The club was nothing like Viktor’s lab.

The air was thick here, not with the sterile hum of filtered vents but with the pounding rhythm of bass, heat from too many bodies pressed together, strobe lights. Viktor had only agreed to come because Jayce said it would be “good for him,” whatever that meant. But now, standing stiff near the back wall with a drink he hadn’t touched, he felt more like an alien dropped onto a new planet than any sort of participant.

Everyone looked so... Cool. Like they had stepped straight out of some underground fashion magazine. Weird clothes, ripped fishnets, teased hair, black lipstick smudged by dancing. And then there was Viktor, hunched at the edge of the room with a soda clutched in his hand like a lifeline, old academy uniform buttoned all the way up as if it could shield him from neon.

He tried to smile when people walked past--which didn't happen very often, Janna bless--but the most he could manage was a timid glance before looking down again. His brain kept offering up labels instead of conversation starters. The flashing cycle of the lights, 3.5 seconds. The rhythm of the bass, 128bpm. The waves they made in a puddle of indistinct liquid on the floor in front of him. They were useful observations. Also, useless for talking to other human beings.

For a moment, Viktor considered just going back to the lab to put his overthinking brain to good use. Until he saw you coming up to him, and you stepped into the puddle with your big pair of boots, disturbing the pretty ripples. And everything clicked into place.

"Wait, oh my god."

You didn't even have time to get a word in, whether it was to ask him to dance or to tell him he was ruining the mood. Viktor grasped your arm, stopping you right in your tracks.

"That's it. Magic is like a wavelength. I know that. But--but I guess hextech--hexcrystals--are like a disturbance. Like a weight! Like a stone in a spiderweb, or a foot in a puddle."

He looked up at you, half forgetting that he was not in the lab. "You see it, right?"