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Jayce likes to think of himself as a self-starter, just waiting for his big break.
When his family immigrated to Piltover, they had just enough money and standing to purchase the empty lot that would become the first Talis factory. Jayce had grown up following his father on the factory floor. He shadowed him in the forge, ran messages between him and the foreman. He’d grown up with the hiss of molten steel and the clanging of metal on metal for company instead of friends his age. He’d grown up lonely, but that was neither here nor there.
After his father died, he went to school, at his mother’s behest. He saw firsthand how you could take something raw and rough and turn it into something polished, something greater than the sum of its parts. He saw how the difference between those who changed the world and those who made pocket wrenches their whole lives was a lot of hard work and just a little bit of luck.
All this to say: when Jayce nearly jumps off a building; when Jayce blows up two labs in the span of a single week; when Jayce looks through the bright blue light of magic, real magic, and sees Viktor’s smile, he knows he’s been given a chance, here.
He refuses to squander it.
~
Something passes through the air. It’s familiar and warm, almost a buzz; sometimes Jayce hears things in his own head. Jayce hums in tune with it, not looking up from his soldering.
A moment passes. Perhaps two.
“Jayce.” Viktor is suddenly right there. Jayce nearly drops the component, swearing.
“Yeah?” he says, lifting his goggles off his head. Oh shoot, the humming had been Viktor’s voice. A little thrill of pleasure goes through him at that, the realization that the voice in his head and Viktor’s sound the same. “Sorry, did you say something?”
Viktor looks at him, head titled like Jayce is a puzzle. “I said,” he says slowly. “Shall we call it a night?”
Jayce blinks. “You,” he says, unable to keep the disbelief out of his voice. “You want to stop working?”
“Jayce.” Viktor’s voice is soft, almost gentle. “It’s past midnight.”
Jayce jolts. He glances at the clock to confirm. It’s not that he doesn’t believe Viktor. It’s just…has it really been that long? They’d started well before dawn this morning; they have a deadline at the end of the month. Jayce glances out the window as if it might hold a different answer, but nope. He sees the glowing lights of the Academy twinkling, campus gone empty and dark.
“Oh,” he says. He tries to take stock of his body, his surroundings; he sits up and finds that he’s a little lightheaded, and that his back aches. He hasn’t eaten since…he thinks back—a very late lunch or early dinner, maybe? Hours ago. That explains the dizziness, at least.
He looks at the part he’d been repairing and finds that his hands are empty. The soldering iron is now in Viktor’s hands, strong and callused. Jayce watches dumbly as Viktor places it on the table.
“Jayce,” Viktor says again. Jayce blinks at him. He can usually get a read on his partner, even though they’ve only been working together for a month. It’s strange, how he feels like he’s known Viktor much longer than that. A good kind of strange.
“Viktor,” Jayce parrots back. He means it to be teasing; instead, the name comes out a little slurred. His head swims; his ears ring. He…can’t really make out Viktor’s expression. His dear face comes in and out of focus—a mole swimming into view here, a flake of chapped skin on his lips there. Jayce blinks again. When had Viktor’s face become dear? He thinks it probably always has been. Viktor is dear. Viktor—
“You should go home, Jayce,” Viktor says softly, stemming the flow of Jayce’s rushing thoughts. “The work will be here tomorrow.” He pauses. “I will meet you here, yes?”
Panic seizes him—he can’t go home, to that empty apartment. Once the Kirammans had decided he wasn’t a complete waste of their time and resources, they’d secured him a small one-bedroom a few blocks from his last place. It’s smaller, and farther away from the Academy, but that isn’t why Jayce hates it. He hates the sparseness of it; the way it feels like a testament to all his failures; the way it’s not here, not their lab.
It’s a useless space, and he feels useless in it.
He closes his eyes. Really, any place outside the lab is inferior by virtue of it being…not here. Not where he could focus, could work, could turn around at any given moment and find his new partner already waiting, already half-turned to meet him. Ready to lend an ear, or provide some brilliant answer to a question Jayce had still been formulating.
His apartment isn’t home. Home has become, instead, any place where Viktor is.
But Jayce can’t say that, can he? Right? He shouldn't feel this way. They met barely a month ago. They should barely know each other.
Still, as he opens his eyes to meet Viktor’s gaze, he feels the endless, floating feeling from that first night return to him, the way it always does when Viktor looks at him.
His chance. He refuses to squander it—him.
“Okay, V,” he finally says. The nickname slips out of his mouth easily, his exhaustion letting loose this one thing, instead of all the other damning things he can’t say. It’s a testament to how tired he must be—the term of obvious endearment easily blamed on exhaustion, perhaps—that Viktor only blinks, then smiles, small and warm and all for Jayce.
The humming is back, and this time it is warm.
Jayce carries that warmth with him on the long walk back.
~
(Jayce has always been a self-starter.)
(Sometimes, though, he wishes he knew how to stop.)
~
Jayce lets himself in, closes the door, toes off his shoes. Washes his hands, eats half a sandwich, takes a quick shower. Slides into bed and immediately finds, despite his exhaustion, that he can’t sleep.
It’s always been a problem, a holding pattern—the insomnia, the bursts of manic energy, the steep fall into some dark part of himself afterward. But recently it feels like it’s been getting worse. It has been getting worse, ever since the trial, since the ledge, since—
Well, he thinks, folding his hands over his chest, I’m alive. That has to count for something.
He thinks, I’ll make it count for something.
He stares up at his shadowed ceiling and tries, in vain, to fall asleep. He tries to do breathing exercises, tries to meditate, tries to clear his mind. He needs to be in top form. They have a meeting with Cassandra Kiramman and a potential investor at the end of the week, and he still hasn’t figured out what’s wrong with that godsdamned component.
The memory comes to him unbidden—the sudden weightlessness in his hands when Viktor had taken the soldering iron from him an hour ago, his touch gentle but firm. He thinks about Viktor's eyes, concerned and watching and tired, too.
Jayce realizes, suddenly, that he is no longer alone.
He keeps the thought close, a comfort to fiddle with. It does the trick; eventually, he drifts off, into restless, shallow sleep.
~
(It’s enough to get by. He just has to get by.)
~
When he stumbles into the lab the next morning, Viktor—who’s already there, because he said he’d be, because he’s the first person in Jayce’s life who’s promised to show up and has, every day—takes one look at him and says: “Jayce. You did not rest.”
Which is true. Still, Jayce tries to look like someone who is well-rested. He realizes he’s already failed by the way the room seems to be getting both dimmer and brighter, by the way it’s swaying, because he’s swaying. It’s honestly a miracle he didn’t slice his own throat this morning while shaving. Wouldn’t have been so bad, he thinks, then immediately shoves the thought away.
Not anymore, he reprimands himself. He looks at Viktor, takes him in. I don’t want to think like that anymore.
“Here,” Viktor says, taking his hand. Jayce startles—Viktor has never initiated touch like this before. Jayce melts into it easily, following as Viktor leads him to the couch.
Once he’s settled, Viktor presses a mug of something hot into his hands. “Drink,” he says. “It’ll help. There is no caffeine in it.”
Jayce does; it tastes sweet. It fills him up, and something in him relaxes, just a little.
“Now,” Viktor says, taking his own mug and sitting beside him. “What happened? You seem…” He searches for the word. “Distracted.”
It’s a very generous term. Jayce thumbs at his mug. His hair falls into his eyes; he hadn’t put gel in it this morning, he realizes. “I…” he starts.
Viktor waits, patient.
“It’s nothing,” Jayce says. Lies. Shame wells up in him.
Viktor just raises an eyebrow. Not in judgment exactly, but again that same look from before—curiosity, their shared language. Like he wants to figure Jayce out.
“It’s clearly something,” he says. When Jayce still does not respond, he looks away, thumbing at his mug. “I’m sorry if I am…prying.”
Jayce’s head jerks up. “No!” he says, a bit too loudly. He doesn’t want Viktor to think he’s overstepped—Viktor could never overstep. Jayce would give him anything he wanted; Jayce wants to give him everything he could ever want. He tries to give him this. “I…have trouble sleeping.” He swallows, looks into the dark swirl of his tea. “And…”
Viktor waits.
Jayce can’t say it. Can’t explain it. The urge—no, the need—to keep going, past his breaking point, over and over again. The way he throws himself against the rocks of his own ambition until he is bloody, raw. The greedy thing that lives inside him—a great gaping maw—always hungry, always empty, always spurring him on. Everything else becomes secondary: his appetite, his sleep, his health. His relationships.
It’s this last point that terrifies him. A month ago he’d told Mel Medarda, No, he’s my new partner, and he’d meant it. But he's already fucking it up, isn’t he? Already, he can feel the tide drawing back, the empty, barren coast of himself exposed once more, and Viktor, Viktor his partner, Viktor his friend, gods, he hopes they’re friends—
Viktor didn’t sign up for this. He signed up for a chance to make the world a better place, for magic and light, not—whatever this is. Whatever Jayce is.
“I—” Jayce chokes out, and fuck, Viktor won’t want to work with him anymore, not after seeing him like this. He needs to rein in it; needs to get himself under control, Talis, what the fuck is wrong with you—?
A hand on his knee. The world narrows down to it, to the warm press of Viktor’s palm. Jayce can feel every one of his fingers.
“Jayce,” Viktor says, not quite a command, but low and firm all the same. “Breathe.”
Jayce realizes his chest is heaving, that he’s gasping.
“I—” he says again. “I’m sorry—You shouldn’t—” The room is spinning. “—I should—You should go—”
Viktor’s hand is still on Jayce’s knee; he squeezes. Jayce gasps, his fingers spasming around his mug. Viktor takes it from him and places it on the low table in front of the couch, then takes Jayce’s hand. “I’m not going anywhere, Jayce,” he says. It sounds like a promise. It sounds, impossibly, like he means it. “Breathe with me?” He draws Jayce’s arm forward. He places Jayce’s palm on his chest.
Beneath his hand, beneath the soft vest and cravat, Jayce feels the warmth of Viktor’s chest. He feels the rise and fall of him, the steadiness of his breathing—in, out. In, out.
Jayce tries to follow, lets Viktor hold his hand firm, just below the hollow of his throat. Viktor’s eyes never leave him, an anchor. Jayce is still spinning, but it’s a controlled fall, now. Beneath his palm, he feels the strong beat of Viktor’s heart.
“That’s it,” Viktor murmurs. Jayce breathes. In and out. In, out. In. “Good.” Out.
Good.
Viktor says he is good.
Jayce breathes.
Eventually, Viktor lets go of his wrist. Jayce keeps his hand on Viktor’s chest, fingers slightly curled to clutch at his shirt. His head bows; he feels himself tip forward. He takes another deep breath, and finally, finally, he feels it—the exhaustion.
It hits him hard, a physical thing; it leaves him gasping and winded, his body one long bruise.
When he looks up, he sees Viktor looking back at him, and he can’t help it. He pitches forward, into his chest. Viktor catches him, his arms coming up around his shoulders to hold him steady. He strokes Jayce’s back like a lover.
They’ve known each other a month. Jayce has never felt more unraveled, more loose-limbed and pliant, more undone, in his life.
“Would you like to rest for a bit, Jayce?” Viktor keeps saying Jayce’s name like that—all soft and quiet. Jayce has never wanted to weep at the sound of his own name before, but he does now.
“Yes,” he whispers. He pulls back a little. “If that’s okay?”
Viktor nods. “Yes, Jayce. It’s more than okay.”
Jayce trembles. Permission granted. It’s like a weight has been lifted off his shoulders. “I’ll just—” With shaking hands, he reaches for the blanket he’d brought in earlier this month, when they’d brought in the couch. “Could you wake me up in half an hour?”
Viktor frowns. “No,” he says. “No, I have a better idea.” He stands, and Jayce feels his absence immediately, turning his head to watch him collect his cane and walk to his desk. He opens a drawer and draws out a book.
“When I was young,” he says as he walks back. “My mother would read to me when I couldn’t sleep.” He sits beside Jayce. “Would you…” For a moment, he looks almost unsure, which is strange. Viktor is always so sure of himself; Jayce can’t imagine why he would hesitate now. “Would you like if I did the same?”
Jayce nearly sobs. “Yes,” he says. Rest. He can rest. His voice becomes a whisper. “Yes, please.”
Viktor’s face softens. “You may, ah,” he says, taking a pillow and placing it across his lap, gesturing a little awkwardly. Dear, he is so dear. “If you would like.”
Jayce can hardly believe it, his luck. Slowly, he lays his head down. As if on instinct, Viktor immediately threads his fingers through his hair with one hand, and cracks open the book with the other. It feels far more comfortable than it has any right to.
Jayce should feel shame. He is a grown man, and Viktor is his colleague. They have only a few weeks to finish this grant proposal, so they can sell Hextech, so they can give magic to the people, so Jayce can do what he’d always dreamed of since he was a boy.
If he can’t do that, then what good is he? What purpose does he serve?
Viktor begins to read. It’s a novel, from the sound of it, and he starts somewhere in the middle, perhaps where he’d last left off. Jayce doesn’t mind; likes it, in fact. He likes the casual intimacy of it, likes how Viktor doesn’t feel the need to double back for him.
Maybe that’s why we work so well together, Jayce thinks, his eyelids drooping. We meet each other where we are.
“Thank you,” he murmurs.
Viktor’s hand stills. He shifts the book to peer down at Jayce. Several emotions flash across his face in quick succession, too fast to fully make out. Something like understanding, a curiosity finally sated. Then, perhaps—anger, then sadness, and then, finally, a fierceness Jayce has never seen before. It’s similar to the night they met, now tempered by softness. It furrows his eyebrows, burns in his eyes.
“You do not need to thank me, Jayce,” he says, looking back to his book. “We are…partners.”
It’s the first time he’s said it out loud. The inner voice returns, pleased, pure tone; something in Jayce sings.
Viktor isn’t leaving, and Jayce hasn’t squandered his chance. He’ll get to rest for just a moment here, and then, as he always does, start again.
And for the first time in his life, he won’t have to do it alone.
Jayce smiles sleepily. He closes his eyes and turns his face inward to Viktor’s stomach. Nuzzling, just a little. “Yeah, V,” he mumbles, already slipping away. “Partners.”
Viktor hums.
Lulled by the sound of Viktor’s voice, Jayce finally falls asleep.