#go forth and queue | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

tenderwatches · 2 months ago

Text

Being on the other side of this confession has a quality of… not lightness, exactly, but relief. ‘Sometimes, you need to get through the pain to heal.’ He’s beginning to understand what Vi was getting at. He takes a deep breath, holds it, and exhales slowly. As painful as Viktor’s scorn is, it’s now truth, not misunderstanding, that lies between them. He’s ready, he thinks, to own his mistakes and whatever consequences they bring. “J-Jayce—” The tone in Viktor’s voice isn’t one of anger, bitterness, or even tentative forgiveness. It sounds like panic, like pain. He hasn’t heard this in years. “Viktor?”

Chapter 16: Inescapable Entropy

When Jayce was seventeen, they’d buried his father. He still remembers the procession of mourners. Workers from the forge, business partners, friends, and family darting in and out of his memories like midges buzzing over the brackish pools of water that formed after a storm.

In that time, he’d been so painfully young, unequal to the task of being without his father so suddenly. But, after a while, reality had set in; you grow around the absence, like vines covering an abandoned house. The person you would have been with the person you lost still in your life is buried with them. Instead, you are the person you have to be in the aftermath.

He’d felt something similar when he’d settled into the after of losing Viktor in his life. He’d patched up the wound best that he could and trudged forward. Even in the months since his return, it’s felt like he’s been carrying this emptiness in him, this place that Viktor used to occupy. The facsimile of almost having it back has driven him mad.

But as he stares at the glowing, reconstructed Hexcore floating in front of him, he feels the anticipatory sense he may finally bring them together again. His adjustments to the original plans had taken him almost a week to finalise, but now, staring at the new version, he can feel the flutter of restless anxiety in his gut.

He’s not let himself think too hard about this moment. Failure in his efforts to recreate the prototype was just as likely as success. A good scientist doesn’t get ahead of themselves in assuming their work will always bear fruit—but that hasn’t stopped a burgeoning hope from coming to life in his chest.

Viktor doesn’t have the time needed for Jayce to flounder in scientific drudgery. He needs to be here, well enough to pursue new breakthroughs. He needs to be here, whole again with his work restored and Jayce at his side. The time in which these brilliant visions might be possible is growing short—Jayce can count Viktor’s recent number of good days on one hand. He’ll have to slow down soon.

It’s been a long evening of work, painstakingly setting each of his reforged pyramids into the proper location; the inspiration rune shines on the pieces now, and they undulate gently, shimmering with magic. He’s excited by the implications. What will be possible with this new version of Viktor’s original work? How will he feel to have it back in his hands?

Jayce squints out the window; it’s late, but it seems the blue light of dawn is still far off. He stands, stretching to pop the aches from his spine as he crosses to pour himself some tea from the now tepid pot. Mug clutched in his hand, he settles back onto the couch in the far corner of the lab space that occupies the upper floor. It’s cosy up here; it’s always felt personal, more like his and Viktor’s original lab.

He wonders if it will ever feel as familiar as that space had. He thinks of Viktor’s smile, wry and clever, as he tosses a joke in Jayce’s direction. They’ve been so much easier with each other as of late; it feels like that might be a possibility for them again. A future where warmth is between them always, without the subtle danger of devolving back into miserable anger.

Unbidden, the thought of his hand on Viktor’s shoulder flutters into his mind, the subtle pressure of him settling back into Jayce’s palm all those nights ago in the carriage back from the Ferros’ gathering. God, he’s agonised over that soft motion of Viktor acquiescing to the comfort of his touch so often he’s beginning to wonder if he dreamt or imagined it in his inebriation. He tosses the rest of his cup of tea back and sets the mug aside on the floor by his ankle.

There is a torch in his gut for each of the cherished memories of their hard-won closeness. He unbuttons his lab coat, feeling the cool on his chest like a kiss of relief. He tips his head back, eyes drifting softly closed. The night comes back to him in a flood—champagne and darkness, air hazy with desire. Viktor’s presence beside him, enclosed, intimate. His fingers tremble with possibility; what if he’d let his touch linger? What if he’d worked the tension from Viktor’s leg until his winces of pain turned into soft sighs? What if those brief points of contact had been allowed to multiply, to grow into something more?

Something that might be guilt or shame licks at the edges of his consciousness, but his sleepless hours weigh him back down into the world of blended imaginings and memory. In it, he lets his hand run from Viktor’s knee to his thigh, pressing between the brackets of his brace to feel the tender skin jump under the ghosting of his touch.

His blood races through his veins at the possibility, the thought—if he could have moved to settle down between Viktor’s parted thighs, pressing them wider to accommodate the span of his shoulders, he would have slid a palm up his chest to rest over the rapid beating of his heart. He’d have lifted himself up onto his knees to allow his hand to move up Viktor’s body, higher and higher, fingers gliding up the delicate column of his throat. His touch would shift behind him to curl at the fragile bones making up the apex of his spine.

He would let his fingers dip low beneath Viktor’s collar, ghost over the metalwork of his spinal fusion. He’s only seen it once before, long before it was well-healed, but he knows he’d be fascinated by the conflicting sensation of slick metal and soft skin. These are signs of Viktor still fighting, an indomitable core in him that never gives in to the creep of his disease, steel in flesh and spirit.

He’d let his touch linger there just a moment, tracing the edges of the top bolt with reverence before letting himself move his hand up, his broad palm cradling the back of Viktor’s skull. He’s sure he’d find an ache of tension there that his fingers could knead out, attending to it until the tight creases of pain leave his partner’s face.

Viktor might breathe his name like a sigh, even reach a hand out in return. A sharp pang of desire shoots through his body at the imagined pressure of fingers under his jaw, reeling him in closer. It should be a nervous moment, a new closeness between them that crosses lines they never have dared to before. But in his mind it’s easy, as everything between them always should be. Viktor’s hands on his face are firm and certain, in the way he is when he’s working on machinery. Viktor wouldn’t hesitate; he never does.

There is a strength in him that Jayce wants to curl inside of and make himself a home within it. He wants to be that for Viktor as well, something solid to crash into when everything becomes too much. He can imagine how his grip might tighten in the unruly auburn mess of Viktor’s hair, every finger conveying the weight of his longing.

Their movements would brim with chaotic inevitability, an inescapable entropy. He’d enfold his partner into his arms, pulling Viktor against him, chest pressed tightly to his partner’s abdomen. He imagines feeling the ridges of Viktor’s brace beneath his clothes. He’d be caught somewhere between awe and urgency at the mesmerising pressure of Viktor’s hand on his skin. They would be so close by then—so close that when he’d tighten his grip on his partner’s body, Jayce would be able to drink in the subtle hitch of Viktor’s breathing and the way the other man would melt against him.

That clever hand would slide down the length of Jayce’s jaw, answering his furious need for closeness. Now, alone, Jayce lifts his own hand to his throat, pressing against the tender skin above his pulse—imagining where he would let Viktor’s touch linger, hot as a brand against him. He presses the pad of his thumb against his lower lip, pulling hard against it, feeling the demand of his vivid mental creation of Viktor.

Jayce can’t imagine any response but to submit with the gentle parting of his lips. His own hand moves in concert with his fantasy, his fingers too broad and calloused from the forge to pass for his partner’s elegant hands, but enough to ease his desperation to feel something real.

He pictures the pleased smile it sparks in Viktor’s gold eyes as he traces the thumb back and forth against his slack mouth in a gesture that feels like ownership. A shudder moves through Jayce’s body at the image—an unspoken question in the heat of that touch.

Yes, he thinks to himself, blurry with the heat of the fantasy. Yes, kiss me.

He falls asleep to the imagined pressure of lips on his own, and nothing has ever felt so perfect.

—·—

“Jayce?”

The voice that wakes him from his sleep is Viktor’s.

Afterimages of Viktor in his arms, hands on his face, and lips on his own hold him down. As he blinks slowly into awareness, he almost expects to crack his eyes open to find them still tight against one another.

Instead, the glare of early sunlight greets him, revealing Viktor across the room. He’s far from Jayce, but only steps away from the still softly undulating Hexcore prototype. He leans heavily on his crutch, but his free hand clutches copies of the notes Jayce has been referencing.

“What… is this?”

Jayce opens his mouth to speak, but his throat is parched; he closes it again to try and compose himself so he might produce a sound that isn’t the pathetic dry click he makes as he swallows, but nothing happens.

“These are my notes.” Viktor’s eyes tear across the pages. He’s breathing heavily, panting almost, from just the trip to the lab and up the stairs. His breaths are ragged pulls of air. When he turns his head to cough slightly, it’s a wet sound, like a man shaking off a near-drowning. “This is the Hexcore,” he concludes, looking at the assembled prototype for a few moments. His tone isn’t awe or even malice, but the oddly detached note in it opens a pit in Jayce’s stomach. Something in this moment isn’t right; there is a discordant quality to them that feels like the beginning of another disaster.

Jayce stands quickly; his jacket is still unbuttoned, he’s unshaven and aching from sleeping slumped on a sofa. There’s a storm brewing in Viktor, too far away to stop but too close to run from. He grapples for words that might offer him harbour in composure, but Viktor continues, “This is what you’ve been working on.” The words are quiet. His heart sinks. With Viktor, quiet means dangerous; quiet is an outrage hot enough to boil water out of the air. “Of course,” the other man murmurs, closing his eyes and turning away, as if he can’t stand the sight of Jayce’s face.

Jayce is desperate to break through to him but can only manage a disjointed response. “Yes—yes, this is what I’ve been—I am working on.” The moment is all wrong. The confession feels incomplete, like he’s admitting something shameful instead of sharing the result of two years of his dedication to Viktor’s vision. The discordance in their interactions that has been fading in recent weeks is springing back to life. He’s terrified of what that might mean.

Viktor still doesn’t seem capable of looking at Jayce as he confirms this fact. He drags in ragged breaths as he stands there, processing, a slight sway to his frame. “After everything, Jayce, everything you took from me. You would take this too,” he spits out in a voice that’s broken with cold rage.

“I—what? Viktor, no,” he begins, stepping towards him only to have Viktor turn back and throw his old notebook to the floor. It lands between them with a resounding thwack, lying there like an issued challenge.

“Take it, then. Since there is nothing of mine apparently that does not belong to you—my work, the years of my life I spent here, my—” He breaks off to cough, the force of it violent now, and Jayce longs to go to him but knows proximity will only make this worse. Instead, he holds his hands out, palms up in appeasement, and wills himself to be calm.

“If you would just let me speak, I swear I can explain.” He keeps his tone gentle, invoking sense rather than pleading.

Viktor’s hands tremble violently, his weight sagging against the crutch. Painful spasms wrack his thin chest, and Jayce can see how the hours of coughing have worn him down—he’s haggard and lethargic. Yet Viktor presses on, dragging in several wheezing breaths as he fixes Jayce with a steely glare.

“I’m sure you can. But why should I let you? So you can—” He breaks off, winded for a second before he can continue. “What? Tell me more lies? Spin me more poetry about how you’ve changed?”

The argument is spiralling out of control, each passing statement pushing them further from reason. “I swear to you, Viktor, I have.”

“And why should I believe you?” Viktor’s words leap out with a bitter, cold hiss. Jayce realises too late that defensiveness won’t help him here. Viktor’s eyes cut over to the window, brimming with fury as he traces each glittering rooftop of the skyline outside. “What makes you different from everyone else up here?” This second inquiry has a dazed quality, as if he might be musing to himself more than addressing Jayce. His focus wavers and his anger slips as another fit of coughing overtakes him. Scrambling fingers pull a handkerchief from his vest pocket, and he presses it against his lips before Jayce takes another tentative step towards him. This snaps Viktor back to alertness. He eyes Jayce as one might prepare for the charge of an angry bull.

“You need to listen to me, please.” Jayce is begging now. He’ll get down on his knees if it means Viktor will hear him out.

“I need to stop listening,” Viktor retorts, and his hand balls into a fist, crushing the linen of his handkerchief within. “I need to stop hearing you out, stop questioning myself when I know—I know what the people up here think of me.” There’s a quiver in his voice.

To those who don’t know him well, the break in his fury would be imperceptible—but Jayce does know him. Jayce knows him well enough to see a crack that might break open with the right gentle encouragement. Jayce knows him well enough to see he’s hurting, something old and agonising that Jayce is prising open.

“I am an idiot.” Viktor discards both the words and his handkerchief with equal disdain. The kerchief falls limply to the desk beside the glowing Hexcore, and Jayce fights the urge to retrieve it, to fold it carefully in both hands as a peace offering. “I keep falling for this, falling for you.” Viktor pinches the bridge of his nose between shaking fingers, struggling to focus. He sways on his feet, and Jayce notices the sheen of sweat glistening on his skin.

“Please, just sit down.” Jayce takes a half step forward, hands raised. “Let me explain—”

“Explain? No.” Viktor’s derisive laugh fractures into a wet cough that he fails to suppress. It tears Jayce apart to see his partner so obviously struggling. “No more of your apologies or logic about progress and necessity. That you had to have me thrown out—”

“It’s not about any of that!” Jayce can’t take it. The accusation hurts more than he thought it might. He cuts across the building tirade with desperate urgency. “When have I ever tried to take credit for your work?”

“What about the 200th Progress Day?” Viktor’s voice drops to something dangerous as he takes an unsteady step forward before he stops. His knuckles whiten on his crutch. “Our Hexgate blueprints, printed on every pamphlet. Your name alone, emblazoned across our work.”

Jayce’s blood runs cold. That whole day remains a blur—the rush of being asked to give the big speech, his deliberations over Heimerdinger’s cautionary advice. He can’t even recall what the pamphlets looked like.

“Where was my name then, Jayce?” Viktor’s words come slower now, each one deliberate despite his laboured breathing. “Where were you, the great defender of our legacy?”

“I didn’t—” Jayce’s throat closes around the words. He feels terribly small. These angry revelations are painful, but he recognises them as the price of his ignorance come to collect. “I didn’t know.”

“No, you wouldn’t, would you?” Viktor says with a cruel approximation of humour. “Always a friend, a confidant, always concerned—and oh so guilty when you know you’ve done wrong.” His face has grown so pale it appears almost blue in the lab’s overhead light. “Is that why you did it? Brought me up to Piltover after I collapsed? You couldn’t stomach the outcome of what you did?” The accusation ends in another series of shuddering coughs and ragged, wheezing breaths.

“I did that because I cared about you; I still do, Viktor.” The response is feeble, but it’s all he can summon. Guilt had been a part of it, but not as Viktor means—not as some way to hide from his own shame. He simply couldn’t bear the thought of Viktor suffering alone in the Undercity, lungs ravaged, perhaps collapsed in some dim alley where no one would find him. The image had haunted him: Viktor’s laboured breathing growing weaker, his brilliant mind fading into delirium while the acrid smoke of the chemical fog crept ever closer. Even now, the mere thought of it makes Jayce’s chest constrict with a phantom pain.

“Keep it,” Viktor says viciously, and Jayce clenches his fists at his sides. He stares at his boots, teeth gritted against his surging frustration. He hates this—hates the mess he’s made of everything. The hope of their work together, the possibility of reconciliation—it all feels impossible again. “Your concern is better off serving the people up here.”

He hears the clack of Viktor’s cane and glances up to find him walking back towards the workstation, his gold eyes fixed on the spinning Hexcore. Turned away, all Jayce can see is the desperate rise and fall of Viktor’s shoulders trying to drag in deeper breaths.

“I should have stayed down there, choked to death in the gutter; at least it was a death that would have granted me more dignity than falling for more of your promises.” Viktor speaks quietly, more to himself than Jayce, but the words cut keen and sharp as a scalpel.

“Stop, please.” Jayce’s voice comes out wretched, tangled with guilt and shame and the awful hurt rising in his chest at Viktor’s bitter words. “Stop saying things like that. I didn’t lie to you; I’m not making excuses.”

Over the last month, when they were making progress, making what felt like amends—what else could he have done to prove this? Could he have made it more clear how much he admired Viktor’s mind and respected his work? Should he have spoken more firmly to acknowledge his mistakes so Viktor wouldn’t think him this selfish? That this moment stands so far from the reconciliation he’d dreamed of feels like punishment—like he hasn’t done everything possible to make this right.

“I do care,” he pleads, nearly surrendering to the urge to go to the floor before Viktor and beseech him. “I always have.”

Viktor shakes his head with a scoff. Jayce wants to lay bare everything he’s been thinking—all the questions this disaster has raised about the things he’s been taught, the systems he’s perpetuated by being stupidly unaware. Perhaps if he had seen the breadth between their experiences sooner, he could have done something to evolve his mindset, and Viktor would see his actions for what they are—desperate attempts to atone. “I’m not without reason for shame or guilt. I made mistakes, Viktor. I’m sorry that I wasn’t better. That I didn’t do more for you.” All he has are thin, insufficient words.

“Stop apologising.” Viktor wrenches himself around, the motion making him veer dangerously to one side. He lands hard on his bad leg, and the resulting wince ripples through his entire body. He takes a shaking hand from his crutch to dig into the muscle of his thigh, brow furrowed with the pain he’s trying to convince away. “Stop telling me about all these things you do so you can sleep at night, Jayce.”

“Then stop ignoring what’s staring at you in the face, Viktor!”

Jayce is trying and failing to keep his voice level. He draws a deep, calming breath and continues in a tone he hopes will broker peace. “I did this for you. This work, the Hexcore, all of it! I recovered it for you—because you’re right, I made everything a mess. I was a fool who trusted people like the damn ethics committee or the council to be honest and fair.”

“Oh, so you did it for my benefit then? My hero?” Viktor’s bitterness might be justified, but the frustration of it burns in Jayce’s gut. The slight shake of his shoulders from earlier has morphed to full-body tremors, and Jayce wishes he would heed the advice to sit down.

Don’t be defensive, he reminds himself. “Fine, yes, mock me; I deserve it,” he concedes, forcing down his irritation. Viktor has every right to feel wronged; what matters is finally giving him the truth he’s deserved. Jayce steels himself with a deep breath, fortifying himself to accomplish at least this, if nothing else. “I get it—I’m stupidly naive—but I couldn’t watch you keep working yourself into a grave even when I begged you to slow down. So, yes, I went to them. I thought it would be a few weeks of some bureaucratic review, and then you’d be back at our lab, no worse than bitter about being forced into a break.

“What—” Viktor tries to interject, but Jayce barrels onwards, rushing to get this all out now that he’s started. If there has to be a fight, let them fight about the truth.

“I didn’t know—I didn’t know what they were doing.” The admission offers no absolution; it’s a paltry reason, but at least it’s an alternative to the malice Viktor ascribed to him. “I’d stepped down from the council by then, so I didn’t even have a warning it was coming. I’d been planning to focus more on work in the lab, so you could get better without feeling like things were falling behind.” Viktor is ghost-pale now, his gold eyes wide and searching. “By the time I figured it out, you were gone.”

“You… what? What are you talking—” Viktor begins drowsily, but another brutal series of coughs cuts him off. He scrambles for the discarded handkerchief, then, realising it’s out of reach, stoops forward to cover the coughs in the crook of his arm. When he looks back up at Jayce, blinking tears from his eyes from the sheer force of his coughing, his expression is one of utter shock.

“I tried, Viktor.” Jayce presses his advantage. “I tried from the second I realised what happened, but they wouldn’t listen to me.” He grips the open front of his lab coat, crushing the fabric in his fists like he can stifle his desire to cross the divide between them and put his hands on Viktor’s skin. “I begged them every day for months to overturn it, but they ran me in circles to avoid dealing with it.”

“I—Jayce—”

Viktor’s voice has lost its edge. He presses a hand to his shuddering chest, blinking slowly as if struggling to process the words. It’s nearly all in the open now, and Jayce can’t force himself to slow down. “So it’s fine; it’s fine if you hate me for being a fool,” he asserts, words tumbling on top of each other as he pleads with his partner to understand. “You have to see it—I didn’t make the right choices, but I never intended to push you out or steal your work.” His eyes drop to the journal still lying abandoned between them, spine turned upwards, pages bent like broken limbs. “Maybe that’s not enough of a distinction for you.” He hears nothing but Viktor’s ragged, wet breaths in the space between them; he’s too afraid to even look up. Too afraid that what he sees will stop him. “But I need you to know the truth. If you hate me still afterwards, then at least it will be for the right reasons.”

“J-Jayce—”

The tone in Viktor’s voice isn’t one of anger, bitterness, or even tentative forgiveness.

It sounds like panic, like pain.

He hasn’t heard this in years.

“Viktor?”

The scene unfolds before him like a distant waking terror. Viktor stands still as the grave, other than the tremors that now audibly chatter his teeth. Something about the way he can see Viktor’s throat working, the way his chest seems to hollow out with each shallow breath, sets off sirens in Jayce’s head. This isn’t like his usual fits—as much as they have been worsening lately, this is something different—something bad. “V? What’s wrong?”

Jayce steps forward, but as he moves, Viktor’s coughing kicks up again, violent enough that his crutch slides from under his arm. It hits the ground with a sharp crack that echoes through the lab. His body slams hard against the workstation as he staggers rather than catching himself on it. The Hexcore shudders behind him, illuminating him in a pulsing halo of magic.

The coughs tear through Viktor, wet and brutal, his muscles taut with pain. Blood sputters from his mouth and nose, past the trembling hand at his lips. His palm slips on the tabletop, leaving a stark slash of scarlet. Above it, the Hexcore glimmers, tendrils of light reaching like curious fingers toward the bloodied mark—but Jayce barely registers this as Viktor’s eyes meet his, wide with primal fear.

“I… I can’t breathe—”

Jayce’s attention snaps back—his partner’s face has gone chalk-white, making it apparent that his earlier impression of Viktor going a bit blue was not just the light. Jayce can’t move. He only just glimpses a fleeting plea in Viktor’s expression as his eyes roll back and his legs give out from beneath him. By the time Jayce breaks free of the horror rooting him to the spot, Viktor is falling.

“Viktor!” Jayce shouts, or thinks he does. It’s hard to say if he manages words or if what’s ripped from him is just raw emotion. He drops to his knees, gathering Viktor from the floor as if he can fix this by touch alone.

That’s how it’s always been when they come together—bringing the impossible to life, building impossible futures—but nothing comes to him as he pulls Viktor close. “Hey, hey, Viktor—” Just having Viktor in his arms feels better, but his impotence mocks him. He can do nothing but shift Viktor’s frame to rest across his thighs where he kneels on the floor. He cups a palm at the base of Viktor’s skull, keeping his head from lolling back. It’s a cruel reality that it mirrors last night’s fantasy of his hand in Viktor’s hair.

Viktor’s eyes are closed, his face slack, blood under his nose and frothing at the corners of his lips. His breaths rasp and spasm like wet sandpaper dragging across rough stones. Jayce shatters at the suffering, but at least it signals that there’s still time. There has to be. “Please, V—”

Viktor doesn’t respond—can’t—his lips are cyanotic, blue petals parting silently to draw breath, but there’s nothing. His fingers are feeble where they seek purchase against Jayce’s coat as he fights for oxygen. Acid burns in Jayce’s chest, a bubble of panic and terror expanding. He hefts Viktor upright, soothing a hand down his spine, trying to clear whatever blocks his airways, but to no avail.

“Please, please—” He guides Viktor’s face up to look into his eyes, but the astute clarity he usually finds there is gone, gaze unfocused as weak eyelids flutter. “No, no, no—don’t do this to me!”

Jayce is overwrought with the need to take this horror into his own body and weather it instead. The urge to scream and beg threatens to ruin him, break him down until he’s nothing but bedding for Viktor to lie in. But that won’t do them any good.

Viktor needs Jayce to act, not fall apart.

Jayce lifts him from the floor, the movement triggering another series of coughs that wrack Viktor’s frail skeleton. His partner groans, more blood bubbling at his lips until it sluggishly drips onto the white fabric of Jayce’s lab coat. He bolts into the hallway, clutching the other man’s form tight to his chest as he takes the stairs two at a time. Viktor is so still.

Gleaming in his peripheral vision, the Hexcore’s tendrils of light seem to wave farewell as they flee. A single drop of blood hangs before it, suspended like a tiny planet.

None of it matters now. Jayce only hears echoes on echoes of the same thought: Viktor is still alive—Viktor is still alive, and there is nothing he won’t do to keep it that way.

[first chapter | previous chapter | next chapter on AO3]

16 notes · View notes