Archive of Our Own

Jayce is tinkering. Feet on his desk, gauntlet in his lap, he can pretend—just for a few hours—that this is where he's supposed to be. Cocooned as he is by the quiet hum of machinery and the intermittent thump of Viktor's cane from across the room, all the petty torments of the outside world—council members shouting over each other, hospital monitors beeping—feel like a far-off bad dream. His head is the clearest it's been in days. Maybe weeks.

He's blowing metal filings out of a knuckle joint when Viktor calls his name. He cranes his neck to peer behind him and grins cheerfully in Viktor's general direction. "What's up?"

"Need your help with something. Do you have a moment?"

Even when they're focused on separate problems, it's not uncommon for Viktor to ask Jayce for help in the lab, and vice-versa, though Jayce hasn't been around as much recently. It's part of what makes them so effective—an extra pair of eyes or an extra set of hands can save hours, sometimes. Today, though, there's something odd in Viktor's voice.

Jayce sets the gauntlet aside for later refinement.

"I should warn you," Viktor says, upon Jayce's approach. "These experiments I've been doing. They're a little bit—mm, shall we say—unorthodox."

"Unorthodox?" Jayce repeats. He peers over Viktor's shoulder at the pages of intricate diagrams spread out across Viktor's workbench, illuminated in the cold glow of the Hexcore. "What do you mean, unorthodox? All of our experiments are unorthodox."

"I told you that the Hexcore responds to organic matter, yes?" Viktor says. He thumbs back several pages in his notebook. Jayce leans in to scrutinize the table he points at. "Here, you see? Blood. When the Hexcore comes into contact with blood, its state is altered for an average of six point eight seconds. Standard deviation, about two seconds."

He flips to the next page. "Saliva is much less reactive. Best trial, only one point four seconds. Not worth further exploration." 

And the next page—"Semen, well. I have only tried it once. Twenty point seven seconds."

Jayce stares blankly at Viktor's finger on the paper, the straight lines and neat handwriting beneath it. It's just dates and numbers. Nothing to corroborate what he thinks he just heard. "Sorry, can you say that again?"

"Twenty point seven seconds. I think—this seems promising, no?"

"No, I." Jayce says. "You—" He closes his eyes for a moment to gather himself, takes a breath. "Uh, Viktor? Whose semen did you feed into the Hexcore?"

Viktor spins in the stool, and Jayce can finally see, with a rush of homesickness, his golden eyes, the impatient set of his mouth. "What do you mean, whose semen? My semen. Who else would—what kind of unethical operation do you think I'm running here?"

His cheeks are pink, Jayce notices. Thank the gods, because he can feel the heat of the mother of all blushes spreading over his own face and down his neck. He's so flustered he thinks even his toes might be red.

Jayce doesn't, as a rule, think about Viktor jerking off. He tries not to think about Viktor as a sexual being at all. 

It's not that he thinks Viktor doesn't have sex, though he's never asked and isn't going to start now. It's not that he thinks Viktor wouldn't, objectively, look and sound and feel incredible pressed up against another body, hot and close, inhibitions discarded—not when Jayce has caught glimpses, before, of how good Viktor looks with his guard down, how much more space he takes up when they're both high off a breakthrough or drunk off cheap wine.

Jayce doesn't think about Viktor and sex because it's simply not sustainable to have an unrequited crush on someone you see for upwards of a hundred hours a week. He knows because he tried it—not on purpose—for the first several months of their partnership. It was intense and disorienting, and it made Jayce stupid, a dead weight as Viktor breezed through testing every theory in that first journal, the one containing five years of Jayce's heart and soul. It's for the best that he has, through sheer force of will, trained himself not to get hot and bothered every time their hands brush reaching for the same screwdriver.

There have been occasional setbacks. He has a feeling this one will take a while to recover from.

"Jayce?"

"Sorry," Jayce says. He focuses on the part of all this that he feels capable of processing. "You said something about the Hexcore's state?"

Viktor curls his fingers around the Hexcore's control mechanism, waking it from its stasis. It crackles with electricity, components clicking as they turn. "Based on the behavior we've observed in smaller models, I believe the Hexcore is testing different combinations of runes, trying to optimize its configuration to meet some objective. But its structure is unstable. It fluctuates. Collapses and reforms. These tantrums not only reset the progress towards this unknown objective, they also disrupt the functioning of nearby Hex-powered equipment." With perfect timing, like it's listening in, the Hexcore explodes into pieces, spinning wildly and then falling still. Viktor scowls. "And," he adds, "they are extremely frustrating."

"Tantrums?" Jayce says. "Personifying your inventions again, huh?"

Viktor shrugs. "It's descriptive. What would you call them? Anyway, they aren't entirely random. Certain rune patterns seem to be triggers."

"And... the organic matter?"

"Seems to speed up its ability to try new configurations while helping it avoid the ones that it is incompatible with. I am not sure of the mechanism—it's something I would like to understand better, so that we can harness it. And I want to see if enough time in this state would allow it to complete its calculations, giving us enough data to make guesses about its objective."

"Okay, I can take a look with you." He's seen the Hexcore respond to blood before—it only needed a drop, pricked from Viktor's finger with the point of a sharp, well-sterilized utility knife. "You have a sample? Should cover, what, ten to fifteen trials? If it's, um, a normal amount. I mean—I dunno, I don't presume to know what, what a normal amount is, I guess. I'm not a doctor."

Viktor stares him down until he shuts up, mortified. "That certainly would be the most convenient approach. Unfortunately, it seems to react best to, well, fresh organic matter, and so I have concluded, well..." He trails off with that familiar, wry sort of grimace he makes when he's suggesting something insane (common) and realizes that it's insane (rare).

"Okay, okay," Jayce says, backing away from the workstation. "I get the hint. It's getting late. I'll give you some—some alone time with that thing. Just, uh, clean up after yourself, okay?"

"If I needed time alone, I would have asked for that," Viktor says sharply, freezing Jayce in place before he makes it far. "Given the limited timeframe for action and the, eh, logistics involved in producing such a sample, it is difficult to gather all the data I need on my own. I find myself in need of assistance."

"What kind of assistance?" Jayce croaks. He imagines jerking off to Viktor's exacting commands, Viktor's eyes fixated on him as he works his dick. Imagines kneeling in front of the stool while Viktor takes notes above him, mouthing at Viktor's balls, spitting Viktor's come back into his waiting hand.

"Don't worry, it's nothing too salacious. I just need someone to keep an eye on the equipment and reset it if it ceases to function. Recording some of the runes would also be extremely helpful. I will be... as discreet as possible."

Yeah. That makes a lot more sense than any of Jayce's ideas.

"Will you?" Viktor says anxiously. "There's no one else I could ask this of. If it's too much for you, I will find another way, but that will take time."

"This will help you find a cure?"

Viktor shrugs. "It's possible."

"I'm in."

"Wonderful. You're already up. Would you lock the door?"

Viktor doesn't ask Jayce to look away, but that's probably because he doesn't think he needs to. It's obviously the polite and normal thing to do. So Jayce stands, very politely and very normally, a polite and normal distance from Viktor, politely and normally averting his eyes. In the corner of his vision, he can barely catch the slight, rhythmic motion of Viktor's silhouette. It's hard to hear anything over Jayce's own heartbeat in his ears, however much he wills it to be quieter.

He does not wonder how Viktor might look as he gets himself off—biting his lip, perhaps, his eyes fluttering closed. Instead, he distracts himself by flipping through Viktor's notebook, tracing through the equations. "Huh, you measured a decrease in the rune output when you increased the charge? The electrical conductivity of materials is usually positively correlated with their magical resonance."

"Yes. That was surprising," Viktor says. He sounds—normal. A bit more strained than usual, maybe, but that could just be Jayce's overactive imagination. "Could've been an incorrect reading due to the interference from the Hexcore. We'll need to replicate the result to confirm."

"These calculations assume that the distribution of energy is anchored around the central gemstone. What if each rune array has its own field?"

Viktor is silent for a long moment. Finally, he says, "Yes. Yes, that might explain some of the behavior I've been seeing. The overlaps cause a dampening effect."

Jayce gnaws thoughtfully on the end of his pen. Gods, he's missed this. "What if it depends on how they're oriented in relation to one another? In certain configurations, they amplify instead of dampening. That's where your tantrums are coming from."

"Yes, I think that might—can we talk about it—after?"

"Oh!" Jayce deflates, chagrined. For a moment, he almost forgot. "Of course. Sorry."

Of course, now that he's been shut up, he immediately has more things to say. He flips to an empty page to try to work out the geometry, sketches a few rough pictures of different possible interference patterns. He's so caught up in it that he's startled when Viktor speaks again.

"I am almost ready to start the experiment. Is everything in place?"

"One sec," Jayce yelps. "Sorry. I want to move the sensors." He sidles quickly past Viktor to rearrange the instruments around the Hexcore, checks the dials, makes sure there's fresh paper in the runic oscillation monitor (Jayce's invention) and hits the button that discharges build-up from the radiohexometer (Viktor's). "Ready. I think."

He keeps his eyes fixed on the Hexcore itself as Viktor comes, through the sharp intake of breath that hisses through Viktor's teeth and the shuddering exhale, scared to move a muscle until Viktor says, "Watch."

Viktor must have used his spare hand to catch the mess. He drags two fingers through the pool of it in his palm and then holds them out to the Hexcore, palm up, wary, like he's offering up his hand for a strange dog to sniff. Milky fluid against Viktor's pale, translucent skin, limned in blue light. A strand of it stretches between his fingertips.

Saliva floods Jayce's mouth. He swallows. Swallows again.

He's seen the Hexcore eat stuff before. It's always pretty weird. It sizzles menacingly with potential energy, throwing off sparks in all directions, and then it starts spinning rapidly in multiple dimensions like some sort of otherworldly top.

Viktor wipes his hands off on a clean rag and sets it on the desk.

"What does it feel like?" Jayce asks.

"Hm?" 

"The sparks."

"Just a mild electrical shock," Viktor says, picking up a pencil. "Not unpleasant. My notebook, please?"

The notebook is snatched away the moment it touches his outstretched hand.

"Look—yes, there. One of the arrays seems to have stabilized," Viktor says, taking hurried notes, and then, with some disappointment, "ah." He glances down at the pocket stopwatch on the table. "Exactly twenty two seconds."

"Another trial? Should I be the test subject this time?"

It would only take a minute. Jayce is already trembling with the effort of keeping himself present, professional.

"What?" Viktor looks him up and down, no doubt observing the sweat gathering at his hairline, the set of his jaw that indicates he's gritting his teeth. Viktor can read him too easily, must know what he does—what he's doing—to Jayce. But his eyes are dark, his face unreadable. "No, I can do it. I don't want to introduce too many variables."

It figures. Viktor is methodical, likes to change one variable at a time. Not like Jayce, who gets too excited and changes five things at once. His intuition usually steers him in the right direction, but he trusts Viktor to rein him in when it doesn't.

He also wants to trust that Viktor knows his own limits, but after that night—

"Are you sure? We're not in our twenties any more, and you're—"

"Yes?" Viktor interrupts dangerously. "What am I, Jayce?"

"Look, why don't we call it a night. We can pick it up again tomorrow."

"Tomorrow?" Viktor's eyes flick up to his face, a cautious, fragile sort of hope in his expression. "You'll be in the lab tomorrow?"

Jayce winces. "Uh. Well, no, probably not. Sorry. I forgot."

"Ah," Viktor says. "Well then. Shall we proceed?"

"Check the next page. I wrote down some ideas," Jayce says. "I'll be right back."

Safe in the dark of the storage closet, Jayce allows himself a moment of respite. He rests his forehead against the cool metal of the door as he unclips his tool belt and lets it fall to the stone floor below, unbuttons his trousers, and slips a hand into his briefs to tuck the hot, hard line of his unruly erection under his waistband. Once he's made himself decent, he palms once over the length of it through the stiff fabric with a soft, defeated groan, then fumbles for the light switch.

They do have an organizational system for the storage closet—well, Viktor has an organizational system—but over the years they've accumulated much more clutter than two aisles of shelving can reasonably accommodate; boxes are stacked on boxes up to the ceiling, papers and notebooks shoved sideways into crevices between jumbled pieces of half-dissembled old prototypes. As such, Jayce's excavation mission creates a substantial pile on the floor—calibration weights, a steel compass and protractor, acetylene canisters, a rattling box of empty ampules—before he finds what he's looking for.

They do, of course, have mechanical lubricant, buckets of the stuff, but it smells like death and eats through rust like it's nothing, so Jayce settles on the flacon of neutral oil they use to polish the Hexgems. Oiling the Hexgems does nothing for their function but does make them look pretty for investors, bringing out the deep, shifting blues beneath their surface. Viktor scoffed at first over the superfluity of it all, but that didn't last long—neither of them are immune to the hypnotic lure of a pretty rock.

He nearly trips over the mess he's made on his way out—and gods, he's gonna get a talking-to if he doesn't remember to tidy up before the next time Viktor is in here—refastens his tool belt, and drops the oil into his pocket.

Back in the lab, Viktor is taking notes in the margins of Jayce's sketches, muttering to himself. "There you are," he says. "Come here. What rune is this? I can't read your handwriting."

"Resolve, I think," Jayce says. He proffers the oil. "Uh, will this help? I just—don't want you to hurt yourself."

"This?" Viktor says. He takes it, turns it thoughtfully in his hand. "This will make a mess."

"Yeah, I guess, but—"

Viktor sighs, sets the oil on the table, and loosens the knot of his tie.

"What are you doing?"

"Undressing."

"Isn't that, uh, against academy regulations?" Jayce says, stupidly, though he can't think of a single rule that would apply to this specific situation—why would anyone make a rule that would apply to this specific situation? "I mean, isn't it a little... inappropriate?"

"Jayce," Viktor says tiredly, tugging off his waistcoat, "when have we ever cared about academy regulations? This remains purely within the bounds of our scientific research. If I was trying to—to seduce you, do you think I would choose—this?" He gestures rather aggressively at the lab around them with one hand, then, apparently satisfied that he's made his point, starts undoing the buttons of his shirt.

This makes Jayce feel worse—guiltier—not better. "No?" he guesses.

"Here, I will show you the difference," Viktor says darkly. He leans forward on the stool, open shirt slipping down his shoulders, and grabs Jayce hard by the forearm, disturbing his carefully rolled up sleeve. "Stop looking so terrified, you'll ruin my demonstration." The angle of his arm has the pink edge of an areola just barely peeking out above the leather of his brace.

Jayce, choosing to believe he has some amount of control over what his face is doing at the moment, makes a valiant effort to look less terrified.

Rather than tugging him down for a kiss or slapping him out of his stupor, Viktor looks up at him through his lashes. "Oh Jayce," he sighs, doe-eyed. "You're so brilliant and so handsome. Tell me again how the Hexgates work?"

Jayce wrenches his arm free from Viktor's grip and swats at him, unsure if he's laughing in relief or because he's gotten crazy enough over the years cooped up together to find Viktor genuinely funny when he does this shit. "Stop," he whines.

"There, you see?" Viktor says, and he's laughing too, etching new lines into his face which Jayce likes much better than the familiar grooves of pain and exhaustion. "If I ever do that, you may involve the administrative office."

"Ugh," Jayce says with feeling. "How did you manage such a perfect impression of the heiress to House Cadwalder?"

"I don't think we've met," Viktor says in a tone that indicates there is very little in the world he would enjoy less.

He mutters something else to himself as he unlatches the closures on the outer shell of his leg brace.

"Didn't catch that," Jayce says.

"I said," Viktor says levelly, "that I also don't make a habit of getting off before my partners do. Let alone twice."

"Right," Jayce says weakly.

Viktor pauses. "Jayce. I am not—this is not making you uncomfortable, is it?"

"No!" It's not really a lie. Jayce is uncomfortable, to be sure, but not in the way Viktor meant.

"Good," Viktor says. "Okay. I've had my fun. Back to work. Let me see if—" He runs his fingertips over the line of his soft cock in his underwear. "Eh. I can work with this." He hooks his thumbs under the elastic, and Jayce busies himself in his journal.

Jayce couldn't hear much of anything, last time, but the oil amplifies the sound of skin-on-skin, makes it louder, wetter. And there's something else, too, as the minutes drag on.

Seven years of sharing a space, and he's developed a sixth sense for Viktor: where he is, what he's doing, how he's feeling. He can tell the difference between the staccato scratch of his pen when he's stuck on a problem and the fast, lilting glide of it when he's documenting a breakthrough, the difference between the rhythm of his crutch on a bad day and good day. Knows the noise of relief he makes when he sinks into the couch after hours on their feet and the awful way he groans when he unfolds himself from the workbench after falling asleep at the lab overnight, like a door with rusty hinges. The way he breathes when he's asleep. The way he coughs when he's trying not to laugh and the way he coughs when his lungs are failing him.

These sounds—the panting, the choked-off gasp—context tells him that they're likely to be good sounds, but the tidal force of habit compels him to double check, to catalog.

That's why he looks. Viktor's eyes are closed and his mouth has fallen open, bare legs sprawled out at loose angles in front of him. One hand clutches the seat of the stool beside his thigh and the other works steadily up and down his cock. It's hard to tell if he likes it slower than Jayce or if it's just because it's the second time. He gasps again when his thumb catches on the head.

Jayce is caught, pinned like a bug in an exhibit, unaware of himself and the passage of time, his brain cells boiling in blood heated by a rapid-onset high-grade fever or rupturing from hypoxia.

And then Viktor opens his eyes, meets Jayce's gaze. For a second, his expression is blank, but then his eyes widen, wracked with something wild and overwhelmed, and his hand falters. He doesn't look away, though, even as he picks up the motion again, the slick sound of it faster and more obscene than before, his head tipping back as his spine arches against the rigid confines of his brace—and then he freezes abruptly with a hoarse, startled sort of noise, collapsing in on himself. In Jayce's annotated mental database, it's close neighbors to the sound Viktor makes when his leg gives out on him, harsh like it's scraped from the back of his throat, low like it aches.

Jayce snaps to his side like a magnet. "Viktor? What's wrong? Is it your back? Your leg?" His hand is gentle on Viktor's shoulder, his fingertips brushing Viktor's collarbone.

Viktor blinks up at him, eyes glassy. "No," he says, "I was going to come." His shoulders rise and fall with his breath. Jayce can smell him, the smell of long days in the lab, copper and ozone and black licorice, stale and fresh sweat. "I didn't expect—I suppose I got carried away. Can you—the experiment? I'm—ah." He shudders as his hips twist into nothing, turning his head away from Jayce like he can't bear to look at him.

Jayce should—he should get out of Viktor's personal space. They should talk about this. But he's only human, and Viktor's cock is right there. Open mouthed, he watches it twitch untouched, shiny with oil and flushed from overuse, as Viktor clutches, tendons straining, into the lean muscle of his upper thigh. Viktor's got a regular-sized dick, by all accounts, but it looks big against his too-skinny thighs and concave stomach, framed prettily by the straps of his brace. It would fit just right in Jayce's palm.

"Jayce," Viktor snaps through gritted teeth. "Please, the experiment."

"Shit," Jayce says, stumbling over himself to frantically check their equipment. "It's okay. Everything's set up."

Behind him, Viktor moans, a loud, breathy sound like nothing Jayce has ever heard from him before. Jayce knocks over the radiohexometer.

Once he's righted everything, he looks back to catch Viktor working through the tail end of what must've been an intense orgasm, one which scattered their mission-critical organic matter, left it dotting his stomach and chest brace and dripping down his knuckles. His eyes are closed in beatific ecstasy, but they fly open when a bolt from the Hexcore arcs from the workbench to connect with his hand.

"What—" he gasps, doubling over and clenching his fist around his cock as it spasms around another weak spurt of come—one which stays eerily suspended in the air, caught by the pseudo-gravitational pull of the Hexcore. "Fuck." He scrabbles for the watch with a trembling hand as the Hexcore crackles and spins, reeling in its prize. 

The Hexcore must be as eager, as greedy as Jayce is. (Who's personifying our inventions now?, snarks an echo of Viktor in his brain.) 

It can't be normal to be jealous of a polyhedron.

It seems to Jayce that it takes too long for Viktor to catch his breath, afterwards, and a coughing fit overtakes him as they pore over the new data they've collected.

Jayce hovers behind him, stealing sidelong glances at his bare skin, the precise scar running up his spine to the base of his neck, the jut of his shoulder blades, the cleft of his ass.

"Aren't you cold?" he says eventually.

Viktor doesn't look up from his notes. "I'm fine, Jayce."

It becomes apparent why he's made no move to redress when he flips to a new blank page in his notebook and says, grimly, "Once more."

"I don't think that's a good idea," Jayce says.

Viktor pours more oil into his palm and reaches to spread it over the skin of his soft dick, but as soon as he makes contact, he flinches like he's been burned.

"I told you," Jayce says, because he's an asshole.

"Shut up." Viktor grits his teeth and does it again, managing a few strokes with the ring of his thumb and forefinger before he jerks his hand away, panting hard. "Shit."

"When I—" Jayce starts, and then his brain catches up with him. "Sorry for—uh, this is probably information that you don't want to know about me, but it's relevant, I swear." He looks down at his shoes, feels the words tumble out of him. "When I have time I like to get myself hard without—um, without touching my dick, see how long I can touch the rest of my body before it's too much. Maybe—maybe you could—"

Viktor frowns up at him. "Where?"

"What?"

"Where do you touch yourself?"

"Uh," Jayce says, "my thighs?" 

It's like the words are a magic spell to make Viktor's hands do his bidding. He skims one over his bare thigh, at first, fingers splayed, up and down the top and then trailing up the inside of it, leaving shiny trails of oil that slick down the hair on his legs. Then he reaches for the one with the brace, fingers tracing back and forth over the skin at the edge of the thick strap that encircles the muscle. It's—fuck, incredibly erotic—hotter, maybe, than watching him jerk off, and hotter still when he wedges a thumb under the strap, rubs hard, and groans.

"Where else?"

"My belly," Jayce says weakly, and Viktor moves at his command. "It, uh, it helps if I pretend it's someone else touching me."

Viktor hums in acknowledgement, blunt fingertips catching on the coarse hair below his navel, a faint tremor in his hands. Jayce swears he can feel goosebumps raising on his own skin, mirroring where Viktor is touching himself.

"Where else?" Viktor demands.

"My chest. My—my nipples."

Viktor hesitates, palm flat over his sternum, then slips the tips of two fingers under the stiff leather of his brace. A full-body shiver runs through him as he catches and pinches a nipple between them. He does it again, and again, squeezing and releasing, before sighing and withdrawing his hand, opening his eyes. "Ah, no. this was stupid," he says. "You were right. I don't think that three times is within the, eh, capabilities of my body in its current state."

This is what Jayce wanted—for Viktor to listen to him, to stop, to rest—but something about Viktor's tone, how quickly the fight's gone out of him, feels off. "I don't know," he demurs. "It looks like your body is managing pretty well."

It is. Viktor's not fully hard yet, but his dick is fattening sweetly between his legs, foreskin still enveloping the oversensitive head. It's still soft enough that Jayce thinks he could fit the whole of it into his mouth with no problem, feel it throb and swell against his tongue as Viktor writhes beneath him.

Viktor's eyes flicker down, and he moves abortively, as if to cover himself, before his hands settle back on his thighs, his long fingers twitching restlessly. 

"Jayce, you do not have to..." he starts, then trails off, tries again. "I know it isn't easy, seeing me like this." 

"Like what?" Jayce says—baffled, because seeing Viktor like this is the easiest thing in the world, somehow, too easy, might be the death of him.

Viktor's quiet for a moment, mouth drawn up in a thin, tense line. "Struggling," he says, finally. "Against my physical limitations."

"Is that what this is? I thought I was helping you feel good." Jayce worries his lip between his teeth. "It did feel good, right?"

"Well—yes, I suppose."

"You suppose?"

Viktor's started tracing patterns on his skin again. Jayce can't tell if he realizes he's doing it. "Feeling good isn't the point."

"Viktor," Jayce says incredulously, "feeling good is generally the mechanism by which one achieves orgasm."

"Just stimulation, actually," Viktor corrects, like it's just another debate over the nuances of one of Jayce's half-baked theories. "The way it feels is an... unnecessary side effect. One which I have been trying to ignore."

"What?" Jayce says. "Are you a monk? Don't tell me you never jerk off for pleasure."

Viktor barks a laugh. "Of course I jerk off for pleasure. Just not in front of my..." He hesitates, then settles on, "the people I work with."

"Don't worry about me," Jayce pleads. "I'll be quiet. Pretend I'm not even here."
 
"I can't," Viktor says softly, agonized. "I didn't ask for your help to—to increase my sexual gratification. But that has been the outcome nonetheless."

"You—what?"

Viktor brings his heels up to the seat of the stool, curling in on himself. "This was a mistake," he says into his knees. "Despite my best efforts, I am taking advantage of you. I'm no better than the vultures on the council."

"You're not taking advantage." Jayce reaches out, rubs his thumb over the tense muscle at the nape of Viktor's neck. "I like being here with you."

"Jayce. I can't think when you do that."

Jayce kisses the top of his head. Viktor's hair is soft against his lips. "Come on, Vik. Please. I know you can do this." Cautiously, he trails his lips down to the shell of Viktor's ear, the corner of his jaw. When Viktor doesn't protest, he eases his leg back to the ground with a hand on his knee. His cock is still curved gently against his thigh, half-hard but responding with interest to Jayce's attention.

Viktor sighs, resettling himself on the stool. "I don't know what you think you're doing," he says, "but I admit that it's very convincing."

Jayce pulls back just enough to meet Viktor's eyes and aims a winning smile at him. "Yeah, well, I don't know what I think I'm doing either."

He takes Viktor's hand in his own and kisses his bony knuckles. It's chaste and tender at first, like he's blessing a playground scrape, but he can't help himself for long, parting his lips to mouth wetly at the skin there. At first, he puzzles at the taste of salt, and then he groans helplessly as he realizes what it is, that he's chasing the taste of Viktor's come.

Viktor's still staring at him uncertainly, color rising in his cheeks, when Jayce relinquishes his hand. "Try again?"

"You're just going to watch?" Viktor implores. His accent is thicker like this, and Jayce has to fight against every instinct to deny him.

"Touching you is a bad idea, isn't it? Might contaminate the sample."

"But you want to?" Viktor says hesitantly.

"So badly."

Viktor wets his lips. "Say it again."

"I want to be the one making you come," Jayce says. He swallows and looks away before the eye contact burns him. "Viktor, I want you so much it scares me."

"Ah," Viktor moans, shuddering as he grasps his cock again, his off hand flying out to grip tightly at Jayce's forearm.

Jayce sinks to his knees on the floor beside him, dares to bring his mouth back to Viktor's neck and taste his sweat, feels Viktor's pulse speed up against his tongue as Viktor slowly, deliberately works himself to a full erection, until his breathing is ragged and his cock is flushed and straining in his hand. "Does it hurt?"

"Yes," Viktor gasps. "Don't ask stupid questions."

"But it still feels good?"

Viktor cries out. "Yes."

Jayce should wait to kiss him properly. It's looking, improbably, like such a thing might be accepted—even welcomed—at some point in the future when they're no longer in the middle of a delicate scientific operation. Some point in the future like, say, twenty minutes from now, after they've documented the results of this trial.

He's never had very good impulse control. Viktor's lips are chapped, dry against his own, but the inside of his mouth is hot, perfect. He presses in closer, delirious, and Viktor groans into his mouth, blindly sliding his hand up Jayce's arm to his bicep and then to the back of his neck. Jayce wasn't really expecting to be met with equal intensity, not with Viktor's attention divided like this, but Viktor kisses him back with intention. Measured and coaxing at first—and Jayce realizes the drag of Viktor's tongue against his own matches the pace of his hand on himself—but more frantic by the second.

Viktor turns his head away before Jayce has truly wrapped his head around the feeling of it, smearing a trail of spit across his cheek. "Jayce—oh, fuck, Jayce. Don't get too distracted."

"We have time," Jayce bargains. "Just let me know when you're closer to coming, and I'll go set up."

Viktor draws a shaky, uneven breath, and Jayce pulls back to look at him. "Fuck. Are you close already?"

"Maybe," Viktor says. "Depends, ah, what you mean by close. I feel—oh—"

He thumbs at the head of his cock, coaxing sticky precome from the slit, and his eyes slam shut and then wide open again, then flutter, heavy-lidded. In seven years, Jayce has never seen him this undone.

"Jayce," he says urgently, "I need it, but I'm not sure I can—"

Jayce makes an executive decision. "I'll go set up."

"No," Viktor says. "Don't. I need you here"

"It's your experiment, I guess," Jayce says dubiously, and then Viktor kisses him again, hard and desperate, like the secret to pushing his body over the edge is hidden somewhere deep within Jayce's mouth.

He swears when he pulls away, unshed tears in his eyes. "Fuck. Fuck."

"Shh," Jayce murmurs, gentling him. "Breathe. You'll get there."

At least they're suffering together. Jayce's own cock is aching with denial as he runs through the checklist of Hexcore measurements again and again in his head. It throbs with every strained whimper Viktor lets out.

It's after the third or fourth time that Viktor pulls his hand away to breathe and then starts up again that Jayce figures he should do something—call a time out, check in with Viktor to make sure it's still good for him—break his promise not to touch him, maybe—but Viktor's speaking before he can formulate a plan of action.

"Jayce—oh, I think I—I think—"

Jayce can see it, the change in his body as he goes from frantically chasing his orgasm to accepting its inevitability, how he collapses in relief as he lets the pleasure take him. His head falls heavy onto Jayce's shoulder, bare heels braced against the lab floor as he humps mindlessly up into his hand, possessed, like some kind of dirty marionette. It's the loudest he's been all night—"Ah, ah, ahh—" but he gets stuck on a soft, hiccuping gasp as he comes, face turned into Jayce's neck, breath hot on his skin. 

Jayce watches it all this time, the way it rips violently through Viktor's whole body, his muscles seizing, toes flexing and curling, hips jerking both into and away from his fist like his body can't figure out what sensation it's chasing. His cock manages one valiant spurt, but the rest of the come left in him leaks out in an exhausted sort of trickle that seems to go on forever, thin rivulets of it pulsing weakly from the slit like the last drops of water wrung from a dishcloth.

He's still shaking as he lets his cock fall sticky against his thigh, as he disentangles himself from Jayce and stares down at his hands. "I didn't know I could do that," he says softly.

Jayce clears his throat. "Science calls."

"Ah," Viktor says, "yes," and he wearily raises his hand to the Hexcore.

It takes a bit longer to organize all the data with Viktor mostly out of commission. It's incomplete, still, but starting to look promising when put together with the previous results.

"I've recorded values from two new arrays," Jayce says, initialing the final page of notes. "I think there's some redundancy—here, look. I think we have enough to figure out most of the pattern. I—" he looks up. "Shit, Vik, you're a mess. Stay there."

He returns with a warm, damp towel and sinks to his knees once again at Viktor's side to run it over his thighs, his stomach, the straps and buckles of his brace. His erection flagged a bit while he focused on rune combinatorics, but this—this ritual of it, Viktor's skin, the smell of sex on him—is enough to get him right back where he'd been before. And like before, he makes himself wait. Viktor watches him silently, parts his legs to give Jayce room to run the cloth so, oh so gently over his balls, his cock. His thighs tremble minutely with exhaustion and overwhelm.

And then finally, finally, Jayce stands up and lets Viktor pull him down into a kiss.

"Jayce," Viktor says hoarsely. "Are you, did that—" His hand finds Jayce's erection, swollen and aching, and closes around the shape of it in his pants. "Fuck," he says, "you really—"

"Yeah," Jayce says mindlessly, "yeah." He's so hard, and he's going to come. He's going to come just from this, whether he's ready or not, and if he tries to get his pants off, he's not gonna make it, will end up losing it with the buttons halfway undone, without Viktor's hand on him.

He can't even manage a warning, just braces himself on the workbench and clamps a hand over Viktor's, adding more pressure to grind his neglected cock into—and coming feels so sweet, so good after all that waiting, his cock shooting off again and again and again like it's trying to catch up to all three of Viktor's orgasms, fabric wet and clinging around the pulsing head. And through it the steady pressure of Viktor's hand, the faraway murmur of his voice.

"Sorry," Jayce gasps, his cock still jerking against Viktor's palm. "Sorry, I don't usually—"

"There's no need to apologize," Viktor says, then grins at him crookedly. "To be honest, I didn't have the energy for much more than that anyway."

"Uh, should we—" Jayce gestures to his crotch and the wet spot spreading there.

Viktor shrugs. "Since the opportunity has presented itself, I suppose we might as well."

While shoving his fingers into his underwear to coat them in cooling come isn't the most pleasant exercise, the Hexcore willingly accepts the new offering. It spins and spins and spins—then slows and settles, its last few arrays clicking into place.

"Huh," Jayce says.

"Favoritism," Viktor says, but he can't hide the spark of excitement in his eyes. "You write it down. I am going to go lie down on the couch."

Later, after all their instruments have been put away, as Viktor is pulling his vest over his unbuttoned shirt, Jayce lingers. "Come home with me," he says.

Viktor stares at him, impassive but for the quirk of a single eyebrow. "If you think I'm getting it up again any time in the next twenty-four hours—"

"Just to sleep. I—I don't like to do this and sleep alone. I hate how it feels like it didn't mean anything." He reaches for his bracelet without thinking, rubs his thumb back and forth over the smooth stone. "This meant something, right?"

Viktor's voice softens. "Yes, Jayce. This meant something."

"I want to look at these notes first thing in the morning with fresh eyes. Vik, if this can cure you—"

"Well," Viktor says meaningfully, "maybe not first thing in the morning."

"You just said twenty-four hours," Jayce complains. "I'm getting mixed signals."

"An imprecise upper bound that didn't account for exogenous factors," Viktor says airily, tucking his cravat into his pocket. "Let's go home."