Work Text:
“How was your lunch with Caitlyn?”
Jayce groans as he crosses from the threshold of their laboratory over to his workstation. Once there, he slides onto his stool and drops his head in his arms atop his desk. He allows himself a moment of quiet, settling into the steady comfort of Viktor’s presence, before he reports, “She’s about to start officially courting that girl she met in Zaun who she wouldn’t shut up about. The one who gave her that eyebrow piercing.”
“Vi, yes?” Viktor checks.
“Yeah. Good memory.” Jayce doesn’t lift his head, but he continues, “Turns out that Vi is the daughter of The Eye and The Hound, from the Lanes.”
Viktor hums. It is a hum pitched in a way that conveys Viktor is somewhat surprised, but Jayce knows it primarily means Viktor is letting his partner know that he is listening.
So Jayce continues, “Cait was worried for a while, but Cassandra’s actually thrilled that her daughter’s new girlfriend is basically Zaunite Royalty. Shows House Kirraman’s dedication to maintaining positive relations in the wake of Zaun’s formal independence, something something, politics, something.” He sighs, tries to focus on the positive. “Cait’s happy, though, so all of that is great.”
Jayce’s head is still on the desk.
Viktor prompts, sounding amused, “I am assuming there is some news which you do not consider great?”
Jayce sighs and groans, “Cait also won’t shut up about the new piercings she wants, and I really don’t want to hear about it anymore.”
Viktor huffs a quiet laugh. He asks, “What is she thinking of getting?”
“Pierced nipples,” Jayce bemoans, without raising his head. “I don’t want to think about it anymore either, Vik.”
Jayce truly doesn't, and she’d brought it up constantly. The first time might have been an earnest solicitation for his opinion, but after Jayce’s initial reaction, a gleam had set in Cait’s eye and she had leaned in over their table in the small restaurant to press the attack ruthlessly. Even when the moment had passed, mostly because Jayce had threatened to leave, she’d continued to bring it up at every conceivable opening. As well as some extra openings that were, frankly, inconceivable.
It had been great to see Cait, as always, but conversationally? Lunch had been an absolute nightmare.
“It’s Cait,” Jayce whines, “so it’s gross.”
Viktor hums again, vaguely sympathetically. He offers, “Eh, give her time. I was quite fixated on mine when I first got them.”
Jayce is sitting on his lab stool. Jayce’s head is in his arms atop his desk.
These facts are good facts.
Because these facts provide Jayce with a couple points of reference to cling to as reality tears itself apart around him.
“Your what?”
It takes Jayce a moment to realize that he’d been the one to speak, at which point Jayce can’t recall if his question had come out as a whimper or a shout or something normal. He hadn’t exactly had a choice in the matter, given it had been uttered without his conscious direction.
“My nipple piercings.” Viktor sounds like he’s shrugging. He sounds like he is making an offhand comment.
Like he is saying something casual. Mundane. Expected.
Like he is not saying something that will ruin his partner’s life.
“Cool,” Jayce manages, eventually.
Time passes.
Jayce listens to the sound of chalk on a board. Viktor hums, after a while; the kind of hum that means he’s found something.
Viktor shifts after that hum, cane tapping on the ground, probably moving from the board back to the prototype at his workstation. There is a clinking sound as Viktor removes a metallic plate from the machine housing a stabilized crystal, probably in order to attempt a new rune combination. Jayce could probably figure out which rune combination if he looked at the chalkboard again, but he can’t.
Viktor hums again, and this time it’s the kind of hum that means he’s lost something.
“Jayce, could you bring me the plate with the—”
“No,” Jayce says, immediately, head still in his arms on his desk.
Viktor hesitates, before he asks, softly, “No?”
“Yep,” Jayce says.
The lab is quiet, for a beat.
Viktor sounds confused when he warily breaks the silence with, “I was going to say that I saw you had the plates with the precision rune variants near your workstation. Did you put them elsewhere?”
Jayce lifts his head off his desk. The container that houses the metallic plates Viktor is referring to, which are designed to slot into their prototypes to express combinations without re-carving runes every time they test a new sequence, is sitting almost directly in front of him. In a small box.
Slightly to the left of Jayce, and exactly where Viktor had probably seen them last.
“They’re here,” Jayce says.
“...But you cannot bring them?”
“I can’t stand up right now,” Jayce explains, before his brain has the opportunity to offer him the advice not to do so.
His brain belatedly offers an excuse for why it hadn’t helped in time; an excuse related to the reason he can’t stand up right now. Something to do with blood flow, something that grows gradually clearer as his brain reminds him, unhelpfully, that it also needs oxygen to operate.
Another part of Jayce’s anatomy is being overdemanding.
After an immeasurable amount of mortifying quiet, the lab fills with the sound of Viktor’s slow steps, the click of his cane on tile; a warning Jayce pays no mind until Viktor’s hand falls on Jayce’s shoulder, which doesn’t help matters much at all.
“Jayce?” Viktor’s voice is concerned. When Jayce glances up, he finds that Viktor’s expression matches. His brows are low and drawn together, and his gaze searches Jayce’s. “Are you well?”
“Yep,” Jayce lies.
Viktor’s golden eyes flit over Jayce’s features, undoubtedly finding one of his tells, and the worry in Viktor’s expression deepens. “Do you need to lie down? Are you faint?”
Jayce doesn't answer.
Viktor asks, “Jayce, what is happening?”
Jayce wants to die.
Then Viktor puts a hand on his forehead, his touch gentle, soft. And Viktor asks, “A fever?”
So Jayce needs to die.
“You have nipple piercings?” Jayce hears himself ask.
Viktor’s expression clears, some relief replacing the concern. He cringes, after an exhale, and says, remorsefully, “I do, yes. I apologize, Jayce. I should not have brought it up. I did not mean to contribute to the discomfort Caitlyn has clearly inflicted upon you this afternoon.”
Jayce blinks, slowly, because he had already lost track a little of how they’d gotten here. Wherever here is. The lab, still, probably.
Viktor’s mouth tilts up at the corner in an apologetic grin as he says, “Undoubtedly you find hearing about mine is also, eh… gross. I should have—”
Jayce laughs. Loudly.
Then he drops his head back into his arms and he continues laughing. Viktor lifts his hand off Jayce’s shoulder. Probably because Jayce’s shoulders are shaking.
Jayce hasn’t laughed this hard in a while.
Jayce hasn’t been this hard in a while, either.
“Jayce?”
“Viktor,” Jayce gasps, eventually. “You just said the most incorrect thing I have ever heard in my life.”
Viktor doesn’t respond.
Jayce doesn’t lift his head, and he laughs just a little more, though something almost like dread is beginning to coil in his chest. In the meantime, he continues, “You just said something so false that I think we might need to invent another branch of logical reasoning so I can even try to show you how false it is. Genuinely. What you just said goes beyond superfalse. Is there a hyperfalse?”
Viktor doesn’t say anything.
Jayce observes, to his desk, upon which his head is spinning, “I think you just invented hyperfalse. Good job.”
Jayce isn’t sure who he’s speaking to, but his desk does not respond.
“What is happening?” Viktor asks, sounding bewildered. He drops his hand back on Jayce’s shoulder, and then says, softer, “Jayce, should I be worried?”
“What shape are they?”
“Hyperfalsehoods?” Viktor asks, after a moment. “They have shapes, now?”
Jayce doesn’t answer.
Viktor says, still sounding concerned, but now also somewhat frustrated by his own confusion, “Since I have apparently invented them, I shall choose hexagonal, so that it may fit in with the other names you have bestowed upon our creations. There should be some degree of consistency, no? Hextech, hexclaw, hexhyperfal—”
“Your piercings,” Jayce elaborates. His own voice is low, rough, and he can’t do anything about that.
The lab is quiet, for a long moment.
Then for a longer moment.
Then Viktor says, “Rings.”
Jayce decides that maybe he is already dead.
“Cool,” Jayce says, again, like that is a normal thing to say in response to whatever is happening.
Jayce hears a shaky breath from somewhere over his shoulder.
It almost doesn’t feel right that his body can experience this many extremes simultaneously. Dread, arousal, hysteria. Surely some of those must be incompatible.
Viktor’s hand lifts away. Jayce wishes it would come back, but it’s too late for that, now.
“You cannot stand up,” Viktor repeats, carefully.
It’s not the hum that means Viktor has found something, but Jayce knows he’s finally found something.
Something Jayce had kept hidden for the better part of years.
“That is correct,” Jayce says, because there’s hardly any reason not to, anymore.
He hears Viktor say, quietly, “Not gross, then.”
“No,” Jayce confirms, voice still uncontrollably low. “Yours are not gross.”
There is another silence. Jayce shifts his arms so he can lean his forehead against the cool metal of his desk directly. It does not help, because it does not whisk him into the past or let him stop picturing Vik’s fucking—
Viktor says, very carefully, “This is a surprising development, Jayce.”
“Not really,” Jayce disagrees. “Not for me. Really just blew straight past the tipping point, I think.”
Jayce lifts his head off his arms, off his desk. He blinks, allowing himself a moment to adjust to the sudden light. Then he reaches out, slowly, and grabs the box of precision rune variant plates. Without looking, Jayce slides it to the edge of his desk, closer to his partner.
He says, quietly, “You’re brilliant. I knew you were gonna figure it out eventually, I just didn’t think that was going to be today.”
Viktor does not reach for the box, though.
Jayce stares straight ahead, at nothing in particular. The laughter is long gone, now. He swallows, throat tight. Rubs his eyes, because…
Well, he can’t cry.
He needs to fix this.
So Jayce says, “I am so sorry, Viktor. If you just give me a few minutes, I’ll be fine. We can move past this, and I promise I won’t bring it up again. Ever.”
Viktor says, very softly and very quietly, “Would you like to see them?”
So Jayce decides he is definitely already dead.
“Yep,” Jayce says, from somewhere beyond the veil.
He looks over at Viktor, just to see if his partner has also died.
It seems so. Viktor’s golden eyes are wide, blown out, and there is a flush high on his cheeks.
Maybe one of them had dropped a hexstone in the lab.
Or, maybe they are both alive, and Jayce should have said something about being in love with Viktor years ago.
Jayce swallows nothing, and it feels instead like he’s swallowed a small sun that’s now setting him aglow from within. He asks, still uncontrollably low, but hopeful, heart racing, “Are you offering, Vik?”
Viktor doesn’t respond. Not immediately.
When Viktor does respond, he doesn’t say anything. He props his cane against Jayce’s desk, near the box of precision rune plates. Then he lifts his fingers, slowly, up to his neck, and starts to undo his own cravat.
Jayce’s mind shuts down.
“I’m in love with you,” Jayce hears himself say. Not a confession, anymore. Just a warning. Just in case that’s somehow unclear, here.
“Are you, now?” Viktor’s voice is also low, suddenly. Almost angry, actually. His golden eyes narrow, and his clever fingers twist into the fabric as he pulls the cravat loose. “How long, Jayce?”
“Years,” Jayce admits, staring.
Viktor nods, and he undoes the knot. He lets the cravat ends hang around his neck, framing the line of his pale throat, and he moves his hands to the next obstruction.
“You could have said something,” Viktor notes, as he opens the buttons of his vest in precise, controlled movements.
“I’m getting that,” Jayce says. But in truth, he’s not sure he is getting that. He’s seeing it, but the fact that it is happening isn’t really registering.
Jayce’s brain reminds him it needs oxygen, and bloodflow, and that another part of his anatomy is being overdemanding.
Jayce ignores his brain, because that problem isn’t one that he can solve any time soon, and he focuses on bunching his hands into fists. Viktor might have asked if Jayce wanted to see, but he hasn’t said anything that might mean Jayce is allowed to touch.
“You are going to go lock the door now, Jayce,” Viktor informs him, shrugging his vest off his shoulders, hands moving to undo the buttons of his shirt.
Jayce nods and stands rapidly, then pauses to wait for the sudden ensuing dizziness to fade or for reality to reassert itself. In the meantime, he watches Viktor’s gaze dart down to the reason that Jayce’s brain isn’t working.
Viktor’s breath catches on a sharp inhale, and his hands stop moving.
Jayce stares, and he watches Viktor’s mouth move, thin lips and a flash of teeth as Viktor also stares, and as Viktor says, “Fuck, Jayce, you’re—”
Suddenly, Jayce decides, “I don’t give a shit about the door,” and he reaches out to—
He stops, though, at the sharp look in Viktor’s eyes. He bunches his hands back into fists.
Jayce begs, instead. A high, whined, breathy, “Viktor. I need to touch you.”
“No,” Viktor says, angry again. “I have, apparently, been waiting years, Jayce, for absolutely no reason. For years, you have been inadvertently torturing me.”
Jayce blinks.
“I have loved you for years,” Viktor says, which would be wonderful, except he sounds hurt, and still angry, and he continues, “I have pushed it aside for years.”
Jayce hears a sound escape from the back of his throat.
Viktor stares him down, heady and furious, and his hands resume working at his buttons. He declares, “I am going to wait ten more seconds, because you are going to lock the fucking door.”
Jayce almost begs again, but Viktor continues, in a tone that leaves no room for Jayce to think, “You are not leaving here until I am done with you, Jayce, and I will not have someone rushing in to rescue the Man of Progress the moment I have you screaming my name.”
Jayce finds himself locking the door.
Thinking back, though, Jayce is utterly unaware how he’d gotten to the door.
But the door is locked, so Jayce must have locked it. And Jayce is standing before it, and reality has yet to reassert itself, which might mean whatever is happening is real.
So Jayce leans his head against the door — which does, fortunately, seem to be a solid object; a good sign — and he tries to collect himself. The first part of himself he gets together is one which gives voice to something small and indignant. “You know, Viktor, you could have said something.”
“Clearly I should have,” Viktor says. His voice is soft now, only angry at the edges. Jayce hears him inhale, exhale, and Jayce listens, head pressed against the door, as Viktor explains, “If it is any consolation, I am primarily upset with myself, and I am choosing to focus on the fact that I am upset because being ecstatically happy is… eh, it is somewhat out of my wheelhouse. I am going to need time to figure out how to express it.”
Viktor’s voice sounds ragged, and he audibly swallows before he adds, “Please do not doubt that I love you too, Jayce. Very much.”
“Oh.” Jayce nods, something in his chest loosening as something else tightens. “Yep. Okay. The time thing. I get that. I’ll probably be on the same page when I can think again. If that happens. Ever.”
Viktor continues, though, like Jayce hadn’t spoken, or like Viktor had just been getting started, “I have adored you since the night we cracked Hextech. Your passion, your brilliance, your devotion to do good, your dream, and your willingness to share it with me? I was lost.”
Jayce mutters, “Oh god,” and he trembles against the probably-real door.
“Also, your jaw is stupid, so I have wanted to fuck you for even longer, because I have wanted to do that since the moment I first saw you.”
“Please,” Jayce says, not sure entirely what he’s asking for.
Fortunately, Viktor has always, always, been ready with a breakthrough when Jayce desperately needs one.
Viktor breaks through. He says, gently, softly, “Turn around, Jayce.”
Jayce turns.
He lifts his eyes. Viktor’s shirt is gone, and his undershirt. Viktor is leaning against Jayce’s desk, gripping the edges. Eyes golden and dark.
Jayce’s eyes trace downwards.
Viktor does have nipple piercings. They are rings. Silver ones.
“Come here.”
Jayce steps closer, because he’s been told to. He steps closer again. And again.
Until he is standing in front of Viktor, as close as he dares to.
Until Viktor asks, gently, “What do you want to happen now, Jayce?”
Jayce’s mouth opens, closes, and he finally gets out, “I can’t—” before he trails off, the rest of it caught somewhere.
Viktor’s eyes are soft. “Words?”
Jayce nods.
“Yes or no, then. Can you do that for me?”
Jayce nods once more.
“Good, Jayce,” Viktor says, eyes wide and wondering. “My Jayce. My love.”
Jayce makes a sound, probably. One that has Viktor reaching towards him, like he means to… But then Viktor’s hands twitch, and he pulls them back to grip on the desk, though it looks like it pains him.
Jayce can relate, given the sharp sensation of the half-moon crescents from his own nails digging into the meat of his palms.
A ragged inhale, and Viktor continues, “There is no rush. Not truly. Please tell me honestly, is this too much?”
Jayce shakes his head. It’s not enough.
“Would you still like to touch me?”
Jayce looks at his partner, speechless, searching.
Viktor stares back, and rasps, “Assume I am offering, unless I state otherwise.”
Jayce nods, then, because he wants to touch Viktor a little like he wants to breathe, at this point.
“Are you comfortable being touched?”
Jayce nods again.
“Kissed?” Viktor checks.
Jayce nods again, breathless, drifting closer.
“Good, Jayce,” Viktor breathes. His golden eyes dart down to Jayce’s mouth. “If you would like me to stop?”
Jayce’s jaw works, but sound doesn’t make its way thorough.
Viktor suggests, “You will tap me or the desk, maybe? Three times. Show me you can, please.”
Jayce drifts closer, reaches past Viktor, and taps the desk. Once. Twice. Thrice.
Viktor nods. Eyes searching Jayce’s features, he says, “Good. Until you find words once more, and we can have a conversation, only this will happen: I am going to kiss you, and you are welcome to touch me, however you would like, anywhere I am currently unclothed. Do you understand?”
Jayce nods again, and drifts even closer. His breath and Viktor’s combining.
Viktor gaze drops down to Jayce’s mouth, then flicks up again. Searching, before he moves in to close the space between them. Which he does with his fine fingertips first, placing them on Jayce’s jaw, tracing over the line of it with something like reverence. Then pressure; light. A suggestion, not a command, one that guides Jayce closer. Helpless before his heart, Jayce follows it.
And when Viktor presses his lips to Jayce’s, it is everything.
Jayce brings his hands up to cradle Viktor’s face, and that’s everything, too. It’s everything Jayce had imagined, and everything he hadn’t imagined, because somehow it is real and Viktor is actually kissing him.
And kissing him.
And kissing him.
And between the hand that moves into Jayce’s hair, and Viktor’s mouth opening under his own, Jayce’s head goes blissfully quiet.
Jayce’s capacity to form words doesn't return until many kisses later, in a slightly different location, when he and Viktor are wound up in one another atop the couch they keep in the lab. Jayce’s head is pressed against Viktor’s still-bare chest as he listens to the steady rhythm of his partner’s heartbeat.
Jayce lets his hands roam; an exploration absent a destination, but it has been an informative one regardless. Viktor’s small tremors and shaky breaths are his only reward, along with the discovery that Viktor is ticklish in the space between his hips and his ribcage. Viktor’s hold on Jayce is very different. Steady. Warm. Firm.
His breath stirs Jayce’s hair.
Jayce confesses, quietly, “I spent so long terrified you’d be upset with me if you ever found out.”
Viktor hums. Kisses Jayce’s forehead. Says, “That is uncharacteristically unintelligent of you.”
“I think I just…” Jayce tries, then he trails off.
Viktor waits, holding Jayce close. Patient.
Jayce says, “Then you were upset, but in a way I wasn’t ready for. I think I got stuck with the words somewhere.” A shaky exhale. “I don’t do great when people are upset with me, and I can get… talking can get hard, especially when… with sex.”
It is hard to admit, fragmented though the admission is, mostly because it brings to mind memories Jayce prefers not to dwell on. He’s lost words during intimacy before. It’s been a problem before.
Viktor hums, cards his fingers through Jayce’s hair. He says, “I understand. I am sorry my reaction gave you reason to believe I might be anything other than elated.” Viktor huffs a laugh, though it seems directed at himself, and he says, “The only explanation I can offer is that I was taken by surprise, and I also, eh…”
He sighs, pulls his hand away from Jayce’s hair. Then continues, voice raw, “I have been pent up. I have wanted you for such a long time, Jayce.”
Jayce nods, presses his lips to the center of Viktor’s chest, over his heart. Then he shifts his ear back to listen to its beating.
Viktor’s hand returns, and he runs his fingers gently along Jayce’s scalp as he says, softly, “But you are important to me. We are both well aware I can be somewhat reckless, but I am not willing to take risks with this. With you. That is the reason I had not said anything before now. I… I am happy we slowed down.” Jayce can’t see it, but he knows, somehow, that Viktor closes his eyes for a moment. Something in the flex of his fingers, maybe. Like Viktor is steadying himself before he says, “Jayce… if you need to reconsider—”
“I don’t, Viktor,” Jayce says, immediately. “I love you.”
A shaky, relieved exhale, and another kiss to Jayce’s head.
Jayce feels his lips twitch into a smile as he winds his fingers together with Viktor’s. He draws Viktor’s hand up to his mouth and kisses each knuckle in turn, before he lets his eyes fall closed, listening to Viktor’s breath. He murmurs, “I think you were mostly worried I wouldn’t be able to ‘scream your name’ unless I was able to talk.”
Viktor huffs a laugh and buries a smile in Jayce’s hair, along with a mumbled, “Mm. Yes. That too.”
“Maybe we…” Jayce starts. Stops. Takes a deep breath, collecting his courage. He looks at Viktor then, meets his golden eyes, and finishes, “Maybe we take some time, just to process? And maybe we go out to dinner? Tomorrow?”
“I would love that,” Viktor admits. His smile is careful, almost, but radiant.
Jayce beams at him and kisses Viktor’s knuckles again before he ducks his head back to rest on Viktor’s chest. His hands roam, then, where they hadn’t before.
Upwards, from Viktor’s hips. To a ring, its metal cool beneath his fingers. Viktor goes incredibly still and Jayce waits.
“You are welcome to—” Viktor breathes, before he shudders and exhales sharply, a low sound absent words.
Because Jayce had tugged. Lightly.
Just once.
He moves his hand back to Viktor’s hip, after. Says, as if he’d been uninterrupted, “After dinner, Viktor, I want you to take me home, because I want to taste your nipple piercings.”
Viktor whines, hips shifting, but Jayce tightens his grip to hold him still.
Jayce continues, “And just in case I have trouble saying it then, I’d love it if I could taste you. And I’d really like you to fuck me.”
Jayce waits, and smiles when he notes that his partner’s heart is beating faster than it had been.
It takes around a minute, before Viktor checks, “Which we will not discuss further until tomorrow?” His voice cracks in the middle, somewhere.
Jayce nods, grinning, almost smug. Kisses the center of Viktor’s chest.
“I see. Now you are going to advertently torture me,” Viktor observes, but he's audibly grinning, and he nestles another kiss in Jayce’s hair and holds him close as he sighs, and says, “It is a date, then.”
Shortly after, they’d gone to their respective homes, both under the thin guise of “processing.”
Jayce had managed to “process” three times under the icy spray of his shower before he’d managed to not be hard.
Afterwards, he’d laid atop his bed, staring at the ceiling. For hours.
Viktor’s eyes, golden and bright.
His voice, commanding but soft. Gentle.
Please do not doubt that I love you too, Jayce. Very much.
Viktor’s skin under Jayce’s hands. Viktor’s mouth.
Jayce stares at the ceiling until he feels like he might need to process again, as the blood stirs beneath his skin and his heart hammers in his chest.
Viktor against the chalkboard, his mind supplies. A classic.
Jayce’s hand slips down, and fortunately, Jayce has new details to add to a repeat fantasy. Like Viktor’s soft gasps, and his nipple piercings, and the taste of Viktor’s tongue. Jayce could press him up against the chalk scrawl, smearing the rune combinations, and Viktor would…
Viktor would smear rune combinations. Because Viktor’s been testing rune combinations.
Like the one in the equation on the board behind Viktor, which resolves and crystallizes in Jayce’s memory even though it had escaped his notice in the moment.
Viktor had needed the precision rune variant plates. Which had been on Jayce’s desk, because Jayce had needed… so that Jayce could…
So Jayce could take them to the forge, because he’d found a small…
Just a dent, in one of the…
But Viktor’s rune combination might explode, actually, because of that dent.
“Shit,” Jayce breathes, and he sits up, hauls on pants and a shirt, and races back to the lab.
He is, fortunately, quick enough to make it just in time to prevent said explosion.
Viktor glances up from the prototype he’s standing in front of when Jayce bursts through the lab door.
Viktor hums, like a confirmation, and says, quietly, “Then you could not sleep either.”
“Hadn’t gotten around to trying,” Jayce admits, out of breath. He points at the chalkboard, orders, “Do not try that sequence in the prototype. There’s a dent on the plate.”
Jayce leans on the door frame, after, and grips his chest. He inhales, deep. Then exhales. Then repeats that a few times, because he had sprinted.
When he feels moderately less breathless, he meets Viktor’s perplexed gaze and adds, “It’ll explode, I think?”
Viktor glances at the chalkboard. Jayce does too, contemplates, and runs a full calculation now that he has the time.
Then Jayce corrects, “Implode, actually. Either way, don’t.”
Viktor stares at Jayce for a long moment, before he looks down at the plate held aloft in his own hands, which he had been moments away from slotting into place. Jayce watches him consider it, but Viktor doesn’t seem to be seeking out the dent Jayce had been referring to. He seems to be looking at the disk more like it has wronged him, somehow. Eventually Viktor sighs and tosses the metal disk to the side of his workstation.
He stares at his empty hands. “No working, then.”
Jayce nods. “Not until I get that plate down to the forge to fix up.”
Viktor nods also, and says, quietly, “No sleep, either.”
Jayce shrugs.
Viktor pinches the bridge of his nose, and sounding more frustrated than Jayce has ever heard him sound, he says, “Well, I suppose I will sit here. Until tomorrow.”
Jayce feels weak with relief, giddy at his partner’s impatience, and somehow still hard. He grins, watching as his partner glances at the clock in the corner and makes an expression that makes Jayce think Viktor might be trying to glower time itself into accelerating. It would certainly work on Jayce, if Jayce were time itself.
Viktor stares down at his hands some more before he groans and drops his face into them.
He warns, slightly muffled, “Jayce, I might implode.”
Jayce huffs a laugh. He steps closer, clears his throat. “Well, we can’t have that.”
Viktor glances up, then. Hopeful and wary both. Jayce steps through the lab, around their prototype, and he lets a hand fall on Viktor’s shoulder. Reassuring. Familiar.
Viktor glances at Jayce’s hand, then back, and he does something with his face that flickers between an accusatory glare, devotion, and pouting.
So Jayce uses the grip on Viktor’s shoulder to angle him closer. Ducks down. Jayce kisses Viktor’s cheek, light and lingering.
Viktor isn’t breathing, and Viktor hadn’t bothered to put his cravat back on, earlier. Or his vest. Just his shirt.
So Jayce kisses Viktor’s cheek, then he kisses Viktor’s jaw, and then he brings his arm around Viktor’s waist, and he kisses down Viktor’s slender neck.
Viktor stays admirably still, until Jayce mutters, against Viktor’s jumping pulse, “How can I help?”
At which point Viktor’s hands claw into Jayce’s hair, and he wrenches Jayce’s mouth to meet his own. He clings to Jayce, aligning their hips, and he rolls pointedly against him.
And in the slim space between them after Jayce pulls back to breathe, Viktor mumbles, “Jayce. Please don’t make me wait.”
Jayce doesn't intend to. “Tell me what you want,” he begs.
“You,” Viktor hisses, tilting his head to the side, gripping Jayce’s hair to guide him closer.
Jayce rolls his hips against Viktor’s, and asks, low, against the shell of Viktor’s ear, “How?”
“However,” Viktor breathes, shuddering. “I am… any way you want.”
“I want it lots of ways, Viktor,” Jayce mutters. “Thought about it constantly. You want to bend me over this desk? Get on my knees for you?”
Viktor whines.
“You want me to pin you against the chalkboard? Make love to you on that couch?”
“Yes,” Viktor gasps, hips rolling again. “Yes, Jayce. All of it.”
Impossibly good news. Unhelpful, though.
“Wanna make you feel good, Viktor,” Jayce says, breathy and low. “I want you to tell me how.”
“Couch,” Viktor says. Clear, now. A command, not a suggestion. Like a gear has clicked into place. Jayce reels with the sudden rightness of it.
They make it to the couch, and somehow in the interim Jayce loses his shirt, and Vikor’s comes half undone.
Viktor lands on top of him, his hands on Jayce’s belt, tugging it away, and Jayce exhales in relief at the absence of the confines of his pants before Viktor’s hand is around him. Viktor’s the one who groans, low, even as Jayce twitches forwards and gasps into the crook of Viktor’s neck.
“Cannot take you tonight,” Viktor says. Spoken as a fact, but layered in some combination of wonder and disappointment. “You are huge.”
“Later,” Jayce promises, dizzy with want as he rocks into Viktor’s palm. “Can’t take you either. No lube. Just, let me,” as his thumbs find Viktor’s nipples, tracing, as he stares up into golden eyes. And when Viktor gasps and nods and sits up to remove his shirt entirely, Jayce leans forward, following, and abruptly seals his mouth around one.
Viktor shouts, and his hands fly to grip Jayce’s shoulders like he needs to steady himself, nails digging into Jayce’s skin. Jayce peers up, seeking, and waits for another small nod as Viktor rolls against him.
Viktor cries out again when Jayce lets his tongue flick against the ring, lightly, and once more when Jayce lets his hand find its way into Viktor’s pants. Viktor shudders against him, says, shattered, “Jayce,” as Jayce lets reality unfold before him like it’s one of the dreams that have grown achingly familiar since the day he met Viktor. Lets the tip of his tongue catch in the loop so he can pull, then lave it flat again, then graze with his teeth, as his hand finds a rhythm that matches Viktor’s stuttering hips.
Fragments, then. Viktor babbles, almost.
“Your palm, Ja—”
“Fuck, yes, just like—”
“Don’t stop, please don’t stop—”
And at some point Viktor’s fingers return to Jayce’s length, his grip steady and sure. So Jayce whines around the piercing resting on his tongue as Viktor rocks into his hand, and it’s like that, pressed together, that they shudder apart.
Jayce first, somehow, eyes slamming shut against the tide of sensation, mouth falling open and head falling back against the couch’s armrest, choking Viktor’s name as every muscle in his body clenches and releases. And then Viktor makes a sound that wrenches Jayce’s eyes open, because Jayce can't possibly miss the opportunity to stare up into Viktor’s sharp features and watch as he follows.
Golden eyes, lips parted, hair falling over his forehead.
Time goes hazy and soft, when Viktor captures Jayce’s mouth with his own and slumps bonelessly against him.
“Okay?” Jayce asks, when he has the capacity. Sometime after long moments have passed, when his breath has mostly returned.
Viktor nods, shifts, settles.
“You?” Viktor checks, still breathless himself.
Jayce swallows, lets his hands roam over alabaster skin dotted with newly-discovered beloved marks. He clears his throat, then rasps, “We on for dinner still?”
Viktor snorts. Mumbles, “Of course we are.”
“Then yes,” Jayce confirms. “More than okay.”
Viktor hums. It’s not a hum Jayce recognizes, yet. He’s pretty sure this one means something like adoration. Something like contentment. He hopes he’ll get to hear more of it, now.
Viktor winds their fingers together, and he stares at their joined hands like he’s made a discovery. His smile is soft and as warm as their bodies feel pressed together.
“If she goes through with it, I am going to buy her a set,” Viktor says, hazily. “The nicest I can find.”
Jayce blinks, uncomprehending for a single, blissful moment.
Then he groans, in a fashion very dissimilar to the way he had been groaning in the past several hours. “Now, Vik?”
But he holds Viktor close in his arms, and he can’t truly bring himself to be bothered.
Viktor mumbles against Jayce’s chest, “I owe Caitlyn Kiramman a debt I cannot repay.”