boyofprogress | closed rp for [recursiveimpulse]

Eager. Note to self - I need to be careful how I word anything that might sound like a request.

But even while he's thinking that, watching Jayce light up, he's smiling. They make such an odd pair, really. Jayce is bright and friendly and earnest, determined in a way that suggested that the world hadn't QUITE jaded him just yet.

It's nice, actually.

"If you like - and only if it is no trouble," he adds, waggling one finger in emphasis.

"No trouble at all. She'll be excited to learn she has a second person to spoil. I should bring some of her food to work, at some point. You'd be doing me a favour, taking it off my hands. I foist some of it off on a few of the other students, sometimes, but I have loads."

He realizes he's rambling again and ducks his head, looking sheepish. "Sorry, um. You just feel really easy to talk to." Which is the truth. Even just writing equations with Viktor, it feels like they're starting to finish each other's thoughts. It's incredible, and a little bit frightening. The idea of someone being in his mind like that.

"She sounds lovely." It could be dismissive - but there's no irony this time, nothing wry in the tone. He's being quite sincere. After all, Jayce had to get it from SOMEWHERE, right?

But the second part?

Viktor blinks owlishly.

"...You...really think so?" But he's smiling, all the same. He's been told either that he blends seamlessly into the background or that he is intimidating - but being told he's easy to talk to? That's new.

"It is...nice to have someone who is interested in talking to me."

Edited 2025-05-16 07:09 (UTC)

"Well, you're interesting. Why wouldn't I be interested in talking to you? But I -- " he laughs a little, and holds his hands up before Viktor can protest. "I won't start complimenting you again, don't worry.

I'm just saying I think we work well together. Our interests match."

It catches Viktor off-guard to be called interesting - faintly, his cheeks burn, in spite of his best efforts to keep himself composed. One hand finds the back of his own hair, twirling and twining it between his fingers. A peek behind that wry curtain to something...shy.

"Well - thank you. I agree. I don't think I have ever worked on anything even half as interesting as what we are doing now."

"It has so much potential," he agrees eagerly, pushing past the fluttering in his stomach at the sight of Viktor playing with his hair like that. A sweet, shy sort of gesture that hints at a little vulnerability.

"So many applications, if we can pull everything together like we've been wanting to."

"Yes, absolutely!" Back onto solid ground, onto topics that make sense and don't make him dizzy to think too hard about.

"Absolutely. And I think - I think we really have a strong first direction to develop in, with this....this acceleration rune of yours. If we can just begin with getting...a pen, say, across the lab, then...why not a person across the town, or...?"

"Yes!" He nods his agreement, moving back to the chalkboard to look at Viktor's equation. Trying to work out the next steps. "Start with something small, something easy. Perfect it on a small scale, make sure we have the sequencing correct before we move on to bigger tests."

He grins over his shoulder at Viktor, his tone light. Excited, easy. "Do you think the Professor will let us borrow his poro for live testing?" he jokes.

"Exactly! We just work in scale."

Viktor has to look away from that grin before its warmth floods his cheeks. He busies himself with his notes, chuckling all the same.

"No, but damn if that thing won't find its way into the experiments anyway. I swear he has it out for me."

"He's underfoot at the worst possible moments. One of these days I'm going to trip over him and go flying."

Jayce squints a little at the equation on the board and makes a few small adjustments based on his rune and the memories of the cloaked man. "We need to refine this a little, but I think it's a good start."

"Try getting around him with a cane."

But he's laughing - even as he pushes himself to his feet, shuffling his way over to stand at Jayce's side and taking up a piece of chalk. Looking at what has been written, he taps his lip a couple times, then changes one number.

"A very good start."

"He hasn't tried to steal it, has he? That seems like a potential problem. I've seen poros out in the wild before, but this is my first domesticated one. A group of poros," he informs Viktor with a flourish of his chalk, "Is called a fluft."

The number changes has him squinting at the equation again, reading back over their work. But he nods his agreement, "You're right, that makes more sense."

"No, it is too big and he is an old Poro." But the fact does get a laugh out of him before he carries on. Perhaps he's not quite as straight-laced as he would like others to believe.

"Enh, it was an easy miscalculation to fall into. We're dealing with elemental things, it's easy to lose the fundamentals."

"And so much is still unknown!" he agrees, nodding firmly. "I've been working on those gems for years now, and I still don't have a full understanding of them. What their full potential is. I think it's going to be a lot of changing small things and running tests over and over until we hit the exact right point."

"Isn't it fortunate, then, that you have found yourself with a partner who finds repetition to be soothing?"

He's already off in his head - creating charts, preparing his methods for categorizing his findings in a way that is useful. If anyone can bring order to chaos, it will be him.

He thinks.

"We should pick our first target object to test calibrate for. Something...very small."

"You mentioned a pen, but I'm a little worried about potential ink explosions. Not that I mind cleaning up after that in the name of science, of course." And not that he's unused to explosions, at this point, unfortunately.

"So we need something more simple, something with less parts to worry about."

"Parts, parts...a-ah! Wait!"

Suddenly struck by a thought, the tinkerer plunges a hand into his pocket...and from it he pulls a little cog, holding it out on the palm of his hand. "This one was...floating with us, yesterday. It passed THROUGH the field once already!"

"The gear!" he exclaims, excited by the idea and frankly quite touched that Viktor held onto it. But he pushes aside that soft, warm sort of feeling in his chest to contemplate later.

"Viktor, I could kiss you. That's genius. It's one solid piece, too, so we don't have to worry about the mix of materials."

Well. Viktor never said he wasn't sentimental. He just wouldn't admit to it if you asked him.

The first piece of that statement gets a raised eyebrow from the tinkerer - but he doesn't press or tease. He just smiles, setting the piece down on the nearest surface for them both to look at.

"AND we know it is possible already. It's a direction to begin in, anyway."

If Jayce realizes what he just said, he doesn't comment on it, too excited about this next step in their work.

"It is! We just need to narrow the focus, first. Make sure it's concentrated on one spot, and not filling the entire room. We've got power, but it's broad. To spread out for what we want to do with it."

Jayce steps back to study their work so far. Trying to pinpoint where things need to be shifted in order to scale things down properly.

"We have foci for the energy - the crystals - but...maybe if we adjust the mount..."

And just like that, Viktor is off - the man casually chatting about his thermos stepping away in favor of a near-mechanical technical mind.

He diagrams a new shape to the crystal mount, with wings to change the flow of energy - then steps back, frowning.

"Something is missing. The return will diminish too quickly this way...."

"Ugh," Jayce sighs, setting the chalk down and pushing a hand through his hair. Not realizing he's now smeared chalk dust across his face. "I wish we could just build it and test it now, but at the same time I want to make sure our theories are sound before we do that.

I just feel -- antsy, you know? I want to make it happen."

By the time Viktor snaps out of his focus, he has to stifle a chuckle at the white smeared through Jayce's hair. Reaching up, he dusts it out with a gentle tousle.

"You forget - you are out of theory now. This project is live, funded, backed. If we want to start fabricating a test unit... we can. Literally right now."

"Hm?" he asks of the hair tousle, turning his gaze up to try and look at Viktor's hand.

"Oh!" Jayce looks startled, a little, at the idea that he can just... do things now. This is their project. They can decide the timeline. "We could, couldn't we? We could start designing, start building."

"Chalk," he tosses back lightly, shrugging in dismissal.

But watching the way that his expression shifts as it sinks in that this is for real? That's the sort of reason why he's doing any of this. To fuel sparks.

"We could. We can. And if it doesn't work? We do it again. This is not an assignment, where we pass or we fail. We have iteration."

closed rp for [recursiveimpulse]

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