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V.
One letter. That was the only name Jayce had known him by.
Up until, “It’s Viktor,” anyway.
Jayce’s life's work may have been working to harness magic through science, but nothing in either realm, mundane nor arcane, could have prepared him for V to walk through the door when his world came crashing sideways.
Nothing could have prepared Jayce for V to ask questions like “What happened here?” and “Who authorized your research?”
It wasn’t even until the second question that Jayce had been forced to realize that V’s presence in the room where his life was falling apart probably wasn’t an artifact of his likely concussion from hitting the wall as his workshop exploded. The woman who had introduced herself as the Sheriff of Piltover was also in the room.
The Sheriff of Piltover.
Who was deferring to V.
Which probably meant she could see him, and also meant that V—the man who met Jayce in a dark room twice a month, who brought him to the brink of reality with gloved hands, golden eyes, firm commands in soft tones—was someone who, for some reason, was also in control in a bombed-out room full of enforcers.
“Who are you, anyway,” Jayce snapped at him, frustrated by his own wrong-footedness.
“I’m the assistant to the dean of the Academy,” V said, simply.
Jayce’s mind was occupied—busy trying to process that his arrangement was apparently with someone who was staff at the Academy where Jayce was a student—for long enough that he missed some of what V said next. Jayce didn’t come back to himself, really, until V was saying something about the head of the council.
Who Jayce knew, as the dean of the Academy.
And V was, apparently, the dean’s assistant.
Jayce’s palms were dusty with the debris left by his attempts to harness magic, and they were clammy.
Jayce knew how illegal his materials were, the ones the enforcers were handling indelicately enough that there was still a risk this situation could get even worse. His research was forbidden. He knew he was likely about to lose his dream. Already, Jayce was preparing himself to fight for it.
But he was also likely about to lose V, because a few important rules had been broken.
One of those rules was V’s, who had a lot of rules, actually, and while some of them were flexible ones Jayce was eager to break because such transgressions would be met with pleasantly painful consequences, other rules were ironclad.
Like the rule: No names.
Broken, now, because V had learned Jayce’s name. It was on his list, apparently.
“How am I dangerous?” Jayce demanded, suddenly furious, because dangerous didn’t make sense coming from the man who regularly reduced Jayce to a fragile, whining mess.
“That’s for the council to decide,” V shrugged.
Which was a problem, because the other important rule Jayce had broken was Piltover’s Ethos. Given V was the assistant to the Dean of the Academy, that was probably something V took seriously enough that he wouldn’t fuck Jayce’s brains out the following weekend the way he had the weekend before.
Even if Jayce wasn’t going to be imprisoned or exiled, even if he somehow won the fight for Hextech, Jayce’s late night encounters with V were probably over.
Which ached a bit disproportionately to the rest of it, all things considered, but it was what stung the most when Jayce lost his freedom a few moments later. Jayce reeled as the sheriff put him in handcuffs, with no prompting other than an impersonal nod from the slender man standing near Jayce’s chalkboard.
Real handcuffs. Metal, instead of leather. Looser than the ones Jayce was used to, but they might have seemed familiar anyway if V had bothered to put them on Jayce himself.
The fact that V didn’t genuinely hurt. At least that might have felt like a goodbye, or something.
Jayce wished for that goodbye later, when the trial was over. When Jayce had lost his research, his magic, his patrons. When he’d lost, unexpectedly, even his faith in his mother’s faith in him.
“Your name’s no good now,” Caitlyn Kiramman had reported, matter of fact. It had run down his spine, more frigid than the rain he’d been standing in outside her estate.
Talis was a minor house with a name he’d tried to elevate, to earn.
His father’s name. His mother’s.
His own.
Talis was a name now soiled by its presence on every page of Jayce's confiscated research. His life’s work.
Jayce Talis. No good.
Jayce had lost everything. Even his arrangement with the anonymous V, the only person to whom Jayce’s name had never mattered, who had never even known it, and Jayce wished he’d… well, Jayce wished for a lot of things.
Right when Jayce had figured that in light of losing everything, he might as well lose himself too, V showed up again.
V, who had read Jayce’s research. Who was intrigued by it. V, who stepped up beside Jayce on a ledge, told him not to ask for permission when he was going to change the world.
Then V handed Jayce his bracelet; which Jayce only took off when he was letting go.
It was a bizarrely familiar motion; it was something V often did, after their scenes. Since the very first one.
“This may interfere with the restraints,” V had said, back then, petting over Jayce’s skin with a gloved hand, framing the bracelet. “I can work around it, or I can keep it somewhere safe for you.”
Back then, Jayce had thought for a moment, then held out his wrist, wordlessly.
So, a long time ago, V had carefully unclasped the bracelet, folded it into the pocket of his trousers. He’d pressed a soft kiss to the inside of Jayce’s bare wrist, muttered, “Thank you, sweet boy,” then he’d lifted and secured Jayce’s arm to the X shaped cross that took up half the wall in the room where they always met.
Jayce hadn’t known V's name, and in that dark room it hadn’t ever seemed important for Jayce to know. V was someone who tied him up, held him down, choked him out, took him in, broke him down, pieced him together, and then left. V was a person who created a time and place where Jayce was only J.
But J was also Jayce, Jayce Talis, who dreamed of Hextech, of magic, who wanted to share that dream with the world. And V was also… Someone else. Someone Jayce didn’t know, who Jayce now desperately wants to. V is the assistant to the dean of the academy, yes, but also someone who stands on the ledge with him, who says he’d come to Piltover from the Undercity carrying nothing but his belief in himself. V is someone who says he wants to help Jayce with his research.
V is someone whose name isn’t V.
…And since Jayce can’t think of anything else to say, Jayce says, “I don’t even know your name.”
V’s familiar golden eyes are curious. His voice is impossibly soft and characteristically upending when he says, gently, “It’s Viktor.”
They don’t talk about it, after they find the right frequency.
Or after they break into the dean’s office.
Or after they harness magic and are enveloped by it, or after Jayce spots a smile brighter than he could have imagined on Viktor's face as they float near the ceiling, or after Heimerdinger asks, "Will you please stop hovering?" and Vikor's response is a wry, "I'm not sure how to do that, sir."
Or any time after that, when Jayce is firmly in possession of the grimly elated awareness that he's going to fall for this man, if he hasn't already.
Or after Jayce is given another hearing.
Or after the council grants them a small lab to continue their research along with a massive list of parameters and specifications on the kinds of projects they might explore in their prototyping. They are limited, strictly, to concepts that are deemed “safe,” which has an arguably nebulous definition with a conspicuous correlation to projects that might prove most profitable for the council’s members.
For the first week of their new partnership, Viktor doesn’t bring it up. Jayce doesn’t either.
So Jayce isn’t sure, when he steps through the city in the long jacket he wears to keep his features hidden on nights like this, if he’s…
Jayce isn’t sure if V’s going to meet him, like he used to.
Viktor is his partner, now. V had been his… V had been something else.
Jayce only knows they don’t talk about it as Jayce and Viktor, which he is fairly sure means there's not a V and J anymore.
But there might be.
It’s their usual time, and if the usual place is empty, then at least Jayce will know. So he charts his way down the hillside, to the club near the bridge over the River Pilt, and he tries to get himself ready for something a little like heartbreak. In the days leading up to this one, there had been an ache in Jayce’s chest; something shaped, somehow, both like hope and its absence.
He tries walking slowly, tries to remind himself it’s for closure. Tries telling himself the room will be empty, but that it’s still important for him to see it empty; he’ll have an easier time making peace with it, then.
It’s worth it, Jayce reminds himself. For what they are now, he’d give what they had been before. Viktor’s belief in him and their work on Hextech, their pledge to improve lives. Viktor’s real name and soft laugh and his terrible handwriting and his genius. All of that is vastly more important than what they’d been to one another before, nameless bodies winding together in the basement of the club near the bridge.
Viktor is more important than V, Jayce tries telling himself, tries ignoring that there’s something like a paradox, tries ignoring that Viktor is V.
Jayce tries to steady himself, in the basement of the club, outside their room, before a closed door. His key—one of two—feels hot in his palm.
Jayce used to arrive earlier, before. First. He used to step inside, remove his long jacket, then remove the rest of his clothes. He used to store them in a box in the corner. He used to kneel in the center of the room. He used to wait.
Now, he only steadies himself. Inhales, exhales, and slides his key in the lock.
Jayce, slowly, opens the door to what he tells himself will be an empty room. Which will be fine.
It will be understandable.
It will be worth it.
It will be okay.
Or, it would be, except for the fact the room is not empty.
There’s a man inside. Sitting on a chair placed in the center of the room, one leg crossed primly over the other. The picture of expectant patience, as soon as the raw relief leaves golden eyes.
No gloves, tonight, which is a first. The sight of his hands is unexpectedly intimate in this space.
The palm of one of those bare hands rests against the handle of his new cane; the cane Jayce had made in the forge a few days after they’d become partners. Metallic. Reinforced, too, just in case its owner ever tries using it to bar a door again. Forging it had felt like some kind of confession to himself and giving it to this man had put an expression on his face that Jayce couldn’t hope to read just yet.
Maybe this man is Viktor. Maybe this man is V.
Jayce isn’t sure.
He also isn’t sure who he is himself, at the moment. Jayce, maybe. Maybe J. Either way, he’s someone who needs to say something.
“...Hi,” he manages, after a long, quiet moment.
A mouth tilted up at the corner, a shifted mole under golden eyes.
“Take off your clothes,” the man in the chair says. “Now.”
A command. Softly spoken, but inexorable.
Relief sweeps through the man at the threshold, followed by obedience, then, as he steps inside and closes the door behind him. He takes off his long jacket. His shirt. His pants. His underwear. He doesn’t fold them like he would have before; he lets them drop to the ground, quickly. He stands before the man in the chair, bare with one exception.
Golden eyes flick to a bracelet—worn leather and a blue stone—as Jayce reaches to take that off too.
“You may keep that on, Jayce,” the man says, softly.
Jayce’s throat burns, and his eyes water, and his own smile nearly cracks his face.
“Viktor,” he breathes, because he’s been named. He’s Jayce. “Hi.”
Viktor swallows, smiles back, cautiously. He looks to the cross in the corner, then back.
He clears his throat. Viktor says, “We… We will be talking tonight, first. And if… I will not…”
Viktor’s never been at a loss for words before, or hesitant, in this room. But he’s never been Viktor in this room, either.
And Jayce hasn’t really taken initiative in this room before, but he does now. He steps closer, up to Viktor, and taps Viktor’s legs, guiding him to uncross them. Once he does, Jayce slides to sit down on the ground before him. He shifts slowly, and leans his cheek against the inside of Viktor’s knee, the one Jayce knows isn’t braced beneath his trousers. Viktor’s hand settles into Jayce’s hair—on reflex, Jayce is pretty sure—as Viktor exhales, long and steady.
Comfortable. Familiar.
One of their aftercare positions, normally.
“Okay, Viktor,” Jayce says, heart brimming. “Let’s talk.”
Viktor’s hand moves though Jayce’s hair, slowly. Jayce lets his hand wind around Viktor’s ankle, thumb rubbing in small circles.
“You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to, here,” Viktor reminds him.
“I know,” Jayce says, firmly. “You don’t either, Viktor, and you started saying something just now, started with, ‘I won’t.’ Tell me.”
Viktor is silent as they both settle into one another. He seems to need time to gather himself before he says, quietly, like he is admitting something shameful, “I do not feel comfortable putting you in restraints, tonight. Not after—”
“That’s okay,” Jayce says, quickly, nodding. “We’ll do something else. Or we can just do this.” He nuzzles into Viktor’s leg and sighs his contentment. “I’m just… I’m glad you’re here. Worried you wouldn’t be.”
“I also worried,” Viktor admits. Then, his voice oddly strained, “You were late.”
Jayce hums and gazes up at him through his lashes. He drops his voice low, as alluring as he can manage, and he asks, “How can I make it up to you, Viktor?”
Viktor grins, bright and sudden, but he lightly tugs Jayce’s hair, after. A pleasant reprimand that floods Jayce with a sense of rightness. He finds himself groaning from deep in his chest. Viktor’s eyes darken in response, but his grip goes suddenly lax, gentle again.
Viktor clears his throat, and says, “First, you can make it up to me by helping me figure out how much separation we will be keeping between our activities here and our work as partners, yes?”
Jayce—bare, relieved, unguarded—asks, “Is none an option?”
Viktor blinks. His hand goes still. “You… you would let this leave here?” he asks.
Jayce nods, heart skipping at the mere idea. He mutters, “Want all of you,” and melts into Viktor’s touch.
Viktor stares down at him, looking astonished. “Jayce, are you certain?”
Jayce frowns up at him. “Why would you think otherwise?”
“I am from the undercity while you are from a minor house, we are working together to pioneer a novel technology and this might present complications, and I also had you arrested and nearly exiled,” Viktor lists off.
Jayce shrugs, leans further into Viktor’s knee. Allows his hand to wander, tracing from Viktor’s ankle up to his calf.
“Was mostly upset you—” Jayce starts, then he considers Viktor’s new boundaries, and decides not to mention that he’d mostly been upset that Viktor hadn’t put him in cuffs personally, “—acted like you didn’t know me.”
The redirection feels like a lie, up until Jayce realizes a moment later that it’s true.
Viktor nods, but offers, “I, eh. Was quite sure you would not wish for me to acknowledge this, outside of here.” He waves his hand to indicate the room.
“I’m not sure I would have wanted you to, before I knew your name,” Jayce admits. “But now I know that you’re brilliant, and principled, and strong. Dedicated and reckless and… Viktor, that’s on top of all the things that I knew about you as V.” He lets his hand roam higher, settling over Viktor’s knee.
“Like how patient you are. How controlled. How sweet, and how mean, too.” Viktor looks down at him, eyes wide, so Jayce peers through his lashes again, shifts slightly closer to the junction of Viktor’s legs, and adds, letting his breath ghost hot against Viktor’s trousers, “I know how fucking good you feel in my mouth.”
Viktor’s breath comes out in a sudden rush, and his hand tightens in Jayce’s hair again, so Jayce shudders and moans, and from there it really just escalates.
“Brat,” Viktor admonishes, fondly, breathless. There’s a flash of signals in the form of quick gestures, and a nod that Viktor answers by reaching down to undo his belt buckle and slip himself from his trousers, perfect and flushed and well on his way to hard. Jayce leans forward, eagerly, and helps him along.
He licks up Viktor’s length with a broad swipe of his tongue before he collects the drop of moisture weeping from the head with a pointed flick. Then he wraps his mouth around the tip of Viktor’s cock and sinks down.
Viktor’s head thunks against the back of the chair and he groans as Jayce slides further and further, until he’s nosing into the curls around the base of Viktor’s cock. Jayce inhales the familiar scent of him, clean and heady, and feels something like static already at the edges of his mind, dulling the sensations around him, narrowing his focus down. To Viktor.
Somehow, a few moments in, it’s already surpassing the usual perfection of the sensation of being in this room together.
“This isn’t talking,” Viktor notes, as his hips rock forward, just slightly, and Jayce’s eyes roll back.
In response, Jayce pulls back and hums, dismissively, around the length of his partner. Then he hollows his cheeks and bobs forward again until Viktor hits the back of his throat.
“Oh, fuck. Just like that, my sweet Jayce.”
Tears prickle at the corners of Jayce’s eyes immediately, chest flooding with warmth. To be here, in this room, and to be called his name; to know Viktor’s; it’s like…
Fuck, it’s like nothing he’s ever felt before, actually.
And it gets even better, when Viktor pulls his hair, grips it tight with one hand to keep Jayce in place, wraps his other hand so his bare fingers squeeze around Jayce’s throat. He commands, “Hold still, Jayce.”
Jayce’s mind fills with that perfect hum as Viktor starts pistoning into his throat, exactly how he knows Jayce likes it.
Jayce barely even notices his own state of arousal until Viktor’s left boot nudges between his legs and settles against his sex. Jayce doesn’t move yet; he hasn’t been told to, but even at the gentle pressure, he feels his length begin weeping against the black leather, his cock throbbing against Viktor’s foot as Viktor fucks his mouth; hard, fast, deep.
Eventually, when Jayce’s head is filled with static, his mouth is filled with Viktor, his eyes are filled with tears, and his ears are filled with the sound of his own whimpering, Viktor grunts and presses even deeper. Deep enough that Jayce can’t breathe. He releases Jayce’s throat, choking him with his cock instead, and commands, “Take what you need, Jayce, before I come in your pretty mouth.”
So Jayce rolls immediately against Viktor’s boot, rubbing his cock against the leather, whining in the back of his stuffed throat.
The static filling his head turns to an overwhelming roar as he shifts against Viktor’s shoe, winding tighter and tighter, his whole body shuddering and straining as the edges of his vision fade out. Viktor keeps his cock lodged deep in Jayce’s throat with his firm grip in Jayce’s hair, but he runs his other hand along Jayce’s face, incongruously gentle. He wipes the tears under Jayce’s eyes with his slender, bare fingers.
It doesn’t take long for the roaring in Jayce’s ears to shift loud enough to feel like silence, and for the focus on Viktor to narrow down to a pinpoint as the the barriers of everything blur. Jayce can’t breathe.
Something animal deep within him edges into something near fear, and Jayce gets to let it loose, to claw at Viktor’s trousers, and wait for it to give way to the thing he loves most about this room; the understanding that he’s entirely safe. Completely in control.
He could stop this at any time, and he also doesn’t have to, because he’s with Viktor.
So after the animal inside Jayce feels something near fear, the sensation goes molten; pouring down his spine. It feels like warmth, feels like ecstasy, feels like Viktor holding him in place while he teleports somewhere right. Feels like magic.
Feels, also, like asphyxiating on Viktor’s cock as he rubs himself off on the now-slick leather of Viktor’s shoe. Viktor watches closely, rewarding Jayce’s trust with attention, care, and safety. Same as V has always done.
There comes a point where Viktor pulls both his shoe and his cock back just long enough to allow Jayce to gasp through his nose and hover on the brink. Jayce stares up through his swimming vision, imploringly as he can, and moans as Viktor brings his dampened thumb up to his own mouth to settle Jayce’s tears against his tongue.
V hums, closes those golden eyes, tilts his head back. Asks, voice rough, “Close, Jayce?”
Jayce feels like he’s floating. He nods, body tense and shuddering, still gasping through his nose, still crying, but the edges of his vision are almost fully restored. Viktor can’t see it, but he can feel Jayce’s nod, his hand is still in Jayce’s hair.
Golden eyes slit open, dark and amused. “Good. Hurry up, if you wouldn’t mind. We were mid-conversation.”
He bullies his cock deep in Jayce’s throat again, and then his foot is back against Jayce’s groin, pressing hard this time. Jayce ruts against it frantically, the roar returning in an instant. He comes, almost surprising himself, twitching and trembling against and soaking Viktor’s shoe as he cries out around Viktor’s cock.
Jayce barely hears it when Viktor hums, “Good boy,” just whines in the absence of warmth when Viktor slowly draws out of Jayce’s mouth almost entirely, eyes rolling back when Viktor slams back in, and Jayce loses time somewhere between his own aftershocks and the rapid pistoning that precedes Viktor tilting his head back, mumbling Jayce’s name, and spilling down Jayce’s throat.
Jayce catches his breath, after, in the same position that they’d started in, really. Viktor’s hand soothing through his hair as the waves of Jayce’s release work through him in full-body tremors.
By the time they’ve stopped, he finds that Viktor has settled a blanket around Jayce’s shoulders. Soft, familiar, one that Viktor must have placed nearby earlier, because Jayce can’t remember moving.
Jayce clears his wrecked throat and offers, in a rasp, “We could do that in our lab sometime? If you wanted.”
Viktor is slumped bonelessly in his chair, looking down at Jayce in wonder, his chin propped up under his hand. He’s smiling softly, chest heaving, but he swallows, and manages to get out, “Hazardous,” and at Jayce’s raised brow, clarifies, “Explosives.”
Jayce shrugs. Mumbles, “My apartment, then,” into the fabric of Viktor's trousers.
Viktor hums, toys gently with Jayce’s hair as they both linger in the silence, warm and sated.
“My bedroom is closer to the lab,” Viktor states, after a while. “It is on the Academy grounds. It is also not rubble.” A series of statements; not exactly an offer, but also not exactly not an offer.
Jayce can’t fight his own smile.
“What… would that make of us?” Viktor wonders, quietly.
“Partners,” Jayce promises. He rests his forehead against the inside of Viktor’s knee, and curls in close.