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“Dmitri Rostov,” Viktor says, tracing a finger down the table of contents of the journal he’s just opened. “That sounds familiar?”
“Oh yeah. I had a couple classes with him. He was kind of a dick.”
They’re doing lit review: skimming through the stacks of scientific journals that have accumulated on the lab bookshelf, looking for articles that might be relevant to their work, or interesting enough on their own. It’s what they do when they’re really stuck on a problem and need something to distract themselves, but neither of them is ready to admit defeat and go home for the night.
“How’s his paper?” Jayce asks, after Viktor has flipped through a couple pages of it.
“Pedestrian.” It’s a devastating insult coming out of Viktor’s mouth.
There’s a stretch of companionable silence. Viktor with his elbows on the workbench, bad leg stretched out under the desk so he can pop his knee idly every few minutes. Jayce using his foot against the edge of the bench to rock slightly back and forth on the back legs of his chair. (He only fell over that one time. He knows precisely how far he can tip it back now. He’s an engineer.)
Viktor can sit in silence for hours. Jayce is always the one whose concentration breaks first. “Y’know, I still don’t understand why we never had a class together,” he says eventually. “You’re only a year older than me.”
“I told you. I lied about my age and I tested out of everything I could, to get to the advanced classes faster. So I was more like three years ahead of you.”
Another long moment of silence before Viktor says, without looking up: “Actually. We did cross paths once. Only I didn’t know it was you.”
The paper he’d been trying to concentrate on is instantly forgotten. “What? When?”
“Heimerdinger’s advanced mechanical engineering seminar. I was the teaching assistant the year you took it.”
The clack of the front legs of his chair hitting the stone floor startles both of them. “That was you?”
His face goes hot. Because the thing is…the thing is…he’d had a whole thing about Heimerdinger’s TA that semester. Unseen, known to him only through their spiky handwriting that littered the project schematics and exams and problem sets he got back. The most ruthless grader he’d ever encountered.
There’s a little smile tugging at the corner of Viktor’s mouth. “Are you just putting this together now?”
“You never came to class.” He would have remembered.
“Why would I? I had better things to do.”
“But you did the grading.”
“I did, yes.”
He’d had a strategy, up to that point. He could skate by on scribbling his way through homework half an hour before class and occasionally pulling an all-nighter right before a big project was due. His marks weren’t perfect, but they were good enough to keep his professors and the Kirammans happy. And as long as they were happy, he had access to the Academy’s labs and libraries, and as much time for Hextech research as he could squeeze in.
But then there was Heimerdinger’s seminar. The lectures and projects were interesting enough, but the professor had been handing out the same practice problems for decades. And his mysterious, maddening TA caught every single mistake he made and shortcut he took.
He couldn’t even complain. They were always right. And every once in a while, among the unending enumerations of his shortcomings, there was a little gem of something else. Once, on a draft schematic, a pointed question that had kept his mid-term project from collapsing under its own weight. Another time, at the end of his solution to a tricky problem, a hastily-scribbled Very good. He had held on to that paper for an embarrassingly long time.
He doesn’t know what expression is on his face right now, but it must be amusing Viktor, because he’s doing that thing where he looks like he’s biting the inside of his cheek to keep from grinning.
“Oh my God.” He wipes a hand down his face. “You were my nemesis that semester. God, you were vicious. Were you that hard a grader on everyone?”
“No. Only you.” Viktor makes a considering hum. “Well…one or two others through the years. But mostly you.”
Just pinching the bridge of his nose isn’t enough. He buries his face in his hands and flops down over the desk. “Why me?”
“You were so smart. I could tell you understood the coursework. But you were sloppy. You made careless mistakes, and you never read back through your own work to catch them. Sometimes you would just write down the answer to a problem, and you’d be correct, but I had to mark you down because you didn’t show your work.”
“Did it in my head,” he mumbles through his hands.
“I know you did.” He risks peeking up though his fingers and Viktor is looking at him with equal parts exasperation and fondness. “Do you have any idea how infuriating you were? I didn’t know anything about you. I thought you were just some rich kid pissing away a genius brain they didn’t even know they had.”
“I was teaching myself runic calculus that semester,” he says, trying to ignore the way his stomach had just done a little flip at genius. “I didn’t pay a lot of attention to homework.”
“Yes. Well. I know that now,” Viktor says, his expression warm. “Unfortunately I don’t think I could have gotten away with giving you extra credit for learning esoteric mathematics for your illegal side projects.”
“When did you figure it out?”
“When I read your confiscated notebook. I recognized your mind.” He shrugs. “And also your handwriting.”
Viktor is still watching him, that steady amber gaze that can feel like it’s sliding right into him, but gently. A sharp knife into butter. “You are having a very intense reaction to this.”
His whole body flushes hot again. “I got— Okay, don’t laugh. But I got kind of obsessed with you. That semester.”
(“Are you sure you don’t have a crush on them?” thirteen-year-old Caitlyn had asked, one of the times she’d snuck away from the Kiramman estate to sit cross-legged on his dormitory bed. “You just…kind of keep talking about them. Like a lot.”)
“I had, um. Some fantasies about you.”
“Oh?” Viktor is not laughing. But there’s a glint of something mischievous in his eyes.
“I’d imagine…my grades had been slipping. Or I failed an exam—”
A snort from Viktor. “You have never once in your life failed an exam.”
“I said fantasies, okay? Anyway, I’d go to your office—you always had your own private office in these scenarios, with a big desk. And you’d offer to…raise my grade in exchange for, um, sexual favors.” He gets it all out in a rush, not quite sure why he’s embarrassed about this, now, when they’ve been waking up in each other’s beds more often than not for the better part of a year.
“I see.” Viktor has one elbow on the workbench, chin resting on his hand, a leonine smile on his face. A finger is keeping his place in the journal, but whatever he’d been reading has been forgotten for now.
“What was I like, in your fantasies?” He sounds genuinely curious, in an academic way. “Was I a man or a woman?”
“Either. Both. It changed. Sometimes it was just…the idea of it more than picturing a specific person.”
“Did you get on your knees?” The tone is exactly the same—light, detached—but when he glances over the look Viktor gives him is heated.
“Um.” His throat is dry. “Sometimes.”
“Did I make you beg?”
He swallows. “Sometimes.”
Viktor drops the journal he’d been reading on the workbench. Stands and crosses the few paces to Jayce’s chair, the tap of his cane marking out slow, deliberate steps. Viktor’s gaze pins him in place the whole time, molten gold. Every movement intentional, unhurried. A hand placed on the edge of the workbench for stability. The press of his cane on the inside of Jayce’s calf, all the signal he needs to spread his legs.
They’re playing a game. It has already started. He knows because Viktor never uses his cane to touch in real life.
Viktor slides into the space between his spread legs and the desk. Hooks his cane over the edge and leans back a little so he can peer down at him.
“Mr. Talis,” he says. “I do not usually entertain visits from students outside of my normal office hours.”
His voice is different. A little colder, consonants razor-sharp, the easy, familiar affection withdrawn. “To what unfortunate circumstance do I owe this interruption?”
Fuck. His brain is working with a deficit of blood already. “M-my grade,” he stumbles. “On the last exam.”
Viktor raises an eyebrow. “Abysmal, yes.” He is effortlessly good at this. Jayce can extol the virtues of Hextech to a crowd of a thousand, but this leaves him tongue-tied, barely remembering the scenario he himself described.
His clothes feel too tight. He’s getting hard faster than he thought possible. “There must be something”—he tilts his gaze up in a look he hopes is beseeching—“I can do to make it up.”
“I don’t usually award extra credit,” Viktor says, the perfect, icy façade uncracked.
He pushes his chair back a little, the scrape of wood jarring in the charged silence of the lab. Just enough so he has room to get down on his knees on the stone floor. It’s quiet enough he can hear the tiny hitch in Viktor’s breath when he looks up at him.
He licks his lips. “Please.”
Viktor’s already a little bit hard in his pants. He can see it from this angle, and Viktor sees that he sees it.
“Mr. Talis.” For the first time his voice is not perfectly steady. He takes a breath before continuing. “Your work this term has been lazy and sloppy.”
“I can do better.” He scoots a little closer on his knees, until he’s almost close enough to press his face into Viktor’s crotch.
“I would hope so.” Viktor reaches down to grip his chin, his thumb just barely brushing the corner of his mouth. “I would like to believe that you can be diligent, thorough, and attentive when sufficiently motivated.”
He drags his thumb along his bottom lip, pulling back before Jayce can capture it in his mouth. Desire clenches in his belly.
“I can be,” he breathes.
“Prove it to me.”
He withdraws his hand and starts unbuttoning his pants with unhurried, practical movements. The leg brace doesn’t give him very much leeway to shove his trousers and underwear down without taking it off, but it’s enough. Pale skin, his cock half hard among dark curls, the mole in the divot of his left hip that Jayce is a little obsessed with: he’s gorgeous like this. He leans languidly back against the workbench, the tension in his grip on the edge of it the only tell that standing like this isn’t easy for him.
Jayce sneaks one more glance up at him, and then he closes his lips over the head of his cock. He licks up and down the velvet-soft skin, feeling him harden under his tongue. Laps at the first bead of precome gathering at the tip. Hears the soft huffs of breath that punch out of him, even though he knows Viktor is trying to play it cool and aloof. It lights something up inside him, every little reaction. He’s done this plenty of times now and it still sends electricity buzzing under his skin, knowing he has the power to take Viktor apart like this, and the privilege to be invited to do so.
The first time he sucks him into his mouth, deep, Viktor twitches and tugs at his hair. “I said thorough,” he hisses, and he thrills at how unsteady his voice sounds. “Take your time.” He keeps his fingers threaded through the short hair on the back of his head, but he doesn’t push or pull or do anything to direct him.
He tries his best, teasing him with little licks and shallow sucks and not enough pressure, even though he wants nothing more than to swallow him down until he chokes. Viktor knows it, too, and every time he looks up Viktor is watching him, like this is a competition to see who loses control first.
The hem of Viktor’s shirt keeps hitting him in the face. After the third time it happens he gives a huff of frustration and pulls off his cock long enough to unbutton the bottom two buttons, enough to shove the fabric out of the way around the sculptural planes of his hips. Then he gets lost for a minute, hypnotized by the way the ridges of his hipbones fit in his hands, mouthing wetly at the alabaster skin below his belly button until Viktor tuts, “Focus.”
In retaliation he takes him in all the way to the back of his throat, earns a sharp “ah!” and an aborted thrust of his hips before he gags and has to pull back.
He’s getting better at it, taking him deep into his throat. What he wants more than anything is for Viktor to take control, grab a handful of his hair and fuck into his mouth, make him take it. But almost as soon as he thinks it, Viktor’s hand relaxes against the back of his head, and he understands without being told that that’s not what’s going to happen here, no; Viktor is going to make him do all the work himself.
He sucks him down again, swallows around him until his throat spasms, pulls back just enough to breathe and hear Viktor gasp out, “Fuck that’s it,” breathless, almost involuntary. So he does it again, and again, spearing himself on Viktor’s cock until his nose is nudging into his pubic hair every time he bobs his head. Everything else in his brain shuts up. There are no problems to solve other than this; no sound in the universe but the obscene wet noises of his mouth and the little grunts and swears coming out of Viktor’s mouth above him. His eyes water; he can feel himself drooling but can’t manage to summon any shame about it. What does it matter when he’s close enough to Viktor’s body that he can feel the sudden coiled tension in his lower belly that means he’s about to come—
And that’s when Viktor pulls back, dragging him away with an insistent hand in his hair.
He leans back, Viktor’s cock flopping out of his mouth trailing thick strand of saliva. He’s too drunk on lust to find it gross when it splats on his chin. When he looks up at Viktor he’s breathing hard, color high on his cheeks, a thin patina of sweat on his forehead.
"Well," he pants, the stern façade cracking a little as a grin tugs at his lips. “Not so lazy after all.” He risks taking both hands off the workbench so he can keep one in his hair while he swipes the drool off his chin with his thumb, and this time he does push it into his mouth for Jayce to suck on eagerly. “And sloppy can be forgiven, under the right circumstances.”
Viktor’s spit-slick cock is right there, inches from his face. He tries to lean forward and get it in his mouth again. Viktor gives a sharp tug on his hair, holding him back. “You really want me to come down your throat, don’t you?”
He nods, stupid with arousal.
“Hm. I have a better idea. What class do you have next?”
“What?” His brain scrambles to catch up. For a moment he’d completely forgotten that there’s supposed to be a narrative thread here.
“It’s that four-hour materials science lecture, isn’t it?” Viktor supplies. “The one in the old lecture hall, with the really hard wooden chairs.”
“Yeah,” he pants. “Yeah, that one.” Now that he doesn’t have all of his attention focused on Viktor’s pleasure, he’s aware that he is desperately hard in his trousers.
“I think you would enjoy spending those four hours with my come leaking out of your ass. Don’t you think?”
He shivers. Viktor can say the dirtiest things with the most deadpan nonchalance. “Yes,” he gasps.
Which is how he ends up bent over the workbench, face pressed into his notes and trousers around his knees as Viktor presses two slick fingers into him, driving him insane alternating between not-nearly-enough and jolts of pleasure than make his legs tremble.
(“Do you think we’re enabling ourselves, putting lube in the tool cabinet?” he’d asked when he first noticed Viktor stashing it there.
“I think we are being prepared for every eventuality,” Viktor had replied.)
Now Viktor crooks his fingers inside him and he arches his back, chasing the sensation without thinking about it. Viktor gives an amused little hum. “So this is what has you applying yourself. I see.” He drags his bent fingers out of him in one slow, dizzying motion.
He’s too needy to be embarrassed about the noise he makes. “I’m ready. Please…”
And then the slick, hot tip of Viktor’s cock is pressing against him, pushing in, slow but unyielding. He’s getting better at this too, understanding how to relax into it, and Viktor has some kind of absurd sixth sense about it, knowing just how much and how fast he can make him take it without hurting him.
He muffles a groan against his forearm as Viktor bottoms out inside him, fingers digging into his hips. He can feel the tension in Viktor’s bad leg where it’s pressed against his own, the tremor of a steel cable near its limit—then Viktor starts moving and he can’t think about anything else but the drag of Viktor’s cock inside him.
It’s always so intense, so much like this—it doesn’t hurt, but it takes a minute for the feeling of overwhelming fullness to unfurl into pleasure. He can tell by Viktor’s iron grip on his hips that he’s working hard to avoid coming immediately, no breath left in either of them for more than rough grunts and moans. He can feel Viktor’s leg shaking against him every time he bottoms out, but he knows better than to ask if he’s all right.
He’ll never say it out loud, but he thinks Viktor prefers it this way—hasty and half-undressed, using the nearest available surface for leverage. He can fuck him harder if he keeps his braces on.
He can tell by the roughness of his rhythm that Viktor’s getting close, and he’d be perfectly happy to let Viktor come inside him and then get himself off however Viktor told him to. But then Viktor’s grip shifts from his hip to his shoulder, bending over him, and his other hand wraps around his cock, stroking him fast and hard as he fucks into him.
“You know what I think?” Viktor pants, his breath hot against the back of his neck. “I think you weren’t worried about your grade at all, golden boy. I think you just wanted to get fucked.”
He comes with a shout, the sudden spark of an electric circuit of pleasure connecting, lighting up his whole body. As he spurts all over Viktor’s fingers he can feel Viktor pulsing hot inside him.
Viktor collapses on top of him, breathing hard, the sharp point of his chin digging into his shoulder. His leg is shaking really hard against Jayce’s thigh.
“Fuck,” Viktor hisses, sudden, urgent. He pulls out of him hastily and Jayce levers himself up on his own watery legs, whipping around in time to grab Viktor as his knee buckles.
He huffs out a sharp noise—frustration, pain, maybe both—but he doesn’t object when Jayce lifts him to sit on the workbench bare-assed; doesn’t object when he pulls the chair closer so he can prop his leg up stretched out on the seat.
They stay there a moment, sweaty foreheads tipped together, silently catching their breath. After a moment Viktor hooks his good leg around the back of his knees, pulling him closer until he can tuck his face against his shoulder. Viktor’s fingers are wound tight into the fabric of his shirt, as if he’s the one who needs soothing and comfort after. Or maybe his leg just hurts and he’s trying to hide it.
Through the sweet, sluggish haze of pleasure, a thought occurs to him. “Did we lock the door?”
It’s late. But not impossibly late.
Viktor snorts. “Fuck if I know.” A jagged wheeze of breathless laughter escapes him.
“Hey, you’re not the one with come dripping out of your ass.” He can feel a line of it trailing down his inner thigh. His pants are still around his knees. He can’t make himself care.
“Oh hush,” Viktor mutters into his shoulder. “You liked it.”
Later, after he’s cleaned them up, after he’s coaxed Viktor into letting him take the outer brace off and knead some of the tension out of his thigh and hip, after they’re settled together on the couch (Viktor is not making it any further than the couch tonight, although he won’t say it) and Viktor is all melty against his chest after taking a painkiller…he thinks about it again.
“What do you think would have happened?” He’s been combing his fingers through Viktor’s hair for some time now. It’s hypnotic but he can tell from his breathing that Viktor is not quite asleep. “If I’d really come to your office, back then?”
“Well. Not that,” Viktor mumbles. “I have ethics in real life.”
“I just meant…we could have known each other then.” There’s a sudden ache in his chest he can’t explain. “We could have had years—”
Viktor presses soft fingertips against his lips, putting a gentle halt to that thought before it can spiral too much. “We know each other now,” he murmurs. “That’s enough.”