Let Me Eat Your Heart Out Darling

Arcaneverse Jayvik Fic

Really, he should have been more disturbed by the sight in front of him, he really honestly should, but he’d seen a lot in the past few years, and the young man that threw up at the sight of dead bodies had long since died.

There’s a brown box sitting on his kitchen counter, it looks like it probably contained pastries or something at one point, and the kicker is the small red string tied around it, with a little card attached, neon pink and blue scrawlings say “With Love.”

There’s also blood leaking out the bottom of the box, he doesn’t know how long it’s been sat on his counter, and he really doesn’t want to think about the fact Jinx had broken into his home and he hadn’t even noticed

“With Love!” The card says again.

“Please be quiet.” He replies, It’s too early for this.

“With Love,” the card says, in a dejected manner.

With shaking hands (since when did his hands shake?), he picks up the sodden brown box, it’s heavy, and something slightly rolls around in it, if you could call it rolling, it might have shifted really. Blood lands on the table top. He’ll have to clean that later.

It takes him a little while to find something to put the box down onto, he eventually just grabs one of his old plates, dumps the sodden thing down onto it, and throws himself into one of his table chairs, the old wood creaking under the sudden weight.

Pulling the string off wasn’t that hard, though a part of it slapped against his wrist and left a small trail of blood. Gross.

“With Love!” The card says.

Maybe tipping the box upside down wasn’t the best idea, but Jayce didn’t tend to have many of those these days.

The wet splat resounding around his kitchen does almost make him gag. The plate itself rocks a bit too, so it slides against the ceramic for a second before it comes to a rest.

“With Love!” The card declares, before Jayce picks it up, crumples it and throws it into the nearest corner.

There is a heart sitting upon the ceramic plate, a human heart. There’s another little piece of string tied around the pulmonary artery, a blood stained card hangs from the soaked string, and he swears he could recognise the handwriting in his sleep.

He barely makes it to his kitchen sink before he throws up.

It takes him half an hour to even think about looking at his table again, and then another twenty minutes before he can make his way back over towards it, pulling his chair back and sitting in it with less force than last time.

“From Viktor” is almost obscured by the amount of blood staining the card. It’s still written in that slanted messy hand, certain bits darker than the rest, Viktor always used half dead pens, said he had to get the idea down now and finding a pen that worked wasn’t worth it. There was even a squiggle on the edge of the card, evidence that he had to work the pen before he could even start writing it.

He can see the jagged edges where the arteries have been cut from the rest of the body, there’s a small nick of a knife on the left side of the heart itself, but other than that, it was in relatively perfect condition. If he ignored the black soot stained sections it would almost look like the perfect model for an anatomy class.

What the fuck was he meant to do with this. Donating it to the academy felt… impersonal, like spreading someone’s ashes in a randomly selected location. He obviously couldn’t keep it here on his table, letting it rot and decay (further than it already had, but he was pushing that thought to the back of his head) was also out of the picture, what if Cait and Vi brought their kid over? How would he even explain that?

“Yeah! Sorry about the mess, my ex-best friend’s heart is taking up a quarter of the table and it feels wrong to remove it.”

That would only serve to make him sound even more unhinged than he already did most of the time. No, leaving it there or giving it away weren’t options.

It took him two hours to find a discarded water bottle to put the heart in. And then another three hours to find out what liquid you use to preserve stuff like this.

Against his better judgement… It looked almost beautiful. Lovely in a way.

— ★✶★ —

He doesn’t know where to keep it. I mean who would know where to keep the severed, preserved, heart of your ex-best friend and current rival. He kept it in the fridge for a week, before an event where he’d forgotten he’d left it there at 3am trying to make a coffee. So yes he’d moved it somewhere else.

He tried his work desk next, though that also turned out to be a pretty terrible idea. There was one point where he’d accidentally forgotten to move it whilst working on some explosive prototypes, and had to quickly catch it before it landed on the ground of his laboratory, which put a dent in one of his main options. He almost entertained the idea of leaving it at Viktor’s old desk, though the one time he tried that he felt like it was watching him, so he moved it after four hours of leaving it there.

Eventually, he puts it on his bedside table, no one visits him enough (or at all) for him to warrant it as an inappropriate place to keep it, and if some small part of him finds some peace at it being the last thing he sees before passing out, and the first thing he sees when he wakes up, that’s for him to know, and to shove into the recesses of his mind.

— ★✶★ —

It’s two months into the “heart situation” that Cait and Vi finally come over. He doesn’t move it from its place at his kitchen counter (he’d taken to moving it around his house when he leaves a room, this is normal behaviour). To be honest, Viktor’s heart has become such a staple in his life at this point, that he’s almost forgotten that it’s weird.

Almost.

He's only really reminded when Vi yells obscenities when she goes to raid his kitchen. It takes him a few seconds to process why she’d be screaming, and in that very small amount of time, Cait has already rushed into the kitchen herself.

There’s a second yell.

Right. He should go deal with that.

It really is a bit of a funny sight to see Piltover’s Finest pressed against his back cabinet, staring at the water bottled heart on his cabinet. Vi, for all her love of violence looks ready to hurl, and Cait is staring at him like he’s just killed her Poro.

“I can maybe explain that,” is the first thing he manages to say.

“Then start explaining.” Cait looks ready to punch him, he probably deserves it.

And so he explains, he explains the brown sodden box, the notes from Jinx and Viktor, and the process of preserving wet specimens, which has recently become an interest of his, even outside of the heart situation.

Vi is the first to speak after his explanation

“So you really couldn’t have just gotten rid of it?”

“No? What? I just explained that to you. It’d be… impolite.” He wishes his voice wasn’t so laced with venom. Maybe it would help convince them this was perfectly fine and sane.

“Okay. Jayce, I love you, but don’t you think this is a little far? Just a bit?” Cait is picking her words carefully now, he can tell by the way she keeps looking towards Vi for some sign of approval, that she got this one right.

“It’s not that bad.” Great defence there, Talis. Really, well done.

Cait just sighs, puts her head in her hands, which she only really does when Jayce is being particularly stubborn about things, drags her hands down her face and then claps.

“Right! Well! We are going to go back to the living room, finish our conversation, and then me and Vi are going home, seeing as I have lots of paperwork to fill out, and she needs to think of a way to convince her sister that giving people human hearts is not appropriate.” She finishes herself off with another small clap, leaves his kitchen, and drags Vi along with her.

— ★✶★ —

The rest of the night goes fine, and he takes the heart back to his bedside table before turning in for the night.

He should probably find something better than a water bottle to keep him in. It doesn’t feel right really. But finding something that worked? That fit Viktor? That was evidently pretty hard when he hasn’t seen the guy without starting a fight with him in nearly a decade.

The heart, to Jayce, was beautiful, not in the romantic lovey-dovey sense of the word. Viktor had been his friend. He was important to Jayce, and he always made such beautiful things when they weren’t working on Hextech (his favourite had been the toy carousel, it had little metal unicorns and played a tinny tune when it span), so by definition, it was totally normal for him to think Viktor, by extension, was also beautiful.

He hadn’t even noticed his own hand reaching out to touch the surface of the bottle, his pointer finger running down the glass. At some point he’d installed a small light in his bedside table, just under where he’d usually put Viktor, the light shining up through the liquid and casting lovely shadows on the crevices of the heart. It really wasn’t that weird to find it as beautiful as he did.

It takes him another hour to stop staring at the heart, before he’d lulled himself to sleep.

— ★✶★ —

He keeps it on him at all times around the five month mark. It’s also been five months since he last physically saw Viktor. In a sense the man's been with him this whole time, but it’s not always the same. He misses Viktor’s wheezing laugh more than he used to, and It might just be his own fault really.

He’d started talking to it, just a bit. Not intentionally! But it was easier to concentrate when he spoke what he was doing aloud sometimes, whether it was his reasons for doing things, reminders like “tighten this cog” or “don’t forget 2912” that it became a habit to aim the words at Viktor.

He knew the heart couldn’t respond to him, or make meaningful conversation like the rest of Viktor could, but it almost felt like it had on bad days, where Jayce would say something into the empty silence of the lab, and would receive a grunt or huff for his efforts.

So it’s no surprise that he’d begin missing Viktor’s, albeit stilted, commentary on things. And if that included the way his eyes would light up when he solved a particularly hard puzzle, how he’d hum to himself quietly as he worked, the way his hands would curl around a spatula as he made sure the milk and star anise wouldn’t burn as he made sweetmilk in batches, then really, Jayce wasn’t going to judge.

He wondered if under his armour he still had that mole on his middle finger. Jayce had noticed it during one of their tamer arguments, he can’t really remember what they were arguing about, but Viktor had flipped him off with his right hand, and in the middle of it was a small mole.

He hoped he hadn’t gotten rid of it, it was cute.

Anyways, the point is that he carries him around in his bag. It didn’t even really matter where Jayce was going, be it a meeting with the council, his mothers house, or his monthly meet up with Mel. It felt… nice. Almost like Viktor really was still with him, like they were going to go back to the lab after all of this, like they had never argued, like Jayce hadn’t put his own insecurities onto how Viktor was feeling…

Like he hadn’t berated and yelled at him for his self augmentation.

Maybe he should have apologised. Maybe if he’d have just listened he wouldn’t be carrying Viktor’s heart around with him in a water bottle (he still hasn’t found the perfect place for it). Him and Viktor might still be lab partners, might still be friends. Instead of meeting up every couple of months to beat the shit out of each other, they could have been sharing an apartment, developing Hextech together.

He can’t really change the past now, and a heart's a heavy burden to bear, in a metaphorical sense at least.

At the end of the day he still has some of Viktor left with him, and that’s enough for him.

— ★✶★ —

It’s been eight months since Jayce first received his little “present." Viktor has since been made a permanent fixture on his person. He’s moved him from the water bottle, it felt disingenuous to keep him in there. He’s not sure why he kept him there so long in the first place.

Viktor’s new body (ha, and isn't that a funny thought) is a glass dodecahedron. The glass has a sort of blue hue to it, just a small tint of colour, and an intricately forged metal frame and handles that made him easier to hold. He's not too big, and Jayce doesn’t really think he’s all that heavy. It’s a beautiful piece of work, He’s honestly quite proud of himself for managing to build it right, and Viktor looks so lovely in the middle, a heart encased by a thousand possibilities.

He might’ve carried Viktor around before, but now he didn’t feel as though he was gonna break him, didn’t feel as though he could damage or lose him as easily. The dodecahedron has raised metal edges. He’d spent maybe a week testing out the durability of the thing, which really meant tossing it out of windows, lobbing it against the floor, chucking it into various surfaces, and blowing it up on one or two occasions.

After some minor tweaks and lots of industrial Noxian glass, he could declare Viktor’s new body safe.

Sometimes he still remembered the first time he had him in the lab. The explosion, how fast he’d reacted to Vikor being flung off the table… it made his stomach curl to think about. What if he was too slow? What if the bottle had fallen to the ground and smashed, glass embedded in him?

He was pretty glad he spent so long stress testing it after a visit from Jinx. She’d been prodding and poking around at one of his newer telescope models, and by prodding and poking, she’d placed one of her chomper bombs on the eye piece, and he didn’t even think before running in and tossing the grenade in a direction where it wouldn’t damage his precious telescope.

It had landed a few metres from where Viktor was perched on his desk, Jayce didn’t even have time to react before the explosion went off.

Viktor had gotten pushed back a couple of inches, not a scratch, and Jayce let out a breath he’d hadn’t realised he’d been holding.

— ★✶★ —

He’s fairly certain he saw a spec of something on Viktor. It might have been a trick of the light, or maybe his mind playing tricks on him, but he really, really doesn’t want anything bad to happen to Viktor, so he empties out the dodecahedron, and set to cleaning it down, disinfecting it, refilling it with preservatives, until he finally turns to Viktor himself.

He’d forgotten to buy disposable gloves, he’d been in a bit of a rush to get everything so he could make sure Viktor was okay, and really the gloves hadn’t been the top of his priority. It takes him a little while to wash off the remaining preservatives off his skin before he feels comfortable picking him up.

His hands are cold, clammy, but Viktor feels so strong in his hands, and he can’t help but sweep his thumbs over the surface, can’t help but separate out his arteries, feeling the bumps and veins just under his surface. If he had to describe it to anyone else (which he couldn’t, they wouldn’t why he needed to do this, why it felt so nice to feel the strong muscle under his thumbs) he would say the texture almost feels like holding raw chicken, but he's strong. Stronger than Jayce would have given him credit for.

It’s ten minutes until Jayce breaks out of his slight trance, shaking his head slightly. He turns to place Viktor in the pail of fresh clean water on his desk, and sets to cleaning him, inspecting him and making sure he’s okay.

There isn’t any mould on him, no specs, no dust or dirt. He looks exactly how he did when Jayce first got him, and the thought calms him down, and he goes back to massaging the muscles. He gets his fingers into the crevices to make sure he’s clean, nothing left behind that could rot.

He dunks him in alcohol, and then places him gently back into his body, the cool preservative encasing him once again.

He looks much better this time around, compared to the first time he did this. His hands don’t shake anymore, and once he’s done, he gently picks him up and places him back on his bedside table, climbing into bed for the night and passing out the second his head hits his pillow.

— ★✶★ —

Jayce really should be more careful with what he says, or at least thinks things through a little better before he runs his mouth. But he’s tired and annoyed, and the council isn’t listening to him again about providing resources to Zaun, about making Hextech what he and Viktor wanted it to be.

Today’s argument calls his sanity into question. He’d been holding himself away in his apartment and lab for too long, hasn’t gone to enough sanctioned events, and hasn’t mingled enough with the upper class. He stopped showing up to events shortly after getting Viktor back. He didn’t need to leave his lab anymore, he didn’t need to fill the void in his chest with meaningless drivel and ass-kissing.

He doesn’t tell the council that though, he simply states he was taking some time to dedicate to Hextech, and if Vi gives him a look across the room from where she was stood guarding the door, then he ignores it.

“Why haven’t you brought any of your new prototypes before the council then, Talis?” It was Councillor Salo that spoke first, his lips turned up in a sneer. He looked like a jackass like that, but then again he always looked like a jackass, so it was more like double the jackassery.

Salo never liked Jayce. He can’t remember why anymore, but Jayce knew Salo didn’t like him, despite all he’d done for the good of Piltover, and to his own dismay, lining the pockets of the council and the elite.

“They’re not exactly grand gestures that I believed you would all be interested in. Common tools, like hammers and breathing respirators. I was focusing my efforts on helping the everyday person, and didn’t feel as though it would interest you all, that’s all,” he finishes off his slight half lie with a shrug.

The council always brushed aside his smaller projects. He knew why, had known why for a while, actually. The idea of Hextech leaving their control, being something everyone could use? It angered a lot of them, and disgusted the rest.

They forgot their “Golden Boy” could barely afford the materials he needed to start his experiments safely. Hextech was never for them in the first place. It was for people like his mom, for people who needed the help, that needed the assistance.

This admittance turned out like it always did. Members of the council yelling over one another, telling him it wasn’t safe in the hands of those “deviants.” (He saw Vi’s fists tighten at that, the sound loud to him even if she was on the other side of the room.) He sees them getting more heated, but Jayce has long since tuned out their meaningless words and arguments, instead watching the way Vi flicked her gaze over to him, and sending him a look that very obviously conveyed “I want to punch these cunts.” His own withered “I’m begging you, anything to get them to shut up,” back at her.

He’s brought Viktor with him. He never liked coming to these things, but Jayce needed the support, and so he keeps his bag on his lap, fingers brushing against the cold metal of the frame. He can imagine Viktor sitting next to him, scoffing at the remarks the councillors made about their decisions. He can imagine the feel of his atrociously bony elbow knocking him to pay attention to one of the bastards doing something highly inappropriate whilst the others were going for each other’s throats.

Vi being there is almost the same. The times she’s allowed to move from her post to stand next to him were the best. Her dry wit and humour reminded him of Viktor on his bad days.

It takes them two hours to end the discussion about Hextech, Jayce somehow managed to convince them to let him carry his work out. Which was a start at least. His fingers catch on Viktor again. At least he has some company.

— ★✶★ —

He gets thrown into a pile of sharp rubble, and it hurts a lot. But still, picking himself up is easy. Sure, he hasn’t done this in over a year, as him and the Herald avoided one another for the most part, (which is to say Jayce didn’t leave his home and didn’t keep up with the news, or what was going on in Zaun) but it’s hard to forget how to do something like this. The Mercury Hammer feels so good in his hands. It’s heavy and solid, and fuck if it doesn’t give him some sense of control.

The Herald is standing above him. His unfeeling metal mask is staring into his soul, or it at least feels that way. He can’t really tell. His body doesn’t creak or moan like the rest of the metal around them, the movements are silent, too natural to be fully robotic. But he quickly dispels that thought, because if he thinks about it too hard, it’ll send him into a spiral. Because if Viktor was still in there, what was he meant to do?

He’s startled out of these thoughts by a shot from the Hexclaw, Their Hexclaw, the one they made together. It sits on Heralds’s shoulder, he doesn't really know how Herald’s armour works, he never really spent too much time properly inspecting it, and his hammer was slightly long distance.

There’s another shot, a bit closer to his head, Right, he should actually focus on what he’s here to do.

Herald is close enough for Jayce to take a swing at him, if he's anything, its accurate, because it hits him square in the head, and he hears a deafening crack sound resound from Heralds mask, its a few seconds later, but it feels like an eternity till Jayce hears the clatter of metal on the ground, and deep, human breaths.

He can't look up, he's staring at his feet, which lets him see the broken metal mask laying on the floor, and a few metres away from that he can see the broken glass case, half full of liquid, and Viktor is laying at the bottom of it, and Jayce can’t force himself to move and scoop him up, make sure he’s okay.

He sees the purple hand of Herald push his body up off the ground, and watches as it reaches forwards, grasping Viktor, turning him over in his hand. From what Jayce can see he’s not damaged, a metallic hand joins the other, running its fingers over the muscle and tissue of Viktor.

“ Jayce…” It’s not the voice of the Herald, but he’s refusing to admit to himself what that means.

The sound of exertion fills his ears, followed by metal footsteps, and then Herald is sat next to him, the sound of fans overpowers his ears and he can see Viktor resting in his hand, just sitting there.

“You kept this?” It’s a quiet question, if he wanted to he could ignore it, keep up the facade that he doesn’t care about Viktor, this Viktor.

But he’s never really been able to deny the man anything really.

“Only because I didn’t know what to do with it.” It’s not a total lie, and he's trying to keep his voice down, to keep himself from baring his chest.

“Bärchen…” it’s said so softly. He has to blink back tears, he’s meant to be killing Herald, not sobbing into his lap. Which he’s getting close to doing at this point, the metal is warmer that he thought it would be against his face.

He doesn’t really have anything to say, not really, There’s a heart in Heralds, in Viktor’s hands, and he doesn’t know what to do about it. The shattered dodecahedron sits a little ways away, the metal is a little bent, he thinks he might’ve hit it himself when going for Hera- Viktor, and isn’t that a little ironic.

“Did you build that?” It’s the longest conversation they’ve had whilst being civil in years, and he can tell Viktor doesn't know what to say either, obviously Jayce built it, it’s in House Talis colours.

“Yeah, I kept you in a water bottle for a bit, didn’t have anything that fit you, sorry” he admits into the metal pressing into his cheek.

If anyone were to catch him looking like this, he’d probably be exiled from Piltover again, headlines would scream “GOLDEN BOY CAUGHT CONVERSING WITH MACHINE HERALD?” or something like that, the idea makes him chuckle.

“Is a water bottle the best you could do for me? I would have thought my heart would be worth more to you.” It’s a tease, he knows it’s a tease, but it doesn’t stop him from feeling guilty, doesn’t stop him from feeling ashamed that he even put Viktor in a water bottle of all things in the first place, and it must show on his face because Viktor speaks up again.

“I’m not mad at you Jayce, it was a joke, I’m sure it was a lovely water bottle”

“If it was an ugly one, would you be mad at me?” It’s a childish question, this whole situation is childish really, but it’s the first time in months he’s felt good, and that has to count for something right?

“Hm…” He feels the bastard lifts his hand to his chin, a mock show of him actually thinking hard about it, and fuck has he missed it, “no, I don’t think I’d mind unless it was one of those atrocious ‘Man of Progress’ ones they made”

“You’re lucky then, it was a plain one, it might have been yours actually now that I think about it”

They’re quiet for a bit, the creaking metal of the warehouse around them and slight whirr of Viktors fans filling the silence.

It’s pleasant.
Sadly, Jayce needs to ruin every nice moment in his life.

“What do you want me to do with it?” He tries not to sound like a whiny puppy about it, but it really doesn’t come off as anything but a silent plea to let him keep it, let him keep some memory that they can get along… did get along, if they go back to fighting after this.

“Well. I’m touched you looked after it so well, it certainly didn’t do me the same favour” he pauses for a second, Jayce knows not to interrupt, sometimes it takes Viktor to find the right words, it’s something he missed greatly. “ Though I don’t think keeping it locked away in a cage forever is the smartest thing to do Jayce” he can feel Viktors eyes in the back of his head.

“Where else could I keep it then Vitya” and oh that name is sweet on his tongue, he hasn’t said it in years.

“Well, you could eat it” if he didn’t know Viktor any better, he’d think he was joking, but the hands grasp the heart tighter, and there’s a finger brushing against his lips.

“Is it even safe to… to do that?” He’s not sure why he’s entertaining the idea at all. The thought of it doesn’t make his stomach curl like he feels it should though, instead just makes a warm weight settle in his chest.

“We can test that hypothesis, if you’d like” and it’s almost like they’re in the lab again, and Viktor is proposing blowing up one of the crystals to see if it makes any new properties.

He makes a small noise of affirmation, and then closes his own hand around the heart, nodding against Viktors chest plate, and rising back up into a sitting position. He can’t make himself look any higher than their joined hands.

The finger at his lip parts them slightly, and runs a soft finger across his canines, his mouth parting more and more until he can feel Viktor’s other arm shift, bringing the heart closer and closer to his mouth, the metallic taste already reaching his taste buds as its placed next to his lips.

Something must show on his face again, because Viktor lowers it for a second, and barely makes a sound above a whisper when he asks his next question

“Are you sure about this?” There’s a degree of uncertainty in his voice, of vulnerability, of humanity, and Jayce chases after it like a greyhound does a rabbit

“Absolutely”

And then his teeth sink into cold flesh.

It’s harder than the thought it would, the thick layers used for pumping blood fighting against his teeth and jaws. He gets an edge in eventually, sharp teeth finding purchase in the muscle and tearing their way through nerve endings and arteries.

It takes him a second to swallow it, the slimy texture making him gag slightly as it goes down his throat, before he steels himself and takes another bite from the fruit offered up from Viktors palm, it’s easier this time around, he knows what he’s meant to be doing, knows how the muscles fold and break under his teeth, and it feels freeing.

It doesn’t take long to finish it, Viktor holding the last piece between his fingers and placing it into his mouth like it wasn’t a part of him. There’s blood running down his mouth, for a split second the thought he was going to throw up there, but he quickly got used to the sensation of the muscle between his teeth.

It takes him a second to finally look at Viktor’s face, and oh, what a lovely sight that was, why hadn’t he looked up beforehand. The moles under his eye and above his lip were still there. He's not sure why he thought they’d be gone in the first place, but it’s a pleasant surprise.

“Can I kiss you?” He doesn’t even realise he’s said it, doesn’t even know why he’s said it, but he can’t take it back now, not after something like that.

“Jayce, you just ate my heart, I think we’re well past that” and then there’s a hand at the back of his neck, and warm lips against his own.

The kiss tastes like blood, how could it not, but if it isn’t the best kiss he’s had in his entire life. It feels like Viktor is trying to crawl inside him, to make a home in his chest with his heart, teeth nipping at his lips causing him to gasp before pulling away.

Viktor rests his forehead against Jayce’s own, noses touching in a slightly awkward manner, it’d be uncomfortable if Jayce didn’t feel so good.

“I’ve been wanting to do that for over twenty years” and he can’t reply before his lips are caught up again.

And there’s not a place he’d rather be than here