The sound of distant merriment, muffled by the floor, and the unfamiliar angle of sunlight through the window wakes him with a start and a thought: what the fuck have I done?
You moved, his logical side answers. You spent all of yesterday feeling horrible that you could only label and tape boxes, drive the truck, and pay your movers in pizza and beer. You slept fitfully, occasionally awoken by crashes and bangs and laughter, and then by Jayce coming to bed around 1 a.m. You snuggled against him, grateful for the stability; and now you are waking up in the warm dent his body has carved in his old mattress, tangled in his sheets, wrapped in his scent.
You also have a term paper due tonight. So get the fuck up and make coffee, Skinny Pete...
Obediently, Viktor sits up. His mouth tastes strange: a mix of morning breath and the remnants of Jayce's kiss. Where IS his toothbrush, anyway? He massages his face, thinking woefully of all the things he needs to complete his morning routine... all of which is still in boxes, crowding the tiny living-room of the upstairs space.
Jayce lives in an old house hastily converted by savvy landlords: apartments on each floor and a basement, a not-unfair walk from the far southern end of campus. That dubiously-nepotistic stipend from the Kirraman Foundation pays the rent for upstairs, while the denizens of downstairs scrape together each month for their share. Vi is the only one with a real job right now, and of course Cait never worries for money. Whatever Mylo does is best not examined too closely (though a sugar mommy has been jokingly mentioned before.) Claggor works part-time for campus-tier pay, and Jinx? Well, that's also best not questioned... Couch-surfers in the basement, whose possessions are hidden when the washing machine requires a professional fix, probably make up the difference.
The whole house feels like a place for players in a busy game to throw down a save-point: too manky for deep care, all its fixtures barely maintained. And yet Viktor cannot deny that the place's implacable gunk, its uneven baseboards, its gummed-up windows - whose panes rattle with laughter from below - already make it feel more like a home than a house.
Viktor had given up a coveted (but ridiculously small) bedsit on the north end of campus because the ill-maintained outdoor stairs had proven too much for his leg. A desire not to slip to his death on icy mornings had met and mixed with the lovely, lovely happenstance of landing Jayce Talis and become the new solution to his problems: "just move in with me." Jayce had suggested it so casually, and now Viktor understood why. This home was the central waypoint for so many people dear to Jayce's orbit... Of course he hadn't hesitated to want Viktor here: just about everyone else he loved was. (Even Ximena visited every few weeks, bringing big pots ofsopa and arroz con leche for all the starving college students.)
The five other residents had even helped him move - people he'd literally met yesterday.
And despite his apprehension - despite his fear that he wouldn't be able to handle living with others, given his introversion and oddities - Viktor had taken the plunge. Jayce inspired that kind of trust in him, you see.
Whether this was a good decision, though, remained to be seen.
The smell is what brings him clunking down the carpeted stairs, where no door seperates the stairwell from the first floor. Immediately to his left, Mylo is futzing with the buttons on a sputtering coffee maker while Claggor peers into the fridge. Skinny as Viktor is, the kitchen is still so small, it would be difficult for even him to squeeze past them.
Mylo's untamed eyebrows arch when he notices Viktor. "Aww, look at you!" he teases (it seems to be his default method of communication.) "Wearing your man's clothes!"
"I couldn't find mine." It's true: despite his nigh-upon obsessive labelling, five college-age movers managed to so thoroughly jumble Viktor's possessions that the "clothes" box is buried under all the books and prototypes.
"Wait, lemmee see!!"
Jayce's head pokes up over Claggor's back, eyes hungry. When he spots Viktor - drowning in an old, giant uni tee with a stretched-out neck - his smile is so beautific that being its object makes Viktor want to squirm. With great difficulty, Jayce squeezes past the boys and sweeps Viktor to his side, planting a kiss on his mussed-up hair.
"Morning, cutie."
"It's afternoon," Mylo sneers.
"And I stink," Viktor adds, pushing Jayce gently. But there's nowhere to go, so Jayce just puts another arm around him- carefully, so as not to stab him with the screwdriver he's clutching
"You must be parched. Up five minutes and no caffiene... Mylo! Status report!!"
"We're givin' 'er ool she's goot, Captain!"
"And we're out of milk!!" Jinx calls, nearly drowned out by furious drilling from the porch. Jayce sighs enormously, chest swelling against Viktor's ear.
"No we're NOT, I just bought some! EKKO!!" Jayce calls down the stairwell. "EKKO! DID YOU TAKE THE MILK?"
"RACISM," echoes back up.
"No, you have a mini-fridge and the lesbians are LACTOSE INTOLERANT!" Jayce shouts back; Viktor turns his head to hide a smile. "Bring it back, my man is DYING here!"
"I can drink black coffee, Jayce," he protests. "I won't wither..."
But no, Jayce inSISTS. Insists on waiting for Ekko, and scraping almost two spoonfuls of sugar from the nearly-empty bag, so it's just the way Viktor likes.Then Viktor is jostled into the first-floor living room, past a table covered in uncleared beer cans and pizza boxes from yesterday, and into the corner of a futon that has seen better days. Vi is wearing headphones and pecking at the keys of a desktop in the corner and Cait is sprawled on the other sofa, reviewing a print-out of some lecture notes. How she can concentrate in the epicenter of all this, Viktor has no idea. Especially with the blaring music and sparks flying in from the tiny entryway porch, where Jinx is doing... uh. Something involving a soldering iron.
The remaining pizza, cold and crusty, is divided between Mylo and Vi; Jayce is on a step-ladder, trying to re-attach the fallen ceiling light and occasionally calling for Ekko to flip the breakers downstairs. Mylo tries to bully Jinx into listening to something besides 100 gecs, which ends with him being shut in the hall closet until Vi finishes counting one-one-thousand, two-one-thousand, to fifty.
At some point one of Ekko's buddies (a hulking, artsy type with piercings seemingly everywhere they CAN be) rings the anemic doorbell.
Everyone except Viktor yells "SIDE DOOR," out of habit; the front door has been stuck for ages, and even Jayce has given up trying to fix it.
Viktor just curls up as best he can. Sips his coffee and observes. There is a whole, silent apartment upstairs, and he thought he'd prefer it. Yet he finds himself drawn down here. To where all the life is.
Jayce's huge footfalls creak across the second floor. Viktor hears him drop his toolbelt by the door and flop onto to the ottoman to remove his sneakers. He keeps his head bowed over the desk, but his pencil hovers above the paper in anticipation. Strong and sure, he thuds across the old floor, into the hall almost as wide as his shoulders, big hand around the office doorknob, and then--
"You okay?"
The greeting he uses when it's just Them - because Viktor's well-being is constantly, thoroughly on his mind.
"Of course," Viktor answers, one side of his mouth curling up. He thinks it's an awkward smile, and so hardly ever shows it. Jayce, however, thinks it's perfect. Thinks everything about him is perfect, in fact.
He sweeps over and pushes Viktor to the far side of the reclaimed piano-bench that's juuuuust the right height for this desk. Tucks Viktor so easily against him, it was like he was made to fit there; Jayce is a poster-child in many ways, but especially for touch as a love-language.
"Whatcha workin on?"
"I need to submit schematics with this assignment... Didn't notice until today."
"Are they too noisy downstairs? I can yell at them-"
"No." The gabbing and bustling has not entirely escaped Viktor's notice, of course, but all in all it's not as disruptive as he feared. "It's... Kind of nice, actually."
"Phh. You won't be saying THAT the first weekend they have all their lil friends over."
"Well
that'swhen I'll have you yell at them," he smiles. "But there's... I don't know. Even when they bicker, they're just so... alive, you know?"
Viktor is not often sentimental, so he's expecting quite the reaction. What he gets instead, though, is a hug and a huge sigh of deep relief.
"I was so worried you were gonna change your mind."
"I broke my lease. I can't."
"You know what I mean." But Viktor doesn't, and inquires via a raised eyebrow.
"I- I was scared we'd get you all moved in and it would be too much. They'd be too loud or interrupt your studies and you'd- you'd have to go and you'd hate me..." He's rambling and he knows it. Though that's never stopped him before.
"-- 'Cause I really really
reallywant you to be here when I come home. I dunno, it just makes this -
us- feel real, I guess. Does that sound crazy? Probably... Yeah, definitely. Sorry."
Viktor puts down the pencil; clutches the strong arm around him. Jayce has felt like the most constant thing in his world since undergrad, second only to his work. Even the doubt inside of him - a bottomless well of hurt and suspicion, at times - could not overpower his dedication to either.See AlsoWhat Is Desoldering Wick and When Should You Use It? - UMA TechnologyLead-Free Solder: Safe Practices and Recycling Benefits for PlumbersProject 3459X, building high-end DMM by using scrap 3458A parts
It had seemed like a natural dichotomy: academia was the safe place where his mind could roost, and Jayce would be where his body could. The only thing Viktor feared could ruin that was himself... His stubbornness. His fixations. The person he became when the pain grated for days on end, or when something wasn't working out the way he desperately needed it to.
They'd dreamed once before, successfully: dreamed of a technology so revolutionary, it seemed more like magic than grounded science. They'd made it a reality through quotidian tools: math, physics, mechanics. Now they were their departments' darlings, PHD students their advisors had fought over. Viktor had come a long, long way from his humble beginnings; and yet the creature he'd been born, imperfect and troublesome, seemed to dog every dream he'd ever dared have... Why should his dream of a life with Jayce (and all the people Jayce loved) be any different?
"I... I'm worried they'llhate me," he confesses.
Jayce had seen him at his worst, for sure - sick, short-tempered, desperate and terrified of dying before he did any good in the world. But what about their housemates, who meant so much to Jayce? Could anyone who didn't love as ardently, as selflessly, as him really put up with Viktor?
"Don't be stupid. You bought them pizza. They'd
diefor you now."
Viktor clucks - his babushka noise, Jayce calls it. "Oh yes, off on the right foot... But what about the rest of it, Jayce? What about my--"
"I said," Jayce cut him off, scooping his face up between both hands and turning it gently towards his, "don't be stupid. Everything about you is an inseperable part of the guy I love. And if someone can't deal with a little part of you, well... Then they're gonna have to deal with me."
He wrinkles his nose seriously. Squishes Viktor's face a bit. And that does it: Viktor can no longer keep a straight face. Cheeks sandwiched by those big, strong hands, he leans in. Kisses Jayce until the doubts in his stomach begin to unknot. Until his back is against the wall and Jayce is curled around him like one side of a heart, peeling the giant Piltover Uni shirt off him...
Until there is an absolutely gargantuan crash from downstairs, and Mylo and Jinx start yelling. Jayce groans enormously.
"Stay"
*muah*
"here,"
*muah*
Jayce finds each freckle on Viktor's sharp cheekbones with ease.
"Gonna make sure"
*muah*
"no one's bleeding."
And one more on the lips for surety (and to allay any protest.)
To Viktor's credit, the schematics do eventually get finished and submitted... at 11:57 PM and 34 seconds.
The silence of the next, damp morning is broken only by the sound of Viktor slowly clacking his way down the foggy, empty street. The bus to his day-job as the Dean's Secretary is less than a block away - which is good, because that's just about as far as Viktor's leg will allow him to go without major protest.
Despite the wet chill, he's dressed light: shirtsleeves rolled up and sweater cinched around his waist. When you depend on a crutch, even a short commute becomes quite a lot of exertion.
He's only made it past the mailbox when he hears The Thing in hot pursuit.
Something hulking, mechanical: gaskets wheezing, engine coughing, underinflated tires farting softly with each rotation. And then they slice through the fog: two figures, one clinging to the other's back, aboard an absolute wreck of... well, something
likea motorcycle, Viktor supposes.
Jinx flips the visor of Ekko's helmet up jauntily. "Hop on, Skinny Pete!" It's a Zaun turn-of-phrase, but the immediate question on his mind distracts Viktor from appreciating.
"Eh... Where?"
On top of the milk-crate bungee-corded to the back for extra storage-- duh!
Crutch under his arm, Viktor clings to Ekko's waist, Jinx and his laptop bag sandwiched between the two. Ekko blazes past Viktors' bus stop, and it takes him a moment to realize that they're headed onto campus proper - they intend to drop him off, it seems.
Cars flash by, rearview mirrors centimeters from their elbows. They are going
fartoo fast... The way Jinx's braids keep pummeling him in the face, though, prevents him from catching a peek at the speedometer. Probably better that he doesn't know, all things considered.
As they rocket past the formerly-peaceful quad, Viktor's bad leg can no longer maintain its death grip on the tiny piece of metal he managed to find a foothold on. Final Destination-type scenarios filling his head as Ekko swerves and burns rubber through the round-about, he grits his teeth. That's something he's internalized you must do, in Piltover. No choice. Hang on. His knee quivers from effort...
Without a word, Jinx wraps a hand around the scaffold of his leg-brace. Holds it careful as you please, steady as she goes, until they skid to a stop an inch - an actual inch - from the shiny bumper of the car occupying Dean Heimerdinger's assigned parking spot.
Viktor looks like he's just been put through the science lab's wind tunnel. And once again, it's just like moving in: he should feel overwhelmed. Apprehensive, in the face of a broken routine. But instead, there's something strange. New.
Exhiliration.
"We go this way every morning," Jinx states into open air as she helps Viktor down. That's how kindnesses are offered in Zaun: roundabout, and without ceremony.
Viktor casts a glance at Ekko to confirm."I got all 8 a.m's this term," he nods.
Viktor pretends to focus on straightening out his windswept clothes, gratefulness stinging the corners of his eyes. He knew full-well what a tough climb it was, getting out of Zaun. How easy it was to misplace your culture, when you did so. They've given Viktor more than just a ride today... they've reminded him what being a Zaunite amidst Pilties really means: looking out for each other.
"Only if you let me take a look at that engine," he mumbles, giving the bike a pointed once-over. "The construction is inspired... but, eh, it sounds worse than a grandma with Grey-Lung."
Praise and thanks, too, is always offered hand-over-fist in Zaun. Ekko smirks, braids spilling artfully over the colorful patches of his jacket. "Deal."
It's nice, Viktor reflects as he waves goodbye, to be around people who speak your language.
The next time he hears Salo in Financial Aid whining about "sump-scholarships," he decides he's going to trip him with his crutch.
Viktor is just beginning to settle - just finished unpacking - when the accident happens.
Jayce gets distracted easily; Jayce suddenly surprises his mom by bringing over flowers, gets roped into setting up chairs at a student social, or drives a big loop around town in his dead dad's car just because a good song came on the radio. Unexplained lateness is not unfamiliar.
What Jayce does
notdo is go this long without texting. And he
doesn'tmess around when it comes to snow.
He religiously starts getting that old car ready for snow as soon as October closes. And his mood always darkens once winter properly sets in, to the point that a mere weather forecast will make him edgy for days. It's not for any reason he can easily explain, either. But Viktor knows why, and it's part of why his stomach drops when he notices white flakes swirling past the window that night.
The journey from Ixtali to Piltover killed people, but that had done little to stop the flow of desperate immigrants. Civil war will do that... If Ixtali were safe, after all, no one would sell everything to pay for a guide through the murderous mountain range which made up the shortest crossing. If she had another choice, no mother would bundle her sun-skinned child up against the life-leeching cold and drag him into the frigid unknown... Ximena had lost a hand to frostbite when the coyote abandoned them in a blizzard, but she and Jayce were fortunate: they'd made it, both physically and figuratively. Plenty didn't. That said, though, all the opportunities immigration gave her son still couldn't erase the trauma that crossing wrought on his mind.
To this day, Jayce loathes and fears snowy days. Hides indoors all day, if he can possibly help it.
Viktor has spent so long trying to dissuade him of his fear that he forgets, for a moment. Forgets how cruel fate can be.
Mylo is closest, when the police call. He and Claggor had sensed Viktor's growing anxiety and invented reasons to stay nearby. Cajoled him with silly but plausible explanations for Jayce's tardiness ("he's helping old ladies across the road, he's saving a cat from a tree...")
They are the only ones in the house to witness the journey of Viktor's face as phrases crash over him: black ice, flipped three times, ICU.
Viktor hangs up the phone and, for a helpless moment, feels the panic swell in his head like a balloon. Knows the shapes of gangly Mylo and sturdy Claggor, silhouetted by the kitchen light, but cannot make out the details. Can only hear parts of what they're trying to say to him.
They must be the ones who get him to the hospital; Viktor has no idea how else he would have managed to.
The nurses have tried to cover the mess of Jayce's leg with a blanket, but the shadow of it under there just isn't right.
Jayce has listed Viktor as next of kin, and that means he has to make decisions he cannot. Has to decide, for the comatose love of his life, whether six months of external stabilization and a bone transplant that might take (they can't promise, of course - they never can) and the certainty of chronic pain are worth it.
The more they tell Viktor what could go wrong - the more he looks at the spiral and shatters where a blue, strong bone is supposed to be in the X ray - the more he knows, academically as well as in his owndeadweight leg, what needs to be done. They need to amputate it.
But until Ximena arrives, he can't bring himself to say it. And once he does, she has to hold Viktor together as he falls completely apart.
In the delirium of shock, Viktor's terrified she'll be angry - that she'll blame him for telling them to mutilate her son. To ruin the beautiful boy she lost so much to preserve.
But there is nothing remotely close anger in Ximena's embrace. Because she too understands the risks we take. The fingers - and more - that we'll sacrifice, if it means a better life for the ones we love.
"I'm sorry," he sobs. "I'm so sorry--"
She sobs something back in the language of her homeland. Clutches Viktor tighter. My poor boys, my poor boys...
The next two weeks are a blur of grief; days spent on autopilot and nights spent terribly, terribly alone inside of himself.
All noise in the house has lowered itself, perhaps in reverence, as all of its residents struggle to navigate a suddenly Jayce-less space. Viktor is, of course, preoccupied and only half-present at any given moment. At first he closes the door to the office (mostly so he doesn't accidentally peer into the bedroom and spot the dent in the mattress where Jayce is supposed to be.) Listens to the muted bustle of downstairs life: Caitlyn and Vi speaking in hushed tones, Mylo and Claggor cleaning up better than they normally would, Ekko and Jinx having an increasing amount of quiet arguments in the stairwell.
Viktor holds it together during the day, but at night, the quiet tears into his soul. Because the silence allows his worst fears to whisper to him. It lets the enormity of how much both of their lives are about to change sink in. Eventually, going to bed and breaking down in tears there forges a terrible connection in Viktor's brain between rest and grief: he stops even going in their bedroom, unless to grab clean clothes.
Cait and Vi make up the downstairs couch for him.
It's an imposition, he knows. Everyone apologizes for waking him as they get ready in the morning, but Viktor tells them not to worry. It's the noise - the sound of their proximity - that ultimately soothes him to fitful rest.
And they all understand. Because they love Jayce, too.
There's talk of switching levels of the house, so Jayce doesn't have to deal with stairs when he's released from the hospital. But the man himself rejects this: he wants to go home, he says. To their home, where Viktor's possessions are scattered amongst his own familiar ones: where pictures of himself as a gap-toothed, able-bodied boy sit in frames on the bookshelf, and pairs of shoes lay cluttered at the entry to the living room. The way he says "our" makes something Viktor has no bandwidth to process flare, momentarily, inside him.
Despite his eagerness, though, Jayce has only begun to use crutches; going up even three steps to the side-door is ungainly, and visibly taxing for him. The day he finally comes home, every resident of the old house is there to see it. To be useless, trying so hard to be positive...
They all see him look apprehensively up the stairwell: this huge man, backbone of their happy home, cowed by the sight of 14 carpeted stairs. See his thigh move of habit: see the memory in muscles that no longer connect to anything, and the spasm of pain it causes. They crowd the stairwell and encourage him, joke about rope and pulley systems...
And when he finally does get to the top, all of the kids scatter. Giving him privacy, so he can finally break down, his huge sobs shaking the windows in their panes. So Viktor can wrap himself around Jayce like a poultice against a wound. Stroke his hair like the prayer in a mantra:
WE will be okay, WE will be okay... Somehow, somehow...
Viktor can't take any more time off work. Ximena stays for a week and is an absolute lifesaver; when Viktor comes home, something is always bubbling away on the stove and Jayce is in good (or at least, not bad) spirits. They all get a kick out of Viktor trying spicy Ixtali foods for the first time. For a brief respite, upstairs is full of laughter, the smell of coriander, and light.
When it's time for her to leave, Viktor rushes to embrace her so hard it nearly topples them both over.
"I can never, ever repay you."
"Oh mi hijo," she says, voice thick with emotion, "love isn't a debt. It's an investment in the future."
In the week before his prosthesis fitting, Jayce has built up enough strength to haul himself downstairs. He's working on a finicky model of the Shuriman Risen Altar, with lots of pieces that give a satisfyingly-tactile *snap* when they slot into place.
But he's constantly interruped, because Jayce's warm presence is like a heart: pumping the life of the house into the room with him.
"Jayce, can you read this, please? I've been writing so long the words are blurry..."
"Jaaaayce, my monkey's not working!! What do you think's wrong!?"
"Uhhhh Jayce... The bathroom plug's not working again. What'd you do to fix it last time?"
*snap* go the Legos.
"Of course," he grins like his old self, taking first the laptop Claggor holds out, then pinching a wire sticking jauntily out of the mess cupped in Jinx's hand. "Okay first, re-wire THAT before you blow us all into next week... And Mylo, you are NOT doing any electrical work on any place I'M living in. Plug your poor tired beard trimmer in in the hallway."
"Yeah, that's DEFINITELY what he's using it on..."
Vi swats Claggor; Cait makes a gagging sound. And it's all so sweet, all so good to be back to - but it's not the whole story.
*snap*
Viktor and Ximena are the only ones Jayce will allow to
seehim suffer. But the insulation in this house is too thin for all of their housemates
notto know how Jayce is adapting (or failing to) to the loss of his leg. They hear him fall against the sink, swearing. Hear him groan through the spasms of phantom pain. Perceive the change in the cadence of his voice two hours before his next dose of meds, when the ache starts to ebb through.
*snap*
Viktor wouldn't wish nerve pain on his worst enemy; he'll be talking and notice Jayce's unfocused eyes, unfocused mind. He knows Jayce knows that his restless tossing and turning keeps Viktor up. He longs to follow Jayce to the office and sit with him as he fiddles with complex Lego sets (they distract his mind from the pain) just to be supportive, but goddamnit he has to sleep if he's going to function... Viktor has been running on near-empty ever since that snowy day, strapped beside Jayce on the same roller-coaster of emotion. His hands ache from clutching Jayce's through this nightmare.
Moments like these, though, Viktor feels like he can release his grip for a moment. Like Jayce's recovery is the work of a village, rather than an individual.
It's been so goddamn hard. But watching them flock around the man he loves so deeply, Viktor realizes how dear they all have become to him.
*snap*
Then the sad, strangled little doorbell buzzes (Ximena never remembers) and they all shout together - Viktor included - "SIDE DOOR!!!"
There's many bricks left, but the Altar is far enough along Viktor at least recognizes the shape the finished product will take.
Three years pass; rent is going up. Cait and Vi want their own space, the weed fumes have started aggravating Viktor's cough, and they're all pissed off about having to schlep to the laundromat after the landlord refused to replace the damn washing machine. Still, Jayce broaches the subject of moving for the new job gently. He knows what this house means to Viktor - knows that, for the first time in forever, he's felt at home somewhere.
At least, that's why Viktor thinks Jayce is so twitchy about discussing. Why he wants to come all the way up here to talk about it, though, Viktor also can't surmise. Probably sentiment... After all, this was their shared, secret little thinking-spot during undergrad.
Viktor stands at the keystone-shaped aperature and stares down at the moonlit quad, enjoying the feel of wind running fingers through his hair.
"I mean, it's a big change..." Jayce continues. "We'd be on our own, if I take this Noxus job. Uncharted waters. Far from everyone."
If Viktor turned around now, he might spot three gleaming things.
The first one is Jayce's honeyed eyes: stars in the half-dark, studying his silhouette with a love that's grown so familiar, so tangled in his soul, that Viktor hardly remembers a time before it. Before I became We, in his mind.
Viktor shrugs; with the right support system, the things that used to scare you lose their power. Why, once upon a time, he'd been afraid to share a house with Jayce... How the times (and they) have changed.
"Jayce, if we can survive the last three years," he asserts, "we can handle anything. ... And besides, working with Mel, you can keep our inventions at least mostly in our hands."
"Your inventions," Jayce smiles. "Mister Head of Research."
"Yes, well... I had a very supportive muse."
The second gleaming thing is Jayce's mismatched metal leg, the one Jayce sketched on a napkin and they'd prototyped together. Viktor is right; after Jayce lost his leg, there'd been a dark time; an unmoored time, for them both. Jayce had lost his place in the PHD program; lost his stipend, his sponsorship. Nearly lost all hope, until an old friend with a company in Noxus had taken an interest in his sketches for better prosthetics. But far on the other side of those days, everything it took to survive feels worth it... All the pain, all the uncertainty.
Yes, Jayce thinks, from his seat behind Viktor - this is exactly where they were meant to end up.
The third, gleaming thing feels warm in Jayce's back pocket. Full of promise.
"Come back from there, you'll catch a cold."
Viktor laughs, diamonds in the breeze. Stays. "Jayce, really... I won't wither."
He nearly had, though... Quite a few times, he'd nearly collapsed under the weight of Jayce's grief and the strain of his own condition. All his life, his instinct had been to withdraw when life got tough. Folded into Jayce's life, though, there
wasno solitary place anymore... He'd
hadto rely on others, to get through the days when his own pain crescendoed; when his cough got worse and they waited weeks on biopsies, Viktor on a knife-edge of panic that things were about to get
worse.When the solitary, strange turn of his mind was unable to process his huge feelings into words and he just shut down, unable to ask for what he needed.He couldn't have done it. Not alone.
But Cait had made him mint tea when she found him trembling, silent, in the dark.
Claggor had tightened the bolts on his leg-brace when Viktor was too overwhelmed to even realize it needed repair.
Jinx had trimmed his hair when going out was overstimulating; Ekko had worked beside him in the garage when staying in was too much. When they found out Viktor's mind didn't turn the way theirs did - when he did strange things for reasons that never seemed to fit into words - they hadn't shyed away.
In their own, silent ways, they had all bourne Viktor up through the last three years... and he could never, ever repay them.
But love is not a debt.
Jayce's footfalls scuff across the stone floor. Viktor hears him stop behind him. Hears him sink down, down onto his good knee, hands hovering in anticipation. Viktor turns, the world suddenly only as wide as the space between them.
As narrow as the circle of the ring sitting in Jayce's cupped palms.
Love is an investment.
"Then let's do this," Jayce smiles. "Together."
Once again, five eager movers are ruining his careful organizational system; once again, Viktor can only supervise and label boxes. But instead of the uncertainty he felt moving into this house, there is a strange happiness to the process of leaving it. A hope in it.
Hope as bright as the glint on Viktor's finger, when he reaches up to shade his eyes.
"Careful with that one," he reminds Mylo.
"Why?" he snorts. "More of Jayce's fucking Legos?" He pretends to shake it bodily. "There a scale model of Runeterra in here!?"
"It's MY going-away present." Cait cuts in. "And it might be loaded."
Actually, it's just books- but the look on Mylo's face is priceless.
He gets his comeuppance later: when the moving truck is finally crammed full, Mylo tries to yank the rope down and close the door. Nada. He hangs there for a moment, grunting and twisting like a fish on a line - it still doesn't budge. Claggor has to hug him around the waist and yank, bringing both him and the door crashing down.
"I-it was just stuck!""Suuuuure..."
And all too soon, it's time to leave.
Ximena can't be there, but her presence is felt: Claggor and Mylo, who are staying to return the keys (and try to air out the basement,) will subsist for three more days on thawed bricks of sopa from her last visit.
Claggor hugs him first: a huge boy, quiet in his love but no less constant. The strength of the embrace is what surprises Viktor: he was already strong, but there's leagues of unsaid emotion in how tightly he hugs. He's cleaned up and grown strong (as well as handsome) in the past few years. f he wasn't so content following Mylo around, maybe he'd have come out of his shell sooner. But at the same time, a world in which he isn't there to yank his roommate ad perpetuum from trouble could be a grim one. Perhaps, eventually, he'll be a good influence...
Next comes Mylo, tall now but still thin as a bean-pole. Despite constant derision from Jinx while she was here, he insists on new and ridiculous facial hair combos: this month it's a soul patch, a thin moustache, and mutton chops down to his jaw. He's going to be a professional streamer, an influencer, a guitarist... It changes as often as his hair. What he is is a mess - but a good-hearted one. He's dumped his whole paycheck into making sure Jinx made it the few appointments she kept, or that Ekko's bike isn't impounded. And for that, they forgive him his perpetual weed-stink.
Cait's embrace, like her, is at first stiff and formal. Growing up and having Vi by her side has helped her relax somewhat - allowed her to let go of some intensity and a smidge of haughtiness. But she'll need her stubbornness, her strong will, if she wants to become a criminal investigator someday. Viktor finds himself a little more comfortable thinking that eventually she'll be doing police work that doesn't explicitly require carrying a gun.
"Please take care. He needs you," she whispers to Viktor. He pats her back: a silent promise.
Vi is next, rigid and silent; she's still not over what happened a few months ago. It's like the light has gone out of her... Viktor wishes they could postpone the move a bit, just to stay and make sure she's going to be okay. But logistically they can't: everything was already in motion by the time of the sisters' blow-up. Vi's so incredibly resilient, but she also has Caitlyn; she has the medication and therapy her sister refused; and, perhaps most importantly, she has a reason to fight. She wants to be better, for when she gets a second chance with her sister.
Jinx's absence is louder than her music blaring; larger than her rail-thin body ever was. But Ekko came to help anyway, out of loyalty. He's moved into some artist commune now, one that faculty loves to sniff about being "too political." Viktor clacks across the uneven pavement to him as he mounts his beloved bike - much improved, but still fundamentally the same hunk of junk he first took Viktor to work on.
"One last joyride?" he offers.
"Eh... Best I don't tempt fate." Ekko still drives like a maniac: like a firelight zipping through the summer air...
His grief looks different from Vi's, but it's still there. In the hunch of his shoulders. In the way he keeps a second helmet in the milk-crate on the back of the bike, waiting for Jinx to come back.
Neither of them are huggers, or very good at this whole Feelings-Into-Words business. Viktor pats his shoulder, Ekko grips his elbow for a moment, and then he's off. Compared to how the bike used to sound, it's a surprisingly quiet departure - because despite his crowd being "too political," Viktor has entrusted their frontman with the technology he and Jayce developed. Trusted that by leaving a piece with Ekko, an 'errant' part of their research will always remain accessible to Zaun's young and bold, for whatever purposes they might require...
"Ready, V?"
Jayce is already in the driver's seat, triple-checking the handbrake and pedal adapter. It took a year after the accident to get him driving again, and even longer for him to feel remotely at ease.
But Viktor knows running down his anti-anxiety checklist will take a few more minutes yet... He waves as Cait and Vi back down the driveway, and at the boys as they climb the familiar side-steps. And then it's just Viktor standing next to the van idling on the lawn, staring up at the empty windows of the old, tired house.
A lot happened, within those walls. Good experiences. Terrible ones. Things that built him... All of them an inseperable part of the man he is now. The men they are, now.
He gives the house one last, grateful smile, and climbs into the truck with the man he's going to marry. Off into the future, wiser. Stronger.
No longer alone.