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It starts with Vi.
“What is that thing you do?” Jayce asks, after Cait leaves their lunch early for her Enforcer duties.
Vi slurps up the rest of her drink with a straw. “Hm? What thing?”
“The, uh—” Jayce tries to mime it; he does an awkward little half-bow, half-bob of his head. “Forehead thing.”
Vi’s eyes light up. “Oh!” she says, the straw falling out of her mouth. “Traditional Zaunite greeting. I taught Cupcake how to do it for when she comes home with me next month to visit my dads.”
“I see,” Jayce says. Interesting. “Is it a romantic thing?”
Vi shakes her head. “Nope, not necessarily. Pow-pow and I do it all time, and Vander and Silco do it with both of us.” Now that Jayce thinks of it, he has seen Vi and her little sister Powder do the same motion—he’d just assumed it was a thing only they did. Powder was certainly grabby with anyone or anything she liked—clinging to Viktor’s arm when she came to visit in the lab, climbing all over the stools no matter how many times Jayce asked her to please be careful. “It’s for anyone you’re close to, really. It’s like a…” her nose scrunches as she thinks. “An intimacy thing.”
Jayce thinks of Viktor, who is not touchy at all, who prefers to dole out affection with his words rather than his hands. Jayce treasures every time Viktor initiates touch, rare as it is, and tucks it away in his mind to go over later—a brief press on his elbow to get his attention, a hand on the small of his back while he squeezes past him in the confines of their latest prototype. It always makes Jayce feel all warm and fuzzy, and sometimes a little shivery.
Viktor came to Piltover when he was a teenager, and unlike Vi and her sister, he’s lived here for well over half his life now. The few times they’ve discussed his relationship with Zaun, it’s always been precious; Jayce hoards those conversations as greedily as he does Viktor's touch. He remembers one instance, in the soft shadows of early morning on Jayce’s couch after they’d stumbled home from a bar, tipsy and celebrating their first year of working together.
Do you ever miss it? he’d asked.
Viktor had looked at him, his eyes considering, remembering. Outside, the sky grew lighter, the shadows thinner. Yes, he’d said. But this is my home, now. Then he’d smiled at Jayce, like he was sharing a secret with him.
A year out from the worst day of his life, and there Jayce had been, alive and watching the first rays of dawn on Viktor’s face. He couldn't breathe with it, the thing growing in his chest.
And then, as if Viktor couldn’t help it—he’d reached out and touched his face, briefly, his fingers sliding down his cheek and away. Yes, he'd said again, as if confirming something, the words soft and sure. My home is here, now.
Sometimes, Jayce thinks he can still feel his fingers there, lingering.
~
Still, Jayce thinks now, at lunch with Vi, armed with this new knowledge—he would like to learn more about the place Viktor came from, would like to take part in it, if he can. Even if it's only in a small way. Zaun is a part of Viktor, and Jayce wants to learn about every part of Viktor that there is.
“Can you do it with partners, too?” he asks.
For a moment, Vi gives him a look he can’t read. Then she grins and leans back in her chair.
“I don’t see why not,” she says, her smile very bright.
Alarm bells go off in Jayce’s head, but Vi is still smiling at him, her expression encouraging. It occurs to Jayce that she already knows exactly who he has in mind; he relaxes a bit.
“Perfect,” he says.
He thinks about Viktor’s touch, on his face. He thinks about the sun rising and him being there to see it.
Even if he isn’t brave enough to say it aloud just yet, he’s happy to do this—he wants to do this. In all the ways he can, is allowed, he wants to show Viktor how much he cares, how much it means to him, that they get to work together.
How much he—
~
Viktor is ninety-nine percent sure Jayce is trying to fucking kill him.
It had started out normal: “How was your lunch?” Viktor calls back when he hears Jayce return.
“It was great!” Jayce says. He has a bit of a spring in his step, which while not unusual, is still heartening to see. They’ve been facing a few setbacks recently—nothing major, but just enough for Viktor to see it was weighing Jayce down. It had been a good idea for the girls to take him out to lunch, to get him out of the lab and his own head for a few hours.
“I’m happy to hear it,” Viktor says, unable to stop himself from smiling at Jayce as he continues to walk closer. “Now that you’re back, could you grab the spare capacitor from the supply closet? I can’t seem to find—”
It takes a moment for Viktor to register what’s actually happening—Jayce keeps moving towards him, a soft smile on his face, and then he…lowers his head, his forehead bumping Viktor’s.
Viktor blinks in surprise, words stuttering to a halt. He feels Jayce’s breath ghost across his nose, his lips; feels the warmth of his forehead against his own. For a moment everything is suspended, the world fading away except for the feeling of Jayce’s skin against his, the warm pressure of his skull, the sight of his sweet smile and closed eyes, his face so close to Viktor’s face. Viktor’s face, which he feels steadily growing warmer as the moment stretches out, lingers.
“On it,” Jayce says quietly, then steps back, still smiling. Smiling like nothing has fucking happened.
He walks away, looking more relaxed than Viktor has seen in weeks, while Viktor wonders if he’d hallucinated the whole thing.
~
As it turns out, it was not a hallucination. Over the course of the next month, Jayce continues to greet or leave him with a touch to the forehead, usually after they’ve been apart for more than a few hours (rare, since they spend nearly every day together), or when they're about to be apart for longer than usual, and always, somehow, when Viktor least expects it.
He makes a mental list of the instances, and soon they are too many to count—when he’s frustrated and tired after a long, fruitless night; when they crack a problem they’ve been trying to solve for weeks; when Jayce asks Viktor if he wants coffee. And so on and so forth. There is no rhyme or reason to when it happens—sometimes Jayce is excited, his eyes crinkled with joy (good, Viktor always thinks, remembering the ledge, the cold wind, the terror he’d felt months later when he’d woken up and realized he was in love with him, and had almost lost him). Sometimes he’s more subdued, his voice quiet and rough in the small hours of the morning, when it’s just them and all the warm promise of the day ahead. Sometimes he’s the way he is now—looking at Viktor like he hung the moon, his smile soft and fond and warm.
And every time—he leans forward, touches his forehead to Viktor’s, a warm point of pressure, and then is gone. Gone before Viktor can do anything about it, because it somehow takes him by surprise, every time. It’s driving him insane.
After an initial period of data collection the first week, Viktor eventually gives up and just lets it happen. He doesn’t know whether he wants it to stop, for the sake of his own sanity.
“Coffee, V?” Jayce asks, bumping his forehead to his just as Viktor looks up from his desk.
“If you wouldn’t mind, Jayce,” Viktor says, somehow managing to keep it together.
Actually, he thinks as Jayce walks away, feeling like he's imploding and somehow also the happiest he’s ever felt in his life, he’s pretty sure he never wants it to stop. Who had even taught him how to do that? He’s pretty sure it was either Violet or maybe her sister, who they see every now and then on account of Violet and Caitlyn’s courtship...but if it was either of them, they clearly didn’t tell him the full meaning of the gesture.
Because the greeting, while done between those in all kinds of relationships, is also contextual. Powder and Vi are sisters; for them, it is the familiar motion of siblings greeting each other. For Vi and Caitlyn, it is a touch with romantic connotations. Between Viktor and Jayce…
Jayce can’t know…can he? Because if he did, then they would’ve talked about it. Right? Because whether or not Jayce knows it, the gesture is special, its significance lying not in the type of relationship between its practitioners but rather its weight, its depth. Given the...nature of their relationship, what Jayce is doing is something spouses would do, and particularly spouses who have been married for a long time, not…whatever they are. Friends. Partners. Lovers, in the sense there is an unspoken agreement they're it for each other. Something a bit of all of that and in between—until now, Viktor hadn't cared to label it, content with the knowledge that they were the most important people in each other's lives.
Whatever they are to each other, this crosses a boundary Viktor hadn’t known existed until Jayce had happily stepped over it. Whatever lies between them has, if possible, grown—become something greater, deeper. More intimate.
With a groan, Viktor realizes his craving for Jayce’s touch—manageable until now—has worsened. Every time Jayce draws near and presses his head to his own, he wants to crawl inside him and live there forever.
The worst thing is: he thinks he could do it. He thinks Jayce would let him.
Jayce comes back with his mug of coffee and sets it down, snapping him out of it. “I gotta run to that meeting,” he says, touching his forehead once more to Viktor’s. "Be back this afternoon, probably?" He lets out a dry laugh that Viktor feels as air against his lips. "We'll see how it goes."
Viktor frowns, distracted now by something else. He can tell Jayce is anxious, can feel the furrow of his brow against his own. Well, this time Viktor can do something about it, with his body instead of his words, in the language most familiar to Jayce, Jayce who is so generous and open with his touch; for the briefest of moments, he lets himself lean back.
Mine, he thinks.
When they break apart, he sees Jayce watching him, his face flushing prettily. He smiles at Viktor then, shy and lovely.
“Good luck,” Viktor says, resisting the urge to yank him down and kiss him. He feels like he wants to break something.
“Thanks, V,” Jayce says, a hand squeezing on his shoulder, and then he’s gone.
Viktor watches the door close behind him. He stares at it a moment more before he sighs, turning back to his work.
He fiddles with his hair—should he tell him? What would he even say, if he did?
Viktor thinks about that line. Whether or not he knows it, Jayce has taken a step forward. As always, Viktor feels himself being tugged ahead.
Eh, he thinks. For now, he will let it lie. There is, after all, no rush.
~
The investor meeting is draining and awful. Salo, who had arranged it, had been predictably condescending and horrible, and Jayce’s face hurts from having to hold his smile for so long. The only upside is that Caitlyn is waiting for him outside the room; she pulls him aside after to ask if he’d be available to get lunch with her and Vi the next day.
“I’ll be a little late,” she says apologetically. “But Vi will be able to meet you at the restaurant.”
"That sounds great,” he replies, already feeling the tension go out of his chest a little. "I'll be there."
“Viktor is invited too, of course.”
“Ah, he has physical therapy tomorrow,” Jayce says. “But I’ll let him know. Hey, by the way, Vi taught me the—” he ducks his head a little to demonstrate, stooping down lower than he normally does to reach her.
She smiles. “Wonderful,” she said, leaning up the rest of the way to affectionately touch her forehead to his, although it’s more of a gentle head-butt. It feels very different than when he does it with Viktor—this is definitely more familial, teasing. “See you tomorrow, Jayce.”
He smiles at her, his first real smile all evening. “See you, Sprout.”
He makes his way back to the lab, exhausted. He just wants sit next to Viktor and not say anything until they both go home. Maybe they can grab dinner at that food stand they both love, the one that sells fried squid.
His mood lifts as he hurries across campus, then plummets when finds the lab disappointingly quiet, an empty mug where Viktor had been sitting this morning. He must’ve gone out.
Jayce sighs. He’ll just have to wait.
He sits in his chair next to Viktor’s stool and flips open his notebook. It takes him all of five minutes to realize he’s not actually reading any of it, all the letters and numbers blurring together.
He gives up and puts his head down, closing his eyes.
Just a few minutes, he thinks, and drifts away.
~
Click. Still drifting, Jayce hears the door open, the familiar clack of a crutch against the floor, a faint murmur, maybe his name. He lets it all wash over him, sensation filtering in from far away—the brief pause in movement restarted as the footsteps move away, quieter now. A faint rustle; some shuffling; and then something warm and heavy is being draped over his shoulder—lab...blanket, a part of Jayce thinks, thoughts slow and foggy. It smells like Viktor.
A touch on his shoulder, light and warm. The touch becomes a little firmer, a hint of pressure, like someone is leaning over him.
Then, Jayce feels it.
Soft warmth against his forehead, the barest gust of breath across his lips.
It’s there for a long moment, lingering. Warm.
Jayce feels himself twitch, still not quite awake, but Viktor is already leaving, the familiar click of his cane fading away as he rummages around in his desk for something.
Jayce feels himself shuffling forward instinctively towards the sound, as if to follow. Always following him. Soon he hears the familiar sounds of Viktor’s favorite pen scratching, his soft breathing in the echo of the lab, the chime of the bell tower across the campus.
He feels his lip twitch, a faint smile, and slips away once more into sleep.
~
“Um,” he says the next morning, while he and Vi wait for Cait to show up. “Vi?”
“What’s up?” she says.
“What does it mean when, uh,” Jayce says. He mimes the motion again, feeling a little ridiculous. “When someone does it back?”
Vi looks at him for a moment.
Then she smiles, all teeth. “I think,” she says, “You already know.”
Jayce thinks about the warm press of Viktor's skull against his own, grounding and real. He thinks about sitting on his couch and Viktor's fingers sliding down his cheek and the way the sunlight had kissed his face when he'd said My home is here, now. He thinks about Viktor's eyes, wide in wonder every time Jayce pressed his forehead to his, how he kept doing it so Viktor would keep looking at him like that, like Jayce really is his home.
"Yeah," Jayce says, his voice catching. He touches his forehead and thinks about Viktor pressing close yesterday, lingering, the motion more intimate than a kiss. It had felt like a homecoming, a promise. "I think I do."