Chapter Text
The bridges reopened on Sunday, so Viktor made his Monday test, after all. He caught up on homework, missing Silco. He fell asleep in Silco’s Piltover apartment wishing he’d kept some of Silco’s freshly-scented clothes or something to cuddle with: that coat, maybe. He could have worn it to class and dipped his nose into the collar whenever he wanted to remember Silco’s hand on his thigh under the table, Silco’s teeth digging into his shoulder, Silco’s tongue licking over his cock.
He fiddled with his air purifier prototype. He masturbated on a phone call with Silco Tuesday night.
He didn’t realize something was off. He was a bit tired, maybe, a bit cranky and a bit horny, but nothing out of the ordinary. Then, at the end of Wednesday’s final class, as students were filing from the lecture hall, a group of alphas swaggered up to him.
Their leader leaned on Viktor’s desk, and the others took up positions around him. The professor was already gone, so Viktor would receive no aid from that quarter. The alpha said, “So is this why you’re at the Academy?” He bit his lip and glanced down Viktor’s body.
“Is what why?” Viktor asked. He didn’t know what the alpha meant.
“You’re not here for a degree. You’re here for a mate.”
Viktor scowled and packed up his belongings faster, wishing they would leave him alone. He smelled taken, didn’t he?
“Your plan is to waltz around campus in heat until somebody bites you, is that it? Couldn’t catch a mate on your own?”
“Let me through,” Viktor said. He stood and, thankfully, the alphas made way for him.
They were grinning, though—wicked, knowing, hungry grins as they eyed Viktor up like a free meal.
Was he in pre-heat? He was due sometime within the next few weeks, so it was possible. Fuck, he should have insisted on talking heat plans over with Silco the last time they were together. He’d wanted to, but he thought he had more time.
One of the alphas said, “Let me walk you home, Omega. You shouldn’t be out and about smelling like that.” He inhaled through his nose. “Something might happen to you.” His buddies laughed.
Viktor pushed through the small crowd and walked determinedly out the door.
He was not at the Academy just to find a mate. He’d risked everything for this education, and he was not about to let his designation spoil his chance at a degree, not when he had less than a semester left.
Technically, omega students received heat leave, no questions asked, but Viktor should inform Heimerdinger in person rather than via an email that he was going to miss their appointments for the next week. Viktor owed the professor that courtesy. At least Jayce was there to pick up the slack.
Viktor knocked on Heimerdinger’s office door and then opened it. The professor and Jayce were both inside.
“Viktor, my boy! Come in!” called Heimerdinger. “I have papers for you to grade today. Mr. Talis here has already made a dent in them. Lucky you!”
“I’m very sorry,” Viktor said, “but I have to beg out of grading papers… and the rest of our office work this week.”
Jayce looked up from his seat at the table by the window. “Is something the matter?” he asked.
“It’s, eh, delicate.” Viktor addressed Heimerdinger, who was a beta and therefore safely civil. “I’ll be on sick leave for the next week or so. I apologize for the late notice.”
Jayce inhaled visibly, like that other student had done, and Viktor saw the moment Jayce clocked his scent. Jayce’s pupils dilated. He set down the paper and pen in his hands. He zeroed in on Viktor like a hunting dog.
Alphas.
Viktor ignored Jayce. He would turn affable again as soon as Viktor left and took his pre-heat smell with him; it must be pungent for Jayce to be so worked up from a whiff across the room. Viktor resisted the urge to sniff himself and check.
“Take all the time you need,” Heimerdinger said cordially. “I hope your professors don’t make you do too much work when you get back. If they’re tough on you, send them my way.”
“Thank you, Professor.” Viktor wouldn’t. He could handle makeup assignments. He didn’t want to appear like he was whining or trying to use his designation to weasel out of work. Just a couple more months, he told himself. A couple more months, and he would have his degree, and all the taunts of alpha students and glares of xenophobic professors would be worth it.
Jayce stood up. His chair scratched the floor. “Let me walk you home,” he said.
“No need. I’ll take the bus.”
“Let me come with you. You shouldn’t be traveling alone.” Jayce realized belatedly how condescending he sounded, and he scratched the back of his neck. “Please?” he asked with more timidity. “I just want to make sure you get home safe.”
His heat must be coming upon him faster than he’d realized because the thought of having an alpha he trusted near, someone to lean on and growl at annoying strangers, suddenly sounded like the sweetest indulgence. Viktor sighed and ran a hand down his face. He said, “All right. Just until I get home. Then you come straight back here to help Professor Heimerdinger.”
“Take care of yourself,” Heimerdinger said, and then Jayce packed up his backpack and escorted Viktor out of the office.
“Thanks,” Viktor told Jayce after a few minutes of walking in silence.
“Please don’t thank me. I’m glad you let me come along.” Jayce smelled good, potent and powerful to Viktor’s sensitive nose, but his scent arrived in flashes, like he was trying to hold it back and periodically failed. The little bursts of scent were almost worse for Viktor’s sanity than if Jayce hadn’t been stoppering himself at all, but Viktor appreciated the attempt at courtesy.
Viktor and Jayce waited at the bus stop then sat side-by-side on the ride to Viktor’s apartment.
In his mind, Viktor walked through the next few hours, making preparations before he was too horny to think. He would email his professors that he’d be out for the next week, call Silco and tell him to come over, build up his nest, then… No, scratch that. He would call Silco first, before anything else, and when he was on his way, then Viktor could take care of the other shit.
What if Silco couldn’t get to Piltover fast enough? What if there were a traffic jam or some work emergency or he didn’t pick up his phone?
Viktor told himself to stop freaking out. He was only freaking out because his hormones were in overdrive. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t noticed his pre-heat all morning.
Viktor lifted the collar of his shirt and sniffed it, checking. Yeah, he definitely smelled submissive and breedable. No wonder those alphas had harassed him. “I’m pretty much asking for it, aren’t I?” he asked Jayce.
The comment was meant as a joke, but Jayce frowned and clenched his fists. “Don’t say that. You should be allowed to exist in public without assholes feeling like they can…” Jayce shook his head. “Forget it. Anyway, that’s why I’m here.”
Viktor tapped his fingers on his cane and stared out the window.
Jayce picked up Viktor’s backpack along with his own when the bus came to a stop. “Let me,” he said before Viktor could protest.
“All right. Thanks.” Viktor followed him onto the sidewalk. “It’s this way.” Jayce hadn’t been to the new apartment, so Viktor took the lead.
Jayce smelled obscenely good right now, like strength and safety and sex. Viktor kept a few feet between them. If he got too much alpha on him, Silco was going to freak.
Well, that might be fun. In his head, Viktor drooled over a possessive, sneering Silco, holding Viktor down and filling him up and giving him babies. (It was just the hormones talking. Viktor didn’t actually want to be pregnant, ever, but he could get off on a daydream, okay? He was allowed.)
“It’s this one,” Viktor said, pointing out the building.
Jayce walked Viktor inside and into the elevator. One would hope that Viktor wouldn’t be attacked in his own building between the lobby and his front door, but with alphas, safe was better than sorry.
“I am grateful,” Viktor said. “In case I forgot to say so. Thank you for walking me home.” Now, Viktor was going to collapse onto that squishy couch and call Silco. No, email his professors. No wait: Silco, then couch, then professors. Yes, that was it.
Silco, Silco, Silco. His brain buzzed like a microwave, rotating a single thought. How had he not noticed his heat approaching?
Outside the apartment door, Jayce stopped and frowned.
“I’ll take my bag back, now,” Viktor said. He reached a hand out.
Jayce didn’t move. A muscle worked in his jaw. He was not making any efforts to dampen his scent anymore, and the territorial, potent smell of him clogged the hallway.
“Jayce?” He reached his hand again, like maybe Jayce had missed it. “My bag?”
Jayce was slipping. Perhaps sitting beside Viktor on that bus ride and standing beside him in the elevator had put too much pressure on his self-control. Viktor was sympathetic. If an alpha—an alpha Viktor knew and cared about—had been going into rut a few feet away, Viktor might have acted like a fool, too.
“Jayce,” Viktor said gently, “I think you should go. I think you should go before I unlock my door, to be honest.” Viktor pictured Jayce trying to invite himself inside, and that picture didn’t end well. A few more minutes drunk on the scent of virile alpha, and Viktor might be making some stupid decisions.
“Viktor,” Jayce said, and his voice was thick with repressed need. He still didn’t hand Viktor his backpack; it was slung over one shoulder beside his own. “This is a really nice apartment building.”
Viktor dropped his hand. “Yes.” Where was this going?
“Is this your boyfriend’s place? Did I just bring you to your boyfriend’s place?”
“Sort of. He’s not here at the moment, though. It is his place and my place. I live here, but he also has another place.” Whew, Viktor was already at the incoherency stage of pre-heat. He blinked Jayce’s scent out of his eyes and refocused. “This is my apartment. He lets me use it, since he has a more permanent residence elsewhere.”
A growl built in Jayce’s throat and then cut off just as suddenly. He shifted from one foot to the other. He stared down at Viktor. “Viktor, I need to say something.”
Oh no.
“And I’m not just saying this because you’re about to go into heat, okay? I’ve felt like this for a long time. You’re the smartest, kindest, funniest person I know. I would do anything for you. Do you understand? Anything. Just ask it of me.”
He wanted Viktor to invite him to be his heat partner. Viktor shook his head. “I have a partner, Jayce.”
“I know.” Jayce made a fist and touched it to the bridge of his nose. “I know. It’s just, I’ve never met him. I don’t know him or if he’ll take care of you like you deserve. I would pray you were making him up all this time for some reason, except I can smell him all over you, and he leaves those marks, and it drives me nuts.” Jayce dropped his hand and moved suddenly closer to Viktor, backing him against the door.
Oh no.
Jayce’s chest heaved with restraint. His palms were flat on the door on either side of Viktor. His smell was rich with interest. He didn’t touch Viktor, but he hovered close enough, staring at Viktor’s lips, that Viktor knew he needed to get out of this conversation before Silco smelled a competitor on him. Viktor turned his face into his own shoulder to avoid the stinging, claiming alpha smell in the air. “Please, Viktor,” Jayce grit out. “Just consider me. Please. I would be so good for you. I would make it so good for you.”
“You need to leave before you embarrass yourself any further,” Viktor said as sternly as he could with his nose in his shoulder, cowering and smelling like he wanted to be held down and knotted. Behind him, the door was locked—a nonexistent passage. The key was in Viktor’s bag.
Jayce’s arms were prison bars six inches thick. “I just need to know that you’re taken care of.”
“You know that I’m taken care of,” Viktor shot back. “I have hickies on my neck, as you pointed out, and I live in a really nice apartment, and he sends me snacks all the time. You just want to be the one taking care of me.”
“Yeah. I do.” Jayce’s eyes were pupil-dark, and he smelled so fucking aroused, was that all for Viktor?
Viktor whimpered. And then he got a grip. He pushed against Jayce’s chest. “Give me my bag, and then leave.”
To Jayce’s credit, he let Viktor push him a few paces back. He closed his eyes, sighed in defeat, and dropped Viktor’s backpack to the ground. “All right. All right. I’m sorry.”
“Thanks to you,” Viktor scolded, “now I have to wash a competing alpha scent off me.” He shook his arm out as if to dispel drops of water.
“I know.” At least Jayce looked remorseful, even if he still smelled turned-on. “When will your boyfriend get here?”
“It’s not any of your business. None of this is! You’re not my alpha. Go away, Jayce, please.”
Viktor waited. Jayce watched him wait. Jayce bit his lip and trailed his eyes down Viktor’s neck, his body. “I could be,” Jayce said. “I could be your alpha. Your boyfriend isn’t here yet, right?” He licked his lips hungrily. “I could be your boyfriend.”
If Jayce didn’t leave, Viktor was going to turn from frustrated to needy like a ball racketed to the far side of a court. Tears welled up behind his eyes. Was he going to have to fight Jayce off of him? He reached for the doorknob behind him. Futile. He wouldn’t be able to do much more than slap at Jayce if Jayce decided to take him. If his heat crashed upon him in full force, he might not want to.
Desperate now, Viktor tried again. “Go away! Why are you doing this to me right now? You think I’m going to cheat on my boyfriend just because I’m going into heat? You think I’ll just bend over and present for whichever alpha is nearest?”
“No, Viktor, it’s not like that. I just want—”
He interrupted Jayce. “I don’t. I want you to leave.” He clutched the doorknob.
Jayce took a step back like it pained him. “Okay.” He took another step. He hit the button for the elevator.
Viktor didn’t catch his breath until the elevator doors had closed on Jayce’s form. He slumped into the door. Gods. Heats turned everyone insane.
Now what?
He decided he wasn’t going to forgive Jayce for scaring him. He considered texting Jayce to tell him so and then thought better of it. Then he decided to open the door. He pushed off of it, used his cane to help him down so he could fish around in his backpack, and pulled out his key. He picked up the backpack, unlocked the door, entered the apartment, and locked the door behind him. There. No more wayward alphas.
In another life, in another universe, perhaps Jayce would be the alpha for Viktor. But in this life, all Viktor wanted was Silco.
Viktor left his backpack on the top step and descended into the apartment, letting the familiar space and its familiar scents wash over him.
Maybe he needed to make a pocket-sized air scrubber to carry around with him. Maybe he needed to listen to his body’s signals better and apply scent blockers the moment he felt a tinge of heat.
He was home now. He was safe now. All he lacked was Silco. He pulled out his phone and dialed Silco’s number.
As the phone rang, Viktor wandered to the kitchen and opened the fridge, looking for a cool drink. He chose a can of cherry coke, wet with condensation.
“Hello?” said Silco through the phone. “What is it, baby?”
“I’m starting my heat.” Viktor put the phone between his shoulder and his ear and hooked his cane over his arm to pop the tab on the soda.
He expected immediate joy, immediate promises. What he got was Silco saying, “...And?”
The fridge door swung shut. Viktor froze with the soda sizzling in his hand. Viktor said, “...And, what? How long before you can get here?”
Silco’s side of the phone crinkled with static. The line was silent for a few breaths before Silco said, “Heats weren’t part of our arrangement. You don’t have to give this to me.”
He did not have the patience right now. His eyes watered again. He set the coke on the counter to hold the phone. “I assumed you would be my heat partner.”
“I don’t expect it, Omega.”
“Silco, what are you even saying? Don’t you want me?”
“Of course I do.” Silco’s voice was measured, businesslike. “But you’re under no obligation to sugar during your heat. I’m sure there are partners you’d be more comfortable with. I’m sorry we didn’t have a chance to discuss this beforehand, but you aren’t breaking our deal or cheating or anything of the sort by taking care of yourself during this difficult time. What about your little engineering friend? Have him help you out.”
Help him out, like Viktor was having trouble with a math problem. Viktor didn’t want Jayce. Viktor had just commanded Jayce out of his sight. His lip trembled.
“Do what you need to do. Call me when it’s over.”
“Wait!” Viktor could just picture Silco hanging up the phone and turning it off, leaving Viktor alone, alone. “Don’t go! Silco, you’re my alpha. Nobody else! I need you!”
Silco snapped at someone on his end of the line, “Watch her for a moment.” Who else was there with him? What was he doing?
“Silco,” Viktor whined. His eyes prickled.
Silco was quiet again. On the other end of the line, a door closed. Then, with emotion cracking into his voice, he said, “This is different, Omega. I won’t pay you for a heat.”
Pay him? Viktor was offering Silco his heat, and Silco was fretting over the cost? “I don’t care! Keep your money. Just come over, please.”
“You’re only saying this because—”
“I’m not in heat yet. I know what I want and who I want.” Did Silco think Viktor was stupid? That he couldn’t consent? The tears dripped down Viktor’s cheeks, released at last. “Are you saying you won’t come? I have to be alone?” He shuddered through a breath. “You don’t want to have sex with me if it’s real?”
Was it all fake, all this time? The doting attention, the gifts, the apartment, Viktor’s name on Silco’s lips as he finished inside him, knotting him in the dark—was all of that kink devoid of any true feelings? Viktor had been played. He’d let Silco into his heart when all Silco saw in him was a business transaction.
Viktor had thought he would be spending a lovely, blissful heat with his alpha, but Silco thought Viktor’s heat was too inconvenient to bother with.
Silco said, “Baby, Viktor, no.”
Viktor’s voice came out small. “If you don’t want me for real, I want to be done.” He lifted the cool soda can to his forehead, suddenly burning up. In his fragile emotional state, he couldn’t stand another second of Silco paying for Viktor’s company when Silco’s company was all Viktor desired. “Actually, we’re done regardless. No more sugaring. I just want you.”
If Silco were playing with Viktor’s feelings, professing how much he cared just for the sick thrill of leading Viktor on, then Viktor was out. He couldn’t bear Silco’s disinterest. Viktor would lose his meal ticket and his apartment, or he would gain a relationship; either way, the transaction ended here.
Viktor said, “If you want to be my boyfriend for real, then come over. Please.”
“I’ll be there in thirty-five minutes.”
The line went dead.