Work Text:
Eyelids heavy enough that no match could keep them open, you sink into the chair, chin cradled in your hand as your gaze idly follows the movement of Viktor’s pen through the tight crack of light. The hour is late enough that the library should have emptied, yet neither of you moves to leave.
It’s a constant battle of wits—tonight’s opponents: your endurance versus the unbearable longing. An ouroboros of torment, where the more endurance you have, the better you can perform restraint—but once it slips and gives way to that slow, dreamy state of mind, the longing overtakes, unguarded. Soon, your eyes slip—up, up his hand to his elbow, tracing the line of his arm, all the way to the ultimate bane of your existence: his neck.
Your absolute woe—the space on Viktor’s body seemingly crafted for your whiffling nose, or your lips, or perhaps even your fingers, if you dared be so bold. His cravat is loosened. The collar of his shirt gapes at the throat. You can see the little notch where his neck meets his shoulder. The tendons shift when he swallows. His pulse flutters visibly under pale skin, and your eyes—traitorous things—keep returning to it.
He stays focused, scribbling something in the margin of a notebook, lips pursed, jaw working as he thinks. All the while, you are being siren-called by that sliver of skin. The curl at his nape is slightly damp. A wisp clings to him, more memory than hair.
You almost gasp when his fingers creep into the periphery of your vision—curling around the knot and pulling, unspooling the fabric. His collar gapes further. You’re nearly cross-eyed trying not to look. His voice comes soft, distracted, like steam easing from a kettle:
“I think I’m missing something… are you still with me?”
“Huh?” You jerk upright a little too fast, the sound catching in your throat. Heat flares up your neck as you scramble to recover. “Yes, yes. Just… tired.”
He hums, unconvinced but not unkind. Rolling the cravat in his hands, he flattens it with absent fingers before placing it neatly on the table between you. “Will you endure a little bit longer, or would you like to wrap up?”
“I will do my best.”
“Alright then.” He pushes himself up from the chair, movements careful. The rustle of paper and creak of wood. He pauses to stretch—his shirt pulling just enough to make your eyes follow—and then gestures vaguely over his shoulder as he turns. “Give me a minute.”
You stay frozen. A statue of want, carved from hunger and too many nights of watching that cravat loosen thread by thread. His absence leaves the table hollow. The shape of him lingers, ghost-heavy.
Your gaze trails after him, stalking the shift of his shoulders until the shelves consume him. He turns into the mechanical engineering section and vanishes behind cracked leather spines and oil-scented paper. The click of his cane follows—a metronome ticking down the seconds of your resolve.
This is the real trial. Not exams. Not thesis deadlines or sleepless nights with textbooks and too-little coffee. No—this. The simple distance of a metre and the war of what’s yours to want and what’s not yours to take.
Your fingers twitch in your lap, then still. Again, they twitch. Then rise—hesitating over the cloth like it’s a wound that bleeds heat and memory. The cravat lies there, spent and spiralled, soft silk. It smells like him, you know it does. Like soap and starched linen and something warm beneath it all—him. His skin. His neck.
You imagine pressing your face into it. Just once. Just once. Just for a second, a breath, to inhale and be full of him.
You imagine more. The cloth curled in your fist under covers. You imagine sighing into it, open-mouthed and shameless, tongue thick with the ghost of him, hips rolling to the memory of his voice in your ear saying your name.
The cane clicks again—closer now and time snaps tight around you. Without another thought, you move—one decisive sweep. The garment disappears into your bag and your hand falls flat on top of it. Palm burning, heart frantic.
When he returns, he finds you exactly where he left you—almost.
The rest of the evening blurs—notes skimmed, pages turned without reading, the crackle of a candle nearing its stub the only measure of time. Viktor offers you a few more questions, a few more thoughts, but even those seem fainter, abstract, like echoes bouncing off stone. Finally, after one too many silences and a glance that lingers too long on your face, he exhales and concedes. “I suppose it’s late. Let’s get back?”
You nod, heart clanging like a bell in your chest. Is he truly tired, or has he noticed something? Are your cheeks so hot he can feel it radiating from you like nuclear fallout?
The two of you walk in tandem through the dim corridors, footsteps soft and wordless, until the path forks between dormitories. He gives a nod, a small smile, and vanishes around the corner.
As soon as he’s out of sight, your pace doubles. You shoulder the door to your room open, hand already plunging into your bag, rifling down until your fingers brush fabric. It’s there. Still warm. Still real.
Too late for regrets. The door clicks shut behind you. You lean against it, breath hissing from your lungs in one long, trembling sigh.
The cravat comes out soft between your fingers, its fabric catching faint on your skin. You bring it up slowly, hesitant but past saving. It smells—oh, it smells like Viktor. Like clean skin and warmth, the base note of him after hours, worn into the fabric. You press your nose into it, mouth open, breath ragged, and draw the scent in deep. Indulgent. Shameless. Almost a relief, this closeness, like you’ve peeled the ache from your ribs and pressed it into your palms.
Your thighs shift. Heat pulses low and heavy. One hand remains clutched in the silk, the other—well, it moves without orders. Trails down the slope of your stomach, dips between your legs. The contact is electric, almost too much at once, overwhelming. You lean back against the door, knees soft, head tilted. The moan tears itself from your throat without warning, his name catching on it like a hook. “Viktor.”
And that’s when it happens. The knock—sharp, unmistakable—lands like a stone on water.
You jolt, tear your hand away, nearly drop the evidence of your crime of passion. As if burned. As if caught. As if the door is suddenly too thin to contain the guilt blooming in your chest.
Ruling out the impossible you shove the cravat down your vest pocket, clumsy, almost uncaring, though you care greatly. Wipe your forehead, your mouth. One deep breath. You creak the door open.
The impossible stares you in the face. Viktor stands there, hand hung in mid-air, as if about to knock again. He is flushed. Not winded—flushed. Lips parted, eyes sharp with something that has no place in polite friendship. Cheeks dusted pink like the ink spill of an unread letter. He sees you.
And your face, gods, your face—you feel the heat claw up your skin like it’s trying to drag you down. Because he knows. Somehow, he knows.
"Forgive the late hour," he begins, voice rough, not quite steady. "But have you seen—"
Then he stops. His gaze dips. There, traitorous and proud, a white tongue of silk peeks from your vest pocket like it was never meant to hide. Viktor’s eyes glaze over. He takes one step forward, measured. Then, oh—reaches.
You flinch, try to cover your face, fingers fumbling for shame. But he is faster. Cane propped aside, his hand swallows your wrist, gentle but unwavering, and peels you open like folded paper. He plucks your right hand from your face, not missing a beat. You brace for a reckoning. An autopsy of your sins right here, at the threshold of your room.
But he has mercy—he steps inside and swings the door shut with a quiet kick. Then he lifts your hand to his face—and inhales. A low sound slips from him, all breath and gravity, like it costs him something. His lashes flutter shut.
“I heard you,” he whispers, tracing your fingers with his lips, and you wince—try to flinch away, but he won’t let you. “But I didn’t think it possible.”
He stands so close now you can feel the shift of his breath. One hand holds the forsaken cravat, already creased and warm from your grip. The other still wraps around your palm—evidence of everything you were doing just seconds before he knocked. He lifts the fabric slowly, brushing it along your cheek. You lean into it without meaning to, a quiet sigh escaping as your eyes flutter closed.
“W-what?” you whisper.
“Do you like me?” he asks then, soft but direct, as if the answer will change something vital in him.
You open your eyes, startled. “Viktor—”
“Don’t be ashamed,” he murmurs, stepping closer, his voice low and coaxing. “I like you. But I could never figure it out. You’re so private.” His thumb brushes over your knuckles.
You laugh, dry and breathy. “Oh, that’s because I’ve been working very hard for you not to notice.”
“Why?” he breathes. His brow knits, vulnerable in a way that’s rare for him, and utterly real. “I like you too.”
You hesitate, heart thudding. “Well, we’re friends. Have been for five years. It’s not something you throw away on a whim.”
He lifts the cravat, trails it down the line of your jaw like a ribbon threading through skin, voice quieting. “Where is the whim in here?” he whispers, and finally—he brushes his nose against yours. An inch left. Maybe less.
He leans in—and you panic, not out of doubt, but because of the sheer weight of this moment, this nearness you’ve longed for so painfully. One hand shoots up and covers his mouth.
“Are you sure?” you whisper, eyes wide, your palm trembling against his lips.
Viktor’s gaze softens. He doesn’t answer at first. Instead, he reaches up, gently takes your hand from his face, and brings it to rest against his neck—right there, at the hollow you’ve obsessed over in silence. His skin is warm, his pulse skipping hard under your fingers.
Then he gives it another try and this time there is no barrier. It’s slow lips at first—startled, searching. But it catches like flame to dry grass, all dry mouths and barely restrained hunger. You breathe through your noses, his hand rising to cup the back of your head, fingers threading into your hair. His lips press and pull, not sloppy, but wanting. The kind of kiss that knows it will be followed by more. The kind that curls your toes and sends your thoughts skittering from your head like marbles spilled on a floor.
You sigh into him. His arm wraps around your waist and pulls you closer, until your bodies meet fully, chest to chest, heat and want shared through nothing more than breath and fabric and need.
When you part, it’s only because you have to. Both of you gasping, mouths red, eyes glassy. “Do you like me?” he asks again, quieter now. Barely more than a whisper. And it just snaps.
“Yes,” you gasp. “Yes. gods, yes—I like you.” The words tumble out as your hands clutch his shirt, tugging him back in. You pepper his face with kisses—his cheeks, his jaw, his mouth again. “And you smell so nice,” you add, laughing wetly, a little breathless.
His answering laugh is quiet, and full of something so tender it makes your knees weak. “You smell nice too,” he murmurs, voice husky with heat and something else—relief, maybe. Or disbelief that this is real.
You don’t make it to the bed, neither of you suggests it. Your mouths mould together again somewhere between the doorway and the reading chair by the window, knocking into each other with the gracelessness of hunger. Kisses stretch long and deep, tongues pulling sighs loose and slackening your limbs. Hands fumble at shirt hems, tugging clumsily, not knowing when to part, unwilling to. You trip together, Viktor stumbling slightly as you both move, and you press your mouths hard to stifle the laugh.
And then—there. That holy place. You find it, finally. The space between his shoulder and throat, right where skin softens and heat pools and scent gathers, strong and damp and him. You nose in with a ragged breath, lips parted, tongue brushing salt. A tremor shudders through him and his arms tighten around your waist.
He peels your shirt up and over your head. You return the favour, dragging fabric over his arms, slow so you can watch the flex, the planes of him bared inch by inch. His skin is flushed pink, his chest dusted faintly with hair. His mouth finds your neck in kind, and when he sucks there, teeth scraping just enough, your spine arches like it’s seeking higher ground.
Your hands drift south, undoing the button of his trousers with ungodly urgency. But he pulls back, breath catching, one finger lifting. “This first,” he murmurs, glancing toward his leg.
You freeze, chest hitching, face blooming with heat. “Oh. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”
“Don’t be.” He smiles, quiet and sure, and bends to unbuckle the brace. It drops to the floor with a dull clink of metal and leather, and he steps out of it, free, all yours.
After that, it’s a shared undressing, wordless. Fingers hooked into waistbands, trousers pushed down thighs, underwear peeled away like sunburnt skin, like secrets.
When you both stand bare, the moment stills—his cock rests flushed against his thigh, undeniably lovely. Reddish and full, curved slightly, veined with that same lattice of want you’ve traced in his throat, his hands, the backs of his knees.
Your fingers follow the sharp cut of his hips—those v-lines taut with restraint—and he groans, low and sharp, when your hands reach back and cup his ass. Clothes scatter underfoot, forgotten, as he lowers into the chair and pulls you into his lap, one hand guiding you with a desperate grace.
With thighs spread to straddle him, knees bracketing his hips, you’re both breathless already, mouths swollen from kissing, your hands tangled in the soft hairs at the nape of his neck. Viktor sits back, spine curved into the hollow of the chair, eyes half-lidded and dark, so dark you wonder how you’ve ever looked away from him.
When your centre settles against his, it’s not quite contact. Just the barest brush—heat meeting heat, wet meeting hard flesh. His cock flexes beneath you, the slick of your lust catching on the head as it nudges forward, cradled against the seam of you.
The chair creaks, and your breath shakes. You rock once, slow. Not even pressure—just presence. The glancing slide of him through your lips, not entering yet. And the sensation is so maddening it borders holy. A private heat, the flushed ache of your cunt meeting his cock like they’ve been aching for it across lifetimes.
Viktor’s hands tighten on your hips, and he groans low. Then, wordlessly, he reaches past you—down to the crumpled heap of his trousers on the floor, fingers searching. You pause, watching him, throat tight with wonder.
When he lifts the pale cloth, it dangles from his hand with a subtle weight—his boxers. “Let’s see,” he says, voice cracked with heat, “if you like how all of me smells.”
He moves slowly, delicately. Draws them up from your shoulder, grazing your collarbone. Trails them up your throat, letting the cloth whisper over your skin. And then he cups your cheek with them, brushing the edge under your nose. And oh—he was right.
It hits you all at once, that scent: Viktor, concentrated. The sharpness of his soap, yes, but buried beneath that something else—warmth, salt, the tang of skin, and beneath it all the soft rot of a body worked hard and yearned for even harder. A hint of sweetness where the fabric kissed the crease of his thigh. You inhale open-mouthed, greedy, shameless.
Your lashes flutter. Head tips back, eyes roll. It is like the cloth itself could render you undone, this second-hand closeness so intimate it borders obscene. A gasping little sound slips out of you—almost a sob for how much you want him.
Viktor watches you with eyes so dark they’ve swallowed the light whole. “Such a filthy girl,” he says, and the phrase drips from his tongue like honey, like he’s discovered a rare fruit he plans to eat with his fingers.
You exhale, laugh breathlessly, unsure if you’re laughing at yourself or at how good it feels to be seen like this. To be held in the soft mouth of his attention and not spat out.
He tucks the cloth beneath your chin, leans in close, and presses his lips to your jaw—open-mouthed, awed.
Your fingers curl around his wrist, knuckles white with want, pinning his hand to your cheek as you press the worn cotton there, breathing him in like you’ll never get enough. Your chest heaves, eyes fluttering open then falling shut again, lashes trembling as the scent floods your skull. Hot, heady, raw. It rolls over you like a fever.
You rock against him slowly, purposely, hips tipping forward in a stuttering rhythm. It’s instinct more than thought—seeking friction, chasing it. The heat of his cock against you, separated by so little, maddens. The slide of skin, the dull pressure, the way your bodies know what to do even as your brain hiccups and stalls.
Viktor groans, strained, hands coming to frame your hips, leaving the holding of his underwear to you. His fingers grip just enough to ground you, thumbs dragging along the jut of your pelvis as he matches your rhythm—helps it. Encourages it. One hand slips around to your lower back, drawing you in tighter with each grind.
His gaze never leaves your face. Watches the haze take you, drink you in—your parted lips, your unfocused eyes, the way your breath snags every time your clit catches on the ridge of him just right. He’s wrecked with it, shaken.
“So pretty,” he rasps, barely audible. “So… gods, what were we doing all this time?”
You whimper something that might be his name. Might be a prayer.
“I should’ve known,” he breathes. “Should’ve followed my nose.”
He leans in then, mouth against your jaw, your cheek, the place behind your ear that makes you shudder. Kisses and breath and heat, all around you, and you keep grinding, brazen, gasping, the fabric still clutched to your face like a reliquary. Your thighs tremble where they frame his, and the heat builds dizzy behind your eyes.
Your arms wind around his neck, fingertips finding purchase in the damp curls at his nape. You drag your mouth open along the column of his throat, just above his pulse, your breath steaming where it lands. “You smell like life itself,” you murmur, devoted, drunk on him. “I love it.” A kiss to the hollow below his ear. “Gods, I’ve wanted you for so long.”
Viktor makes a sound—half-choked, half-swallowed. His hips shift beneath you, cock sliding slick through your slit, caught and cradled by your wet heat. He doesn’t push in, no need or no time. The drag of him, hot and heavy against your cunt, is enough to make your thighs quake. Enough to make you keen into his mouth when he kisses you again.
You feel full. Not inside—no breach—but everywhere else. Full of him, of his heat, of his scent. Of the warm, persistent weight of him gliding slow against you with every movement, every breath. His chest pressed to yours, heartbeat thundering where your ribs touch. His breath ragged in your mouth. He’s in your blood now, everywhere, omnipresent.
His hands cradle the back of your neck, thumbs stroking up into your hairline. “Closer,” he mutters, hoarse, voice buried in your skin. “Closer—” as if he doesn’t realise you’re already pressed heart to heart, stomach to stomach, slick joining you where you grind, slow and soaking.
Your bodies melt together, no seam between them. Sweat pearls at your temples and runs down the line of his spine where your fingers trace him blindly. The soft sounds of it—flesh, breath, mouth—fill the room in waves, each crest heavier than the last.
You feel the twitch of him—urgent and uncontrolled—where his cock slides along, dragged by the rhythm of your hips. His stomach is tight beneath yours, muscles drawn taut like string, trembling between the bars of want. The vein in his neck rises under your mouth as he tips his head back, jaw slack, lips bitten vermillion.
“I can’t,” he gasps softly, “I won’t last—”
“Kiss me,” you whisper, panting against his cheek. “Please.”
Viktor obeys instantly—like it’s the only thing he’s ever longed for. His mouth finds yours, warm and trembling, the taste of him the last spark you needed. It breaks something in you—a breath caught sharp in your throat, a tightening low in your belly—and then the snap.
It overtakes you in a long, flooding wave. Your muscles seize, thighs arresting his hips, spine arching. Your moan is swallowed into his mouth, open and dank, tongues clumsy with the rhythm of your shuddering body.
He gasps when you tighten above him—not inside, not quite—but the friction, the warmth, the slick rush of your release pouring onto him is enough. He moans out your name, his cock twitching helplessly where it’s caught between you. You feel it, hot and sudden, the spill of him striping his belly, thick and wet between you both.
Still, you move. Slow, drawn circles of your hips, chasing every aftershock, dragging your folds through the mess of it until Viktor shudders and groans—“Please,”—high and wrecked, trembling under your weight.
You kiss him through it. Through the bliss, through the overwhelmed whimper. Through his lashes fluttering and the flush climbing to his ears. You kiss him like he’s the only thing keeping you afloat, and he kisses you back like you’re something sacred.
There’s no line anymore between where he ends and you begin—just sweat and sighs and the unbearable sweetness of finally, finally having each other.
You don’t move far. Just shift your weight enough to nuzzle into his jaw, his cheekbone, dragging your face over the slick of his skin. You’re gathering him: his sweat, his scent, the salt-heat of his body, rubbing it into your own like a fevered benediction.
“I want to smell like you always,” you murmur, voice hoarse with truth. “Everywhere. On my skin, in my sheets, under my nails.”
Viktor’s breath catches, soft and stunned.
“You have no idea how long I’ve wanted this,” you go on, fingers slipping into his hair to pull it back, so you can kiss the line where his jaw meets his throat. “How long I’ve stared. Dreamed. Gods, Viktor. I just—”
“I think I know,” he interrupts gently, one hand rising to cover yours, to press your palm deeper to his chest, right over his thudding heart. “I just wish I knew sooner.” Your eyes close. The confession hums between you, warm and bright, like the filament of a bulb not yet burned out. When you open them again, you’re still in his arms, still tangled in the sweat and spent longing of what used to be wanting—and is now it’s yours.