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The moment the door closes behind him, Jayce scans their living-room-turned-laboratory for Viktor.
And finding him away for the evening, he balls a fist, presses it to his forehead, and screams. A guttural, exasperated scream, one that’s been developing in his lungs, burning in his esophagus for his entire fake-poised walk back from the Council meeting.
He needs a drink. And a frontal lobotomy. And he needs to brainstorm a calm and reassuring way to explain to Viktor, when he gets back from the forge or the library or wherever he’s gone off to, that the Council will not be funding any of the projects that they care about—that Viktor cares about—but rather the hexgates and the hexgates alone.
But first, yeah. A drink.
In their cramped kitchen, just off the living room, he indulges in being too loud. Cracking ice out of its tray, nearly shattering the plastic. Slamming a glass on the counter. Banging the cupboard shut after procuring a bottle of their cheapest, strongest liquor.
He’s so fucking pissed.
It’s especially maddening, because Jayce is pretty sure there isn’t any other way the conversation could have gone. He’d know, because he replayed the entire exchange four or five times over as he stalked back to their apartment, and he’s pretty sure he crushed it. Like, he advocated for his and Viktor’s projects so well that it’s almost comical they were rejected.
For now. Rejected for now. Until the Hexgates are finished, they said.
Of course, because they’re fucking cowards, the Council wanted to speak with Jayce alone. Didn’t want to look anyone adjacent to the undercity in the eyes when they decided to focus on progress for Piltover over the greater good of humanity.
He downs a glass of the liquor, pours another, and leans on the counter. Takes a breath. Closes his eyes. Replays the conversation again, because obsessing over his phrasing and his tone and his body language in retrospect is the only thing he can control, now.
“Jayce?”
Viktor’s voice is so tentative, so uncharacteristically uncertain, that Jayce thinks he’s imagining it at first.
But when he opens his eyes, Viktor is standing in the doorway to their bedroom, head tilted, brow furrowed. Jayce stands up straight and ice clinks in his glass.
“I’m—fuck. Viktor.” It’s early evening, and his partner never retires to the bedroom before midnight, but of course today has to be different. “Were you sleeping?”
“No,” Viktor says. He lingers in the doorway, clearly not wanting to eliminate space between them, and Jayce’s stomach turns over. “I was just—” He shakes his head, indicating a lack of importance. “Is everything alright?”
The thing is, Jayce wouldn’t have been so fucking loud, certainly wouldn’t have screamed, if he’d suspected Viktor was here. Viktor knows him better than most people, but Jayce doesn’t lose his temper around Viktor. He never has a reason to lose his temper around Viktor. Viktor pisses him off a lot, sure, but Jayce is like, biologically programmed to take anything from him in stride—or something.
“I take it your meeting with the Council did not go according to plan.” Viktor’s still not getting any closer to Jayce, and of course he’s surmised the situation based on context clues alone.
“They’re assholes,” Jayce says, because he has lots of things to say about the Council and what bridges they can jump off of and, hey, if Viktor’s asking, “Privileged fucking cunts who’d let a million die in the undercity before they’d let one trade deal lapse for their supporters.”
Viktor grants a subdued smile for this, but still remains in the doorway. “You’re beginning to sound like me.”
Jayce snorts and tilts back half his second glass. Of course he sounds like Viktor. He spends nearly every waking hour with Viktor. What a wholly unnecessary fucking observation.
“They rejected everything,” he says, bluntly, because he wasn’t afforded the time to sugarcoat it. “We have to deliver a working prototype of the hexgates before they’ll approve further funding for any of our other projects.”
Viktor takes a slow breath. “Did you—”
“Don’t,” Jayce says. He doesn’t want to know what Viktor would have done or said. It won’t make a fucking difference, and it’ll just make him feel stupid. And what is he even saying? Nothing could have been done, Jayce fucking nailed it, it was doomed from the start. Bureaucracy, and whatever. “Please, don’t.”
Viktor pauses, the request playing out first with a little visible indignation in his jaw, but then settling to quiet acceptance. Which, yeah, it better. Jayce can count on one hand the number of times he’s earnestly demanded Viktor not do something, and at least half of those went ignored regardless.
“I’m going to get drunk, pass out, and tomorrow we’re going to get to work,” Jayce says. Just finish the hexgates? Fine. He’s like a year out from that—if he doesn’t take weekends off.
Finally, Viktor ventures out of the doorway to join Jayce in the small kitchen.
“I don’t believe I’ve ever seen you this upset,” he says. “Not since we first met, at least.”
Jayce rolls his eyes and finishes his second glass, turns to pour another rather than absorb Viktor’s amused expression.
Viktor, with his diamond-cut cheekbones and his soft accent and the whole saving-Jayce-from-dying-on-the-worse-day-of-his-life situation, had rerouted the neural pathways in Jayce’s fucking brain the moment they became partners. He’s plagued by a persistent, repetitive mantra to protect Viktor. It’s something psychological and inherent that Jayce doesn’t have the time to unpack yet.
So, yeah. Of course Viktor hasn’t seen Jayce this mad since then. He’s only seeing it now because Jayce hasn’t had time to decompress.
Jayce finishes pouring his third drink and turns back to say as much, to find Viktor’s gotten much closer. He takes the glass from Jayce’s hand, sets it on the counter, and steps up on the toes of his stronger leg to kiss him.
Jayce humors him, for a moment, because it’s not like he’s profoundly opposed to this form of comfort, but the uncaring faces of the Council and the sixth or seventh or maybe eighth repetition of their conversation are seared into his brain. Not exactly a turn-on.
He gathers Viktor’s wrists in his hands and presses them down, and Viktor falls back onto his heels, brow still creased like Jayce is a problem to be solved.
“Maybe in a bit,” Jayce says, and releases Viktor’s hands, doesn’t meet his eyes. He grabs his drink again, like it’s an anchor to sanity. “You should have seen them. I’m…so fucking furious right now, Viktor.”
Viktor doesn’t retreat.
“That’s alright,” he says, in his softest voice, the one he calls upon when Jayce needs extra convincing, and, better yet, when Jayce has pleased him somehow. His slender fingers caress the lapels of Jayce’s uniform. Huh.
“It’s really not.” Jayce’s throat is so dry.
He knows shielding Viktor from his temper isn’t necessary. Because Viktor’s made it clear that he doesn’t want to be treated delicately—in all aspects of their life together. But Jayce, even now, a year after Viktor leaned over and kissed him and they stopped pretending this was anything other than what it was, can’t help himself.
He treats Viktor delicately because, God. Look at him. What the fuck else is Jayce supposed to do? He’s all soft, bruising, blushing skin pulled too tight over powder bones and kept together with that leather corset, that intricate leg brace.
But he doesn’t want to insult his partner, of course, who’s asked so nicely and so consistently to be treated no differently than Jayce would treat anyone else. And, in fact, Viktor likes to be pushed around in bed—which is hilarious because he pushes Jayce around the rest of the day.
So, faced with this cognitive dissonance, Jayce pretends to be rough. A mimicry of uninhibition. He pins Viktor down with a gentle touch and says filthy things on the tender side of cruel and leaves marks that will heal overnight, at worst.
But tonight, at least not without a few more glasses of liquor, or an impromptu therapy session, or a good night’s sleep, he’s not sure he can keep up the act.
So…safest to disengage.
He starts, and cards through his hair, and pretends to smile, and says, “Why don’t we—"
Viktor keels up on his toes again, cuts him off with another kiss, curls his fingers into Jayce’s vest and tugs him down. Liquor sloshes over the side of the glass onto Jayce’s hand, sticky and cold, and his brain interprets this minor inconvenience as the last straw.
Jayce stiffens and breaks the kiss, and then braces Viktor against the counter with a forearm across his chest to keep him at bay. The sudden movement has Viktor’s cane clattering to the floor, and Jayce startles.
“Fuck, I’m sor—”
“Stop, Jayce,” Viktor says. And he is fine, supported against the counter, so Jayce closes his mouth. “Let’s channel this into something productive, alright?”
“Something product—” Jayce cuts off the intended ridicule, seeing the tapering of Viktor’s eyes, and he caustically exhales all the air in his lungs instead, narrows his own eyes back at him.
It’s typical, that Viktor’s treating Jayce’s emotions as something to be solved, or worse, something to be effectively utilized.
But, fine. Whatever. Whatever he wants.
The sugar in the sweetened liquor has coalesced in response to the heat of Jayce’s fingers, making them tacky against the glass that he still fists so firmly he’s surprised it hasn’t shattered. He sets the glass on the counter and offers Viktor a chance to clean up the mess he’s made.
Viktor’s expression softens, his eyelids falling a little, glancing at Jayce’s hand and seeming placated, like he’s pleased that Jayce is a fast learner. Jayce crinkles his nose in annoyance, grabs the back of Viktor’s hair with his other hand, and pushes his thumb between Viktor’s lips. Because, actually, he’s not offering.
And Viktor doesn’t seem to mind. His eyelids fall further, delicate eyelashes kissing delicate cheekbones, and he draws Jayce’s thumb into his mouth with a contented little sigh. His tongue darts between Jayce’s thumb and index finger, lapping away the stickiness.
“Fuck,” Jayce says. He feeds Viktor his other fingers, lets him clean them one at a time, and once he’s finished, once Viktor is licking his lips and swallowing around excess saliva and meeting Jayce’s eyes again for approval—Jayce has honestly forgotten what he was mad about.
Viktor holds his wrist and guides Jayce’s hand, still tacky but with spit, to his throat. Jayce involuntarily envisions Viktor’s weak lungs, under his corset, under his visible ribcage, tucked away but not protected, and he freezes.
“Uh,” Jayce says. “Um.”
Viktor chews on the inside of his lip, like he’s fighting an undue amount of amusement considering the situation, and raises his eyebrows.
“Perhaps I’ll show you, first?” he asks.
“Yeah,” Jayce says, if only to prolong the inevitable.
And because he’s two-glasses-of-liquor-on-an-empty-stomach in.
And, fine, okay, because he doesn’t really say no to Viktor much, especially not when matters of the heart over mind are concerned.
“I mean, sure,” he continues. “Go ahead.”
Viktor releases Jayce’s wrist and goes for his neck, instead. Viktor’s always had strong, skilled hands, a welcome juxtaposition in Jayce’s eyes, their sinewy muscle unencumbered by his exacerbating spinal injuries, his mangled leg, the sickness growing in his lungs. It reminds him of Viktor’s strength and solidity that lies behind his physical weaknesses. Especially now, when he closes his hand around Jayce’s throat.
Jayce’s neck is too large, or Viktor’s hand is too small, to fully evoke the effect. But when Viktor presses the flat of his palm against Jayce’s larynx, columned bones shoved together, Jayce’s breath catches and warmth rises to his face. And like, other places. Okay.
“You—you like that?” Viktor asks, voice more breathless and reverent than Jayce has heard from him in a long time. Golden eyes track his face, down to his neck, and Jayce nods into the grip, letting Viktor’s hand settle more firmly around him. “Interesting.” He grinds his thumb along the pulse of Jayce’s jugular. “Something for another time.”
Viktor lets him go, and Jayce draws in a heavy breath and cracks his neck and starts, “I don’t know if—”
“I will not break, Jayce,” Viktor says. He sounds a little exasperated, which is fair. He’s not stupid, and he’s probably more than aware that Jayce has been faking the rough treatment all this time. “Trust me.”
“Fine,” Jayce says. “Fine. I get it. Okay.”
He massages out the knuckles in his right hand with his left, like he’s preparing to play ball or something. But he can’t stall too long. Viktor will be able to tell what he’s doing.
Because like, the thing is, Jayce isn’t worried that he won’t enjoy choking Viktor out. He isn’t worried that it won’t be fun to pin him down and leave long-lasting bruises and ruin him for other men, or whatever power play it is he wants from Jayce.
Far from it, actually. Jayce is worried that he’ll like it too much.
He drags his gaze across Viktor’s face for any last sign of trepidation, and finding none, he centers Viktor’s strong hands and convictions and mind to the front of his psyche. Viktor isn’t weak. He’s just packaged that way, like rich velvet draped over a bucket of rusty nails. Or, more aptly, vice versa.
Jayce narrows his eyes and steels his jaw and dives in like he always does when his mind is made up: with reckless confidence.
If Viktor’s surprised by this, he doesn’t show it. He arches his neck back when Jayce’s hand closes around it, and, god, does it ever close around it. If Viktor’s hand on Jayce’s neck did the trick, Jayce’s hand on Viktor’s is just gratuitous. Total fucking overkill. Obscene, really.
Viktor swallows, and even without Jayce applying pressure he can feel the undulations of Viktor’s throat protesting against Jayce’s palm.
“Fuck,” Jayce says, and lifts up a little, fondles the sharp bones under Viktor’s jaw, holds him like a lamb up for slaughter. He staggers closer and shoves a leg between Viktor’s and his partner huffs a muted whine. “Yeah? Like that?”
Jayce almost regrets asking, since he’s pretty sure he’s nailing this, but even now the desire for Viktor’s verbal approval is etched into his DNA. That’s probably normal and healthy.
And Viktor doesn’t give it to him, which, fair. He can’t really talk like this. Instead, Jayce catches a flicker of amusement, so Jayce takes that inch to run a mile and finally squeezes his hand around Viktor’s throat. And Viktor’s eyes closing, lips parting, muscles going limp and tense and limp again under Jayce’s body—truthfully, that’s all the encouragement he needs.
He releases Viktor too fast because he has no idea what he’s doing, still, and Viktor draws in air and slumps his shoulders forward, face tinted appealing pink. Jayce doesn’t really want to afford him time to make new requests. He gets what his role is here, now.
“Gonna take you to the bedroom, okay?” Jayce waits for Viktor to manage an affirmative response before he picks him up. His partner is a little shaky in his arms, and Jayce again has to run through his list of reasons why this is okay, convince himself that Viktor isn’t easily broken.
That’s even harder to accomplish once Viktor’s spread out on their bed, with his shirt rucked up, exposing pale stomach and fragile hipbones and xylophone ribs. Jayce crawls on top of him and chews on his lower lip and watches the way his partner’s chest rises; imagines those lungs, broken and glowing and resilient.
Viktor, because of who he is as a person and because Jayce is rarely allowed a thought to himself anymore, reaches up and threads his fingers around Jayce’s tie and pulls him down for a kiss. Sweet, and soft, and reassuring.
“I’m fine, Jayce,” he says.
“I know,” Jayce says, on reckless confidence auto-pilot, even though he didn’t, and doesn’t, and may never know whether or not Viktor is fine. He can’t even get Viktor to fucking take a lunch break nine days out of ten.
Viktor releases his tie and shoots him a slightly impatient, slightly entertained, slightly unconvinced look. A so-get-on-with-it-then look. Jayce bites back a scoff and busies himself with unbuttoning Viktor’s shirt, with working Viktor out of his pants and undergarments, with propping his legs up so Jayce can see him.
And any doubts Jayce held as to whether Viktor was into being choked out, or if it was just a twisted experiment he involved Jayce in, dissolve immediately.
Viktor is dripping wet for him. Sopping, really, and his cock is hard and flushed red and begging Jayce to feel him up. Jayce hasn’t even touched him yet.
“Fuck, Viktor,” he says. He drags three fingers through the sticky mess between Viktor’s thighs and his partner claps a palm over his own mouth, screws up his eyebrows like he’s embarrassed.
Jayce is actually kind of embarrassed that he’s let the whole choking thing go unexplored for so long, if this is how wet Viktor would have gotten for him. But he’s not going to let his fucking ego get in the way of taking advantage of this.
“Look at you.”
His pesky engineering brain is demanding he formulate a plan: a best-possible-solution to unwind and exploit and ruin the perfectly wrapped and undeserved present underneath him. And it’s, as always, at odds with an animalistic compulsion: pulsing red and hot on his pleasure center and insisting he just fucking open it already.
Maybe he’ll be an engineer about it next time. Nobody could fault him for being impatient when Viktor’s looking at him like that, with those blown-open pupils and that all-over blush.
Jayce steadies his left hand on Viktor’s thigh, holding him still and open. He strokes the thumb on his right hand over Viktor’s flushed, hard cock, and sinks two fingers into the slickness of him, almost by accident. Viktor’s head tilts back into the mattress, a frenzied whine audible through the hand fastened over his mouth, and this reveals the elegant column of his neck. Jayce can see where his fingertips pressed bruises under Viktor’s jaw earlier. It sort of drives him insane.
He fucks Viktor open on his fingers, adding a third to the mess, grinding into his cock with every thrust. And Viktor goes fucking nuts for it, free hand tearing into the sheets above his head, whimpering that unmistakable ah-ah-ah each time Jayce hits home.
It’s thoroughly unnecessary, how good Viktor looks like this. Jayce has never been more grateful for a little alcohol-induced stamina boost.
“Okay,” he says, when Viktor’s hips arch off the bed and his voice starts to break. “Okay. Fuck. Alright.” Maybe he’s talking to himself, maybe to Viktor. His frontal lobe isn’t operating at full capacity. But he’s not going to let Viktor come before he even gets his own pants off; he’s made that mistake before.
Jayce withdraws, and Viktor collapses and immediately goes to touch himself, and Jayce’s reckless confidence or animalistic compulsion, perhaps both, rise to the occasion and he says, “Don’t you dare fucking touch yourself.”
And it’s almost comical, Viktor pausing with his hand over his cock, widened eyes reflecting actual surprise. If not for the reckless confidence powering him through all this, Jayce is pretty sure he would look surprised himself.
It shouldn’t be novel that Jayce has surprised him, but it is. Viktor’s always been the fucking jack-in-the-box in this relationship, with Jayce stuck winding him up.
Viktor isn’t one to allow the tables to turn for long, though. He lowers his lids, calms his expression, and curls his hands around his thighs, slender fingers spreading himself open further for Jayce. That kind of subdued—obscene—acquiescence, coming from Viktor, is certainly a bigger surprise.
Jayce can’t get his pants off fast enough.
He’s on top of Viktor seconds later, hands hiking up his thighs, hooking his stronger leg on Jayce’s shoulder, and then, without resistance, sinking into him all at once.
Viktor cries out, voice unfettered for the first time, and when he moves to cover his mouth Jayce smacks his hand down onto the bed. And Jayce is treated to Viktor’s surprise again: parted lips, golden eyes eclipsed by pupils, disheveled hair framing his wanton face and blushing cheekbones.
“I’m the one doing all the work here,” Jayce says, through his teeth. He doesn’t really know why he’s started talking, just that a torrent of filth has poisoned his brain now that he’s balls deep in Viktor, and it would be criminal to not finish the thought. “So the least you can do is let me hear those pathetic fucking sounds of yours.”
He doesn’t have the guts to wait around and let Viktor undo him with a scathing look or, more likely, a better-crafted verbal retort, and perhaps more pressing is the fact that Viktor is so, so ridiculously tight around his cock, just quivering underneath him. So, Jayce closes one fist around Viktor’s ankle, hooked on his shoulder, digs the fingertips of his other hand into his thigh, and fucks him as if he cannot be broken.
“Jayce,” Viktor says. His hands seek purchase above his head, nails in the sheets, arms craning and pale and perfect. His skin is blazing red underneath Jayce, chest skittering with every breath and thrust. “Yes—ah—fuck—Jayce—"
Viktor’s so worked up, a masterpiece of desperation, that when Jayce reaches between them and rubs Viktor’s cock with the calloused heel of his hand, he goes off instantly with a choked-off cry. Whole body shaking, spasming around Jayce’s cock, flooding his thighs, face turning into the mattress to keep Jayce from seeing him.
“Fuck,” Jayce says. “God. Viktor.” He almost stops, because he sort of wants to live in the moment for the rest of his life, or at least take a fucking picture or something. But he doesn’t, he lets the reckless confidence push him forward, fucks Viktor through and past his orgasm even as Viktor is clawing at the sheets and trembling from over-stimulation and repeating Jayce’s name like he’s in a fugue state.
Because they’re also not done, yet. He knows what Viktor wants—what he needs—and he’s not stopping until he’s given it to him.
Jayce slows his pace, a little, to achieve the necessary leverage, and grabs Viktor’s chin, makes him face forward again. And, fuck, he’s pretty, all lost like this. His eyes are unfocused and glassy and—actually, Jayce has never seen Viktor look like this before.
“Are you—”
Jayce bites down on the inside of his lip. He’s not going to ask Viktor if he’s fucking okay. Viktor will tell him if he’s not fucking okay.
…But he still kind of would like to know if Viktor’s okay.
And, because Viktor is ever in tune with Jayce’s needs, his partner doesn’t tease him for this weakness—honestly, Jayce isn’t sure he has the strength to tease him—and instead he blinks and nods, almost imperceptibly, up at Jayce. Okay. Alright. Fine.
Jayce shifts his hand down from Viktor’s chin, ensconces his slender throat again, and presses down a little, like Viktor taught him. He holds the sides of his neck, gently at first, just to let Viktor know he’s there.
“Gonna let go of this,” he warns, squeezing Viktor’s ankle, his bones grinding in his grip. “So keep it up, okay?” Even now he can’t help but deflect: “If you can, I mean.”
“Please, J-Jayce—” Viktor tilts his head up, neck nuzzling Jayce’s palm, and Jayce finally, officially, for fucks sake, puts Viktor’s well-being out of mind. He drops his hand to Viktor’s cock, grinds into the slick hardness with the precision only his fingers can offer, and tightens his other fist around Viktor’s throat until his partner’s breath goes harried.
Viktor swears and twists and shudders around Jayce’s cock, and when Jayce returns his attention to fucking him hard, bearing down to stuff him to the hilt, he loses it a second time to a full-body, shivering orgasm.
This time Viktor protests the aftershocks harder, grabbing Jayce’s wrist in both hands and arching his body away. The corners of his glossy eyes fill, and he shakes his head, unable to take further stimulation. Jayce eases up on his throat, not letting him move but no longer keeping him from breathing, and Viktor sucks in air and whimpers Jayce’s name in a way that almost breaks him.
“Hold on,” Jayce says, committing. Like he’s supposed to. “Almost there. You’re okay.” He grabs Viktor’s thigh again for leverage, fucks him just as hard, just as deep, aggressively chases his own orgasm and tries not to feel guilty about using Viktor’s overstimulated body to achieve it.
And, because Jayce is the luckiest man in Piltover, or something, Viktor seizes up a third time around him, gasping and cursing Jayce’s name, and Jayce has no choice but to follow him down.
“Fuck, Viktor—” He plants his palm on Viktor’s chest, holds him down and fills him up, watches him squirm and moan and flush before breaking down entirely underneath Jayce, muscles loose and body deflated.
As soon as it’s over, as soon as his orgasm subsides and the post-coital clarity endows him with the mortification of being known, Jayce’s nerves set in again, and he rolls off of Viktor as fast as he can to keep from crowding his airspace. He lays on his side and watches his partner intently.
Viktor inhales raggedly and feels up the sides of his neck. Jayce bites his tongue to keep from asking if he’s okay, digs his fingernails into his palm to keep from checking. He wants to spread Viktor out under him and inspect and kiss every bruise on his body, wants to open his corset and press his ear to Viktor’s beating heart and glowing lungs.
And then, thighs a shaky, dripping mess, Jayce’s cum still leaking out of him and onto the sheets, Viktor coughs, glances over, and says, “Alright. Why don’t you walk me through—exactly—what you said to the Council?”
Jayce blinks.
“Let’s, ah, brainstorm what you can do differently tomorrow,” Viktor continues, as if that explains his request. Because Viktor’s ridiculous and perfect and intelligent and, above all, so much stronger than he looks. And apparently intent on not letting Jayce forget it.
Jayce shakes his head, rolls onto his back, takes a deep breath, and recounts the presentation a ninth time.
And with a clear head, and a second opinion—it’s pretty obvious that there was room for improvement.