meant,” he says, voice hoarse. “that I wanted you to feel good. That I wanted to make you feel..."
He trails off, horrified that the second version is somehow coming out worse.
Viktor is looking at him strangely now — amused and a little vulnerable.
“You do realize,” he says, inspecting his fingernails. "That there are other ways to make me feel good, Jayce.”
Jayce’s pulse kicks.
Viktor hasn’t moved, but the way he’s holding himself now — undershirt clinging to his shoulders, knees spread — is enough to make Jayce’s fingers twitch. The intrusive urge rising, to run his thumb along Viktor’s clavicle and press it hard into the hollow of his throat.
Then, with a wince, Viktor pushes himself up from the chair. He stretches his right leg once, then limps across the room to lean casually against the blackboard. There he rotates his ankle in deliberate circles before speaking again, deadpan as ever:
"Ways," he continues, "I might add, that pose far less risk to my personal safety — and by that I mean not just the immediate threats to life and limb such as unclamped ladders, or electrocution, or being rendered bald by prototype grooming devices — but also, let us not forget, to my increasingly fragile vanity, which has already suffered immeasurably under your so-called 'aesthetic instincts,' and, of course, to the future financial integrity of Hextech as we kn—"
Jayce is already halfway across the lab; he closes the remaining distance in two strides. Then he brackets Viktor in, arms on either side of his head, palms flat on the chalkboard. The room is cavernous, but he presses in close, forcing Viktor flush with the surface.
“Jayce,” Viktor says, blinking. “If this is your idea of a counterargument, I must inform you it lacks a certain rhetorical clarit—”
“Janna,” Jayce mutters. “You never shut up.”
Then he kisses him.
Against his mouth Viktor is a wall of surprise, brows almost at his hairline as Jayce pulls back reluctantly, cradles his face, and asks for permission with his eyes. For a beat Viktor just stares, lips parted. Then he nods, with so much uncharacteristic vigor it nearly gives Jayce whiplash.
He doesn't waste the invitation.
They collide again and Viktor makes a noise — a disbelieving and entirely gratified little hum of approval — that does unspeakable things to Jayce’s self-control. His hands, respectful at first against the blackboard, take it as a sign to move into Viktor’s hair, where they become absolutely filthy once tangled up in the mess Jayce has made of it.
He grips the roots with a desperation bordering on indecency, loosening only when the need to touch overwhelms the need to hold. He lingers in the baby-soft dampness, coveting it along with the scent of that damn soap, finally on Jayce where it belongs.
He reaches for Viktor’s hand next (the one still fisted in the back of his shirt) and guides it up above his head, pinning it against the board. Then he takes his time stroking down his side, his hip, the length of his spine, mouthing at the little beauty marks that pepper his skin as he goes.
Viktor shivers, and Jayce feels it acutely — the rigidity in his frame, the taut propriety in his shoulders — right before he gives up and sags against him. Jayce grunts softly and adjusts his grip, one arm cinching instinctively around Viktor's waist. Only then does he notice: the cane, still somewhere across the room. Jayce is more than happy to take over, committing himself fully to the task of holding him up.
And that? That earns him a moan. Sweet and involuntary, and punched out of Viktor like air. It cracks something open in Jayce’s ribs and — gods, he needs a moment.
He pulls back, only to be met with a deliciously frustrated whine. Jayce hadn’t realized Viktor’s eyes had slid shut until they're blinking open again, hair utterly deranged and brows creased in mild betrayal as he tries, blearily, to locate where Jayce’s tongue has gone.
Jayce, grinning now at the look he’s managed to put on his partner's face, takes a moment to wet his lips, swiping Viktor’s lower one in the process. A shaft of afternoon light catches the dust in the air, the water in Viktor’s hair, and the blown-out ring of his pupils. Their shared gulps of air scatter all three.
Jayce sways, suddenly unsteady himself, and rests his forehead against Viktor’s.
“Fucking hell,” he groans.
Viktor exhales shakily. “Precisely."
“I didn’t know how else to say thanks for letting me ruin your hair.”
“Perhaps," Viktor pants. "Next time, use your words instead?” He touches the spot where the top button of Jayce’s collar had been minutes earlier. “This behavior might be seen by some on the Council as…unbecoming of their Man of Progress.”
“Next time?”
Viktor shrugs. “You are already the most disastrous barber I have ever had. Might as well be consistent.”
And despite everything — the truly appalling bangs plastered to Viktor’s forehead, the very real possibility of public humiliation at tonight’s competition — Jayce knows he’ll remember this as a good day. Maybe even the best of his life.
“Next time,” he promises, brushing back the jagged fringe. “I’ll charge you full price.”
And then, with all the reverence of a man who’s just found religion in the worst haircut of all time, Jayce kisses him again.
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By the time the Distinguished Innovator’s Competition commences that evening, Mel has already reviewed fourteen proposals, judged three unexpectedly flammable prototypes, and had her shoes stepped on by two separate professors of substratal ecology.
She is not, by any stretch, in the mood to have the boundaries of her patience further toed at.
And yet.
Far across the exhibition floor, Jayce Talis and his undernourished accomplice stand side by side at their demonstration booth, haloed in the bluish glow of Hextech’s latest promise.
Jayce, to his credit, is immaculate. His hair, shaggy this morning, now frames his face with just enough structure to suggest professionalism without erasing his signature brand of blinding sincerity. Mel, momentarily pleased with herself, considers making her way over purely to say I told you so.
Then Viktor steps out from behind him.
Mel slaps a hand over her mouth.
“Oh,” Elora says. “Oh my.”
Viktor, clearly mid-charm offensive with a potential investor, looks almost philosophically disheveled.
His hair, usually neglected in an endearing way, has clearly been subjected to some kind of misguided lab experiment. The length is horrendously uneven, the crown puffed out like the feathers of a territorial waterfowl. A section at the back has collapsed entirely.
He looks inconceivably smug about it.
“Fascinating,” Elora murmurs.
Mel takes a long, steadying sip of her drink.
“Mm,” she manages at last. “They've survived, at least. Whatever it is that happened.”
“Barely, it would seem."
Mel slumps against the wall and closes her eyes. Elora pats her arm. “They’ll stabilize."
“They better. I did say they were the future.”
“You said they could be,” Elora corrects. “Depending on the strength of their partnership.”
Mel makes a thoughtful noise. She lingers on the sawtooth edges in Viktor’s hair — the telltale absence of gel in Jayce’s. The matching satisfaction in both their postures.
She hums into her wineglass, unsurprised. “It would appear they’ve been working rather closely.”