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Birth is an ugly thing. Raw and primal. The scent of blood heavy in the air, bodies twisting, screaming, crying out in agony. Twin voices of fear marveling at the true horror of what it means to exist, to be. The child destroys the mother in the process, damaging her in ways her system and processes cannot hope to repair. Organs misplaced, distorted, twisted into impossible shapes to account for that parasite. A host and a tumor. We are excised.
This second birth goes much the same.
Viktor is the mother and child in one. A victim to his own body. Eating and tearing away at the curtain of identity that makes him real. Destroying everything down to the core, muscles and sinews. He twitches and moans in pain as he’s trapped within the prison of his mind. The hexcore twists him until what’s physical is a memory, a hazy shadow forged in unnatural metal. Sensation melts away until not even the pain can reach him. Numbed into complacency.
But that pain has stuck with him since his first birth. It became a part of Viktor just as much as his limbs, teeth and eyes, his brain. The ache in his knee that shoots up his thigh any time he miscalculates and bears weight onto his disused ankle. He doesn’t know how to exist outside of it. He feels… hollow. Wrong.
The wrongness urges him forward. Viktor is reborn like an animal tearing itself out of its dead mother’s womb. The texture is all wrong—gelatinous and far too soft—but he fights and claws all the same. His fingers slice through the substance like honed blades, but it clings to him like a lover’s caress. Drawing him back to safety with a lying tongue. The threads clinging to his forearms eventually snap under the pressure and Viktor stumbles into open air. The numbness persists.
He falls. Palms spread flat on the white flooring, Viktor gasps for air. There are voices in his head that he can’t shake out, ones that aren’t his own. They echo around the lab like a near empty theater. An audience to his farce of a second life. Slowly, he manages to find the resolve to stand. Across the room, there are half a dozen people staring back at him.
And Jayce.
There’s an unsettling heaviness weighing on him. He feels burdened and liberated at the same time. Each step forward takes immeasurable amounts of strength. Viktor expects himself to crumble, but he bends and bears it all. The cane is an instinctual thing, silly, illogical. He knows he doesn’t need it but he hardly knows how to walk without it now.
Jayce is hunched over his desk, tools and papers strewn about. He fell asleep by accident again, Viktor acknowledges with a huff. There are bandages hugging his stomach and wrapping around his shoulders for additional support. Shirtless, and glistening with sweat, as he often is. As he limps towards Jayce’s familiar form his feet thud against the floor, scraping harshly with each drag. It’s loud enough to stir Jayce from his familiar snoring.
“Jayce?” Viktor’s voice is a fragile whisper as he calls out. For the barest of seconds he wonders if his partner is another phantom hallucination.
Jayce is standing in an instant, the muscles in his back and abdomen shifting as he turns and stares back at Viktor with wild eyes. He cards a hand through his own hair, making it even more of a mess than it already is.
“V-viktor?!”
Viktor is suddenly embarrassed, a pesky natural reaction to vulnerability. Gods, he’s hideous, everything but his face now a malignant cancer. He folds in on himself, clinging to his cane and averting his gaze from Jayce’s expression of pure joy and adoration. It knocks the air from his alien lungs. He gasps for it like he’s drowning. Panic. He’s panicking. Viktor is choking on it when he asks, “What… am I?”
What have I become? What have you done to me?
Jayce shares in his breathlessness. He looks all over Viktor, down his slight chest, narrow waist, and angular hips. There’s no attempt made to hide his… base curiosity. His attention is so pointed that Viktor can feel it on him like fingers running down his skin.
“You’re…” Jayce swallows, bare throat bobbing. A red tint blossoms on his tan cheeks. “Beautiful.”
That—Viktor did not anticipate. Shock, disgust, yes. Awe and telltale signs of arousal? Jayce has always been ruled by emotion, but that doesn’t account for this peculiar reaction.
Jayce shakes his head with an awkward laugh, smiling just enough for Viktor to see the hint of his teeth. “Sorry. I don’t know why I said that. I mean. You’re alive?” His tone makes it sound like a question. “You’re alive!”
He throws himself at Viktor, then. Two strong arms curl around his back and all Viktor feels is warmth. It’s dulled, muted by whatever abomination has become his exoskeleton, but warm nonetheless. A gasp spills past his lips, and Viktor is momentarily rendered immobile in the face of Jayce’s unfiltered affection. Viktor’s shame is juxtaposed by Jayce’s shamelessness, and it’s all so overwhelming all he can do is return the embrace in stunned silence. His purple alien appendages press into furnace-hot flesh, like he wants to pry Jayce open and steal back some of his humanity.
He trembles in Jayce’s hold.
“When I saw you like that—” Jayce is distraught with emotion, breaking apart in a shuddering sob. “Viktor. Oh, Viktor.”
“Yes,” he says weakly after a long silence. Then, “I’m surprised you even want to touch me.” It could be contagious, caustic, turning Jayce to dust much like Sky. Her laughter echoes between his ears.
Jayce pulls away to look Viktor in the eyes, but his hands trail down Viktor’s arms as he goes. “What? Why would you say that? Viktor, it’s just you. You’re still you. It doesn’t matter what you look like.”
“I believe most people would not agree, but I admire your optimism.”
“Fuck them. If they can’t see how amazing you are—”
“Jayce,” Viktor sputters. He fights the urge to hide himself behind his hands. He’s not used to this sort of openness.
“I meant what I said. You look beautiful,” Jayce murmurs. His pained voice has turned into something far more sensual. “I can’t stop staring at you.”
Without any further warning Jayce touches the hard chitinous flat of Viktor’s pectoral, stroking along the surface. Viktor goes rigid, beyond flustered by the increasing tension between them, one that’s notably beyond the boundaries of friendship. Jayce’s breathing gets louder as he reduces the distance between their bodies once more. Now, he looms over Viktor, watching him with something unknowably hungry in his eyes. Hot air ghosts across Viktor’s forehead, one of the only natural parts of himself remaining. The sensation would have him breaking out with goosebumps if he still could.
Viktor layers his palm over Jayce’s wandering hand and raises an eyebrow from under his curtain of messy hair.
“S-sorry,” Jayce blinks himself out of his stupor. “I shouldn’t be doing this.”
“Don’t stop,” Viktor says quietly. It’s more like an order than a request. His confidence has Jayce wide eyed.
“Ok. Yeah. I’m so glad you said that, because I really, really didn’t want to.”
Jayce is all over him in an instant, grabbing onto Viktor’s narrow waist with his large hands as he runs his lips along Viktor’s jaw. His surface is the texture of satin, cold and unyielding but smooth. The elegant gilded filigree accenting Viktor’s ribs, hips, and limbs are a jarring contrast to the rest of his outer shell. More questions well up in the back of his mind, variations of why and how? There’s no time to think of them when Jayce is stroking the seam between his upper torso and the golden piece ingrained into his abdomen. The feeling is so peculiar, like Jayce is caressing the very core of his being. Viktor clings to Jayce’s broad shoulders and shivers in response. His cane clatters to the floor, forgotten.
It’s gradual corruption goes unnoticed.
“Is that alright?” Jayce asks with a shy smile. “Does this feel… good?”
“I…do not know,” Viktor blinks, musing over the alienness. He squirms from the rapt attention. “There are nerve endings reacting to stimuli, your warmth and pressure. But it is different. I do not feel you.”
“Oh…”
“Touch me more,” Viktor suggests without considering any possible implications.
Jayce inhales sharply, brown eyes darting up to meet Viktor’s with a sort of sheepish guilt. The unspoken reason why thickens the air between them, so heavy it’s nearly tangible. But Jayce doesn’t object, in fact it seems he’s more worried that he’s the one overstepping. A puzzling sort of anomaly. Viktor makes a habit of solving those. He curls his strange fingers around Jayce’s handsome jaw, momentarily hesitant at the sight of his own twisted body. Jayce continues to watch him under lidded eyes as Viktor steels his resolve and leans forward, pressing their lips together.
Viktor must be frigid against Jayce, because the moment they meet a roar of heat seeps from Jayce to him. The kinetic energy transfers, and Viktor is nearly buzzing. He gasps into it, spine arching to push his chest against Jayce’s broad figure. Viktor is naked, and Jayce is nearly there. He lacks the resolve to discover what the hexcore has done between his thighs, but Jayce clearly doesn’t share the same fears. He grinds his hips forward, the pressure of his erection on Viktor’s lower belly has him letting out a surprised oh! Then Jayce snakes his hand down the blackened landscape that leads to Viktor’s pelvis.
“You’re really enjoying this,” Viktor acknowledges with a coy amusement. His voice is still weak, and that makes the remark all the more cutting. Jayce looks at him like he just got caught with his pants down, which… well. It’s close.
“Think of it as, ah, scientific curiosity?” Jayce flushes.
“Oh? Strictly business.” Viktor smirks and drapes his arms around the back of Jayce’s neck. He tilts his head to the side, sending his loose hair over his brow. Jayce bears a majority of his weight without complaint. “What is your hypothesis, then?”
“Don’t ask me to actually think right now,” Jayce all but whines.
“What, am I distracting you?”
“Um.”
Viktor spares him the burden of stringing words together by kissing him again.
It’s a silly impractical emotion that surges within Viktor’s chest, this bubbling endearment. There’s so much that he can choke on it between the fear and confusion. Jayce… is not his, they’re hardly even partners anymore. They belong in two separate worlds. Piltover and the undercity. He shouldn’t dwell in this fleeting moment, but the way Jayce looks at him—as if Viktor is the most important thing in Runeterra—makes him sick with such a pathetic human need. If he were a different man, he would lash out in frustration. Beat at Jayce’s chest and beg him to listen, to change. But Viktor is far more keen on bottling everything up until he’s numb.
Hope is a horrible thing.
Jayce kisses him more desperately now, licking into his mouth as he takes them backwards. When they meet the edge of the counter, he guides Viktor down on top of it. Those big calloused hands gently support his back as Jayce turns him horizontal. There are papers everywhere, it’s a chaotic mess. To anyone else it would be the furthest thing from romantic, but to Viktor it’s so overwhelming all he can do is laugh.
Jayce stops kissing him to study his face, perhaps determining the cause of his little outburst. Viktor watches him through the fan of his dark eyelashes as Jayce reaches up to brush the hair from Viktor’s brow. Then that tender gesture is followed by another as Jayce cups his half-corrupted cheek.
“I’m going to leave the council.”
“What?” Viktor blinks, as bewildered as if Freljord water has just been dumped over him. “Why?”
There’s sadness in Jayce’s eyes as he closes the distance to kiss Viktor’s forehead. He sits on the desk as well, hooking his knees over the edge. The muscles in his abdomen and back shift as he twists at his waist to face Viktor. Their legs are pressing against each other, the warmth traveling through veins all the way to Viktor’s heart. “You said it yourself, we have to make it right. This position, what it’s done to me—to you—fuck, Viktor. I can’t do it anymore. I don’t want to. I don’t want to push you away after everything we’ve been through. I just want to be partners again.”
He can hardly hear Jayce over the sound of the beating organ trapped behind the prison of his golden ribcage. “You would do this… just for me?” Viktor whispers, confused. “Abandon everything—”
“Not everything,” Jayce strokes the side of Viktor’s head, threading his fingers through messy waves. “Not you, not us.”
Good, Viktor wants to say, but perhaps that’s too insensitive. In truth, he can’t speak at all. Love wraps its fingers around his throat and squeezes tight until he can’t even breathe. Is it supposed to be this stifling?
“I was never qualified, and I never really wanted it anyway. I just did it out of… I don’t know, obligation? My civic duty to Piltover?” Jayce huffs, his shoulders drooping. “It’s not worth losing you over.”
“I didn’t know I was leaving,” Viktor says with a hint of playfulness to hide his discomfort. He nudges at Jayce with a sharp knee.
“I thought you were going to die,” Jayce admits, his voice breaking through with pain. He meets Viktor’s gaze warily, now lying himself down on the countertop until they’re parallel. The warm caress on Viktor’s cheek strokes down a corrupted arm until it laces between his fingers. Holding his hand…Viktor can hardly look at his face. Jayce, so sentimental.
“I would have, if you hadn’t…” Viktor doesn’t want to think about it. The hexcore, the repercussions to the method Jayce utilized. It’s inside him now. He’s not dead, but maybe this is worse.
Jayce made a promise, and he broke it. Now, Viktor is something… else. There’s a latent power coursing in his blood, and he’s terrified. But he understands Jayce’s devotion could never permit him to stand by and let Viktor die. In a way, he is reborn through Jayce’s affection.
This is his way of saying sorry, Viktor realizes, putting lips on the body he destroyed. If he gives enough of himself it might outweigh the guilt from what he’s done.
“This will have consequences,” Viktor says weakly.
“And I’ll help you figure it out, whatever happens. I’m not going to abandon you,” Jayce replies, full of conviction. He squeezes Viktor’s hand reassuringly.
“Thank you,” is all Viktor says. He isn’t so sure he means it.
A tender smile spreads on Jayce’s lips, the moment is intimate in a way that makes Viktor want to hide. Eventually Jayce remembers where they are and why they’re here, the honeymoon phase is over. He blinks and shakes his head, pulling away and trying to stand, but Viktor chases after him with a stubborn tug on Jayce’s shoulder.
“You’re—This isn’t comfortable for you. I should cover you,” Jayce stammers, his eyes are firmly averted away from Viktor. What a gentleman. The Man of Tomorrow indeed.
“No.”
Jayce frowns, his nervous energy is written all over him. It’s endearing, cute. “Are you…sure?” he asks, instead of objecting. “Aren’t you cold?”
“You’re better than clothes, bigger and hotter, more effective at transferring thermal energy. Besides, I fear I have little body heat of my own to preserve.” Viktor cranes his neck up just enough to watch Jayce more intently. “Come here, you aren’t going to break me.”
Jayce audibly swallows, he slowly complies, changing his position so that he’s on his hands and knees on top of Viktor. He’s a most pleasant burden. The voices in Viktor’s head are singing now as Jayce smothers him. A discordant choir of sighs vibrate inside his skull while hands slide down his jagged hips. Skin on skin contact—if it can even be called that—has something stirring between Viktor’s legs. Whatever anomaly is poised there is crying out for attention, swelling and filling with fluids. Viktor will assume it’s blood, for sanity’s sake.
“I know you want to have sex with me, Jayce,” Viktor says with a slight smile, as casual as an undercity brothel whore. Jayce shivers as he teases at the hem of his pants, spindly fingers slip the button through its hole. A perfect metaphor for what’s to come.
It’s Jayce’s turn to be flustered now, his cheeks go bright red as he stares at Viktor in shock. It takes a moment for him to work his slack jaw into comprehensible words. “Gods, we shouldn’t be doing this.”
“You’re craving that rush, that release. Chemicals and dopamine. To sate your curiosity. It’s alright. You don’t need to be afraid… or feel guilty. It’s a natural response to a high intensity situation.”
“What if there’s a reaction? What if it hurts you? We don’t know what will happen if… organic material interacts with this,” Jayce counters, but his decision is already made. His rich brown eyes are burning with desire, his cock digging into the crease of Viktor’s thigh.
There’s no mention of Mel. Viktor wonders if she’s even coming into the equation.
“We’ve already been doing a bit of touching, I’d say,” Viktor muses playfully, arching an eyebrow.
Jayce sputters.
“But if insertion is what worries you—it’s not without reason—there are alternative methods.”
“That’s, um, true.” Jayce’s gaze trails down Viktor’s slim frame. “What methods did you have in mind?”
Viktor makes a show of considering it, but he already knows what he wants. Eventually, he puts a hand on the crown of Jayce’s head, threading his fingers through soft dark hair and pushing him down. “Oral, and I suggest you do not ingest any fluids.”
Jayce chokes out a moan. “Viktor,” he hisses in surprise, but he doesn’t resist.
It takes some repositioning from the both of them. The desk is at an awkward height for Jayce to kneel on the floor, so he has to lie down with Viktor. They end up taking up nearly all of the surface area, Jayce throwing various wrenches and hammers to the side in the process. He pushes Viktor’s legs open with an eager look on his face, and it makes Viktor feel something hot surge down where his spine should be.
The sight of Jayce in such a provocative position nearly blinds him to the horror of his own body. It’s not out of view, but it fades to the background for the moment.
“You’re beautiful,” Jayce reminds him quietly, then he puts his mouth on Viktor’s lower abdomen. Trailing down the flat expanse of blackened tissue.
Viktor inhales sharply, hesitating for a moment before urging Jayce lower. The sensation is greatly dulled compared to what it should be, but it’s still there. If he digs deep enough he can feel the pleasure hidden behind layers of nothingness. The results are clear enough, making his own cock swell and perk up between his thighs. It… looks like the rest of him, covered in that strange sinew-like texture. Golden accents replace what would have been veins, and the tip is a lighter color, more yielding when Jayce wraps his hand around it. The both of them watch it with the intensity of true professional curiosity as it comes to life under Jayce’s touch.
Gasps spill from Viktor’s mouth, he arches his gaunt hips into the feeling, the heat. The skin is not pliable or soft, it doesn’t shift as Jayce strokes him. His cock is more akin to a silicone toy than a flesh and blood organ. There’s no time to mourn when Jayce dips his head down and licks along the underside of the head. He eyes Viktor as he does it, studying every little reaction punched out of him.
“Have you ever done this before?” Viktor can’t help but ask.
“No,” Jayce admits, his eyes glancing away.
“It’s alright,” Viktor smiles affectionately. “We’re both no strangers to experimentation. Just try not to bite.”
Jayce shakes his head, taking it for the joke it is. It seems to have succeeded in alleviating his anxieties, or at least some of them. He doesn’t hesitate to wrap his lips around Viktor’s glans, once again meeting his gaze and he suckles shallowly. The wet heat makes visions appear around the room, geometric shapes and colors imperceptible to human eyes. The voices change to a more unified hum of building tension. Viktor hooks his legs around the back of Jayce’s thick neck and pulls him closer, locking him into place.
It conveys his pleasure well enough.
Jayce uses one hand to stroke at the base of Viktor’s shaft, while the other runs up and down his angular torso. He has no nipples left to tease, his pectorals are hardened and far too slight to properly fondle. Jayce doesn’t mind. He adapts as he would in any other situation. Fingertips slide over the metal embedded in his carapace, and nestle into the holes shining through with purple. The first time he makes contact with that inner layer, Viktor cries out in surprise. It sends a jolt through his whole body like he’s just gotten stabbed, but it isn’t unpleasant. Far from it. His cock throbs in Jayce’s mouth.
“That was… unexpected,” Viktor pants.
He throws his head back against the desk as he gives into the sensation. The simplest of touches are setting him ablaze. His limbs squirm as Jayce swallows him down to the base. He’s the sole point of sanity in the kaleidoscope swirling around them. Jayce shuts his eyes and submits himself to the motions, bobbing on his cock, slicking the unnatural flesh with saliva. His face is a mess, glistening and wet. Viktor’s pleading hand in his hair as tousled Jayce’s bangs into his eyes. Disheveled is a great look on him, the image searing into the chaos of Viktor’s corrupted mind.
The head of his cock is hitting the back of Jayce’s mouth, brushing against the fluttering muscles of his throat. When he sucks, they squeeze around him like a vise. Viktor can’t help but thrust into it, chasing his release with a desperate fervor. Jayce stops moving to adjust, breathing laboriously through his flaring nostrils as Viktor fucks his face. He’s too aroused for the shame to register, all he can think about is Jayce, Jayce, Jayce, and getting off.
It happens sooner than Viktor can anticipate. He manages to spit out a warning for Jayce to get off of him. By the time his swollen lips release him, Viktor is orgasming, painting Jayce’s face with his cum. His whole body trembles, pelvis humping the air uselessly as everything tears through him. The voices are singing, a deafening cacophony that drowns out Jayce’s matching moans of delight. Only when it’s over and Viktor’s eyes slide open does he see that his semen is purple.
Jayce wipes it from the bridge of his nose with a perplexed expression. He spreads it between his thumb and forefinger, studying the viscosity.
“Huh,” he says. “Good thing I didn’t swallow this.”
“Jayce,” Viktor moans weakly. He feels like what little energy was left in his body is completely gone.
“Hey, are you feeling okay?” Jayce frees himself from the tangle of Viktor’s legs wrapped around him, putting them down before climbing closer. He brushes Viktor’s cheekbone with the back of his hand.
“Yes, very okay. Better, even,” Viktor leans into the touch with a smile. “You should get that off your face.”
“Ah, right.” Jayce gets off the workspace to do just that. He grabs a spare towel lying around—one typically used for oil or other messes—and wipes the cum from his skin.
When he’s done he returns to Viktor, cradling him in his large arms. Jayce’s half lidded eyes meet his own for a moment before they trail down to Viktor’s lips. Then they’re kissing again, slow and sensual. A hand curls around Viktor’s hip while another tangles in his hair. Their bodies fit together like a puzzle, limbs interlocking to fill the gaps. All the while at the back of his mind, Viktor wonders if it was only the light, or if Jayce’s skin was paler than usual.