Work Text
It’s well past sunset when Jayce looks up from his work, the lab silent and dark except for two desk lamps and, in Viktor’s case, a flickering monitor illuminating the stark planes of a haggard face.
Jayce is the one who brings it up. He doesn’t believe in God, but he believes in tradition and the power of faith. His mother took him to church every Sunday, but shortly after Confirmation he made a case for not returning and mostly hasn’t.
“It’s the first night of Chanukah, isn’t it?” he asks gently.
Viktor doesn’t respond immediately, instead finishing the line of code, slender fingers flying across his keys. He pushes back from his desk, blinking. “Is it?” he mutters, before reaching for his mouse to click on a browser tab with the calendar. He squints, and frowns. “So it is.”
“Are you doing anything?”
For it? About it? To observe it? Do you care?
Jayce doesn’t ask those questions, only the first, but when Viktor catches his eye, he knows that he’s too transparent.
“For Chanukah?” In Viktor’s accent, the chet is pronounced in a way Jayce never quite manages, voiceless and unforced. He shrugs.
“Yeah. Is it important to you?”
“Some years more than others. My mother was observant. My father-” Viktor shrugs again and sighs.
“Yeah, my mom too,” Jayce agrees too readily and then realizes what he’s said. “I mean, she’s not Jewish. But she’s religious. Observant.” If he could physically kick his own head, he would right now.
Viktor’s lips pull into a tight smile. “I didn’t buy candles.”
“I saw a display at the market. We could pick some up. Get some dinner.” Jayce is grateful that he has to be blushing hard before it really shows on his cheeks. “If you wanted,” he adds lamely.
Viktor’s amber gaze turns briefly to his monitor, then with a couple of keystrokes he locks the screen.
“All right.”
-=-
Jayce has been to Viktor’s apartment, but he’s never spent much time there. It’s a cramped one bedroom in what passes for a bad part of Piltover without actually crossing the bridge into the Undercity. But it’s where the Judaica lives, so they get some takeout, a bottle of wine, and a box of candles from a Chanukah display that bafflingly features matzah and jars of gefilte fish in addition to an untouched and tidy stack of candle boxes, where it’s clear theirs is the only purchase, before returning to Viktor’s tiny apartment.
“So… do we eat first? Do the candle lighty thing first?” Jayce vibrates with nervous energy as Viktor points him to the kitchen.
“Properly, we’d have done this at sunset, but…” Viktor lifts a shoulder. “Needs must. There are plates in the cupboard to the right of the stove. I’ll be back.”
Jayce finds the plates as Viktor disappears into the bedroom, from which he can hear rustling, then a heavy thud. He’s known from his short association that rushing in to help is not going to go well, so he concentrates on plating their dinner and looking for wine glasses.
At the point that he gives up on wine glasses and settles for a pair of mismatched small jelly jars for their wine, Viktor reemerges with something that looks like a brass box with dried candle wax drips. “Found it! The family chanukiah, such as it is. Grab some foil. And I think there’s a lighter in the drawer?”
It doesn’t take long for Jayce to find both, and set them on the tiny table in the nook that doubles as a pantry and dining room, followed by their dinner plates. A bare bulb hanging from the ceiling just above the table serves as a lamp and Jayce has to duck to avoid hitting it.
Jayce isn’t sure what’s supposed to happen, but Viktor gestures for him to sit while he tears off a piece of foil and folds it, then sets the box on top of it. In the dim light, he can see that the box has nine holes in it, one on a blob of brass slightly higher than the others, and carvings of bricks? Letters? A bird maybe? It’s hard to tell and Jayce doesn’t think it’s polite to ask,
what’s the deal with your religious paraphernalia?
Viktor taps out two short, slender candles from the cardboard box they just purchased, and with the air of a professional long used to precisely this action, he flicks on the lighter, melts the bottom of one of the candles, and places it in the right-most hole in the brass holder, the melted wax adhering to the metal.
He lights the other candle with the lighter, and murmurs words Jayce doesn’t quite catch - but he recognizes the melody as one Viktor sometimes hums under his breath when he’s deep in thought.
He also recognizes the
amen
at the end and realizes belatedly that it was a prayer. Viktor was
praying.
And he didn’t even clock it.
Viktor picks up his fork, but Jayce sputters, “is that it?”
“What did you think it would be?” Viktor asks with an infuriatingly mischievous smile. “It’s a small holiday. A small observance.”
“But- all of the-” Jayce gestures expansively, sending the overhead bulb swinging, and singeing the back of his hand.
“For some people. For Piltover, trying to show how important diversity is, it’s made larger. My mother usually has some people from the neighborhood over for a get together at some point. And the rabbi at the old temple would do a nice service for the shabbat.”
“That sounds great!” Jayce winces at his own enthusiasm.
Viktor doesn’t respond immediately, instead spearing a piece of broccoli and chewing thoughtfully. “Why do you care so much about this?”
The question surprises Jayce, but he doesn’t have a ready answer. And if he’s learned anything in the months he’s known Viktor, it’s that kneejerk responses are rarely the right ones.
“You’re here for all the Piltover holidays. You go to the parties when you can’t avoid them-” he lifts a hand to forestall Viktor’s frown, “but I know they’re not yours. You do all the right things, say all the right words, but I can tell they’re not… familiar?”
At this, a line appears between Viktor’s eyebrows. “No, no. That’s not what I mean. Not exactly. It’s um… like, you know all the things to do, but they’re not comfortable. They don’t belong to you. This, though-” he waves at the menorah, his awe in Viktor’s assured motions. “
This
is yours. And I want to know that part of you.”
Viktor meets his eyes steadily, evaluating. Jayce can’t tell what he’s thinking and he wants to melt into the floor. His cheeks burn and he knows that his darker skin isn’t hiding his blush this time.
“If that’s okay,” he amends, wishing his voice wasn’t shaking.
Viktor nods after a long moment.
“I’ll show you.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Viktor hasn’t been back to temple in years, not since going to the university, not since moving to Piltover. He’d heard from his mother that the old rabbi retired shortly after the cantor, his wife, passed. They had been replaced by two young men, whom his mother refers to as
children
, but Viktor is used to his mother declaring anyone younger than fifty as a child.
He isn’t prepared for the new rabbi and cantor to look quite
so
young, though, not much older than he and Jayce. The rabbi is clearly growing a new beard in an effort to look a little older, like he has a little more gravitas, but the patchiness only makes him look like an adolescent. The cantor is a clean shaven young man with bright eyes and in another time and place, Viktor can imagine meeting him at a bar, having a nice time together.
Instead, he holds his cane a little tighter and glances up at Jayce.
Jayce is trying so hard. He’s not wearing his Piltover best -
baruch hashem
- but perhaps his third or fourth best suit, still nicer than anything anyone is wearing in the undercity, even as they are going to Friday evening services. He stands out - taller, broader, more handsome - in the cramped foyer, where Viktor is now making awkward introductions between people he knew in another life and his- whatever Jayce is to him. More than business partners. More than lab partners. Less than life partners.
There are kippot for loan in a basket next to the coffee carafe, but Viktor made certain to bring an extra for Jayce and already coached him on placement and securing strategies. And he has to admit, the blue crocheted circle perched on Jayce’s head stirs something in him that he didn’t realize was missing.
Jayce is a natural. He doesn’t belong here and it’s clear to absolutely everyone that he’s not Jewish, not part of the undercity, but he’s charming and friendly, and it’s hard not to like him. His ignorance of their practices is neither a badge of honor nor a shameful secret; he’s here with Viktor, to learn what he doesn’t know. The rabbi is charmed and worse, so is his mother.
Viktor hadn’t told her he was coming, least of all with Jayce, and he was low-key praying that she would happen to choose this shabbat to skip. But she’s here and Jayce is impossible to miss, let alone the dozen or so of his mother’s friends from the old neighborhood who immediately start fussing over Viktor as soon as they enter. Slipping in and out unseen was never an option.
As soon as he spots his mother, he knows they’re sunk. She is a small woman with sharp features; more than once in his childhood, the neighbors remarked how much he looked like his mother, sharing the same amber eyes, dark brows, cutting profiles.
She pulls herself to her full, unimpressive height and points at Jayce. “So you’re what’s been keeping our Viktor up there.”
It’s tempting to blame the clumsy sentence on being an immigrant, that her command of the language isn’t as strong as it could be, but Viktor knows better. As he turns to make the introduction, Jayce is already extending a hand, dimming his brilliant smile to one more conspiratorial.
“I don’t think I could keep Viktor from making his own choices, even if I wanted to.” For a moment Viktor thinks he’s in the clear. “But I make time to see my mother.”
Viktor groans while his mother cackles.
“Come along. You’ll sit with me,” she links her arm in Jayce’s leaving Viktor to follow behind into the sanctuary.
-=-
On the one hand, Jayce making fast friends with his mother is about the best outcome he could hope for. On the other, Viktor left his life in the undercity behind for a variety of reasons and now he wonders if he should have come at all, or brought Jayce with him.
He watches Jayce more than he pays attention to the activity on the bimah. His body follows the rote actions of a lifetime of ritual while Jayce follows his mother’s firm instructions, half a beat behind everyone else, as he stands and sits and covers his eyes and turns with the rest of the congregation. Jayce is so focused on doing this well, doing this
right.
Viktor wonders if he could have a chance of being half so good at living in Piltover, of being accepted half as well as Jayce is being accepted here.
In lieu of the d’var torah, the rabbi asks the children (and interested adults) to come sit on the floor with him. At first, Viktor has never been so grateful that his braces make sitting on the floor (and crucially the return journey) inaccessible. Despite being fifteen years out from his bar mitzvah, he’s continued to be one of the children, which isn’t the main reason that he always finds something else to be doing when he receives an invitation to return… but if he’s being honest with himself, it’s a contributing factor.
But then Jayce joins the children sitting on the floor, a giant, handsome, smiling man willing to hold a little boy in his lap while the rabbi reads Herschel and the Hanukkah Goblins, and a flush of annoyance, and envy, and despair fill him to the brim.
His mother reaches for his hand and gives it a squeeze.
“You like him?” she asks under her breath. At Viktor’s tight nod, she gives his hand another pulse. “I like him too. Invite him to latkes. No excuses.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
After a whirlwind trip into the undercity where Jayce went to church (temple? Synagogue? Shul? He’d heard all three used interchangeably and he’s extremely confused as to how to even describe the experience) with Viktor; met
Viktor’s mother
(Jayce had honestly thought that Viktor was an orphan and an outcast doomed to live alone); and was invited to no fewer than three events the names of which and purposes are a mystery, he’s feeling both out of his depth and deeply confused.
Viktor is not in a talking mood, though. His steps returning to Jayce’s car are slow and he is white knuckling his cane like he does when he’s in a lot of pain and isn’t keen on being coddled. Jayce just slows his steps to keep pace with Viktor, even though he briefly fantasizes about lifting him off the pavement and shaking him.
He doesn’t say anything in the car.
He doesn’t say anything when Jayce drives them back to his own apartment, bypassing Viktor’s entirely.
He doesn’t say anything when Jayce draws a bath in the ridiculously deep tub that Jayce has never used, only ever filled it for Viktor.
It’s only when Jayce deposits Viktor in the bathroom that Viktor blinks and catches Jayce’s wrist. “Don’t go. Please. Not yet.”
Jayce doesn’t go.
“I didn’t know you had family,” he murmurs, hoping that if his tone is low enough, his voice gentle enough, Viktor won’t spook and might,
maybe
talk to him.
Viktor’s fingers still on his shirt buttons. “You never asked.”
Jayce presses his lips together, takes a deep breath, counts to ten. “I told you about my family. My mom. Why I do all of this,” he gestures at the wall, but it’s in the direction of the university, the work they’ve done together. “I thought you didn’t talk about it because it hurt.”
Viktor snorts softly, resumes unbuttoning. “It does.”
“But why would you hide it?” Jayce presses.
“I didn’t hide it. I simply didn’t mention it.”
Jayce feels his temper rising, but before he can voice it, Viktor shrugs out of his shirt, folding it neatly and setting it on the expansive counter beside the sink. The new back brace digs into his skin leaving welts, and the sight of those livid red marks makes Jayce’s stomach flip flop and his anger disappears.
“It’s easier when people make assumptions and I don’t contradict them. Easier when I fit into a convenient box.”
“But we’re-” Jayce doesn’t even know what they are. Friends? Partners?
Viktor’s trousers fall to the floor and he steps out of them, hands on the counter. “If I was hiding it, I would never have brought you with me..”
Jayce retrieves Viktor’s trousers for him, which Viktor takes and folds with the same methodical care.
“I don’t understand why you couldn’t just talk to me-”
“We’re talking now.” Viktor turns to face the mirror, using it to find the buckles on his brace, not meeting Jayce’s eyes. “What do you want to know?”
Jayce exhales slowly. What
does
he want to know?
I want to know why you didn’t trust me. I want to know why, when I told you about my mom, you spoke about yours in the past tense. I want to know why you showed me this way. I want to know if you love me the way I love you.
He says instead, jutting his chin at Viktor’s body in the mirror, “Do you want some help?”
Viktor hesitates, then nods. “Please.”
The steam from the tub is starting to fog the mirror as Jayce makes quick work of the buckles and straps of Viktor’s new brace. He only knows it’s a new one because Viktor admitted to needing an adjustment to it last week and he’s certain, looking at it now, that he hasn’t had it done. The welts are startling against Viktor’s pale skin.
The brace goes on top of the clothes, and Viktor slips away from Jayce, sitting on the edge of the tub for a moment before pivoting his legs and lowering himself in.
“Do you want to join me?”
Jayce is not a bath kind of man, but the tub is legitimately large enough for two. He contemplates for the sparest moment whether this is a ploy to stop talking about this, decides quickly that even if it is, he doesn’t care. In seconds, he’s stripped bare, his clothes left on the floor where they fall, and he’s in, nestling Viktor’s back against his chest
“Is it just your mom in the undercity? Do you have other family?” Jayce murmurs into Viktor’s ear.
Viktor half twists away. “Are you going to, eh, pump me for information now that I’m unlikely to flee?”
Jayce is about to protest when he catches a flicker of Viktor’s smile behind his deadpan. “Are you going to answer?”
Viktor settles back, but he’s stiff in Jayce’s arms. “It’s just my mother now. She and my father came here when I was very young. But Piltover does not have a lot of use for smart men who couldn’t learn the language. My father… did not do so well. Very smart. Very well respected before. But here? Just another laborer. My mother did better, but…” he shrugs. “She had a precocious child who was always sick. She worked too much and I was too smart, but also very stupid, as children can be.
“We had a community. We’re not from here, there are very few people here where we’re from, but we celebrated the same things, worshiped the same ways, more or less. When my father left and my mother worked, we had our shul, and they helped in the ways they could. I didn’t have blood family other than my mother, but I had them.”
“They clearly adore you. Why don’t you go back?”
“When? How?” Viktor asks bitterly. “They’re deep in the undercity. If I go back too often, my lungs fill with fluid. The Enforcers don’t allow people up without a permit. Heimerdinger kept me busy, and now you do, too-”
Jayce realizes it was a stupid, awful question at the same time Viktor seems to realize he’s said too much. He reaches his arms around Viktor and holds tight, before Viktor can try to squirm away.
“I’m sorry,” Jayce says into his hair.
Viktor doesn’t like to apologize and Jayce doesn’t expect one in return.
“It’s a matter of survival,” Viktor says after a moment. “I don’t go back so I don’t have to choose.”
“Choose what?”
“A short, brutal end with my people or a longer life without them.”
“Shit,” Jayce sighs.
“Indeed.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Piltover doesn’t get cold, not in the way the undercity can. Even though the elevation is higher and the streets are wider, allowing for sweeping and brisk winds to run their course through the city, Piltover in the winter is joyful and convivial, full of festival markets and brightly lit storefronts. Even the residential districts are bright, families spending small fortunes on window displays.
In Viktor’s first year in Piltover, his classmates lured him out of their dormitories and he nursed a single cup of mulled wine paid out of his tiny stipend and wondered,
where are my people?
He knew the answer: they were in the city below, their labors funding the spectacle above.
He didn’t return in subsequent years.
Jayce didn’t know any of that when he invited Viktor the first time, nor any of the others. And unlike Viktor’s previous classmates and roommates, he didn’t stop asking. Whatever Jayce’s faults, his consistent optimism drove him to continue asking, to never once think that Viktor’s excuses were anything more than what they looked like on their face: feeling unwell, or having a scheduling conflict, or whatever else Viktor told him. Jayce believed him with his whole heart and being.
Perhaps that was why Viktor took him to shabbat services, opened this part of his life to someone from Piltover in a way that he had never shown anyone else.
Viktor is walking back to his apartment, a habit born of necessity and continued out of dogged determination not to lose his mobility any sooner than he must. The cold air matches his mood, sharp and brittle and there is a part of him that wants to stay out in it until he has frozen his emotions just as hard as the icy streets.
It’s an idiotic thought, and he tells himself that as he sees his building’s stoop, dim light against the rapidly darkening sky.
Upon letting himself in, he collects his mail, then evaluates the rickety elevator versus the regrettably steep stairs, before picking the elevator. He might be an idiot about Jayce, but he’s not going to kill himself by losing his balance on cold stairs.
He shuffles through his meager mail as the elevator makes its slow, lurching way to his floor, juddering to a stop, and then taking two tries to open before it fully gets there. One of these days, he’s going to get trapped in this elevator, he knows.
Viktor leaves the heat off in his apartment when he’s not there (and often when he is), so the interior is only a little warmer than the world outside his window. He turns the corner once the door is closed to his little dining nook to find his chanukiah still set on the foil, with the remains of the first night candles, and the box still open.
This is something that Viktor has never known how to approach: the practice outside of the undercity, outside of community. He had never entirely understood the point of a minyan prior to leaving his home, but now he sees why the religion dictates who and how many people should be present for any given practice. It is a sneaky, sneaky way to ensure you have community, to not allow yourself to become a hermit.
Lighting a chanukiah does not require ten adults. It’s something that can happen by oneself, without anyone else seeing or knowing. But if that’s the case, what is the point of doing it?
Viktor does not believe in a god, any god, even his own god. When he sings the prayers, he has tried to find a connection to something else, but they are, as so much else is, rote memory; comforting in their consistency, in their nostalgia, but the words wash over him, syllables without much meaning.
But belief is not part of the practice, the actions are.
He strips off his gloves, hangs up his coat and scarf, puts his hat and earmuffs on the second hook, bending to take off his boots and places his cane in the umbrella stand, careful as ever that everything is in its place.
They didn’t finish the bottle of wine the other night, and there’s still some leftovers. He pours the last of the wine into a glass, heats his leftovers and sits. The chanukiah is out, the candles are ready, a lighter is neatly lined up beside the foil he had Jayce put down to catch any wax drips.
Why not?
He taps out four candles, then remembers that it’s the fourth night and taps out a fifth. Melting the ends of each one so they sit evenly, he places them one by one, then lights the shamash.
Should he sing? Recite? Say the words in his head? Doing this in a group, the answers are easy. It’s a group activity. Even with just Jayce, even as he rushed the prayers, he felt like he was doing it for someone else and that someone would care.
“Fuck!”
Burning wax rolls down the shamash and burns his fingertips. He nearly drops the candle, but he manages to just stop himself and instead angles it over the foil so the wax doesn’t burn him again.
He starts singing, mostly out of habit, but halfway through the first prayer, he realizes that his heart has stopped thumping quite so hard in his chest, and when he concentrates on the music, for a brief moment, his mind quiets too.
Maybe the rabbis knew a little something about this, too.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
It had never previously occurred to Jayce that the rules around who could enter Piltover were draconian. They weren’t
official
, of course. Ostensibly, anyone with legitimate business could cross the bridge back and forth. But what constituted legitimate was up to the Enforcers to determine and if they found someone they didn’t approve of, they could send them back or arrest them.
It resulted in an unofficial permitting process for workers who lived in the Undercity, whose Piltover employers issued letters or cards attesting that their business was legitimate. Anyone from Piltover could pass freely, but anyone from the other side? That was another matter.
Jayce has questions though, and no real way to contact the people with answers that he can easily find, so off he goes across the bridge, another example of the stark differences between him and Viktor and Viktor’s family.
Traffic to the temple (synagogue? Shul?) is light and he makes it to the building faster than he anticipates. His plan of coming up with questions to ask and an approach that don’t make him sound like a complete idiot on the drive is stymied by suddenly being there and, worse, the young rabbi being outside, sweeping the front stoop of the building. He waves as he sees Jayce and Jayce’s only options are to pretend that he’s on his way somewhere else (a lie) or get on with it.
“Jayce Talis. Come to this part of town often?” the rabbi asks, leaning on his broom, as Jayce approaches.
In the light of day, he’s a large young man with a square jaw, but he seems even younger; his beard still patchy and he has a sprinkle of spots across his cheeks, more reminiscent of one of Jayce’s interns than an honored and respected elder.
“No, not really,” Jayce says honestly. “I- I’m not sure why I’m here.”
The rabbi chuckles. “Come on in. Around here, you’re liable to find more questions than answers, but we’ll give it a go.”
The rabbi takes Jayce through the foyer, a side door leading away from the sanctuary, and to an office that has “Rabbi C. Uhrman” on a sheet of paper taped over the old name plate. Jayce breathes a sigh of relief that he won’t have to admit to having forgotten his name.
The office has three walls of books, a dingy window, a small desk, and a few well worn chairs. The rabbi waves Jayce to one of them and takes his own seat across from Jayce.
He’s expecting the chairs to be uncomfortable, like the ones in the priest’s office of the church his mother attends, but is surprised to find it well-worn, probably
because
of its comfort. It’s a seat that encourages visitors to stay.
“You came with Viktor on Friday?” Rabbi Uhlman prompts.
“I’ve never…” Jayce starts, trails off. The rabbi waits patiently, unhurried, as Jayce shifts in his seat. “I asked him if he was going to do anything for Chanukah. And he wasn’t going to, but I sort of pestered him into it, and now…”
Another pause. Jayce almost wishes Rabbi Uhlman would fill something in, so he could find the words he needs.
“I feel like I’ve opened something that Viktor didn’t want opened. And I don’t know what to do about it.”
“Have you asked him how he feels about it?” Rabbi Uhlman leans back in his chair, folding his rough hands across his cardigan-clad belly.
“Kind of. We talked after shabbat. A little.” Jayce’s cheeks heat at the memory. “But not since then.”
“Why not?”
At least this has an easy answer. “I’m fundraising and he’s working in the lab. We haven’t seen much of each other.”
Rabbi Uhlman raises an eyebrow. “How long have you been together?”
“We’ve been working together for a couple years-” A couple years since Viktor saved him. A couple years since they made their discovery together.
“I meant, how long have you two been
together.
”
Jayce blushes to the roots of his hair at the rabbi’s clear meaning. “We’re not. I mean, I don’t think we are. We’re-” he stumbles over the words.
“He brought you to his home. He introduced you to his people and his mother. I think it’s safe to say that whatever you are to each other, it’s more than two men who happen to work together.”
“He wouldn’t have if I hadn’t pressed him.” Jayce flops back in his chair. If he didn’t push, Viktor would never let him in.
“Mm. Maybe, maybe not. That’s not for me to say, but he let you in. If I know anything about Viktor from the old days, no power could move him if he didn’t want to be moved.”
Jayce has to admit that was true enough. Viktor is too stubborn for his own good. “Did you know him…?”
“His mother and mine are friends. Tried to beat him up a few times when we were both boys. Didn’t work out so well for me,” Rabbi Uhlman laughs unselfconsciously. “ He’s smart and vicious. And I don’t think that’s changed.”
“Yeah, tell me about it,” Jayce mutters.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Viktor shivers on the street, huddled in the doorway of the tall brick building, waiting for Jayce to buzz him up. It’s another minute and Viktor has to hit Jayce’s button again before the buzzer sounds and the door unlocks. Jayce appears a moment later in the stairwell, running down the stairs before the elevator can get to the lobby.
Jayce thrusts a warmed towel at him, exchanging it for Viktor’s heavy grocery bags. “I’m so sorry, I meant to meet you down here-”
Viktor shakes his head, pressing his face into the warm towel. It smells like fresh laundry and Jayce. “I was early.”
When he comes up for air, he finds Jayce poking through the bag. “What’s all this?”
“My mother called,” Viktor hooks his cane over one arm and folds the cooling towel neatly. “She found out you have a kitchen worth a damn, and now we’re responsible for some cooking.”
“She
found out?”
Viktor makes a face. “I confessed, but I assure you it was, eh, under duress.”
“I thought your family thing wasn’t until tomorrow-”
“Ha. These recipes take time, effort, the sacrifice of blood, sweat, and tears, and generational wars have been waged.” Viktor aims a crooked smile at Jayce. “But mostly, we’re doing the prep work.”
“Is this a
twenty pound
bag of onions? You carried it?”
Viktor pushes down a wave of annoyance. “Stronger than I look, remember?”
Jayce contrives to look contrite for all of a second before grinning. “Does that mean you want to carry these the rest of the way?”
“Feh.” Viktor presses the elevator button as his answer.
-=-
Jayce’s kitchen is big, beautiful, and mostly unused. He has good tools, but isn’t home often enough to use them, Viktor knows. Even when he’s stayed over, Jayce makes coffee, and then sweeps them out the door to the carts down the street for a more substantive breakfast.
But Viktor has gone through Jayce’s cupboards enough to know that there is a fully stocked kitchen, with pantry staples aplenty. When pressed, Jayce admitted sheepishly that his mother stocked his pantry, put leftovers into his refrigerator, and took away anything that was getting close to its use-by date to use herself.
Does he know how fortunate he is?
Viktor wonders, not for the first time, as he takes his customary spot on one of the island counter chairs, glad to be off his feet. He might be stronger than he looks, but it’s an admittedly low bar.
Jayce sets the bags on the counter and starts unloading them, making small talk about the gala he attended two nights before, the promises of funding he received and how many he thinks will actually pan out, which is never as much as promised.
“Mel is still working on some other angles, but-” Jayce sighs as he lets the bags drop to the floor to be retrieved later.
Viktor resists the urge to pick them up and fold them. “But what?” he prompts, busying himself with sorting the potatoes and onions into piles.
“If I’d known how much time I would spend fundraising and how little time doing the real work-”
This is an old refrain. “Fundraising is part of the real work. And funders want to see their golden boy of Piltover, not me,” Viktor reminds him, not quite keeping the bitterness out of his voice.
“If they knew what you were like-” Jayce starts plaintively.
“They’d be even more insistent on seeing the golden boy. Hand me a knife and put your big pot on to boil.”
“Are you going to stab me with it?”
“And cut off our funding?” Viktor wrinkles his nose. “Never.”
Jayce hands over a knife and cutting board.
-=-
It’s hours of chopping onions, parboiling potatoes, and preparing sides. These are easy things to do, but having the counter space to do them companionably the night before rather than trying to do it all in his mother’s tiny kitchen the same afternoon is a blessing. And, Viktor reflects, it neatly avoids having the aunties come kibbitz about how the preparations are being done, which his mother told him if she had to listen to another year, the neighborhood might have a few more shivas to sit.
At one point, Jayce rummages in his refrigerator to find a spiced stew his mother left and they take a break to reheat it before getting back to it all.
By the time they finish, it’s nearly midnight. Jayce did the lions share of the work while Viktor provided commentary, support, witticisms, and advice. Perhaps he has a future as a kibbitzing auntie, he thinks, which makes him chuckle aloud, and then he has to explain it to Jayce.
“Shit - we didn’t do the candles! Is that okay?” Jayce asks, his eyebrows drawing together in a worried line.
Viktor is briefly torn between feeding him a line about the terrible fate that would befall them all (Jayce’s look of horror when Viktor explained hagbaha and the consequences of dropping the Torah almost made the entire shabbat service worth it) and shrugging it off entirely, but there’s something incredibly sweet about Jayce’s desire to be part of this. He’d half anticipated it, and tells Jayce to get his messenger bag from the foyer table.
Jayce’s expression of sheer delight when Viktor pulls out his chanukiah and the half used box of candles makes it worth carrying the damn thing across town.
Jayce fetches some foil, places it under the chanukiah, and hands Viktor his kitchen lighter.
“Sixth night?” Jayce asks as Viktor is counting them off on his fingers, and he nods.
“Sixth night. Chag chanukah sameach, Jayce.”
Jayce stumbles over the unfamiliar words, but Viktor has never felt so keenly that someone is wishing him a good holiday from the very depths of his heart.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Before they go down to the undercity, Viktor tells him to leave his car in Piltover. Jayce is dubious; how are they meant to carry everything they prepared? But Viktor has a solution, a plan, a full itinerary of which trams will get them closest to the bridge, and two wagons and a cart that they load their goods into.
Viktor also consults on Jayce’s wardrobe: “Lose the suit,” he says before diving into Jayce’s closet to find something else. He comes up with a jewel red collared shirt, a brown tweed vest, and slacks. Jayce doesn’t remember owning any of these. While Jayce tries on the ensemble, Viktor sits back on Jayce’s bed, eyeing him critically, making Jayce self-conscious.
“Roll up the sleeves,” Viktor says at last.
Jayce turns to the mirrored closet doors and sees a well dressed man that isn’t completely out of place in the undercity. His broad shoulders and muscular arms fill out the shirt, and the rolled sleeves make him look… ready for action. Competent.
Viktor comes up behind him, braced on his cane and they gaze at their reflections. Together, they’re a study in contrasts.
“Very nice,” Viktor pronounces, and Jayce isn’t sure if he means Jayce or the two of them together. “We should go.”
-=-
Viktor and Jayce are early to his mother’s house, a narrow row house not so far from the bridge as the shul, and not quite so deep in the undercity. Tidy where the neighbors are not, it doesn’t stand out to an untrained eye, but Viktor has been explaining the undercity to Jayce in bits and pieces. Jayce sees the swept stoop and the hardy succulents in pots that need neither water nor good sun to thrive. Viktor’s mother cares about her home.
Viktor lets himself in without so much as a knock, and is greeted by a bevy of women ranging in ages from older adolescent to ancient crone. Viktor hands off the wagons and cart, then undertakes the introductions. Jayce is good at remembering names and faces, but so many of the women have a sameness to them, that isn’t quite familial relation, but close, that his head is spinning.
Eventually Viktor manages to get through to greet his mother, who is incandescent in her joy at seeing Viktor, and somehow manages to increase her ebullience at seeing Jayce. “I’m so glad you’re here! I need you to move the sofa.”
Jayce knows that the path to a mother’s heart is through kindness to her children and willingness to move heavy furniture, so he ducks his head in assent. “Absolutely. My hands are yours.”
Viktor doesn’t even have the grace to look apologetic. He winks at Jayce, and then ’s swept up into his mother’s flock, put to work cutting up yet more potatoes, and for a while, that’s the last Jayce sees of Viktor.
-=-
It starts with standing in the doorway of the kitchen where women have made an assembly line for the latkes. Jayce discovers that what seemed like so much food in his kitchen is nothing compared to the contributions of more than a dozen people who have brought more and more and more.
He is given the duty of taking the finished latkes out to the rest of the party, to keep them from trying to get into the crowded kitchen. He takes this duty seriously, returning empty plates and going out again with fresh ones. Best of all, it gives him a job, something that keeps him occupied while Viktor has disappeared into the fray.
While he’s waiting for the next batch, someone hands him a drink. Viktor tells him early in the night to be wary of the cheap, sweet wine that will be served, but every time Jayce looks away from his cup for even a moment, someone refills it. He loses track of how much he drinks and realizes the wisdom in Viktor’s insistence on leaving the car topside.
A band sets up at some point, in the spot where the sofa used to be, and plays music that is almost entirely foreign to Jayce’s experience. He thinks he knows part of a folk melody, but then it shifts. The languages they sing in make no sense to Jayce’s ears, but the rabbi and the cantor grab microphones and everyone laughs. Jayce doesn’t know why, but he laughs too, happy and joyful to be here.
Someone grabs his hand and sweeps him into a dance he doesn’t know, but apparently the only thing he has to do is stumble along and not fall down. Someone grabs his other hand and he knows that he has a second task: don’t let go.
This keeps going over and over until the music pauses and someone pushes a cup of cool, clean water into his hands.
Jayce blinks to find Viktor close, putting cool fingers against Jayce’s flushed cheeks. “Drink this,” he murmurs, amber eyes glowing under impossibly long eyelashes. Jayce does, guzzling the precious drops like the lifeline they are.
Viktor takes the cup away, replaces it with his lips against Jayce’s.
In their lives in Piltover, there’s always been an unspoken agreement about their- whatever this is. Their intimacy is private, never to be seen in public. They are friends and business partners, but no more. Jayce needs to be seen as available and approachable, and they both know that Viktor is neither of those and even touching a crippled Zaunite would… not tarnish, but certainly dull the glamor of Piltover’s favored son. They could be lab partners but not lovers. A committed relationship is an impossibility.
But here… Jayce gathers Viktor into his arms, opens his mouth to Viktor in his mother’s parlor, in front of everyone and it’s
thrilling.
Viktor pulls away, breathless. “Let’s go home,” he murmurs into Jayce’s skin.
Let’s go home.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Viktor rolls over in the wide bed with its crisp white sheets, and checks his phone. He sends a text to Sky letting her know that they’re not making it in today, gets a thumbs up emoji in response, and burrows back under the covers. His hips hurt too much to easily go back to sleep, but Jayce is enticement enough to curl up in the curve of his warm, sleeping form.
Jayce wakes up with a groan. Viktor had expected the hangover and made him put a granola bar, painkillers, and a glass of water on the bedside table before going to sleep, which Jayce now takes after gentle prodding. He groans again, pulls Viktor closer, and falls back asleep, a quality Viktor wishes he could emulate, but this - the gentle domesticity of this - is nice.
Eventually, Viktor has to get up to stretch or his joints are going to lock up. Jayce is still blissfully and gently snoring and barely notices as Viktor squirms out from under his arms. He’s glad he had the foresight to also put his cane next to the bed rather than leave it in the hall, because everything about getting his aching and stiff body moving is made at least a little easier by having that familiar point of leverage.
Now that he’s upright and breathing a little heavier, he feels the tickle deep in his chest that portends at least a few very uncomfortable days in his future. He makes it to the bathroom before he starts coughing, and while he’s doubled over, he considers whether two trips home in a week is worth this.
But then he remembers Jayce’s mouth on his, his beaming mother, and he concedes that maybe it is.
He turns on the water in the shower as hot as it will go, inhales the steam, and hopes that this time the illness will pass swiftly.
-=-
By the time Jayce is fully awake and mobile, Viktor has showered, made coffee, and tidied the kitchen. He knows he does this every time, as if activity and action will stave off the inevitable. But he runs out of things to do, that he reasonably can do without assistance, and finally sits at the kitchen island to read the news.
Jayce, wrapped in a robe and fresh from his own shower, pauses in his quest for caffeine to press a kiss to Viktor’s cheek, then recoils. “Viktor, you’re burning up!”
“Hm?” Viktor glances up from his paper to find the world is just a touch fuzzy, the fever creeping in around the edges.
Ah, well.
It never works, but he figures it’s always worth the try. And at least now he can leave with a clear conscience.
“I can take myself home.” He folds the paper neatly, starts to slide off the stool. “Don’t worry, I’m not contagious.”
Jayce pulls himself up, the picture of affront. “I don’t care about that. You’re
sick.”
Viktor smiles thinly. “That has been one of my defining features since the beginning. It will pass.”
He tries to push past, but Jayce puts himself between Viktor and the door, looming large and Viktor’s brain is starting to soften a bit. He can’t quite work out how to move around him.
“Do you want to be alone?” Jayce asks, a hand on Viktor’s shoulder. Jayce has large blacksmith’s hands, rough, competent, and
warm
.
“It’s better if I am-” Viktor starts to say, but Jayce gives his shoulder a gentle push that nearly sends him to the floor.
Oh no.
“Do you
want
to be alone?” Jayce repeats earnestly, catching Viktor’s eyes and by his elbow.
Viktor almost repeats himself. He closes his eyes, inhales Jayce’s scent, and shakes his head. “No,” he hears himself whisper.
“Give me your keys. I’ll go pick some things up for you.”
-=-
Jayce installs Viktor on the sofa with a cup of tea and a blanket. The fever is getting worse and Viktor’s ability to focus on anything more complex than getting the cup from the table to his lips without spilling is diminishing rapidly, and he dozes off and on.
As the afternoon turns dark, the door rattles open, heralding Jayce’s return with a duffel in one hand and a grocery bag in the other. Viktor blinks awake long enough to see Jayce come through the door, coughs, and drifts off again.
The next time he wakes, it's Jayce's soft touch against his shoulder. It’s fully dark outside Jayce’s wide windows with the beautiful view of the city.
His head is full of cotton and he blinks hard in the dim light coming from the kitchen to see what Jayce is doing. His question is interrupted by hard, rough coughing that brings a metallic tang to the back of his throat, which he resolutely ignores.
Once he’s recovered enough, though, he finds that Jayce has brought his chanukiah from his apartment, and the box of cheap candles they bought together last week. All eight candles are in a tidy row, ready to be lit, with just the shamash missing.
Not missing: in Jayce’s hand. “Is this okay?” Jayce asks softly, passing the unlit candle to Viktor.
Viktor takes it with a trembling hand.
Shit.
“Here, let me.”
Viktor almost protests. There’s something in the back of his mind about appropriateness, but he can't think of what, and couldn’t form the words even if he wanted to.
But instead of taking the candle away, Jayce puts his hand around Viktor’s, steadying it. He lights the candle, but Viktor guides their movement. Viktor recites the bracha in a rasping voice, unable to find enough range to sing the melody.
But it doesn’t matter, he thinks, as he moves their hands together, lighting each candle in turn.
A great miracle is happening
here
.