Chapter Text
Viktor doesn’t like Jayce Talis. He’s too loud, too confident, too self-centred. He’s been at their university for less than six months and already earned the nicknames ‘golden boy’ and ‘man of progress’, despite being Viktor’s junior by a couple of years. Everything about him screams I spend too much time in front of a mirror. Some might call Jayce charming, Viktor sees the subtle manipulation for what it really is.
Like in the director of commercial engagement Mel Medarda—paid directly by the Noxus company and placed at the university for the sole purpose of creating tighter connections between industry and research. Which is a good thing, on paper at least. In practice, they expect researchers to provide ideas and work for them for free.
Viktor doesn’t exactly dislike Mel, not really but he hates how she’s using her charm to bend people into backing her cause, hates how easily most men fall for it. Hoskel, Salo and, of course, Jayce. How one smile, one carefully placed gesture can make all the difference. Viktor had to admit, it’s why she’s so good at her job. Personally, he had exactly one meeting with Noxus before deciding to never talk to any of them again.
He sets down his oat smoothie and sits at his desk, his cane leaned against it. They’ve recently moved their whole research centre into an open space office. There’s less workspaces than people and they’ve all been told to “hot desk”. Viktor claimed the desk in the corner furthest away from everyone and made sure everyone knew it was his desk. It worked just fine, although not many people showed up to work before him anyway.
Or maybe it was something else that made people leave him alone. A few years back there was this huge case about Dr Reveck (or Singed, which is how everyone referred to behind his back due to the massive burn scar on his cheek). He was a professor Viktor worked closely with who got dismissed for smuggling their ideas to an external company. Viktor didn’t know that at the time of course, he wouldn’t have worked with Reveck otherwise, despite learning so much from him.
Safe to say Reveck was expelled immediately and Viktor cleared from all the accusations but the reputation stuck. Many people, especially at the university, steered clear of Viktor for a good few years afterwards, Noxus included.
Perhaps it was because he’s a cripple. He refused to hide his leg brace underneath his clothes these days to make himself more palatable to the masses, to hide the parts of himself others found uncomfortable. This is who he was and he refused to hide that any longer.
Whatever it was, Viktor has a desk all for himself and that worked together just fine for him. It could have been worse, they could have moved them into a heritage building with wonky floors and no lift like the Computer Sciences. No, the open space in a fairly modern building doesn’t bother Viktor as much.
He opens up his laptop to sift through just under a hundred emails he’s got overnight. Most of them are not relevant to him, some that he only got copied into for information, some spam but then one email in particular jumps out at him—it’s an announcement from the vice chancellor. There is going to be another restructurisation. Viktor knows it’s just another word for redundancies; they need to cut budgets again, they’re going to be firing people.
By lunchtime, there’s a rumour that a list has been created, supposedly of people who haven’t brought any funding in a while but one can never be sure. He sighs. He tried to move to a different university a couple of years back but it seems all universities are struggling.
“Ah, Viktor!” Centre Director and Viktor’s former PhD supervisor, professor Heimerdinger, corners him in the corridor. “ Just the person I wanted to talk to,” he says trying to make it sound like a total coincidence which is how Viktor knows that it isn’t.
“Professor,” Viktor nods politely, stopping to talk to the man, leaning on his cane.
Heimerdinger is significantly shorter than him, almost comically so. He had messiest locks Viktor has ever seen and his unruly beard and mustache covered most of his face. He is sure he wouldn’t be able to recognise Heimerdinger without it.
“I’ve just had this idea, and no obligation of course! But how would you feel if you could possibly take one module to teach? You don’t have to answer now!” Heimerdinger adds quickly seeing as Viktor already opens his mouth to respond.
He smiles. Heimerdinger is ever so polite, a manager now more than a scientist. He knows there’s only so much he can make Viktor do.
“You know as well as I do that I wouldn’t have time for my projects if I accepted.”
It was in Viktor’s contract, he negotiated it specifically when joining, right after finishing his PhD. Things were different then and everything felt possible. He agreed to supervise PhD students but no undergraduates, though he didn’t have many of those either. Most people weren’t fond of his way of supervising.
Unlike perfect-in-every-way Jayce Talis who runs multiple modules and supervises more students than any of them. No wonder he only ever does commercial consulting instead of research.
It’s perhaps the most annoying of Jayce's traits—he is a brilliant scientist, but instead of using his skills for the good of all, he chose to work with commercial companies. He didn’t have to do it. He’s on the university’s payroll, just like Viktor is. It was a matter of principles, which Jayce clearly didn’t have. But what else is new in this world? Viktor certainly stopped being surprised a long time ago.
“Yes, yes, of course. But if there is anything, even a short training course…” Heimerdinger suggests.
Semantics, Viktor thinks and sighs, that wouldn’t be the end of the world. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“Thank you, Viktor,” Heimerdinger puts a hand on his shoulder. “These are some darker times but if we can just work together, we can pull through. I am sure of it. Ta-ta.” He walks away, cheery as always.
Viktor wonders if it’s still optimism or already wishful thinking.
All of this really deflates Viktor for the rest of the day. It’s hard to think about revolutionising the world where he can feel the breath of capitalism on his neck. He holes up in the lab in the hopes that he can at the very least focus on some manual work but in the end he just sits idly by his desk pondering his life choices.
This is how Jayce Talis finds him.
“Not working?” Jayce quips at him. Viktor can’t decide if he’s genuinely surprised or trying to tease him. They have not exchanged many words since Jayce joined.
Viktor doesn’t grace him with his gaze as he responds: “Really not in a mood to perform at work while there's HR visiting other research centres announcing more redundancies. I see it as capitalistic disrespect of science.”
Jayce chuckles, clearly reading it as a joke. “Okay, Mr Arcane.”
Viktor blinks and looks at him then. “Is this what people call me?”
Jayce freezes. “Isn’t that your name?” Viktor sees horror creeping into Jayce Talis’ face. It gives him some sort of twisted satisfaction.
It’s also very amusing. “No.”
“What is it then? Viktor…?”
“You wouldn’t be able to pronounce it anyway.” The edges of his lips quirk in an almost imperceptible smile. “It’s just Viktor. With a k.”
He looks at Jayce’s reddening complexion, and wonders what other gossip is circulating about him in the research centre. He could ask Jayce but he finds that he doesn’t really want to know.
“What is this?” Viktor turns away from his microscope to stare at the styrofoam cup placed on this desk as if it personally offended him.
“Coffee,” Jayce says simply as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.
Viktor folds his arms. What does Jayce Talis might want from him? A small chat? A favour? “And it is on my desk because…?”
“I, uh, wanted to apologise for yesterday.”
“No apology needed.” He turns back to his samples. “I don’t drink coffee.” He adds, not sparing Jayce any more attention. He half-expected the man to make a joke, typically something cringe along the lines of prefer pints of vodka eh? But no, nothing like that comes his way.
“Okay then, I’ll just…” Jayce never finishes the sentence but next time Viktor looks away from his samples the offending coffee cup is gone.
Viktor is not in the mood to babysit Jayce today, or anyone else for that matter. He’s just got rejected funding for a major project he’s been putting together for a while and counted on its success, particularly in the current political climate. He knows that the funding around the world is dwindling and it’s only natural that the competition is getting worse but it’s still making him feel inadequate. Someone out there has won that grant after all.
He supposes there’s no getting out of preparing that training course for Heimerdinger now.
“Don’t you think you’re a bit harsh on him?” Viktor looks up again to see Sky leaning by his working space, the same cup of coffee Viktor saw before now held firmly in her hand.
“It’s not like he could have known you only drink tea and barely ever eat.” She places a hot mug of green tea next to him as she says that.
“Miss Young,” Viktor nods to her, tips of his mouth quirking up slightly. “I’m certain there is no possible way of finding that out.” Especially if he’s not in the lab at all, he doesn’t add but he knows Sky will understand.
She’s a technician but she’s one of the smartest people Viktor has ever met. He tried to persuade her to do a PhD but so far unsuccessfully. And what’s more, she’s one of the few people that doesn’t treat him any differently.
As expected, she gives him a knowing smile. Satisfied, he goes back to the sample in front of him—a broken polymer film. He’ll have to figure out a different battery component.
“Apparently, students say his lectures are brilliant,” Sky continues.
“I didn’t expect you to be so easily swayed by a cup of coffee, Miss Young.”
She chuckles softly at that, although this time Viktor isn’t sure if she understood that Viktor didn’t mean it as a joke. It was frustrating seeing everyone falling for the persona Jayce was presenting, it’s like Viktor was the only one wearing reality glasses.
“You know, folks are going out tonight after work…”
Viktor grunts noncommittally. To be honest he stopped listening after Sky mentioned the meeting.
“...so what do you think?”
“It’s good that people get together, I suppose.”
“So you’ll come?”
Viktor frowns, looking away from his sample and at Sky. It was getting increasingly more difficult to focus here.
“Go where?”
“With us? You said it yourself—”
“Oh no, I have work to do. And Heimerdinger just doubled it. Maybe another time.”
“But… you always work late.”
He does. But how is he supposed to explain it to Sky in a way that she understands? He doesn’t drink alcohol, he can’t with constantly being on and off antibiotics. Half of the things served in pubs he cannot even eat, his gut flora is way too messed up for that. And then they will all want to go dancing or worse, choose a place with a dancefloor to begin with, leaving him at the table alone.
And what’s most important… he wouldn’t be able to focus on being there because he’d be thinking that he’s losing precious time and energy that he could spend on innovating.
He takes so long to respond, lost in his thoughts as he’s trying to choose an inoffensive response, that Sky’s features finally soften and she just nods.
“Maybe next time,” she says finally.
“Yes,” Viktor agrees quickly. “Have a good time Ms Young.”
It takes Viktor all morning and the better part of the afternoon to analyse his battery samples and read publications in search for a solution. The office is particularly noisy today for reasons Viktor doesn’t care to investigate. Maybe it has something to do with the upcoming Christmas break. By the end of the day he gets so disheartened he decides to check what’s so ‘brilliant’ about Jayce’s classes that even Sky decided to bring it up to him.
He checks Jayce’s schedule online and finds one in a building not far from their research centre. The student hall is nice, bright. The centrepiece forms a massive staircase that goes in all weird angles up the atrium. Most walls are boarded with timber panels and there's a motivational quote to the side of the entrance.
It’s a stark difference to the dated buildings of his old university back in Prague.
Viktor takes the lift and sneaks into Jayce’s class fashionably fifteen minutes late. If Jayce notices him coming in, he doesn’t let it show. A few students turn their heads to him but no one really knows him so they mostly ignore him. The hall is filled to the brim but there are a couple of free seats at the back. He sits down and listens in.
Jayce’s class is… fun, for the lack of a better word. Viktor isn’t fully convinced that’s a good thing but students appear to love it, love him. That’s not really surprising, everyone who meets Professor Jayce Talis ends up being charmed by him in one way or another. What’s surprising is that when he talks about science he sounds genuinely passionate about it. He’s not just a common mercenary who will work for the highest bidder, which is why Viktor thought Jayce did so much commercial work. Well, he still might be wrong, one swallow doesn't make a summer, but it intrigues him well enough.
Once the lecture ends Viktor leaves with the crowd of his students, not wanting to get noticed, and makes his way to catch the bus home. He works some more on his laptop, reading through relevant publications and replying to his project partners. He doesn’t know what makes him put the name “Jayce Talis” into google or what he was expecting to find but it certainly wasn’t the whole article on Jayce volunteering at his local Repair Café—a type of charity formed by various types of engineers and craft-people set up to provide people with a place to repair electronics, mechanical devices, computers, bicycles, even clothing.
“Huh,” Viktor says out loud to pet rats snuggled on the hammock in the cage of his living room. There are four of them so they don’t get too lonely when Viktor has to work late. “Would you believe that?”
Viktor scrolls through the article—there is a picture of Jayce beaming next to an electric wheelchair that he helped to repair. There’s the same wild glint in his eye Viktor noticed during the lecture earlier today. Genuine passion to… help? Viktor muses. Surprisingly, the article doesn’t mention him working at the university or make any cross of reference. If Viktor didn’t google it, he’d likely never found out about this initiative at all.
“Curious,” he says and closes his laptop.
It’s late. Viktor knows it’s late despite his lab not having any windows to the outside world. His bones are more reliable than any clock. They cry out, at the limits of their fatigue from a day spent holding up the weight of his mind, like Atlas to the heavens (if Atlas were frail and bound by two metal braces). His muscles begin to tremble, his hand erupting with friction blisters where he has leaned too long on his cane by the whiteboard. He's ready to go home.
Then he sees a light in another part of the vast space. It could have been someone simply forgetting to turn it off so he walks into that direction but—no. It’s Jayce, in a state Viktor has never seen him before—sprawled all across a desk tucked in the corner, an almost empty bottle in his hand. Viktor wonders where Jayce even kept that hidden.
It’s a far away picture from the image of Jayce he has conceived in his mind. It bothers him in ways he cannot quite pinpoint. If the faculty found out about this… Jayce would be in big trouble.
Viktor clears his throat. “Am I interrupting?” Viktor says, politely enough. “Jayce?” He adds quietly when there’s no response.
Jayce’s head slowly turns back to look at him, surprise written across his face. He didn’t expect anyone to be here at this hour, Viktor realises. Then, he is painfully aware how closely the perfect-in-every-way man eyes him from head to toe, gaze lingering on the iron bars of his leg brace. As if he hadn’t dared to do that while sober. Viktor is grateful that the harsh ridges of Viktor’s spine brace are hidden underneath his knitted jumper.
Somehow Jayce has enough presence of mind not to comment on it. Thank god he doesn’t comment on it.
“I can’t get this experiment to work,” Jayce slurs, head landing back in between his arms on the desk. “The whole project will fail because of me, because I can’t figure it out. And I’ve just lost a post-doc to industry, HR is taking forever to advertise the role, we cannot employ, and I just… I don’t know what to do.”
Viktor sits down on the nearby stool, holding his cane in front of him. “Okay, calm down. We’ve all been there.” He says. It’s true. Half of the time the projects would fail, especially if many partners around the world were involved. It’s part of the job. The best they can hope for is to produce new knowledge, record what didn’t work.
Unfortunately impostor syndrome is also part of the job, of which Viktor knew all too well. Jayce, who works predominantly with industry, likely doesn’t.
Viktor furrows his brow, realising it only now. “What’s the project?”
“It’s uhhh,” Jayce appears cagey somehow, like he is ashamed of it. “One of the European ones.”
Viktor lights up. At this point, after Brexit, not many people bothered with the European projects, not many have the necessary network to even take part in them. They’re not impossible to win but require a lot of effort to be put together and the winning ratio is low. Viktor feels a weird mix of awe for Jayce and shame for not paying more attention to what his colleagues are doing.
“Let me see,” he says, simply taking Jayce’s notes without waiting for an answer. Jayce gestures with his hand like he doesn’t care either way. They’re signed, Viktor notices, each and every page as he’s leafing through them.
“Jayce,” Viktor’s eyes widen as he starts reading.
“I know, I know,” Jayce waves his hand in the air.
Their research centre’s focus is green energy—hydrogen, batteries, supercapacitor cells, Viktor’s area of focus is battery diagnostics specifically—inventing sensors big enough not to break but small enough to fit into battery prototypes. Many projects need it, few people can do it.
From Jayce’s notes it transpires his batteries are overheating but he can’t understand why, can’t really properly see into them to check. Of course not, Jayce is an engineer at heart, he prefers mechanics and using his hammer than theoretical physics. That was the job of the post-doc that he lost.
“You should have come to me with this,” Viktor says. It’s the only logical conclusion.
“I, um…” Jayce slurs, looking back up at him. “I… tried? You weren’t exactly… receptive.”
“Wait—” Viktor pinches the bridge of his nose. “The cup of coffee? The jokes? That was your way of asking to collaborate!?”
Jayce shrugs. “People in the office told me it would be difficult. That you mostly do your own thing.”
Viktor pauses. It makes him reevaluate everything he thought of himself in the context of the research centre dynamics. He hasn’t even considered— Sky would have told him… wouldn’t she?
He puts Jayce’s notebook back on his desk.
He’s suddenly painfully aware of how tired he is, how much he overstretched his fragile body tonight. He can feel it in his bones but the project shouldn’t suffer for it.
“Sign me up for that post-doc job and let’s meet tomorrow morning to discuss.”
“It’s… below your paygrade.” Jayce blurts out, disbelief clear on his face. Clearly he’s more used to getting his way with cups of coffees and pleasant conversations than merit.
“Don’t worry about it,” he says, he’s made up his mind. Heimerdinger can fight him about it. He stands up and turns around to leave.
“Wait!” Jayce yells after him. Viktor stops, turns around and looks at him expectantly. “Thank you, professor, um…” he hesitates, “just Viktor.”
Viktor lets his lips quirk in a small smile, he nods. “You’re welcome, Professor Talis.”
He’s still smiling as he leaves, lost in his thoughts when he suddenly hears steps coming from the lab’s entrance. He hesitates, it could just be security checking if the building is already empty but either way, if they’re going to see Jayce like this…
Hurrying up as much as his leg lets him to, he turns a corner to stand face to face with Heimerdinger.
“Professor?” Viktor doesn’t hide his surprise. It quickly forms into terror. Jayce is going to get a disciplinary dismissal if Viktor doesn’t do something.
“Viktor,” Heimerdinger stops to look at him. “Was that you in the lab? I noticed the light is on.”
Right, Viktor’s part of the lab doesn’t have any windows, but Jayce’s does.
“I switched it off on my way out,” he lies. “ Someone must have forgotten about it.” He adds pointedly feigning annoyance.
“Oh, okay, good. Thank you, Viktor. I’ll reprimand Jayce about it tomorrow. You shouldn’t be working this late either, dear boy.”
Viktor rolls his eyes as they’re walking back out together. “You know how many projects I have, Professor and now this training course too—”
“Did I not tell you? Don’t worry about that, Viktor. I believe we have enough volunteers.”
Viktor looks at him strangely. What does that even mean? There’s no such thing as having too many teachers at a university, particularly among researchers. It feels off in ways Viktor cannot quite pinpoint but he’s already too busy covertly looking up Jayce’s number on their research centre website and texting Jayce to turn off the lights at his lab to overthink it any longer.
It gives him the oddest thrill.
Viktor’s opinion of Jayce doesn’t change, but he does give him a benefit of doubt. For now.