Archive of Our Own

“Is it—is it in yet?”

“Not all the way I just need—fuck, it’s really tight, V”

There’s a sudden snap! that sounds in the half-moment before the pressure Jayce was applying to the one end of the calibration cage gives, sending him face-first into the hard and unyielding surface of the worktable beneath him. A white-hot explosion of pain sparks out from his cheekbone, sending him reeling back in time to watch Viktor slump forward across the metal bars he was responsible for holding in place.

Jayce blinks the swarming dark spots from his vision and drinks in the sight before him. Viktor’s panting softly above the now-broken arm of the cage, one hand pushing his sweat-slick hair off his forehead. In front of him, the metal bars Jayce had been trying to force into place are splayed apart—one of them hopelessly snapped in half—and scratched to shit from the constant dragging and scraping.

“Well, that didn’t work,” Viktor says, pouring himself back into a chair as the last dredges of dusk threaten to overwhelm them. “We, eh, we can throw this in the scrap pile I think.”

Jayce picks up the piece of the arm, turning it over in his hands. “I really thought it would fit,” he says, brows pulling together. “If we just uh, gave it enough of a push.”

“We should have tried oil,” Viktor says, pulling the other end of the cage towards him. The whole thing is battered, but the side Jayce was trying to wrangle his side into is now hammered flat in some places and curved out in others. The space around it is scratched, deep grooves cut through the brassy reflection from where the sharp edges and corners had gouged them out.

The metal clangs as Jayce tosses it onto the table and rubs at his hands. Deep red marks cut across his palms, scoring through the base of his knuckles. His arms hurt from the strain, and his hands are already starting to smart. “Yeah. Might’ve been a good idea.”

“Is that going to bruise?” Viktor asks, leaning over to peer at Jayce’s hands.

Jayce shakes his head. “No, my hands are a little rough from all the forge work,” he admits. “I’ve got some pretty intense callouses.”

Viktor sighs, pulling back from the hunk of now-useless machinery. He glances towards the window, where sunset is starting to bleed through the winding streets of Piltover, to pour and puddle through the glass. It’s scattered over their table and across the floor—bringing with it the reminder of a day’s work now rendered snapped in two. “Well,” he says, mouth working for a moment afterwards. Like Viktor is trying to come up with a positive end to the story—a lesson in the wake of the fable. “That was a waste of time, I suppose.”

Or not.

Jayce groans. His back is killing him when he stands up properly. “Yeah.” He nudges one of the fragments of metal away. “Fuck. Is it just me or does it feel like we haven’t gotten anything done all week?”

“That isn’t true,” Viktor says, immediately. “We very successfully broke two energy transponders and a very expensive crystalline glass bowl.”

“I thought the refraction—”

“No, no it was a good idea. We just didn’t account for the, eh, the fact that the sonic boom would break it.”

Jayce’s head pulls back, a wave tugging along with his shoulders as he bends into a slow arc. Like he’s hoping gravity will just take him. Sink him all the way through the tile flooring and down into the abyss of nothingness—an eternal black pitch where he and Viktor can stop fucking breaking everything they own.

“We also broke one of the hammers.”

Jayce blinks, straightening to look at Viktor. “We what?”

“I say we,” Viktor says, stretching to grab his cane from where it’s been resting against the table. “I broke a hammer this morning. I was trying to pull two of the magnetization spheres apart.”

“Did it work?”

“Eh,” comes Viktor’s reply, and Jayce follows the glance he casts towards a pile of twisted metal. “They are apart now.”

“Adding another sphere to the shopping list, I guess?” Jayce offers.

One of Viktor’s narrow shoulders shrugs. “I can make a new one. Or fix it.”

“Or we can buy a new one,” Jayce offers, stretching his sore arms above his head. It’s the kind of deep-boned and deep-muscle stretch that burns so thoroughly and so well that he can’t help the soft noise that builds like static charge in the low pit of his throat.

Viktor’s eyes glance towards him. “Or,” he says. “I can fix it. Would you like dinner before we leave?”

It’s become tradition in the slow-yet-lightning-quick months since Jayce and Viktor first filed for the official company licensing for HexTech—their names right there beside one another, emblazoned forever in history as the co-founders of the company. It’ll sit on the paperwork in the files in boxes in Piltover offices, same as it does in the patent offices with copies of every single one of their proprietary works that Viktor insisted they didn’t need to patent—but caved with enough pressure from Jayce, who caved with enough pressure from the council.

They’d work—they’d work—they’d work—then they’d have dinner—then they’d work.

Jayce would walk Viktor home sometimes, a mirror of that first night they had together. In the ruins of Heimerdinger’s office, with fragments of glass scattered across the floor and still hanging, loose and carefree in space—proof that if they didn’t want it to, gravity didn’t mean much. Viktor’s cane, the barrier and sacrifice he’d given in the name of one more minute, one more second, of invention and creation, had been broken to pieces by the explosion.

Viktor hadn’t minded, he’d said. He could find his way home.

But Jayce had offered, one arm extended out towards him—only an offer, never a demand. He let Viktor come to him, he let him slip his hand into his elbow and lean his weight with every step.

Something about that night had been electric, like residual blue-spark energy traveled between every brush and every touch and Jayce felt somewhere beyond painfully alight and wildly electrified. He was caught in the throes of creation, drunk on the power of invention and newness and novelty and magic. Everything was new, everything was perfect. When he closed his eyes he could still see blue and blue and blue.

He doesn’t ever remember who kissed who first, with Viktor’s weight against his chest and Jayce’s hands on his hips—but they didn’t go much past it that first night.

It was more exciting to work.

It was always more exciting to work.

Jayce and Viktor have been caught in the strange in-between for months since then. Dinner sometimes means walking Viktor home, and walking Viktor home sometimes means another farewell kiss—another slide of lips against his own. Even rarer are the times that dinner means walking Viktor home which means a glass and a half of wine in his new apartment—though Jayce does know that there hasn’t been a time when the glass-and-a-half nights haven’t turned into Viktor straddling his lap, kissing Jayce like he wants to become him. Like he wants to break Jayce into pieces and meld them into his body one by one until they’re nothing less than one whole.

Dinner, this time, means two bowls from the noodle-cart a few blocks away from the lab. The same place they’d gotten lunch from, the same place they’d gotten dinner from a day ago. Something about the consistency, the comfortable regularity with which the tradition sets in, with a bowl of spicy noodles for Jayce and something laden with fresh vegetables for Viktor. Shrimp for both, please, extra sauce.

Dinner, this time, means sitting near the water feature in the park, the fading light running out the children who, eventually, succumb to the calls of their parents and guardians. It means chopsticks in empty bowls and idle conversation as Viktor points out the fire-bugs that light up the distant scattering of planted trees and the bats sweep down from the dusk to claim their own evening meals.

Dinner, this time, means a slow, winding, walk back to Viktor’s place as the night slowly begins to settle over Piltover and drag her denizens down into the embrace of a cool darkness. It means Jayce’s hands tucked into his pockets as Viktor huffs some short laugh at a pun or comment or joke that Jayce made that he’s already forgotten because the only point of it is to make Viktor make that noise. It means stopping outside the door to his apartment, it means Viktor’s back pressed to the wood, it means Viktor’s mouth—warm and welcoming—against Jayce’s as his hands come to settle on his hips. It means an open door, it means a glass of wine apiece.

It means Jayce, sitting on Viktor’s sofa, warm palms skating down each skinny thigh as Viktor settles in his lap.

Viktor’s flat is much different than the dormitory Jayce saw that first night they went home together. Though, not by much. The walls are lined with the same ancient and worn bookshelves, filled with journals and textbooks and other collected bound volumes that Jayce has tracked the titles of a thousand times now. Nearly every horizontal space is filled with some kind of machinery, some prototype, some piece of something he’d been working on or fixing or repairing or updating.

A thousand little signs of Viktor’s life, of Viktor’s presence. A vest thrown over a chair, an empty coffee mug sitting beside a jar of cookies that Jayce’s mom had given him.

But Jayce isn’t focusing on them right now. He’s in Viktor’s living room, sitting on his worn cream-colored couch, doused in the yellow light of Viktor’s lamps. His tie is undone, tossed over his shoulder as Viktor relaxes in Jayce’s lap. He’s in the same state, with his kiss-bitten lips parted and his hair mussed by Jayce’s fingers tangled up in them.

They’ve been at it for what could have been a few minutes or a few hours—Jayce doesn’t know. He doesn’t remember what they were talking about before Viktor kissed him again, before Viktor clambered into his lab, before Viktor made the rest of the world disappear around them in the eclipse of his slight body.

Because when Viktor is there, hand settled on Jayce’s shoulders, everything else goes happily and completely blank.

“Mmm,” Viktor hums, the wine-flush of the half-empty merlot bottle staining his cheeks as he nudges a half-inch closer. His mouth is red, colored by the drink and the soft sting of Jayce’s lips against his. “I love doing this.”

Jayce’s mind is soft under the fuzzy heat that Viktor’s body provides, letting him push his hands up the fabric of Viktor’s trousers. Up and up and up until he can wring his arms around his waist.

“Yeah,” he breathes back, pushing his nose up under Viktor’s jaw to nuzzle into the soft, tender, skin there. He smells like spice and sweat, the familiar scent of a long day.

Viktor’s fingers find the close-shorn edges of Jayce’s hair, nails scraping gently over his scalp. They’ve been at this for months, dragging each other close to learn the strings to pull and the spots to press to elicit the soft siren-call songs from one another. Jayce knows that Viktor likes to be bitten, he likes leaving marks. He likes fingers in his hair and he likes lips on his collar.

And Viktor knows what Jayce likes. He likes being held against Viktor’s chest, he likes feeling small against him.

He likes when Viktor hums, when he drops his nose to kiss the top of his head.

Which he does.

And then he does again.

“That’s right,” Viktor purrs. “That’s my good boy.”

Jayce shivers in Viktor’s grasp, pulls him down tighter so he can feel the impact Viktor’s presence always has on him. The proof of Jayce’s interest presses up between Viktor’s clothed legs. Just like it always does.

They do this, sometimes. Viktor would grind down until Jayce is left a mess, and Jayce would slip his hand down beneath the waist of Viktor’s trousers to feel him—push into the slick, molten, heat of his body—and let him ride his fingers to completion.

It’s just as easy, just as familiar as everything else they do together. As easy and natural as walking in step, as talking, as breathing in time with one another.

Viktor’s nose nudges between strands of Jayce’s hair, seeking the scent of him as blunt, square, nails drag another shuddering groan from deep in Jayce’s throat. “Do you like that?” Viktor asks, like he has to. Like his hips aren’t shifting against Jayce’s clothed erection.

Jayce nods into his throat, lips skating until he finds the jump of his pulse buried there. “I do.”

A smile pushes into his scalp. “Is this what you want? Is this what you need?”

Another nod, another shaky breath as Jayce’s arms tighten ever-so-faintly around Viktor’s waist. “I—yeah. I need it, I need you.”

Viktor’s hips push a little firmer down against him, letting that starving burst of need and hunger under Jayce’s skin spark and burn like he’s stoking the flames. “How much do you want me?”

Jayce’s mind skips—just a moment. His tongue twists and trips over the truth of it. He wants Viktor. He wants Viktor more than he can explain, he wants Viktor more than he can articulate. He wants him more than he wants air, more than he wants to be able to breathe—he wants him more than the sea wants the shore, more than the dawn wants the sun and more than the newborn spring flowers want the summer rain.

He craves him—he needs him with an all-consuming and blinding intensity that Jayce had never met outside of work and science. In a way that hums of electricity and magic—like a pull and constant ache.

Jayce opens his mouth and presses a whine hot and slick against Viktor’s pulse.

“That isn’t an answer,” Viktor tells him.

And Jayce knows it isn’t. He knows.

“So bad,” he says, because explaining everything at once is going to make him seem like a lunatic. “I—Viktor please, I need you. I need it so bad I want—can I get you off first? I wanna—” a deep, stabilizing, breath. “I want to feel you.”

The chest pressed against his own hitches in a soft gasp, echoing out into Jayce’s hair. “You are always so…” Viktor’s narrow frame shivers in Jayce’s arms. “Always so good to me. What is it you would do to me?”

“Anything, whatever you want,” Jayce tells the space under his jaw, where he can feel Viktor swallow. “I would—I want to feel how wet you are, I want to touch your cunt until you’re shivering—really gently to make sure that I don’t overstimulate you too quickly. I know—I know you’re sensitive. I want to ease you into it. I want to wait until I know you’re ready and relaxed and play with your cock until you make those little whining sounds.

“I want to get my fingers inside you, please, V. I want to—I want to feel how hot and wet you get and how tight you are when you come. Sometimes it feels like you’re going to—like you’re going to break my fingers with it.”

Viktor’s breath pricks, crescendoing into a soft little laugh that curves around into a groan. “...if I eh, if I wanted you to—would you do anything else to me?”

Jayce’s brows knit as he pulls back to drink in Viktor’s expression.

He’d thought—he’d thought a lot about this, about the other things he’d do to Viktor if he was ever given the chance, if Viktor ever let him have them. He glances down, where the dip of his collar peeks out from between the slightly parted edges of his shirt. “I, um,” he starts, eyes fixated down on the faint glint of yellow light off the sweat-soaked skin. “What would you want me to do?”

I want to devour you, he can’t say. I want to lay you out and consume you whole. I want to touch you until I have every inch of you memorized, until I can find every one of your moles with my lips in the pitch darkness. I want you to rip me open and crawl into my ribcage and be part of me—I want you to devour me in turn, I want you to do whatever you want to me, I want you to swallow me and let me make you scream. I want you to use me, I want you to come off every inch of me, I want you to leave your mark and use my body until you break yourself on me.

It’s the rising tide of need and want clawing itself out of him and the last thing Jayce wants to do is scare him off. The last thing he wants to do is spook him, is make Viktor shift away from Jayce’s flexing fingers on his hips.

The last thing he wants to do is make a fool of himself.

“What if I wanted your mouth on me?”

And Jayce’s hips twitch at even the prospect that he’d be allowed that. That Viktor would let him.

He nods, immediately. “I can—I want that. I want to do that. I can do that if—please?”

That would mean touching him more. It would mean seeing him.

Jayce’s heartbeat pricks at the idea of getting to unpeel Viktor’s clothes, of getting to pick layers off him until Viktor’s thighs are spread over his shoulders and Jayce can leave the traces of his mouth up every inch of him. He could choke on his own desperation, the way it swells in the pit of his throat.

Viktor’s cool, calloused, fingers brush over Jayce’s cheekbone. “Then go ahead. Lay me down.”

It’s a quick, almost practiced, movement. Jayce knows Viktor doesn’t like being picked up, he knows he doesn’t like to be handled around by anyone. So he doesn’t. He doesn’t scoop him up and roll them onto the sofa together. He shifts a hand to Viktor’s hip and the other between his shoulder blades to gently urge him out of his lap.

Viktor sits, knees falling apart, as Jayce collects himself up off the couch to sink down to his knees in front of him. And fuck. Fuck.

He’s already aching at the sight of Viktor looming above him. His face looks sharper from this angle, looking up from between his knees. His eyes are dark, pupils blown with the matching thrum of arousal that pounds beneath Jayce’s skin.

“That’s right,” Viktor breathes, one hand combing through Jayce’s hair. “You look so good like this. Does anyone ever tell you how pretty you are?”

Jayce feels his face burn slightly as his fingers smooth up Viktor’s skinny legs. “No?” It’s almost a laugh as one hand comes to find Viktor’s fly. “I…no. You’re the first.”

“Shame,” Viktor says, extending his leg out so Jayce can urge it up over his shoulder. “I think you’re a very pretty boy.”

That does…it does something to Jayce. The same sort of slick heat that floods his stomach every time Viktor tells him he’s good or he’s sweet. It makes him squirm, just a little, like Viktor has him pinned under a microscope. Like he’s some sort of specimen on display. He ducks his face in, electing to hide the churning of feelings in his gut in the crotch of Viktor’s trousers.

He tucks his nose against the seam and breathes deep and—and it’s like everything else disappears again. Viktor floods his senses, the heat of him leaching through the fabric onto his face, the scent of him invading and obfuscating anything else.

This is it, this is all he wants, this is all he ever needs.

Above him, Viktor hisses as his thigh twitches against Jayce’s head. “Jayce.”

Jayce muffles a small laugh up into him. “Sorry, I uh…” He looks up, lifting his face only to nuzzle him through the fabric again. “I wanted to smell you.”

“I can tell.” It’s warm, soft. Viktor’s hand is in Jayce’s hair again, nails offering an affectionate scratch. “Do you like it?”

“Yeah,” Jayce breathes, pushing a hard kiss into the same space. If he focuses, he thinks he can—maybe, maybe— he can feel the pulse of Viktor’s cunt through it.

“You should take these off,” Viktor purrs.

Jayce’s fingers curl into the open fly, peeling the fabric down just enough that he can hook his fingers into the waist of Viktor’s underclothes next as well. “Right, yeah. I was just distracted by, uh, by you.”

“I mean you should take these off before I ruin more than just my underwear.”

Oh.

Oh.

Jayce’s face floods with the same heat that roils deep inside him. He leans back and gives Viktor’s clothes a gentle and guiding tug. Viktor’s strong foot stays against the floor long enough to use it to leverage himself up so Jayce can inch his clothes down over his ass. Once it’s free, Viktor works his legs through one at a time until Jayce can toss both aside and—

—and—

And that is it.

Jayce has died.

Jayce has died and someone has seen fit to bless him with this.

Viktor settles his weaker leg over Jayce’s shoulder, with an almost hesitant care. The other stays spread, keeping him open. Jayce has felt most of this before, he’s felt the soft, slick, curls that spread out over him, framing his warm, soft, cunt. He’s felt the contours and shape of his lips, he’s traced his fingers blindly through them, he’s felt his cock, he’s felt his slit—but seeing it?

Viktor’s pubic hair is an almost exact shade match to the rest of his hair, only darkened where his slick has matted it against his skin. The low light of the lamps glint off him, where his lips pull apart to reveal the wet heat that Jayce has long-memorized by the shift and brush of his fingers and his swollen, flushed, cock. Already, he feels himself starting to salivate with a deep, aching, hunger.

His eyes drink him in, following the long-faded lines down the inside of his thighs, the proof of a growth spurt once upon a time marked in the grooves of his skin. There’s soft wisps of hair that scatter down him, with the occasional mark and mole hidden amongst it.

Jayce could sit here for hours. He could lay his cheek on one boney thigh and brush his fingers down the soft length of him again and again and again—feeling him for hours until he didn’t know anything but the blueprints of Viktor’s body.

Viktor shifts on the sofa. “Are you just going to stare?”

And Jayce blinks. “Huh?”

“Are you going to stare at it or are you going to do something?”

“Oh! Oh,” Jayce’s arm circles up around Viktor’s leg, pushing the bottom of his shirt up out of the way so he can take in more of Viktor’s body. “I just…wow. You are gorgeous.”

Beneath his touch, Viktor squirms. “You are making me self-conscious. Stop looking and eat it.”

Jayce leans in, obedient to a fault, and does as he’s bid.

He drags the flat of his tongue up the length of Viktor’s cunt, a soft and slow touch—just to ensure he doesn’t overwork him immediately. He even tastes perfect, a warm and almost-familiar taste that spreads across Jayce’s tongue like the first hit of some sweet summer fruit.

It’s the kind of taste he could get lost in, it’s the kind of taste he could suck his tongue to remember hours from now, like trying to draw the last remnants of it from the deep recesses of his own memory. The kind of taste he could see himself craving, endlessly.

So he leans forward, the bridge of his nose nudging Viktor’s lips further apart, and he does it again, this time the pressure of his tongue hard enough to push past Viktor’s lips to drag over his slit. It clenches against him, drawing a soft and affectionate huff from Jayce.

“Shut up,” Viktor responds, through a breathy sigh. “You’re—you just make me very, eh, very needy is all.”

Jayce laves the breadth of his tongue over Viktor again, and again—and then a third time, to feel the way he twitches and pushes his hips up against him. He waits, just a moment longer, luxuriating in the feeling of him pulsing up against his mouth, at the feeling of Viktor already starting to dampen his chin and his jaw. When he finally gives, finally snaps his meager restraint to gather up a fresh droplet of welling slick and push his tongue into Viktor’s body—it’s almost enough to send Jayce tumbling over the edge.

Viktor’s body is the tight, slick, sort of heat that burns any capacity of genuine thought out of Jayce’s mind. He twitches and flutters around him and holy fuck Jayce is feeling it, Jayce is tasting it. He’s tasting the way Viktor’s walls pull him closer, the way he squeezes him as he pushes his tongue up into him.

Fuck, Jayce wishes he could be deeper, he wishes he could be further into Viktor’s body like he wishes he could fully consume him. He fucks his tongue into Viktor unabashedly, listening to the gentle rise of Viktor’s breath.

He’s never been the most verbal partner Jayce has ever had. But there’s something in the panting whines, the soft and muted groans and soft muttering in languages that Jayce doesn’t speak—something that sends him into a desperate spiral for more. More. More.

If he could live off nothing but the way Viktor’s breath pricks, high in his throat, when Jayce shoves his tongue into him, he would. He would live here, between Viktor’s thighs, he would live with his lips seamed to his cunt. He would live with Viktor above him, Viktor atop him. Viktor’s hips pushing back with each push and thrust of Jayce’s tongue.

If Viktor asked, he’d let him have him any way he wanted. He’d be his seat at the table, at the desk in the lab, in the council meetings—anything and anywhere if it meant that Viktor’s come would bead and swell and drip down his jaw.

His eyes roll back at the feeling of tension finally collapsing and the rapidly-cooling line of Viktor’s slick runs down to soak into his collar.

Jayce considers, briefly, never washing this shirt again. He considers letting Viktor’s stain stay, he considers later, sucking the taste of him out of the fabric, of drawing every last sweet drop of him—savoring everything he has to offer until he’s drunk off the taste of him once again.

He fucks his tongue into Viktor’s cunt, chasing that clean high that clouds out any reason from his mind to the tune of Viktor’s panting breath above him.

“F-fuck, Jayce,” Viktor manages, the hand in his hair clenching slightly as his fingers slide between the strands. “Need—need you to suck my cock. Your fingers inside me and your mo-ah—ah!”

Viktor doesn’t manage to finish his request before Jayce complies. He dives for his cock like it’s the last key to oblivion. Like it’s the last thing staving off the darkness that might overtake him if he doesn’t, like if Jayce doesn’t, he might unbecome then and there, nothing but ashes and dust stuck between the floorboards of Viktor’s Academy District flat. A ghost and a memory all at once, laid low by the half-second beat it takes him to suck Viktor’s throbbing cock into his mouth.

He wraps his lips around it at once, feeling it pulse against him. It feels larger in his mouth, the weight of it against tongue sending his prey-instinct heartbeat trilling through his veins.

The fingers he knows, the fingers he can feel like the cruelest sense-memory in the depths of the night. Stuck, alone in fever-sweat sheets with the phantom throb of Viktor’s cunt over his middle and ring fingers.

Viktor has never been terribly vocal.

He cries out when Jayce sinks his two fingers into him, curling with the efficacy of a man who regularly touches himself with one hand and chases the ghost of this same moment with his other.

Viktor’s hips buck and work in time with Jayce’s hand and mouth, chasing his own undoing just as readily as Jayce is offering it to him.

“I’m—fuck, Jayce!” It’s breathless, it’s the half-gone sound of Viktor’s voice in the way that Jayce knows means he’s close. He only ever talks at the start or when he’s close, a bookend to either side. “Going—going to come in your mouth—is—is that what you want?”

All Jayce can do is nod in time with the press of his tongue and the working of his lips and the shallow thrusts of his fingers up into that spot inside of him—where he can work that place that makes Viktor make these noises from two different angles.

He wants it. He wants Viktor to come on his face. Please, he tries to push into the constant movement. Please, please come on my face, come all over me. I want to be messy with you, I want to be filthy with you, I want to be so covered in your come that all I can smell is your pussy on my skin.

And Viktor does.

Jayce can feel it before he hears it—the clenching of Viktor’s abdomen muscles under his hand, the lift of his hips to push up into Jayce’s touch and hold himself there, the flexing of his leg around Jayce’s shoulder to pull them flush together—it’s a tidal wave rolling in to pull Jayce under. And he doesn’t back away.

If Viktor asked, he’d meet it in the sea for him.

Viktor squeezes him with the same uncanny strength that he always does, as his head throws back with a wave-crash moan that tears from the depths of his lungs. Slick all but gushes from between his fingers, dripping down the contours of his wrist.

And Jayce can’t help himself. The hand on Viktor’s stomach drops down to his own groin, grabbing at the aching bulge and squeezing once, then twice.

It barely takes anything, feeling Viktor’s cock twitch with overstimulation in his mouth, for the kinetic heat to unfurl and unleash all at once in a blinding, dazzling, array of lights sparking blue and white behind his eyes. He doesn’t know if they squeeze shut or roll back or if his vision just whites out under the burst of fire and electricity that wrenches through him.

It’s far from the first time Viktor’s made him come in his pants in this living room.

Jayce pulls away when Viktor’s hips begin to shy back. He drops his cheek to the fuck-flushed skin of his thigh and nuzzles there. He breathes him in, the heady scent of Viktor hanging thick in the air around him. He’s almost dizzy off it, the sweet high of knowing he’s made Viktor come so hard that the leg thrown over his shoulder is shaking against him.

“Did you come in your pants?” Viktor asks, after another long moment of panting in time with one another.

“Uh,” Jayce starts, because he is, above everything else, one of the smartest men in Piltover. The other is Viktor. The other has always been Viktor. Even when he wasn’t there. “I…you feel really good.”

The laughter that drips down from Viktor isn’t cruel in the slightest. Jayce nuzzles into the downy-soft hair on his thighs. “You are very sweet,” Viktor hums. “Do you, eh, usually go multiple rounds? It is fine if you don’t—I only wish to plan my evening accordingly.”

Jayce’s eyes snap up to Viktor’s face, where his chin tilts down to his heaving chest. “I can,” he says, because…well, he can. “A, uh, a few times, actually.”

Viktor raises a brow down at him. “Oh?”

He nods, feeling his cheeks burn. “I…I’ve got a lot of stamina? I guess? After we’d y’know here, I’d usually go home and think about it and—” And touch myself, he thinks. And beat off at least one more time in the shower, then again once I was in bed—sucking my fingers clean of your taste. “You know.”

“You masturbated to the thought of grinding off against me?”

Jayce shrugs, then nods. “Yeah? It…by the time I got home I would just be thinking about it and I was so turned on again. Then again when I was trying to sleep.”

“Twice?”

“...is that not okay?”

Viktor leans down, drawing his fingers from Jayce’s hair to brush through the slick mess at his jaw. “It is very okay,” Viktor breathes, before he slots in for another slow, mind-breaking kiss. It only lasts a few scattered moments before he pulls back. “I wish I knew before.”

“I mean, you knew I was into you. We make out a lot.”

“I meant that you are insatiable,” Viktor hums. “I would have kept you here much longer. Let you come all over my face.”

Jayce whines at the thought, at the visual of Viktor’s sharp cheekbones dripping with his come—of white splashed in thick ropes over the bridge of his nose and cutting across one of his pretty little moles. He bites at his own lip. “Fuck.”

“Come all over my face, come inside me, all you like,” Viktor teases and now, now Jayce is on the verge of whimpering already. His cock gives an interested twitch in his trousers, where it’s trapped in the rapidly-cooling mess he’s made of himself. “Would you like that?”

Jayce nods without hesitation. “Yes! Yes, fuck, V, I want that. I want to—if you want, I mean.”

Coming inside him means—it means being inside him. It means being inside Viktor.

Fuck, Jayce could get hard again just from the idea of it, just from the promise of something he never even let himself think about. “Of course I want to. I feel that cock of yours under me every time we get off together. Do you—I would have—” Viktor makes a soft huff of frustration, leaning back into the sofa. “I would have suggested this much earlier had I known you were not a, eh, a one-trick horse.”

“I mean, I really did like what we did. I didn’t—I was waiting for you to…if you were comfortable.”

Another soft laugh, shaking down through the slight line of Viktor’s body. “I was waiting for you to ask. I figured you would, eh, say something. If you were interested in taking it further.”

Jayce blinks. “I thought…I thought you would.”

“You said, yes,” Viktor hums. “I, eh, I suppose we have a lot of lost time to make up for?”

Jayce turns his cheek back into Viktor’s leg, watching as his hand drops down to cover his own cunt. Thin, but not delicate, fingers trace and drag along the length of it. “I…should warn you that you are…you seemed rather large beneath me. I’m not particularly…” Viktor pauses as he slips two fingers down, pushing them into himself with a soft noise. “Deep here, if you understand. I’ve always had issues taking men of a particular size.”

“We don’t have to,” Jayce says, immediately, as he stares with transfixed eyes as Viktor slides them out again, a thin web of his come caught between them. It catches the light in a mesmerizing dance as Viktor brings them to his mouth, smearing it over his lips in contemplation. “If…if you’d be uncomfortable or in pain.”

Viktor’s tongue darts out, pink and beautiful. Jayce can feel himself teetering on the edge of recovery at the sight of him tasting himself. “Mmm. Perhaps. Or you can always fuck my asshole.”

Jayce chokes.

He doesn’t know what he’s choking on but one second he’s staring and the next his breath is pinched around nothing and he’s hardly managing to cough up a single thought in response to—to—to that.

To whatever Viktor just said.

Because he’s going crazy, because he misheard, because this is a dream and he’s going to wake up in his bed with sticky underwear and sheets that he has to wash and a weird roiling sense of shame knitting under his skin. That’s it.

That’s it because Viktor didn’t just suggest— “What?”

“Unless you do not enjoy anal sex,” Viktor says, slipping his leg up off Jayce’s shoulder and no—no—no he needs that there. He wants it there.

His hand darts out, cupping Viktor’s calf lovingly as he tucks his nose into the side of it. “I—you really—you like it?”

“I prefer it,” Viktor shrugs. “I can fit more. And I enjoy being fingered while a man fucks me from behind.”

Jayce isn’t asleep.

No, no he’s dead. That’s it, that’s the answer.

He’s dead.

He hit his head very very hard when they were working on that stupid hunk of metal and now he’s dead. Memories and ghosts and some other metaphor that his blood is too quickly leaving his head to think of.

“You want me to—you want me to put it in your ass?”

“If you’d like, Jayce,” Viktor says, his clean hand returning to Jayce’s sticky-drying cheek to tilt his eyes up away from where they’re finding themselves stuck on the back of the couch. “I’m not going to make you do anything you’re uncomfortable with.”

“I just…I mean.” Jayce can imagine it. Jayce can imagine it too well. “Will you let me get you ready? Just so I can—and if it hurts or you want me to stop you’ll tell me, right?”

“If I am not enjoying myself, I will make you very aware of it,” Viktor assures, his voice soft and sweet. “Now come on. Take me to my bed.”

Jayce pushes himself up, stealing another slow, warm, kiss as he goes to grab Viktor’s cane from the side of the couch. It’s within grabbing distance, but Viktor thanks him anyway. He holds onto Jayce’s offered arm in his other hand, a gesture they both know he doesn’t need but a gesture they both know Jayce likes to offer anyway.

The weight of Viktor’s hand in his elbow is comforting, it’s soft and gentle and Jayce knows he’s quickly becoming addicted to the feeling of him there. A constant and comfortable presence at his side.

Viktor guides him to the bedroom.

Jayce hasn’t ever been inside it.

He’s been inside Viktor now, two different ways, and he’s standing on the precipice of a third but he’s never been inside his room. Something about it, as he pushes the door open, feels more intimate than splitting him on his tongue.

It’s like cracking open the space between Viktor’s ribs, seeking out the most private and intimate secret parts of him. It’s like looking into the marrow of his bones and drawing out the quiet secrets of his DNA—untangling him and laying him out in ways that no one has ever done before.

Everything in here is Viktor.

The pile of clothes in a hamper tucked near the door, the large bed in the middle of the room with grey pillowcases and a pile of soft-looking blankets that Jayce can just tell are ancient and hand-stitched. The pictures of people Jayce doesn’t know mixed in with pictures of Viktor tucked beside them. Viktor, as a child on the hip of a woman who looks too young to be holding him. Viktor on a man’s shoulders, Viktor as a gangly teenager, Viktor at the Academy.

It’s a history that Jayce realizes, as Viktor slips from his grasp to head for the bed, he doesn’t know. An unwritten truth of his life laid bare and unashamed over the polished surface of his dresser.

Tangled in them, twisted as irrevocably into this network of love and affection as Viktor’s strands of genetic coding, is Jayce.

The two of them, an arm casually over each other’s shoulders with an award on the table before them. Them, standing in front of the patent office. Them, standing in front of their first fully functioning invention—about three days before it blew up in their faces from too much tinkering.

Them.

Just as plain and simple as the rest of Viktor’s heart laid out in pieces.

Jayce’s throat pinches shut as, somewhere in the distance, the bed squeaks under a soft weight.

“Come here,” comes the soft siren call.

Viktor is sitting in the middle of a half-made bed, his cane tucked near a nightstand crowded with unlit lamps and journals. His hands are already working down the buttons of his vest.

Jayce goes, because Jayce will always go. Like the sea to the shore, he’s called. His legs are uncertain, unstable, like a new-born foal on the sand, as he lets himself sink down onto his knees in front of him. The bed dips under his weight, another gravitational pull towards Viktor.

Viktor shrugs his vest off, then his shirt and then the last of his underclothes. “I don’t, eh, I don’t mind if you touch my chest,” he says, tossing his clothes aside. “It is actually rather sensitive.”

The only thing keeping him from being properly and entirely nude is the back brace. Jayce drinks in the sight of him, the places where leather and metal bite into skin as Viktor starts to work on the clasps and the buckles. He’s just as pale as the rest of him under his clothes, each patch of skin just as near-translucent in the cool cast of the night. The moonlight filters in from the windows, dousing them both in the soft, dull, light. Viktor’s skin is covered in a constellation of dark spots, a new wave of stars that all Jayce wants is to piece together and follow over the rise of his small chest, and up to the jut of his collarbone and the knobs of his shoulders.

Every piece of him is put together masterfully, as he peels away the layers of his brace with an intensity and focus that Jayce only ever sees him wear in the quietest nights in the lab.

“Sorry, this takes a while sometimes. I was, eh, I was in a bit of a rush getting ready this morning.”

“Don’t be,” Jayce breathes, hands coming to stroke his legs. He shifts back so he’s sitting on his heels, settled between Viktor’s legs once more. “I uh…I really like to look at you.”

Viktor glances up. “You are sweet, you know that?”

“It’s true,” he says, eyes following the molten flow of his throat into his collar and down where his slight breasts hang over the edge of his brace. There’s a mole there, a patch of darkness right beside one dark, peaked, nipple. “You’re…wow.”

The last clasp gives and the external tension that winds through Viktor’s muscles and bones snaps and gives. He slouches back almost immediately with a sigh of something mixed with relief. He carefully folds the brace and sets it aside before letting himself sink back into the pillows. The skin where the leather had rubbed into him is red, an angry line of irritation that Jayce follows Viktor down to soothe.

His fingertips find the welts on his stomach, tracing them softly as Jayce’s lips find their home beneath his ear. Then down, to his throat—he traces out the inches of Viktor’s skin now exposed to him, now available in the soft embrace of night. His fingers soothe the lines up his side, his ribs, his shoulder and chest—following a pathway of irritation and heat as his mouth marches on downward and downward and downward to the beat of Viktor’s soft breaths.

“Go on,” Viktor tells him, letting one of Jayce’s hands slip beneath the arch of his back. Jayce hesitates as he drinks in the sight of Viktor beneath him, spread like a feast.

Go on.

He kisses the rise of one breast, then lower. A soft trail leading to a tightened, pleading, little nipple. Jayce kisses the mole beside it first before he lets his tongue slip to lave, hot and slick, over it.

Viktor gasps.

Already, he’s wriggling in his arms, pushing himself up into Jayce’s mouth as his lips close around the peak to offer a soft, slow, suck in return.

“Fuck,” Viktor breathes. “Just like that, I love—yes.”

He swears again, this time in a language Jayce doesn’t know as he lowers himself down an inch or so closer to Viktor, where he can feel the radiating heat off his core seeping through into his ruined trousers yet again.

He pulls off him with a soft noise, listening to Viktor’s breath catch slowly over itself. “Good, then?”

“Very,” Viktor replies. “There’s oil in my nightstand.”

Jayce’s fingers brush over warm metal, twitching back after a second before he remembers the attachments to the brace. He brushes along the side of them, each knob and disk of metal that sits flush against Viktor’s flesh. “Is it okay?”

“It’s…it isn’t bad,” Viktor says, relaxing into the touch. “Strange, but not awful.”

Jayce nods, dropping another kiss to his chest before he lets himself detangle enough to start to strip.

It doesn’t take long, with the feverish need building under his skin and Viktor laid bare before him. He peels off his ruined trousers and underwear at once, kicking them into a pile with his sweat-soaked shirt before he falls over Viktor once more, tugging them flush together—skin seamed to skin seamed to skin seamed to skin.

Connected, in one unbroken stretch from collarbone to thighs as Jayce settles, half-hard already, between Viktor’s legs. His hand is blind, reaching for Viktor’s nightstand as he tries to keep his lips pressed to Viktor’s, trying to taste the twin-cast desperation and heat building between the two of them.

Viktor’s tongue pushes past his lips again, tasting the contours and shape of his mouth as one hand drops to circle around Jayce’s sticky, come-streaked, cock.

“Messy,” Viktor teases up against his mouth, a chuckle sounding in the hot panting breath between them. “Made a mess for me?”

Jayce sucks in a steadying breath. “Yeah. Yes. For you.”

Whatever Viktor was going to say dies in his throat as Jayce watches his brows knit to the squeeze of his hand around him. Jayce’s hips jump, still, to the touch. “Is—you’re not fully hard yet, no?”

“...no? I’m—I mean I won’t need that long. You, you really do it for me, V.”

“No, no you’re—” Viktor leans back and squints into the darkness between them, like he’s trying to solve a complex equation in his mind. Jayce can almost see the numbers and math starting to play out slowly. “Are you a shower?”

“Am I a what?”

“Does it get bigger?”

Jayce’s cheeks burn. “I um. Y-yeah? Is—is something wrong?”

Viktor’s fingers hardly close around him, where he strokes curiously at Jayce’s still-filling out cock. “You are huge, Jayce.”

He drops his face to the crook of Viktor’s neck, feeling a strange sort of mortification start to wash over him. “I—it’s not that—”

“No, I’m serious. I—I don’t think I’ve ever taken anything this big before.”

Jayce doesn’t know how he feels, but he stays there, burying a nervous laugh into Viktor’s warm, sweat-sweet skin. He knows he’s big. It’s no secret. He’s been told before, he’s been told far too many times. People who couldn’t, or wouldn’t take him tall, people who’d see him and suggest oral instead. Jayce never minded, he never even hesitated. “We don’t have to—”

“Oh, we are. I am,” Viktor breathes, bringing one leg up to wrap around Jayce’s hips, as if he might go somewhere. “I—fuck, Jayce. I cannot wait to have this inside me.”

The movement tilts Viktor’s hips up, his hand shifting to nudge his shaft along the slick heat of his cunt. Jayce rocks, gently, through the crevice he offers, his breath catching in his throat as he feels the warm pulse of him almost engulfing. “C-can you?”

“Certainly,” Viktor huffs. “If we go slow, if we, eh, if you exercise some patience.”

“I will,” Jayce says, without a modicum of hesitation. “I—I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t ever want to hurt you.”

Jayce would rather die, he doesn’t tell him. He’d rather lay himself down on Viktor’s blade than ever, ever, be the one to hurt him.

Viktor nudges his hips up higher and Jayce gasps into his skin. “Would you like to see?” Viktor hums, the hand covering his cock working him slowly to full hardness, “How far inside me you are going to be?”

It’s a moment of adjustment, where Viktor shifts and Jayce’s brows furrow at the question. He’s about to ask how he would see that when he notices Viktor staring down between them.

Jayce’s cock, now straining and flushed from the touch, rests on top of Viktor’s pubic mound. The dark, slick, tip rests just past his belly button, stretching up into Viktor’s abdomen in a distance that makes Jayce blink rapidly in response.

“Will it fit?” He asks, dropping a hand to cradle Viktor’s bony hip. His thumb drags over the skin beside his cock.

“Mmm, it absolutely will,” he promises, offering Jayce’s temple another soft kiss. “Trust me. I wouldn’t ever put you in a position to hurt me.”

Logic and ease forces them to part for a moment, Viktor snagging a pillow from the top of his bed to lay beside him while Jayce finally gives up on his blind fumbling to look for the oil properly. He takes his eyes off Viktor a second, just long enough to squint into the darkness and catch the amber-glint bottle on the stand.

A second.

And when he turns back, Viktor is laid out with his stomach on the pillow, his face pillowed on his arms as he glances back down to Jayce. “Is this alright?” He asks, one leg stretched out behind him as the other tucks his knee up. “It’s, eh, it’s comfortable for this. At least for this part.”

Jayce blinks twice. “I uh…” and he can’t stop staring at Viktor’s ass. At Viktor’s perfect, if sparse, ass. “Yeah.”

There’s a pair of moles there, low on his right asscheek. Jayce slots his thumb between them, using it as an anchor point to spread Viktor wide. And there goes Jayce’s mouth again, already pooling with saliva as he stares down at his hole.

“Please tell me you’re not going to stare at me again,” Viktor whines. “I am begging you, Jayce. Stop looking and just do something.”

Jayce is quickly beginning to reconsider all the things he’d thought about Viktor before. Starting with the fact that maybe he was wrong—maybe Viktor is one of the more verbal fucks he’s ever had. He groans a long, throaty, noise when Jayce ducks his head to drag his tongue over his hole. Just once, then twice, then a third time for good measure—to make sure he’s glinting and gleaming in the low midnight cast.

He drops his lips to Viktor’s tailbone as he slicks up one thick finger first. Jayce teases it around him, gentle as he feels him twitch with a soft sound. He smears the oil over his own spit, massaging the taut muscle slowly and carefully as he nuzzles into the skin-over-bone at the base of his back. “Is this—?”

“Yes,” Viktor interrupts. “It’s—Jayce, I have taken so many—please. I can take a finger.”

“I just want to be sure,” Jayce mumbles, circling the tip of his finger around him again.

Viktor’s breath settles with a heavy sigh. “I know, I know I just—will you please? Do not treat me like I’m fragile.”

“I’m not treating you like you’re fragile,” Jayce argues, pulling back just a hair to watch as Viktor’s hole yields to the press of the tip of his finger. Just the sliver of him, edging past him. “I want you to be comfortable.”

“I am,” Viktor assures.

Jayce nods, and watches as Viktor’s hole takes his finger. It’s a slow, gentle, push but Viktor spreads around him beautifully—opening with a hiss of breath between Viktor’s teeth and the fluttering of tensing-relaxing-tensing-relaxing that Jayce knows is intentional. A contestation to make himself relax.

It feels different from his cunt, but no less obsessively hot and incredibly tight.

It takes all of Jayce’s self-control to not groan at the feeling of him wrapped around just a finger.

He slides his other hand around Viktor’s hips, pushing between them and the pillow keeping him up and level for Jayce. His fingers rest just above him, nails scratching gently at the dark curls he finds there. “Can I?” He asks, nose dragging up to the first piece of embedded metal in his spine. “I don’t want it to be too much for you.”

Viktor hums. “Certainly,” he says. “I, eh, it does help.”

Jayce tilts his face to drop a kiss to the metal. The temperature difference is more prominent against his lips than against his fingertips, the metal is cool and smooth as his fingers push down to slot around Viktor’s cock, nestling into the crook between them. Jayce keeps it slow, a steady and consistent rock against him as he works one finger into him.

It doesn’t take long at all for Jayce’s first finger to sink down to the knuckle, fully engulfed in Viktor’s heat.

The arm wrapped around him flexes as he drags the fingers around his cock back to keep working him slowly. He pulls back, tip of his nose sliding across sweat-slicked skin until he’s breathing hot against Viktor’s entrance. He tastes like oil and skin, sweat and Jayce’s spit as he laps at him around his finger again.

Viktor swears, hips bucking back into the twin touches that drag across him.

It clicks into place the same way a four-am epiphany does. It’s a clinging honesty and truth that plasters itself between them—how easily Jayce can pick Viktor apart. How much he likes this, how much he enjoys the feeling of being played from two angles, from two places at once. It’s like playing a stringed instrument, like one hand plucking the chords set into motion by the other—pressing here and pulling there. The music that croons out is a soft, low, song vibrating in Viktor’s throat.

It picks up, a slow crescendo as Jayce nudges the tip of a second slick finger against him.

“Mm,” Viktor hums. “Do it—I want you to bring me off again with two of your fingers inside me. I want you to feel how tight I get when I come. I want you to feel what I’m going to do to your cock once you’re inside me.”

“Fuck,” Jayce hisses against his skin. He kisses over the cluster of moles on one asscheek again before he lets himself start to sink the second finger into Viktor—and as much as Viktor had wriggled and puffed himself up at the idea of Jayce watching, he can’t stop. He can’t stop watching as Viktor’s body yields and takes him in.

There’s something almost addictive about watching him, about watching Viktor draw Jayce’s fingers into his body—something about watching them slowly ready themselves to become one.

Jayce shudders as the fingers of his other hand shift to circle around Viktor’s cock—no longer teasing him. Viktor’s hips rock between the two sensations, the fingers on his cock and the fingers inside him and Jayce wishes he had a third hand more than he’s ever wished for anything else. He wishes he had a third time, something he could just to brush up Viktor’s chest and something he could use to pet down his leg and stroke his back as he whispers into his hair just how well he takes him.

Viktor’s breathing pricks against the pillows as his arms stretch out slowly over his head, the legs spread out around Jayce starting to tremble in earnest again. Jayce knows the signs, he knows the signs as Viktor sucks in a deep breath.

As Viktor starts to twist and arch to hold himself in just the right place, to keep himself at the right angle where Jayce is touching him in just the right way, where Jayce is good, where he’s perfect.

“Come on,” Viktor breathes into silk and cotton and Jayce isn’t sure who he’s talking to, himself or Jayce. “Fuck—so-so close, Jayce. Fuck me on your fingers, spread me open for your cock. I can’t wait to show you how much of you I can take, how ready I am for you. I’ve been d-dreaming about this—fuck.”

Jayce picks up the tempo of his fingers just a touch, focusing on the tight little circles he knows drives Viktor up the wall.

It wrenches another desperate panting noise from him, as Viktor cuts himself off with a bitten-off swear and a shove of his hips.

“Like that, like that, like—that—”

He doesn’t get much further before Jayce’s name shatters across his voice and the tidal-wave pull of another one of Viktor’s orgasms crashes over him. This time, Jayce feels it with two fingers buried to the knuckle in his ass, the vice-like grip of his body tightening to a degree that Jayce wasn’t even sure was possible. It feels, for a moment, like Viktor’s grinding the small bones of his knuckles together—a tight and breathless hold that almost makes Jayce worry.

Jayce lets the fingers on Viktor’s cock slow as the slick from his cunt drips down over his knuckles. Viktor’s harsh panting fills the room as Jayce watches the tension unlock and bleed from Viktor’s muscles down over the bed again. He unspools like he’s been waiting for that for hours, as opposed to the maybe ten minutes from his orgasm out on the sofa.

The relaxation spreads, pooling around them two of them as Jayce nuzzles into the small of his back. It’s a warm and affectionate wash that Jayce can feel in the weight and press of Viktor’s body against his own.

He hums and gently nudges the fingers in his ass deeper. “Is—still good?”

Viktor nods, mumbling something warm and loose in his mother-tongue before he sucks in a breath and turns those amber eyes up to Jayce over his shoulder. “More? Three should, eh, three should be enough. Once I can take those…”

Jayce’s mouth goes dry as he looks to where Viktor is already spread over the two fingers. He glistens between the oil and the spit, but the skin is just a little work-and-attention reddened. The tip of his index finger traces around him. “Yeah?”

“Mm. Three is, eh, usually good. And I’m getting,” Viktor pauses, his tongue pressing into his cheek as he thinks for a moment. “Impatient.”

Alright, that draws a soft little puff of a laugh from deep in Jayce’s chest. “Yeah?”

“Shut up,” Viktor huffs in reply. “You’re not the one with two thick fingers in your ass right now, Jayce. If you were in my position you’d be begging for my cock.”

Jayce glances down, nudging his fingers deeper into Viktor’s body—turning the huffy little expression on his face into something a little closer to blissed. “Probably, honestly,” he says. “If you, uh, if you had one of those things—I wouldn’t…y’know. I wouldn’t be opposed. Not that I’ve done that before.”

It’s not like Jayce hasn’t been with men before. He’s just used to giving off a particular energy to them. Jayce isn’t stupid, he’s aware of what he looks likes.

Who he attracts.

It never really bothered him, but there were things he’s wanted to try, things he’d been interested in doing. Things he never quite got to experiment in.

But Viktor is his…his partner, in all senses. Viktor is his partner in -, above everything else, above the sex and the dinners and the two-glasses-of-wine-a-piece -, his partner in scientific experimentation. And Jayce knows there isn’t a person he trusts more than Viktor to be beside him in a new endeavor. There’s no one else he’d stand on a ledge with, there’s no one else he’d face down the nerve-choke feeling of oblivion and change that comes with standing on the precipice of something new.

Viktor, his best friend.

Viktor, his partner.

Viktor, who he loves.

“Really?” Viktor asks, brows knitting as if he can read the sudden and oxygen-snatching realization that washes over Jayce and immediately sucks him beneath the turbulent waves. Like Jayce isn’t stuck in a riptide of information that he knows he knew before, but he never let himself acknowledge.

“Yeah?” Jayce breathes, soft and warm, because they aren’t talking about the same thing anymore. But Viktor doesn’t know that, and Jayce knows it isn’t fair to have this in his head and not say it. So he does. “I love you, I’d do anything with you.”

And maybe, just maybe, telling your partner-in-unnamed-relationship-status that you love him while working a third finger into his ass while he’s in the post-orgasm bliss isn’t the wisest move in the world.

But, while Jayce is smart, he never claimed to be wise.

Viktor’s eyes go wide, two brilliant disks in the night—shining like night-dulled amber gems. “You—what?”

“I love you,” Jayce says, because the poro’s out of the bag now. “I love you, V. I’m—fuck. I’m sorry I shouldn’t have said that I’m—”

“I—no, no, Jayce don’t apologize I—” Viktor looks down the line of his back, then down his front. “Can we talk about this later? But don’t—do not apologize or feel badly about it. I feel—I—”

Viktor’s mouth works for a moment and Jayce tries, he really tries, to not feel like his heart on the brink of shattering.

A deep breath, hovering on the brink of something.

Of something, indeed.

“I love you, too,” Viktor says, voice soft and assuring. “We can talk about what that means later, okay?”

Jayce isn’t sure what they need to talk about, but the fact that Viktor agrees, that Viktor feels it too—it’s enough for Jayce. A balm to the sudden burn-wound alive across his skin.

Whatever feeling is currently clawing at the inside of Jayce’s ribcage, digging itself into the inside of his bones and flesh and muscle—threatening to shred the underside of his lungs in retaliation for keeping it caged—isn’t named. It isn’t something Jayce can truly understand as Viktor’s body holds Jayce fast and tight.

“I love you,” Jayce repeats, pushing the third finger deeper into him.

Viktor’s body tenses, and flutters, and yields for him. “I love you, too, Jayce.”

He says it like a promise, he says it like the same sort of vow in the night in the ruins of Jayce’s blown-out apartment. The same sort of swear and the same sort of promise. I love you, I want to help you finish your work, I love you, this hextech dream of yours (our hextech dream).

There’s something obscene about the melding of then and now, bringing the ache in Jayce’s chest out to Viktor’s skin. But there’s something inherently beautiful in the obscenity of it. Something is inherently them about it—about the entanglement of all the things they are, all the forms of partnership they can encapsulate.

Jayce keeps working Viktor open to the soft and slow pants—the fingers on his cunt still working him slowly, keeping him on the edge of oblivion steadily and slowly until he’s drooling slick out over Jayce’s hand, until it’s dripping off his wrist and smearing out onto the pillow beneath Viktor’s body. Jayce doesn’t know how long it takes until Viktor’s body is relaxed around him, until he’s taking all three of Jayce’s thick fingers down to the knuckle again and again and again—a bit more oil there, another lave of Jayce’s tongue there to keep him slick and comfortable.

Until the sounds coming from between them are wet and squelching and slick. Until Jayce is painfully hard between them, his own cock drooling into the sheets—smearing precome in his desperation.

Until Viktor pants out his readiness.

Until Jayce slides the hand over him back. He doesn’t ask this time, because he can tell where the edge of Viktor’s patience is. “Tell me if you need more?”

“I will,” Viktor promises, his good knee pushing into the mattress to shove his ass out more.

Jayce is careful, slowly sliding his fingers out of Viktor’s body. He watches as Viktor shivers, hips twitching back like he’s chasing the feeling of Jayce inside him.

And Jayce knows he’ll have him again soon—but still, the aching little whine he gives at being empty makes something in his chest clench. Like all he wants is to keep Viktor full and happy if that’s what he wants. Like he’d happily toss reason aside and give Viktor whatever he wants as long as it keeps that arousal-flush high on his cheeks and the feeling of his come dripping between Jayce’s fingers from hours of playing and toying with him.

As long as it means that Viktor is content and Viktor is happy.

Jayce would give himself over to Viktor a thousand times if it meant anything at all.

“Okay,” Jayce says, just to fill the suddenly nervous silence he feels beating out between each beat of his heart. He slicks his cock up with a generous amount of oil—smearing the remnants off his hands over Viktor’s hole gently. He dips two fingers back into him, just to make sure none of it is wasted. He pulls his hand back and shifts forward and—and there’s no way this is fitting.

His cock pushes up between Viktor’s cheeks, spreading him as he rocks into the crevice there. It’s different than when it was pressed against his stomach, when Viktor had shown him with excitement and exaltation.

There’s no way.

“Jayce,” Viktor breathes, his forehead pressing into the sheets. “You’re in your head.”

“I’m—if it’s too much you’ll tell me?”

“How many times have I promised?” Viktor asks. “If you don’t want to—”

“I do,” Jayce insists. “I’m just…”

Jayce trails off as one of Viktor’s hands dips down, finding the slick, messy, one that Jayce had used to bring Viktor off while he was preparing him. Square, calloused, fingers, tangle with Jayce’s filthy ones. His eyes fixate there, where the moonlight-pale skin meets Jayce’s sun-warmth.

“I trust you not to hurt me,” Viktor says, pushing back gently against him. “I…also trust you to know yourself.”

I trust you not to hurt me.

Something about it, with Viktor’s hand wrapped around his own, spurs Jayce onward. He swallows the bundle of nerves in his throat and shifts just a fraction closer. I trust you not to hurt me. He takes Viktor’s hand, shifting as he bends over Viktor’s back to give himself the leverage he needs as his cock catches on the rim of Viktor’s well-stretched and well-slicked hole. He keeps their fingers tangled in one hand as he uses his other to keep himself steady.

“Okay,” he breathes, listening to Viktor suck in a breath in turn.

And he starts to push in.

And it’s like the world collapses around him all at once.

There was a moment, when Jayce hit the wall opposite his penthouse the day he met Viktor, where everything was blue and black—where the world focused to a pin-prick moment and then became nothing at all. It had happened again in the exact moment he’d clicked the runes into place in Heimerdinger’s office—as Viktor put his own safety and security into the handles of the door to keep the Enforcers out. As Viktor bought them another few seconds.

A moment where everything snapped into perfect clarity. There was no noise, there was no static, there is nothing but the moment, nothing but all the things that Jayce needed right then and there. Nothing but them, nothing but all the things they needed.

And then it was gone.

And then Jayce’s concussion took over and he was swallowed into darkness.

And then the core stabilized and they were floating.

There isn’t a moment when it stops this time. Jayce’s world narrows down to Viktor. Viktor. Viktor. Viktor. Nothing but him, nothing but the molten embrace of his body as he spreads him on the slick head of his cock.

“Fuck,” Jayce breathes—eyes dropping half lidded as he watches himself pushing Viktor’s body open, watches himself sink just a little bit further. “That’s right, you’re doing so good.”

Viktor shivers at the praise, and Jayce latches onto that like a poro with his teeth caught in a steak. “A-ah—” He pants. “Jayce you’re—fuck you feel so good.”

“C’mon, V,” he mumbles as he pauses, the thick head of his cock barely pushed into him. “Let me in? You’re taking me so good, so, so, so good.”

“Big,” Viktor says, like it’s a swear. “Further you—you can go more.”

Jayce gives him as much as he can before Viktor seizes around him, the tension that once melted from him wrenching back up the length of his spine—twisting and pulling as Jayce stills. Viktor’s hand squeezes his own. “Hey, hey,” he says, dropping one hand to stroke his flank while the other runs up his back, only releasing Viktor’s with a soft squeeze in return. “You’re doing so well. You—fuck you’re taking so much, V. I—I don’t know how you do it.”

“Practice.” It’s gritted, but something about the twitch of humor soothes that part of Jayce that can’t stop worrying. “Fuck, Jayce it feels like you’re in my lungs.”

Jayce looks down. “It’s uh…” he keeps stroking him soft and slow. “Not even half-way?”

“What?” Viktor sounds almost delirious, wrenching his head back, as he pushes himself up on one trembling arm. His other slinks down between them to reach the place where he’s stretched around nearly a third of Jayce’s cock. “You’re—ahh—you’re not kidding?”

Each breath sounds like it’s punching a soft groan from Viktor’s throat as Jayce shakes his head. “It’s okay, okay? I’ve got you.” The hand stroking down his flank slots into the space between his thigh and his hip, holding him there. “You’re taking so much, V. You—do you have any idea how good you look like this? You’re so stretched around me that—that I have no idea how you’re doing it but you are. You’re so amazing, you’re so strong.”

And it’s true. Viktor’s always been Jayce’s strength in one way or another. He’s always underwritten Jayce’s with his own, he’s always brought a power to Jayce’s life that he didn’t know he needed. The force pushing him to keep going, to keep trying, to say fuck it, let’s steal from Heimerdinger, saying let’s try again when the radiator blows up in their face.

A willpower beyond reason.

Jayce’s hips nudge just a fraction further and Viktor’s head thrashes back with a shattered groan. “Do you want to set the pace?”

Without another word, Viktor’s own hips push back against Jayce, taking another inch of his cock with a soft, muffled, sound of pleasure. “If you agree to touch my cock while I do it?”

He wastes no time giving him the hand he’d been using on his cunt before, offering featherlight, distracting, touches as Viktor starts to work himself back. He goes slow and steady, hips undulating to the beat of Jayce’s fingers. It’s a steady, slow, rocking motion—pulling off a half-inch then sinking down a full. Each one comes with a gentle, needy, puff of breath from Viktor’s throat or Jayce’s or both of them at once—Jayce doesn’t know, all he knows is the sound of rushed, panting, breathing, the sound of his blood rushing in his own ears, the sound of skin sliding wet and slick over skin.

It’s noise and sensation and the hottighthottight feeling of Viktor’s body clenching and gripping at him and the steady pour of fluid over Jayce’s fingers from Viktor’s cunt. It’s the feeling of Viktor around him and against him, the sound of his whining breaths, the smell of his dripping pussy mixed with the rising scent of sex in the air.

It’s all of it at once and Jayce has to leverage a hand on his hip the second Viktor has shoved back against his hips—taken him fully. “W-wait.”

Viktor stops, immediately. “I—is something—?

“Just…“That’s it,” Jayce says, the awe as clear as the breaking dawn. “You—that’s it. I need—fuck—I uh—”

Viktor’s sweaty brow drops the bed. “Too much for you?”

It’s a joke. At least, Jayce thinks it is. But he just bends his forehead to the space between Viktor’s shoulders. He breathes him in, the sweet heady smell of sweat and skin. “Yeah,” he says, as honest as he can. “Fuck, I love you—I can’t believe you’re taking it all, I can’t—fuck.”

Viktor’s body squeezes, tentatively, around him and Jayce chokes on the noise he makes in response. “All for you my love.”

My love.

My love.

Jayce’s chest seizes as he wraps his arm back around Viktor’s waist. He keeps them anchored together, bodies seamed as tight as he can.

It’s only then that he realizes that he really is inside him. The pulsing beat of his cock is pushing up against Viktor’s walls, he’s buried to the hilt inside his body. It seizes him all at once, arcing within him like a thousand volts. It strikes him like an arrow—piercing through the center of his chest and out the other side. A clean shot, like that of a long-wanted lover.

He’s inside him.

Joined so close and so tight that Jayce doesn’t think he can feel an inch of him that isn’t seamed to Viktor’s skin—piece to piece to piece to piece they’re one and one and one and one. He doesn’t have to release him, he doesn’t have to let him go. It isn’t a fleeting touch in the night, it's Viktor in his arms.

It’s everything he’s ever wanted, everything he’s ever needed. It feels like the first warm summer day after a grueling, endless, winter—it feels like the first burst of flowers from the frost—the first touch of the heat of the forge—the thawing of frozen things and the rebirth of dead things. It feels like coming home after years of being away.

It feels like being whole for the very first time.

His hand slides up to Viktor’s chest, pressing into the bone and muscle to feel the fever-pitch thrum of his heart. In perfect time with the pulse of his body.

The sweat that drips down his cheeks comes with a soft, hitched, breath pushed between his shoulder blades. Viktor’s hand covers his own, fingers interlocking again, anchoring them together against his heaving chest.

“I know,” he says, “I feel it too.”

Jayce’s cheek pushes against his skin as he buries another choked sob of pleasure and desperation against him. That Viktor feels it means more than words could ever describe.

It isn’t just him.

It wasn’t ever just him.

In cold and lonely nights, watching the shape of Viktor drift across the lab like a specter of creation—wondering if he was something so perfect that Jayce could have only dreamed him up. In days they spent trapped together, trading idle touches and casual looks across the graveyard of scrap metal and wasted parts. It wasn’t ever just Jayce, chasing the kisses they shared, considering the emptiness of the bed beside him. It wasn’t just Jayce relishing in the lingering touches and wondering how much he wanted more.

A shared need and a shared desire.

Two parts of one whole.

What’s one cog in a machine, alone and aimless?

Jayce doesn’t know when they make the decision to shift positions—when they both keep guiding and pushing and pulling and twisting until they’re stretched out on their sides together, still effortlessly and desperately seamed together like they’re trying to sink into each other’s pores. Like Jayce can come apart into atoms and drift his way between the cracks of Viktor’s skin.

They end up with Viktor’s head resting against Jayce’s shoulder—his mouth hanging open with an endless array of constant noise dripping from his lips. Jayce has Viktor’s knee bent up towards his chest, pinned between the two of them as his hips work slow and deep into him—each thrust carrying with it another soft sound. His hand finds home high on his chest, seeking out that steady thrum of his heart with every push and roll of his hips.

Jayce tucks his nose into Viktor’s shoulder, his eyes squeezing shut as he fucks up into him, his own voice churning out an endless array of praise, a constant stream of you’re so good to me, baby, fuck you feel so good. You have no idea how tight you are, no idea how hot it is inside you. I could live here, I could stay here forever and just fuck you open like this—again and again as long as you wanted. As long as you needed me to. I’d do anything for you, I’d let you do anything to me—ride my cock, ride my face, ride my fingers. If it makes you make these noises, if it makes you come, I’ll give you anything you want.

At some point, Viktor stops responding in words—only managing more encouraging noises and the same rhythmic clench of his body. It’s a blissed out mess he’s made all over himself, come running between pale thighs and starting to soak, dark, into the sheets beneath them. Jayce tilts his hips, like summoning the best angle to meet the wind—finding the perfect pace to drive the perfect sounds from Viktor’s body.

He isn’t even chasing his own orgasm—too busy being lost in the feeling of Viktor’s body, in the feeling of becoming part of him. He means every word he says, everything about being a took for Viktor to use, an object of his pleasure.

Jayce loses track of time, loses track of the passage of seconds, minutes, hours. For all he knows he’s been here, buried in Viktor again and again for days—stretched out across the months and years. For all he knows they’re timeless there, frozen in a never-ending moment that won’t ever change from this.

The only thing that keeps him grounded, that keeps him from fully unbecoming, is the shift of Viktor’s hand. He tugs gently at the hand pressed to his chest and wordlessly pushes Jayce’s hand down—and for a moment Jayce thinks he’s guiding it back to his cunt, a quiet plea for Jayce to get him off again.

But something knocks into his palm with the roll of his hips and Viktor’s hand stops. Which means Jayce’s stops too. Jayce’s brows knit as he shifts impossibly closer to Viktor’s body, finally able to crack his eyes open. Viktor’s flushed from his hairline down to his stomach, a soft burn that highlights every arm and every freckle and mole.

He looks down where part of Viktor’s—part of Viktor’s stomach pushes into Jayce’s hand.

His hips freeze, buried to the root inside of Viktor and something is bulging gently into Jayce’s palm. And when he presses, experimentally, Viktor’s breath catches around another soft little groan in the same moment Jayce—Jayce feels it.

“Is—” he pants, voice raw. “Is that—”

“Mmm,” Viktor manages, the soft panting of his breath almost deafening in the sudden silence and stillness of the room. He presses Jayce’s hand harder and yep.

Yes.

That’s his dick.

That’s his dick, pressing up through Viktor’s stomach and into his own hand.

“I—” He breathes, caught somewhere between this is incredible and this is horrifying as Viktor’s half-lidded and pupil-shot eyes turn to him with a warm smile.

“Why did you stop?” He asks, voice fucked beyond belief.

Jayce blinks again. “Is...I’m…” Sentences are impossible, especially when Viktor’s body undulates against him, pushing back to make the cock inside him shift in a way that Jayce can feel in his hand. He watches it move, watches it shift. He swallows down the instinct—the knee-jerk should I stop? Are you okay, do you want me to stop? “Am I hurting you?”

Viktor shakes his head. “No. Keep—fuck, Jayce please don’t stop. Please—hhn—please keep going? I want you to feel it, I want you to see yourself inside me.”

Jayce sucks in a stabilizing breath, drawing his hips back to watch the bulge in Viktor's stomach disappear for just long enough that Jayce can push back into him. This time he watches it—watches the movement of it on Viktor’s skinny stomach. He watches as it presses up to the same point it was last time, finding the center of Jayce’s palm with ease.

In his arms, Viktor shudders and groans. The hand not holding Jayce’s firm to his stomach dips down to brush through his own folds.

Jayce moves to drop his hand instead, but Viktor’s only squeezes tighter, a vice-like grip grinding the small bones of his wrist.

“Do not. Stop. Touching it.”

And Jayce nods, because of course he does as Viktor bids.

Of course he does.

He watches as the muscles and tendons in Viktor’s arm work and twist and contract-and-expand-and-release in the effortless and perfect dance of searching for his own pleasure. He watches the way his chest heaves, the constant press-and-vanish-and-press-and-vanish of the bulge in his stomach in time with Jayce’s thrusts. He watches the way Viktor moves between it and his fingers, the way he starts to shake against him—starting at his thighs, one tensed in Jayce’s hand, and spreading like a warm and needy blanket up to his arms and his chest. Until the whole of him is slowly coming apart in Jayce’s grip.

Jayce only tightens his hold, somewhere between an attempt to keep him together and an attempt to anchor himself to the disparate parts and beautiful whole of Viktor. Viktor. Viktor. Jayce feels him start to tighten, the already vice-hot channel of him beginning to squeeze and he feels himself begin to slip towards the edge of oblivion once again.

The place he knows Viktor is beside him, the place he knows Viktor is with him always. The bed beneath them joins the cacophony, a steady squeak of springs being rocked and a knock of wood-against-wall as the headboard promises to leave its scars on Viktor’s bedroom. A constant marker, a constant reminder etched into the drywall.

When Viktor comes, it’s with a sharp, wailing, cry. It’s with a torrent of heat between his legs that seeps through onto Jayce’s body. It’s with a clamp of Viktor’s walls that wrenches a wretched sound from deep in Jayce’s chest. It’s with a tautness to his muscles and a twist that almost pulls them apart if it wasn’t for their own grips on one another.

It’s with everything they are and everything they could be.

Jayce has no choice but to follow him over the edge.

Though, it’s not like he would have ever questioned it. Jayce would follow him anywhere—into any thing.

He tumbles, willfully and welcomingly, into nothingness—knowing that he’ll become parts once again, but knowing that Viktor is there on the other side to put him back together. Knowing that once on the other side, he’ll be able to get his hands on all of Viktor’s pieces next. Unbecoming together and rebuilding in tandem.

He wrings himself out inside of Viktor’s trembling body. He’s lost, tangled in the gentle pulses of the aftershocks washing through the two of them as Viktor all but milks his orgasm out of him with the endless twitching of his hips.

Jayce doesn’t let him go.

Jayce doesn’t think he can let him go.

He buries his nose into the crook of Viktor’s neck, peppering the space there with soft presses of his lips. “I love you,” he tells the pooling sweat and thrumming pulse once he’s come down from the teetering high enough to speak.

Viktor thumbs over the space on his stomach. “I love you too,” he says, turning to look at him. There’s tear-tracks catching in the faint slivers of moonlight.

Jayce’s stomach plummets. “I—” his hand jumps to cup his cheek, thumbing across one with an almost wounded noise. Look what you did—look what you did to him look—

“Bah,” Viktor says, nuzzling into Jayce’s palm without hesitation. “It is overstimulation. A lot of a good thing.”

“So they’re, uh, happy tears?”

Viktor nods, breathing deep for a moment—like he’s memorizing the scent of Jayce’s hand. “Very happy tears.” There’s a beat, a long-stretched moment. “What about you? I know…it was a lot for you.”

Jayce feels himself flush, wrapping closer around Viktor. “I’m…I liked it. Is that…that’s not…”

“Hush,” Viktor says, leaning against him more. His head tilts back to rest into the pillows. “You’re supposed to like it. That is the point, isn’t it? If you weren’t—if you were not enjoying yourself, I would not be either.”

Jayce supposes Viktor isn’t wrong. But still.

He stays quiet, kissing a patch of skin on his shoulder. “I liked it a lot. I loved it, even.”

Viktor’s eyes stay closed, but he smiles. “Good. I loved it as well.”

“You wanted to talk?”

“Mmm. In the morning. I want you to stay inside me as long as you can, if you would not be opposed? I likely will not be able to fall asleep on your cock—but I’d like to rest here.”

Jayce shivers at the idea of Viktor there, keeping his spent cock warm all night. His stomach flips in excitement. “I…yeah.”

“Jayce?”

“Yeah, V?”

“It’s a good talk.”

Jayce nestles closer, taking in one last hit of Viktor’s scent—just something to keep him sated. “Okay.”