#academy dorks era jayvik

[linddzz]

I intended to write out ONE scene for the early days of Team Hextech, but these dweebs completely derailed me into an entirely different scene by establishing nicknames.

So here's a teaser of sorts for the wider fic @amahhi and I are working on, which is going to be snapshots through their years together and also a way for me to shove every Jayvik meta I have into one manifesto.

Stage 1: let me sell you on the whole nickname thing with Academy Dorks. Pure pre-relationship fluff and dork4dork energy. Nothing bad is ever gonna happen to these cuties.

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It is surprising, how easily things come together.

Surprising in how Viktor has now been around Jayce Talis for over 72 hours (it is currently at 79) and he has, at no point, felt an urge to knock Jayce out with a sharp swing to the back of the head so that Viktor could have a moment to himself. Surprising in the fact that he is not actually surprised by this. Nothing could surprise him now, when the euphoria fills his veins like nothing he's known before. 

There is the magic. Of course there's the magic. The blue glow like a lightning flash caught behind his eyes and burned forever into his mind. There could not be anything but the magic now. Yet it was everything else that came with the magic as well. The freshly assigned lab that is, truthfully, hardly more than an old office with the furniture shoved out of it. The chalkboard being pilfered from the library in the middle of the night, because the single pathetic one the lab came with was a joke. 

There is Jayce. Jayce, who is the magic, the spark, the surge of life and energy. Jayce laughing in little hitched noises that his stifling only turns into absurd wheezing, because they couldn't fit the stolen chalkboard out of the library at first, not until Viktor made him knock the whole thing over so they could remove the wheels. Which, of course, had to be put back on immediately after they got the thing through the doors.

"We're going to end up exiled anyway after this." Jayce whispered far too loudly, sitting on the wet stone of the Academy courtyard, fully illuminated by a street lamp to screw the wheels back on because Viktor's flashlight flickered dark after five minutes.

"Fine." Viktor hisses back, "at least we will have an actual chalkboard." Which is a nothing statement, but it makes Jayce curl in on himself with another fit of little hiccuping giggles, so that's alright.

"I don't think they'll let us take the board, V."

That causes Viktor to pause for approximately half a second, considering. "Is that a nickname?"

The little hitching laughs stop, which is a shame. Jayce clears his throat and goes back to tightening the wheel in place. "Uh. I guess? Sorry, is that ok?"

"You misunderstand. I've never been given a nickname before." Viktor taps his fingers on his cane, looking up at nothing as he examines how he feels about getting his first nickname.

"Oh yeah?" He can't tell if Jayce is secretly pitying him or not, but it doesn't sound like he is. "What do you think of it?"

Viktor tilts his head one way, and then another, feeling his face pull into a grimace. He doesn't want to accidentally hurt Jayce's feelings, but he does not think that insincerely given adoration of the nickname would be a good early mark for the relationship. 

He intends on keeping himself in Jayce's life for however long his own lasts, by any means necessary. It's going to be a learning curve, figuring out how to have someone like him for that long, but he doesn't think lying or even stretching the truth is how he should accomplish this goal.

"Woah," Jayce says, and when Viktor looks down the other man is sitting, ass still fully on the wet paving stones, staring up at Viktor with sincere fascination and the beginnings of a grin. "You really hate that, huh?"

"No." He doesn't. Which he doesn't realize until he says so, but it's true, he doesn't hate it. "I am still deciding, don't rush me."

"Don't tell me you're grading my nicknames, V." Jayce huffs, and he shuffles himself through a puddle to get the last wheel on the last leg of their stolen goods. "I'm gonna have a panic attack over nicknames. And then I'm gonna have nightmares about the fact that I had a panic attack over a nickname, instead of over stealing Academy property. Hey. How come I've done more crimes in three days with you than I ever had in my life?"

"That seems like it is your problem." Viktor points out, leaning with both hands on his cane now, watching some curls of mist under the street lamp as he continues mulling over his first nickname. It's been given to him by Jayce Talis, who gave Viktor magic and who is now soaking his ass on the ground so that Viktor can have a better chalkboard. It seems a small price to pay.

"Yes." He decides, nodding. "It's fine."

"That sounds like one ringing endorsement."

"You wanted my opinion. Honestly? It eh, lacks creativity."

"What did I say about grading my nicknames?"

"Plural? No no, you get one."

"Hardass." Jayce grumbles, pulling first himself and then the chalkboard back up with little effort. Which is impressive, as it is not a small board. "What about me?"

"Hm?" Viktor is already moving, tugging the board around to make sure the wheels are all even.

"Come on, fair's fair. What's my nickname?" 

When Viktor looks up - intending to point out that making a nickname for a name which is already a single syllable is counterintuitive - Jayce is at the other end of the board, grinning a blinding and crooked grin. His hair is a mess, with the mist depositing little gleaming drops of diamonds against the black. There's an eagerness, nearly a hunger, in his bright hazel eyes as he waits for Viktor's nickname. All of that, beaming at him from the other side of the board that Jayce agreed to steal at an obscene hour of the night for him. There are dimples.

"Lásko." He says, as naturally as a heartbeat, as easily as blinking. It's hardly a revelation for him. Viktor has already spent 77 of the past 79 hours reconfiguring his ideological stances on the concept of soulmates. 

Jayce snorts, his grin falling, but not into a shocked disgust or even displeasure at the foreign sound. Instead, he sets his formidable jawline forward and pouts.

"I want a do over. That sounds so much cooler." He groans.

Ask me what it means. 

Scratch that. Do not ask me that. However long one is supposed to wait before saying love, I am sure that I am under that mark. 

"No do overs. Even I know that about nicknames."

"You don't make the nickname rules! You never even had one before!"

"No do overs."

"Ok! Fine! Congrats on being stuck with V!"

[vhvrs]

they are beating my ass in my mind palace rn