Archive of Our Own

Jayce is starting to learn that there is no end to his repentance. In the several months that he exists between existences, pulled between the gravity of one necessary act and another, he creates a long list of regrets, each of which consumes, and consumes, and consumes. Sometimes, when the chill of the fissure is especially cold, and the fire he’s built threatens to go out, he becomes uncertain if there are any parts of him left without contrition. He is, wholly and incomprehensibly, a body of stacked up mistakes– or, at the very least, it feels that way.

Which leads him to other thoughts. He spends many days in the fissures, bleeding, delirious, and shivering with a fever that feels destined to never go away. He does not have a god to believe in– they don’t have those in Piltover, really, not when the ticking of a clock sounds just as holy as a church bell– but sometimes he finds himself praying regardless. To whom? Whatever name that his brain can catch itself on: Ornn, Anivia, Volibear.

Sometimes the Veiled Lady and the Winged Protector, though he feels compelled to stay away from them.

Justice.

That is what they are meant to symbolize, to enact. Jayce cannot imagine finding himself anywhere but at the end of the Winged Protector’s sword. He, like Hextech, is a thing to be protected from. No, he thinks, the twin sisters of justice would not take kindly to his prayers.

He moves past religion to desperation; it is not the gods’ forgiveness that he seeks anymore. It haunts him– their faces. Mel and Viktor. Like a binary star system, like two polarities, he sees them everywhere. In the flame of his newfound hearthfire, in the darkness that occupies him the moment his eyes close, the whistling of the wind passing through the fissure.

He doesn’t succumb to his melancholy. He can’t, though it tempts him in the mornings through the ache of his broken leg. Yet there is a dichotomy, a secondary impulse. He can’t think of his leg without thinking of Viktor’s. And Viktor, as always, has a gravity of his own. It’s a gravity large enough to keep him going, to pull him steadily yet slowly from the event horizon of his doom. A doom that feels so damningly self-inflicted.

He deserves this. He doesn’t deserve this. He goes back and forth on what he deserves until he decides that it has never, ever been about deserving. What does he want?

Many things– he’s always been covetous, and has never been satisfied. He lists them out: to have a warm meal, anything besides a rock to sleep on, the incessant pain in his leg to stop. These are all base needs, things that cover the truth of his desire.

He wants his partner back. Yet want is hardly fitting– it is a prerequisite to everything. He wants Viktor– it’s all he thinks about. Viktor would know how to get out of this situation, he wouldn’t find himself here in the first place. I should have listened, I should have gone after him, I should have known that he was dying, I should have…

The regret almost occupies him as an infection would, ever present and changing him.

There is a single thing that he can find no remorse in, even when he tries to, even when he knows he should: he does not regret bringing Viktor back to life. There is no way to separate his mind from the emotion of such a decision, even when he knows it is the emotion that holds the logic back like a floodgate.

At the end of the day, it’s Viktor– it’s always been Viktor– that motivates him from self-pity to resolution. The courage to keep going, the perspective to look up at the barely-there sky and dream, it’s all borrowed from Viktor. It almost feels, sometimes, like Jayce prays to him, like Jayce has named him god. Maybe it’s the fever, or maybe it’s just the cold, hard fucking truth finally hitting him after years and years of denying himself reality.

It doesn’t matter. It pushes him from the fissures and calls him to the top of the hexgate and there he finds it: absolution. His corpse. A cloaked man with a familiar face that he’s been chasing after his entire life. Viktor’s face, skin wrinkled from an aging that Jayce had never even dreamed of being possible. Yet here, on top of the globe, where everything falls apart and together– gods, a fucking star collision, his body the remaining blue straggler– there is direct evidence of a world where Viktor is alive and well and so, so beautifully uncorrupted by the arcane. Yet at what cost?

Jayce looks down at what is left of the reality below them. Which is to say, the absence of reality. Of life. There is nobody here to witness the beautiful aging of Viktor’s face, his wrinkles and pale hair. And isn’t that strange, the way that Jayce is enraptured by Viktor even when he is like this, worn and solemn?

And Viktor speaks to him, his voice gentle in such a profound way. It makes all the months of hating himself worth it, because Viktor has faith in him and his redemption. Which is to say that he is forgiven through love. Suddenly it’s all so simple.

Jayce is given a mission, a way to fix everything and fulfill a promise– to not just the Viktor before him, but also the one waiting for him in the past, a different reality that is so similar that it is damning.

He can fix this. He can fix this.

He closes his eyes, willful, and feels hope bloom in his chest. He’d almost forgotten how to feel that emotion. It is quickly replaced with nausea and a sense of falling, ascending, and spinning. As if he is a magnet being pulled in a number of directions. Realities, he realizes distantly. And then he is somewhere else. It takes him several moments to realize where ‘somewhere else’ actually is: the council chamber. He’s stood leaned over the table, Vi before him, begging for the counselors to just do something. He suppresses the overwhelming urge to keel over and vomit. The time frame that he’s in comes to him slowly. The bridge had just been attacked, a number of enforcers dead, their bodies–

What had he done after that? After the meeting?

Gone to the forge. He’d been so preoccupied with the demands of the council that he’d practically forgotten about Viktor.

Gods, Viktor..

He thinks of his leg, his hand, the synthetic skin of it all. His dead body after Jinx’s rocket had hit.

Is this his reality, time unthreaded and wined back, or something else? If he’s in a different timeline, there could be a number of minute changes that are impossible to account for. He is hit with the alarming realization that Viktor might already be dead, taken from him by the disease in his lungs instead of a terrible attack.

The fissures, their dreams.

When he’d requested for Viktor to send him back, this is not, by any means, what he had meant. But that version of Viktor is far more experienced than he is, and he trusts his decision implicitly. He’s learned by now that it’s best to roll with the punches– faster recovery time and less of a bruised ego.

He stays rooted to the floor, if only to not draw suspicion to himself. The dialogue between everyone is effectively tuned out until Vi leaves the room, frustrated. Will there be repercussions if Jayce decides to not go to the forge and make a pact with Vi? There’s a very real possibility. But still, he needs to know if Viktor is alive.

It’s all he can think about. When Mel attempts to pull him aside after the meeting and speak with him, he waves her off. There’s a well of anger towards her built by months of total isolation and countless opportunities to question her motives. A deep feeling of betrayal pools in his stomach.

It’s rude, because of course it is. And maybe this version of Mel doesn’t deserve it, but he doesn’t care.

He rushes through the hallways, his destination the lab. He prays– like he had so often in the months he’d spent in that hellscape of a reality, desperately– that Viktor is okay and not forever changed. Dead.

Deep dread washes over him the moment he finds himself before the lab’s door, but there is no time for hesitation. He needs to know the severity of the situation he’s found himself in now. He pushes the door open, his leg close to buckling.

How has he managed to keep that injury? Does he look as he was before, or dirty, unkempt, his hair grown out? There are so many unanswered questions in his head, ones that cause his brain to pull itself apart and then back together again seconds later.

He seems to have traded one form of hell for another.

Viktor is bent over the desk, his back to the doorway, his shirt, his pants missing. He looks on the precipice of something terrible. The room is tinged in a dark purple, the hexcore wheezing and pulsing, making noises that he’s never heard it produce before.

“Viktor!” he says, and Viktor’s head whips around.

He looks entirely caught off guard. Jayce doesn’t give him time to do anything stupid, running over. The chair clatters to the floor as Viktor stands to meet him, and gods, he’s so thin. Closer now, he observes him. There are red, angry lines carved into Viktor’s skin, across his shoulders, his arms, his neck.

“Gods, Viktor, what have you done?”

Jayce’s hand reaches up to grasp his cheek, but Viktor flinches back. Viscerally.

“I–”

Jayce realizes that he doesn’t care if Viktor has reservations about Jayce touching him. Jayce needs him to know that he isn’t disgusted, that they’re in this together. He’s careful not to press too much of his weight into Viktor. He grabs Jayce’s forearms, realizes that he almost touched one of the red cuts. And, fuck, those are runes carved into his skin. Jayce had read about this in his notes, had known the process that Viktor had gone through, but seeing it’s another thing entirely.

Viktor’s knees buckle. Jayce follows him to the cold lab floor, fumbling off his jacket so that Viktor can wear it– it’s clean, just as it had been all those months ago. He pushes it into Viktor’s lap, cradles both of his cheeks, hoping that Viktor can see that it doesn’t matter, he’s here. He’ll stay here with Viktor.

He’s been so stupid, so blind. But he can see clearly now, any fault in his vision corrected by future Viktor and the knowledge that Viktor loves him, in whatever form that may be. You don’t make a single, solitary garden of flowers and dragonflies for just anyone. You don’t save them, time and time again, when it would have been far easier to just let them blink out in a random snowstorm. To let them die, and to never meet them.

It has to be love in the same way that it has to be torture.

“It’s okay,” Jayce says, gently laying his jacket across Viktor’s shoulders and guiding his head into the crook of his neck. He smells of sulfur, copper, and sweetmilk– the combination should be unpleasant, but it isn’t. “Gods, I’ve missed you.”

Viktor has begun to sob, and it’s loud, and heart wrenching. Jayce, compelled by Viktor, begins to cry, too.

“It’s okay, I understand,” Jayce says, running fingers through Viktor’s auburn hair, “you had to.”

“No, I–”

“The shimmer,” Jayce says, and Viktor flinches against his hold. He should not know this, should certainly not say the fact so confidently, but his mind provides him with the notes Viktor had left. His mind also provides him unkindly with the image of Viktor dead on their lab table. Their current predicament, though undesirable, is leagues and leagues better. “Have you taken it already?”

“No, it’s… run out,” Viktor says, a difficult number of breaths leading him to produce the words.

“That’d kill you. You know that, right?”

“Not for certain. It’s a risk I– if it did kill me… at least death will be on my terms, then.”

“No, Viktor. I won’t let you. Please,” he says, and the next words tumble out of his mouth with confidence, because he’s waited to say this for months. It has been a mantra to him, a devotion outside of himself to place all hope in– a fact. “I love you.”

He sounds pained, and he doesn’t mean for it to come out that way, but his love for Viktor had been a condemnation. Dialectically, a saving grace. Everything.

Viktor shakes from the adrenaline. “It’s okay,” Jayce reassures once more. He pulls Viktor closer, presses barely-there kisses to his jaw, his cheeks, his chin. Worshipping him. The salt of his tears taste bitter on his lips. “You’re okay. We’re okay.”

Viktor’s entire body tenses, clearly confused by the absurdity of the events that have happened in the past minute. Jayce can imagine how insanely different he must be acting from the man that Viktor knows, yet Jayce can’t help but not care because he is simply not that man anymore.

Viktor’s brows draw tight on his face, his eyes averting Jayce’s face. “The council–”

“Fuck the council,” Jayce spits, the words pressed into the side of Viktor’s cheek where his lips had just been. His grip on Viktor’s hair tightens imperceptibly, possessively. Viktor hardly responds, still shocked by Jayce’s change of heart. But it’s not him, not really– not the Jayce that this Viktor knows, for better or worse. Viktor doesn’t so much as blink.

Jayce’s hand roams from Viktor’s hair to his back. The metal of his chest brace is cool, the craftsmanship complex. Jayce traces the intricacies of it with the tips of two fingers. He’d watched the entire process of its genesis– Viktor had made it, had convinced Jayce not to interfere. With his leg irreparably changed and a brace on his own leg, he can make out the importance of each cog, slab, and bolt of the chest brace.

It had been soldered to Viktor’s body during his melding with the hexcore, and made into a part of him. A part of him that he must have invariably hated. Jayce knows that he himself bears no love for his own leg brace. It’s evidence of all his sins. Gods, does Viktor see himself that way?

Jayce’s grasp of Viktor’s back returns to the nape of his neck, feeling the sweat perspiring there, the way it spreads into his hair and curls the ends of it. “I’ve missed you. Please, Viktor.”

He isn’t sure what he’s asking for. It just feels so unbelievably good to be touching him, to feel the rapid beating of Viktor’s heart in his chest against his own. He feels like he could melt into him, make them one single thing. They’re close to it now, he can tell, closer than they’ve ever been before. It’s maddening.

Jayce’s hand roams down to Viktor’s leg, the one purpled by the arcane and buzzing with an electric energy that jolts up the neurons of Jayce’s hand and into his neck. It feels surprisingly good, like the way Viktor had felt when he had just been freed from his arcane chrysalis. It’s so familiar. Which makes sense: they’d been at the edge of a precipice then, too. Jayce can only hope that it brings them closer this time instead of farther apart.

“Gods, Viktor.”

The words are practically punched out of him. Before he can make sense of his actions, he’s hunching his back over so that he can press his mouth to the delicate cusp of Viktor’s patella. The contact shocks Jayce, the electricity running across the skin of his lips. It shocks Viktor too, though in a different way, his jaw falling lax, stunned.

Jayce’s hand wraps under the back of Viktor’s thigh, fingers tracing the lines in his skin that exposes the magic beneath it. It’s one long, steady thrum of energy that makes Jayce’s entire body heat up as if lit on fire. He presses two more kisses down the front of Viktor’s patella, open-mouthed and delirious.

It’s been so long. And now he’s free, now he knows for certain what he wants. “Viktor,” he says, eyes lifting to meet Viktor’s own, “can you feel that?”

Viktor seems at a loss for words. He licks his lips, mouth opening to speak but ultimately unable to say anything of worth. It’s hard to find meaning when nothing makes sense, Jayce supposes. His cheeks, and even down his neck is beginning to flush a deep pink.

He’s so alive, Jayce thinks, and then: cute.

Jayce’s attention returns to Viktor’s leg, the arcane responding to each touch. He kisses there, again and again, asserting to himself that Viktor is real and– for the most part– unharmed. His hand swoops down, feeling the metal that undoubtedly used to be the cruciate and collateral ligaments bracketing the back of his knee. His hand dips lower, right over the meatiest part of his calf. There’s an opening of the pseudo-skin there that he presses his fingertips into.

Viktor’s breath hitches. “Jayce–”

“How about here?”

He watches Viktor’s expression like a bloodhound tracks the movements of an injured deer. He’s effectively pulling at the leash, seeing what Viktor will let him get away with. This Viktor, after all, may not be his Viktor, but another version of him. Yet here, with his hands pressed to the curve of his leg and his hip, he feels remarkably similar. Similar enough that he feels no hesitation doing what he’s doing.

He pulls Viktor’s injured– healed? changed? – leg into his lap.

And he shouldn’t be, but he’s so fucking hard. Ridiculously, it isn’t even the content of their interaction that is making him so overwhelmed, but instead the existence of it. He’d never expected to see Viktor again– he’d hoped, and prayed, but for months that had meant very little. It certainly hadn’t changed anything.

Yet Viktor is here, mostly flesh and blood, so he’ll have him, if Viktor wants that too. And he must, or else nothing that he’s been through will make any sense. Viktor is the center of his universe now– he always has been– and if Viktor decides to leave, he’s not sure what he’ll do.

He’s desperate. He’s missed him so, so much.

Viktor’s hand finds its way to the front of his forehead, sweeping back the hair that is beginning to stick there. He looks at him, eyes wide and confused yet also so sharp. His intellect is evident even now. Viktor’s hand slips down to the nape of his neck, guiding him up to eye-level, an even playing field.

“Jayce, stop.”

The metaphorical leash tightens. Jayce halts all movement, though the pulsing of electricity against his palm continues.

“What’s gotten into you? I…” Viktor drawls off, gaze lowering to Jayce’s cheek and then his lips, the dryness of them, clearly beginning to put pieces together. Viktor shakes his head in an attempt at creating clarity, but stops halfway, exhaling a pained hiss. Jayce’s eyes dart to his neck.

Right. Viktor is injured– he’s made a decision that would have irrevocably changed the both of them. He’d loaded the chamber, and Jayce had caught him just before he pulled the trigger.

Was this the start of the end, or was it all those years ago, the very day that they first met in his crime-scene apartment? Or, no, even before that, when Viktor had saved him and his mother?

There is no way for him to explain this to Viktor with words.

“You’re hurt,” Jayce says simply. “I’m sorry, I–”

He produces a bitter laugh. Even now he is prone to selfishness. “I’ve just missed you so much.”

Jayce’s eyes search the room for the medical cabinet in the lab that he knows must be here somewhere. He wants to touch Viktor everywhere, but now is not the time.

Viktor lets go of the gentle hold he has on Jayce’s hair, hand falling to his shoulder. He scoffs. “I saw you yesterday, you brute.”

Jayce recalls the memory. They’d argued, at the bridge, Jayce compelled by appearances to… to accuse him. Yes, Jayce realizes, this is where his part to play comes in. He’d unknowingly pushed Viktor away, leading him down this path. All to adhere to the standards of the council. He’d been so easily manipulated– he’d played puppet and lapped up praise when those pulling strings were amused by his performance.

“I’m sorry,” Jayce says, tears forming once more in his eyes. “Gods, Viktor, I’m so sorry.”

He hugs him, careful to avoid the open wounds on his arms and chest. Viktor exhales loudly against the side of his throat, causing them both to shiver.

“Stop apologizing,” Viktor murmurs. “I don’t know what to do with that.”

“Accept them,” Jayce says, pulling away from Viktor, tugging his jacket further over his form and rising to search for the first aid kit in their cabinet. He finds it easily enough, tucked into an almost-filled-to-the-brim corner.

Viktor looks so small. Maybe it is just that he hasn’t seen Viktor without his clothes on more than a handful of times through the years, or that Jayce’s coat provides ample contrast between their sizes, or even it is just the simple reality that Viktor has lost a significant amount of weight in the last two months. Regardless, Jayce finds his heart pulling tight in his chest.

He lowers himself to the ground before Viktor, already fiddling with the contents of the first aid kit. When he brings an antiseptic wipe up to the first rune carved into Viktor’s neck, Viktor’s body is tense and his entire face is scrunched up.

“Why are you here, Jayce?” He sounds resigned to his fate. “You look… different.”

Jayce brings the wipe up to the rune, other hand placed on the opposite side of his neck, keeping him there. Viktor’s face shifts away, but he guides him back. “Stay still.”

“I expect an explanation.”

Jayce pats the wipe down gently several times, watching the way that the muscles in Viktor’s neck go stiff under the skin. He can feel the stiffness too, under his hand. His skin isn’t cold, Jayce thinks. He’s so wonderfully alive.

“It’s not an easy one,” Jayce says, pulling another antiseptic free from its container and wiping over the precision rune right below the center of his collarbone. Viktor doesn’t let out a wheeze of pain this time, but his lips are pressed tight and his teeth are bared. Jayce dabs over it once more before moving to the rune beside it.

“Tell me anyway,” Viktor says.

Jayce glances at his face briefly; Viktor is watching him, his expression well-guarded. He deliberates on whether to tell the truth or be obtuse. Even Jayce, who himself has lived through it, finds the last few months of his existence difficult to make sense of.

“I’m not your Jayce,” he starts. “Hextech, the hexcore–”

It’s difficult to find a place to start. He looks down at Viktor’s healed leg, and then his own brace. Viktor’s attention follows his. Recognition flits across his eyes.

“Your leg is broken.”

“Was. It’s… healed,” Jayce responds, dabbing now at the mark near his wrist. It isn’t a rune that Jayce recognizes, just a scribble mimicking what a rune should look like– a telltale sign of desperation, a missing attention to detail that Jayce knows Viktor always carries with him.

Viktor brings his own fingers down to trail over the mechanisms of the brace, pushing down on it hard enough to hurt. Jayce winces in both pain and apology for being caught lying. “Mostly healed,” he corrects.

“How’d it happen?”

Viktor’s attention is completely on Jayce’s leg and brace, eyes shrewd. When Jayce starts to wrap his injuries with clean bandages, he hardly pauses. Viktor follows the design with his eyes, fingers more careful this time when touching the metal of it.

“My mercury hammer,” Jayce says.

Viktor’s hand retracts. “A weapon?”

Jayce makes an affirming noise, his mind walking into the basement of his memory. The memory of a blue flash, the smell of ozone in the air, the smallness of the boy, his expression stunned, hands clenching as if to fight against the pain. The sound of wind against clothes as he fell, and then a sharp crack of skin to pavement. This time, it’s not the tearing apart and re-piecing of reality that makes him nauseous. This kind of sickness is not a foreign body; it’s born within him, because of him.

He knows what he’ll have to do, when this daydream ends and reality finds a way to make beds and force him to lay in them. His throat bobs.

“Don’t worry, it’s destroyed now,” Jayce says, hand curling over what used to be the gear shift of the hammer. He produces a bitter laugh. “Took it apart to make the brace.”

Viktor watches him, watches his hands as he wraps the bandage around and around his forearm, action slow and intentional. There’s a kind of distance in his eyes, one step back from the actuality of the man before him. It brings up an indignance, a sense of entitlement in Jayce’s chest that at one point would fit well into him but now he struggles to hold onto. He’s tired, and confused, and cut open. Like Viktor; there’s more in common between them than there ever has been.

Viktor seems to recognize this eventually, his eyes skimming over the length of his hair and beard, the marbling texture of some parts of his face, back to his brace. His jaw sets with resolve.

“A future you that’s come to stop me.” Viktor looks at the hexcore. It pulses and chitters in response. “To clean up my messes.”

He sounds so self-loathing. It breaks Jayce’s heart. And there is so much anger still stuck in Jayce, at himself, at a future Viktor, at the councillors, at Hextech itself. There are so many vectors of outrage that it’s difficult to perceive what direction he’s going in, let alone what direction he should be going in.

Yet he knows the answer: towards Viktor. He places the bandages back in the first aid kit.

“To clean up mine,” Jayce asserts, returning his hands to touch Viktor, one through the short strands of his hair and another at the meeting of shoulder and neck. “You have no fault in this. I pushed you here, and then further.”

“Stop touching me like that,” Viktor says, his voice hard. Jayce’s heart rises to his throat; his hands shake as he releases his grasp of him.

Is this his Viktor? It’s hard to tell from the way that he’s looking at him, as if his understanding of Jayce is coming into significant question. Yet there’s no certainty that his Viktor would react any differently– and that’s the nail in the coffin that makes Jayce fervent.

He’s never, a single day in his life, been as obvious in his affections for Viktor as he’d thought he had. Like a sun pulled over the horizon after years of only blackened night, he’s sure that his tenderness is burning.

“Why? Like what?”

“Like you want me,” Viktor says, eyes wide and pained. “Like this doesn’t change what you think of me.”

“Fuck, Viktor, it doesn’t. It really, really doesn’t. I’ve done worse with far less justification.”

He hugs him, pulls him tight and sets his chin to Viktor’s shoulder. It’s a strange fit, them both sitting on the ground, their legs pressed oddly together, but it isn’t terrible. In fact, it’s perfect. Jayce has been alone for months, uncertain of his survival, completely isolated and questioning everything.

But Viktor’s before him now, and there’s no chance in hell that he’ll let him slip through his fingers once more.

“Do you know what I’d do for you?” Jayce curves his face against the side of Viktor’s head, hair tickling his cheeks. “If you’d just ask?”

He can feel the way that Viktor sharply inhales, his bird-wing chest pushing against Jayce’s more solid one.

He’d do anything– he will do anything, has done anything before. And he’s a selfish bastard, and maybe he should stop wanting things so fucking much, but old habits die hard, his feet walk over familiar paths, he gets what he repeats. He gets Viktor. That’s how it's always been, even when he’s been too blind to see it.

Viktor brings a timid hand up to Jayce’s back, right over where his scar should be. It’s almost as if he’s touching the center of his sins and, whether unknowingly or not, absolving him.

“You said you aren’t my Jayce,” he says carefully.

“But I can pretend to be yours. I want to be,” Jayce whispers, words exhaled into the curve of Viktor’s neck that stays unmarred by any inscribed runes. His mouth remains open, lips hovering right over one of his darker moles. Viktor shudders under his touch. “Do you want that?”

Viktor hums, not an affirmation or a condemnation, simply a low, contemplating sound. Jayce takes Viktor’s deliberation as an opportunity to explore the expanse of Viktor’s throat, touch delicate enough to hide the reality of his greed.

“I–”

Jayce pulls away just enough to be able to look at Viktor’s face.

“Do you?” he asks again.

They watch one-another. Viktor’s expression is torn between two polar emotions, appearing bittersweet. Grief. Desire. He keeps managing to hurt him even when he doesn’t mean to– but maybe that’s what is necessary before the relief. You need to pop a broken bone back into place before it can begin to heal.

It doesn’t take long for desire to win over; Viktor surges forward, placing a hand to Jayce’s jaw and bringing him into a kiss, a surprising amount of desperation in the act. Jayce’s entire body leans into it. Viktor’s an alarmingly good kisser. He tilts his head at just the right angles to line their upper and bottom lips together. The kiss turns from sweet to manic in a matter of seconds, Viktor’s tongue pressing against the seam of his lips to request entrance. Jayce obliges, letting Viktor do whatever he pleases. It’s wet, and messy, but neither of them care.

Jayce can hardly breathe. He pulls back from the kiss, panting. Viktor doesn’t seem much better, his chest rising and falling rapidly. While recollecting himself, Jayce presses kisses to his jaw, down his neck, paying particular attention to the . His hand finds Viktor’s stomach, slides back to grad at his waist and pull them closer. Not close enough. “Do you wanna–?”

As always, Viktor knows what he’s thinking without explanation. He nods vigorously, taking his turn to kiss and suck at the tan skin of Jayce’s throat, teeth catching teasingly on his Adam's apple. With permission given, Jayce’s hands slide under Viktor’s thighs and he lifts them both from the floor in a smooth motion, Viktor’s calves wrapping around his back.

Jayce had expected Viktor to be light– and he is, but his right leg is still unused to bearing weight. As he stands, he feels his leg tremble, yet his desperation makes his knees lock. He stumbles forward, Viktor’s body pressed to his own, until the curve of Viktor’s thighs find the table behind him.

Jayce lets go of Viktor’s thighs, shuffling closer between his legs until Viktor’s back is laid flat against the stone– it’s cold to the touch, Viktor’s back shivering– and Jayce is crowded over him. He rolls his hips against Viktor’s own, a barely lucid action, and they both groan into each other’s mouth.

“Fuck, Viktor,” he says, panting against the side of his cheek. Viktor’s changed leg wraps around Jayce’s hip, a heel pushing him closer. “Is this okay? Do you feel good?”

He isn’t sure if the questions are rhetorical or not, his mind addled from the knowledge that he finally, finally has Viktor under his hands. Viktor responds anyway, nodding and groaning as he pushes up into Jayce’s hold. They kiss some more, Viktor’s hands roaming up to Jayce’s hair and the back of his neck, encouraging him closer. Jayce lets his own hands roam across Viktor’s body, down the plane of his chest, his sides.

He’s so fucking pretty. Jayce tells him as much while he brushes his finger against each rib, tracing it from sternum to side, the delicateness of skin pulled taut over bone making Jayce’s heart race, both enraptured and remorseful. It’s him, and there’s beauty in that, even if Viktor can’t see it and instead views it as weakness. It’s okay. Jayce will show him– will change him through love as Viktor has done for him.

He separates from Viktor’s lips to bring Viktor’s palm up to his face, kissing his fingertips in a show of reverence, their eyes meeting. A stunted laugh pushes its way from Viktor’s chest, and he frees his hand of Jayce’s grasp to graze tenderly over a cheek and pull him into another open-mouthed kiss.

Viktor’s grasp slides down his forearm until his thumb makes contact with the gemstone that’s burrowed under his skin.

“Your bracelet, the gem,” he says against Jayce’s lips.

There’s something unbearably disarming about it. After all, it’s Viktor’s gem, and the finger that’s tracing the outline of it in his skin is from the same hand that placed it in his palm all those years ago. It makes his cheeks flare, it makes his stomach pulse with heat. Jayce wants to give Viktor something that significant, something to claim him through– and in ways he has, his crutch marked with the Talis house colors and his cravat red.

But it’s not enough. It hasn’t been in a long time. He isn’t sure how to put such a sentiment into words, so he doesn’t, just kisses him and touches him and hopes that the meaning will come across.

He feels like a university student again, clumsy and desperate and impatient enough to not even bother with removing clothes, instead favoring the intoxicating drag of fabric against his cock every time he and Viktor collide. It’s mostly his clothes in the way, Viktor completely bare save for his underwear, which is starting to darken from precum. It’s so fucking hot, and Jayce trails his mouth down the plane of Viktor’s stomach, licking, sucking, and kissing. He backs up slightly, practically kneeling on the floor so that he has the room to do what he wants.

Viktor’s stomach quivers under his touch. The moment that he arrives at the junction of Viktor’s torso and hips, he laves his tongue over the head of Viktor’s dick, wetting his underwear, and they both moan.

“Fuck, V, so good. So perfect for me,” he says, sliding the underwear down Viktor’s legs and off. Viktor’s head tilts back, a hand covering his mouth to suppress the sound of his groans.

Viktor’s dick, like the rest of him, is frustratingly pretty. Long and pale, the head pink and twitching when Jayce’s breath heats the sensitive skin there. His mouth waters, and he’s taking him onto his tongue with little thought.

Viktor’s hand curls into his hair, his thighs shifting around Jayce’s waist, squirming, hips shifting up and then down as if uncertain of what to do.

What Jayce lacks in experience he makes up for in enthusiasm. Though he’s never given head to another man before, he has received it, and so he knows the things that he likes. He lets saliva pool in his mouth, lets it dribble out and slick Viktor’s cock. He pumps his length twice, eyes watching Viktor’s face for his reaction. He’s watching him back, chest rising with shallow pants, a pink flush going all the way from his cheeks to his neck. It’s unbearably hot.

Jayce takes him into his mouth. He gets only three inches before he gags– it’s an ugly, wet noise, but Viktor seems to like it, because he moans, bucks his hips up, and Jayce feels Viktor’s dick pulse on his tongue. He presses his tongue into the slit of the head, focusing on the delicate skin there. Viktor smells good– like sweat and sex. He tries to swallow him again, more careful this time to avoid overwhelming himself. He gets further than before.

What he can’t reach with his mouth, he accounts for with his hand, pumping the base of his shaft. Viktor’s hand tightens in his hair. “Gods, Jayce, fuck. That’s good. Good boy.”

And that does something– makes his hips pitch up against empty air. He whines, which only results in Viktor’s grasp in his hair tightening to the point of pain, and then he’s moaning. He doesn’t even think to touch himself, instead focusing on Viktor’s pleasure.

He wants to make him feel so good, wants to make up for all the lost time, all the stupid fucking mistakes and pining. Wants it to break the both of them and form them into something new. Jayce pops off of Viktor’s cock, breathing into the skin of his pelvis, “can I fuck you, please? With my fingers?”

“What the fuck,” Viktor groans, as if still surprised by the fact that this is all actually real, “yes, fuck, yes.”

Jayce takes his own fingers into his hands, letting saliva collect on them. He makes a show of it, tilting his head up to allow Viktor to watch him drool and make a mess of himself. Viktor’s cock jumps against his stomach, and he tugs at his hair, a clear request to get a move on. Jayce obliges, bringing his hand down and rubbing a finger around his hole.

He takes Viktor back into his mouth then presses a finger in slowly, attempting to mask the uncomfortable stretch with pleasure. It seems to be effective, as Viktor only lets out a garbled moan. He slides it in and out slowly, giving him time to adjust. Jayce has never been with a man before, so he lacks the intimate knowledge of what is good etiquette, but he makes sure to be extra considerate. He licks at his cock, the hand on Viktor’s hip drawing soothing circles. Eventually, after a minute or so, Viktor begins to loosen. Jayce presses another finger in, the stretch more damning this time.

He hears Viktor hiss something in his native tongue that sounds like a curse– something that makes it difficult to tell if it’s in pleasure or pain. He hums apologetically, which makes Viktor’s hips buck, and then Viktor is using his hand in Jayce’s hair to pull him off of his cock and up to his mouth. They kiss, Viktor biting at his lower lip only to hear Jayce groan and give him space to slip his tongue in his mouth.

Jayce curls his fingers, exploring, hoping to find and press on the gland that he knows will make it feel good for Viktor. That’s all he wants: Viktor to feel good. “Is that good, Vik? Do you feel good?”

Viktor huffs a giggle against his mouth, licking his lips. “So good, Jayce, you’re doing so good.”

And then they’re kissing again, and Jayce’s fingers begin to scissor, stretching him out. He thrusts his fingers in further, pressing at his walls until he finally finds what he’s been looking for. Vikor moans– loudly– his entire body jerking up towards Jayce as if to give him more space to repeat the motion. Which he does; once he finds his prostate, he keeps hitting it.

He adds a third finger, which makes Viktor gasp and writhe and it’s fucking insane. Jayce has no clue how he hasn’t come in his own pants yet, that’s how unbelievably hard he is. It’s difficult kissing like this, both of them panting and fighting for breath, sweat slicking their skin. Jayce tilts his head into Viktor’s shoulder, focusing on stretching him well, making him feel good.

Eventually Viktor grasps his hair once more, brings their mouths together, says, “fuck me.”

Jayce presses a kiss to the corner of Viktor’s, right below his mole, then straightens slightly, pulling his fingers slowly out of Viktor. Jayce fumbles ridiculously with his belt buckle, fighting his pants down alongside his underwear. The cold air hits him and he hisses, but there’s no time to process it, as Viktor’s hands insistently tug at Jayce’s shirt until he’s sliding that piece of clothing off, too. He’s naked now, and so is Viktor, and when Jayce looks at him he’s overwhelmed with the fact.

That Viktor is really in front of him, that he’s so stunningly beautiful, even like this, moments after an averted crisis, the threat of death withering him. He doesn’t let it sour his mood– instead, it only motivates him, making him more ravenous. He can give Viktor everything, can give him the fucking world.

He spits into his hand, wetting his dick with the saliva, and Viktor watches him, his mouth open on shaky inhales and exhales. Jayce pumps himself twice, grasps hold of Viktor’s left thigh, giving himself more space between his legs. “Is that okay?”

Viktor nods, shuffling his hips closer to the edge, to Jayce’s cock. “Yeah.”

Jayce lines himself up, the head of his cock pressing to Viktor’s entrance. He glances one final time at Viktor for permission, which he sees in his eyes and the flush of his cheeks, the biting of his bottom lip. And then he is pressing in. It’s a tight fit, Jayce’s hand squeezing Viktor’s hip, both of their eyes rolling closed. They moan the same moment that Jayce bottoms out.

Jayce is remarkably close to coming– which is ridiculous, really, but it’s been so long, and Viktor is so fucking gorgeous that it isn’t fair at all. He leans over him, careful not to shift his hips or lay his weight on him, and nuzzles his nose against the curve of Viktor’s cheekbone. There’s sweat there, and at the edges of his hairline, near his ears and forehead. He brings a hand up to the back of his head, stroking through strands of auburn hair, comforting him. “How’s it feel?”

Viktor huffs, licks at his jaw. “Give me a moment,” he says, then, “you’re… big.”

Jayce’s stomach tightens, his cock pulsing. He groans and brings his hands up to roam across Viktor’s chest and stomach, trying to distract himself while also making Viktor feel good. “Stop. I’m gonna come.”

Viktor laughs, loud, and only manages to stifle it when Jayce pouts and says, “it’s not funny.”

Viktor reassures him with several short, sweet kisses, raking fingers through Jayce’s grown out hair. They both sigh into one another’s mouths. “You can move,” Viktor permits, resting his head back against the table and blinking up at Jayce, pupils dilated.

Jayce pulls out slowly, the drag still tight but now bearable. He thrusts back in shallowly, eyes locked on Viktor’s expression in case of any pain. Viktor nods at him, breaths picking up once more. He looks ethereal like this: skin pale, colored lavender by the hexcore, eyes golden in the low light, flushed all over his cheeks. This close, Jayce can make out a few smatterings of freckles across the bridge of his nose, and he loves him, he loves him so much that something so small makes his heart feel like it’ll expand until that’s all he is. Just heart– just Viktor.

His hands slide down over his ribs and to his hips. He gives another experimental thrust, which pushes a moan out of Viktor, then another, and another, until he’s started up a pattern.

“Gods, Viktor, you’re so beautiful,” he babbles, pressing kisses to the side of his jaw and neck until he makes it to the mole on his collarbone, “so perfect. Feels so good.”

The pace of his thrusts begin to pick up now, leaning back and lifting Viktor’s arcane thigh over his shoulder, the electricity below his skin pulsing and simmering into the neurons of Jayce’s hand. It feels strange, but it also feels really, really fucking good.

“That okay?”

“Yes, just–” Viktor throws his head back, hands scrambling for purchase on the table below him, only finding the edge to hold onto. “Faster, please.”

Jayce obliges, hips snapping against Viktor’s thighs, producing the sound of skin slapping against skin. Viktor responds in his own way, making belated attempts to meet Jayce’s thrusts by rolling his hips. It’s ridiculously endearing, Jayce’s eyes tracking the beginnings of sweat that has started to pool in the crevice of his sternum and collarbones.

Gods, he fucking loves him, wants to open him up and make a bird's nest out of his chest cavity. Stay there forever. He’d worship him, if Viktor let him. Overwhelmed, Jayce turns his head away to press a kiss to the inside of Viktor’s knee. The skin responds in kind, shocking his lips. Behind them, the hexcore produces a faint whirring sound, coloring the room purple.

Viktor’s mouth is hung open, small groans punched out of him each time that Jayce bottoms out. He’s not desperate yet– he’s not squirming, not moaning unabashedly. Jayce seeks to remedy this, angling his hip in hopes of hitting where he thinks Viktor’s prostate is. Viktor’s breath catches on the next thrust, and then his back is curving up off of the table, shuddering.

“Fuck. Yeah, there.”

“You look so pretty, V,” Jayce babbles, mouthing at the skin behind his ear that’s damp with sweat. “So fucking gorgeous. You feel so good. All mine, yeah?”

Viktor produces a high whine of assent, head bobbing in an abundance of nods. “Yours. Always ‘ve been,” he breathes out.

Jayce growls, hands coming down to bracket his hips so that he can pull Viktor slightly further off the table and grind into him deeper. The roll of his hips is more intentional now, taking more time to drag the head of his cock against Viktor’s prostate. The pressure in Jayce’s stomach is heightening now, but he refuses to come first. Fuck that. It’s about Viktor– it’s always been about Viktor.

Jayce releases one of Viktor’s hips to spit in his hand and then drag his palm over the head of Viktor’s cock. Viktor’s entire body jumps, his mouth opening around a silent plea. Jayce sucks a line of blooming hickies down Viktor’s neck, teeth occasionally teasing over the skin there, threatening something more. “I’m gonna–”

“Yeah?” Jayce says, voice low and heated, the word exhaled into Viktor’s ear.

He palms roughly at Viktor’s dick, his hips speeding up, thrusts becoming less and less controlled. He drags his hand up two more times and then Viktor’s entire body stiffens, the high-pitched moan that Viktor produces bouncing around the walls of the lab. Jayce removes his face from the side of Viktor’s neck, wanting to see him.

His expression is cracked open, mouth open and eyes pinched closed, brows furrowed. Jayce can imagine it– the strands of Viktor’s hair laid out on the table like a halo, his skin slick with sweat, the moles of his body making a constellation. His hands, black holes pulling Jayce in. This is where he belongs.

Clearly overstimulated, Viktor tightens around him, and Jayce feels his pleasure begin to peak. He makes an aborted attempt to pull out, but Viktor’s calf tightens around his waist, keeping him there.

“You can… inside,” Viktor sighs, and that’s enough permission.

Jayce leans over, bringing Viktor into an open-mouthed, messy kiss that is more tongue and teeth than lips. Then Jayce is coming, giving a final deep thrust, hand squeezing the minimal fat of Viktor’s hip. “So good, Viktor. So perfect. I love you.”

Viktor pets through the strands of Jayce’s hair as he comes down from the high, peppering short, sweet kisses to his jaw. “I love you too,” he murmurs.

It is nothing short of perfect.

He pulls out slowly, hands roaming Viktor’s body in an attempt to distract him from the discomfort. He pulls Viktor close to him, their bodies so close to one another that they make a closed system.

“I love you,” Jayce whispers over and over, arms wrapped tightly around his waist.

It’s not that his actions aren’t enough proof of his feelings, but instead the knowledge that he may not have the opportunity to say it again, to speak the words into Viktor’s skin and trust that they both believe him to be an honest man.

Viktor pushes damp strands of hair away from his forehead, allowing him to see him fully. Viktor’s eyes, warm, golden, flit across his face, from lips to nose and eyebrows, over the small scar there. He touches every detail that he can think of, hands bracketing his face.

Jayce knows that he doesn’t look the way that he has before, that he’s been undeniably altered, that there are parts of him once fitting neatly in his chest now stuck to the outside of him like scar tissue. He’s become unpalatable, rough at the edges. He’s sure that he makes a somewhat unfamiliar face. It seems to not bother Viktor, though there is a melancholy to his eyes; maybe there’s just enough of the old Jayce left in him to spark an intimate recognition.

And as Jayce holds him tight that night, the coolness of Viktor’s feet and hands endearing instead of bothersome, the ends of his auburn hair tickling the curve of Jayce’s neck, breathes quiet and so lacking of any distinct metallic inhumanity, he knows that he isn’t meant for this. That he won’t be satisfied here, in a past that could have been his yet isn’t.

There is a greater gravity pulling him away from here, his own Viktor calling to him.

Jayce has ascribed himself to Viktor now– he’s become so large in his heart that he is almost godly. Wrong and right bears no weight over him; it is just Viktor, and the command that he’s given to him. And so, really, what left is there for Jayce to do than become a martyr?

Jayce’s life has always been Viktor’s, anyway.