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Gatherings like these aren’t without entertainment. The mingling parties, the concessions to a new world order that Piltover tried in vain to ignore and now tries to assimilate, as though with enough weak cocktails and strained smiles they can tame the beast they invited to the table. Perhaps, Viktor thinks, they really believe that their way of life is the true way of progress and civilized society, and that Zaun will eventually calm like an ornery teenager and come to heel.
Jayce begged him to come. It’s an old song and dance of Viktor please, you should be there with me, it’s your work too and the counter step of my time is better spent in the lab, they want to see you- fine, just this once. This is the third ‘just this once’ of the year, promising to be the last for the season but hardly the finale. Like every other time Jayce manages to stick by his side for about half an hour before they are separated, leaving Viktor to sip weak cocktails and eye strained smiles.
He cannot say he doesn’t feel a level of sadistic enjoyment in these parties, the ones where Zaun is invited much to the chagrin of traditionalists. It is easy to pick out the people who came from the undercity, the ones who make no attempt at blending with Piltover aesthetic. Their clothes are dark with bright bursts of color, neon or metallic, rust to Piltover’s gold. In Zaun fashion is as experimental and makeshift as their means to survive; it’s cutting and often toxic, it celebrates scars and glorifies augmentations and prosthetics. In Zaun they are badges, not imperfections.
Zaun - it’s still a word that feels fledgling on Viktor’s tongue, ripe with possibility of both greatness and failure. A man with metal optics drilled where his eyes should be speaks to an uncomfortable couple from a higher house. A woman with filed teeth and metal fingers laughs, loud and snorting, as a councilman looks away to hide his disdain. A Zaunite with dark makeup caked around the eyes mutters to a friend about the poor quality of the drinks in earshot of the host’s husband. Viktor smiles into his own drink and allows himself the enjoyment of watching the people who made him jump through social hoops trip and fall under the same strain.
Another drink and he can begin planning his escape, he thinks. As if sensing his thoughts a glass is offered to him, not a champagne flute but a short glass of amber, ice in a flawless sphere in the middle. Viktor takes the glass, eyes on the man offering it, the long, thin fingers and telltale black sclera.
“Councilman,” Viktor greets, watches the barest hint of displeasure flit across Silco’s face.
“Silco,” he corrects, as though Viktor called him his government title as a jab. The sad thing is Viktor gets it, the way he gets why that woman smiles with all her filed teeth despite the cringing or why the dark eyed party goer looks at the beautiful, clear ice in their glasses with disgust. If you didn’t vent out the build up of steam there would be a colossal explosion, complete with flying shrapnel and a body count.
This drink is better in that it hurts as it coats his tongue. Just a mild sting but Viktor takes it with a nod bordering on grateful, letting it settle in his mostly empty stomach like a threat of bad ideas to come.
“I’ve always hoped to find you here,” Silco informs him as the string band starts up. Viktor wonders if the Zaun officials ever have parties in their clubs and invite the noble houses. It would be funny if even he didn’t flinch at the thought of the enforcer force that would be hired to walk them to their destination. “The hidden face of progress.”
“Is that what they call me?” Viktor knows what they call him, at least topside. It’s freeing to know his dry delivery will be taken for what it is and not tittered over at face value. “Catchier than most of what I’ve heard.”
“Zaun is more forgiving, at large. Even prodigal sons are still our blood.”
Viktor resists the very real urge to snort against the very real swell of old hurt at the reminder he’s something of an outsider in his own home. He could pick at that old scab until it bled fresh but he drinks instead, wonders if drugs or run off made Silco’s eye what it is now. Chems, one way or another, the punchline of Zaun.
“Eh, forgiving is not the word I would use.”
“But prodigal is?”
“It is the word you used,” Viktor reminds him. “I think any of these ‘sons’... they would consider themselves the misunderstood party. Personally I do not bother myself with it. My actions will speak for themselves, in time.”
“You are wasted up here,” Silco tells him after a beat of consideration, punctuated by distant, tittering laughter. It’s odd to believe him after years of swallowing lukewarm, polite praise set like a script. He has no reason to believe it isn’t whatever Silco wants, likely a foot into Hextech from a perceived weak link.
“I do not consider my work with Hextech a waste,” Viktor answers, finishing his glass like it will put a close to the conversation. He’s had enough politics for one night, even if this flavor is new.
Silco reaches for his empty glass, a simple and unnecessary gesture with all the help moving about. Viktor almost says as much but Silco is very close now, the jagged scars more obvious where layers of makeup blend them to the color of the man’s already sallow skin.
“They will write your name in footnotes and consider it a service.” His voice is just as silky up close, smooth like seduction but the draw of violence rather than that of lust. It isn’t a threat yet Viktor feels the ache of tension up his back.
“Is this an offer or a lecture?” Viktor manages. His heart thumps, conditioned to know a predator when he sees one, taught to avert eyes and stay small when chembarons and those in their employ get too close.
And Silco is a predator, sharp teeth and battle scarred, refusing to let Piltover declaw him even in the presumed victory of Zaun’s ascension. Viktor reminds himself of that when Silco smiles at him as he draws back, a quirk of lips instead of the full, pearly whites of Piltover politicians and nobles.
“A reminder,” Silco answers. “I thought you would need it, but even before I approached I could see it in your eyes. Exhaustion, the drain from playing their games and performing when they snapped their fingers.”
“Then why remind me at all?” Viktor finds himself asking, willing the defensive snap from his tone. People keep glancing at them, or maybe Viktor is getting paranoid with all the grandiose talk and vitriol. Zaun and Piltover are twin cities, allies, so the judgment he feels sliding down his neck is likely an exaggeration. Old prejudices and defenses, hypervigilant to the image he must project to survive.
“Sometimes it’s best to hear it said out loud,” Silco says.
His departure is without fanfare, only sidelong glances from anyone he passes as he makes his way through the crowd. Viktor watches him, the tension still tight through his chest before he decides it’s time to make his escape from the party.
–
Opening the door to the lab comes with a burst of color. Viktor has enough experience now to step back when he opens the door to their lab these days, since Jinx is so incredibly fond of the old bucket over the door trick. Well, in her case usually a bomb of some sort that goes off with the door opening, full of confetti or streamers or memorably a gaggle of toy snakes. This time it’s chalk dust in several colors, coating the air with a bang.
When it settles Viktor walks in and to his station, tapping the soles of his shoes with his cane to dislodge any further powder.
“Ugh, not again!” Jayce yells from the door.
Viktor ignores him, sitting and flipping through his notes to make sure nothing is out of place. “She only drew on the top page of my notes, she must have been in a hurry.”
“Yeah, a hurry to draw all over mine,” Jayce fumes from his own desk, walking over to shove the pages at Viktor as if he needed the proof. “This can’t keep happening, I’m talking to Caitlyn.”
Jayce says this every time, and every time he actually does something Jinx just delights in it. More patrols from enforcers, a stationed guard, the lock system Jayce painstakingly made and installed - all of it useless.
“You realize this is a game to her, yes?” Viktor asks, waving the papers Jayce is showing him away. “If you want it to stop then you must stop engaging her.”
“That’s not the point!” Without looking Viktor can picture that particular pout Jayce gets, the brooding one that means the point is Jayce’s pride and not much else. “How are we going to be taken seriously if we can’t even protect our research? What if she’s been stealing our ideas? What if she uses them for something sinister?”
Viktor shakes his head as he pulls on his goggles, more a declaration of disinterest than any real need for lab protection. “Hextech smoke bombs do sound nefarious.”
“You’re making fun of me.”
“I would never,” Viktor replies without missing a beat, in the same tone he’s used to make fun of Jayce since the first day they met. “I take your… eh, what would you call it? A pissing contest? This pissing contest with a teenager is very serious to me. I support you, Jayce.”
“You’re making fun of me and you won’t even look me in the eye,” Jayce sighs. His wounded pride at least seems soothed by the humor, and Viktor always appreciates Jayce’s ability to bounce back quickly from his maudlin turns.
The script does call for a give and take, because Jayce requires a level of routine emotional maintenance to work at his best. A fancy way to say the man can be quite sensitive at odd turns, resilient to an absurd degree in areas others would easily crumble and a bleeding bruise at the strangest points of tension.
Viktor is fairly sure this is not one of those points but he turns regardless, refusing to raise his goggles out of principle but otherwise meeting the man’s eyes. “If we were not taken seriously your inbox would not be filled to the brim with invitations to unbearable parties thrown by equally unbearable people. We are beyond the point that small mishaps will send Hextech crumbling down.”
“I’m glad you think actual break ins to our top secret research are ‘small mishaps,’” Jayce replies, plopping himself down to sit on Viktor’s desk, very much ignoring how Viktor hisses and moves some of his more delicate work away. “You really don’t think she’s going to steal our work?”
Sometimes Viktor thinks of how easy it would be to hate Jayce Talis, if only he were the slightest bit different from the man gazing down earnestly at him. He thinks it when Jayce doesn’t finish his plate and considers that polite, or when he simplifies survival in a way only someone from Piltover could manage, as though hard work and integrity were all a person needed to live a fulfilling life.
He thinks it now when it feels impossible to explain the nuance of it all to Jayce, that an unstable undercity teen isn’t thinking of academic grandeur or the glory or discovery. Viktor can’t begin to explain how worthless that ultimately is outside of the Academy’s gilded towers, down and down to where discovery is an edge, a step up, a meal ticket or another rung of the ladder. If she’s stealing their ideas it’s to gut them and find the most useful parts.
No, it would be easy to hate Jayce but it isn’t, because Jayce would listen if he tried to explain it, even if he may not understand. Sometimes Viktor makes the attempt but often he finds a fatigue clouding him at the very thought of playing mediator between two mindsets bound to war with each other at every turn. He is not enough of Zaun or Piltover to do either justice, existing in some useless in between.
He turns back to his work, slapping at Jayce’s thigh with the back of his hand until the man sighs and moves from his desk. “That isn’t a no, V.”
“No, Jayce, I do not think she’s stealing our ideas, as I have said before and will no doubt say again.”
“I’m building another lock,” Jayce tells him as he walks off, voice loud over his shoulder. “I’m building another lock and a trap of our own.”
“Your own. I have no part in this.”
“We’re partners! It’s our trap,” Jayce calls, once again proving he is a difficult man to hate.
It’s only at the end of the day Viktor finds a folded piece of paper tucked into his newest notebook, falling out when he lifts it to hide in a floor safe he’s fairly confident Jinx will not find.
(Even if she did Viktor rigged it to burn anything inside if broken into, a controlled little explosion he improvised from studying some of her traps. While he doesn’t lie to Jayce that he believes Jinx’s antics are largely harmless at the moment he is not a fool. He does not know her, does not know the extent of her capabilities. All he knows is which research could be made into something truly dangerous, and that research he makes sure does not stray from any hands but theirs. Not Jinx, not Piltover if he cannot help it.)
The paper is a bruised grey, not unlike the many invitations from Piltover elite but decidedly rougher around the edges. In elegant print it invites him and Jayce to a party in Zaun, at a club a few levels down and decidedly not the somewhat higher brow affair of the promenade.
His name is pointedly written before Jayce’s, like his partner is the afterthought. Bright colors from Jinx’s scribbles curl around the main message, a decided unfriendly ‘Or Else!’ written in after the printed ‘You are welcome to attend.’
Jayce chatters beside him, about their current research or Caitlyn’s latest headaches with her family, and Viktor takes the moment to consider if he should tell Jayce. He doesn’t particularly enjoy lying to his partner, theirs is a relationship based on trust now as much as the thrill of discovery, and he does not want to be the one to poison it. On the other hand dragging Jayce deep into the undercity and possibly putting him in proximity to Jinx is a headache he could do without.
“Jayce,” he calls, holds the card out for Jayce to take. He watches Jayce do so, a scowl at the familiar scribbles then blink in surprise.
“Is a teenager inviting us to a party?”
“I believe Silco is.” The bottom of the card did hold his slanted signature, nearly gulfed by what Viktor thinks is supposed to be a drawing of a shark. Jayce squints to read it, folding it up as Viktor continues, “It’s tomorrow night.”
“Are we going?” Jayce’s tone is careful, years of Viktor’s rejections to every invitation he could feasibly skip out on rearing their head. “Bolbok is having a party around the same time, I guess he wasn’t invited.”
“Mm, I have no doubt the timing was deliberate.” Bolbok and Silco did tend to butt heads viciously. It was petty but Viktor imagines Silco sees it more as a pointed statement, that he and the Zaun councilors are not children just happy to have a seat at the adult’s table. “I will go, I think. You do not have to.”
“Of course I will,” Jayce replies, straightening like he’s expecting a fight. It amuses Viktor even as he eyes Jayce warily, looking for signs he thinks his presence is needed to protect Viktor from the ‘dangers’ of Zaun. “I mean this is the first time Hextech has been invited down to Zaun, right? We should both be there.”
Viktor eases, plucking the card from Jayce’s hand. “You just wish to find Jinx and ‘give her a piece of your mind.’”
“C’mon, I’m not going to yell at a teenager at a party, Viktor,” Jayce retorts, though there’s the faint seeds of a flush on Jayce’s cheeks that say Viktor caught him out. “So is it formal attire? The card doesn’t say.”
Viktor can’t help a huff at that, tucking the card away in his vest. “Remind me tomorrow we need to get you something appropriate to wear.”
“I feel like our script has been flipped,” Jayce tells him as they finish tidying up. “Next you’ll be schmoozing and I’ll be trying to find the quietest corner.”
–
Truthfully Viktor has very little experience with parties of any kind in Zaun. Before it was officially Zaun he was a quiet boy who couldn’t keep up with the other children, then the other teens when he was older. A right of passage in Zaun is running the rooftops, those first jumps between alleys, climbing as high as crumbling walls and rusted metal would allow. As a child Viktor could not, as a teen he still couldn’t but he already missed his chance to find a way into the tight knit groups of kids.
That is a beautiful part of the undercity, he thinks; he even tries to impart to Jayce the rare times he indulges his partner’s curiosity on Zaun matters. The bonds forged in the undercity are quick and sharp, they’re deeper than family because they’re often bound together by agents far sturdier than blood. A true friendship in Zaun is built under pressure, pearls of understanding that this person is worth the risk of protecting, the risk of keeping close, the risk of losing and all the agony it brings.
Topside sees them as criminals ready to stab each other in the back for profit but Viktor’s seen those same criminals throw themselves in front of knives and fists to protect a friend, people without any funds to their name offer what little they had to those they loved. He’s seen generosity that he’s never once seen matched in Piltover.
There was a time Viktor felt a level of bitterness at being denied a chance at that facet of his home, though he supposes it made leaving all the easier. A clean break for the most part, his connections mostly regulated to fellow academics at the college. His homesickness never had a defined face, fog to be wiped from the mirror.
That still left him with no real experience with undercity parties of any type. He’s seen enough bars and clubs to know the raucous ones that put Academy ‘ragers’ to shame, a small entrance fee to be lost in a faceless crowd. He knows parties like festivals that spill onto the street during more fruitful times, laughter and singing and drunken brawls. He has a vague idea that chembarons likely have parties of their own, and what those entail he wouldn’t know, avoiding the trouble getting ensnared would bring.
Of course Viktor doesn’t admit any ignorance to Jayce. He can make educated guesses based on Silco and the location itself. They get Jayce something less stuffy than his usual clothes, far less slathered with his family crest. Something darker to help him blend in better, and it is incredibly odd to see Piltover’s golden boy in dark greys rather than stark whites.
(“You think I’ll blend in?” Jayce asks him, clearly entertained by this vague subterfuge. Viktor told him several times they were invited as themselves, but he supposes it’s better than Jayce being stilted and nervous.
“No,” is Viktor’s answer to that. “The minute you open your mouth they’ll know where you’re from. Your teeth are comically white.”)
Jayce is good at following directions at least, letting Viktor lead them to where they need to go and not bringing any sort of guard with him. He doesn’t know if Jayce told anyone where they were going but he knows most of the people he might tell would advise him to bring an enforcer along. It makes the journey an easy one, less so for Jayce who began making faces at the quality of the air far sooner than Viktor would have guessed.
Forgoing a mask was another suggestion Viktor made, well aware it would cast Jayce in a very particular light the moment he stepped foot into the club. He hopes there will be no trouble but he also refuses to send Jayce in at a disadvantage if he cannot help it.
The club in question is hard to miss, the eye in neon lights watching over the streets like a vague threat. There are bouncers at the door, a thrum of music beating like a heart into the streets. It’s not unlike Piltover to walk ahead of people less well dressed than they are - it’s not at all unlike the topside to offer the invitation and be gestured inside by merit of their names alone.
Inside is dim, the jukebox at the wall spilling music far louder than Viktor would have expected. He vaguely remembers this place was different once, back before the revolutionary Vander was thrown in Stillwater, back long before everything changed and Zaun was permitted its own name but not its independence. Viktor thinks the room was brighter once, less the hard edges of a club and more a backwater drinking hole with clean tables and only minimal brawls.
Beside him Viktor can feel Jayce’s discomfort- a glance and he can see it at least is cut with fascination, the unease of danger and discovery. He wonders if it feels anything like the first Piltover party Viktor went to, fascinated but lost in a crowd of well dressed sharks. He wonders if it will end for Jayce as it did for him, with the intimate knowledge he’ll never belong even when they deign to make space for him.
Viktor grasps his elbow and pulls him further in, ignoring the looks they both garner. The people are better dressed than a true club night in Zaun, many of them people he recognizes as important figures, Zaun councilors or factory owners, chembarons and ‘industrialists.’ Entrepreneurs is another title they throw around, a flimsy coat of paint more a joke than anything. There are a handful of people from Piltover at least, though Viktor doesn’t recognize them as anyone particularly important. Jayce’s brow rises in recognition once or twice, though he keeps quiet until they reach the bar.
“Okay, so I’m an idiot for assuming this would be a little more like a fundraiser or society party, huh?” Jayce whispers to Viktor, and Viktor can’t help a snort.
“This is a society party, just not for the society you’re used to,” Viktor says. He gestures to the bartender, amused when Jayce takes the toxically blue drink with the look of a man who may as well be handling battery acid. “It’s not so bad.”
“It’s glowing, V. Why is it glowing?”
“Hm, I thought the smell would be what alarmed you,” Viktor replies thoughtfully.
Jayce continues his very clear effort of not breathing through his nose. “I’m trying not to think about that.”
A bang from across the room diverts both their attention, a rowdy pair throwing both their glasses down with victorious howls. A burly, bald man goes to cuff them both like a harried mother while a woman at a table nearby slams her fist hard enough to shake the table when she wins a round of cards.
Viktor’s chest eases, a tension draining he wasn’t aware before this moment. All of it is so familiar, the rough edges and the boisterous celebration, the skulking and the easy violence followed by easier laughter. When Zaun ascended part of him did always wonder what then would change, what the undercity would lose to pay for a seat at the table. For all its flaws the undercity is unique, a culture all its own beyond the poverty, the poison Piltover helped pour into its waters. Beyond all the horror stories, true and absurdly false.
Jayce doesn’t share his revelation, a matter Viktor cannot blame him for though the pinched look on his partner’s face irritates him regardless. He takes the untouched shot from Jayce’s fingers, meeting his eyes with an unimpressed look before downing it one go. It rakes down his throat like claws trying to find purchase, familiar and welcome. When he places the glass back on the bar Jayce is blinking at him like he just realized Viktor is made of rough edges too. How he feels about that Viktor doesn’t wait to dissect, instead turning back to the party at large.
–
It does end up being a flipped script as Jayce joked. When the Zaun councilors come over it’s to shake Viktor’s hand, their attention on Jayce either fleeting or dismissive, some predatory in a way Viktor is quick to try and turn around. He can tell some of them see him as more Piltover than Zaun, a strain around their eyes and words that surprises him. Not the venom but the restraint, as if Viktor holds some power they don’t wish to test.
It baffles him. He’s not rich even with Hextech’s increasing success, the money he does make usually going back into his work one way or another. He has no particularly powerful connections, only really with the professor who is quite obviously not the type to use his influence in any remotely dubious way, even for a friend. Maybe these matters are only obvious to him but it still feels off, a layer he isn’t seeing. His best guess is their host, and why Silco invited them here in the first place is another matter entirely.
Despite his best efforts he loses Jayce in the crowd, far thicker and livelier than any party they’ve been to before. It concerns him but it is also freeing to walk the room alone, falling into old habits of slipping through a ruckus without turning any heads. He hopes Jayce is clever enough to stay put somewhere and not leave the party, Silco’s influence hopefully enough protection to keep him out of too much trouble.
At the very least he suspects Jayce will be more agreeable when Viktor begs off Piltover parties from now on.
The quietest area is separated by thick curtains, one side roped up to show a sitting area behind the nearly literal veil. He makes his way there under the thought that Jayce might retreat to a quiet place like this. He steps toward it in time to feel fingers brush his elbow, gone before he can turn to scowl.
“I am glad you could make it.” Silco looks different here, fluid in all the ways he was jagged and sharp at the first party they met. Beside him is a woman who towers over them both, her prosthetic arm a marvel of engineering that Viktor can’t help but look over in fascination. It must take a great deal of power, both to run it and to handle the strain of weight it adds to her body.
“I suggest using the mail next time,” Viktor says, still distracted with thoughts of the arm’s workings before he forces himself to focus. The woman doesn’t look impressed but she doesn’t look irritated either, a typical bruiser type down here, though he imagines she must be special if Silco’s funding her. It would explain how she could afford an arm like that.
Silco’s lips almost quirk at that, a shocking flash that could be fondness. “Jinx was already in the neighborhood.”
“Whether anyone likes it or not,” the woman snorts.
“Ah, then I suppose asking you to tell her not to break into our lab to make a mess is unlikely,” Viktor muses, a response that gets another snort from a woman, this one of derisive laughter. “The Piltover side of the council gets quite eh… alarmed about it.”
“Surely our generous topside neighbors are not scared of a young girl,” Silco drawls, the woman’s lip curling like Piltover is the punchline of that joke. “Allow me to introduce you. This is Sevika, my right hand.”
“Viktor,” responds Viktor in turn, a nod of the head enough of a greeting in the undercity.
“I admit I didn’t expect your research partner to come with you. How is he enjoying Zaun’s flavor?”
Silco’s question is a pointed one, not quite a dig but jabbing, searching for a spot to pierce. Viktor answers it with a level stare, refusing to break eye contact despite knowing he is in no position to challenge this man.
Even still it’s refreshing, to forgo lowering his head rather than causing an unwanted stir that would come back in petty little waves. Homesickness is rare for him now yet in this baffling moment he feels it bone deep.
“I think we all know it is an acquired taste,” Viktor finally answers. “I was just as surprised you invited him, in truth. You made your thoughts clear when we last met.”
“Did I? Do you know my thoughts then?”
Viktor half expects Silco to lean in like he did that party weeks ago, anticipation singing traitorously down his spine at the thought. He can guess at some of Silco’s mentality but there’s a wild, caged energy he catches the barest glimpses of, one Viktor doesn’t think he could possibly put to words or comprehend. It is too easy to consider Silco in the scheming, manipulative light of the Piltover councilors but this hidden facet of Silco is nothing like them. It sets him apart in ways Viktor cannot yet grasp.
“Jinx found him,” Sevika butts into the moment, making both men glance away to follow her gaze.
There finally is Jayce, standing by the bar in a heated argument with a girl plopped onto the bartop. She can’t be older than sixteen at a glance, dressed in what looks like pieces of several different suits thrown together to make a clashing whole. They’ve never met officially but Viktor can take a guess from the blue hair in a long braid down her back, the blade edge to her grin as she watches Jayce.
Viktor sighs, disengaging to make his way over before something actually explodes. He half expects Silco and Sevika to follow but when he arrives he is alone, placing a hand on Jayce’s arm in hopes of calming him.
“Heya,” Jinx greets despite the tense atmosphere. Viktor wonders what she said to Jayce, given it’s rare he gets this worked up without quickly deflating under his own pressure. Instead he’s tense, pulling his arm away from Viktor and biting his lip in a way that makes Viktor ache with how frustratingly obvious his partner is with his weak points. “You must be the better half of the whole ‘magic science’ craze.”
“Hextech,” Viktor corrects, tone level in hopes that will give Jayce a hint how one handles situations like this. “I am Viktor and you would be Jinx. Your last eh… chalk was it? Your last chalk bomb took two days to clean.”
“Not like you were doing the cleaning,” Jinx answers with a roll of her eyes, and Viktor shrugs because she isn’t wrong.
Jinx is an odd spot in the fluctuating politics of the city, both topside and under. Silco made his protection of her well known, backed by the other Zaun councilors with varying degrees of enthusiasm, bound together at least against the common enemy of Piltover. Jinx continues to toe the line with her antics, small crimes, vandalisms, erratic behavior that threatens to snap the growing strain of the cities. Viktor can only guess why the scales haven’t tipped one way or the other yet.
“I was just asking your boy here some questions but-” Jinx leans in, a stage whisper with her hand cupped as if to keep Jayce out of hearing. “-he’s so touchy! Kinda unstable really. You should get him checked out.”
“Viktor, we’re done here, right?” Jayce answers that, this time the one to grasp Viktor’s elbow. “You’ve made the rounds.”
“Jayce-” Viktor tries, but Jinx’s bubbling laughter at the response just makes Jayce’s grip tighten.
“Aw c’mon! I haven’t even got to talk to him yet. Isn’t learning to share a whole important baby lesson- heh, well guess Piltover’s never been really good at sharing unless it’s enforcers and toxic waste, yeah?”
Viktor lets Jayce lead them away, a simmering irritation finally giving way when they reach one of the side entrances. He pulls his arm away, regarding Jayce with a hard stare. “Enough, Jayce. I told you before engaging with her is just encouraging her.”
“You didn’t even try to help!” Jayce says, turning with a glare Viktor isn’t used to seeing on Jayce’s face. Jayce’s anger isn’t new to him but it’s never been directed at him in a way that matters, a cold shock rippling through him as he recovers.
“Help? She’s a teenager and she was just trying to get under your skin.” If you listened to me in the first place she wouldn’t be bothering, a likely unfair part of Viktor thinks, thankfully swallowed before it can escape from behind his teeth. “Jayce, whatever she said-”
“No, it’s- look, I’m sorry,” Jayce interrupts with a sigh, his anger finally releasing like a hiss of steam. “I guess I bit off more than I could chew with this. I didn’t expect them to be this unwelcoming.”
Viktor bits his tongue, offers a nod even as part of him wants to snap that every party in Piltover is like this for him, every time a sponsor calls him Jayce’s assistant or doesn’t turn to shake his hand when they’re done with Jayce’s. It’s unfair, Jayce always tries to rectify those insults, stand up for him, yet Viktor can’t help but think of how little pressure it took for Jayce to crumble under the same situation Viktor’s been dealing with for years.
He sighs, trying to lance the infection at the source. When his hand find’s Jayce’s elbow he isn’t shrugged off this time, Jayce’s face easing as it always does when he dodges ire or an argument. “Let’s get back then. We are stopping for something at the food stalls on the way back.”
“Please tell me it’ll smell better than that drink,” Jayce pleads, and Viktor makes no promises.