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Jayce's daemon settled so early that many people he told called it a prophecy. A sign. A destiny.
He hadn't even noticed when it happened.
He was barely nine, bundled so tight that his limbs doubled in thickness, clinging to Yslaine's fleece and pressing his face into her side to shield himself from the howling wind. But the cold cut right through her and deep into his bones. It made sense. They were one and the same, after all.
His mother was barely a few paces ahead of him, she and her black bear daemon carving a trench through the snow for Jayce to follow.
Her daemon collapsed first, hunching over into a ball, the ends of his fur graying. Then his other half fell next to him.
"Mom!" Jayce yelled. He and Yslaine stumbled over each other to get to her. "No, no! Mom, wake up!"
Jayce shook his mom's shoulders desperately, while Yslaine nuzzled against the other daemon, bleating hoarsely.
A strange, high pitched cry split through the storm—a single note, primal and musical at the same time, pure and clear as air. Two lupine eyes emerged from the pall of white.
When the mage wove the spell that spirited them away from the mountain, the stars burned themselves into Jayce's eyes, the back of his skull, clear down to his heart and into every nerve of his body.
He wasn't sure when Yslaine had shifted into a sheep, but she never changed again after that day.
Sometimes classmates would heckle him. A sheep daemon meant he was weak willed, a follower, gullible. But Yslaine wasn't just any sheep: she was a ram. Despite being indisputably female, two majestic, proud horns curled from her head, and she wore them like a crown.
Later, when Jayce and his classmates were both older and stupider at the same time, they'd ask, "Are you sure your daemon isn't a he? Do you really know for sure?" But Jayce knew. He knew the same way he knew everything else about himself.
His mother adored Yslaine's round, robust form, almost a reflection of her own daemon's bulk.
"And such thick wool," she would coo. "It's because you bring me so much comfort."
When Jayce joined the Academy, a lab partner in his first term told him that her daemon—a rooster with shiny emerald tail feathers—being human-bred entailed that she too was meant to help her fellow man.
Jayce internalized that interpretation and took it as his own. After all, House Talis were toolsmiths. They put hammers in the hands of the people, gave them the means to build bigger and brighter futures.
Hard working. Selfless. Warm. Proud.
One last interpretation that Jayce kept to himself was that Yslaine's form reflected Aries, the stellar ram, a sign of fire. As he aged and grew and learned, the sparks scattered by hammered iron reminded him more and more of the mage's spell. Of the heavens. Of a place he could reach if only he aimed high enough.
And maybe that secret hope and the certainty it instilled was what led to his apartment exploding.
---
Viktor remembered exactly when Radko settled, down to the precise breath before and the exhale after.
Throughout their childhood, Radko didn't have forms he preferred to take so much as forms he refused to ever take again. Anything meant to fly was top of the list—the wings invariably failed. Small critters and insects were next. Most of the time, Radko hid away in a pocket, curled up as something furry and unassuming. And if he had to run around, he'd change into a dog.
Dogs were a dime a dozen in Zaun. A dozen dozens, even. They charged in packs down the lanes and stood guard outside homes and shops. Every breed was represented, with a majority settling burly and strong.
At first, Viktor assumed that Rio was the doctor’s own daemon. He never saw them apart, and the doctor made sure never to let Viktor get close enough to touch the waverider.
But the doctor’s true daemon was a delicate spider that clung to his shoulder. Viktor had suspected, but he hadn’t known for sure until he returned one day to find tubes biting into Rio’s flesh like the hungry mouths of lampreys, illuminating her organs and clouding her eyes dull and milky.
No person would do this to their own soul.
Viktor’s cane clattered to the floor. “You did this? How— Who’s—” He’d never seen anyone in the cave or house besides the doctor.
“She must survive,” the doctor said simply.
Viktor stumbled back. Radko circled around him, ear flat to his head and fur puffed defensively.
The doctor shook his head. “I thought you understood.”
Boy and daemon ran as fast as they could from the cave. Radko stumbled over his paws, splashing water and drenching his underbelly and bushy tail.
As soon as they broke into the daylight, Viktor knew.
Wanting so badly to find people, a person, anyone, who understood and loved him, but instead being shunted out into the world alone. Radko was a fox. A dog, but a solitary animal.
For a long while, Viktor resented the change. Neither he nor Radko spoke of the bitterness that festered between and within them. Now too large to carry or hide away, Radko’s sympathetic limp was all the more troubling, but the pair eventually grew into their gaits, their life, their self.
Foxes were clever. All the stories said so, painting them as tricksters, mischief makers, benders of rules and escapees of death. Viktor would never say out loud that he was smarter than his peers; no, he let his actions speak for him.
And sometimes he’d get shoved into the chem-slick mud for his troubles. Foxes were the dogs that other dogs joined hunting parties to kill. Their pelts sold, their meat devoured. It was a sport, to band together in a pack and chase the russet fox until it was gasping pitifully for air, desperate to hide, turning every which way only to find more snarling fangs flashing in the dark.
But the fox slipped the trap, and Viktor kept to himself.
In their later years, Radko took on a composed air. Wild though he was, he preened and posed, his movements liquid, the limp just another part of his dance. And Viktor stood as ramrod straight as he could next to him, each a sentinel for the other, for themself, always on guard.
And sometimes he let himself remember that his soul, too, had teeth.
—
There were two schools of thought when it came to daemon-reading: predestination and causal. A daemon was either a divine map for one's life, or it settled to match one's choices and guaranteed all choices going forward.
Perhaps the answer lay somewhere in between. Adherence to a pattern emerged regardless, even under the most dire and vital circumstances. Obstinate conviction burst forth even when on trial for violating a sacred ethos; self-assured disobedience flared even in the face of sage warnings.
—
Radko paced the rubble-dusted floor as Jayce and Viktor covered the chalkboard—a miraculous survivor of that morning's explosion—in calculations. His tail brushed aside scattered papers, his paws making dampened tip tap sounds that melded in with the click of the chalk.
“Yes, but if you were to look at it this way,” Viktor said.
Jayce tacked a sheet of notes to the wall. “I see it. I see it, yeah.”
Radko had grown a plump, white shadow. As he traversed the apartment, Yslaine followed him step for step. He pretended not to notice, even as his ears flicked around to track her. She was terrible at hiding. Her fleece always made its way into his periphery.
“Wait a minute,” Viktor said. “Right here—”
Radko rounded on his fellow daemon, spinning in a tight circle.
Yslaine didn't flinch. Instead, she bucked up, lifting her front hooves and leveling her horns at Radko's eyes.
“I thought of that,” Jayce said, rifling through a chaotic stack of papers to wave a notebook in Viktor's direction. “It's in here, on page— No, that's stupid. I'll find it. One second.”
Yslaine trotted away, her little tail wagging.
“The page with your name on it?”
Radko followed after, sniffing curiously. They continued in circles for a while, Yslaine deftly scaling the chunks of brick and mortar, Radko weaving between twisted rebar.
“What about–?”
“No, there! That's it!”
“Where?”
“This aligns. Conventional electromagnetic principles, do those still apply? What have you found?”
“Here, here! I've done trials before–”
The calculations went on fervently, dialogue like neurons splitting, joining, breaking apart, ending with a final slash of the chalk, a tap, a declaration. “It works!” The daemons stilled and looked over.
“On paper,” Viktor said.
The joy of a breakthrough quickly soured as the two men lamented their inability to test, to physicalize. Jayce’s equipment was set to be destroyed tomorrow, at dawn for all they knew, his life’s work smashed and burned to tar and soot.
Yslaine wandered over to nuzzle the back of Jayce’s hand with her nose. The soft velvet touch was cold comfort, but Jayce returned the gesture anyway.
“Can’t do it without the crystals,” he muttered. “The Enforcers took them all. They’re gone.”
“Locked away in Heimerdinger’s lab,” Viktor mused.
It took less than a second for the idea to occur, for a decision to be made. Radko padded over and jostled the ring of keys Viktor had laid on a chair, catching the ring in his teeth when they fell.
“No. No, no,” Jayce said. Yslaine stamped her hoof in emphasis. “You heard the council. If we’re wrong—”
“Better be right, then.”
Later that night, two men, a fox, and a ram floated like celestial bodies across the ceiling of an Academy laboratory, the beginning of something neither of them could take back even if they wanted to.
—
Their Hextech discovery came with funding, a laboratory of their own, and an entire new rhythm for their lives to fall into. They did so like two gears slotting together.
Jayce moved his sleep schedule a little earlier, Viktor’s a little later. Viktor learned that Jayce held doors open for everyone and not just him, and Jayce learned how to dodge out of the way when Viktor tried to swat him with his cane.
Both men were chatterers. Most people spoke less and less with their daemons as they aged, verbal communication giving way to implicit understanding, body language, and synchronicity. But Jayce and Viktor still spoke with Yslaine and Radko respectively, using their own mirrors as sounding boards for ideas.
Radko paced whenever Viktor was deep in thought, and Yslaine picked up the habit of following him. On particularly fraught days, they all but wore a circle into the floor.
Any time Jayce got excited, Yslaine would give a little jump, bucking out her back legs. Once, she knocked over an in-progress prototype, and Viktor had spent the better part of five minutes cussing Jayce out.
If Viktor slept on the lab couch, Radko would curl up on top of him, laying strategically on his pelvis so as to avoid his leg or chest. Sometimes they’d wake to a blanket having been mysteriously draped over the both of them.
Jayce was liberal with his touches, patting Viktor on the back, clapping him on the shoulder. He never thought it bothered his partner until one day Radko gave a frightened yip when Jayce jostled Viktor’s shoulder. Yslaine, it seemed, had butted playfully into Radko’s side, and the fox hadn’t been able to stifle his reaction.
“Is that—” Jayce pulled away. “Sorry. Should I not be doing that?”
“No, it’s fine,” Viktor said, put out that his daemon had betrayed him. “Perhaps ease up next time, that is all.”
And as weeks became months became years, Radko and Yslaine would spend late working nights laid next to each other on the couch while their other halves tinkered. Each action was a metaphor for the other.
—
Viktor never attended the parties. It wasn’t part of his responsibilities, he said. Technically, it wasn’t Jayce’s responsibility either, but he was best at scoring them new funding from wealthy sponsors—gathering his flock, Viktor called it.
But this wasn’t a party. Instead, Jayce had been invited to speak at the Academy’s annual conference, and of course Viktor had to support Jayce in his scholarly endeavors. There just happened to be a luncheon beforehand, and the luncheon greatly resembled a party.
Jayce hadn’t eaten a single thing for all the time he’d been there. As he answered yet another question from a bright-eyed upper level student, he caught sight of Viktor across the room.
He hadn’t bothered to clean up at all, sporting soot marks down his cheekbones like how one might contour their face. Unkempt, and yet he shone the same way a knife might as it caught the light—sharp, wicked, precise—as he spoke about their work. He was clearly engaged and enjoying himself.
Jayce understood the feeling all too well. This conference was the first time in ages he’d gotten to speak with people who actually cared what he had to say beyond the money it would make them.
And then Viktor laughed. And Jayce hadn’t been the one to make him laugh. And the one who had was leaning towards Viktor, amiably, fondly, and Radko’s ears were pricked at attention. His tail gave the barest flick of a wag.
Jayce excused himself and strode across the room.
He planned to be calm, casual. He would tease Viktor about being suckered into a social event. He would ask what they were talking about and join in.
“Viktor,” he said.
Yslaine bowed her head to lower her horns. Jayce noticed immediately and spun around, blocking her charge, nearly tripping over his own daemon in the process. He made an incredibly embarrassing panicked noise as he fought for balance. Yslaine’s hooves scraped the floor, making loud clopping sounds. Finally, both righted themselves.
What the hell? What the hell.
“Jayce!” Viktor said, staring at him. Half the room was staring at him. “Are you alright?” he asked in a way that meant what are you doing?
“I tripped, I guess,” Jayce said lamely. “I, uh, it’s just nerves.”
“Okay,” Viktor said slowly as his conversation partner drifted off. “Do you need to go over your notes again? We can find a quiet spot.”
“Please,” Jayce said, then cleared his throat. “Yeah, I think that would help.”
Yslaine rarely ever tried to ram someone, and she only got aggressive if Jayce himself was already worked up, but he wasn’t. He was fine. Sheep weren’t even aggressive animals. They only rammed each other to compete. Compete… for what exactly?
When Jayce looked at Viktor, he was wearing a scrutinizing expression that made Jayce want to run away and hide. What a privilege and a curse to be the subject of that gaze. His face reddened.
Oh. So that’s how it was.
—
They were so close to stabilizing the Hextech gemstones. They’d ruled out chemical treatments and external containment, and now it seemed like something akin to pressure treatment might be the ticket. But getting the mineral to submit to that treatment was making Viktor want to grind the stupid rock into powder and be done with it forever.
“Let’s call it a night,” Jayce said. He’d been tidying his workstation for upwards of ten minutes now, a prelude to him asking so that Viktor would have as few excuses as possible to refuse.
“No, no,” Viktor said, “I am having a thought.”
Across the room, Radko and Yslaine were splayed on the couch together, and Radko’s tail swatted her in the face.
“Is it a coherent one?” Jayce asked.
Yslaine hopped off the couch and trotted over. The sudden absence of her heft made the couch spring and rock in a way that jostled Radko from his comfortable position. Reluctantly, he slunk after her.
“That remains to be seen,” Viktor said with a sigh. “Perhaps you could let me finish putting it together.”
“I’m pretty sure you haven’t had a coherent thought for the last hour. I really doubt this is going to be the one.”
“Such little…” Viktor had to pause to stifle a yawn. “Little faith.”
Jayce began tidying Viktor’s workstation, reaching around him to close book and organize tools. “Either you go home to rest or I carry you there,” he said. An empty threat, but paradoxically, they both knew he meant it with his whole heart.
Viktor gave himself a moment to appreciate the gentle challenge in Jayce's eyes, the rings of exhaustion underneath, the way he let his smile crook to the side when, for the Piltover public, he always smiled evenly, with all his teeth.
Radko laid a paw on Jayce's leg.
Both men startled, and Viktor sat up so fast that his lower back twinged painfully.
“Sorry,” Jayce said, though what he had to apologize for was a mystery.
“I should go,” Viktor said, gathering his cane and coat. “You're right, I'm tired, we're tired. I will see you tomorrow.”
Once they'd quit the lab, Viktor cast an annoyed look at his daemon. “What the hell was that about?”
Radko didn't have an answer for him. All Viktor's knowledge was Radko's as well, and the same was true of their ignorances.
Viktor spent the short walk to his apartment justifying the gesture. The touch. The… proximity. It was annoyance. Obviously. Yes. He was annoyed. Radko had tried to brush Jayce off, to push him away, even though Viktor could've easily done that himself. He didn't even need to touch Jayce for his partner’s gentleman instincts to kick in and give Viktor his space.
At the very least, there hadn't been any outright contact. That was one consolation. No fur to bare skin. The thought sent a shiver up Viktor's spine, the idea of Jayce touching his daemon, of feeling him, feeling Viktor, the fur and skin and bones of his soul. Jayce's strong arms carefully cradling Radko, arranging the fox's slim legs as he fussed, one hand supporting the feet and the other scooped under his ribs. Radko luxuriating in Jayce's body heat. Jayce running a finger up his snout, between his eyes, over the back of his head like he was a precious thing and not a feral animal with a broken stride.
Viktor nearly walked into a lamp post.
“Son of a bitch,” he said to no one in particular. Maybe to the lamp post. Maybe to the universe at large.
He and Radko locked eyes. “We are never to do that ever again, yeah?” It was a question, but also it wasn't. They were never going to do that ever again.
—
The bottle was red glass, thick on the bottom with a stout neck dipped in gold wax. It did not belong with the delicate materials on Viktor’s desk, but that’s where Jayce placed it anyways.
“Is this a bribe?” Viktor asked. “Like I told Councilor Hoskell, I can’t be bought.”
“No, I—” Jayce stopped, frowned. “Wait, what?”
“A joke. He would never approach me; we both know that you’re the one to tempt with fancy baubles and treats.”
Jayce placed a hand on the desk, leaning in to observe Viktor’s work. Yslaine was pawing at the floor. Even if Jayce had mastered the art of schooling his expressions, his daemon wasn’t quite as skilled. No matter how hard he tried, he could never stop his big, bright emotions from shining through.
“Do you know what today is?” Jayce asked.
Viktor had to stop himself from answering with something blithe. “It seems you do,” he said. “Enlighten me?”
“It’s our anniversary. Of our partnership on Hextech, I mean.”
“What happened to the anniversaries of the past years?”
Jayce’s cheeks reddened. “We were always too busy, and by the time I remembered it would be weeks later. But I wrote it down this time, and I know we’re at a dead end with the runes right now, but I thought we could take the night to celebrate everything we have managed to do this year.”
Viktor picked up the bottle, holding it by the base. “So, this is indeed a bribe.”
“To get you to quit working, sure,” Jayce said. “Will it do?”
“Hmm, it will.”
The setting sun painted pink and gold streaks across the floor as they broke open the bottle, shrank to a radiant line when Jayce recounted a series of ridiculous mishaps from his latest party, faded to dusk while Viktor taught Jayce one of the many traditional Zaunite drinking songs he knew. Viktor can only carry a tune when he keeps his voice down, and Jayce couldn’t carry a tune halfway across the room if he tried. They give up after a while.
They’ve switched places with their daemons, Jayce and Viktor on the couch nursing their second—or maybe third—drinks while Yslaine and Radko poke around the lab equipment and workstations.
Jayce is leaning into Viktor’s personal space again, but Viktor is just buzzed enough that it takes him a while to notice. By that point, it would be rude to make a fuss. He lets it be.
“Have you heard what people are calling us?” Jayce asked out of the blue.
Viktor raised an eyebrow. “Do I want to know?”
“It’s not disparaging,” Jayce said. “Apparently people are calling us ‘The Kindred Two’.”
“Really.”
“Or versions of that.”
Viktor took another sip of his drink. “I do not get it.”
“Wait, do people from Zaun not know about the Kindred? It’s the two halves of the spirit of death after they split themself with an axe into the Lamb and the Wolf. The Lamb reaps the souls that accept the end of their life. She’s the gentle death. The Wolf hunts down souls that try to escape and gives them violent deaths.”
“Jayce,” Viktor said, “I know about the Kindred. I had forgot that most see them as Lamb and Wolf. In most parts of Zaun, we call them Seal and Shark, though I’ve also heard of Hare and Hawk.”
“In the north, they have Goat and Lion, I’m pretty sure.”
“So,” Viktor said, gesturing with his glass at their daemons across the room, pointing first to Yslaine and then Radko, “Lamb and Wolf. Eh, it’s a bit imprecise, but I see it. Though ‘the gentle death’, that is not you at all.”
“What?” Jayce shifted his position, causing the couch cushions to dip and Viktor to slide so their hips sat touching. He hunched over so he could look Viktor in the eye. “That’s my daemon you’re talking about. You’re saying I’m not the Lamb?”
Viktor had to scoff. Jayce, a spirit of death? The man was so full of exuberance and life that Viktor wanted to drink him in like ambrosia. It would heal his every ache.
“You are not any kind of death,” Viktor said. “You wouldn’t hurt a wharf roach, not even if your life depended on it.”
Jayce looked across the room to Yslaine, who currently had her head bowed and cocked to stare at Radko. “He’s calling us soft,” he told her. She snorted.
“Like a marshmallow, Talis. And I am no wolf.”
“You’re plenty Wolf.”
“Oh? Tell me, can you picture me on a hunt?” Out of the corner of his eye, he watched Yslaine follow as Radko padded in a silent circle. His tail was held low, whisking back and forth.
“I’ve seen you be vicious,” Jayce said, lowering his voice, his tone kept even. Viktor could smell the spice from their drinking on his breath. “The way you attack problems, you never let it rest until you’re satisfied. That’s persistence hunting. It’s amazing.”
“Does the Wolf not hunt the Lamb as well?” Viktor asked, haltingly. The drink, the closeness, Jayce’s eyes. It was all a little much and Viktor was beginning to burn. “I seem to recall that being an important part of the myth.”
“Sure,” Jayce said. He was vaguely aware of their daemons moving on the other side of the room, making scuffling noises as if playing keepaway, but it was the furthest thing from his mind. “But you can’t have one without the other, and you’re the only person I’d ever want to be my Wolf.”
When Viktor opened his mouth, he intended to sound amused, to pose it as a question, a retort, but he was so warm and the curve of Jayce’s body held him just so that his brain fuzzed. It came out as a defeated admission. “And you, my Lamb.”
It was all they could do to simply hold each other's gaze.
And then it happened, simultaneously meters away and yet deep within them: Radko bit down on Yslaine's neck.
Not hard. Not enough to wound. Just enough so that Jayce could feel the sharp points of pressure digging into the very core of his being, holding him there, gently, mercifully. His pupils dilated. Immeasurable sensation welled up inside him, rushing like blood to a bruise.
And Viktor… Viktor could feel the bob of a throat, the quickened pulse under his daemon’s tongue, the primal hunger that sang in his blood, the desire and tension of a hunt nearly complete.
And that moment right there, resting on a razor’s edge, it was exquisite. It could’ve lasted forever.
“Viktor,” Jayce whispered, urgent, afraid almost.
And then Viktor followed through on his daemon's promise and kissed Jayce firmly.
Jayce gasped into the kiss, but there was no hesitation. He gathered Viktor in his arms, pulling him closer, closer. Viktor fisted his hands in Jayce’s shirt. The kiss was all teeth and fumbling and the sour sting of alcohol, but neither cared.
Somewhere else in the lab, Yslaine and Radko wrestled each other back and forth, nipping and nudging and growling. Blissfully primal.
Jayce steered Viktor by the hips, mindful of his leg, maneuvering him so that he straddled atop Jayce’s thighs, Jayce’s back to the couch arm.
Viktor pulled back slightly, just enough to bite Jayce’s bottom lip. His partner whimpered. This stupid man whimpered for him. Viktor dove back into the kiss with renewed vigour, chasing, devouring every little sound that Jayce fed him.
They kissed as if to undo the oldest wound in the world. To heal the swing of the axe. To become whole.
Viktor finally broke away, gasping, chest heaving. Jayce was similarly debauched. He panted, face red, lips perhaps even redder.
Viktor stared in disbelief. “Oh, you are the gentle death,” he said, awed.
And then there was a sharpness, a spark, and neither could’ve said which of their daemons had done it. They didn’t need to. The drag of teeth knocked all inhibitions from their minds.
Jayce pulled Viktor back in.