Work Text:
I peel oranges neatly.
The sections come apart cleanly, perfectly in my hands.
***
One day, Ximena buys Jayce a crate of oranges.
She hands it to him one Sunday morning; he still visits every Sunday, makes time early in the morning before the sun has even risen to find his way to the meagre Talis estate and let himself through the front gate and into her warm kitchen, where spiced chocolate is always steaming and waiting for him. She asks him about his work; she asks him about the Council, and about Hextech, and about the forge, and about Viktor and Heimerdinger and the Academy.
He asks her about her garden, and helps her remove and clean and oil the joints of her digital prostheses.
She tuts over a new burn or scrape on his hands--which have never been cared for properly, the skin red and inflamed around the site, a mild infection setting in. She finds the antiseptic and the gauze, withdrawn from the first aid kid mounted next to the kitchen sink, and does her best to clean it, and he indulges her. She is, after all, his mother. He hasn't needed her in a long time, but this is something he can do for her, let her mother him, and it's nice to sit in his childhood home with her fussing over his hand while the mug of chocolate warms his palm, a pleasant soothe against the sharp sting of disinfectant.
This is their weekly morning ritual; it does not typically involve oranges.
"I know for a fact," she tells him mildly, digging out a sharp splinter of metal that got lodged at the base of his thumb two nights ago, "that you and that Viktor of yours don't eat nearly enough."
"Ma..." Jayce sighs, shaking his head. His tone is long-suffering, teasingly weary; but he can't say anything more than that, because she is unfortunately, right. There is an icebox in their lab, just a small one, installed in the corner next to the futon he liberated from his old bedroom. It is rarely in use; empty but for a few odds and ends, pots of condiments, something green and slimy rotting in the back. That is, if it even works at all. He doesn't recall the last time he checked. Regardless, over two decades of living he has learned: it's not wise to argue with Ximena Talis.
She clicks her tongue at him, and the sliver comes out, captured neatly between the precision points of her prostheses--more effective than tweezers. He winces, flexes his hand, and a drop of blood beads on his skin. He'd honestly figured it would work itself out, but she'd spotted it immediately.
"You're so busy, Jayce, I understand this; but you must eat, if only to give that brain of yours the nourishment it needs, hm? Coffee is not enough."
"Okay--but oranges?"
She tears open a small foil packet, withdrawing an antiseptic wipe from inside--a folded piece of damp towel, soaked with solution. She swipes it over the pinprick wound, wiping away the blood. "Your father always kept a crate in the forge," she says, her voice soft and fond. "He was like you--or you are like him. Always working, always moving, never a moment to stop and care for himself. But he liked oranges. The juice for his thirst, the pulp for his stomach, and the sugar for his energy. Convenient; clean." The towelette is set aside. She plucks a small square bandage out of the first aid kit, fitting the adhesive to the skin around the wound. The pale fabric stands out against his darker skin. "I used to come and sit in the forge with him while he worked and peel oranges for him." She laughs, "Useless man. For how fine his smithing was, he never could manage to peel them without smashing them to pulp."
Jayce laughs with her. He doesn't remember his father very well, but the recollection of a toddler brings to mind an enormous bear of a man, with strong, large hands. Maybe larger than they would have been in reality, memory unable to adjust to the passing of time, still remembering a palm and fingers broad enough to encompass the top of his head. It's easy to imagine hands as massive as that trying, and failing, in the delicate operation of removing a peel without damanging the fruit inside.
"Besides," Ximena continues, folding both her hands over Jayce's one and smiling at him. Crow's feet wrinkle at the corners of her eyes; deep lines form from her nose to the corners of her mouth, etched by the years. "They were on sale. Take them with you and keep them in your lab. Then I will worry less, hm?"
"All right," Jayce agrees, laying his other hand on top of hers and squeezing gently. She is his mother; far be it from him to reject this expression of her love. At worst, they will turn green and fuzzy and end up in next week's trash. At best--a juicy segment of orange now and again does sound nice, against the dry acrid metallic taste of the lab's stagnant air.
These last few weeks, he has been in a rush through these Sunday morning visits. The chocolate scalds down his throat, barely having cooled by the time he makes his excuses. It's not that he doesn't relish the time spent with her--he does, it's important to him, she is important to him--but the work at the lab is important too. Important, and exciting. Jayce carries a secret fear that, if he stops for too long, loses too much momentum, the tendrils of thought and theory he is chasing down will evaporate into the air and leave him stranded.
This conversation--the oranges--he knows she worries. And he hasn't really been around long enough, if he's being honest, hasn't spent enough time with her to wash away the concern a mother must feel. This thread is a new and extra demonstration of care. He looks at the oranges, and he hears her say: I am here. He thinks back to those times, as a child and a youth, when his independence was growing and Ximena stopped being able to answer all of his questions and needs the way she once did, and remembers: Please tell me what I can do.
It's a bid for time, a hopeful extension of support. She doesn't know what he needs, but she knows he needs something, and feeding people has always been a language of love in their family. So he lingers a little longer with his mother today, wanting her to see he is all right, wanting her to know he still needs her. He usually likes to beat Viktor to the lab, if he can; but one day of being later won't hurt anything. And if Viktor decides to tease about his lateness, well--he'll have oranges to ward him off.
Ximena seems less sad when he leaves, an hour and a bit later, the crate of oranges cradled in his arms. It is early enough still that he thinks he will reach the lab before Viktor does (unless his partner has stayed working through the night; he does that, sometimes, but if that's the case, Jayce was never going to beat him there). The aroma of citrus oil wafts into his nose the entire way to the Academy.
***
Of course they don't have fresh citrus in the Undercity.
It's not like Viktor doesn't know what they are, when he arrives at the lab later that morning (Jayce is pleased at the hour; it means Viktor likely got some real sleep the night before, and even if it was just because he was too exhausted from too many sleepness nights to fight it back any longer--a win is a win). His eyes land on the crate as he hooks his stool with his cane, pulling it over to him; he pauses, as it caught off guard.
"What...are those?"
"...Oranges?"
VIktor sighs impatiently, waving a hand at Jayce as though he's swatting at an insect nuisance. "Yes, I know what oranges are, Jayce. Why are they here?"
"Oh! My mother--a gift. She thought having some fresh fruit in the lab might encourage us to eat better."
Viktor's face shifts into a thoughtful moue, lips pulling down and eyebrows lifting as he considers, shrugs. He settles into his stool and sets the cane aside, leaning against the worktop. Jayce resists needling, asking if Viktor has had breakfast. The oranges are there; Viktor knows they are there, and, apparently, knows what they are, so if he's hungry, he'll go for the oranges in his own time. He has a vague, filial sense of not wanting to disappoint Ximena, but--it's irrational to think she would somehow know, or sense, if her offer of care had been rejected. Her disappointed face floats in front of his mind's eye for a moment; it prompts him to reach out for one of the oranges himself.
The two men settle into their work--Viktor pulling over an opened notebook and setting his pencil to the page, presumably picking up where he left off in navigating the complex mathematical proofs that have been occupying his mind, Jayce sliding his goggles down over his eyes as he turns his attention to soldering together a number of small components that, he hopes, will one day be capable of housing and conducting energy from a Hexstone. They work in a comfortable silence; occasionally, Viktor asks for Jayce's contribution to his notes. Jayce sets the soldering iron aside now and then to pop another segment of orange into his mouth, then resumes working, admiring the way the liquid metal cools around the joints as the housing takes shape.
It's a couple of hours later, that Jayce--intent on a particularly delicate connection, goggles magnifying the shape of in the metal in front of him and, by extension, blocking out everything else in his surroundings--hears a pained hiss, followed by Viktor's familiar huff of frustration. His back complains as he straightens--how did he end up slouched so far over?--and he turns to look at Viktor. At first, the magnification of the goggles restricts his range of vision, and so all he sees is a close-up of Viktor's fingers digging like claws into the pitted skin of an orange. His index is buried in the fruit to the first knuckle; there is juice spattering the back of his hand. Hurriedly, Jayce pushes the goggles up off of his eyes, and its in time to see the irritated embarrassment on his partner's face before Viktor can wipe it from his expression.
"...Doing okay there, Viktor?"
"No, Jayce," comes the exasperated reply. "I have citric acid in my nail bed, and this--impossible fruit refuses to come apart for me. And now my notes are covered in orange juice!" He withdraws his finger with a wet popping sound.
Wordlessly, Jayce holds out a hand for the orange. Viktor drops it into his palm with another irritated eye roll, his face twisting in disgust. He shoves his rolling stool back from the workbench, grabbing up his cane so that he can cross to where they keep the cleaning rags. Jayce listens to the retreating tapping of his cane as he considers the orange in his hands.
There are pale grooves in the skin, the pitted surface not quite scraped clean of zest, where Viktor clearly had tried to peel it; scratching at the tough exterior with blunted, chewed-off nails, obviously to no avail. He rotates it in his hands, unable to keep the bemused expression from his face as he notes the evidence of all of Viktor's attempts, culminating, finally, in a singular frustrated stab through the peel and into the flesh beneath.
"Viktor," he calls out, as he fits his own index finger into the wound and pulls, gently, teasing the pith away from the segments as the peel comes away, "what on 'Terra did the orange do to you?"
He hears the tapping of the cane as Viktor comes back to the workbench. He pauses next to Jayce's shoulder, watching as Jayce strips the flesh of its rind in large chunks, tugging away reluctant bits of the pith that refuse to come away cleanly. "Nothing," comes the reply. Jayce glances up at his face, then away; there's a faint tinge of pink to his cheeks, as Jayce peels the fruit with ease. "I just--didn't know the trick of it."
And that is how Jayce learns what he should have guessed at: that, indeed, there are no oranges in the Undercity. And Viktor, for all that he lives in Piltover and has lived in PIltover for some time, and has advantages and access to things he never could have enjoyed at home, is still staunchly loyal to where he comes from; he tends not to indulge in luxuries that are denied his compatriots. So while he knows what they are, he's never had cause to peel a citrus fruit in his life.
It's not the first time Jayce has unexpectedly run up against this rigid internal moral code of Viktor's, manifesting in unexpected ways in how he lives his life as a transplant from disadvantage to relative privilege. Privately, he adds this to his own list of grievances, which grows every time he learns some new angle as to how badly Piltover keeps the Undercity ground below its genteel boot.
He finishes peeling the orange for Viktor, setting the fruit on the pile of discarded rind, and shows him how to tease apart the segments so that they separate cleanly in his hands. Points out where the seeds can sometimes live, so that Viktor won't crack his teeth biting down on one. Viktor nods to him, offering a crooked, embarrassed little half smile, and turns back to his work, wiping away the splatters of orange juice on his notebook pages before turning over to a fresh one. Jayce waits, and watches for a moment, but Viktor seems uninterested in pursuing the fruit any further for the moment. Still--the scent of oranges hangs heavy and bright in the air between them, so he reaches out to snag another from the box, rolling it along the countertop to loosen the peel before quickly stripping it down.
The taste bursts sweet across his tongue. Of course Piltover won't export oranges to the Undercity. They can't have Zaunites developing a taste for sunlight.
***
Viktor's hands are deft and skilled. Jayce knows this; has seen the evidence of his work, his elegant script in their shared notebooks, the fine detail work on the pieces and components of their creations. He has a light touch, deliberate and confident, and more than once Jayce has gotten distracted watching Viktor work. He compares Viktor's hands to his own, often; he knows his broad palms and thick fingers speak of crude strength, but it's not like Viktor's are any more delicate than his own, for all that they are lighter and more nimble. They both bear collections of small wounds, markers of their work, the pride they each take in working with their hands. Jayce's are covered in nicks and gouges from his tools and from the forge, in differing stages of healing depending on their age and whether or not his mother's first aid got to them early enough to speed their healing. Viktor's wounds speak more to his habits when he is deep in thought, his nailbeds often torn and shredded, red and inflamed at the corners where he nibbles off his hangnails and teases at flaps of loose cuticle idly with a thumb while he considers.
And maybe that's the reason why--the remembered sting of citrus in an open wound making him shy of it--but despite his very adept hands and Jayce's demonstrations, Viktor seems absolutely useless at peeling oranges. His nails, chewed bluntly down to the quick, can't pierce the skin; no matter how Jayce tries to help, showing him tricks of rolling the orange across a surface or digging in to the navel where it once hung from the branch, Viktor inevitably tears holes into the delicate flesh, juice squirting out in all directions as he craters into the skin. He even tries, once--and only once, to bite through it with his teeth; Jayce can't help but laugh at the disgusted expression his face shifts into when the bitter oil lands on his tongue and gums.
He doesn't think Ximena would quite approve of the way in which they devour the crate of oranges between them. He knows she meant the fruit to be a supplement to, not a replacement for, their usual trips out of the lab to the cafeteria or to the food carts on the streets outside. Instead, their diet dwindles down to primarily oranges, for 8 to 12 hours out of the day (when they remember to eat at all). Still: Jayce knows they are both appreciative of the chance to fulfill their bodies' needs without having to get up from their work stations at all. And they're healthy; and its better than not eating anything at all during the day, Jayce thinks--which has often been the case for Viktor, at least, unwilling to abandon his train of thought for even an hour to satisfy his body's demand for nourishment. And for all that trying to peel them frustrates the hell out of his partner, Viktor seems to have developed a taste for them.
Eventually, Viktor stops even trying. He'll reach for an orange and roll it about mindlessly on the table top for a few minutes as he thinks, or ponders a particularly challenging runic equation, before rolling it across to Jayce. He'll roll one of them back and forth between his palms as he stands at the chalkboard, eyes raking over their scrawled notes and diagrams, then tab back to where Jayce is sitting at the workbench and deposit it next to him. And sometimes, he simply grabs an orange out of their dwindling supply, and plops it next to Jayce's elbow without a word. In all cases, the wordless request is there; and every time, Jayce takes up the orange, peels it, and sets it back on Viktor's side of the table. Often--not always, but often enough--he'll get a quick smile from Viktor, a duck of his head in thanks, before he goes back to whatever he was working on or talking about, wandering back to the chalkboard with the fruit cradled in one hand.
Sometimes, he pushes the orange back to Jayce's side, and Jayce realizes that he has not in fact eaten yet that day. It warms him, to think that Viktor notices, is checking in on him as much as he is checking in on Viktor.
Sometimes, when they get stuck, Viktor will push his rolling stool a few more feet away, making up a large empty space between the two of them. They'll bandy ideas back and forth, hypotheses and refutations, as they toss an orange to and fro across the lab. It's a break from the monotony; the bright scent of citrus oil sinks into their palms, waking up their tired minds, until one or the other has a sudden brainwave and they can get back to work.
Sometimes, in the time it takes for Jayce to peel the fruit, Viktor's mind has already moved on to something else; and the orange sits, bare and shining, skin slowly drying out in the staticky, dehumidified air of the lab. Jayce takes a certain kind of glee in pulling off a segment when this happens and waiting for an opportune moment--usually while Viktor is expounding on his latest theory, or ripping into one of Jayce's--to pop the orange into his mouth, interrupting him for a brief moment. Viktor's expression is always a delight--first the irate response to having food shoved in his mouth, but then, usually, a look of resigned bliss as he bites down, filling his mouth with a burst of flavour and brightness, and inevitably holding out his hand for the rest of his orange as he continues.
***
When Jayce visits his mother the next week, she doesn't seem surprised when he tells her that they've already worked through most of the crate. He tells her about peeling oranges for Viktor; he relays the series of misfortunes that Viktor has encountered, watching a soft smile spread, unconsciously, over her features. It makes him feel warm; he stumbles over the rest of his words, finishing the story lamely, but she doesn't say anything about it. Her hand rests over her heart, over the locket she wears around her neck. He doesn't know what her expression is saying.
She does ask him, in the resigned tone of a mother who already knows her beloved son's answer, whether they have eaten anything else besides the oranges. He makes her a sheepish promise to do better about making sure they're both nourishing their bodies properly.
She walks with him to work that day, forcing a detour to the produce market, where she insists on buying another crate and placing it in his arms. "You boys need to eat," she says, "and a mother worries. Oranges are better than a diet of coffee."
Its not until he kisses her cheek at the entrance to the Academy grounds and bids her a good day, tells her he loves her and promises that, yes, he'll try for some meat--or at least a piece of bread--every day, that he realizes how similar his orange-story must sound to her own memories, peeling oranges for his father in the forge.
***
"More oranges, Jayce--!" is Viktor's exclamation when Jayce arrives, grimacing a little as he walks into the lab. The market detour made him later than usual. He thinks if he had gotten here first, Viktor probably wouldn't have even noticed the supply replenish, but it's hard to obscure an entire crate of fruit in ones arms.
"It's my mother," he explains, sheepish. "She is convinced we don't eat enough, and now that she knows we've been going through the oranges at a breakneck pace..." He shrugs, and sets the crate on the countertop. He tips the last few oranges from the week before on top, and tosses the empty rigid-paper crate in the direction of the door.
Viktor squints at him. "You are just enjoying my torment. You enjoy mocking me. 'Ah, poor Viktor, he is so incompetent he cannot even peel a fruit.'" The way his tongue rolls on fruit sounds like music to Jayce's ears; he can't help but laugh a little at it, which just causes Viktor's playful scowl to deepen further. "'I must continue to ply him with citrus, to keep him humble, in the hopes that he forgets that I am incompetent in everything but the peeling of oranges."
Jayce has already pulled out two oranges to approximate a breakfast for them both. He peels one in a long, continuous spiral while Viktor continues on his "tirade", plopping it down in one of Viktor's open palms as the gesticulations--a habit of Viktor's whenever he sets out to mock Jayce, exaggerating his (admittedly expansive) hand movements--come to a pause. Viktor looks down at the orange, then back up at Jayce, who grins, shrugs, and pops an orange segment into his own mouth. "You done?" he asks. "Because I can take that back, if you don't want it." Viktor's fingers curl around the globe, settling into the slight divots between the segments, cleaned of pith as best as Jayce can manage. "Mmm. That's what I thought." He turns away from Viktor, and pulls over a tray holding a pile of metal discs and a handheld grinder.
"Ridiculous man," he hears Viktor mutter; then again, the consonants shaped this time around a mouthful of orange, "absolutely ridiculous." It sounds affectionate, and pleased, and warm; like the sunshine in the orange is beaming out from Viktor's lips, washing over Jayce like a warm summer morning. Jayce shoves the remaining quarter of his own orange into his mouth, cheek bulging out as he chews, and begins notching gears.
***
It's not as though they only eat oranges. Even before Ximena's admonishment--Jayce is well aware of his body's needs, to maintain his physical ability in the forge, to retain the muscle definition and physique that he is proud of. And, too, he is hyper aware of the needs of Viktor's body; as it rebels against him, as it deteriorates, the need to eat a balanced diet and intake all of the essential macronutrients for survival becomes ever more present. Viktor doesn't thank him for the fuss, but Jayce keeps a careful tally of everything Viktor eats, to his knowledge, and tries to force himself out of his hyperfocused headspace when it's necessary to ensure they are both getting what their bodies need.
They still take short walks--shorter, now, than they used to be, and Jayce knows that Viktor knows even if he doesn't comment on it--to some of their favourite places, when the need to consume something that is not either coffee or an orange becomes strong enough to pull them away from the lab. When they have a breakthrough, they celebrate at a restaurant, rewarding themselves with a socially acceptable dinner (instead of digging into the work with even more fervour than before).
But every week, Ximena buys a new crate of oranges, and Jayce brings it in to the lab. The space constantly smells of citrus, now--it's a clean, bright, fresh scent, combating the metals and oils and the ozone-copper tang of magic that suffuses their working space. Jayce feels more awake when he walks in each morning, the sharpness hitting his olfactory senses and sending a signal to his brain that makes him alert and attentive. He thinks it is having an impact on Viktor, too--his mood noticeably lightens, his sharp edges of frustration growing a little fuzzier, a little softer, whenever Jayce hands him a freshly peeled orange to combat an ornery mood. He starts collecting the peels, tipping handfuls of them into the jar of vinegar they keep for cleaning their work surfaces. The orange oil infuses into the sharp, acrid vinegar, balancing out the harsh scents with something bright and warm.
And Jayce's hands--they smell like oranges all the time, the scent of it lingering in the bits of zest caught under his nails, the oils worked into his skin. He is surrounded by it; he closes his eyes and feels sun-warmed, comfortable, memories of walking through orange groves flitting through his mind's eye. It's comforting in a way that feels strange until he makes the connection--his mother, peeling oranges for his father in the forge, then coming to gather him up from his minder with orange oil on her own skin. It awakens something in his subconscious, a feeling of home and safety and family, and he realizes--
It's a scent he's started to associate with Viktor, too.
Which doesn't quite make sense--after all, Viktor doesn't peel the oranges, isn't getting his hands and fingernails sticky with orange juice, doesn't have to pry clumps of rind from under his nails when he goes home every day. It makes Jayce a little sad, to realize that this smell he associates so strongly now with Viktor and with their lab might solely be from his perspective. That maybe Viktor doesn't smell of oranges at all. That they haven't left their mark on him the same way as they leave their mark on Jayce.
How many oranges, he wonders, does a person need to eat per day before the essence starts to bleed through their skin; before their cells are infused, like the vinegar in the jar, before that brightness is lent out to their fingertips and palms? If he breathed Viktor in, would he smell of sun-bright citrus, warm and energizing, waking up Jayce's senses?
If he kissed him, would he taste oranges on his breath?
The grinder slips, scoring a rough scrape along his finger, and he bites back a yelp as he is brought forcibly back down to earth from wherever his thoughts have been wandering. Viktor's head shoots up from where he has been working on screwing together the framework for a calibrator, eyes wide and alarmed. Their gazes meet, and Jayce feels a flush creep over his cheeks.
Where did that thought come from?
***
Ximena tuts over the scrape, spanning along the side of his finger nearly from the mound of his knuckle all the way to the tip. The antiseptic solution stings, entering his skin and contacting his nerves through what must be hundreds of tiny nicks, each grain of the rough sandpaper abrading away a tiny piece of his skin.
There is another crate of oranges sitting on the counter, waiting for him to take it to the lab with him when he leaves.
He wants to ask her a question; but he doesn't know how to put it into words. About peeling oranges. About infusion. About how long something can sit in solution with something else before they become inseparable, orange oil in vinegar. It's a silly urge; he is the scientist, after all, these are things he should know, but its less about the combination of molecules than it is about something...more. Something he has no experience with, but which he knows she does; knows it in the way he thinks back to that conversation about peeling oranges, the expression on her face when she spoke about care, her hand resting over the locket, over her heart, the way his foggy memories of both his parents sharpen whenever he first splits an orange peel with his thumbnail and feels that fine mist spray into the air.
He doesn't ask her anything about that, doesn't say anything at all as she tends to his hand, wraps it up with thing gauze to prevent infection. "You're quiet today, caro," she remarks when she's done. He offers her an apologetic smile.
"Sorry. Thinking through a hypothesis. I'm fairly certain I know the answer, but...I'm having trouble testing it."
She tidies away the first aid supplies, taking them back to their place. Jayce cradles his hand, still stinging, against his chest. When she returns to the kitchen table, she's carrying a small plate with half a dozen golden-brown muffins. Their tops are dotted with gleaming jewels of candied peel, and large crystals of sugar, and curls of pale yellow zest.
"Maybe you're not asking the right question, then," she suggests. "Or maybe your heads addled from too many oranges, and not enough of anything else. Are you actually managing to eat a balanced diet? Or did I condemn my son to a lifetime of nutritional deficiency?"
Jayce has to laugh, as he takes a muffin at her urging. "Well, at least you know I won't die of scurvy," he jokes back as he tears off a bite. Her comment sends him back, to long hours bent over schoolwork; the frustration of trying to sort through scientific procedure, of having to rein in his instinct and enthusiasm for something testable and repeatable, experimental design.
The muffin is sweet and warm, a little bitter from the copious amount of zest inside. He groans his appreciation, and she answers it with a beatific smile. "These are so damn good, Ma," he tells her. She swats his arm for swearing. "Can I take one with me? For Viktor?"
She looks at him, and he swallows as the weight of her regard falls on him. There's something significant in her even gaze, as it flicks down to the muffins, then back up at him. He knows, before she tells him--
Viktor made them.
***
Jayce does take a muffin for the road--for himself, seeing as Viktor likely has as many as he would want after having baked the batch. He tucks it into a corner of the box of oranges as he walks, his mind racing. It's not--it doesn't need to mean anything. Anyone can slice an orange in half with a knife, cut through the barrier to get at the flesh inside, juice it and squeeze it into a batter. It's just--the peel. Diced, and finely, but not enough to hide the pieces with a rough and ragged edge, distinct from the knife work on the other four sides. The way some of the little chunks, enrobed in sugary syrup, still have tiny shreds of pith clinging to them, encased like a bug in amber. That's not--if you cut an orange apart to get at the pieces you needed, or if you bought those pieces already prepared, those things wouldn't be--
And of course, it's not like Viktor is incompetent. One doesn't need a pristinely peeled orange for use in baking, it's not like it matters, he could massacre a pile of oranges and still get what he needs for the recipe, but--
If I kissed him, would Viktor taste of oranges?
"Maybe you're not asking the right question."
Do I...want to kiss Viktor?
***
Jayce feels himself moving slowly, when he pushes open the door to the lab. There is a reluctance to it; not fear, but hesitance. For a man normally so bold with discovery, it doesn't quite feel like him, but for all their talk of changing the world--this hypothesis feels like it could shake every foundation of everything Jayce has known, up to this point, more than any he has had before.
He sets down the box of oranges; there are none left to replace on top, and he's fairly certain there were some still in the box last night, which means the fruit in the muffins came from their supply. Viktor took them home; he didn't buy the ingredients pre-prepared. He takes out the muffin, and sets it, carefully, at Viktor's work station; in the space where he normally deposits his coffee mug. It's maybe a bit overdramatic; the morning sun slants in through the window and falls directly on it, setting the candied peel to glistening.
He takes a few moments to bustle about the lab, pouring clearning vinegar onto a rag and wiping down the stainless steel surfaces until they are gleaming, until the only thing he can smell is oranges. His pulse is pounding in his ears.
"Maybe you're not asking the right question."
Does Viktor...want to kiss me?
An hour passes; two. Jayce can't sit still; he grabs Viktor's notebook, and flips through the pages, reviewing the work from the last week, jotting down some observations in the margins and copying some thoughts down into his own collection of notes. He grabs a second book, comparing work from two months ago to the work they are refining now; finds an inconsistency, corrects it, copies it into both books so that they are each correct. He balances them in one hand and copies a few figures onto the chalkboard, the chalk screeching against the slate, his lines shaky.
Finally, he hears the door open ehind him, the tapping of Viktor's cane as it hits the ground with every step. He hears the unusual pause as Viktor comes intot he room, enough to see the muffin sitting in its beam of light--or where it used to be; the sun has moved, and the shaft from the window is creeping now along the very edge of the workbench and up the wall, putting the pastry back into shadow. Still, he knows he sees it. He thinks he can hear Viktor's brain calculating from here. The other man says nothing. The tapping of the cane resumes, and when he hears the creak of the stool settling under Viktor's weight, he turns on his heel, plastering a nonchalant, sunny smile onto his face.
"Good morning," he offers, and aims for casual as he closes Viktor's notebook, tossing it gently towards the the end of the workbench so that Viktor can re-shelve it in the stack of books and notes and loose papers according to whatever strange filing system he's adopted. "Everything okay? You were a little late getting in."
"I am fine, Jayce," Viktor says. He doesn't sound quite fine; his voice sounds a little strained. Kind of like his own. Viktor clears his throat. "Just had a rough start to the morning. Pain acting up; I opted to move a bit more slowly, and allowed myself some time to soak in epsom salts before I made my way here."
Jayce makes a sympathetic noise, settling into his own chair, tossing his own notebook down onto the work surface. "I'm sorry to hear that," he says, and he means it. "You've been having a good couple of weeks; sorry that the pain's back."
"Eh. It is what it is. I will deal with it as I always do," is Viktor's reply.
"Is there anything I can do?"
The question is met with silence. Jayce tries to keep his hands busy, as though the question isn't loaded with weight and meaning, as though he hasn't placed an accusatory muffin right in pride of place on Viktor's work station, like he doesn't have a hypothesis buzzing in his head based on nothing more than instinct and disconnected observations. But his eyes flit to the side, trying to catch a glimpse of Viktor--his posture, his body language, his expression. HIs partner is extremely still, for a moment, then a moment omre.
Then he moves. Jayce watches as he reaches out, past the muffin, and snags an orange from the box. "I'm a little hungry," Viktor murmurs quietly. Jayce turns a bit more, swiveling in his seat to face him more directly. Viktor isn't looking at him; his eyes are watching the orange as he rolls it back and forth on the countertop, smooth, measured motions, flicking from it to the muffin and back again. The motion stops, the orange pinned between his fingertips--deft, nimble, strong--and the desktop. There's an orange tinge under his fingernails.
Then, decisively, Viktor flicks his fingers, sending the orange rolling to nudge up against Jayce's elbow. Viktor's eyes lift to his face, and there's a sweet, tentative half-smile there. Jayce isn't sure he's ever seen an expression like it, not on Viktor, at least. He can see the small gap in his teeth, the crooked line of his lower jaw. He's close; closer than Jayce realized. When he speaks, Jayce swears he smells oranges.
"Would you mind peeling an orange for me?"
***
When Emily peels an orange, she tears holes in it.
Juice squirts in all directions.
"Kate," she says, "I don't know how you do it!"
Emily is my best friend.
I hope she never learns how to peel oranges.
- Oranges, Jean Little
