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They were supposed to work on some delicate soldering today, on a Hexcore gear-stabilizer that Viktor had theorized would do good with some cryptography inscribed. Jayce knew Viktor was excited for it, though he hadn’t said it outright. It was in his emphatic gestures, in the way his eyes lit up in front of the chalkboard. It was good to see Viktor excited again, after their long recent spate of experimental failures, though Jayce would never say that outright either. Viktor had a tendency to withdraw when you pointed out a part of him he didn’t realize was exposed, like one of the iridescent snails edging the fountains in the Academy Gardens when you touched its tail.
Not to say Viktor was a snail; dammit, Jayce was overthinking this. More it was that Viktor had a shell and an overcautious reflexive instinct, even if he was the bravado man of the two of them, the one listening sagely at the bar, during those rare times Jayce could lure him into a social activity, as Jayce spilled all his experimental anxieties over one too many pints of drink. The soldering was lower stakes, a break from the bruising, a project to unwind. Today was supposed to be a good day, the first fully good day in months.
Viktor hadn't shown up to the lab.
Jayce waited for hours. At first just at his workbench, where he’d had his annotations of Viktor’s notes open and waiting, then, after longer, he started decluttering the underside of Viktor’s workbench, which had gotten so haphazard lately, uncharacteristic of Viktor, with all his love for neatness; and Viktor hadn’t let him touch the clutter even after he’d caught his cane on a stuck-out piece of metal rigging and almost went sprawling. Sky had sided with Jayce, before she went on vacation.
And then after that Viktor was an hour-and-a-half late, still, and Jayce caught himself pacing, and then he went down to the Gardens, to try and run into Heimerdinger, or to see if Viktor had fallen asleep in the sunlight, which he never had ever done, but Jayce had always imagined finding him on a garden bench one day, sleeping like that, a butterfly resting on the mole above his lip.
He wasn’t sure where the image had come from; maybe he had dreamt it. That was the thing with lab partners: they never stopped at just inhabiting your waking hours. When you worked together at the hip, they leaked into your gestures, your speech, your annotation habits, what kind of drink you order at the bar. Or your sub-processing… your dreams.
The hours passed like gears rolling by in the dark. Maybe Viktor had gotten an urgent ask from Heimerdinger, something that required a trusted messenger halfway across the city. Maybe Viktor had a sudden request from someone in the nebulous Undercity, and he’d forgotten to leave a note.
Or, uncharacteristically, maybe he slept in their afternoon appointment.
Part of trusting your usually punctual lab partner was not going to their dorm door first thing. House Talis, as a rule, was not one for nonsensical manners, or penance, but part of having a lab partner is doing your time; is waiting in front of the giant lab window and watching the dark skyline slowly subsume the sun.
As soon as the last of the sun slips below the horizon, Jayce sets off down the Academy hallways.
He’s never gone to Viktor's before. Viktor forcefully described the place to him, at the beginning of their partnership, just after they’d gotten the Hexcore to stabilize. A kind of gritted, resigned, there, there is where I spend my time when I’m not doing miraculous and extraordinary things, now you know the basics of me, can we get to the science?
Jayce still remembers the path there; at the time he scribbled Viktor’s directions into one of his private notebooks, as safekeeping, and then memorized it after, in the case there was some kind of Hextech explosion or rampant fire off-hours, and he’d have to sprint to Viktor, as they never set a rendezvous for that kind of thing. Viktor brushed it off when Jayce brought it up. We’ll both be fine, Jayce. You’re overthinking this.
After ten minutes of hallways, stairs, covered archways open to the heartbreaking sunset: Jayce stops in front of a weathered wooden door with a short, spare V inscribed on the replaceable metal nameplate. It’s in the oldest part of the Academy, tucked in a shadowed corner, near a rattling vent. The air smells like mildew. The tiles are yellowing, and the lamps he passes are seldom lit. Jayce doesn’t even live on campus, but he could always request a provisional living quarters on account of his House, and those are just a minute’s walk away from the Lab.
Why did they tuck Viktor away into this… crawl space?
And he had to take all those stairs to get up to the lab every day?
Jayce hovers his fist over the door, hesitates. Knocks twice.
Waits.
He doesn’t hear anything but the guttering of the vent.
He knocks again, presses his ear to the door. Another few, long heartbeats. Gods–what if he wasn’t there–then what, send an official summons to Heimerdinger and rat out his assistant’s long absence?
A hollow thump, like someone knocking over a bottle.
Like all the lamps in the hallway light up at once. He’s in there.
Jayce pulls away from the door. “Viktor, it’s Jayce.”
More long, silent heartbeats.
“Coming,” says a muffled, tired voice.
Jayce takes a step back, crosses his arms. Catches himself doing it. Decides to keep them crossed.
The door creaks open a hands-width. Viktor’s face is just a sliver, with just his eye and the corner of his mouth in an otherwise dark room. “Jayce,” he says, and it’s low and exhausted and inscrutable.
“You didn’t come,” Jayce says, and he’s surprised to find anger coloring his voice.
“I’m sorry, I had a–” Viktor’s posture shifts, and Jayce notices for the first time that he’s not–decent. Hints of cane, back brace, leg brace, dark boxers. “A distraction.”
“A distraction,” Jayce echoes. When Viktor doesn’t respond, he presses: “What? Like, a girl?”
Viktor snorts, but even that is much quieter than Jayce is used to. “I would not miss our soldering for a girl.”
“Then what?”
“I am tired, Jayce. Tomorrow.”
The door begins to close, and Jayce darts one hand out and catches it. “No.”
A surprised exhale, on the other side.
“No.” Grasping, and then firm: “You owe me an explanation.”
He’s leaned into the gap in the door, and Viktor’s face looms back into his vision, that hollowed, purple under-eye. An indignant arch to his brow.
“You’re acting obscene.”
“As your lab partner, I have a right to know what’s going on.”
Viktor’s one eye studies his face, flicking back and forth, and then he makes a frustrated noise, his breath puffing against the side of Jayce’s braced palm. His words are seeded with bite. “Very well. Come in, Talis.”
Then Viktor disappears from the door.
Jayce ignores the barb, relishes the brief spark of victory, shoves aside the bittersweetness of Viktor’s tone.
Then he pushes inside.
Viktor’s apartment is small, with a small window and little sunlight and a whole life’s worth of things crammed inside. And it’s messy. A small twin bed, Academy standard, shoved in the corner and sagging in the middle; three differently sized and shaped haphazard bookshelves that are bursting at the joints; clothes piled and spilling out of a closet like he can’t bother to hang them, and then more clothes discarded on the floor. And then, there’s the more interesting things: the small lantern of perpetual green light on a high shelf, swimming with some kind of unidentifiable organism, a Zaunite jellyfish, maybe?; the chalkboard above his bed, overrun with equations, like he does them lying in bed, is that his way of counting sheep?; the picture frames face-down on the nightstand, wood gilded with the luminous, sepia quality of old family pictures.
“Wow,” Jayce says, as he walks down the narrow middle of the room, toward the far window and the desk. He gets the very implicit feeling that he should not be here. But he’d insisted, hadn’t he? “This is… nice.”
Viktor is glowering at him from the side of the bed, sitting up with a resentful hunch to his shoulders, those molten eyes following Jayce. He’s nearly completely naked, save for his braces and his boxers. Jayce has never, ever seen this much of his bare skin. Seeing him without his Academy uniform feels very, very wrong. It makes the room feel smaller and quieter.
Jayce stops at the desk. It’s littered with food trash, take-out containers mouldering. The trash-can next to it is overflowing. And more wrappers and stained paper plates are discarded on the floor, next to the bed. Jayce feels his face heating up.
“Uh…”
“You wanted to come inside,” Viktor snarls.
Jayce nods, at a loss.
“Well? Is everything to your liking?”
“Come on, Viktor–”
“Now that you’ve had your luxurious fill, I think you’d better go.”
“I just wanted to know why you–”
“Why I couldn’t come today? After months of working to the bone, chasing failure after failure?”
“You could have just told me you wanted a break–”
Viktor winces, and then a look of mortification crosses his face. He turns away from Jayce, toward the wall, toward the chalkboard. “I overslept, Jayce.”
Jayce crosses to the bed in two strides. His heart’s hammering in his throat. Gods, he’s gotten it all so wrong. “What’s wrong?”
Viktor’s refusing to look up at him. “It’s nothing.”
“It’s something, Viktor. I can tell.”
Viktor’s face snaps toward him. “Like you could tell at the door?” he growls.
“Look, I’m sorry–”
“It’s my leg,” Viktor interrupts. Then he shakes his head and looks away, his jaw working in his temple, voice low. “It’s everything. All my–joints. My back. I must have done something. I can go for months and months, you know–”
“Oh,” Jayce whispers.
Viktor laughs, his first laugh of the night, but it’s breathy and bitter. “I wouldn’t have been much use to you today.”
Saying all that must have taken it all out of Viktor. He never discusses his leg, nor complains of any pain, even during their more physically intensive builds. And now Jayce has gone and forced it out of him.
The nausea is a low, venomous kick in Jayce’s stomach. “I–you shouldn’t feel obligated to–”
“No? When my lab partner has just broken down my door after one day of absence?”
Jayce runs one hand through his hair, swallows. Viktor looks close to wavering and collapsing, still looking up at Jayce, all that venom softening as his words drain out of him.
Jayce sits down next to him, on the bed. Viktor closes his eyes and slumps to the side, resting his shoulder on a tall stack of pillows braced against the headboard. A few books are littered open-face down at the foot of the bedspread. “I was… worried,” Jayce says, even though he knows it’s the most inadequate, insufficient explanation.
Viktor’s eyes are still closed. His eyelashes flutter, and the mole on the top of his lip moves with his words. “I know.”
“Does it hurt anywhere… a lot?”
“Hmm.” Viktor’s mouth quirks. “You’re sounding just like my doctors now, Talis.”
“They ought to ask better questions than that.”
“You’d be surprised how helpful some of them really are.”
“I want to know.”
With Viktor’s eyes closed, Jayce doesn’t have them to anchor his gaze. Viktor’s got a smattering of freckles on his chest that Jayce never noticed before. They were always hidden by the collar of his uniform.
Viktor’s chest rises and falls above the dark leather of his back brace, and he makes loose gestures with one hand. “My leg. My neck. My hips.”
“I have a pair of blacksmith’s hands, right here.”
Viktor’s eyes flutter open. “What?”
The idea’s falling out of his mouth, as if it’s so simple. Anything to make up for– “I’ve given massages before. Surely that’ll help.”
Viktor’s lifted his head, and he’s staring at him as if he’s suggested to swallow a Hexcore. “And? To who?”
“Girls.”
Viktor’s cheeks darken faintly.
“And family.”
Oh, Jayce has really fucked it up now. What has he fucked up? Gods, why doesn’t he know–
And then, brusquely, Viktor says, “And? What did they think?”
Now Jayce is the one at a loss for words. “Um–they enjoyed it–”
“I’m sure.”
The bedroom is darkening, orange light fleeing the air, and in the silence he feels it darken more.
Carefully: “So… is that a yes?”
Viktor looks down at the floor, shakes his head. Jayce can’t tell what that means. “Sure, Jayce. We can give it a try.”
As if it’s one of Jayce’s wilder hare-brained ideas in the lab that he’s pleading Viktor to try. Some kind of vestigial tremble shakes its way up Jayce’s spine, ends in his shoulders and jaw. “Okay.”
Viktor says, “Okay.”
He leans off of his column of pillows, disassembles them and re-assembles them around the head of his bed with practiced motions. The most comfortable position? He pauses, once, and turns over his shoulder, and then his golden eyes meet Jayce’s for one long second. Then his shoulders hunch, and his eyes flit away again.
Self-conscious, Jayce realizes. He’s made Viktor self-conscious.
Satisfied with his pillows, Viktor straightens out his body and reclines, kicking away his crumpled blankets. Jayce turns, pulls in one leg, surveys what he’s working with. Even though the bed’s as comfortable as Viktor can make it, something still doesn’t look right. Viktor’s too rigid. Even though he’s on his back. In the dying light, the line of his abs is curved inward from tension. As if he’s expecting Jayce to stab him in the chest.
“Relax,” Jayce says, and Viktor huffs. Jayce can see his jaw working. Does he grind his teeth when he’s sleeping?
“I’ll just start on your leg.”
Viktor makes a gesture with one hand, like, Go ahead. His eyes are skipping from Jayce to his own stomach, sometimes up to the chalkboard, and back again.
Jayce slowly undoes his leg brace. He’s never done it before, but he’s observed it enough to figure out how it works, practical and elegant interlocking brass and leather and reinforced linen. Viktor must have put it back on to get to the door, if his pain is rearing so badly. Jayce’s chest constricts, and he clears his throat.
Viktor’s studying the chalkboard, his arms tucked behind his head. “What?”
“Nothing, I just…” Jayce undoes the last buckle and gives the brace a gentle, experimental pull, then tucks his hand under Viktor’s calf to lift it as he slides the brace off.
Oh, wow. He tries not to focus on the weight of Viktor’s calf in his hand, how that warm teardrop is unexpectedly soft, how the width and curve of it fits perfectly into the heart of his palm. Viktor always teased him about having fingers that were too unrefined for the delicate calibration necessary to their engineering; Jayce read between the lines and figured out Viktor was saying his hands were too big. “Didn’t expect removing your brace would be so easy.”
“What use would it be if it were an arduous process?” A thread of his calf moves against Jayce’s palm, and Jayce looks up, at his deadpan face, and then back down to his foot, where Viktor’s wiggling his big toe.
Jayce smothers a smile, flexes his palm against Viktor’s calf as a playful retort.
Doesn’t expect the arch of Viktor’s ankle to go stiff, for Viktor’s shoulders to bunch and his head to fall back and the small of his back to lift and roll him deeper into his pillows.
Jayce freezes, waits a few heartbeats, uncertain. Viktor’s calf seems to have doubled in weight. He must have been lifting it somewhat with Jayce and then just let go.
Viktor’s voice comes high and tight, from a face he can’t see. “Stop fucking around and get on with it.”
“Okay, okay.” Jayce lowers Viktor’s calf to the bed, gets both hands on it. Sometime between then and now some candles have flickered to life on Viktor’s shelves; some kind of Zaunite mechanical work? Or plain self-igniting lamps, which are, coincidentally, banned?
Despite being really soft, Viktor’s calf is also a pincushion of knots. All Jayce has to do is roll the side of his hand from top to bottom a few times to mentally map it. It’s like diagnosing a machine in its bowels, where you can follow the tension line just by pressing your fingers against all the shafts and gears.
“Tell me if I’m hurting you.”
Viktor’s still speaking into his pillows, or the ceiling. “Massages usually hurt.”
“Tell me if you feel a bad hurt, then.”
No response there.
The hair on his calf is a fine brown-gold, or maybe that’s just the candlelight. Jayce works the tips of his fingers into the heart of Viktor’s calf, where the double teardrop joins into an unyielding knot, and in the corner of his vision, Viktor’s pale stomach spasms.
“You okay?”
No response again. Jayce hazards a look up.
Viktor’s got one arm flung over his face, and his breaths are rising and falling rapidly.
“Vik?”
“Has anyone told you you talk too much, Talis?”
Jayce smiles and looks back down at the way the light catches the front of Viktor’s leg, keeps working the knot.
Slowly it unravels under his fingers. He rubs it in broad circles to try and untense the last of it, and Viktor makes a small, ragged moan. Jayce doesn’t look up.
He starts to move on to the next, but Viktor mutters, quietly, “Stop.”
Jayce straightens from his work. “What?”
Viktor’s calf slips from his grip; he turns toward the wall, revealing the long candlelit line of his back, the shadowed dimples at the bottom of his spine. “You’ve done more than your due. You can go, Jayce.”
“I barely started–”
“The pain is gone.”
Okay, this makes him angry. “Stop trying to bullshit me.”
Viktor’s voice has lowered the shutters, closed shop. “Your blacksmith’s hands are inadequate.”
Huh? He crosses his arms. “I said stop trying to bullshit me.”
Viktor’s voice goes raised and brittle. Still turned, he grabs for a blanket at his feet. “Does everything have to be a fight with you?”
Jayce rears back as if slapped. What?
Viktor’s reaching, but he can’t grasp the blanket without turning. He lets out a guttural cry and slams a fist against the wall.
The chalkboard wobbles.
Green red black. It slams into Jayce’s shoulder blades first, thumping the breath out of him, and then sliding painfully down his back. Reflexes. He lunged for it, shielded Viktor’s body.
His torso buckles, and for a dim mortified second he registers a strap of Viktor’s back brace digging between his pecs, and then the clattering of the chalkboard against the floor finally ceases.
Jayce registers breathing, then, loud in his ear. His face is buried in pillow, Viktor’s sweaty hair tickling the side of his neck. The smell of soot and floral shampoo. The crook of Viktor’s neck; that’s where his face has landed.
“Ow,” he says, which is not an overstatement, or an understatement. His shoulder blades pulse. Gods, that chalkboard was heavy, and way too big. But not big enough for Viktor’s calculations.
The Viktor who he is crushing.
Viktor’s heart hammers against his like a horrified rabbit. Their legs are tangled together, soft and hard planes frozen and indistinguishable. And something’s digging into the inside of his thigh.
Oh Gods.
Jayce lays there, panting, thoughts fractaling. Some kind of noise is building in the back of Viktor’s throat; it sounds panicked, like the keen of a machine before it unspools and never works again.
“Viktor, Viktor Viktor VikVikVik,” Jayce bolts out, whispers, lifts his head a coins-width and tucks his chin into the crook under Viktor’s ear to make sure it reaches him. He’s half out of his mind too. It feels like the world is tilting on its axis. “Don’t panic.”
The noise continues for a second more and cuts out. Jayce edges his knees toward himself and lifts off of Viktor, very slowly; his face rises above Viktor’s as he does, and Viktor stares up at him, pupils fixated, lower lip trembling.
Jayce sits back, on his own knees, hovering above Viktor’s thighs. He tries not to look. At where Viktor’s tenting his boxers.
“Nothing a girl won’t appreciate,” Jayce says, with a crack at humor, but his voice cracks instead.
Then, into the silence– “These things happen.”
Viktor’s hair has slicked dark to his forehead with sweat. His chest shines with it, too, inviting and golden despite the heartbeat visibly clamoring in his sternum; it feels like the room’s ratcheted up in temperature several degrees. Jayce’s pants are starting to feel uncomfortable.
The adrenaline plunge of that realization has his shoulders coiling. No. No. “I–I’d better–”
Viktor’s watching him, very carefully.
Oh, shit.
Jayce pauses.
A thousand possibilities clamor at him. But where—how can he—
Late evenings in the lab. The last of the sunset draped across Viktor's hunched back. The exasperated sigh of another experimental failure, and the small, self-satisfied smile that graces his lips when he flips up his goggles to a weld well done.
The intricate inside jokes, the deft coin tricks with his favorite gear. The shyness at the bar and the steely confidence in front of visitors and councilmembers alike. It comes down to how Viktor surprises him, all the time, again and again. And how he’s doing it now.
And where does all this get Jayce?
Oh my gods. A warmth aches through him, an electrifying current threatening to knock down everything in its path. It is so simple. He loves Viktor.
It is so simple, when he knows this.
Jayce leans down and kisses him.
Viktor’s lips are sweaty, soft, better than a dream. They open immediately, needily, and then he tastes like, honestly kind of bad, like he slept all day, but this is Viktor’s tongue he’s talking about, so it doesn’t matter.
Viktor groans into his mouth. Jayce doesn't want to hesitate anymore, doesn't want to second-guess, palms Viktor through his underwear, and that’s crazy, Viktor’s heft behind just one layer of cloth, kind of damp, and Jayce is smoothing it up and down, the distant backbrain part of him mapping him from root to tip. Gods of the Undercity and Above. Viktor’s moan reverberates onto his tongue. This is better than anything he could have ever fucking imagined.
Viktor’s hands are tracing the back of his neck, carding into the nape of his hair and curling, and then one, like a pilthound catching a scent, darts to Jayce's thighs, and presses its palm into his crotch, seeking. Jayce worries Vik’s bottom lip between his teeth, is rewarded by Viktor’s hand stuttering and curling in pleasure against his trapped cock.
His brilliant partner, his superior, has began rutting up into Jayce’s hand, his back arching, and the buckle of his brace rubbing up against Jayce’s ribs, too. Jayce grinds his palm into the underside of Viktor’s shaft, right where it laps against his balls, and in his mouth, Viktor bites off a sob. He’s gotten one finger into Jayce’s front belt-loop, and he’s tugging at it insistently. Take it off.
Jayce bites his lips once more for good measure, and leans back to unbuckle his belt. Viktor’s looking up at him, surrounded by all those pillows, chest blushing, hair in a disarray, lips bitten to red-rosy and his eyes shining.
Jayce’s heart feels like it’s going to explode. He dips back down and kisses a line down the side of Viktor’s neck, licking into that heat and salt, as he undoes his tie and vest and undershirt. It’s insane, how in his few years of knowing Viktor, Viktor has sounds that he hid from Jayce, that he was dangling just for Jayce to discover, throaty moans and encouraging Yes-es and tremulous whines that catch at his teeth as his eyes flutter shut. How much more vulnerable could Viktor get? How much further could Jayce burrow? Jayce wants to make a nest of him, dig in and rearrange and bed down. Surely it’s possible. Surely they can make it work.
When his pants and undershirt are finally off, Jayce pauses and leans back. He’s still got his underwear on; he gets the feeling Viktor took pleasure in seeing him undress. But still. This is the big reveal.
Viktor props himself up on his elbows, a brief moment of allowed lucidity. His shoulders loosened from the pleasure, his bright, golden eyes start at Jayce’s, and then drink lower, across Jayce’s chest, his abs, his muscled arms and the V sliding down into his waistband. And then, lower, of course...
“I fucking knew it,” Viktor breathes.
Jayce laughs, and dives. Down, not to Viktor’s lips, but to his waist, where his cock is waiting, dampened, behind one flimsy piece of cloth. Jayce flattens both hands on either side of Viktor’s cock, traps his length into the divot of his hip-bone, kneads; Viktor flings one forearm over his mouth and arches. There’s knots in his hips, too, which Jayce will alleviate in due time; haven’t they got all the time in the world? And he can see the head of Viktor’s cock behind the cloth, in stretched translucence, the musk here making his mouth water; wow, has anyone ever told Viktor he has the most tantalizing smell in the world? And this heart-shaped head all swollen and alert and pretty–he swipes a thumb over the ridge–it’s a crime.
Viktor’s stomach is tensing and untensing above him, those fine juddering lines, and his thighs coiling and uncoiling too–Jayce kisses a line down the inside of each, before turning to the task at hand–Viktor’s sobbing and humping against his soothing placeholder palm–and then Jayce pulls his underwear down in one motion and takes Viktor in his mouth.
He’s got no shy dick–his head stretches Jayce’s cheek before Jayce shifts and tucks his chin, then the thickness of it slides into the back of his throat like it was born to be there. Sweet and musk and weight in his skull. Oh, fuck. He nearly gags around it, knows Viktor can feel his throat fluttering by the way Viktor’s hands curl in his hair. He’s had enough girls give him blowjobs to not have a pretty good idea of what it’s like for them. But still. This is new.
Viktor’s hips shift in his grip, and the head of his weeping cock rubs into the roof of Jayce’s mouth, at the very, very back behind his uvula and throat-folds, oh my fucking gods he is not going to throw up. He swallows instead, and Viktor begins to thrust in degrees, sloppily. The friction and weight, like the hilt of a hammer in his mouth, has him seeing comets. Distantly Jayce realizes he’s begun humping the mattress. His bucking kicks off some books. All those blowjobs and he just didn’t know it would make his own cock so fucking hard.
Usually the girls would make a show of it, eye contact and the whole thing, but Jayce can’t really pull off. He’s getting lost in Viktor’s motions, in his lithe hips writhing between Jayce’s hands and his soft, furred balls distorting Jayce’s lower lip from the friction, and the prickling pain across his scalp as Viktor tugs, in his high keening moans and his pace growing more and more frantic, foreskin lathing across Jayce’s tongue and down his throat, all of Viktor’s Fucks and Gods Jayce and Oh gods you’re being so so good I’m gonna, I’m gonna–
Viktor’s hips go rigid, and then he’s spilling down Jayce’s throat, his thighs shuddering around Jayce’s ears and his balls pulsing against Jayce’s chin with each gush. The moans he’s making are downright pornographic, his hands flinching as Jayce swallows around him.
Jayce pulls off in one motion, more sluggish than he intended, catches the last drops of it on his tongue just so he can properly taste. Tastes warm and sweet and bitter, and when he presses his sore tongue into the aching roof of his mouth, it sublimates into the palate like cream. Way better than his own cum, which he’s tasted via girl-mouth.
Jayce rests his face into the crook of Viktor’s inner thigh and looks up at him. Viktor’s dick is softening against his cheek. Viktor's eyes are two hazy smears of gold. Jayce keeps blinking; his eyes are watering and he can’t tell if it’s from the cock-sucking or the stunning ache in his cock or the sheer fucking feeling of his heart having grown larger than the room. It feels like they’re fucking inside his heart.
With Viktor’s eyes looking like that, who needs candles? Viktor looks for a moment like he’s actually praying, lips moving soundlessly as he looks up at the ceiling and smooths his hands through the front of Jayce’s sweaty hair. Then he looks back down at him and says, voice thin and fucked-out, “My gods, Jayce. You’ve done this before?”
Ha. Jayce Talis, done this before? He shakes his head, and it has the inadvertent side-effect of nuzzling him deeper into Viktor’s hip. It’s so moist and wet now, from saliva and precum and sweat all mixing into Viktor’s nest of hair, and smells so fucking good, Jayce could live here forever.
Viktor blinks and shakes his head, eyebrows furrowed. His chest is rising and falling deeply, nipples rosy above the dark brace, skin blushed-out as a crushed rose. His palms caress Jayce’s chin, tilt his face up so Viktor’s face more easily falls into Jayce’s eyeline. “You’re joking.”
This line of questioning would make Jayce feel more uneasy, had he not just almost cum from getting the back of his throat hammered. Viktor’s thumb carefully wipes drool off of his bottom lip. “What,” Jayce drawls, “have you done this before?”
It feels like a question of no consequence, given what they’re currently doing, but the skin around Viktor’s eyes tenses a hair. Jayce plants a kiss on his thumb.
“Come on, Vik.”
Viktor’s golden gaze keeps steady. “It’s all I do.”
Doesn’t make sense. “Not true. You’re in the lab with me.”
Viktor sighs, readjusts his back brace on his chest by slipping one thumb underneath. His other hand plays with the hair below Jayce’s ear. “What I mean is I only fuck men, Jayce.”
Jayce’s cock is so hard it’s killing him. “Oh.”
“I’m surprised you couldn’t tell.”
Even soft, Viktor’s cock is so staggeringly beautiful, shades of pink and brown, surrounded by wiry brown hair, an elegant vein pulsing up the side. He wishes he could cup it in his hands and put it in his pocket. He begins nibbling at the inside of Viktor’s thigh instead. “Well, you’d tolerate the women flirting with you at the bar.”
“Tolerate.”
He pulls away, checks that the skin is reddening like he wants it to. It’s a party trick, leaving unexpected hickies like a scavenger hunt, so Viktor finds them in the shower later and thinks of him. “I always thought you were too focused on our work.”
Viktor’s hands are resting on his freckled stomach, rising and falling with each breath. “It’s true, I slept around more back in Zaun. After coming here I tried. But I was losing my taste for it.”
“Was it the people or the place?”
“The people are the place, Jayce.”
Ah. Right. Well, that makes sense. He doesn’t know many people here who are… to Viktor’s taste, social or otherwise.
Jayce hums into his thigh. “I’d like to show you some new places.”
Viktor’s squirming a little under his tongue, and his cock is starting to pinken again. Perfect.
Jayce props himself up on his elbows, on either side of Viktor’s hips. “Do you want your brace off?”
Viktor’s eyes flick up to the ceiling, considering it. Then he says, “Sure.”
This brace Jayce hasn’t had the pleasure of mapping before. Viktor instructs him to undo this buckle, no, not this one, pop these buttons, loosen this other strap, and then they’re peeling it off his body.
Jayce rubs the reddened indent in the crook of Viktor’s shoulder, where the strap once sat. “Do you think you can flip over and misplace a few pillows?”
“Sure, Talis,” Viktor says with a smile, and then sits up and tosses a few pillows Jayce's way. Then he shuffles over, lays back down on his stomach, hips propped up on his newly placed pillows.
Oh my fucking gods. Ass.
It’s gorgeous. Pale like his stomach, tense like he’s shy. It’s got divots in the sides like those skinny, athletic girls. Probably each cheek is full of knots. He cannot wait to knead those out, preferably with lots of lube.
Then he gets yanked out of his body.
For a moment he feels he’s been flung out onto the stars, some kind of astronomical jealousy or body-hopping déjà vu, seeing from the point of view of all the men who got to experience this ass before him. The power of this ass. Its magnetic beckoning. Viktor knows, likely why he flipped over so proudly. It’s bewitching. Like some kind of illicit Noxian magic.
Speaking of. The earlier thing.
“Do you have lube in here?”
“Of course,” Viktor says, and waves at his nightstand.
Jayce finds it, a little blue glass bottle with clear, odorless liquid inside. He gets both hands on Viktor’s cheeks, kneads them a little, just to hear him moan. Then he parts them and carefully drizzles the lube between.
Viktor arches. The lube is cool on his fingers; Jayce should remember to warm up the vial beforehand next time. Next time?
Whether there will be a next time is both an impossibly monumental question and a foregone conclusion, but that’s only in the privacy of his own head. He stores it away to ask at a different time. Right now, he has work to do.
Viktor’s hole is perfect, a prim brown pucker. No hair, not even stubble. Does he wax it? How often? Pretty wild. He might have to teach Jayce.
Jayce pauses. “I’ve never done this before, Viktor.” All he knows is that assholes, regardless of whose, need to be warmed up before diving in. He’s never had a girl willing to do anal.
Viktor’s voice rumbles from his chest. “It’s hard to fuck up with me, Talis. Just let your fingers do what they want.”
“Ah, okay.”
One finger in. Warm, tight, much more relaxed than his calf. Maybe the orgasm did its part. His fingers are comfortable with slow and exploratory.
“Luckily I haven’t eaten today,” Viktor mutters.
Jayce doesn’t like the sound of that. “What?”
“I will tell you what all goes into my sexual escapades, Jayce. But first, please hurry up.”
Jayce’s cock has been weeping for Viktor.
If he gets to hurry up, so be it.
Pointer, middle, and thumb, down to the knuckle. Viktor cries out, clutches at the pillows under his chest. “Talis.”
It’s time to get a little mean about it. Not because he’s feeling mean, but because his cock is. Viktor’s asshole is such a marvel. Jayce is knuckle-deep and it’s slick, like the inside of a cheek, and yet spacious, and it’s pulsing around him. He angles his wrist, drives his fingers deeper. Sweat drips into his mouth. Viktor is cursing into his pillow, and then, as he adds a fourth, comes a mindless little moan of Jayce, Jayce, Jayce.
More lube. He pulls off his underpants.
Viktor strains over his shoulder to see, but there’s no time, really. Viktor hasn’t told him he’s ready but judging from the elastic glide of his four fingers, and the way his pretty brown hole swallows them up, he should be good enough. Jayce is bigger than that but he can let the rest of his cock do the loosening up; cocks start narrow at the head and broaden, so really, it’s just a massive fifth finger.
He should be more nervous about fucking his first asshole, but really, this is Viktor.
He flattens one hand under Viktor’s shoulder blade, feels his heart hammering behind his ribs.
Leans down to kiss him, braces himself on his arms, on either side of Vik’s shoulders. Slides his cock up and down the cleft of his ass, exploratory, calculating his entry. Viktor gasps against his mouth. “Oh my gods, Jayce.”
“I think you can do it,” Jayce says back, warmly, easily. Viktor’s shoulders shiver under his chest. It’s mean to tease, especially when he hasn’t seen it. But Jayce gets the sense Viktor’s finding it fun not to see. Dousing him in adrenaline, heightening his anticipation.
Jayce slips in slow. Oh my motherfucking fuck, it’s like water after weeks without it, it’s like warmth in a past tundra of white, it’s tight and greedy and hot and slick and wanting. It’s like Viktor’s ass is communicating directly to his dick, they’re saying something to each other that Jayce’s brain is not privy to. He cannot believe he ever went a day, an hour, a second without sheathing himself into Viktor’s ass.
Viktor’s keening under him, breathless pants and cut-off moans, thighs shaking against Jayce’s as Jayce pushes his way inside.
And Jayce is only halfway in.
Viktor’s making protesting sounds. Jayce nips across his mouth, and Viktor’s lips part, his tongue pushing out, a dollop of pink waiting for Jayce to meet it. Instead, Jayce presses his lips to Viktor’s cheekbone, hums against it, and pushes deeper in.
Viktor’s hole is slowly guzzling him down. He tries to map it, in his mind, the inside of Viktor, Viktor’s asshole and then his rectum, muscled rings usually small, capable of stretching if needed, how that tunnel drives up between his pelvis, and then beyond the rectum, what, the colon? Could he reach there?
Not without hitting the prostate first.
He couples the hot tight squeeze of his cock with the knowledge that it’s sheathing into Viktor’s narrow pelvis, lodging between those hip-bones, and he nearly cums right then.
He’s about to bottom out, balls deep, and Viktor’s squirming under him, sending hot shocks right up into Jayce’s hips. Viktor’s screwed his eyes shut. He’s whining, breathy rattling inhales bordering on sobs, the backs of his thighs tensing and untensing and tensing against the front of Jayce’s. And that little tongue, that little mouth, that tasty breath, open and wanting.
“You want me to kiss you so fucking bad,” Jayce whispers.
Viktor’s breath hitches. A long clench around his cock.
Jayce buries his face into Viktor’s shoulder, swears, loudly. He bears into the clench, and Viktor yelps as Jayce bottoms out.
Viktor’s eyes flutter open, and Jayce can see him struggling to focus. Those golden eyes trying to stay open. His bottom lip shiny with drool. The twitching of his hole around Jayce’s root.
Jayce softens his voice, wipes a thumb across Viktor’s bottom lip. “Stay with me, Vik.”
Viktor nods, lolling, frantic, and Jayce groans and begins to move.
Slowly, slowly at first. A coin’s width, no more; lower down he’s bumping up against something and sliding past it. The prostate? Jayce slides one hand under Viktor’s stomach, flattens his palm against it, to feel the muscles jumping there as he moves methodically; it’s the most agonizing kind of withholding, to be hilt-deep inside his lab partner, his favorite person, and not let go of the reins. Against his hips Viktor’s ass is firm, just a great springboard to bear into, lighting up all the nerves in his lower back when he bottoms out and grinds against it. Viktor’s insides are so eager to hold him.
Jayce kisses the back of his neck. “How are you doing?”
Viktor moans some kind of noise from the side of his mouth, like, mmmph.
Encouraging. Jayce speeds up a little. The friction feels great around him, like three fists clenching and rippling and releasing. The way Viktor’s exhales are coming, Viktor’s started to hold his breath in short intervals, something Jayce always found so fucking cute when the girls did it. It’s a good sign. They never realized they were doing it, until they were red-faced and cumming.
Viktor shifts under him. He's begun clenching around him in longer and longer bursts, coinciding with his breath. Jayce cannot think about Viktor’s freckles right now or he’ll lose it. Viktor’s moans tip into a higher pitch, bouncing with Jayce’s thrusts. Jayce’s force traveling up and into his sternum.
“Jayce I’mgonnacum,” Viktor says, in one fell swoop, a gasp like he can’t believe it.
“Then cum,” Jayce says into his hair, and forces four fingers into Viktor’s mouth, and doesn’t change his pace.
Viktor only gets one or two sucks in before his body’s shuddering, his hole sobbing around Jayce’s cock in long, searching pulls. Oh my fucking gods. Jayce stops, sees stars in Viktor’s hair and feels stars around his cock, takes Viktor’s surprised inhale as an opportunity to slide his fingers in deeper, until they’re curling into the back of Viktor’s throat and Gods, Viktor’s arch is obscene, Jayce’s forward thrusts forcing his legs to splay and his ass to cant up in accommodation, his thighs unable to close around Jayce’s heavy hips, and his chest is heaving and he’s trying to scream around Jayce’s fingers and his feet are spasming into the bed. The air smells heavy, like his cum, again. He must have stained the mattress.
Jayce waits until most of Viktor's limbs have stopped quivering or tensing, and until Viktor’s pants are the only noise he’s making. Deep inside, he’s fluttering gently and exhaustedly around Jayce’s tip. Is this how Jayce makes Viktor his nest?
He strokes the back of Viktor’s tongue with the pads of his fingers, feels his throat constrict in natural gag reflex. Presses another kiss into his hair, that sweet-smelling shampoo. “Good boy.”
Viktor’s rumbles around his fingers sound like, Oh my gods.
Jayce carefully rests a little more of his weight onto Viktor’s back, snuggles his face into the crook of his neck, so they can intermingle breaths. Then he starts thrusting again.
Keeps it small, but enough to be walking the water’s edge of overstimulation. Viktor’s fingers have long locked into his pillows. Looks painful. Jayce grabs one of Viktor’s hands, massages it out with his own, encircles the wrist with his thumb and forefinger and lifts it to card into Jayce’s hair. Kisses the side of Viktor’s nose instead of his mouth. Sees Viktor worry his bottom lip with his teeth. Oh, wow. Visual indicator of. A little frisson of anxiety. So fucking hot.
“You’re doing good,” he says, and Viktor’s too focused on what’s going on to give indication that he heard, so he says it again, and this time Viktor gives a curt little nod. It must be a lot, to not just still be taking dick after he came the second time, but to have each thrust rubbing his trapped cock on the pillows and against his stomach still. Oh my gods, Jayce didn’t know sex could be this perfect. Like the moment they stabilized the Hexcore, when for a brief moment his awareness expanded, to everyone and everything, in that beam of blue light, to even, for a millisecond, the interior of his partner’s joy and wonder, next to him. He didn’t know he could replicate it by doing this with Viktor.
Viktor’s starting to hold his breath again, for a second, two seconds, a few seconds each time. Tears are collecting in the corners of his eyes, and Jayce doesn’t pause, but he does wipe them away. They’re starting to enter shapeless time, that kind of time that happens when sex is really good, astronomically good, when the minutes don’t matter, they blur and flee. Maybe Viktor entered that time long ago, and Jayce was playing timekeeper, counting breaths and spasms, waiting to join him. His cock feels great too, the friction so regular it’s slipping into marathon endurance. His stomach isn’t cramping, nor are his arms or his hips. There’s just: him, his bed, his Viktor. Intimate, in this tiny room, and yet. He’s entering that headspace where he swears he can feel comets passing above his head, so many light-years away.
“I could fuck you forever,” he murmurs into Viktor’s ear. Pauses above it, a moment, to feel the heat emanating off of it, onto his lips.
“I can’t do this, Jayce,” comes Viktor’s sob.
It’s always like that, when the sex is astronomically good. The person he’s fucking doesn’t think they can do it anymore, because they’ve been chasing each other’s tails, like rabbits across the Academy Gardens, reaching the borders of what they know and teetering on the edge of deeper, murkier glens. As long as Jayce is fucking Viktor, they’ll make it across the other side.
He tongues Viktor’s earlobe. “You can, Vik, you can.”
Viktor’s breaths are skewing, going irregular, his stomach trembling like a leaf. He’s tugging at Jayce’s hair, clenching around Jayce in unpredictable waves. His knees are flexed, one ankle locking around the back of Jayce’s thighs, his heel bumping into Jayce's ass as he thrusts. Viktor’s trying to get ahold of his breathing, but he can’t. Viktor’s reaching the border. Jayce needs to chase him into deeper glens.
Jayce cups the side of his face. “I’ve got you,” he says.
And he thrusts deeper, faster.
Viktor is sobbing under him, hips trying to twist, thighs trying to buck him off. Every motion only gives Jayce an in, pulls Jayce deeper in. Overstimulation, on the way to stimulation, on the way to something bright and terrifying hurtling toward Viktor. But Jayce has made a home here, inside of him, and there’s no way to dislodge Jayce, to fight against the balls slapping against Viktor’s own, there’s only taking what’s given to him and trembling around it, and trying to make the best of it, and trusting him through it, and trusting, and trusting–
Viktor yells, a full-throated one, one high pure note made of all the air out of his lungs, and then his eyes roll back, and he’s cumming.
The comets crash into Jayce’s skull. His rhythm stutters, and he’s shuddering, pressing his face into Viktor’s, burying himself there, into Viktor’s gasps, his other hand curling against Viktor’s stomach. Viktor’s a wet clenching heat, his constricting, overstimulated pleasure a siren song, yearning and wanting and so fucking welcoming.
Jayce groans. He’s spilling in uncontrolled gushes, deep, maybe into his colon, maybe his seed will travel past, somehow, up around layers of porous smooth muscle to spread and rest and intermingle in the hollow spaces between Viktor’s organs. Keep him there forever. Mark Viktor as his, make Viktor his lasting bed.
When he’s finally spent, when he’s laid on top of Viktor an eon, he smooths the hair away from Viktor’s forehead. Focuses on his eyes, which are still closed. His cheeks and forehead are unlawfully flushed, his breaths becoming more regular. Inside, he’s still twitching around Jayce. Any attempt to move or peel away sends off another cascade.
Jayce kisses each eyelid, is rewarded by seeing them shift and the lashes flutter slowly open. Viktor’s eyes. Molten pools of gold. Jayce is adept at the forge, he’s a sucker for liquid metal.
“Viktor,” he whispers, and smoothes another stray hair off his forehead. “I think I’m done. No second round.”
Viktor’s laugh is affectionate and weak. “About time, Jayce.”
He manages to slide out of Viktor, but not without Viktor cursing a lot, and another few fingers in his mouth to shut him up.
They end up curled against each other, Jayce into Viktor, with one of Jayce’s hands reaching back to cup Viktor’s ass, and Viktor’s mouth brushing the back of his neck, one hand smoothing over the curve of his shoulder.
The afterglow is unreal. It’s impenetrable. Like Jayce could say anything, and Viktor could say anything, and it could ring true and clearer than a bell. Better than… than… when the Hexcore stabilized.
“You smell good,” Viktor murmurs. His voice, now, the hoarse growl, the gentleness, a stomach gone belly-up… Jayce would do horrible things for the privilege of hearing that voice for the rest of his life.
“I smell like you,” Jayce says, and is rewarded with Viktor’s laugh against the smallest hairs on his nape.
“You know,” Viktor says, and his voice dips. Like he’s thinking. Then it resurfaces again. “I imagined this. Happening. In different ways. But never like this.”
Even after all they’ve done, this comes with a flicker, no, a flame, of surprise. “You… you did?”
His fingers plays a pattern against Jayce’s tricep. “You idiot. I spend all my time locked in a lab with a brilliant, audacious, stubborn inventor. He constantly surprises me. We chase each other’s theories until the sky goes dark. And you expect me not to imagine… something?”
Jayce turns to Viktor, scoots closer to him, so their foreheads are nearly touching. Brow to brow. Viktor’s eyes are other universes, plains flooded with swimming pools of gold.
He’s not lying. Jayce doesn’t know why he thought he might be, only that, Viktor seemed…
“You seemed too good for me,” Jayce says, and a corner of Viktor’s lip quirks. “Not in a romantic sense, although, maybe that too… in the lab it was different, but outside it, you were too good for courting girls, too busy for outings, too exasperated by the council presentations and the subtle politicking. It was like you were married to the lab. Briefly basking in success, yes, but always chasing the future. Something just… out of my sight. Out of our reach.”
“And do I intend to stop?” Viktor knocks his brow into Jayce’s, gently. Then his smile settles, fades. “I would, if you walked away. Do you think I want to do this alone?”
“I…” Jayce’s smile fades, too, and he presses his lips together. He knows his answer. “I don’t. I wouldn’t. Not without you.”
Viktor’s hand moves to his waist, pulls him in closer so their legs slot together. His voice is low and wry. Jayce recognizes his want, to tilt the conversation into a lighter beat. “So all this to tell me… you never fantasized about me?”
Fantasies of awe-striking breakthroughs, unfurling ribbons and giant trophies the same color as Viktor’s eyes, stumbling back to the lab, drunk on the afterparty, long-gone champagne, to catalog the day’s victories and finally tidy up shop, and then, sliding into deeper dreams, of the stone floor against his back or Viktor’s, guttural cries into his shoulder, nails raking hot lines across his back. All those inescapable, interminable dreams.
“I may have had some,” Jayce admits.
Viktor’s grin is better than champagne.
Jayce kisses that grin, and then the tip of his nose, for good measure. “You’re a mess. I’ve made a mess of you. I ought to clean you up.”
Viktor’s eyebrow quirks. “The shower is down the hall,” he whispers.
It’s Jayce’s turn to bang a fist into the wall.
Viktor yawns. He looks like one of those old Runeterra manuscripts, the illustrations of the angels. “Just go wet a towel. I’m too tired.”
“Promise you’ll be awake when I get back?”
Viktor stretches, his collarbones popping. “You’re denying a princess his beauty sleep.”
“I’ll be quick, I promise.”
As he’s readying to slip out, Jayce pauses at the door, straightens his wrinkled, haphazard collar. He made up his mind before entering, but it comes back to him: requesting that House apartment, for Viktor. And outfitting it with a chalkboard so huge and sturdy Viktor will never run out of space to write on.
He gazes upon Viktor, on his peaceful, nearly sleeping face, on the openness of his body, the relaxed contours of his flank. The golden, gentle illumination of the side of his cheek. The steady rise and fall of his chest, the perfect shape of the back of his knee, the curve of his waist.
It takes Jayce’s breath away. Makes his chest ache. He massages over his pec. He can’t believe this.
And that last question. The tremulous one, bated breath. He tries to deliver it with confidence.
“We can do this again, can’t we, Vik?”
Viktor’s lips move. “If we don’t, I’m breaking up with you and the lab.”
Breaking up. Jayce smiles to himself, a secret smile. “If it’s a promise.”
Viktor’s lips quirk again, faintly. “I promise, Jayce.”
A thousand comets over a thousand glens. The towel in Jayce’s hand, itself, a promise.
Jayce reaches for the door.