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They’re finally here. Viktor straddling his lap where they’ve landed on the edge of the bed, purple fingers tangled in his hair and mouth hot and eager on his own. Taking turns to distractedly pull off shirts in between biting kisses, finally being able to get his hands all over that beguiling Hexcore skin, as smooth as brushed metal under his fingers but warm and elastic as flesh, the faint hum and crackle of magic a counterpoint to the familiar rhythm of heart and lungs.
He nips at the streak of gold running down Viktor’s throat to his collarbone, delighting at the breathy gasp that comes out of him. “It’s more sensitive, isn’t it? The gold bits,” he murmurs against the hollow of Viktor’s throat. A hypothesis developed through careful analysis of their growing catalogue of halting touches over the preceding weeks.
Viktor laughs, an aborted huff that he feels like he could live on for weeks. “Well observed.” He indulges Jayce licking and sucking and scraping his teeth along the gold at his throat until he does something that tickles too much, and then a decisive hand under his jaw tilts his head back up for more searing kisses.
The dam had broken all at once, the skittish tension between them snapping without warning after dinner. He can’t say it hadn’t been building, but if there was a logic to why tonight had been the night that Viktor had finished drying the dishes he was washing and then calmly backed him up against the wall and kissed him breathless, it was beyond his understanding.
And now Viktor is in his lap, on the edge of the bed they’ve shared chastely every night since finding the little cabin, and one of Viktor’s hands is in his hair while the other one slides down between them to cup him where he’s desperately hard. Now that they’ve stepped over this line, Viktor does not seem the least bit shy. And, by the way he’s touching him, not inexperienced either.
“Fuck. Um. Are we doing this?” He breaks the kiss, but only pulls back the bare minimum needed to speak, an arm looped around Viktor’s waist to keep him close.
“I want to,” Viktor says. He’s trailing his fingers so lightly over the bulge of Jayce’s cock where it’s trapped in his pants and it’s maddening. “Do you?”
“So much.” On the edge of his vision he can see Viktor’s mouth twitch up in a smile. “Can you—” He’s not really sure how to ask this without killing the mood. “I mean, uh. What are our options here?”
“I can use my hands.” Viktor darts in for a coy brush of his tongue between Jayce’s lips. “Or my mouth.”
“I meant for you.”
“Oh.” He says it like he hasn’t considered it before now, and Jayce experiences a millisecond of hurt (did he really think Jayce wouldn’t care about pleasing him?) and another one of indignation on Viktor’s behalf (is that what he’s used to?) and then he realizes Viktor is watching him with a considering, slightly guarded look.
“There is an, um. Orifice. Down there,” he says, his gaze dropping to his own groin. “I don’t really know…what it is.”
“What do you mean?”
“Anatomically, its purpose is…unclear.” Viktor does this sometimes, retreating into talking in detached analytical terms about his own body. “I don’t need it to eliminate waste. Or to birth children, I suppose. But it is, ah…sensitive to touch.”
Viktor is not meeting his gaze, and there’s the slightest flush on his cheeks. There’s something terribly charming about it, the flip from his total confidence a moment ago to this little bit of shyness when it comes to discussing his own pleasure.
“You’ve…investigated this?” He runs a hand up Viktor’s thigh, where the slightest flicker of purple light glows through the loose linen pants he wears around the house.
“Not thoroughly.” Viktor does look up at him then, a coy, halting invitation.
“Show me?”
Viktor stands, unlaces his pants and tugs them down off his hips. Fuck, he’s kind of obsessed with Viktor’s hips. The curve of his waist, the plane of his lower belly, the ridge of smooth lilac-gray carapace where the sharp jut of his human hipbones used to be. There’s a gap now, between his pelvis and thigh, the Hexcorized muscle fiber glowing beneath it. He should probably not tell Viktor how many times he’s thought about putting his hand in that gap, wondered what it would feel like to touch him there. That’s weird. Right?
He knows Viktor’s feelings about the body the Hexcore created for him are…complicated. That he thinks of it as something that was done to him. (Something that Jayce did to him, although he is usually kind enough not to say it that way.) That it’s an ever-present reminder of what he did to others.
So Jayce mostly keeps quiet about the fact that he’s fucking enraptured with every detail of it. There is just no way to say that stuff without making it sound like he likes this body better than Viktor’s fully human one, and that is not what he means. He would love Viktor in every form. He has loved Viktor in every form, since that first night floating in the azure glow of the arcane. It just took him far too long to realize it.
But also…Viktor’s Hexcore body is fascinating. Both human and otherworldly, flesh and metal and magic woven together, embellished with gold filigree and pulsing violet light.
Viktor is climbing back into his lap now. He catches his wrist and guides his hand down, over the smooth delta of his pelvis to slide between his legs. Farther back than he would reach to touch a woman, but—oh, there is something there. A spot between the metallic cords running between Viktor’s thighs that parts ever-so-slightly when his fingers press against it.
“There,” Viktor says. “Do you feel it?”
“Yeah.” He traces the seam of the mystery opening with his finger and doesn’t miss how Viktor’s breath catches. He can feel swirls of variegated texture there, and he’s dying to see what it looks like. It doesn’t really feel like a cunt, or an asshole, or any part of a human body he’s encountered. “What is it?”
Viktor shrugs. “Maybe the Hexcore created it. Or maybe it was my doing.” He raises an eyebrow. “Perhaps my subconscious was not specific enough about the exact manner in which I wanted you inside me.”
He knows—he knows, because Viktor told him—that Viktor has wanted him for a long time. (“From the beginning,” he’d said simply, easily, when Jayce had asked.) The rush of heat at hearing him say things like that is still unbearable.
“Can you lie down, so I can get a better look?” he asks. “You know. For science.”
Viktor gives one of his sly half-smiles, and then he slides off Jayce’s lap and lies back on the bed, knees bent and legs open in invitation. “Anything in the service of discovery.”
He looks obscene like that, propped up on his elbows with his legs spread, and also alien, the glow of Hexcore tendons peeking through the gap where thigh and pelvis meet. (What would happen if he stuck his tongue in there? His brain supplies the thought before he can stop it.) The smooth surface of his pelvis turns into ropy fibers again between his legs.
He scoots down between Viktor’s legs, lying on his stomach to gently probe for the spot he found before. There’s a place where the fibers can be separated, and when he eases them apart with his thumbs there is a teardrop-shaped opening there. When he nudges it open enough to see the surface inside, it looks soft, yielding; deep purple shot through with swirling tendrils of gold.
“Holy shit,” he breathes.
“What?” There’s an edge of uncertainty in Viktor’s voice above him, and that won’t do.
“Okay. This is gonna sound weird. But it’s kind of…beautiful?” The tracery of gold that he can see inside him looks almost like the pattern on his cheekbones, where the Hexcore matter blends into human flesh, and—he has very recently learned—Viktor loves to be touched there. “I wish you could see it.”
“I don’t think I’m that flexible, even now.”
“I could get the shaving mirror.”
Viktor gives him a playful nudge to the shoulder with his foot. “Focus, Jayce.”
“Right, of course,” he says, mock-serious. Viktor is making that face that he makes when he’s trying not to give in to laughing at some stupid joke Jayce has told in the hope of amusing him. “The gold bits are more sensitive, huh?”
There’s a seam of gold lining the edge of the orifice, just under the outer layer of Hexcore fibers. He ducks his head and licks around it in a circle.
“Fuck!” Viktor hisses, hands clenching into the sheets. “Jayce! Just…going in cold? With your mouth? You really have no sense of self-preservation, do you?”
“What, do you think your…hex…hole is gonna eat me or something?”
Viktor is making a very determined effort to scowl, but a smile keeps fighting through. “First of all. I am not calling it that. And I have no idea, do I?”
“Only one way to find out.” He can feel himself grinning now; he can’t help it.
“Perhaps you should start with your finger.”
“Okay, Mister Lab-Goggles-are-for-Topsiders,” he teases. And then before Viktor can muster a comeback, he drags his index finger around that circuit of gold at his entrance.
Whatever Viktor was going to say is cut off by a sharp gasp. Delighted, he does it again with two fingers, tracing from top to bottom and back again. When he looks up Viktor is biting his lip.
“Good?”
“Yes.” He’s a little breathless already.
He slips a finger inside him. Just a bare inch at first, then another when that goes easily. He’s burning hot inside, elastic and organic-feeling, except for the ridges of gold, which are smooth as inlaid metal.
“What does it feel like in there?” Viktor asks, his voice not quite even.
“It’s sort of…spongy?” He struggles to find words to describe the texture other than fuckable, which if he’s honest is the first thing that came to mind. “Not wet. But sort of…soft…and pliable. And warm.” He looks up to catch Viktor watching him, his lips half-parted. “There’s gold in there. On the inside.” He finds a vein of it by feel and strokes.
“Ahh—” Viktor arches up under him, a hand latching suddenly around his wrist. He pulls his finger out of him immediately.
“Too much?”
“It’s…weird.” He huffs out a shaky laugh.
“Good weird?”
“I think so? Do it again.”
He slides his finger in again, stroking slowly from front to back. Viktor’s laugh is sharp and bright this time, a jagged release of nerves and overstimulation. Or maybe it just tickles.
“It’s—ha!—very sensitive on the inside,” he gasps. His eyes are shining, more amber than silver in the low lamplight, color high on his cheeks. He’s so beautiful it hurts sometimes. “Nevertheless. I think we should continue. For science.”
“Well.” Jayce licks his lips. “I think we’ve proven you won’t dissolve any of me.” And he dives back in with his mouth, kissing and licking and running his tongue over everything he can reach.
It tastes like sucking on a hot spoon, and his brain keeps insisting there should be wetness where there isn’t; expecting the organic scents of a human body that are not there at all. But Viktor is so responsive, squirming against his mouth, every place his tongue wanders a new thrill they are discovering together. An entire secret lexicon of quiet little moans and sighs and whimpers pours out of his lips, his fingers threading into Jayce’s hair while he fucks his tongue into him as deep as he can get it.
“Nnnh. More,” he demands, grinding against Jayce’s face. “Use your fingers again.” He’s slick with Jayce’s own spit now and two fingers go in easily, and when his fingertips brush against a lacy splash of gold deep inside him Viktor cries out; grabs Jayce’s wrist again but this time to hold him in place, so he keeps his hand there, working his fingers over that spot again and again. Viktor is making all kinds of incredible noises, rocking against Jayce’s hand, and he would gladly do this until his fingers went numb if Viktor wanted him to, but the longer it goes on the more the sounds Viktor is making edge into grunts of frustration. When he looks up, Viktor has his head is thrown back against the pillow, eyes squeezed shut and lower lip bitten red, straining for something he can’t quite reach.
Finally there’s a noise that’s more like a growl, and Viktor props himself up on his elbows to pin Jayce with his gaze. He’s got that look in his eyes that means it’s useless to try talking him out of doing whatever he wants. “Jayce. I think you should fuck me.”
He’s been so focused on Viktor that he hasn’t been paying attention to his own arousal, but he’s immediately slammed back into awareness of the fact that he’s painfully hard.
“Are you sure?” he makes himself say anyway. “You’re um, kind of tight.” Viktor’s body is snug and hot around the two fingers he still has inside him, in a way that he absolutely cannot think too much about or he will come right now.
“It’s not muscle. You won’t strain it or tear it.”
It’s endearing—and so fucking hot—how quickly his caution has gone out the window now that Jayce has got him a bit worked up. But still. “I don’t want to hurt you,” he says.
Viktor makes an impatient noise and rolls away from him, pawing through the drawer in the little nightstand beside the bed. He tosses something onto the sheets near Jayce—the little bottle of oil from the kitchen that he’d looked all over the damn place for the other day, before accepting that he’d sent it into the same pocket dimension where his left sock and every pencil he’d ever owned resided.
“How long have you had that in there?”
“Irrelevant.” He makes a get on with it hand motion. Oh, he gets bossy when he’s horny and that’s, uh. Yeah. Jayce could definitely get used to that.
It’s not until he’s pulling off his pants and underwear that he notices the ridiculous amount of precome that’s soaked through them. He’s glad he’d already unstrapped his brace for the night; he truly doesn’t think he would have the patience or the higher brain function to deal with all the straps and buckles right now.
God, the way Viktor is looking at him—focused and hungry, unabashed, stretched out with one knee up, the crux of his legs shining from where Jayce has had his mouth all over him. He can only take it in small doses.
He hisses through his teeth when he slicks himself up with oil—just that brief, pragmatic touch has him on the verge of coming. He takes a couple of steadying breaths before maneuvering himself back onto the bed, on his knees between Viktor’s legs. It’s a bit of an awkward fumble at first—the outer layer of Hexcore fiber doesn’t part easily, and after a couple of attempts Viktor ends up holding himself open, which is so weirdly, unspeakably hot Jayce can barely look at it, operating by feel as he nudges against Viktor’s entrance. And then, all at once, his body just sucks in the head of Jayce’s cock, hot and tight around him. He bites the inside of his cheek to distract himself from spilling immediately.
“Oh,” Viktor says, low and guttural, long lashes fluttering on his cheeks. And then: “Keep going.”
“I’m—hnnh—trying not to come.” He closes his eyes and takes steadying breaths through his nose, concentrating on not losing his entire shit before he’s even fully inside him.
“Ohh.” He feels Viktor’s smooth fingers stroke through his beard. “You wouldn’t disappoint me like that, would you?” He can hear the devilish smirk in Viktor’s voice. God, Viktor has his fucking number, doesn’t he? Because no. He wouldn’t.
The hand on his jaw turns firm, and Viktor says in a low voice that brings goosebumps to his arms, “Now keep going.”
He sinks into him inch by inch, and Viktor’s body opens to accept him, snug but yielding, and the…texture situation going on inside him is not like anything he’s ever experienced; it feels incredible and he can’t keep paying attention to it if he wants to last at all. He makes himself open his eyes, because whatever Viktor looks like, he doesn’t want to miss it. But then Viktor’s face, iridescent eyes half-lidded and pink lips open and panting, is entirely too much for him and he has to look away again.
“Unh,” Viktor grunts when he’s inside him to the root. “Jayce—ohmygod—you feel so good.” He wraps his long legs around his waist, pinning him in place against his body.
“God, you’re so fucking hot—” He doesn’t think he can open his eyes again, but he can feel the gold-textured edge of Viktor’s cheekbone against his face and he turns to kiss the horizon line where flesh becomes metal.
Viktor whines when he shifts inside him, ever so slightly—he has to start slow, or he won’t last at all. But slow and deep suits Viktor just fine; he moans the most devastating little noises into Jayce’s ear with every rock of his hips, metal fingers digging into his shoulder, clutching at his back as he gets bolder, thrusting harder and faster. Once he gets into a rhythm it suddenly becomes something he knows, working his body hard toward a goal, and that goal is giving Viktor everything he wants.
“Fuck, don’t stop, don’t stop—” Viktor gasps out between moans, fingers digging into his bicep hard enough there’ll be a bruise there tomorrow. He risks opening his eyes and Viktor’s face is transcendent, sweaty and flushed and delighted, eyes alight and a smile tugging at his lips between gasps. He hitches his legs up higher where they’re wrapped around Jayce’s waist, and then Jayce takes a risk and hooks his good leg into the crook of his arm, trusting Viktor to tell him if it hurts.
“Ohh—fuckyes—” he pants instead, arching up under him. It changes the angle of something just enough that he can see it on Viktor’s face, glowing with sweat and the sweet edge of approaching ecstasy.
He is also literally glowing, the purple fire under his skin swirling and pulsing, suddenly bright enough to shine through all the gaps in his Hexcore skin—
Viktor throws his head back with a sharp cry. He feels the buildup of magic crackle across his skin in the same moment he feels Viktor’s body clench down on him in a shivering pulse. He’s coming before he can think to pull out, wave after wave of white-hot pleasure, and then a blast of purple light blots out everything else.
When he comes back to himself, the first thing he registers is that Viktor is laughing. No. In the interest of observational precision, it should be said that Viktor is giggling.
He rolls over from where he’s flopped mostly face-down on the rumpled bed to see Viktor, lying on his back with a hand pressed against his mouth, trying to stifle the jags of giddy laughter coming out of him. The air around them is suffused with drifting purple sparks.
“Holy shit,” he mumbles.
Viktor turns toward him, sporadic giggles still hiccupping out of him. His hair is a mess and he looks blissed out and fuck-drunk and happy.
Many times before now, Jayce has thought he’d seen the most beautiful version of Viktor to exist. But this one blows them all away.
He scoots closer, smoothing the sweaty hair off Viktor’s forehead, stroking the ripples of gold on his cheek. And then they’re kissing, soft and sweet and unhurried.
After a moment, Viktor pulls back, but only just enough to look at Jayce properly. “Thank you,” he says, quiet and earnest.
“What are you thanking me for?”
“I didn’t know…what was possible, in this body.” His gaze skitters away, suddenly vulnerable.
“Some incredibly hot shit. According to science.”
Viktor snorts with sudden laughter, and it’s so fucking cute he has to kiss him about it for a while, pulling him close so he can feel the beat of his heart and the faint buzzing hum of magic under his skin.
“God, I’m so fucking in love with you.” He doesn’t even mean to say it. It just falls out during a break in the kissing.
Viktor draws back just far enough to cup his cheek, thumb tracing over the scar that shard of window glass had left, that first night making magic together. “You are extraordinary, and I love you so much.”
There’s more kissing after that.
The next time they both have to breathe, Viktor mumbles, “I didn’t turn your dick purple, did I?”
He looks down to check. Just in case. “It’s um. Very well-used. But not purple.” A moment of easy silence. “I um, came inside you. Should’ve probably asked about that.” He had barely registered it, in the middle of all the…everything else going on. But the evidence is there, smeared between Viktor’s legs.
Viktor waves a hand. “What are you going to do, get me pregnant?” he says with a raised eyebrow.
Jayce looks up to where the purple sparks are starting to wink out. “Do you think that happens every time?”
“I don’t know,” Viktor says. “Further testing required.”
“Mm, yes. Agreed.” He nods sagely. “For science.”
Jayce makes a sweet, clumsy attempt to clean them up with a corner of the blanket, and then falls dead asleep with his head on Viktor’s shoulder.
Viktor doesn’t need to sleep in this form, he is reasonably sure. But he’s able to, and falling asleep next to Jayce is one of life’s great pleasures. For the moment, though, he lies awake, staring up at the ceiling where the purple sparks have faded into darkness. The magic inside him hums and purrs, both sated and stirring, always moving, always changing.
It had taken him time and effort, to understand well enough to not be afraid, to know how to move with it, a force that could not be tamed but could be shaped. The arcane, he had come to understand, has laws of motion but not intentions. If it has an urge to consume, it is only in the way a fire has the urge to burn, or electric potential has the urge to discharge. There is no malice in a wildfire or a lightning strike; it simply is. The mage creates the intention.
The Hexcore responds to organic matter. It shifts within him now, seeking. It doesn’t speak, not really, but he can feel its curiosity, violet flickers of light uncurling between his thighs, lapping at the place where Jayce’s seed is leaking slowly out of him onto the sheets. The impulse of a question without words. Who is that?
Calm down. He tugs the inquisitive tendrils of magic gently back into himself, redirecting them to wrap peaceably back into his own swirling, shifting essence. That one is mine.