Smile at the Moon

“Viktor!” Heimerdinger scolds affectionately, minorly affronted at the brusque approach of his graduate assistant. “No need to-”

“Yes. Need to,” Viktor interrupts their professor again, grabbing the test from the edge of Heimerdinger’s desk and shaking it as he limps over to Jayce without his cane. “Your score on this test is not consistent with the quality of your work from the first half of the course. And you have been working extra with the study group–I have been there to see it! So the only conclusion I can come to is that you are no longer taking this seriously and–”

“Enough!” Heimerdinger doesn't exactly yell, but his voice slices through the air between his two students as deftly as any blade. “What Viktor is trying to convey,” and here the yordle gives his assistant a glare that could peel paint off walls, which actually makes the grad student blush and look a little sheepish, “is that we’re worried about you, Jayce.”

Jayce looks from his professor to Viktor and back. We?

Further, he is acutely aware of how close his and Viktor's legs are to touching now that the TA is propping himself up on the edge of the desk. Jayce looks down and sighs. “Yeah, I know. I have…” 

spent all my brain power thinking homoerotic thoughts about the professor's assistant who has decided to attend almost all of the past month of classes 

“...been…”

been too busy concentrating on hiding my feral attraction to the genius grad student helping me fumble through my work to remember anything I am learning

“...distracted. As of late.”

Viktor crosses his arms over his chest and stares at Jayce, unconvinced. “Well un-distract yourself. Quickly. This is content essential to your fields of interest…” wait, he knows what I am interested in? “...and you are too brilliant of an engineer t-”

Jayce's head snaps up and he boggles at Viktor, jaw hanging open and eyes no doubt as wide as saucers. Brilliant?

A painfully attractive blush blooms on Viktor's stark cheekbones as his mouth clicks shut. There is a moment of silence where it is just them, eyes locked together, and Jayce swears that Viktor's pupils dilate. 

Then Heimerdinger blunders on, unaware of the crisis happening right in front of him. “Quite right! You are far too promising to have you not pass this class. It would prevent you from skipping ahead and entering the graduate seminar next semester and really digging into your research. I remember when I…”

The professor’s voice fades to a background drone as they maintain eye contact. Jayce picks his jaw back up off the ground and closes his mouth, licking his lips when he does, and fuck he is pretty sure Viktor looked down to track the motion. 

Jayce is totally fucked up over Viktor. Daydreaming about wildly inappropriate things Viktor could do to him with those elegant fingers all through class kind of fucked up. Can barely make it through one of the assistant’s extra recitations without coming in his pants, forget not getting hard as hell, kind of fucked up. Drop to his knees right now and press his face into Viktor's groin and plead to be allowed to suck his cock kind of fucked up. Go down on all fours and serve as a place to rest Viktor's bad leg kind of fucked up. ‘Would you like to be called Sir or Master?’ kind of fucked up. 

Some of that insanity must show on Jayce's face because he unfolds his arms to grip the edge of the desk and uncrosses his ankles so he can stand with his knees further apart. Jayce traces down Viktor's body with his eyes, lingering on what might be the start of a bulge beneath his trousers oh god.

“...right, Viktor?” Viktor startles and looks back to his mentor. “You thought Jayce should start individualized tutoring immediately, yes? I am sure one of the other students in our lab could-”

“No, I’ll do it,” Viktor says, quick and, if Jayce didn't know any better, eager. That thought makes Jayce feel like he might burst into flames. “I can't continue working until we get the next samples of stone from Demacia, which won't be for another two weeks.”

“Oh! Well that works out perfectly then!” The bells from the Academy tower choose that moment to chime the hour. “Ohhh, fargle and bargle, I’m late!” Heimerdinger takes the steps to the floor two at a time and starts shuffling out the door. “I’ll just leave you two to make arrangements then. Good luck!” His poro yips and yaps happily as it follows behind him.

Jayce looks at the door until the sounds of the professor and his pet fade. Then he takes a deep breath and turns back to Viktor.

Viktor, whose gaze has darkened and who is looking at Jayce with an undeniable hunger. “So,” his smirk curls into something wicked, “what might we do to help you overcome this distraction that has plagued you in the lecture hall?” He slides along the edge of the desk until their calves are touching, running his good leg along Jayce's from knee to ankle. “Do you actually need remedial lessons? Or do you just need the opportunity to take your assessment without me in the room?”

Nothing could have prepared Jayce for Viktor being so forward. He isn't sad about it, to be clear; it cuts through a lot of bullshit and for that Jayce is grateful. It is refreshing. “Honestly?” Jayce looks up to the other man and softens his expression, risking that it might come off as too goofily adoring. “I can't think straight when we're in the same room.”

Viktor's head tilts to the side and his eyes glitter like prisms in sunlight. He is gorgeous. “I certainly hope your thoughts about me aren’t straight.”

That breaks the last of the tension in the room and Jayce laughs, running a hand over his face to try to wipe away the giddiness he feels from knowing his interest is reciprocated. He is delighted by this playful side of Viktor, something he has only seen before in small flashes. “No, they definitely are not.” They smile at each other and the mutual attraction simmers between them, alive and electric. “Come on,” Jayce tilts his head towards the door as he stands. “I haven’t had lunch yet. And you apparently don’t have any research to do for a few weeks. Come with me to get a bite to eat? Or a coffee?” 

“Alright. Let me just-” Jayce is across the room in three strides, grabbing Viktor’s cane and handing it to him. Of all things, this makes Viktor really blush. “Thank you,” he whispers.

He ignores the jolt of pain his knee sends shooting up his spine as he goes jumping up to his feet, fists raised and a howl of incredulous, manic triumph shouted up to the clear skies overhead. He remembers the first prototype for the Hexgates, the hellish trial phases, and he remembers the day they got an apple from one side of the room to the other. Jayce had screeched and jumped and paced, babbling like a maniac while Viktor stood, silent and awestruck, holding the apple in his palms like it had just been placed there by the hand of a god. When Jayce finally collapsed onto the floor, half laughing, half crying, Viktor had wheeled his stool over, flicked open his little pocket knife, and wordlessly split the fruit in two, handing half over to Jayce. He'd been certain he could taste the magic they had harnessed. That day pales in comparison to this moment.

He wants to sprint a mile. He needs to scream, he wants to laugh, and cry, and he needs to make a plan to orient himself and find food and get Viktor some clothes, he's still only wearing that goddamm blanket-

"It worked! Viktor! Viktor, we did it, it worked!" He shouts, hands clasped around Viktor's cheeks again, and he smacks a kiss off Viktor's forehead because he can, because Viktor is here, and they're together and alive, they're alive, they're alive-

His body allows him a few more moments of frantic, unrestrained celebration, before it starts warning him, Alright Talis, you've had your fun, now lay down, you're about to pass out, because that sure is a head rush he's feeling isn't it?

He stumbles to the ground the same way his laughter trails off from a manic giggle to heaving gasps, giddiness fizzing in his chest, his head, his whole goddamn body, and he stares up at the clouds, floating unbothered overhead. They might as well be in a different universe. It's entirely possible that they are.

It doesn't matter. Especially not right now. Jayce forces himself to breathe, even as he can't stop smiling, arms splayed out over his head. There's a soft shuffling sound, bare feet trekking uncertainly through the soft grass. He raises his head from the grass, because he would recognize Viktor's gait anywhere. There's a moment, suspended from the rest of reality like a crystal hanging in a window, that Jayce swears he will preserve in his memory to his dying day. Of Viktor, of course, and the way he's looking down at Jayce in this moment.

Haloed by the sun, even more beautiful than when he had towered over every soul in creation, wreathed in magic and might - because this is Viktor, his Viktor, with his thin, uneven shoulders, and the slight crookedness to his nose from a fall as a little toddler, and moles everywhere, and untamable hair, and his beautiful golden eyes that can only be outshone by his beautiful golden heart, full of kindness and curiosity and ruthless drive to do good.

Had it seriously taken the apocalypse for Jayce to realize he loves this man above anything and everything?

It must be written quite plainly on his face, because Viktor's eyes widen as he realizes something, and takes a step forward, to-to what?

With that thought lancing his chest and lighting up his brain in bursts of color, he very nearly rockets to his feet, knee be damned, when Viktor's wide eyes go even wider as his knee buckles and the bubble bursts a little.

"Ngah!" he sputters, arms flailing, the blanket flapping a little as he instinctively reaches for a crutch that rudely neglected to materialize on the other side with them. But Jayce is already moving, arms outstretched. Viktor reaches back, and he is caught in broad hands that immediately pull him closer and squeeze him to Jayce's chest. They fall back onto the grass, Jayce giving a little oof! as Viktor's weight lands atop him.

For a second they're nose to nose, and Jayce looks up at Viktor with all the love in every atom in his body. Viktor looks back with the same love written plainly on his own face.

They don't say a word. They don't need to - Jayce tugs him close once more, presses his cheek to the top of Viktor's sun-warmed head, and Viktor listens to Jayce's heart thunder under his ear. He's lifted, ever so slightly, by Jayce's breathing, a gentle rocking that provides a steady countermeasure to his own rabbit-fast pulse. Jayce holds Viktor like he'll never let go again, and he might just not. Viktor tucks his head under Jacye's chin and he starts laughing as it hits him too.