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Language:
English
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Published:
2024-12-30
Words:
1,120
Chapters:
1/1
Comments:
31
Kudos:
248
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40
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4,724

Firm Warning, Soft Goodbye

Summary:

Jayce has a moment with a Viktor he has long since lost.

Notes:

I see we keep putting Jayce in the lab after his no-good-very-bad field trip, I had to give it a shot!

Work Text:

You arrive in a flash of light, a prickle of energy that runs through the lab like a shiver. You move like you weigh tenfold what you should, and maybe you do; you rest the hammer acting as your anchor on the floor, its warped edges wrong in this space made of clean lines and right angles, the ozone tang of it sharp against the soft anise and oil smell of the room. You breathe it in like perfume; it has been so long since you were last here. You take time you don’t have–just a moment of it–to commit it to memory, the peace and soft dimness of the place you have most considered home . 

It is a moment before you realize you’re not alone in the room, though its other occupant seems to not register your presence, asleep at the desk. Viktor, but not your Viktor, still soft and human, cheek pressed into thin forearms crossed over scattered piles of notes. You move closer, hammer left behind. Brush rough, gentle fingers over unkempt hair, the curve of an ear, the dark blemish on an upturned cheek. Viktor (not your Viktor) shudders under your touch, brow furrowing. Turns into it, ever so slightly. 

To keep yourself from doing something rash, you glance at the notes splayed across the desk. Hexgate schematics, early drafts. Runes for translocation, stasis, acceleration…like the one embedded in your wrist, an oath. 

You startle at bleary fingers grazing the corrupted flesh there, somehow oversensitive yet lacking the nerves to truly feel. You glance down, to my heavy-lidded eyes, taking in the sight of you (not my Jayce). You’re still beautiful, even more so in some ways, the roughness of you novel compared to my smooth, clean-cut partner. I’m struck by the same impulse to touch the corner of your mouth that I always am, to test the texture of your beard against my hypothesis of the texture of your five-o-clock shadow. I don’t. I never do. I just watch, fingertips ghosting over the promise you made, and wait. 

Your eyes fill with tears and you let them fall freely, more freely than I’ve ever seen, and that gets me to move, unwinding my body so I can reach for your face, seeing the longing I’ve long since quieted in my own chest reflected in your eyes. My thumb finds the crows feet at the corner of them, new to me. The chapped skin along your cheekbone, wet with tears whose tracks I follow down your unusually hollow cheeks, your beard coarse under my fingertips. You press your face into my hands, releasing the grief you’ve swallowed, and I catch it in my palms. More than anything I want to taste it in my mouth, but I won’t. I never will. 

(You are not my Jayce.)

I let you pull me into your arms, press your forehead to mine like you know what it means. I bottle your sorrow with mine, something to pull out in solitude and turn over in my hands when it becomes too much to bear. I’ll remember this when Jayce (my Jayce) returns to the lab later, shining with gilt and champagne, fizzing with ideas to stabilize the teleportation trajectory. But for now it’s only you, falling apart in my hands. 

“Tell me,” I say, when your tears slow. You shift, press your lips to my forehead, and the sensation runs down my spine like syrup. You take your time, weighing the things you have to say. 

“Your lungs,” you finally decide. “It’s not…a cold. Or pneumonia. You need…”

My breath catches, an awareness of the organs in my chest growing unpleasantly. A paranoia of exigency I haven’t indulged for years rears its head, smug. Your arms tighten.

“You have some time. To find a specialist, or…or your undercity contact. Maybe they’ll have something. Just don’t…don’t ignore it. Not this time. Please .”

“I won’t.” My lips are numb, the inside of my ribs full of broken glass as I contemplate what’s rooted there, what grows. How much time there is, before it’s truly too late. 

“The Hextech,” you continue, and your voice is full of anguish, of disbelief, at the horrors you’ve witnessed. “Destroy it. Before it destroys everything.”

I draw back from you then, and your arms seize as if to prevent it. I can’t help but drag my thumbs across your cheekbones under the want in your gaze. “Everything?”

“There’s nothing left,” you choke, “if we continue. If I can—”

“If you can what?” Thumbs, cheekbones. Pinkies on the hinge of your jaw. 

“If I think I can save you,” you whisper (a confession, a prayer), “I’ll kill us all.” 

I can see the truth of it, in your eyes, yellow gold and full of tender agony. And I know that if the circumstances were reversed, my eyes would be the same. 

There is part of me that wants it. Preens under the knowledge that you would destroy the world to save me alone. “Does it work?” I ask, not sure whether I should know. 

You don’t answer. Your eyes rove my face. The slide of fingertips on the sides of my neck, thumbs on my collarbones. Palms pressed to my shoulders, firm, soft. “Yes,” you whisper. “And no. Not really.” 

You’re not lying. You study me like you’re trying to memorize my face. 

The air crackles, imperceptibly. You wince, and my grip on your face tightens. 

“I have to go,” you say. The grief that had never truly slipped from your eyes creeps back in. My hands begin to shake, and you hesitate only briefly before darting down to press your mouth to mine. Firm. Soft. You taste like ozone, like blood. I will never recover from this kiss. “Don’t let me waste this time with you. Tell me. Tell him.” 

“I will,” I promise, and it feels as branded on my tongue as the rune in your wrist. You pry your hands from my shoulders, your breathing unsteady, eyes lined in silver. I press my thumb to the corner of your mouth. “I—” A breath. “I love you, Jayce.” 

( You are not my Jayce.) 

You sob, once. Press a kiss to my brow, your forehead to mine, fingers tangled in my hair. Whisper your broken love into the space between us. 

(I am not your Viktor.)

Then you step back, like you weigh tenfold what you should, leaving my hands empty and burning. Your grip on the hammer is harsh. Your gaze is unbearably gentle. It does not leave me until you do, in a prickle of energy that runs through the lab like a shiver, and a flash of light.