WHO: Viktor & Adam WHAT: Catching up, talking cars, magic, school, and junk at Boyd's. WHEN: Saturday, June 18, afternoon. WARNINGS: None! STATUS: Complete!
“I can’t believe that nearly everyone owns one of these where you’re from,” Viktor said, his voice colored with equal parts wonder and skepticism as Adam slowly set the hood down over the car he had been showing. The thought of a society so spread out - of cities so large that they required individual transportation - baffled him. Perhaps it wouldn’t have, he reminded himself, had he been more places than Piltover and Zaun. Piltover was the shining, golden pinnacle of civilization in the clouds, with Zaun clinging to its underside like a forgotten, slovenly sibling… but it was relatively easy, even for someone with Viktor’s limited motility, to navigate between the two.
“If you get a hybrid model in, I would love to see it, if I could.” Viktor found cars fascinating - their powerful (but small!) engines, the way they were slowly turning to something not as reliant on gasoline. It was a problem he understood from home. They might not have relied on cars, but limited resources was absolutely a concern for Viktor, who worried about sustainability, if no one else. Sitting down (slow-going; his back was hurting today), he grabbed one of the cloths Adam had provided, idly cleaning his fingers as he considered the merits of a four-cylinder engine versus a six.
Adam liked having someone who was interested in the scientific side of mechanics. It wasn't that the other employees at Boyd's weren't, but most people who walked in wanting to know more about how to fix a car were doing it so that they could simply patch up their own vehicles. Real self-starters. Viktor's interest had pleased him, because of his genuine interest in wanting to know how they worked. That was where Adam often straddled the line, and he didn't expect Viktor's eyes to glaze over when they got into the physics of it all.
"I've seen more diesel engines than hybrids, but I'll make sure to ring you up the moment one rolls in," Adam said, grabbing his own cloth and mimicking Viktor's cleaning. He leaned against the hood of the car. "Not a lot of hybrids from where I'm from, everyone either owned a gas guzzler or something foreign and sporty." Or his own hobbled together car, which was both. He wasn't going to show Viktor that one.
"But a lot of people relied on public transportation, or biked. Everything in rural Virginia is either very close or very far away. Depending on where you lived in relation to the town center. But I think that's typical for everyone?"
“Gas guzzlers or something foreign. Well, how else are you to have a whole conversation without saying a word, mmm?” Viktor’s mild tone had the air of someone telling a joke that scraped its nails down your throat on the way out; the wealthy and their quirks had never particularly impressed him. “But,” he said, setting the cloth to the side with a sigh, “no, you are correct. It is much the same where I’m from. We’d elevators to get to the Undercity; the grand lift also had escalators. And of course there were the airships for long distance travel, and the tram for short.”
He gestured in the air as he spoke, always in the habit of talking with his hands just in case his mastery of the foreign language didn’t do the trick. Viktor had been fluent for years now, but he remembered how frustrating it had been not to be understood. “I don’t know why cars didn’t ah, take off; we certainly had the tech for it. Though the roads required to support a network of them were simply not taken into account for city planning. Anywho,” he diverged abruptly, realising he was rambling about city planning, “you’ve been working with them for a while. I can tell. When did mechanics first interest you, Adam?”
Adam smiled at the joke, a small quick thing. He had been surrounded by metaphorical dick swinging in the form of overused horsepower in Henrietta; Viktor's comment wasn't lost on him. He had opened his mouth to comment about city planning, interested in how something so grandiose didn't have a support system in place like it did in Virginia, when Viktor asked the other question.
"Oh, well..." He scratched at the bridge of his nose, as if working out a difficult problem of an answer he didn't know how to explain. "I wouldn't say interest initially drove me. Necessity first, actually." He left out the details as to why—it was a simple story with an ugly truth—but Adam had navigated this before. "I needed a job, and mechanics held a real-world application. I apprenticed with Boyd when I could, and then moved to part-time when I got accepted into Aglionby, well, private high school."
Adam tossed his cloth into a bin by the wall, barely making it in. "Interest grew from that. Mechanics are like a puzzle. It makes sense to me. More objective than subjective answers to solutions."
Viktor listened closely in that watchful, every-detail-matters way he had; it was the build of him. He either threw his lot in entirely or he was lost in his head. “I learned out of necessity as well,” he said, with a slight nod of his head to indicate common ground. “You need skills to survive the Lanes, to be noticed. But not, I think, noticed too much.” He smiled, a small, tight thing. “I learned how to build things, fix things, because fighting was out of the question for me, and because I needed to believe that all things could be fixed. You know? That there was value in scrap. So I worked until I could reasonably pass as a student at the University of Piltover, and then I stole a uniform and attended classes. It took them oh… a year? Two? To realize that I was an interloper. But I had already established myself, and was useful, and it was easier to sign me on officially.”
He rose to his feet, his fingers wrapping around a spare engine valve as he observed its flaw. “Your--- Ablionby? Is that how you say it? Did you enjoy it there?”
Adam nodded along in understanding. Value in scrap was something that Adam had learned years before he came to Aglionby, before he met Gansey or Ronan or even knew that escaping Henrietta was the ultimate goal. But because he felt beneath the people he had to rise up above, private school as an outsider was an exercise in imposter syndrome. Constantly.
He and Viktor had more in common than he thought. "I don't know if they ever thought I was one of them, but I enjoyed giving all those—" He almost said assholes, and thought better. "—peers of mine a run for their money." The look on Tad Carruthers's face when he outscored him in their senior year was priceless.
"It was hard, but not academically. It challenged me and I enjoyed that. The whole reason I wanted to attend Aglionby was because it opened a lot of doors for the future that public school couldn't. Not for someone like me." He exhaled, leaning back against the hood.
"Could you not apply to the University of Piltover? Or did you, and they denied you? Just curious."
Viktor had smiled meanly - just a hair - as Adam deliberately chose the word ‘peer’, but didn’t remark on it. “I couldn’t afford the University,” he answered bluntly. “Not the tuition, certainly not the board or supplies. So I attended classes, except test days. A professor caught on eventually, when he noticed my lab work, but I was lucky. He was--” Viktor looked for the correct word, and settled for: “--charmed. A lot of people like to imagine themselves when they see another’s ambition. So he hired me on as an assistant; in return I got board, a stipend, could afford to receive an actual degree, work in research.” His voice trailed off, and he gestured to their surroundings.
“Which is how I met Jayce Talis. Is this what you wanted to do? Work as a mechanic? I know you sometimes attend the coven meetings. I’ve seen your name on the Outlander roster.” His voice lacked judgment. Viktor wasn’t certain how Adam fit into magic, nor did he attend coven meetings of his own despite being an Enki member. Eh… social life. He’d rather work.
That was the bitter truth, wasn't it? Like Viktor, Adam could be the smartest person in the room, but without his own full rides to the prestigious universities, that dream would have stopped abruptly short because his pockets were far less deep than his peers. A part of him wondered if he would have taken the same route as Viktor—hide in plain sight until someone uncovered the truth.
"Law, actually. Being a mechanic is to pay the bills, or was. Now it's to make sure I maintain my own financial independence, which Ronan understands, though I'm sure he'd prefer me to have more free time and not less. And I owe Boyd a favor of keeping this place running until—" He didn't want to think of the until.
He barrelled on. "The magic part is something I stumbled on during high school, but it's not a career. There's still a part of me that feels like an outsider at the coven meetings too, I don't come from a line of magic or have the ability conjure or transmute objects or anything like that. It's probably why my attendance is sporadic at best."
Viktor gave a nod, and shifted his weight in the chair. “I understand there is a need for those versed in legalities, here. Given the ah. Variations of the same depending upon where you are from.” Viktor was better at skirting laws than minding them; you could take the kid out of the Undercity…
“I don’t have much… ability with magic,” he added. “It was not looked at kindly where I was from; I used it as a tool. I see others here… it is more of a life, more a part of their identity.” He shrugged good-naturedly. “I love seeing what others can do with it. But I am afraid I can’t claim a perfect attendance when Enki meets either.”
"It is much more rooted in the way of things here," Adam agreed. He wondered what Henrietta, what the world, might look like if the things he could do or Ronan could do were not something to be hidden away? That had been the whole problem they were running from in the first place, and Adam didn't like trying to understand Bryde's motives and what he had dragged Ronan into.
"Sometimes when I sit in on the coven meetings, I feel that what can do and what the others can do aren't congruent. Like you, watching what other people can do is interesting to me because it's something new, but saying I'm one?" Adam made a small dismissive hand gesture. "Not the same thing to me. But I was also a skeptic of psychics and magic for most of my life. Most people are where I'm from, because magic isn't reality for them."
Adam tilted his head, again, in that inquisitive way of his. "Do you like being with Enki? You know, when you do go? Their magic seems more, uh, technologically pragmatic."
Viktor gave a nod, having heard of societies where magic was not widely believed in. It was strange to think of - he wasn’t sure if it was better or worse than Piltover. “Magic had caused a terrible war, years ago,” he said with a gesture of his hand, “and it’s not widely trusted as a consequence. Jayce and I went against the grain when we used it as we did. I’m glad to see that there are multiple approaches to the subject here.” And both good and bad magic, although he didn’t say as much. Viktor still struggled with how to classify their work on the hexcore.
At Adam’s question, he gave a smile, a shrug. “Yes. I like Mei very much, as well as the others. The purpose there - the desire to improve lives and look to sustainability - they’re important subjects to me. It is what I wish had remained my goal back home. The meetings, the socials…” he shrugged again, looking a little embarrassed. “They are nice, yes, but I prefer staying focused on my projects. Jayce is better at people than I am, and Mel - she’s better than even him. You know? Psychics, you mentioned,” he added, changing the subject abruptly. “Those are… are they the mind readers?”
Magic causing a war sounded too close to the precipice that he, and Ronan, and the rest of the Lynch family were inches away from stepping off of. Maybe it was for the best that this ecological terrorism that Ronan was involved in, the Moderators coming after him, and the mess of complications that dreamers existing brought into the world was best left back home. Adam couldn't say he missed it, and simply looked like he swallowed something bitter at the thought of Viktor's home dealing with it.
Maybe it was better here for more than one person, magic aside.
"Networking is a necessary evil," Adam added. "I can't say I'm a fan of it either. I'd rather let the work do the talking for me, but no one listens unless you're shaking hands or know someone who knows someone." He remembered, not as fondly, his last attempt at rubbing elbows with Gansey-family politicians; a lifetime ago. Adam did seem to perk up at the subject change, thankful not to dwell—he liked that Viktor kept him on his toes with conversation.
"Telepaths are the mind readers. Psychics are future readers," Adam corrected but he didn't think it sounded right. "Or try to be at least. The future is always changing, there's no set line of where someone will or won't go, because we, as a collective group of people and individuals, don't follow the same set of rules for moving through time. Psychics are accurate, but not usually specific with their readings."
“With the ah--” Viktor mimed shuffling a deck of cards before he remembered the word- “cards, yes? You pick them out of a large pack, and interpret their meanings?” He couldn’t help but be curious, partly because this was all very new to him, and partly because Adam seemed much more comfortable with this topic of conversation. Viktor may not have been a people-person but he was sensitive to others’ moods.
“Will you read my cards sometime?” Viktor would have been skeptical at home, but home was not here. And his future at home was nothing good; he knew that deep in the place where his nightmares sometimes formed. But here, well - perhaps some of Adam’s cards had a clearer view of matters.
Not that it was unexpected—even Adam, strongly rooted in his factual beliefs, found curiosity eventually in the supernatural, if only to debunk it originally—but he was still surprised when Viktor asked. Adam's brows rose, briefly astounded, and then nodded like it was a simple request to have their cards read. It was, but he wasn't certain if Viktor would be open to whatever Adam found there. Not all readings were hopeful, and not every person understood the flexibility of the future. Persephone's voice echoed in his mind again: accurate but not specific.
"Yes, of course. Whenever you'd like. I'm at the market on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but if those days don't work for you, then we can find a time. Maybe I can come to you, and you can show me your workstation," Adam said, gesturing at the shop, which was old in its rundown, rural way, and hadn't quite adapted to the magically glittering version of Vallo that surrounded it.
"But we can probably do something more involved instead of the three card spreads I do at the market, if you're open to it."
Viktor perked up at the idea of doing it in the lab; it was his happy place, after all. Especially lately, with Jayce and Mel’s consistent presence, and good projects to complete. “My lab’s in Morningside - don’t ask, it just appeared one day,” he said with a huff and a “what can you do” shrug. Vallo was going to be Vallo. “As far as spreads go…”
He definitely hadn’t gotten that far, yet. What Viktor knew about cards he could fit into a thimble, although now that he put some thought into it, they had tarot cards back home. “I’ll defer to the expert,” he finally concluded with a small smile. “Whatever-- moves you at the time.”
Adam was not an intentional people-pleaser, but there was something to be said about liking the way his suggestions landed. He noticed Viktor perked up, and he couldn't say that the idea wasn't a little selfish. For as much as he was teaching Viktor about cars, the intersection of magic and science of Viktor's world had interested him. Adam wanted to see what it looked like, in its element.
"I'll think on it. Whatever moves me," Adam repeated, knowing that his instincts were solid. His psychic intuition, good and bad, had never led him astray.
He made a c'mon gesture to Viktor, as he pushed himself off the hood of the car and toward the back door. "Let me show you a few things in the junkyard. Maybe you'll see something I don't, and we can salvage a few things before I give it up to Toph to make into a statue."
“I love junk!” Viktor said completely without sarcasm, and grabbing his cane, followed Adam to the attached junkyard for more excitement.