Work Text:
Viktor kept noticing things.
This was not necessarily unusual; he considered himself an observant man. And when working with someone, he made an effort for the sake of efficiency - learning their habits, their preferred formalities, what topics not to press. Learning the way their mind ticked.
Lately, he'd been able to predict Jayce's reactions with uncanny accuracy. He knew what his objections would be before he even opened his mouth to voice them. He could anticipate his questions, and prepared his responses accordingly. Even more, Viktor frequently realised flaws in his own approach through running it by an imaginary Jayce: who, like the real self, provided quick and ruthless criticism.
On second thought, maybe they'd been spending too much time together.
On third thought, it came with not-insignificant benefits, to know each other's minds so well - so, really, it was for the greater good.
No, the reason this was unusual was because of the sheer inanity of the information.
Viktor pondered. He imagined that some distant author, were they to ever write his biography, would use such words to describe his internal monologue. Viktor pondered, he contemplated, he mulled things over. He reflected, and maybe even cogitated, on a particularly interesting topic.
Alright, he hoped his biography did not contain the word cogitated. Wouldn't want the people to think him too pretentious.
Regardless, Viktor's mind had always been deliberate. So then why, he asked himself, had it suddenly lost all ability to triage information?
Predictably, this line of questioning went back to Jayce, as all things seemed to do lately; Viktor wondered when his world had shrunk so much.
Hmm, perhaps that was a misrepresentation. His world had always been himself and his work; then, it had expanded to fit Jayce and their research. And now, Viktor's mind was circling the newcomers, like a territorial animal - around and around, still not knowing what to make of them after all these months.
It was easier, in a way, when Jayce was purely his lab partner. Viktor had worked with plenty of brilliant minds: he'd personally collaborated with half the Zaunite Academy, and a little bit of Piltover's too, across his career.
He'd...had friends, he supposed he could call them, though he never reached the point of caring for them on a truly personal level. Perhaps trusted colleagues was a better term. He'd had flings- though he abhorred the word: arrangements leading to the same mutually satisfying, but ultimately impersonal, benefits. Sometimes, the two overlapped, but that was not often: the fall-out was too big of a risk to take for merely a craving.
Case in point; Jayce was handsome. That, he had no qualms about noticing; he couldn't ignore the fact even if he wanted to. Jayce was stupidly, blindingly handsome, and he had a brilliant mind; in short, Viktor's type. In any other circumstance, he'd already have propositioned him, or else ignored the attraction until it fizzled out into the background.
But now, he could feel the landscape of his world shifting into unfamiliar shapes and grooves - he knew Jayce's idiosyncrasies, his flaws. He knew Jayce took his coffee black, but only because he considered it a waste of time to improve it (as a matter of fact, the man made terrible coffee, somehow both watery and bitter; when Viktor had made them both a drink one day, appropriately brewed, two sugar cubes and a splash of milk, Jayce had been flabbergasted). He knew Jayce got cold easily, and he came to the lab bundled up in the most ridiculously posh winter coat Viktor had ever seen (the thing had gold trimmings). He knew Jayce meticulously collected the crumbs from his sandwiches after he ate, then threw them off the balcony for the pigeons in the courtyard.
He knew the reason Jayce signed his notes so diligently was not because of an overinflated sense of ego (though he undeniably did have one), but out of a deep-seated fear that he'd be glossed over, like his life and work had made no difference. Viktor found it difficult to begrudge him this; being forgotten by history was an unsettling prospect. He knew Jayce had an overwhelming drive to please, which, in Viktor's regard, placed him somewhere between 'doormat' and 'inspiration'. Jayce was probably the only person he had met for whom the term pure of heart could be appropriate.
He knew all of these things; and his mind must have been categorising them as important, or else he would have discarded them long ago. Instead, every day he kept finding out more tidbits - Jayce had three little cousins, whom he wasted no time in gushing about to Viktor. Jayce's favourite colour (favourite colour!) was orange. After some deliberation, Viktor decided his own favourite colour remained green; he hadn't realised adults still asked each other that question.
Jayce had never tried knedlíky, but he expressed an interest to, after Viktor mentioned the dish. Jayce was not a cat person. Jayce enjoyed sketching from the balcony during his downtime, though he was private about his sketchbook. Jayce disliked lettuce in his food, with the asinine objection that it tasted like "water that hates him" (Viktor had smiled at that one, despite himself). Jayce religiously used bookmarks, and never dog-eared the pages. Jayce was afraid of snakes (and this was subsumed under an observation of larger magnitude: Jayce was unreserved about announcing his fears, a fact which Viktor considered somewhat foolish).
And so, his mind went on, increasingly baffling him with the pointless knowledge it accumulated about one Jayce Talis. And even more alarmingly, the thought of forgetting these irrelevancies was upsetting. One time, after Jayce had offhandedly mentioned something about his childhood, Viktor had the bizarre urge to write it down in his journal, alongside his notes. When it caught up to him, he'd stopped with his pen poised above the page and lowered his hand, perplexed.
-
A week later, a hastily scrawled note appeared in the margin of his notebook: "J. enjoys honeycomb - would like medovnik?"