Work Text:
Viktor groaned into the already saliva-wet pillow, gripping the sheets in his augmented hand as Jayce pumped one final time and spent himself deep inside. Jayce was still for a long moment, his heavy pants warming Viktor’s nape as the aftershocks took hold of him—his hips spasming in tight, jerky movements, and the hand balled into a fist in Viktor’s hair tightening rhythmically.
In the past, he might have leaned down, kissed Viktor’s back or whispered sweet nonsense in his ear as he gingerly pulled out. But that was lifetimes ago—whole textbooks could be filled with the rising and falling tides of their complicated and mostly bloody recent history. Now, it was simply long, seemingly-endless days of loneliness, interrupted only by quick bursts of vicious fighting, vicious fucking, or both. So Jayce simply pulled away, sighing as he twisted to plop down on the mattress beside Viktor, his weight causing the whole thing to rebound a bit.
“I thought you said we had to stop doing this,” Viktor supplied, knowing it was unhelpful and incendiary, but saying it anyway. He turned onto his side, inching himself out of his own wet spot as he peered at the side of Jayce’s face.
“I did,” Jayce said, clicking his teeth in annoyance as he turned to retrieve something from the bedside table. “But that was me trying to subtly tell you to stop showing up at my door. Because if you show up… I’ll always let you in.”
He leaned back onto the mattress with the Noxian cigarette he’d apparently just retrieved, holding up a match in slightly perturbed anticipation. “But I should have known—you’re about as subtle as a Klaxon.”
Viktor fought the urge to grin. “Pot calling the kettle black, don’t you think?”
“Never claimed to be,” Jayce retorted shortly, wiggling the match like a petulant child.
Viktor acquiesced, bringing the HexClaw forward to fire a brief, tiny burst at the tip, flames instantly appearing when he did. Jayce held it up to the cigarette, puffing his lips a few times to pull the heat through, then whipped the match about to extinguish it in a trail of smoke.
“And you give me shit about what I do to my body,” Viktor snapped, striking like a snake to steal the cigarette and bringing it to his own lips.
Jayce pulled an annoyed face, motioning dramatically to the cigarette, as if, by taking it, Viktor had walked into his own gotcha scheme.
Viktor shrugged, unbothered, and blew the smoke out toward the ceiling, feeling the almost-instant high that came with Noxian floraweed. “My lungs are entirely augmented. This won’t do anything except perhaps discolor the metal. You, on the other hand…”
Jayce made a dismissive sound, reaching over and plucking the cigarette back from Viktor’s lips. “Yeah, well… I used to care a lot more about it. So did you.”
“Let’s not play that game tonight, hmm?” Viktor drawled, allowing himself to twist and lie on his back, trying not to make a face at the uncomfortable feeling of Jayce’s load leaking out of him. “All’s fair in love and war, right?”
Jayce scoffed, taking a long, telling drag of the cigarette. “Not even close,” he mumbled, his eyes going distant and dark as they cascaded down Viktor’s exposed body, catching on those places that were the least human.
Viktor didn’t want to get into this conversation; mainly because it was so played out at this point that it was stale-going-on-moldy. But there were also points he’d refrained from making—you judge my metal parts until it’s time to take sexual pleasure from them, then suddenly you have nothing to say? Is that what I am now? A source for your wildly whiplashing disgust and arousal? Is there even room in there for the love that used to exist? Or have you convinced yourself that I’m not me anymore, therefore you can’t possibly love me, still?
But, he had to admit, their current arrangement was… mutually beneficial. And to strike that sword in the middle of it could jeopardize the brief reprieves from their brutal fighting, and then what would they have left?
Though it was clear he was trying to be subtle, his eyes snapping over and back in a way that tried to imply they were just wandering, Jayce eyed Viktor’s newly-augmented phallus. They’d only had sex twice, today included, since he’d performed the augmentation, and Jayce had been weary, if not borderline turned-off by it—his hands reluctant to touch, and his body language reading as extremely repulsed. While disappointment had initially flared through Viktor like a winter chill, he’d let it go, allowing Jayce the time he needed to come to terms with the change, like he always did. But this seemed… different, somehow. Jayce had always been a bit queasy when it came to Viktor’s augments, his judgements coming out in various, not-so-subtle ways—the way touch was still his love language, but he hesitated to touch any part of him that was metal. His hands pausing in the air and hovering, as if he thought the touch would mean any less if it was laid against iron. And yet, in typical hypocrite fashion, he had no problem embedding the Mercury Hammer into it when they clashed. And really—that’s what it all came down to… metal deserved pain, flesh deserved tenderness. And yet, he still overlooked the fundamental fact that, without the metal, there would be only pain for Viktor.
So instead of reaching out and taking the cigarette, Viktor held his non-augmented hand out, an olive branch in offering as he watched the vein in Jayce’s neck throb with tension.
“You can ask questions, you know?” Viktor said as Jayce surrendered and handed him the cigarette. “In fact, I encourage it.”
Jayce shook his head so sharply that his hair fell in his face, and he hurried to push it back. When he spoke, it was clipped and dismissive, “I don’t wanna know, V.”
Viktor paused to drag on the cigarette, relishing the way his head spun as it was inundated with the psychoactive properties of the floraweed. “Yes, you do. I know what curiosity looks like in your eyes, I spent almost ten years committing it to memory. And while I’m having trouble seeing past the disgust…”
Jayce bristled at the word, his nose scrunching up in a way that was both sullen and completely adorable,
“It’s still there… hiding. Waiting for you to get your head out of your ass. You’re a scientist, Jayce. It’s in your nature—to encounter that which you don’t understand, and seek to learn.”
It was clear Jayce didn’t have an answer to that, and that bothered him. So, grinding his teeth in frustration, he snatched the cigarette back, and twisted to fling his legs over the side of the bed to stand.
“I don’t wanna talk about this,” he grumbled, exiting the bedroom and leaving Viktor to sigh heavily in his absence.
“Poked the bear, have I?” Viktor called after him, noting the mumbled curses in response, which was to be expected. What he didn’t expect to hear, in the heightened sense provided by his augmented eardrums, was the scribbling of a pen.
So, as quietly as he could, he followed—rolling his feet from heel to toe to keep the metal quiet as he crept out into the apartment proper, where Jayce was leaning over his dining table and writing furiously in an unmarked leather-bound journal.
“Taking notes on our sex life, are we?” he asked sharply, reveling in the way Jayce startled so badly he dropped the pen, and using the opportunity to send the HexClaw striking for the journal.
While Viktor hadn’t expected much, Jayce’s reaction was a tip-off; he spun, his eyes wide with what looked like fear, both hands frantically going for the journal as he spat an almost incoherent jumble of pleas,
“V, waitnostopgivethatback.”
Now Viktor’s own curiosity was piqued.
So he quickly took the journal from the claw, immediately extending it again to press against Jayce’s advancing chest, pushing him back as he cracked the journal open to a random page near the front.
February 15,
I miss his eyes. They were so expressive, and Gods, the color! It was like drowning in Honeywine, and just as intoxicating. I suppose there are ways to read his new ones, though. You have to be standing close to him, closer than anyone is typically allowed without a HexClaw hole through the heart. Well… anyone besides me, I guess.
The aperture in his augmented eyes mimics dilation—shrinks in high light environments, enlarges in low light. This also applies to interest and arousal, making them surprisingly and, I have to admit, endearingly catlike…
Viktor let the journal fall a bit as he leveled Jayce in as stern a glare as he could muster through the bashfulness he was viciously fighting back. “What is this?”
“V, I… it’s… it’s just… I can explain,” Jayce stuttered, pushing the HexClaw up and off of his chest. The apprehension still painted plainly across his features was a tell though, as it tipped Viktor off that this note was just one of many… and how specific and intrusive were they going to get? So Viktor readjusted the claw, clamping it down on Jayce’s shoulder just tight enough to make him yelp and stop resisting.
Without another word, he turned his attention back to the journal, flipping several pages.
March 27,
In an outcome completely contradictory to Viktor’s attempts to rid himself of emotion, or at the very least his outward expressions of it, you can hear his heartbeat. It was one of the first things he replaced, true, but the metal is what makes it audible. The pistons that pump the blood (or oil? Or Shimmer? Or all of the above? I’m not sure, I’ve never asked how his augmented heart works, and don’t plan to) are quite loud, compared to the rest of him. So, even though he tries to appear passive or unresponsive most of the time, if you listen, his heart gives him away; you can tell when his pulse is high. I’ve even run experiments on this—doing the things that used to excite and thrill him, and listening for the quickening thump from deep in his chest.
“Y-you’re…” Viktor started, flipping to another page and catching only a single sentence as he moved on—tongue is still completely organic, and just as talented as it’s always been, I suspect because of his obsession with sweetmilk…
“You’re taking notes on me?” he finished, scanning another page.
His stamina is almost astronomical, but he does tire—the metal parts of him start to grow hot to the touch (temperature can vary from mild to hazardous, depending on the strain he’s under), and the vents in his neck start to hiss. I know that he sleeps, but I don’t know how much he requires to recharge the non-organic parts. I also don’t know if he still dreams…
“V, it’s… it’s not like that, it’s…” Jayce tried, hand still outstretched as if he might be able to snatch the journal back, despite the HexClaw’s fully-extended length.
“What is it like then, Jayce?” Viktor practically snarled, his augmented hand tightening on the journal, the pages crinkling under the constriction. “I was a charity case when I was flesh and bone, and now that I’m steel and filament, I’m… what? Another of your experiments? Do you plan on presenting your findings to the council so they might use them against me?”
“What?! No, you weren’t a… charity… V, will you just stop!” Jayce yelled, reaching up and ripping the HexClaw’s grip from his shoulder, shoving it away and immediately taking a step closer. “I would never do that to you, why would you even… think that?!”
“Oh, I don’t know, Jayce, maybe it’s because you’re so clearly disgusted by what I’ve done to myself, all of which was medically necessary, by the way, to save my fucking life, in the absence of Hextech. But that doesn’t matter, does it? Because my humanity was somehow attached to my rotting body. Because I’m not me if I’m not suffering, isn’t that right…”
“Viktor!!” Jayce practically roared, his hand coming up to wrap around Viktor’s wrist instead of the journal. Viktor did pause, if only to gather his thoughts and work on moderating the rage that was making his audible heart thrum in his chest… and that was when he saw the tears glittering on Jayce’s lashes.
“V, none of that is true, you have to know that. This journal, it’s… I… I’m… I don’t… every time I see you, you’ve carved a little more of yourself away, and… I used to know you, better even than I knew myself. But I don’t anymore; the things that used to comfort you, you can’t even feel anymore. You say you’ve rid yourself of emotion, and sometimes I lay here in the aftermath of this… this… empty, hollow thing that we’re doing, and I fucking believe you. I used to be able to read your body like an open book—I knew when you were in pain, I knew when you were in ecstasy, and I knew every little place in between. I’m just… I’m trying, V, Gods am I trying. But I feel like I have to re-learn you, because it’s… it’s all gone. And sometimes, after you’ve left, I… I wake up in the middle of the night and wonder if… if any of it’s real, if you ever came back to me, or if I’m just losing my goddamn mind, missing you. So… so I write it down, so I can… so I can learn, so I can remember. Or at the very fucking least, so I can be better, be what you need of me. Because I’ve already lost you once, I can’t… I can’t do it again, I can’t…”
His voice had gone high-pitched and frantic, his free hand flailing wildly in the air as if he were a drowning man searching desperately for a raft, and suddenly it all made sense—Jayce was just doing what came naturally; studying, building, growing, and Viktor was ridden with guilt over just how wrong he’d been in his assumption.
“Jayce, Jayce,” he interrupted, his voice kept intentionally soft as he stepped forward, wrapping Jayce up in his arms, all three of them, and holding him tightly until the manic shuddering in Jayce’s rib cage had begun to cease, and he practically melted against Viktor’s steel-plated chest. “I’m sorry. I know… I know that you wouldn’t betray me like that…”
The effort of swerving around the use of the word ‘again’ was monumental, but he managed. They’d had that fight, buried it under a headstone marked ‘agree to disagree,’ and now wasn’t the time to go grave-robbing.
“I was… I was caught off-guard, is all. But… now that I think about it, I suppose, you keeping a journal of my augmented body language is kind of… flattering… in a creepy, stalker kind of way.”
Jayce laughed; a broken, stunted thing huffed out and muffled against Viktor’s sternum as his hand came up to rest above Viktor’s heart.
With that, Viktor raised the journal up again behind Jayce’s head, turning now to the second-to-last entry, the one Jayce had apparently made upon their last meeting… the one in which Jayce had borne witness to Viktor’s newly augmented genitalia.
I know he thinks I’m disgusted, and maybe that was my knee-jerk reaction, at first. That he could replace something so intimate, so personal with cold, callous steel. But I’m not disgusted. Afraid, maybe. Definitely. Definitely afraid. Would it hurt, to have inside me? Would he feel anything? Or would it just be a tool for getting me off? That’s… impersonal, and soulless, and… it’s everything I dislike about augmented body parts. This isn’t supposed to be a one-way street, intimacy, and I’ve never wanted it to be. I’m just having trouble adjusting. I know he can tell, and I’m terrified that I’m going to drive him away. I already told him we have to stop. I don’t know why I fucking did that, I can’t survive without him. But I can’t keep doing this, fighting him in the sunlight and loving him in the moonlight…
Viktor smirked against Jayce’s hair, hoping that he could take a little bit of teasing in his delicate state.
“It’s not cold, you know,” he said, bringing his non-augmented hand up to begin caressing up and down Jayce’s spine, between his shoulder blades, right where he liked it. “And it’s not steel. It’s a new invention of mine, called biometal. It requires a very specialized procedure, and yes, a little bit of Shimmer, but… it’s a metal ore fused with concentrated nanotechnology that acts as artificial nerve-endings. I originally designed it for those who are missing limbs—utility is only half of what is taken from someone, with the loss of a limb. Sensory input is still important, for some—being able to hold and be held, and still feel it as if it were organic.”
Jayce had gone still against him, so still in fact that Viktor began to worry that he might have dumped too much on him, too fast.
“Jayce?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I’m just… thinking…”
Viktor nodded, continuing to hold him as his curiosity got the better of him—what was it Jayce had left their bed to write down tonight?
He flipped the page, finding the most recent entry smudged a bit, the ink still drying on the parchment.
I don’t care what it’s made of, I don’t care if this makes me some kind of freak. I haven’t been able to think of anything else for weeks—what it would feel like inside me, what it would taste like on my tongue. I can’t even function. I’ve just had him, and I don’t even feel satisfied. I need him, I need this, but I’m still scared and I don’t know how to tell hi…
The entry ended abruptly, presumably when Viktor interrupted his frantic scribbling, and Viktor couldn’t be certain, as he thought he’d removed his ability to do so, but… it felt like he might be blushing.
So that was what all the fuss was about.
“Jayce?”
“Mmhmm?”
“At the risk of sounding like my former self… I would never hurt you… not… not when we’re… like this. When we’re fighting each other, when we pick up our weapons, there’s an unspoken agreement, an unspoken consent that… I’m going to hurt you, and you’re going to hurt me. It’s part and parcel of the divided, broken world we live in, now. But this, you and me, here? Different rules, different agreements. I need you to understand something, Jayce—no matter how much of my body I slice away, no matter how much I replace, I’m still me. And I wouldn’t give myself something with the intention of using it to hurt you when you’re at your most vulnerable. I designed it to do exactly as it’s supposed to, no more, no less.”
That wasn’t entirely accurate, it was superior in multiple, vibrating ways (20 to be exact), but he wasn’t about to throw arithmetic at a grade-school conversation. They could discuss all the ways it was better later on. For now, Jayce just needed to understand that it wasn’t all that different.
Jayce pulled back slightly, his eyes honed in on Viktor’s chest as he spoke, hushed and a little nervous.
“Is it… would it hurt?” he asked, chewing his lip in a telltale display of his anxiety and again refusing to look in Viktor’s eyes.
But Viktor needed him to understand, really understand, so he used the HexClaw to gently tip his chin up and force his gaze.
“It has less give than flesh, so perhaps it might feel bigger. But otherwise, no—there is nothing this can do to you that a normal phallus couldn’t.”
“Oh, Gods, please don’t say phallus,” Jayce groaned, a blush coming to his cheeks as he finally grinned.
“What would you prefer I call it?” Viktor asked jokingly, but the conversation was suddenly cut abruptly short, as Jayce nudged the HexClaw away and tipped his chin up just those last few inches until his lips met Viktor’s.
They hadn’t kissed in years. They’d been meeting for raucous sex almost since the beginning, one might hazard to say they never even stopped after Viktor was banished and the vast chasm of their moral differences was made all the wider. But the emotional element, the element of connection was always removed, lest they fall victim to it again, fall victim to that loathsome what-can-never-be.
And as Viktor’s head spun in a way it hadn’t done in years, he knew why—Jayce’s kiss was a lifeline, a carefully-woven blanket of silk and soft peach fuzz, sweet and supple, and it hit like the strongest Shimmer. It made Viktor’s heart race and his skin crawl, what little was left, and it made his teeth ache like he’d bitten into the sweetest Demacian chocolate. It made him descend so quickly into need, spiraling into a dizzying pit of arousal until all his upgrades, all his metal and machinations meant fuckall.
The whimper that roiled up out of his lungs was completely unbidden, and when Jayce let out a giggling growl of triumph in response, Viktor knew he was done for.
It wasn’t long before they were crashing back to the bed, Jayce practically vibrating with anticipation beneath him. He wasted no time teasing—his shaking hand descending Viktor’s body almost comically fast to begin palming at him.
“How does… how does it work?” Jayce asked, throwing his other arm around Viktor’s neck and yanking him down for another frantic, sloppy kiss. “Getting hard, I mean?”
Viktor grinned into the kiss, glad to see Jayce’s curiosity had finally caught up to his arousal.
“It’s like the HexClaw, I control it subconsciously. If I want it hard, then it is. No more of this hoping my body will comply with my brain.”
“Can you make yourself come?” Jayce asked, all inhibitions and tentativeness apparently long since flung out the window.
“No,” Viktor replied, tilting his head to begin mouthing at Jayce’s neck, causing him to arch up off the bed and squirm. “That still requires stimulation.”
To emphasize the point, he rolled his hips down into Jayce’s hand, groaning when Jayce’s fingers closed around him and started tugging.
“I will be the first to admit, though, that there is a downside to the biometal,” he murmured into the spit-wet skin of Jayce’s neck just before he lightly bit down. Jayce whined, angling his head back into the pillow to provide better access.
“The nanotech nerve endings, they’re… they’re far more condensed and exposed, meaning…”
“Meaning you’re a lot more sensitive than you would have been?” Jayce finished for him, punctuating the bold (but very true) claim by sweeping his thumb over the flared head.
Viktor jerked hard as pleasure flashed through his lower extremities, his spine nearly locking up as he cried out against Jayce’s neck, the sound slowly morphing to a frustrated growl.
“I’m working on recovering my stamina, but I’ve yet to… hah!”
He was cut off again as Jayce repeated the motion, a gloating, triumphant grin stretching those puffy, kiss-bitten lips. “And your come, is it still…” he trailed off, clearly growing embarrassed, so Viktor kissed the bashfulness away.
“Do you wanna keep talking about it, or do you want to find out?” Viktor purred against Jayce’s lips, and Jayce visibly shuddered.
“Option 2, definitely option 2,” he barked hastily, descending into slightly manic laughter.
Viktor chuckled with him, pulling back and prowling down his trembling body, laying errant kisses and nibbles on his pecs, abs, and stomach.
“I saw your note about my tongue,” he said with only the barest hint of arrogance, rearranging to settle between Jayce’s quivering thighs and pushing them up. “You were mostly right. I left it for two reasons: sweetmilk, and…”
He didn’t finish, instead just diving in to lick a thick stripe over Jayce’s rim. Jayce yelped, reaching down to grip both his legs behind the knee and pull them up more.
“So you’ve been thinking about it, have you?” Viktor drawled, letting his voice go husky and deep, pushing a bit of saliva to the tip of his tongue and delivering another heavy, wet lick to the puckered muscle before him.
Jayce spasmed, an unhinged, gasp-broken whimper escaping.
“Did you imagine yourself…”
He interrupted himself to flick his tongue a few times, warming at the way Jayce responded like exposed wiring; jerking and losing his grip on his own legs.
“On your knees in your lab, tasting me? Did you touch yourself, lock the door so no one would know?”
Jayce valiantly attempted to answer, a mumbled ‘mmhmm’ that really just instantly devolved into a low moan when Viktor’s tongue breached him. Jayce had always relished a slow buildup, and now was no different—so Viktor plunged his tongue deeper a few times, reaching up with one hand to squeeze at his bum.
“Fuck, Vitya…”
Viktor paused.
Jayce hadn’t called him that since before his banishment—there was always an unspoken understanding that that name was reserved only for those in Viktor’s most intimate circle… actually, for just one. And it had fallen from use when their world was turned upside down, when their closeness devolved to random bursts of violence and frenzied lust. Even when they caved to their carnal needs with each other, it was under the pretense that the intimacy was gone. So words of affirmation, words of sweetness and reassurance… words of affection were also gone.
But he didn’t hate it. In fact some nights, in the beginning, when he’d only just begun his transformation, and was sequestered in his lonely, isolated lab, terrified of both the past and future, he would wake up in a cold sweat, tears pouring down his face and that name, echoing like the WhisperWills of legend through his mind. It had tortured him for the longest time, the aching in his eardrums to just hear it again, just one time—whispered against his temple as he was wrapped up in strong, warm arms. That name was safety, it was security, and though he’d successfully weaned himself off of it (namely by replacing those pesky, weak eardrums), it still struck a chord somewhere deep in the human recesses of his mind.
So he pulled back, knowing Jayce had clocked the pause, and so reassuring him by placing a hard kiss against his slicked rim before moving up to mouth at his heavy balls.
Suddenly one of Jayce’s hands was digging back into Viktor’s hair, scratching lightly at his scalp in a lovely, rhythmic pattern that threw off Viktor’s concentration for a moment, and he hummed against Jayce’s now very hard cock.
“Does the lab still echo with your desperate chants of my name, Jayce?” he asked, licking a stripe all the way up Jayce’s length and watching as the thick member twitched against Jayce’s stomach.
“Eh—every fucking day, Viktor,” Jayce gasped, his hand balling slightly in Viktor’s hair as he took the head of Jayce’s cock in his lips and barely started to suck…
And that was when he heard it—his own heart, the metal pistons working as his pulse thrummed in his neck, in the tips of his ears and fingers… the ones that were flesh and bone, anyway.
He sighed, releasing Jayce’s cock and rocking back slightly, his focus broken by a self-consciousness that hadn’t plagued him in years.
“Wha-what’s wrong, why did you stop?” Jayce asked, his voice a little wrecked.
Viktor puzzled, bringing the HexClaw up to bury his face in it as he answered.
“Damn you and your stupid journal. You’ve thrown off my game, Talis, and I don’t appreciate it.”
Jayce threw his head back and laughed hard, the sound pleasant and activating something warm and fuzzy in Viktor’s memory core, as if a weighted blanket had just been thrown over him.
“You’re doing great, really,” Jayce said, his hand rerouting to caress at the metal plating on Viktor’s cheek. “Five stars. I’ll even put that in the fucking journal, if it’ll make you feel better.”
“It doesn’t,” Viktor grumbled, trying to deliver a puzzled expression but knowing that, whatever he managed, Jayce just found it endearing. “Hand me the lube.”
“Wait,” Jayce said, letting his legs fall to either side of Viktor’s shoulders as he sat up slightly, his hand cupping Viktor’s neck now. “Before we… before we go any farther, can… can I just…”
He appeared nervous again, his eyes darting about everywhere but Viktor’s eyes, so Viktor crawled back up, reached up to his chin and forced his gaze again.
“Whatever it is, the answer is yes. What do you want?”
His eyes went down Viktor’s body again, and he actually licked his lips.
“Can… can I just… touch you? For a little while? Just to…”
He was stuttering and struggling for words, but Viktor understood—he needed to inspect, to physically understand. That was just how he was—tactile to a fault.
“Yes,” was Viktor’s answer, uncomplicated and simple. “How would you like me?”
Jayce inched back up the bed, sitting up fully and pushing slightly at Viktor’s chest.
“Switch with me, lie down,” he said, and they did—Viktor plopping down onto the bed on his back, Jayce settling on top of him, seated on his thighs. He didn’t touch at first, just stared down between Viktor’s legs, his expression blending hunger and hesitancy in equal measure.
“Did… did it hurt?” Jayce asked, his hand starting to caress at Viktor’s hip but still not touching his augmented cock. He wouldn’t like the honest answer, but he deserved it.
“Yes,” he said, raising his metal arm to place it behind his head and prop himself up a bit. “They all did. But temporary pain to eradicate all pain is a trial I’ll willingly suffer.”
“I don’t want you to suffer at all,” Jayce mumbled, both hands now splayed out on the flat plane of Viktor’s stomach, his thumbs barely skirting over the seams where metal met skin, and Viktor had to physically stave off the shudder.
In an attempt to radiate a passivity he wasn’t even close to feeling, Viktor shrugged.
“Price of being alive, Jayce,” he said, his heart hammering harder, louder as Jayce’s hand finally went lower, barely wrapping around his erection. He simply held it for a long moment, his thumb rubbing tiny, torturously good circles against the underside, and this time, Viktor wasn’t able to dampen the shudder.
“Feels different,” Jayce said, his eyes distant in that way that he had—his brain working at breakneck speeds as he thought, as he learned. “Similar, though. Like skin, but… harder.”
He delivered an experimental stroke then, pulling slowly from root to tip, and pleasure shot up Viktor’s spine, making his hips buck in spite of himself.
“I told you, it’s not…” Viktor replied, desperately fighting for a bit more composure. They’d only just started, for godssake, and he was already fighting off the tremor. “Not that different.”
“Hmm, I suppose you’re right. But a scientist should always do his own research…”
Before he’d even registered the movement, Jayce was moved back, his mouth closing around the tip of Viktor’s metal member.
He hadn’t experienced oral since the augment, and he didn’t quite know what it was going to feel like… but he hadn’t expected this—Jayce’s mouth feeling so much more intense than it used to…hotter, tighter, slicker.
He hissed in a breath through his teeth, his body reacting without his consent, like it did in the past—his back arching and his hands balling into the sheets. Jayce was slow and experimental as he began to bob his head, his tongue pressing up and his cheeks sucking in, encasing Viktor in mind-numbing pressure. Almost immediately thereafter, there was a loud, shrill ting resounding through the bedroom, and both of them startled as they looked to the source of the sound…
Without even realizing he’d done it, Viktor must have used the HexClaw to latch onto Jayce’s ornate silver headboard, and when he’d seized up, the HexClaw had too, snapping one of the swirling, geometric bars clean off.
Jayce immediately snorted laughing, turning his head slightly to kiss Viktor’s inner thigh, and this time Viktor knew he blushed.
“If you write this in that silly journal, I will burn your fucking lab to the ground, and use the ashes for eco fuel,” he said, attempting to sound serious but falling short and instead hitting somewhere in the vicinity of defensive.
“Can I at least be vague about it, it’s useful informa—“
“No,” Viktor snapped, fighting the urge to join Jayce in his infectious laughter.
“How will you know?” Jayce clapped back, kissing Viktor’s thigh again. “Now that I’ve been caught, you can bet I’m going to safeguard that thing like my life depends on it.”
“I worked with you when our research was stolen, I’m not concerned,” Viktor said with a grin, and Jayce’s jaw dropped, faux-offended. “Now get up here, so I can shut you up.”
“Rude,” Jayce said, complying eagerly.
Without warning, he grabbed Jayce’s arms and flung him down on his stomach on the bed, clamping the HexClaw onto the back of his neck as he swapped their positions once more, settling on his knees between Jayce’s legs as he pushed them wider. The pitiful, needy little whimper that escaped him as he fisted his hands into the sheets and willingly pushed his ass back toward Viktor was like a straight shot of Shimmer, adrenaline and hyper-focused arousal surging through Viktor’s bloodstream.
He leaned over Jayce to retrieve the vial of lubricant from the nightstand, grinding experimentally against him as he did. Jayce tensed as Viktor’s cock slotted between his cheeks, but he did start to grind back against it, so for now, he wasn’t worried.
Keeping in mind that Jayce had been anxious about this, Viktor went slow—pouring a bit of lube on his non-augmented hand and rubbing his fingers together to warm it. With his augmented hand, he started caressing up and down Jayce’s muscular back, pausing to press slightly at the places he knew were usually sore; neck, shoulder blades, his lower back.
Jayce groaned, and Viktor couldn’t help but notice that his eyes rolled back a bit before he closed them.
“You know, as a forger by trade, I’d think you of all people would be well aware of how… malleable…” he paused to begin massaging at Jayce’s rim with a single lubed finger, barely pressing at it in a tease of what was to come, “metal can be.”
Viktor shifted the HexClaw to the bed, where he used it for stability so that he could lean in to lay a series of wet kisses down the chiseled line of Jayce’s spine. Jayce shuddered, arching up into it and gripping the sheets again as Viktor pressed just that hint harder with his finger, feeling Jayce’s soft muscles twitch in response.
“Yeah, well…” Jayce mumbled over his shoulder, tone somewhat surly. “As a forcibly-turned soldier, I’m also aware of how unyielding and painful it can be.”
“Hmmmm,” Viktor hummed against Jayce’s nearly-feverish skin. “Not unlike people, no? Soft and forgiving at times, hard and uncompromising at others?”
“I’m not sure soft is the word I’d use to describe molten steel…” Jayce replied, but his resolve and composure were clearly teetering on the edge of breaking, judging by the anticipatory tremor that was beginning to wrack his entire body.
“No?” Viktor purred, angling up to nibble at the shell of Jayce’s ear as he breached him with a single finger.
The sound Jayce released was unhinged and loud, his muscles contracting once on Viktor’s finger before he was relaxing into it, his whole body seeming to melt into the bed. Viktor shifted to mouth at Jayce’s neck and the juncture of his shoulder, barely teasing with his teeth as he slowly pumped his finger until he was knuckle deep.
Luckily, in all his years of augmenting, Viktor had retained the ability to salivate, because the sight before him as he prepped and stretched Jayce open on his finger was mouth-watering.
“You know, I’ve learned something, in all my years augmenting myself,” Viktor growled, voice husky as he added another finger. “Words lie, people lie. But our bodies don’t.”
He twisted his hand then, angling his middle finger down and expertly locating Jayce’s prostate. With careful, methodical precision, he began gently stroking—just the barest of movement, but he knew intimately what it would do.
Jayce hissed in a breath, his thighs starting to quiver as goosebumps flared down his arms.
“Your body doesn’t lie to me,” he went on, shifting to drag his tongue over the base of Jayce’s neck as he switched to the other side, nibbling on his other ear just for effect. “It tells me what you like, screams it, in fact. You shiver in my mouth, quake on my fingers. Even my own body, it seems…”
He paused as he fought with the combined frustration and adulation he felt in regards to Jayce’s journal of notes.
“…though I’ve tried to minimize it, can’t help but communicate with you…”
He let himself fall a little, until he was pressed wholly to Jayce’s back, his fingers stilling inside Jayce for a moment as he rolled his hips, pressing his augmented member to the plush, soft globe of Jayce’s ass.
“V, please…” Jayce moaned, actually tipping his hips back to grind against both Viktor’s cock and his fingers.
Viktor grinned, fighting the urge to gloat. “Please what? What does Piltover’s sweet little Defender of Tomorrow want from the likes of me?”
He knew Jayce wouldn’t take kindly to the jab, so he headed off the likely perturbed response by curling his fingers a few times against his prostate, just to drive the point home.
Jayce’s mouth fell open and his eyes slammed shut in ecstasy, his hole spasming on Viktor’s fingers and making a flash of heated lust kick his inner machinations into high gear—his heart absolutely pounding in the relative silence of the room.
“Pleasepleaseplease, Viktor, i-inside me, I want you inside me, please, V, please…”
Viktor couldn’t deny he was extremely taken aback, but delightfully surprised—Jayce didn’t typically beg like this, even in the throes of his most intense passion… well, not anymore. Not since…
“Alright, hush now, sweet thing, no need to beg, you’ll get what you need… though you’re so pretty when you do…”
He accentuated the statement by delivering a final, hard bite to Jayce’s shoulder as he slowly pulled his fingers free, what skin was left of his cheeks warming at the way Jayce whined and attempted to follow with his entire body—pushing back against the bed to keep himself flush with Viktor.
“Come on, like this for me…” Viktor instructed calmly as he leaned back to a kneeling position between Jayce’s spread legs, inching his hands under Jayce’s hips and pulling them up off the bed, until he was up on his knees a bit more. Jayce was heavy, almost limp as he did, the muscles in his thighs still quaking a bit, and Viktor was helpless against the proud grin.
He could have dove right in, but he rather selfishly wanted to enjoy the view for a moment—Jayce’s pert ass and twitching hole on salacious display, and the elegantly swooping line of his bowed spine, begging to be caressed, licked, worshipped. Viktor had never been a religious man, in fact he was pretty actively opposed to the notion… but he did believe in worldly idolatry—revering all the wonders the world could provide, and utilizing them to their full potential. And Jayce’s body—golden and lean, like a bronzed Noxian statue—was particularly laudable.
“I don’t think I’ve told you recently…” Viktor growled, taking a plush, supple ass cheek in each hand and squeezing, slotting his erection in the crease and teasing over Jayce’s hole by barely rocking his hips. Jayce tensed, twitching a bit as his fists twisted into the bedsheets again.
“How beautiful you are.”
Jayce clearly struggled to form words for a moment, his mouth falling open but only a squeaky whine coming out as Viktor teased over his hole again.
“I th-thought y-you… only found m-metal attractive, these days?” Jayce retorted, and Viktor scoffed—he wasn’t really in any position to be sassing anyone right now, especially the man he’d just begged to be fucked by.
“Well…” Viktor began, removing a hand from Jayce’s ass to take himself into a fist, barely stroking and feeling the flash of pleasure shoot through his pelvis. “You of all people can understand the finding of two opposite things attractive…”
Before Jayce could reply, he positioned himself—placing the head of his cock against Jayce’s rim and barely beginning to push.
Jayce’s entire body tensed, every muscle seizing up to the point that Viktor pulled back, caressing Jayce’s bum and lower back to get his attention.
“Jayce, relax. Not that different, remember? Breathe.”
Jayce nodded, forcing himself to relax and taking a deep, shuddering breath. Viktor squeezed his hip once in reassurance, watching as the tension in his muscles slowly released, only to be replaced with a barely-noticeable shiver. Typically, when they got together these days, things were rough and aggressive—a psychoanalyst would probably have a field day deciphering why, but at its silent, unspoken core, they both knew why.
Their intimacy was a cyclone, the innermost spiral consisting of all the things that used to be—love, adoration, comfort, respect. All things they couldn’t give each other anymore, if out of obligation to their respective sides alone. But it was still there, sucking down everything adjacent and sending their entire bloody, complicated relationship just off-kilter enough as to leave it all constantly in flux. And the fringe… the barely-rotating undertow of mutual frustration and history-tainted attraction… that was the safe place, the place they existed now. And to get too close to that spiral, to toe the line between undertow and riptide… it was dangerous. Because, as Viktor had learned the hard way, one cannot fight that wave and hope to survive it, can’t turn back once the sinking has started. Every little soft caress was a whisper of that current, every tender word spoken a ghost of the cyclone, beckoning them both back down into the abyss that would consume them, if they let it.
But therein was the problem, because as long as Viktor still had his brain, still had the human memories swirling around inside all this touch-starved metal… so long as he could remember, he wouldn’t… couldn’t hurt Jayce. He could physically injure him on the battlefield, and Jayce could certainly dole out the same, but… here… without the armor, without the facade labeled Piltover and Zaun… here he was flesh. Soft, delicate, breakable flesh, and that, despite being inferior to metal, was still worthy of consideration.
“Jayce, talk to me,” he said, caressing Jayce’s lower back again and almost feeling the pull of the riptide in his fingertips. “Do you still want this?”
Before he’d even finished talking, Jayce was nodding furiously, his legs falling a little more open on the bed.
“I do, I do, I’m just… I’m… slow, please, V.”
I’m still scared.
Of course he couldn’t say it, of course he couldn’t. Piltover and its politics had ground away at that soft, honest boy Viktor had met more than ten years ago. He used to wear his heart on his sleeve, offer it up willingly to all who would take it… but the hands that held it, more often than not, squeezed it for all it was worth, and sucked him dry of all the innocence and naïveté, until he eventually locked the dried-up husk away, where no one could ever touch it again… not unlike the jar containing Viktor’s own unbeating and still heart, back in his dreary, dark lab on Emberflit Alley.
“Of course, sluníčko,” Viktor cooed, the riptide taking a little more of him as he let slip the endearment he hadn’t spoken in years.
“In your journal, you wondered if I still dream…” he went on, leaning in over Jayce’s body and propping himself up with the HexClaw so that he could wrap one hand around Jayce’s sternum and pull him up onto all-fours, and use the other to position his cock at Jayce’s entrance once more. Jayce went willingly, angling his head back against Viktor’s shoulder, placing him in the perfect position for Viktor to speak directly into his ear.
Viktor nibbled at his earlobe before he spoke, voice hushed and husky, “against my better judgement… I do.”
With that, he inched his hips forward, and the head of his cock popped past that tight ring of muscle to begin sinking deeper into deliriously-good heat and pressure.
One of Jayce’s hands flew up off the bed to grip hard at Viktor’s, where it was still splayed out across his sternum—a long, low moan escaping his parted lips.
Viktor nuzzled against Jayce’s cheek as he kept pressing in, agonizingly slow and methodical. The scent of Jayce’s familiar bergamot shampoo threatened to send him into a dizzying array of sensory flashbacks, memories too dangerous to even peek at these days, so he held his breath as he pumped his hips a little, working himself closer and closer.
They groaned in tandem as Viktor finally bottomed out, the room going still and silent with the echoes of what Viktor had just let slip.
Fuck it, he thought as he laid a kiss on that sensitive little spot just beneath Jayce’s ear, feeling his pulse as it raged against his lips. If I’m gunna get ripped under, might as well do it with style.
“I dream of this, Jayce, dream of you.”
He didn’t want those words hanging in the air long enough to rethink them, so without wasting another second, he gingerly started rolling his hips.
The explosion of sensation that flared through him was almost debilitating; the feeling of Jayce around him so much more intense than it ever was in the past—his augmented cock delivering an overwhelming amount of feedback as he slowly worked into a rhythm. It was all he could do to avoid coming on the spot—keeping his pace slow and measured and not too deep.
“Fuck, Jayce…” he groaned into Jayce’s ear, letting his hand migrate up Jayce’s long, chiseled throat to his chin, where he curled his metal fingers up to question at Jayce’s parted, panting lips.
Jayce eagerly lowered his head, taking two augmented fingers in his mouth and sucking on them as Viktor continued to move inside him.
“I knew you’d come around,” Viktor whispered, the boastful tone undeniable. “How does it feel, Jayce? Metal at both ends, and…”
He rolled his hips harder, arching his back and driving as deep as he could go, reveling in the way Jayce’s body opened up for him so eagerly.
“Ecstasy in the middle?”
Jayce released a wanton, pitiful moan around Viktor’s fingers, hips canting back with every thrust to begin following the rhythm. It was answer enough… but Viktor wanted to hear it.
“Say it, Jayce,” he growled, enforcing the demand by pulling back—delivering shallow, torturous strokes that he knew wouldn’t be enough for Jayce. He withdrew his fingers from Jayce’s mouth, trailing the saliva-soaked digits back down Jayce’s neck and sternum, until he was toying with a nipple.
Jayce bucked, his back hollowing out as he attempted to follow Viktor’s hips, but valiantly, he remained silent.
“Your restraint is admirable,” Viktor cooed, flicking his finger over the hardened bud one more time before pulling away—down, down Jayce’s impressive abs to that thin trail of hair beneath his navel, to his target. Jayce cried out as Viktor took him into his augmented fist, but didn’t yet move. “But ultimately futile. I know what you want, know what you need.”
He curled his hips just that hint harder, driving just barely deeper—a tease of what Jayce truly wanted.
“And sooner or later, you’ll have to admit—“
With slow, reverent intention, he pulled at Jayce’s rock hard erection, reveling in the feeling of the foreskin shifting with him. Jayce hissed, bucking again as his arms began to tremble under his weight.
“That no matter if I’m flesh or metal… I’ll always give it to you. And you’ll like it.”
Jayce was still defiantly silent, so Viktor stilled the movement of both his hips and his hand, and the needy whine Jayce released was almost comical.
“Yes, V, fuck. It’s good, so good… you’re the best fuck I’ll ever have, especially when augmented. Is that what you wanna hear, huh? It’s true. Now will you stop teasing me and fuck me, I’m dying here…”
“Brat,” Viktor grinned, rolling his hips hard until he was fully buried, simultaneously tugging over the sensitive, swollen head of Jayce’s cock.
“Ah!—asshole,” Jayce shot back, but he was shivering in earnest now, his fists balling hard in the sheets and his eyelashes fluttering closed.
Viktor fell into that age-old familiar rhythm, just as quick and deep as Jayce had always liked, putting his whole weight onto the HexClaw and wrapping Jayce up in his arms—one hand on his already leaking cock and the other returning to a nipple. And it was a good thing he did, for within a single heartbeat, Jayce’s arms gave out, but he simply rolled with it—allowing Viktor to hold both of them up as one hand came up to grip at Viktor’s wrist, the other flying up and around to fist into Viktor’s hair.
And while he would have liked to keep a level head—show Jayce just how superior his body was now—he hadn’t actually tested his augmentation this way yet, and he hadn’t expected it to be quite so… intense.
The densely populated nerve endings made it difficult to focus—it felt like he was nineteen again, overwhelmed and hypersensitive, pleasure flooding his muscles and veins until he was about ready to explode.
“Kurva,” he cursed under his breath, slowing his pace in the hopes that he could bring himself back from the edge, and although he too was clearly overwhelmed in his current state, Jayce had the audacity to chuckle impishly.
“Whassa matter, Machine Herald?” Jayce slurred, picking up the slack and beginning to tilt and rock his hips, riding Viktor’s cock to the best of his ability in the position. “Too much for your augments?”
“Shut up,” Viktor growled, burying his face against Jayce’s shoulder blade as he desperately fought for some semblance of control. “I just… just need to… recalibrate the…”
Jayce’s grip on his hair tightened hard, just this side of painful, and on instinct, Viktor clawed at his chest in retaliation.
“Unless you’re planning on doing that right now…” Jayce said, still pumping his hips as best he could, distracting Viktor further and making a long-since dulled impulse begin to take over—mindless, bestial need. “Then why don’t you just relax… and enjoy being human for two seconds.”
For a moment he just breathed against Jayce’s muscular back, the heat of his breath making the musk of Jayce’s scent flare in his nostrils, only fueling the fire.
“Just… go slow…” Jayce went on, angling himself down slightly and shoving himself back onto Viktor’s cock, and Viktor gasped as the electric pulses of feedback sent a shockwave of pleasure up his spine. “Like it’s our first time, again…”
“Our first time wasn’t remotely slow,” Viktor said, having difficulty focusing on forming words through the barrage of sensation.
“You know what I meant,” Jayce said, suddenly pulling forward and off of Viktor’s cock, and Viktor was embarrassed at the completely involuntary whine he released at the loss. Jayce collapsed down onto his side, turning over onto his back and wrapping his legs around Viktor’s waist to insinuate his body back down.
Jayce smiled up at him, something fiery but painfully fond burning in his amber eyes. “Fuck me like you’re afraid you’ll break me.”
Those words were a decade-old echo of Viktor’s own, the first night they’d slept together—‘you won’t break me, Jayce’—and as Viktor stared down in Jayce’s achingly familiar eyes, he remembered why they didn’t typically face each other during sex anymore… because Jayce’s lips… pink and swollen and so soft they could be made of velvet… Jayce’s eyes… deep honeyed pits of understanding and devotion… they were all tendrils of that riptide, sucking him down into the beckoning silk-lined casket marked I still love you, never stopped, though I’ve tried, Janna I’ve tried.
But he’d already accepted that he was getting swept away, come to terms with it, so he threw caution to the wind, and pounced on Jayce’s open and eager body, crashing their lips together as he took himself in hand and slid easily back inside Jayce’s slick, waiting hole.
Jayce whimpered into the kiss, his hands thrown over Viktor’s back and clawing at his steel shoulder plates as he pulled him down, closer. Viktor resisted, but only to allow himself the room to reach down between them and take Jayce’s thick, reddened cock in his augmented hand and start tugging at him, just a hint of movement under the sensitive head, beginning to pump his hips and drive himself deeper as he did.
Jayce pulled away from the kiss to cry out and throw his head back against the pillow, and Viktor seized the opportunity to attack his neck with licks and kisses and bites. And just like that, the animal instinct took over, and he forgot all about his intention to go slow, to make sure he lasted… he just needed to chase this mind-numbing heat, chase the pulsating pressure as Jayce twitched around him.
“Fuck… fuck… fuck!” Jayce gasped at the crest of every thrust, his whole body going taut and his muscles standing out in sharp relief, and rather abstractly, Viktor ruminated that, if he was ever allowed to augment Jayce’s body, he would design it all to go beneath this statuesque physique—metal reinforcing and accentuating what was already perfect, shifting beneath the layers of muscles, just like it was now… deep inside Jayce and pistoning like the inner machinations of a combustion engine.
“Right… there… right there, Vitya, please…” Jayce chanted, beginning to shiver again as he pawed at Viktor’s back, mindlessly attempting to get closer. Viktor chuckled, but he couldn’t deny that he was inching closer again too—the overpowering sensitivity in the biometal making him actually lose control of other things—his hands clenching against his will as something sent electric shocks throughout his extremities. Without wasting a second, he removed his hand from Jayce’s cock—unchecked, the strength in his augmented fist was enough to crush steel plating, so he certainly didn’t want to lose control… like this.
“J-Jayce…” he started to explain, but Jayce seemed to know already—one hand abandoning Viktor’s back to fly down and begin stroking himself, hard and fast.
Well… they were no longer going slow, apparently.
“I wasn’t… entirely… truthful,” Viktor said on each thrust, watching with unreserved hunger as Jayce’s eyes rolled back behind his fluttering lashes. “When I said it wasn’t different. I do have… one more ability… that I think you should know about…”
Jayce seemed beyond words, but he acknowledged that he’d heard by biting a lip as he nodded furiously, and it was all the prodding Viktor needed.
He’d tested it when he was alone, when the lonely nights made his skin crawl with the specter of Jayce’s fingertips. He hadn’t lasted long then, but then again… he didn’t expect to last much longer regardless… so, with a single thought, like activating the HexClaw, Viktor activated the vibrating feature in his augmented cock.
Jayce practically screamed, his entire body seizing up and his back arching up off the bed, both hands flying out to fist into the bed sheets and twisting. It hit Viktor hard too—pleasure shooting through him like a bullet to the spine, and he found that his arms buckled, sending him crashing down on top of Jayce. He still attempted to move, his brain fighting to wrangle even an ounce of control over his misbehaving parts, but all he was cognizant of was the repetitive firing of weak but delirium-inducing electric pulses throughout his entire body.
And in the span of a single heartbeat, Jayce was coming—his entire body rippling with it, his cock throbbing and twitching where it was trapped between them. His hot, panted breaths brushed past Viktor’s ear as he forced himself back up onto shaking, outstretched arms, his hips slowing on instinct, but…
“Keep going… fuck, Vitya, please, keep going,” Jayce begged, hands still clawing at the mattress, not unlike a cat sharpening its claws.
Viktor had always had a soft spot for Jayce’s begging, even now, sans most soft spots. So he picked up the pace again, driving into that pulsing heat with renewed vigor, even if he knew he couldn’t sustain it for long.
And the sight beneath him certainly wasn’t helping—Jayce’s arms thrown out to the sides in mindless ecstasy, and his muscles contracting with the violent aftershocks of his orgasm. His come was smeared beautifully across his abdomen, like a painter’s paramount brush stroke, and his cock was still rock hard—throbbing and lifting up off his stomach with each of Viktor’s hard thrusts.
With his last remaining dregs of restraint, Viktor pushed back to kneel, looping his hands around Jayce’s exquisitely trembling thighs and holding them as he rolled his hips harder and faster. He allowed himself the indulgence of watching his augmented cock, silver and blue and shining with lube, as it plunged into that inviting, beckoning hole.
“Gods, V, I’m… I’m gunna come again, fuck!” Jayce whimpered, his fists clenched so hard in the sheets that the veins were starting to pop in his biceps.
And just like that, barely past the aftermath of his first one, Jayce was coming a second time, hard—gasping and gulping for breath as he keened like a mewling kitten, his come striping across his tensing abs as he shook like a leaf, his hole spasming and clenching at Viktor’s cock, and that was all he could take.
Viktor’s orgasm hit him like a blast from the Mercury Hammer—pleasure erupting from his lower half and sending a shockwave throughout his body, organic and augmented muscles alike. It was so strong, in fact, that multiple systems seized up and failed: his augmented eyes flickering and going dark, and a low buzzing echoing in his ears. Through it, he barely registered that he could hear the pistons in his heart slamming away as they worked double to compensate, his pulse raging in his veins and filaments, but it only seemed to add to the power surge—his control over his muscles slipping and sending him collapsing forward and only just managing to catch himself on hands that convulsed as if with the remnants of an electric shock.
Slowly, his systems started to recover—the buzzing in his ears turning to a dull hum, until he could hear his own gasping breaths and frantically working heart. Next came the eyes, his vision strobing a bit as they rebooted, sight returning unevenly first to his right eye, then his left, and he blinked rapidly in an attempt to focus them.
Now it was just a matter of dealing with the insanely smug expression that was staring up at him.
“Did… did you just come so hard you short-circuited?” Jayce asked, grinning dopily as he raised a hand to cup at Viktor’s cheek, and the metal must have been physically hot to the touch, because he hissed, but notably didn’t pull away.
Viktor sighed, embarrassed and humiliated, and already mentally taking notes on what he needed to rectify in his augments.
“Evidently, yes,” he replied, and Jayce descended into almost maniacal laughter, head thrown back into the pillow as he did. “Shut up,” Viktor whined, letting his forehead fall to hide himself against Jayce’s collar bone as he continued to catch his breath.
“Oh, that one’s definitely going in the journal,” Jayce gloated against Viktor’s temple, but he softened the blow by digging his other hand into Viktor’s hair and scratching at his scalp, just the way he liked, and really… that was just a cheap shot.
“Not if I burn it first,” Viktor retorted, deactivating the vibrate function and pushing back up onto his elbows so he could tip his hips back and pull out.
Jayce ignored the threat as he groaned with the feeling, staring back up at Viktor as if he was beholding a work of art, and Viktor suddenly felt raw and exposed, like Jayce was looking directly in his motherboard.
“I didn’t know you could still blush,” he fairly whispered, his finger following the seam where metal met skin on Viktor’s jaw and forcing a completely involuntary shudder. “V, you’re… you’re steaming.”
To accentuate the point, his hand caressed down Viktor’s neck to the vents, and Viktor could feel the obstruction as his fingertips grazed over them.
“Y-yeah, think I… think I overheated… just… just a little,” he panted, averting his eyes and staring pointedly at the pillow directly to Jayce’s right.
“You okay?” Jayce asked, and that too was like a gunshot straight to the heart.
He couldn’t handle the care, the absolute devotion glimmering in Jayce’s lovely sunflower eyes, so he closed his own, sighing again in defeat as he felt himself finally devoured by the riptide of emotion he’d tried so, so hard to cleanse himself of.
“Yes,” he mumbled, keeping his eyes closed as he took stock of his systems. “Definitely going to need to do some recalibrating, so this doesn’t happen again.”
“Good… because you blew a hole in my wall.”
“What?!” Viktor barked, eyes snapping open to find Jayce smirking at him, waggling a single finger up at his headboard…
…where a very obvious HexClaw blast had gone through both the silver headboard and the wall, the drywall sizzling as charred pieces fell away.
Jayce chuckled again, his thumb reverently caressing back and forth on Viktor’s neck, but it just felt like gloating. “You don’t remember firing it?”
Viktor growled in frustration, feeling his blush grow even more intense and slamming his organic hand over his face to bury the mortification. The point of all these augments was to give him more control over what his body did, not less, and it was frankly a little insulting that this could even still happen to him.
“No,” he said irritably, his voice muffled in his palm.
Jayce started laughing again, his fingers wrapping delicately around Viktor’s wrist to pull his hand from his face.
“Stop laughing, it’s not funny,” Viktor grumbled, pushing away and spinning to plop down on his back next to Jayce so that he could at least stare up at the ceiling instead of in those achingly nostalgic eyes. “I could have hurt you.”
“But you didn’t,” Jayce chided, his hand flopping over onto Viktor’s chest and rhythmically curling there, the action softly possessive. “And… it’s kinda funny.”
Viktor sighed again, deciding to drop it. Arguing with Jayce over things like this was like arguing with a brick wall.
And like a gavel striking down this suspended fantasy they’d momentarily concocted for themselves, the deep grinding rumble of the drawbridge coming down for the morning could be heard, far off in the distance, signaling the creeping approach of morning.
Viktor swallowed down the dread at the thought of returning to his dreary lab, all alone and carving himself open once again in a futile attempt to remove each little flowering bud of homesickness that always arose in the wake of Jayce’s touch. It wasn’t fair, of course it wasn’t—both of them clearly still desperate for the other’s company and forced apart by history, and morality, and bloody politics, of all things. But that way madness lied—Viktor had spent his nights in those early days after his exile raging at the world and the injustice of it all, drowning himself in alcohol and shimmer and screaming up at the glittering city and the people he’d thought had accepted him. That, like his sustained feelings for Jayce, was yet another riptide he refused to get sucked into.
So he inhaled hard, sitting up and swinging his legs off the side of the bed, wiggling his toes to ensure all of his muscular augments had returned to normal functionality.
“V, don’t… don’t go,” Jayce said, the pitiful, cautious words weaving into the silence like the dangerous viper they were.
“You know I have to,” Viktor said, rising and shuffling to Jayce’s bathroom to retrieve a washrag. “If I leave after sunrise, I’ll meet the enforcers on the bridge, and… I don’t think any of us want that.”
There was an audibly dramatic sigh from the other room as Viktor went about wetting the rag and cleaning himself up, and he decided not to dignify it with a response.
“Well, what if… what if you didn’t leave… at all?”
Viktor released his own sigh, leaning heavily on the counter as years and years of longing bubbled up and started itching in the back of his mind, like a bug bite… stay, just stay.
“Jayce, please don’t do this, we’ve been through this; the higher we fly, the harder we fall. We have what we’re allowed, nothing more.”
“No, I know. I know,” came Jayce’s pitiful reply, sounding distant and small. “I don’t mean stay forever. I’d have to take down the entire council for that to happen. Not saying it’s off the table… but it’s not at the top of my to-do list. I meant… just today.”
Viktor bristled, glancing up at himself in the mirror by accident and resisting the urge to shatter it. “To do what? Sulk around your apartment like your loyal little lapdog, waiting for you to return? I don’t think so.”
Suddenly Jayce was standing in the bathroom doorway, still gloriously nude and marked with the proof of their lovemaking—sweat and come and bruising bite marks… and that godforsaken journal held up in his hand.
“I’ll make a deal with you,” Jayce said, wiggling the journal back and forth, taunting him. “I hide this somewhere in my apartment; if you can find it… you can take it, and leave. If you don’t…”
He sauntered forward, crowding against Viktor as he looked up at his now-taller form and blindly stole the washrag, and Viktor fought the gasp as Jayce wrapped it around his cock and stroked at him, cleaning him off.
“Then you stay. You wait here for me, at whatever level of loyal you deem necessary, and when I get back…”
He barely squeezed at Viktor’s cock, and Viktor’s damned audible heart kicked up a notch, clearly to Jayce’s supreme satisfaction.
“…we can do whatever you want. Dealer’s choice.”
While any number of cocky responses roiled in Viktor’s mind—namely ‘what I want is to replace most of your body with glorious, superior steel, until we’re two of a kind’—he elected for something a little more… diplomatic.
“I’ll need to do some tinkering, before we’re intimate again.”
Jayce grinned victoriously, pulling back and using the washrag to clean himself up, obviously smug, having snagged his prey. “You know where the tool kit is.”
Viktor shook his head fondly, settling in for a long day of seclusion back in Plitover, of all unlikely places. And if, when Jayce left for the day, he noticed the notebook stashed snuggly within his elegant Talis overcoat, and didn’t say a thing? Well… he could write it off as a computing error caused by overheating… something he would definitely have to fix later.