Chapter Text
Jayce doesn’t sleep.
He drifts, he thinks, in the strange and numb space between waking and dreaming—but he doesn’t sleep.
He’s never been great at sleeping in strangers’ beds. He wasn’t ever the kid who liked sleepovers or the kid who jumped at the chance to spend the night in a museum or a cabin or go out camping in the far reaches of the woods.
He wanted to be home. He wanted the familiar comforts of his own bed. His own pillows, his blankets.
Jayce likes knowing where he is. He likes knowing how far the bathroom is and where all the lights are and how long it would take him to get there and where all the shit on his floor is. He likes knowing his apartment like the back of his hand, the familiar lines of it clear-cut and plain even in the familiar swaths of darkness. He likes knowing that if he can’t sleep he can get up and putter around his kitchen, he likes knowing that if he’s hungry he can grab something or if he’s bored he can get on his computer and play video games.
It’s just comfortable.
It’s easy.
The unfamiliar clock, glowing on an unfamiliar nightstand across the unfamiliar ocean that is the unfamiliar body beside him, reads 3:15 AM.
It’s probably safe now, that part of him that has stubbornly refused to think about Viktor for the past few hours offers up. It’s like a head on a silver platter, oozing and bloody—raw and messy. His stomach churns with a bileslick mess as he drinks in the carnage of the night.
He aches, a familiar feeling caught in his hipbones and his abdomens—the sort of well-fucked burn that settles in after a long night. The sweat on his back stings into scratch marks that he knows are welting up already.
A physical manifestation of what he just fucking did.
He’s a bad person.
He is such a bad person.
You’re not dating, that part of him reminds him. There wasn’t anything to betray here. You’re not beholden to anyone, Viktor made it perfectly clear.
He feels numb, as he slips from the stranger's bed, quietly making his way across the apartment to find his hoodie tossed over the back of a chair, his jeans kicked somewhere in a shaded corner. He checks all the pockets, finds all the things he needs—keys, wallet, phone.
There’s a part of Jayce that feels bad, leaving in the dead of night. A part of him that wishes he could go crawl into that stranger's bed, that wishes he could bury himself under the rough and scratchy blankets and seam himself up to that narrow mole-spotted back. There’s part of him that wishes he could kiss him awake and ask him his name and see if they can trade numbers.
It’s the same part of him that wishes he could dig Viktor out of his heart with a knife.
And the same part of him that knows he never will.
The nausea doesn’t fade by the time he reaches his car.
###
Jayce’s phone is dead.
He doesn’t know why he’s surprised as he waits for the frigid air blowing in from his vents to start to actually heat the space instead of making him shiver in his hoodie. He slots it into place, waiting for the wireless charging mount to start doing its job.
The car is still in park, but Jayce drops his hands to the steering wheel anyway. Ten and two. Like his mom taught him.
A deep breath in, a deep breath out.
His stomach hurts, and he knows it isn’t from the two drinks he had at the bar four hours ago, or the stranger he pinned by the hips and railed until he came all over his stomach.
Jayce isn’t a stupid man.
He’s never been.
A sharp sound bounces around the cluttered interior of his car as the center of his palm smacks against the steering wheel once, then twice.
“Fuck,” he hisses. “Fuck, fuck fuck!”
He sinks down against it, forehead pressing against pleather as he sucks down two more deep, low, breaths because he’s pretty sure if he starts crying again he just won’t stop. Someone would find him here in the morning, parked outside some guys apartment building, in a place he’s pretty sure he’s not supposed to be parking but the guy said it was fine and Jayce trusted him because Jayce isn’t stupid but sometimes he is.
Sometimes he’s really, really, stupid.
Would it have been so bad to have told him?
Would it have been so bad to let him know?
To have picked up his phone and called Viktor and said please don’t do it, please don’t bring anyone home, please, V, I’m so stupidly in love with you I don’t know what to do with myself. Please every single day since we’ve met I’ve been in love with you and it took me really long to notice and I’m sorry I didn’t realize earlier, but please just come home to me.
Please.
Please come home to me.
His phone flickers on, a little apple flashing before Jayce’s lock screen loads up.
And oh.
Oh, Jayce is fucked.
The wallowing knot of self-pity twists and clenches hard around the central line of guilt in his stomach. Jayce’s mouth goes dry and his heart is hammering away helplessly in his chest—like it’s trying to burrow its way out from behind his ribcage again. Each one cracks hard against bone, a violent and painful jolt inside his body.
23 Messages from Viktor (Roommate)
3 Missed Calls from Viktor (Roommate)
The clicks on the messages, letting them expand down and—
I don’t want you to leave.
I wouldn’t want whatever that this is to you
sexile
you don’t have to go
—and he closes them.
The back of Jayce’s head hits the headrest, a soft breath escaping him as he stares down at the unread messages on his phone—a cascade of concern and worry that he knows links between them. And Jayce doesn’t want to know, horribly and shamefully, he doesn’t want to know.
He doesn’t want to know what he did to Viktor, he doesn’t want to see the worry and concern written out across the texts as his own shame and guilt starts to bubble-bubble-bubble up into a frothing bile slick in his throat.
“I’m sorry,” he tells his phone and he thinks he might vomit.
Every inch of him feels disgusting, every inch of him feels filthy and wretched and all he wants is a shower. All he wants is a shower and to take Viktor into his arms and bury his nose in his hair and cling to him until he stops feeling like he’s going to hurl.
He should read them.
He should text Viktor back, swipe their messages open and text him I love you until he runs out of characters and then just send him another dozen texts.
Fuck, he should call him. He should call him and tell him everything—a cascade of honesty and truth that he hasn’t ever really had before. He should leave him voicemails and memos, telling him every moment of every day, I love you please I’m so sorry.
“Why can’t it be that easy, V?” He asks the empty space where Viktor used to be, the tangle of void and starless darkness that clings to the seat and window. A perfect space for him, slowly unspooling and fraying at the ends. “Why?”
It takes him a minute, then two, to look away from the replaying memory of Viktor, asleep in his passenger seat.
He drops his hand to his gear shift, and he goes.
###
Jayce doesn’t know what time it is when he finally pulls into his spot at the apartment complex. He doesn’t know how long he’s been gone but all he wants is a shower. All he wants to do is scrub the shame and guilt from his skin and never look Viktor in the eye ever again.
He leans heavily against the door as he slips his key into the lock, giving it a twist to nudge it open.
Their front door creaks, but it always creaks. Jayce shushes it anyway. Just in case.
He pushes it shut behind him.
The apartment isn’t dark—but it’s rarely terribly dark. Between himself and Viktor, they’re liable to leave any light on at any point. The kitchen one is the worst—with a dearth of low outlets making nightlights almost impossible and both of them concerned about Viktor tripping over something he can’t see—it’s become just a sort of endless point of light, washing bright and cool through the whole of the apartment.
Jayce sniffs as he lays his keys out on the table and toes his shoes off and—
“Where,” comes a dangerously low, wounded voice from the sofa. “The fuck have you been?”
Jayce freezes, eyes snapping up to the coiled and blanketed form of Viktor. The kitchen light bleeds from over the top of the divide, bending into the cracks and crevices of Viktor’s cheekbones. It floods into the dip of his collar, sliding down the side of his throat.
Viktor is staring at him, his burning-sun eyes rimmed with red and puffy as if—as if he’d been crying.
I did that, didn’t I? He thinks as his mouth works uselessly.
“Do you have any idea what time it is?” Viktor asks, “I have been texting and calling you for hours, Jayce.”
That knot of anxiety and guilt twists tighter around his lungs—until it’s pressing the breath out of him.
“I—I was—” his voice is pinched, caught high in his throat. “I told you I was letting you have the apartment—”
“And I told you I didn’t need it,” Viktor says, unspooling himself from the sofa and flicking the blanket back as he starts towards Jayce. “I said I was worried about you, I—did you even read them?”
Jayce blinks twice. “I—V, what are you talking about?”
“I told you I didn’t need the apartment, that you didn’t need to leave, Jayce.” He stalks towards him like a predator in the tall grass, leaning on his cane with each step. “Do you have any idea what it’s like to ask one question then you disappear for hours without any warning? I was worried.”
His mouth opens, then closes. “I didn’t want to—I didn’t want to get in your way.” It’s not the truth, but it isn’t a lie, either. He didn’t want to get in Viktor’s way, he never wanted to get in Viktor’s way. He wanted to be there for him, he wanted to be tangled in his life in and he wanted to kiss him stupid and breathless and touch him—but he didn’t want to be another hurdle between what Viktor wants and where he is.
“In my way with what,” Viktor hisses. “Because it has certainly been an inconvenience sitting up all night waiting for you to come home. I almost called Caitlyn, Jayce. I almost called your mother.”
The idea that his mother would have been up, worried sick, makes Jayce almost ill. He’d never do that—he’d never do that to her. “I was busy,” he tries, his brows knitting as he tries, he really honestly tries, to find the part where it’s his fault.
“Tch,” Viktor manages, leaning back with his nose in the air.
As if—
As if— “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
“What do you mean?”
“Viktor, I was gone because I was letting you have the apartment because you wanted to get laid. Why the fuck are you mad at me?” He hisses in return, finally finding his footing under himself. “You’re not my fucking boyfriend, okay? You don’t get to tell me what I can do with my fucking night. So what if it’s a Saturday night and I went out so you can fuck some stranger. If anything you should be thanking me for what a fantastic fucking roommate I’ve been.”
Viktor doesn’t respond so Jayce picks up the pieces of the knot inside his own chest and feels himself start to twist them into kindling for the bridges built between them.
“I’ve put up with a lot of shit from you, V, and it’s been fine and it was—you’re my best friend, okay and do you have any idea what it’s been like for me? Every time you cuddle up next to me or you touch my shoulder or you fucking walk around topless, do you—do you have any idea what you do to me?”
And whatever back foot he put Viktor on is gone now—it’s leverage instead to push himself forward and launch into Jayce just as viciously. “What I do to you? What I do to you? Did you read them? Did you read my texts—did you even bother to see what I was trying to tell you, did you give enough of a fuck to listen when I was trying to tell you a thousand times over the last three fucking months or did you delete those too?”
Did you delete those too?
It echoes around inside Jayce’s head, a ricochet in his mind that bangs around and scratches at the inside of his skull.
“What?” He asks, his voice suddenly small as the anger is replaced by an agonizing wave of shock. He can’t know. He can’t know.
If he knew he would have said something.
If he knew he would have said something.
Viktor scoffs, throwing his hands up with such a ferocity that his cane nearly takes out the hanging photo of Jayce and his mom. “Of course. No, because you were too busy getting ass weren’t you, Jayce?”
“Isn’t—what—I’m—” He groans. “Fuck you, man? I was out because you were getting laid, Viktor, how the fuck is that my fault? How is it my fault that you wanted to go have sex with someone?”
“Because I wasn’t bringing anyone home you absolute fucking—” Viktor swears, low, in Russian. “I was trying to see if you would do something about it. If you really meant what you said to me but clearly it didn’t mean anything and clearly everything that you’ve been doing since we met was fucking meaningless so whatever. I’m—whatever, Jayce.”
He blinks twice. “Everything I have done? What does that even mean? You’re not making any fucking sense, Viktor.”
“Oh, I’m not making any sense? Do you have any idea what it does to me when you’re walking around like you’re—when you make me dinner and lunch and breakfast and you bring me heating pads and you make me tea and you sit on the sofa with me while I’m trying to relax and you walk around all sweaty after the gym and you touch my shoulder and my back and you—you—you pick me up from the bar at four in the fucking morning. And then you said it’s because I’m your best friend.”
“Why are you mad at me,” Jayce repeats, his hands throwing up to his side as he steps around Viktor into the living room properly. “Why are you—why are you mad at me? I’m so fucking lost, honestly, Viktor because I feel like if anything I should be the one pissed at you.”
“Because I wasn’t bringing anyone home,” Viktor says, turning to follow Jayce this time. “I wasn’t ever going to bring anyone home. Jayce—you didn’t—my texts sync to the Cloud, Jayce they fucking always have.”
And it’s like throwing water on a fire—all at once the blazing and burning rage, the snap-crack fire that lived under Jayce’s skin that burned and bristled again and again and again is gone. It dissipates into nothing but slow, creeping, horror that churns through Jayce’s stomach.
“...what?”
And Jayce’s flame is out, but Viktor’s doesn’t seem to abate. He pushes forward as Jayce turns, lunging like he’s swooping in for the kill. “My texts back up, they have always backed up. Did you think I wouldn’t check to see if I did something stupid? Did you think I don’t remember sending you those photos? Do you think—do you think I wouldn’t check?”
Jayce can’t breathe.
It’s like the air has been sucked from his lungs, every ounce and atom of oxygen torn and shredded from his body.
He can’t breathe.
He can’t breathe and holy shit he is going to fucking die here. He’s going to—Viktor—He—
“I saw what you said.” Viktor’s voice fractures, a crack spider webbing out before it shatters. “I wanted to know if you meant it. I tried—I tried to—but you wouldn’t do anything.”
Jayce isn’t…he isn’t convinced that he isn’t going to vomit. “You knew?”
“The whole time,” Viktor says. “I know what I told you and I remember saying it and I remember you—I saw your text and I didn’t know if you—if you meant it how I meant it and I didn’t know why you deleted them—if it was because you didn’t want to face it, or if you didn’t mean it, or if you hated what I sent you I—”
His mouth works again, around the thick and heavy knot that stays lingering in his chest and slithering up into his throat and out under his tongue. “I…” he manages, weakly. “Viktor, please.”
“I meant what I said to you Jayce,” Viktor says, with his cane clicking against the floor in a sense of finality. “I did. In the texts and when…and when I said it to you.”
“Why didn’t you do anything?”
Viktor pulls back as Jayce takes a half-step forward. “What?”
Jayce sweeps his hands out in a vague, sweeping, gesture. “Why didn’t you do something, why didn’t you tell me you remembered or that you knew that—that I—why didn’t you say something or do something?”
“I showed you my tits,” Viktor hisses.
“I—” and Jayce blinks twice because…well. Okay. Except. “How was I supposed to know that’s what you were doing?”
“Because I was showing you my tits,” Viktor echoes. “And I was laying on you on the sofa and I was giving you my notes and I was—I sent you pictures. Of myself. Getting fucked by a man who looks so much like you that it almost hurt me to not call him your name. And then I told you I loved you and then kissed you.”
Jayce feels his cheeks heat with a sudden sort of twisting embarrassment. “I didn’t know if you meant it. You didn’t say anything. Do you expect me to just…what? Be able to read your mind, Viktor? To know that if I grabbed you and kissed you that you wouldn’t hate me? You’re—you’re one of the most important people in my life. I wasn't going to risk throwing it all away like that.”
“I had already kissed you,” Viktor points out, bookending each side of his sentence with a line of vicious and angry Russian that Jayce doesn’t recognize—but he stopped to think about it, he could probably get the point.
“You were wasted,” he argues. “How was I supposed to know that you meant it? And if you remembered the photos why didn’t you fucking say anything about them?”
“You deleted the photos, Jayce. How was I supposed to know that it wasn’t because you weren’t interested in me like that? That you didn’t change your mind?”
“I just didn’t want you to be embarrassed,” Jayce snaps back. “I didn’t want you to…I didn’t want you to see what you sent me and think you couldn’t talk to me anymore.”
“I told you that I loved you and I kissed you,” Viktor repeats for the third time—his voice tilting higher with that same sharpened tone. “What did you think that that meant, Jayce?”
They’re going in circles now and Jayce doesn’t know how to break out of it, he doesn’t know how to end the cycle and say something different. “You,” he starts with the same careful and pointed precision. “Were. Drunk. What was I supposed to think? What did you want me to do about it, Viktor?”
“I’m not drunk now, Jayce.” Viktor nearly snarls it as he carries himself forward. And if Jayce didn’t know how to break the spiral—it seems as though Viktor does. One hand fists in the front of Jayce’s hoodie, dragging him down with a startling strength, and brings them nose-to-nose.
He can smell the coffee and anger on Viktor’s breath, the wash of it over his lips in the ghosting sensation of that night three months ago. The tingle is back, the sparklight wash that draws up the sense memory of lips against his own. The differences are stark—the strength and power in Viktor’s trembling arm, the agonizing burn in his eyes—and not at all unwelcome.
In fact—
“Viktor,” he breathes, because the tension is almost strangling him, “I—”
Viktor’s face moves closer until Jayce can feel the ambient heat off his mouth—a radiating siren’s call of warmth that Jayce knows in all the ways he knows he isn’t supposed to know. “If you are going to do something. Do it.”
And he does.
Jayce’s hands drop to Viktor’s hips, taking hold of Viktor’s slight, small, frame and with a surge forward, he crushes their mouths together in a hard, desperate, kiss.
He’s always been good at directions—at least the ones he’s always wanted, anyway.
It’s nothing like their first kiss. Nothing like the dry press of Viktor’s lips and the taste of booze and guilt. Viktor’s lips are just as dry, just as chapped, but when Jayce pushes into it, when he bows and yields, he can feel Viktor smile against him. He can feel his hand curling into his collar and pulling them together. He can feel the way Viktor’s tongue nudges out between them, a testing swipe at the seam of Jayce’s lips.
He parts for him, yielding without pause.
For a half-second he’s worried he tastes like the stranger in the bar, but a half-second later Viktor’s tongue is in his mouth and Jayce’s mind goes fucking blank.
Viktor, when he isn’t drunk, tastes like coffee and the salt and vinegar chips they share that Jayce knows means he probably had half a bag for dinner tonight. He caves and gives and bends to Viktor’s mouth, to his tongue sweeping into Jayce’s and pushing past every last resistance he has.
He bends and bends and bends and Viktor’s hand slides up to Jayce’s cheek, nails scratching idly down his 5 o’clock shadow that’s already a little overgrown.
Viktor’s tongue traces out the inside of Jayce’s mouth like he’s trying to commit him to memory, like he’s trying to follow the curves and dips of his teeth and his tongue so he can recreate him later in clay and steel. And Jayce lets him, he lets him taste, he lets him have him, he lets him do whatever the fuck he wants as their lips slide wet and sick against one another.
They pull back with a gasp, half-breathless and half-desperate before pushing back into one another for another then another then Viktor’s hands are in his hair, fingers tangling to wrench Jayce further down.
Jayce doesn’t think he means to back Viktor up against the living room wall—but he also doesn’t think he doesn’t mean to.
It’s like being caught in a current or some sort of gravitational pull. Viktor leans backward and Jayce follows, tethered to him in a way he doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to break. Viktor guides and Jayce follows and Jayce guides and Viktor follows—a stumbling and awkward dance as Viktor’s cane clatters to the ground just in time for Jayce to bump into his chest the second Viktor’s back meets the wall.
Pictures of them and pictures of their families rattle in their frames on the wall and for a second Jayce is kinda worried one might get knocked over.
But then Viktor’s leg is around his waist and, rather suddenly, Jayce doesn’t care about anything but that.
Viktor breaks the kiss first, his head leaning back up against the off-white plaster. “Fuck,” he swears, as his weaker leg rests up against Jayce’s hip. Jayce drops a hand from his hip to the back of his knee to brace him there, keeping him steadily. “Fuck, Jayce. I need you to fuck me.”
Jayce’s grip tightens on him for just a moment before he pushes forward and catches them together in another hurried and slick mess of a kiss. The sounds they make are obscene—wet and soft—as they seek out each other in an almost frantic need.
“H-here?” He manages, as if he thinks he has the willpower to tear himself away from Viktor’s body for long enough to move to either bedroom. And he’s almost a hundred percent certain that Viktor isn’t about to let Jayce carry him.
“Unless you wanted to go somewhere else,” Viktor offers, hips canting down towards Jayce’s.
And everything about him is perfect. Everything about Viktor is fucking flawless—the weight of his leg in Jayce’s arm, the arms that ring around his shoulders, the narrow hand in his hair, the hipbone pressing into his thigh—all of it is beautiful all of it is perfect and all of it, all of it, is Viktor.
It’s a thousand insistent points of contact at once, every single millimeter of Viktor’s body seamed against his is almost too much to bear and—all at once Jayce needs them both to be naked. All at once he needs Viktor to be stretched out nude beneath him, he needs his face buried in his cunt, he needs him soaking down his throat, he needs him to be fucking dripping onto his thighs, he needs him he needs him he needs him. He needs skin to skin, he needs mouth to mouth, he needs every inch of Viktor pressed against his pores in a way that is fucking inhuman.
Jayce’s fingers tighten in the fabric of Viktor’s thin pajama pants and for a second he debates just tearing them.
“Is that a no, then,” Viktor teases, a thin edge to his voice.
No, he wants to say—in that it is and it isn’t because if he can’t get Viktor’s skin against his own fast enough he thinks he might die and if has to let go of him, if he has to drop him and peel himself off Viktor’s body then he thinks he might die. “Here—here then can I—can—after—”
“You can do whatever you want to me afterwards, Jayce,” Viktor breathes. “So long as you fuck me first. Take your shirt off. I want to put my mouth on you.”
Jayce leans back exactly as much as he needs to comply, tossing his shirt somewhere in the abyss of the living room. He doesn’t know where it landed, he doesn’t care. Everything that isn’t Viktor is space-time. It’s a distant and fraught emptiness reaching out behind him. Everything that isn’t Viktor is nothing. It’s void.
It’s nothing because Viktor’s hands are on him at once, they’re skating up the length of his arms, then his chest, and his shoulders. His fingers dance, feather-light and soft, along the edges of Jayce’s pectoral.
“You’re so handsome,” Viktor sighs, his eyes half-lidded as he drinks in Jayce’s shirtless form. He feels strangely exposed under his gaze. Like he’s being taken apart and pieced back together. “You know that, right?”
“I uh,” Jayce squirms just a little, fingers coming to rest back on Viktor. One hand under his knee, the other at his hip. “I’ve been told. A few times.”
Viktor hums, and leans forward. His lips brush, slick and warm, over the place where Jayce’s neck meets his shoulder—and for a moment it’s transcendent. For a moment, it’s heat and warmth, and the movement of Viktor’s lips against his skin.
The only warning Jayce gets is the soft scrape of teeth before Viktor surges up and bites him. It’s the sucking, hard, sort of bite that Jayce knows is going to leave a bruise—a mark in the shape of Viktor’s mouth pressed into his skin in a place he can press again and again and again until he loses his mind. Until it fades and he can ask Viktor to etch another memory into his skin.
His hips buck against Viktor, grinding the aching bulge in his jeans against the thin fabric of Viktor’s pajamas.
“There you go,” Viktor hums, his eyes already half-lidded. “Now everyone will know.”
Everyone.
“Please,” Jayce gasps, caught in the idea of people seeing the dark bite-bruise peeking out from over his collar. The thought of someone knowing it was Viktor, of someone seeing him there beside Jayce and knowing, knowing how readily Viktor can pull him to pieces.
The idea that they’ll always know who carves him to pieces.
“Please what?” Viktor teases, his voice almost playful all the places where his accent tilts rougher and his voice bends with want.
Jayce swallows a whine just barely. “Please let me touch you. Please—V, I can’t stop thinking about it. It’s all I think about, it’s all I want. I just want to get my hands on—on you and I want to know all the sounds you make and how you feel and please, please let me touch you.”
It’s normally at this point that Jayce would want to blanch. It’s normally at this point that he’d wish he was invisible and wish he was small enough to seep through the carpet fibers and into the wooden flooring beneath it.
But he doesn’t.
Viktor’s touch on his chest burns the shame out of his body—it pulls every ounce from the space between his atoms and leaves it scattering like motes of dust caught in the cheap lamplight around them.
“Then do it,” Viktor breathes. His back arches slightly off the wall—an offering for a moment before his bad leg slinks down to the floor. “Touch me, Jayce. Like you’ve wanted to.”
And he does.
Jayce doesn’t hesitate. Not this time. Not anymore. He surges forward, hands slipping up under the wash-weathered fabric of Viktor’s sleep-shirt. And Viktor’s skin is just as soft and addictive as he remembers. It’s just as warm, just as sweet to the touch. It’s everything he’s ever wanted it to be stretched out in front of him.
And he wishes, for a moment, that he could lay him out on the ground. That the floor wasn’t too hard to spread Viktor out over and that he wouldn’t feel bad about flipping him onto his back and tasting every inch of sweat-sweet skin. He wishes there was a bed right there, he wishes there was space for them, that the couch was closer and big enough and anything and anything and anything that would let him put his mouth on Viktor.
Jayce drops to his knees before he can stop himself.
Anything to get his hands on him, anything to get his mouth on him.
It’s like being caught in prayer, he doesn’t think. Sitting on his knees, genuflecting before something truly holy, enraptured by the way the blinding kitchen lights tangle in Viktor’s hair and scatter across his skin. They leave behind sharp shadows and unforgiving edges and Jayce has never felt more exposed and more protected in one moment.
He yields to the hand in his hair. He yields to the way Viktor leans against the wall, his shoulders pressing to the drywall in order to tilt his hips towards Jayce’s waiting face.
Silent contemplation and silent prayer.
Jayce drops his mouth to the inside of one of the knees spread delicately around him. He wonders, for a second, if he can brace Viktor like that—with legs over his shoulders and his back to the wall.
Probably not, he settles on. But that doesn’t stop him from thinking about it in the future.
His fingers rest in the time-loosened waistband of Viktor’s pajama pants, just a moment as his lips scatter low and soft kisses across the heather-grey pants.
Above him, he hears Viktor’s breath catch gently. “That’s right,” he hums. “You look very pretty down there.”
Pretty.
Jayce feels something blister across his skin, a burning point of pride washing like sweet acid. A chemical-burn of affection searing through the muscles of his chest. “Pretty?” He asks the inside of Viktor’s thigh, teeth scraping across the tender give of muscle and fat there.
“Yes,” Viktor says. “Very pretty.”
“I uh…I don’t get pretty a lot.”
“That is a shame,” Viktor tells him. The leg bends out. Not away from Jayce, but like an offering.
An eye for an eye.
Jayce takes the opportunity granted with happiness. It tastes like cotton and dry fabric—but the sound Viktor makes is more than worth it when Jayce’s teeth dig through the fabric of his pants and bite into the supple flesh just inside his thigh.
His hands tighten on Viktor’s hips, holding him steady as immediately the legs around him begin to tremble and shake.
Pretty, he thinks, as he nuzzles into the mark he knows he’s left behind. “I uh,” he tells it, eyes closed as he drinks in the feeling of Viktor’s leg against his cheek. “I think you’re really good-looking too.”
“Well,” Viktor says, sounding half-breathless above him already. “I am glad to know the feeling is mutual.”
Jayce muffles a soft little laugh, just a short thing, before Viktor’s fingers are back in his hair—tightening ever-so-slightly to tilt his face up to the space between his legs. Instruction more than anything.
Or request.
Or something.
Jayce doesn’t have it in him to think it through, to ascribe the terminology or the proper phrase to it.
He just knows what he’s supposed to do, he just knows what Viktor wants him to do.
Jayce presses up and up and up—burying his nose into the soft, warm space between Viktor’s legs.
Above him, Viktor sighs, the tension starting to unspool as Jayce feels Viktor’s weight only increase slightly against him.
Fuck.
Fuck, Jayce is already gone.
He’s already way fucking gone.
The fabric between his legs is thin as he nuzzles up into it. And fuck, fuck, Viktor really isn’t wearing underwear. Jayce can feel it.
He can feel the way the fabric pushes up against him, already damp against his nose from where Viktor’s already begun to drip and seep through it. He can feel how it nudges between his lips, he can feel the heat that radiates off him. He lets his mouth open, feeling the way Viktor’s cunt pushes up against the fabric in a desperate attempt to fend off the barrier between them and plant itself there.
Above him, he hears Viktor’s breath catch and Jayce feels like a man possessed.
Half-drunk off the sound, chasing another hit and another high, he delves deeper, pushing his tongue up against the fabric.
It tastes like cotton and the distant, frequently-washed memory of Viktor’s cunt.
And he wonders, somewhere in the back of his mind, just how many times Viktor has done this. How many times was there nothing but a flimsy piece of fabric separating them, how many times was Viktor spread out on the sofa with one foot in Jayce’s lap and the other hanging off the side—split open and spread with millimeters of thread-bare fabric between himself and Viktor’s pussy. How many times did Viktor think about him, how many times did Viktor soak through them in his bedroom alone at night?
He shudders, hands squeezing at the cut of Viktor’s hips as if he can imprint the shape of it onto his palms, and he lets himself push Viktor apart. His spit starts to soak through the fabric as he laps over him again and again until he feels himself pushing the sodden fabric up between the lips of his cunt and feels him twitch against the flat of his tongue. A groan bubbles up and drips, unbidden, from his chest as he feels that point of hardness among the soft and sweet.
Jayce zeroes in on it, letting the dripping cotton-blend shift and rub over Viktor’s cock. If he could, if Viktor wanted him to, he’d eat him just like this. He’d eat him through his pants, he’d eat him through blankets and jeans and underwear. If Viktor asked, he’d eat him through glass.
Anything, anything, anything to do whatever Viktor wants.
He works his cock with the flat of his tongue, rolling and undulating against it while Viktor’s breath pricks up above him.
Then, he flattens his tongue back out down the center of his cunt, pushing deep until he can seal his lips over as much of him as he can to offer a gentle and slow suck. It pulls the taste of Jayce’s own spit out of the fabric—but it’s mingled with what he’s really after. Jayce’s eyelids flutter at the taste of Viktor above it all. It melts over his tongue, mingling and twisting with the taste of fabric and the taste of spit and saliva and it’s all Jayce ever wants to know now.
Viktor all but bucks down against him, grinding his soaking cunt down against Jayce’s face as his knees shake on either side of his shoulders. His weight tips him onto his good leg and Jayce takes hold of the bad to offer himself to brace against him.
The shift is welcome as Viktor sinks down to let Jayce balance him out.
“Holy shit,” Viktor pants. “Fucking—fuck—Jayce. Fuck the pants. Fuck the—fuck.”
Jayce’s fingers slip off the bone and cut of his hips. They twist immediately into the front of Viktor’s pajama pants. He doesn’t want to pull back from him, he doesn’t want there to be a moment, a breath, where he isn’t buried in the core of him.
So he doesn’t.
Viktor gasps as the fabric splits under a quick flex of Jayce’s back into his shoulders and arms.
At once, it falls to the side, slackened under the force of the tear—and Jayce has to take a second to reconcile with that. A moment to drink in the sight of Viktor, hovering down his nose.
He’s pretty sure it’s a stereotype but he doesn’t think he’s ever seen anything as beautiful as Viktor’s cunt. It’s a rich, dark, pink that glistens between Jayce’s spit and Viktor’s own fluids—with cute, soft, lips framed in dark, slick-matted curls. From the top, almost as if reaching towards him, Jayce can see the flushed head of his cock poking out, hanging just a touch over the rest of him.
Jayce feels breathless and starved all at once.
And he wishes he had more hands. He wishes he had more hands and more mouths and more anything so that he could hold Viktor up and hold him apart and taste his way into the center of him.
He shifts Viktor’s leg higher over his shoulder, freeing up a hand to slide his thumb down the seam of it. He gathers some of the warm, sweet, slick before he pulls him apart for a better look.
Viktor wiggles. “Enjoying the, eh, the view?”
“Yeah,” Jayce says, maybe a little dumbstruck and he doesn’t know if that’s because he meant it or if it was Viktor’s way of asking him to get the show on the road but Jayce can’t stop looking. He can’t stop looking and there’s something almost mesmerizing about the way he opens and the way he looks.
Viktor’s cunt twitches, a fresh bead of liquid pearling at his slit.
Jayce arches towards him, pushing up to taste him with all the reverence and joy of a man dipping his hands into water fresh from the spring. Just a flick of his tongue, just to follow. The flavor of Viktor spreads across his tongue—sweat and salty-warm and heady and Jayce’s eyes drop half-lidded as he holds Viktor open gently, spread on his fingers, and bows to drag his tongue up the full length of him.
Viktor cries out, his back already arching off the wall to cant his hips towards him. “Fuck! You—fuck, Jayce.”
He breathes up against Viktor, lips skating over lips as he smiles. “Good?”
“Jayce.” There’s a desperation to his voice as he pushes down to muffle whatever Jayce’s witty retort was going to be. Though maybe there wasn’t going to be any. Maybe it was going to always be this. Maybe it was always going to be Viktor and Jayce destined to have a moment like this.
Maybe.
Jayce huffs and pushes closer up against the weight of Viktor’s body. He wishes it was more. He wishes, for a moment, that Viktor was properly sitting on his face. That his thighs were quaking on either side of his jaw, that he was soaking him for hours like that. Jayce would be his seat, he would replace the desk chair Viktor games on, he would be whatever he needed to be for him.
His tongue slides through the slick, gathering the taste of him like he’s drawing the juice out of a summer fruit. Viktor gasps, the fingers in his hair leaving for a moment before returning and tangling to pull him closer as Jayce pushes deeper into him. A slow, heavy, slide down to the root of his tongue as he tastes nothing but Viktor, Viktor, Viktor. His walls shiver and twitch against him. And all Jayce can feel and taste and know is Viktor.
Viktor, as he fucks his tongue into him slow and carefully.
Viktor, as his thumb slides up to stroke the hard length of his sweet little cock.
Viktor, as his cunt starts to drool and drip down Jayce’s jaw—slicking his face and his neck and his collar.
He wants to die here, he wants to be buried here between Viktor’s thighs and never, ever, ever leave again.
He wants his nose pressed to the soft mound of dark pubic hair, breathing him in as he nuzzles and hums into it. He wants to touch him like this, he wants to hear every soft, needy, sound that drops from his lips. He wants all of it, he wants all of it, he wants all of it.
“H-harder,” Viktor says. “I want to come—come on your tongue, Jayce. Touch me harder t—fuck.”
There’s a part of Jayce, buried deep inside him, that wonders idly if the man at the bar did this. If he pushed Viktor up on the bar counter and dropped to his knees and ate him like he deserved.
He wonders if any one of the men he meets and fucks do, if any of them know what it’s like to feel the quaking start to build in Viktor’s thighs around his head, if they know what it’s like to feel hims start to shake apart from the inside out.
Part of him hopes they don’t, part of him hopes he’s never been this loud, that no one has ever been so lucky as to have felt the way he tenses and pushes down onto the steady movement of his tongue, that no one has ever felt him start to leak and flood, that no one has ever heard their name shattering on Viktor’s tongue as the tidal waves overcome him and he arches off the wall with a siren-call song of Jayce’s name.
That no one has ever felt him gush a wet heat down their cheeks before, that no one has ever felt the dripping slick of him bead on their chin as he makes a proper mess of their faces.
That no one has heard the soft wheeze of the first desperate post-peak breath that comes before Jayce shoves his tongue just as deep, curling up against that spot inside him to taste the roiling and rippling aftershocks that try to squeeze his tongue deeper into him.
Viktor’s cock jumps and twitches up against Jayce’s thumb as he starts to come down.
Jayce only stops when his hips twitch away from the sensation instead of towards it. He keeps his tongue inside him for another moment, before he withdraws to pull back and look up where Viktor has tossed a hand over his fever-flushed face.
And Viktor is not wearing a shirt.
Jayce…Jayce has no idea when he took it off, he has no idea when Viktor pulled it off himself and tossed it aside but he isn’t wearing it. His flushed chest is heaving under the aftershocks of Viktor’s orgasm, the light catching on the points of metal on either side of Viktor’s chest.
He’s being pulled—like gravity, like a tide to the shore—up and up and up.
The clash of metal and skin tastes like nothing Jayce has ever had. The flat of his tongue smears over one of Viktor’s perked nipples, an addictive balance between the cool and feverish, sharp and dulled. Jayce takes the time to commit the feeling of Viktor to memory, the weight of him in his arms, the way his breathing stutters beneath his lips as he closes them around the metal-and-flesh.
He wants to know the soft sigh he makes when he’s touched like this forever. He wants to know the gentle whine that pushes up from the back of his throat when Jayce’s tongue drags over him.
He wants to know every sound Viktor makes as Jayce’s teeth tug gently at the end of the bar piercing through his nipples.
He wants to know every caught-breath hitch of his chest, every twitch of the hand that lands in Jayce’s hair to comb his fingers through them. He wants to know the way Viktor melts into the pillows as Jayce gives him the faintest of sucks.
He wants to know the way he can feel Viktor slowly start to fall apart against him as Jayce tastes the difference between metal and skin.
And, well, Jayce can get addicted to this. He already knows that.
He already knows he can get addicted to Viktor in all the ways he never knew was possible. He already knows what he’d give up to stay here, in this place, forever. What he’d give up if it meant listening to Viktor breathing, if it meant feeling Viktor beneath him.
His eyes drift shut as he catches one nipple in his teeth, not biting so much as offering a faint tug.
Viktor gasps, a wet, slick, sound and grinds himself up against the aching, aching bulge in Jayce’s jeans. He can feel himself already starting to drool, making a mess of his boxers and threatening to fucking ruin these jeans forever. But the grind of Viktor, pressure redoubling against him again and again and again—
Jayce releases just in time to swear viciously.
“Do—fuck,” he pants, burying his face into the sweaty space between Viktor’s breasts.
Viktor uses one of his legs to anchor them together, pulling Jayce down to meet his hips. Just a moment, just a breath before he releases him and drops his hands to the front of Jayce’s jeans. He doesn’t do anything there. He doesn’t move. He doesn’t say a word.
Jayce nods against his skin, shifting his hands down to flick the button of his jeans and strip just enough to free his messy, drooling, cock.
It doesn’t take long, a stroke or two to take the edge off, before Jayce has Viktor back against the wall. This time both of his legs are swept up around Jayce’s waist, this time he’s all that’s keeping Viktor pinned to the wall, this time it’s his weight in Jayce’s arms and the feeling of arms ringing around his neck and fingers toying with his hair as Viktor’s hips cant out and grind Jayce’s cock up into the slick, hot, space between his thighs and Jayce’s hips are flexed with restraint to keep from just bucking up against him and grinding off between those soft, dripping, lips.
A twisted, desperate, noise wrings itself out from between his lungs. “Where?” He gasps, resting his forehead on Viktor’s collar. “Do you have—?”
His wallet is in jeans and that would be super useful if they were closer. Or if he hasn’t already blown through his supply on a stranger in a bar.
He’s already on the brink of shaking apart as Viktor’s hand squeezes him gently and his hips shift and—
The thick head of his cock nudges up against Viktor’s slit, held there by his guidance. It’s not enough to sink into him, no matter how badly Jayce wants to just grab him and fill and never, never, be separated again.
Sinking into Viktor is like coming home, in every way that it isn’t and every way that it is.
Maybe in his imagination it was more romantic. In his imagination, the times he allowed himself to draw up the image of Viktor spread across his bed or laid out in a blanket under the stars, it was always soft and slow. In his imagination, it was gentle.
There were nights where Jayce would imagine Viktor tangled in his arms, locked at the mouth more than they would do anything else. Nights where he conjured up the image of Viktor in his pillows, laid out like a gift, like a buffet, like a reward. Something for Jayce’s taking, something for Jayce to have and to keep in his arms.
Something for him to worship, something for him to honor above all else.
He always imagined dinner, movies, dates, drinks. He imagined wine and roses, he imagined soft words and even softer promises.
Even with the visual of Viktor spread out on that tile, with the image of him getting his throat fucked on the floor of a grimey bar bathroom, Jayce always defaulted to the thought of making love.
And Jayce loves him, and he loves, and he loves him—
—and he’s pretty sure this isn’t making love.
He’s frantic as he fucks into Viktor, chasing the tight, wet, heat of his cunt with each snap of his hips. He feels the weight of Viktor jostle in his arms with each roll and thrust, hears each high-caught moan and huff of pleasure punched out of his lungs in beat with Jayce’s hips.
Viktor’s head is lolled back at first, lips parted with each movement. The light catches the sweat, it catches the prick and glisten of Viktor’s fuck-hazy eyes and the spittle and drool that wells from his slack mouth.
It’s fucking effortless to fuck up into him like this, with Viktor just loose enough in his arms that gravity brings him down to meet him. He doesn’t even need to pull him down, he doesn’t need to press him into the wall and chase the feeling of him again and again and again.
Jayce feels almost mindless with it, the way Viktor’s chest swells up against his with each ragged breath, the burning sear of skin to skin—seamed feverishly together—the slick sound of flesh and the sound of sex. He doesn’t want to ever be anywhere but this, anywhere but buried in Viktor’s tight, dripping, perfect cunt.
Nails bite into Jayce’s shoulders as Viktor clings to him—scrabbling occasionally in the sweat-slick mess left behind over his shoulders—and his breath is panting hot against the space above his ear.
“Jayce,” Viktor breathes, voice breaking around a low and desperate plea. “There—fuck Jayce fuck me right there. I love how big you feel inside me, how messy you’re making me do—do you feel how wet I am for you? How soaked you make me?”
And Jayce knows what he’s asking, he knows what he needs. His hand slips between them, wriggling down to find his flushed, hard little cock between them. He slicks his fingers in the mess that Viktor is leaving smeared across the pair of them.
“I got you,” he breathes, fucking up into him again and again and again as his fingers circle around Viktor’s cock.
And fuck—fuck—Jayce can feel Viktor start to get close. He can feel the twitch and clench of Viktor’s walls as he draws closer and closer and closer and soon fucking up into him requires just a touch more energy, a little more power as Viktor starts to thrash and writhe between them. “I’m—fuck—I want—I want to come on you, I want to—I—” Viktor is panting in earnest. “Please—I’m so close, I’m so—so close.”
“Come on, V,” Jayce grits out, bringing his face up from the sweat-slick expanse of Viktor’s chest. “Come on—I wanna feel you come around my cock. I want you to—fuck, fuck.”
He’s close. He’s too close.
Jayce shoves his mouth against Viktor’s slack, panting one in a slick facade of a kiss—more a filthy slide of lips against lips than anything else. “I’m—” he pants against him. “I’m going to—where do you—where—?”
Where do you want it? He doesn’t ask, sliding his own body up against Viktor’s as if he isn’t fucking him so hard he’s going to be feeling it in his back for the next week. Where do you want me to come, tell me what you want me to do, tell me where you want me to mark you.
Instead of speaking, Viktor’s legs tighten around Jayce’s waist. His arms coil tighter and his nails scratch down Jayce’s back in the way that Jayce knows he’s going to be feeling. Sweat stings into the marks left behind as Jayce’s swimming mind tries to fumble for what it means.
“Do—” Jayce starts, as he feels that familiar burning coil start to wind itself around his gut and pierce through and around his intestines. “Do you—”
“Yes,” Viktor gasps, pushing his hips back down into Jayce’s hand and onto Jayce’s cock. “Please, please.”
And who is Jayce to deny him?
He feels Viktor start to seize up around him, the vice-like heat of his body only getting tighter and tighter as Jayce fucks him through the starting roll of his orgasm. He doesn’t know who comes first, who reaches that fever-peak of oblivion, who grabs the other by the wrist and pulls them over the edge.
But his mind is going blank and Viktor’s cock is throbbing against his fingers and Jayce’s joints are searing with a beautiful burn and Viktor’s clenching him so hard Jayce doesn’t know if he’ll ever be able to breathe again.
Like touching a match to gunpowder—it’s a burning bang and a flash and then ash and smoke. Jayce breathes it in, feeling Viktor coating the inside of his lungs and painting down the line of his chest. His hips slow as he feels his own come well from where he’s buried deep inside Viktor’s cunt. It drips, slowly, as he pants, from between them.
Viktor slumps forward, his cheek pressed to Jayce’s shoulder. “...fuck,” he breathes.
Jayce grunts. “I…yeah.”
“...don’t put me down yet,” Viktor asks, voice half-slurred against Jayce’s skin. “I want you inside me as long as you can be.”
A nod. “I uh…yeah.”
His thighs hurt, but he doesn’t complain. He’s squatted more than Viktor for longer than this. Definitely. He buries his face in Viktor’s hair, breathing him in long and slow. “I meant it, by the way,” he says.
Viktor hums. “Meant what?”
Jayce mumbles it into his hair, feeling Viktor unspool and relax against him for a long moment. He pulls back slowly, pouring himself against the wall. Half-lidded and fuck-warm eyes watch him for a long, careful, moment.
One thin hand cups his jaw, thumb sweeping under his eye. “I mean what I said too,” Viktor says, voice warm. “I…I loved you for a long time.”
Jayce bends into the touch. “I uh…I don’t think I realized it until you said it…until you uh, until you kissed me.”
“That was why I wanted to kiss you, I think,” Viktor says. “I eh, I don’t remember much of my…my thought process.”
Jayce kisses him.
And Viktor kisses him back.
It takes a while but eventually Jayce pulls out, hand slipping between Viktor’s thighs to cup his groin immediately. He’s still slick, still filthy with his own want and with Jayce’s come. He drags his fingers through the mess before he sets him down on his feet.
He gets Viktor’s cane, he leaves their clothes behind.
They end up in Jayce’s room, beyond the veil of his sanctum and his most private, hidden, moments. And Viktor is sprawled across his bed and Viktor’s legs are hanging open as Jayce strips off his ruined, come-stained, clothes.
Jayce kneels on the end of the bed, letting Viktor’s knee press into his side. “I love you,” he says for the fifteenth time.
Viktor smiles, lip curling into a soft smile. “I love you too. And, eh, may I ask you a question?”
“Of course,” Jayce says, without hesitation.
“...did you keep them?” He asks, head tilting. “The photos?”
Jayce feels himself flush as he lays out on his stomach. He nuzzles into the space above his knee. “It…I deleted them off your phone and it didn’t feel right to keep them for myself. I didn’t even know if you meant it for me.”
Viktor’s face softens. “I only took them for you,” he admits. “I eh…I thought they would entice you to act. I was very inebriated. If you, eh…well.” And his eyes flicker down between his legs.
Jayce’s gaze follows, fixated on the space where Viktor’s fuck-reddened pussy is spread. His well-used slit pulses for a moment, squeezing, as another swell of come begins to slowly drip, drip, drip out of him.
“I—what?” He asks, blinking as the question quickly leaves him.
“Take photos. To, eh, to keep. Instead of…instead of the ones I sent.”
Jayce looks down at his drooling, dripping, cunt.
“I…” he blinks, then looks up at Viktor’s raised eyebrow. “I’ll get my phone.”