queerly-anxious

[queerly-anxious]

Swan song

Professor Viktor x TA Reader

[PART 1]｡ ﾟ☾ ﾟ｡⋆[PART 2] ⋆｡ﾟ☁︎｡⋆[PART 3]

⋆｡ﾟ☁︎｡⋆[AO3 link] ⋆｡ ﾟ☾ ﾟ｡

Summary: You’re a bright phD student who won’t shy away from a challenge. Getting the most notorious professor at the University of Piltover to hire you as his assistant is one of them.

Tags: Modern AU, SFW (for now…), DILF professor Viktor, who delights in being a bit of a dick, and becomes even more mean on bad pain days, and who is constantly insufferably rightfully smug, Smart & competent reader being reduced to a wolf with heart eyes going AWOOOGA when they lay eyes on Viktor.

Word count: 7.8k

Notice: This fic is written with a transmasculine reader in mind, but that won’t come into play at all until the final third chapter of this mini-series.

Notes: 1. Shoutout to my beloved buddies for helping me with this fic, AND the banner. You guys know who you are. 2. I hope you enjoy this very self indulgent piece about my take on Viktor as a professor in a modern AU. Keep in mind that this work is entirely spoiler free. Although it will be posted over the upcoming three weeks as arcane season two drops, I had no information about any of the leaks whatsoever as I wrote this, and did my utmost to avoid them. This iteration of Viktor was written with his season one character traits as a base in mind. 3. The science Viktor and reader talk about in depth in this fic is entirely made up and definitely falls apart under scrutiny. Don’t look too hard. Yes, I made up an entire hextech based scientific field specifically so I could carnally have this old man.

You know exactly what to expect from someone like Professor Viktor Sidorov-Svoboda. 

You’ve done your homework on the man: interviewed colleagues who’d taken his lectures as undergrads (scary — but great at his job had been the general consensus), and checked his ratemyprofessor profile. Which, by the way, had been a terrific read. 

Dr Sidorov-Svoboda is a very polarizing man, it seems. Reviews were either raving about his cogency, or saying they’d drive to his lecture without wearing a seatbelt in the hopes that death would take them before Sidorov did. There seemed to be no in-between, other than one review calling him a total DILF and rating him five out of five for that alone.

You digress. All sources had gotten across more than enough for you to understand what you were going to face once you’d step into his office: brilliant, tenured, independent, a no-nonsense attitude, and with a spotless track record of turning down TAs. 

Which you’re here to change — the last part, that is.

It’s not exactly a guilt-free affair. Dr Heimerdinger — the dean himself — had personally reached out to you, and requested you try to convince Sidorov-Svoboda to accept you as his TA. Should you succeed, you would be offered a generous wage.

That, along with the fact that Sidorov’s name is going to pretty up your CV something fierce if you somehow land this job, is reason enough to make you at the very least give it a go.

With a fortifying breath, you rap your knuckles on the oakwood of his office door.

“Yes?” A heavy accent makes itself known on the y.

You wait to see if he’ll open — five seconds pass — he doesn’t. 

Rude.

You take that as your cue to push the door open yourself.

Nothing could have prepared you for the man whose cat-like eyes pierce you from above rectangular silver reading glasses. He hadn’t even bothered lifting his head from what he’d been reading through; and when he finally does grant you the gift of being looked at, wholly, it feels the same way as having a painting stare back at you. In the back of your mind, you swear you can hear the horns of an orchestra blaring into a crescendo.

His gaze pierces you, in a way that borders on literal. It’s undressing — less erotic, and more terrifying, as a consequence of nakedness, of being read. Professor Sidorov-Svoboda looks at you with a kind of disinterest that screams I have you figured out, and it’s punching your heart down into your stomach in a lovely, terrible way.

The lines of his face are lovingly crafted. Dark shadows under hollow cheeks, golden eyes under strong brows, there’s something intrinsically statuesque about his face. You’d expect to look at something akin to Sidorov-Svoboda in a museum, carved in marble, not in one of the dusty offices at your university.

He cocks his head, exposing a long, swan-like neck dotted with beauty marks, as he waits for you to regain your wits. Which you do, before any of this crosses the threshold between awkward and downright embarrassing.

“Hello, doctor,” you finally manage. “My name is (y/n) (l/n), theoretical arcanism department, phD student. I was… hoping we could discuss a position as your TA.”

He cocks a brow, thoroughly unimpressed, before he slides his glasses off his face. He even takes a sip of his lukewarm coffee, deliberately slow in swallowing it, before he finally speaks.

“I believe you should already be familiar with the fact that I do not take assistants.” Sidorov leans forward in his chair a fraction, still poring over his book, and there is a marked pop in one of his joints that sounds nothing short of painful. He seems hardly bothered by it. 

“I am,” you reply. “Which is why I am here in the hopes of changing your mind.”

That finally makes him look at you properly again. It’s a delight. You wish you could savor it, instead of desperately trying to keep your wits about you.

“And why would you want to do that?”

The answer to that question has changed substantially since you’d first stepped foot into his office.

But you’re fortunately not stupid enough to tell him that.

“Your name is worth gold in the community, doctor. I would like it on my resume.”

He picks up his pen, squinting as he scribbles something in his book, before he hums with disinterest.

“Mm. I heard doctor Pididdly takes more kindly to flattery.” He brushes a grey strand of hair from his face, clicking his pen as he simply lets you stew in your own embarrassment and focuses on whatever he’s reading. When he speaks again, he does not award you the honor of feigning the smallest hint of interest. “And you can send doctor Heimerdinger my regards. Let him know I am still not looking for an assistant.”

He has you figured out, and it’s making you feel dumber than any advanced class has ever had the honor of doing.

“The dean? I haven’t spoken to him since—“

“Since last year, when you took his theoretical arcane force fields class? Or was it since he explicitly asked you to come to my office with this proposition?”

You’re not the only one who’s done their research on the other. Though it’s painfully clear that he was much more thorough in his pursuit.

“I’m… sorry.”

“For wasting both our time? You should be.” He does dignify you with one glance, and even sets his pen down, as he bids you goodbye.

—

You’re fortunately not a sore loser. The money and resume addition would have been nice, yes, but you suppose they still would not have made up for working with someone as sharp and cutting as Svoboda.

You’ll gladly take the loss. And you are.

He’s long gone from the front of your mind, though something about him — his gaze, his face, his voice — lingers and shrouds the back of your brain with a tempting distraction from your thesis.

The last thing you expect as you’re burning your retinas staring at the blue light of your laptop screen leafing through the countless open tabs on your laptop is a notification. It startles you out of your skin, the red dot next to the university portal app’s icon. 

Still, more curious than nervous about who could be messaging you at 11pm on a Saturday, you click.

Dr. Prof. Viktor Sidorov-Svboda

Good evening. Please come see me in my office on Monday. I would like to discuss the arrangements of your future employment as my assistant. Let me know what time would work best for you, within the limitations of my office hours.

11:32

…What?

You wonder what swayed his mind in your ultimate favor after you’d embarrassed yourself quite so thoroughly this week. But you're not about to complain — you more than certainly need the money, and his name on your resume.

Whatever turned the odds in your favor, you’re ever-grateful. And as much as you hate to admit it, you do double-check the message to make sure it’s actually real.

Me

Thank you for this opportunity, professor. I’m looking forward to working as your assistant, as well as broadening my knowledge and skills. Would 1 PM work for you?

11:34

Dr. Prof. Viktor Sidorov-Svboda

Yes. That should be fine.

11:34

You think you should leave it at that. You know you should. But… you’re curious. You really hope this doesn’t cost you the job offer you’ve just received.

Me

May I ask what swayed your decision?

11:37

Dr. Prof. Viktor Sidorov-Svboda

You may not. Good night.

11:37

So much for that.

—

You knock, but this time you don’t wait after being greeted with a yes? from behind his imposing office door.

“Hello, Professor Sidorov-Svoboda.”

You’re greeted with the distinctive smell of chicken stock and vegetables wafting from his office as you step in — a sore reminder of the fact that you’ve yet to procure lunch. Whatever he’s been eating, it smells tremendous.

His thermos squeaks as he screws it shut and sets it on the corner of his desk, gesturing for you to have a seat.

“Hello.” The faux velvet seat creaks awkwardly below you. “Thank you for your punctuality. I won’t take up too much of your time — we’ll discuss any questions you might have in further detail, but, to, eh… save us time, I’ve compiled a list of your responsibilities, and some personal preferences regarding grading papers I expect you to take into consideration when you do so.”

As he explains, you take a moment to take in his office. You certainly hadn’t gotten to it last time.

It’s mainly tidy, save for his large desk, which is littered with papers, a sudoku magazine, a disposable coffee cup from the campus cafe (though the cup is tall, roughly fit for a latte, if you had to guess… hm) and his dark blue, slightly beat-up thermos. Upon closer inspection, there’s a sticker on the cap.

It’s a small thing, worn like the rest of it, but the colours are unmistakable. Baby blue, pink, white — five stripes. 

As a million questions and half a million answers start flashing through your head, the rustle of paper snaps you out of your thoughts. 

There’s something analytical and vaguely, barely amused about how he looks at you when he slides the list across the table to you.

Contrary to what you expect, it’s not long. His main demand is grading papers, which isn’t your preferred kind of labor, but labor you will chew through, no less. 

“I expect fairness when you grade,” he clarifies. “Contrary to what some students like to say, I grade papers with utmost integrity. I am not lenient, yes, but I am not absurd, either. You will find further guidelines on how to strike that, eh… balance yourself on the list I’ve made. And don’t hesitate to ask, should any uncertainties arise when you grade.”

“Fortunately, it’s applied arcanism,” you reply. “Not much room for… uncertainties, I’d expect.”

“You would be surprised.”

Viktor gives a knowing smile. Something about the placement of his mole right above the corner of his mouth, where his chapped, pale lips thin out, has your vision tunneling. You damn near startle when he starts talking again — good god, you need to get your act together.

“I will direct students’ questions to you, from now on. Should you not have an answer, you are welcome to contact me — but keep it to a minimum. Especially since applied arcanism is, as you seem to think, such an easy topic. As for lectures, you may attend, but it isn’t something I’ll be expecting from you. You teaching said lectures does not come into question. I have standards — high ones. If anyone is to take over, it will be someone whom I am certain is qualified for the job, not a phD student.”

“I am still prepared to,” you say. “Should the opportunity… present itself.”

“It most likely won’t.” With that, he straightens his back out in his seat, cracking the knuckle of his right thumb as he leans back in thought, going over his mental list. “Do you have any questions for me?” 

His little smirk is magnetic, crows feet near his eyes creasing ever so slightly deeper as the corners of his lips rise. One of his dark brows lifts gently in a display of smugness that leaves you braindead enough to nearly miss the entirety of his next sentence. “Other than the one from Saturday night?”

Oh, damn him. Damn him.

And, as a matter of fact, you have about ten more. But none of them are even close to appropriate to ask — not now, or ever.

“No,” you lie. It somehow feels like he can see right through it.

“Very well. Thank you for your time.”

You thank him too. You’re not sure what for — his sudden generosity to offer you this position, or simply for the fact that he looked so pretty while he talked.

—

You, by now, know what optional really means in academia. Above all else, it’s meant to be an abstract line that separates two distinct groups: those who put in the extra effort, and slackers.

You don’t want Sidorov-Svoboda to know you as the latter.

Which is why you get a hold of his lecture schedule from Heimerdinger on the very same Monday afternoon, and plan on attending every single one of them that doesn’t overlap with something else in your schedule. Until he either outright tells you to stop, or until your contract as his assistant ends.

Much to your surprise, most of his lectures, save for Wednesdays and one on Fridays, do fit into your schedule as well.

On Tuesday, you are thirty minutes early waiting outside his office door.

And, as much as it shouldn’t be, it is a little funny how he startles when he groggily wobbles out of his office, keys in hand, and a cane in the other.

It’s a gorgeously designed thing; so much so it has you (stupidly) guessing it’s strictly in use for aesthetics the moment you first see it. It’s made of sturdy wood, with a dark finish and golden details down the length of it. The wood on the handle has gone light and matte with use.

But judging by how he leans on it as he numbly turns to lock the door of his office behind himself while he greets you leads to a different conclusion. And the stagger in his stride as he approaches you only confirms that he does, in fact, need it.

“Good morning, doctor Si—“

He raises his free hand slowly, like it’s heavy with fatigue. It’s enough to shut you up.

“Viktor,” he says. “Please. Just call me Viktor, from now on.” He pauses, looking you up and down with a fatigued sort of near-jealousy, before he shakes his head. “Why… are you here at seven thirty in the morning?”

“I want to attend your lectures.”

He sighs.

“And you picked the one at this hour?”

“Yes.”

“Hm.” You can’t quite tell if he’s displeased or if he’s just really tired.

“Rough morning?” You ask.

“Aren’t they all…” 

It certainly isn’t your intention to let it become a habit — you’re his assistant, not his secretary, but you’ve learned that sucking up does get you forward in academia more often than not, so you offer: “Would you like me to get you some coffee?”

“I am getting myself coffee.” He attempts to stifle a yawn, but does not succeed. “But I would like you to accompany me.”

Your heart flutters. You tell yourself it’s because you’re getting coffee with one of the fathers of applied arcanism.

—

“A french vanilla latte, please. Under the name “A french vanilla latte, please. Under the name Viktor.”

Before you get to mentally clap yourself on the back and imagine a round of applause for your keen eye, you have to focus on not making a fool of yourself when you say your own order. The professor thankfully takes mercy on you, and leaves to take a seat at one of the tables — though probably for his own sake, rather than to spare you any embarrassment.

You decide the polite thing would be to keep him company as you wait for your orders. Reluctantly, you approach the table he’s picked, and, after a moment’s hesitation, pull out a chair for yourself.

“Professor Heimerdinger spoke quite highly of you.” 

It startles you, the sound of his voice interrupting the lull of the clanking of dishes and hissing of steam and hum of the espresso machines.

“Oh. I appreciate that he did.” 

“Hm.” For how blasé he’d acted until this very moment, it seems like you’ve said something that’s piqued his interest utterly. He hunches forward a hint, entwining his long, bony fingers over the top of the cane between his thin thighs. “You don’t seem very surprised.”

Uh oh.

“I’m sorry if it seemed that way, really, it’s not that I’m not flattered, professor—“

“Viktor,” he interrupts. “And you needn’t be. I do not care for, ah… false humility.”

Oh?

“False humility?” You question. 

“A mark of someone either too self-conscious to accept a well deserved compliment, or desperate for one.” He pauses, looking for… something in your expression. You can’t tell if he finds it, but you know his gaze feels cold, like being prodded at with a nitrile glove. “I prefer working with people who are capable of appreciating their own effort. It’s good to know you are one of them.”

There’s warmth that seeps through the metaphorical glove, sterile as it is. It feels good to be acknowledged by the likes of him, who’d been so ruthless to figuratively knock your feet out from below you just days ago. He must have done his research on you, must have asked around, read around, figured out — just like you had done to him.

Curiosity eats at you.

“Well… what else do you know, pr— Viktor?”

His eyes rest on you like you’re a particularly tricky equation. One he knows will yield a pretty result. Being looked at by him is electric, like squeezing an unstabilized hexgem in your fist so the current courses through you, tingling. 

“Don’t get cocky.” He smiles, he actually smiles, and it frays the space-time continuum just how much it youthens him. Salt and pepper hair and crow’s feet and frown lines be damned; as you watch the tip of his snaggle canine poke out from beneath his top lip, it becomes evidently clear that you are standing face to face with the man who stole illegal equipment to prove a point, the man who worked with highly explosive material for years to birth the very foundation of his scientific domain. “It is most certainly a good look on you, but it won’t bring you too far. You can ask Doctor Talis, I believe he should have a doctorate in arrogance by now.”

Is he…?

“French vanilla latte for Viktor!”

—

Listening to him teach might as well count as hypnosis. 

When Viktor steps into the room, silence ensues gently, gradually. He’s not feared by any means, but he is respected. By the time he reaches the teacher’s desk and pulls out the chair from under it, the class has gone fully silent.

He sets it by the blackboard, then, slowly, bracing himself on both his cane and the backrest of it, takes a seat.

“Good morning.” He positions his cane between his thighs, clearing his throat with… perhaps almost a hint of awkwardness. “Alright. Before we begin today’s lecture, there has been a small change that everyone should be made aware of. This is my new assistant, (y/n) (l/n), and they will be joining us today. You will be addressing all questions you encounter outside of my lectures to them, from now on.”

Whispers spread across the amphitheater like wildfire.

“Now,” just like that, when his voice sounds out again, most of the chatter dies out, “today we’ll be discussing Holloran’s equation, and its applications in arcanistic techmaturgy.”

It’s magical, the command he has over the room. Viktor is a meager man, especially with the backdrop of such an imposing room. The high ceiling dwarfs him, and yet, there doesn’t seem to be a single atom in the room that doesn’t move the way he wants it to.

You’d known Viktor to be an eloquent man — you’d experienced it at your own detriment — but this beats your expectations. His explanations are enticing, he uses his words like breadcrumbs, leaves them tactfully, just enough to guide you to the conclusions he wants you to draw.

You’d never found so much satisfaction in simply listening. In spite of knowing full well the intricacies of what he is discussing, you let his voice envelop you, you follow him where he takes you.

“Now that we’ve established how Holloran’s equation exponentially heightens the energy output of Hexcrystals without disrupting the LHC — the laminal hexeon cascade — as I’m sure some of you may be wondering, how do the basic principles play into it? Any guesses?”

The class falls silent. You would give anything to be among the students right now, raising your hand to enounce the right answer. To have him looking at you like you’re bright.

You await with bated breath to see who in the crowd of focused frowns and scribbling pencils will dare speak first.

“Wouldn’t the caveat be that Talis’ fourth principle states that 30% of the energy output is converted into heat?” A young woman in the audience attempts. “Holloran’s equation operates based on the notion that the crystal is at a constant temperature.”

“Precisely. Very good,” Viktor praises. Excited, he turns to the blackboard. “Right here…” he underlines the equation, “is where Morichi’s constant comes into play…”

But you’ve long lost him.

The words twist in your head, turning into something sultry and intimate.

Precisely.

Very good.

Right here.

You find yourself staring at the groove of his pale neck, where it swoops into the line of his shoulder, hidden beneath the collar of a dress shirt and a brown wool vest.

You wonder what it’d smell like, to tuck your face in there. To have the pulse of his neck thrumming on your lips, to mouth at the mole on his jaw when he tilts his head for you, willing. 

You wonder how many more are below the collar of his shirt. Dotted line on a treasure map, to guide your touch, your kiss, your tongue. Use them where he needs them, use them where his skin begs you to. Use them until his tired spine bows, use them until tattered joins are oiled with pleasure—

What is wrong with you? 

—

Viktor disappears after his lecture. You hope he’d grace you with another conversation, another smile, something, but he is gone surprisingly fast. He bids you goodbye once his lecture is over, telling you he has matters to attend to, and that is that.

Overall, it’s an uneventful day otherwise. A few students end up messaging you, most with questions on what Viktor had taught that day. Others nitpicking what would and would not be a part of the upcoming midterm (whom you simply dryly referred to the syllabus). Two people, however, did message you to ask you how you’d landed the job.

You’d ignored them.

On Wednesday, you see none of him. You drop by his office after class, but there is no response to your knock, and the door is locked. He must have gone home.

On Thursday, you wait for him outside his office thirty minutes early for his 3PM lecture, but he doesn’t show. So you decide to go straight to the amphitheater, and do find him there.

He looks worn. No less graceful than the last time you’d seen him, but his cane has been ditched in the favor of a crutch that’s tucked under his arm. The creases in his checkered dress shirt and face seem deeper now, the pale indigo under his eyes is richer, darker.

He gives you nothing more than a curt greeting before class commences.

And yet, he never blunders. Never loses himself, his diction is as concise as the day you’d first met him, carrying himself with the grace of a swan as he talks and his chalk glides over the board. But his numbers slant, the loops on his letters are looser, the rows on the blackboard curve downwards to the right; just barely at first, but as the lecture advances, it becomes more obvious.

He cuts the class shorter by fifteen minutes. 

The students know better than to linger. Nobody comes to address any questions, and they leave the room surprisingly quick.

Once the amphitheater is empty enough that even the thump of his crutch reverberates on the wooden floor as he makes his way to the desk, you finally dare speak.

“Is… everything alright?” 

“Don’t start,” he cuts back, resting his crutch against the desk before bracing himself with both hands on the flat surface. He sighs, and does a futile attempt of relieving some of the tension in his spine by rolling his shoulders.

His joints crack, and you can see his sharp shoulder blades moving under his shirt, wings on a flightless bird.

And you’re not sure what to say.

“Sorry,” he finally adds, the harshness of his reply catching up to him. “Not… a good day.”

“Got off on the wrong side of the bed?” You attempt weakly, and, much to your utter surprise, he does actually smile.

“Mm. That might explain the past two decades or so.” He does finally look at you from below droopy eyelids, and though there’s not a doubt about him being tired still, there is more gentleness to it. As though woken out of a dream. He takes pity on the confused look on your face, and adds: “My bed is in a corner.”

Ah. 

“Is there anything I can do to help? Anything I can get you?”

“A new spine,” he jokes, hunching forward to crack his back, before he does his best to stand up straight once more. When he speaks again, his playful lilt is sorely missing. “Why are you here?”

“I want to attend your lectures — as many of them as I can, at least.”

Viktor shakes his head, mutters something both a little desperate and a little bitter in a foreign tongue. 

“You don’t need to do that. From now on, you can simply tell Cecil you were here. And I will confirm it, should he ask. But I do not need… a babysitter. I’m sure you have better things to do as well.”

What? Why would he think that?

“I…” you falter, “Heimerdinger didn’t put me up to this.”

He scoffs, not particularly at you, but it’s surprisingly hurtful nonetheless.

“I thought we had moved past the stage where you felt the need to lie.” He sighs. “I know he worries. There is nothing to worry about. In the unlikely event he does find out you haven’t been following me around as he asked, I will take full responsibility.”

That alone makes you worry. Had Heimerdinger neglected to tell you the full picture? What was there that warranted the dean himself worrying?

”I came to your lectures because I wanted to see you teach.” The last word is more of a lie than anything you’ve said thus far. “I admire your cogency. I want to absorb as much of it as I can.”

Viktor looks thoroughly unimpressed. “We also discussed how I feel about flattery, did we not?”

“It’s not flattery,” you argue. “I came here of my own volition because I think that there’s a lot I can learn from you, professor. Now, if you don’t want me here, you can simply give me the word, and I will act accordingly.”

He mulls it over for a long second while he shuts his leather briefcase. 

“Perhaps that would be best,” he finally decides. “For now, continue with your assigned duties. I will let you know if there is anything else I need from you.”

He practically scans you for a reaction, lays you out paper-thin on a glass slide, and slides you under his most potent microscope lens.

You don’t know if he finds what he’s looking for, because he doesn’t look long. He slings the strap of his briefcase over his shoulder, and turns toward the exit with renewed, but undoubtedly spiteful vigor.

“Have a good day.”

“You too, professor.”

—

“Oh, if it isn’t one of my favorite phD students!” 

The dean’s mustache curls almost comically with the over-the-top, but somehow still sincere smile he gives you.

“Hello, doctor Heimerdinger,” you greet, letting the smell of laquered wood and floors wash over you as you step into the pristine, impressive office. As opposed to Viktor's, the ceiling is higher, the windows bigger, and there are only sterile messes to be found in the room. A stack of books that is not as neat as the rest, a cactus that doesn’t look all too swell on the windowsill, and documents that are scattered over his workspace in a way that’s still neat.

“What can I do for you? I hope the first week of your collaboration with doctor Sidorov-Svoboda has gone smoothly.”

“That… is actually why I’m here.” You clear your throat awkwardly, and take a seat on the plush chair that faces his desk. Whatever it’s stuffed with, it’s comfortable, it has you sinking.

“I see. I know he can be… a tad, well, peppery at times,” Heimerdinger giggles at his own choice of words. “Give him some time. Once the two of you manage to find some common ground, I can assure you he is wonderful company, and an incredibly bright mind.”

“I don’t doubt any of those things.” You start kneading your hands in your lap, digging for the right words. God, social chess was never your forte. “I’m actually here because there has been a bit of a misunderstanding between the two of us that I was hoping you could clear up.”

“Oh.” His smile drops. “I’m listening.”

“You see, when… well, when I attended his lecture today — the second one I’ve attended — he seemed… very displeased with my presence.”

“Ah…” Heimerdinger falls silent for a long moment, gears turning in his bald head. “That… well,” he laughs awkwardly, “I’m afraid that might have been because he might wrongly assume I told you to do so.”

You nod curtly. “I know. He told me as much.”

“I apologize for the misunderstanding. I will try speaking to him, but—“

“Actually, doctor, that isn’t why I came to you,” you cut in, “he told me more than just that. He said you’d put me up to this because you were… worried about him.”

At that, the smile on Heimerdinger’s face is entirely gone.

“Naturally, that also got me… quite worried. I came to you because I wanted to know the full picture of this… arrangement I’ve gotten into.”

“I see,” Heimerdinger sinks in his seat, folding his hands in front of his blond mustache as he picks his words carefully. “Well, since you have been made aware of this fact, I suppose there is no harm in admitting that I do, in fact, worry about Viktor. Him and I have history, so to speak. I’ve known him for many years, and, though he has remained the same bold, ambitious young man within, I sometimes fear old age may be catching up to him. But! That is not something you need to concern yourself with. The sole purpose of hiring you was to create a mutually beneficial arrangement. Your resume will certainly benefit from his name, and as for him, I wanted to simply… lighten his workload. But that is all I expect of you.”

“I understand.” And you do, to some degree — but Heimerdinger’s whole speech has done nothing but raise more questions than provide any real answers.

“Would you still like me to speak to him on this matter?” He asks.

“No.” With renewed courage and curiosity, you rise from the comfortable chair. “Thank you, professor. For this, and for putting in a good word for me with professor Sidorov-Svoboda.”

“Of course,” he smiles — genuinely, this time. “Though it might sound quite absurd to you now, considering the current circumstances… the two of you are more alike than you may believe.”

You’re not sure what to make of that, either. So you just smile back.

—

On Friday night, as you’re poring over your thesis with a warm mug of tea as a panacea for your racing thoughts and lack of inspiration, you receive an email.

Apologies

From: v.sidorovsvoboda@uofp.edu

To: me

Good evening.

I wanted to formally apologize for what happened on Wednesday. Accusing you of something you hadn’t done was unjustified and unprofessional of me. You are always welcome to my lectures, should you still wish to attend. 

I was also hoping to speak to you in person on Monday. Would 1 PM still work for you? Let me know.

Thank you.

VSS

It comes as a surprise, to have someone in his position apologize so… willingly. You wonder if Heimerdinger had talked to him after all, and if so, what he might have said to turn the odds so terribly in your favor. Again.

You write a fast reply: you thank him too, above all else. You consider saying you hadn’t expected and apology, but you fear that might come off wrong, so you ultimately ditch that part.

And you tell him yes. 1 PM would work for you.

—

You attend his 10AM lecture on Monday, but this time, you don’t wait for him at his office. Though eager and enthusiastic, you fear your initial approach of waiting for him thirty minutes early might have been too stifling.

So you wait outside the lecture hall. He shows up ten minutes early, crutch under one arm, coffee in his other.

There is just a hint of foam on his upper lip, where grey-brown stubble shows. He licks the milk away before he even sees you, and you’re thankful for it — being caught staring at the pink of his smart tongue darting over the curve of his top lip considering the current circumstances would not have been a good look.

“Good morning,” he greets. Though he’s still using the crutch, he seems to be in an improved mood as opposed to the last time you saw him. “I must admit… I did not expect you here already.”

“If you’ll have me, I want to come,” you say. 

Something about that catches him off-guard, the swell of his Adam's apple bobs and his eyes widen just a hint. But he’s fast, always is, and he straightens up and clears his throat before you get to analyze him the way you wish you could.

“Ahem. Well. I’m happy to hear that.” He gestures to the door as if he’d almost forgotten he was holding a coffee, because it sloshes just a hint too loud. Fortunately, there are no victims to the small droplet that spills from the plastic cover. Viktor frowns, most likely with frustration at himself, before he turns to you. “Alright. After you.”

You step into the lecture hall first, per his request. The room begins to quiet when the students see you, but as you turn around to hold the door open to him, it gets worse.

You do not care for the curious, gossip-hungry glances that rest on you.

—

“I appreciate your openness regarding the discussion of this matter,” Viktor begins, shutting his office door behind himself. “Coffee?”

He dips his hand behind an old but trusty looking coffee machine that sits on the table next to the door. You hadn’t noticed it the first time you were here.

The hint of a frown as his fingers roam the space between the back of the machine and the wall is doing… something to you.

“Yes, please.”

“I must warn you,” his voice lilts again in that pleasant, playful way, like a cat twirling figure eights between one’s legs, “it is significantly less… fun than the ones at the cafe. I only have sugar.”

He finds the switch on its back, finally, and there’s a little pop as he flips it, before he retreats his hand.

“Works for me,” you assure. “What did you want to discuss?”

“Mainly, I wanted to eh… extend my apologies to you in person.” His glasses ride further up his nose as he pinches the bridge of it, rolling his shoulders, as if to draw courage. “And to put my… reaction into some context, should you be willing to hear it.”

You hope it’s not outwardly visible that your heart starts vibrating. 

He has been on your mind much more than you would like to admit, tangled in questions, in guesses. You unfortunately have the mark of a true scientist — nothing scratches an itch in your soul quite like having your questions answered.

“I would.”

Viktor retrieves a stack of single-use cardboard cups from one of his drawers, sliding out two, which he positions under the coffee machine. He presses the same button twice, then gestures to the chair that faces his desk.

“Have a seat.”

You do.

He lingers beside the coffee machine, resting the backs of his thighs against the edge of the table it’s on as he starts to think.

Just now, it strikes you that maybe social chess isn’t always his forte, either.

“People tend to… underestimate me,” he begins. The coffee machine whirrs, clicks, whirrs again — and then coffee starts to trickle. He tucks his free hand into the pocket of his slacks in what attempts to be dejection, but clearly isn’t. “And while that is an advantage in a competitive environment, it’s not something I appreciate coming from my colleagues.”

“I wasn’t…”

“I know that. Now.” He clears his throat, then, with a show of surprising dexterity, slides his hand from his pocket and grabs both cups with one hand — one tucked between his index and middle finger, the other tucked between his middle and ring finger. You reach out to offer your help, but he sets down both cups on his desk, then hobbles around it, and finally takes his rightful seat on the opposing side. “I unfortunately can’t say the same for Cecil. He does try, and more often than not, he is tactful about these matters, but there is the occasional… slip-up. I try to understand; him and I… have history, as he likes to say.”

You would love to know the exact implications of said history. From what you’d heard, there was the consensus that Viktor had been something of a protege to Heimerdinger, twenty or so years ago, before he’d made it big and co-created the field of applied arcanism. 

“I’ve taken up some new responsibilities lately,” Viktor adds, “and Cecil, though worried as ever, has… overstepped some boundaries of mine. You were caught in the crossfire of that, which is hardly fair to you. I’m sorry.”

“Was he the one who convinced you to hire me?”

Viktor shrugs, avoiding your gaze. “Eeeh… partially.” 

“I think I understand your issue with his… overstepping. To some degree.” You take the cardboard cup, blowing the steam away, before you take a sip. “I would also have preferred to be hired by you because you wanted it, not because you'd been talked into it, but… well, I’m glad it ultimately still happened, I suppose.”

“Rest assured that the decision was still mine alone,” Viktor replies. Smart eyes watch you over the rim of the cup as he takes a sip himself.

Silence settles. A telltale sign you should get going — but you don’t want to.

“You mentioned some extra responsibilities,” you attempt. He’d shut down your curiosity before, but you’ll be damned if that’s going to deter you from trying again. “Within the university, or… personal?”

“Within the university.” Viktor sets the cup down, sharp joints jutting out as he intertwines his fingers around the circumference of it, hands resting on the table. There is a mole on his left ring finger, right under the knucklebone. “I have been trying my hand at independent research.”

You only notice the fact that you’d leaned in closer with interest when a tiny smug smile ghosts over his face. 

“I’m sorry to disappoint you, but that is just about all I should be telling you.”

Oh, come on.

“Show me yours and I’ll show you mine.”

His brows raise with surprise, and for the very first time since you’d known him, Viktor seems genuinely stumped.

“Your… research,” you clarify. “And I could show you what I have for my thesis so far.”

“Oh. Alright, I will, eh… bite.” Taking his paper cup with him, Viktor leans back in his seat, and watches you like a cat watches birds. Not necessarily on the prowl — but with great interest. “Tell me.”

“Me first?”

“You suggested it,” he smirks. “It seems only fair, does it not?”

Uncertainty halts you. You have to wonder if Viktor Sidorov-Sviboda is the kind of man that would steal an idea.

You’ve heard he’d gotten the short end of the stick in his partnership with Jayce Talis — though he’d contributed greatly, his name was sorely amiss from all the terms, laws, anything Talis had coined in their domain.

He must know what it’s like to be cheated out of well-deserved credit.

You suppose he wouldn’t propagate the cycle — but in the off case he does, you have a handful of professors who could vouch for your idea being yours, on account of having vaguely, barely, helped with your thesis. None had been too keen on such a touchy subject as the one you were breaching, and were resistant to offering their opinion.

You hope Viktor won’t fall into that same category.

Part of you already knows he doesn’t.

“Alright.” Though you’re not exactly excited to have your own strategy used against you, you can only hope he’ll hold up his end of the bargain. “My thesis is on the hexionic model. Within and outside the context of a matrix.”

Viktor scoffs with amusement, rather than plain mockery. But there is a taste of it in there, somewhere, in the curve of his lip. “You theorists and your hexionic models. Any attempt at a new hypothesis is no less flawed than the last.”

And it’s thrilling. To be challenged, instead of praised, or dismissed. It makes something in you catch fire, every word itches behind your teeth, like you need to tell him.

“That’s exactly why I’m proposing an entirely different hexion model in my paper.“

His pupils widen so much his eyes go dark. Like a cat about to pounce. 

“Oh? Tell me.”

“If we accept that the very core of a hexion’s energy release is based on entropy, on the desire for disarray, and we apply that to a hexion’s very structure… I believe there’s something to be made of the whole mess we are currently facing.”

Viktor had been holding his breath. You notice, because it sounds just a tad sharper when he finally draws a reluctant inhale, and, gears in that mind of his turning fast, sharp, steady, he finds another way to refute your point. 

“Like Pididdly’s hexion model?”

“No,” you say. “Though I bet Pididdly will wish he could come up with what I have. Can I have a pen and some paper?”

You have him now. 

“Yes, yes, of course.”

Viktor tugs the drawer of his desk open so hard it thunks, digging for a scrap of paper and a pen. When you take it, holding the paper between the two of you, he leans in, too, enough for you to be able to smell his aftershave — the aquatic spice softened by flowery vanilla.

It’s intoxicating enough to have the storm of ideas in your mind going quiet, buzzing. You manage to untangle them before you make a fool of yourself.

“My model is proposing disordered order, so to speak. The hexion is split up into different parts as Torek suggested in his hypothesis. But I think she was too small minded in her approach. For my model, I use the concept of something I’m calling areals. Different areals for different component particles. I believe particles will never be in a fixed, certain place.” You draw the centrion — though hypothetically an ochtahemiocyahedron — as a sphere for simplicity’s sake, surrounded by three vaguely defined layers. Viktor rests both elbows on his desk, sharp chin on intertwined fingers, watching with a tilt of his head. Your mouth’s gone dry. “These areals are… spaces where, if you were to look, at any given moment, the likelihood of you finding a specific hexion particle in its assigned areal is high — but never 100%. They are constantly moving, oscillating, vibrating —  within their areal. Like I said: disordered order. And this theory also holds up in the context of matrices — for the most part. There are some kinks I need to iron out, but… this is the gist of it.”

At that, he lights up. 

“Extraordinary,” Viktor mutters. It’s music to your ears, rolls down your spine in a wave of dopamine, tingles all over. He taps his finger to the schematic  diagram, then stares into your eyes so thoroughly you wonder if he can see into the depths of your amygdala. There is maybe a palm’s length between your faces, a gap you itch to breach. He says the next thing like a solemn secret. “This could be beyond revolutionary.”

“Thank you.”

Viktor doesn’t miss a beat when he says: “I would like to help you with your thesis. Should you require it.” 

Now that knocks your knees out from under you. You’re lucky you’re sitting.

One of the founding fathers of applied arcanism wants to read your thesis? Wants to help you?

“I…” You can’t remember to breathe, your mouth’s gone thick and cottony and swallowing is a distant dream and he is looking right at you, young and hungry and alive underneath the barely composed shell of himself. “I’d be thrilled.”

He grins, the top of his lip a mere thin line over his teeth. 

“I already am,” he lilts. You watch the way his mouth moves — the curl of his tongue against the back of his teeth as he rolls his heavy, thick r, the plush purse of them on the m.

And when you remember to look into his eyes again, you catch him red handed.

He’d been staring at your lips, too.

Startled with the reality, the puzzle-piece-click of knowing, the both of you retreat into your seats. With a shaky hand, you pick your cup back up, and take a sip from your coffee. It’s gone lukewarm.

“I’d like to ask you to print it, if possible.” His voice is bridled again, steady, certain. Normal. He tugs on another drawer, and retrieves something shiny, metallic. A key. He lays it on the table, sliding it towards you. “You can use the printer in my office, if need be.”

“I can print what I have so far this evening, and leave it for you here. Would that work for you?”

”Yes.” 

You look at the clock on his wall — it’s entirely later than it should be. You have a lab you should be getting to. 

“Could you spare some time on your lunch break tomorrow?” Viktor asks, clearly having read your mind again, somehow. “I think I should have it read through by then.”

“Absolutely, but… you don’t even know how much there is to read through.”

He smiles. “If you write with the same enthusiasm you talk, rest assured I will tear through it.”

[queerly-anxious]

Swan song

Professor Viktor x TA Reader

[PART 1]｡ ﾟ☾ ﾟ｡⋆[PART 2] ⋆｡ﾟ☁︎｡⋆[PART 3]

⋆｡ﾟ☁︎｡⋆[AO3 link] ⋆｡ ﾟ☾ ﾟ｡

Summary: You’re a bright phD student who won’t shy away from a challenge. Getting the most notorious professor at the University of Piltover to hire you as his assistant is one of them.

Tags: Modern AU, SFW (for now…), DILF professor Viktor, romanticizing and eroticizing borsht, lab shenanigans, reader being filled with equal parts shame and lust

Word count: 7.8k

Notice: This fic is written with a transmasculine reader in mind, but that won’t come into play at all until the final third chapter of this mini-series.

Notes: A little something something while we await season two ;] The draft for this post deleted itself twice now. If the formatting looks wonky (especially in the texting section), NO, it doesn't. Shut up.

He didn’t lie. 

Which is all the more shocking, considering you attend his 8AM lecture on the very same day, and he seems more bright and alight than you’ve ever seen him.

When did he find the time?

Though there isn’t a daunting amount to your thesis just yet, you still want to believe you’ve written something quite substantial over the past months. 

You toss one glance around yourself before you follow him into his office after his lecture, and you find the stack of papers you’d left on his desk last night looking positively devoured, in the most… academic way possible. Scribbles and notes litter the margins, the edges of the papers are already somehow lightly worn. 

He must have read it multiple times.

“Coffee?” He offers.

“Yes, please.”

As he gropes the machine in search of its switch again, he cocks his brow at you. “And what was that for?”

You frown. “What was what for?”

“That… glance, before you followed me into my office.” The switch clicks, the light comes on. “Looking around like you were being followed.”

“Oh,” caught in the embarrassing act, you shrug. “I don’t know. Being cautious, I guess. Students have been looking at me a little funny, lately.”

“Much too late for caution, I’m afraid.” 

Uh oh. 

As he retrieves two paper cups, you’re left wondering what exactly that should mean.

“Why’s that?”

“I thought you were well aware of the fact that rumors would start, um… circulating the moment I made it public that I had hired an assistant.” Coffee trickles into the cups, a soothing little melody. Viktor leans against the wall beside the machine as he watches the cups fill.  “I’ve always been adamant about not needing one. It is natural for people to have questions — and to come up with, eh, answers — when I suddenly do.”

The notion of the answers students might have come up with swirls around in your brain. 

You wish they were right.

You’re glad they’re not.

You look at Viktor.

“Do you mind it?”

The coffee stops pouring. Viktor does that thing again, spreading long fingers apart to grasp both cups. And he’s quiet — for a beat longer than he should be.

“No. There are more important things to worry about than… gossip.” He sets the cups on the table, then takes his seat. He hesitates for a brief second, craning his neck before he fixates on you, motionless. Waiting. “Do you?”

“Trying not to.”

The answer makes him… deflate, somehow. It’s barely visible, for just a fraction of a second his chest sinks, before his tone is back to his composed cadence.

“You will get used to it,” he assures. “Now, onto more interesting matters — your work.”

Thank god. You don’t know how much more of the awkward tiptoeing you could have handled.

“Yes.” Your heart leaps into your throat. Acting normal has never been so difficult. “What did you think?”

“Very impressive.” He slides the stack of papers towards you. “I have made some… suggestions here and there, should you wish to take them into consideration. But, I think you struck gold with your hypothesis. Should you need a conversation partner, guidance, anything at all — I would gladly be at your service.”

“Thank you, Viktor. I really appreciate this.”

At the sound of his own name coming from you, something in him shifts. Shifts with an unfamiliar near bashfulness, he stifles a little smile into the rim of his paper cup, the corners of his eyes crinkle, he settles into his seat a little further.

“But you never held up your end of the bargain,” you point out. That snaps him out of it.

“Ah, yes. I did not.” He continues to hide behind his cup, before he finally seems to decide to take a metaphorical leap, as he sets it down and stares down at it. “I fear the unfortunate truth may be that when it comes to research, I either work better with a partner, or that… Cecil is right and I need to slow down. Though I’d guess the former is more likely.”

“You used to work with, uh…” you’re not sure how to approach the topic, “Talis, didn’t you?”

“The five basic principles of applied arcanism are commonly referred to as Talis’ princies, you do not have to feign uncertainty to appease me.”

So you drop the attempt to tiptoe around the subject, and ask, plainly:

“Why wasn’t your name added on?”

Viktor scoffs. “Talis-Sidorov-Sviboda has a terrible ring to it. Or so he’d said. And admittedly… I was more of a conduit than the co-author of his idea. He said we would name the next big thing we would discover after me, but… well, you know how it is. I dedicated myself to teaching, he retired to lead a quiet life in his gaudy mansion with his sports cars and his purebred German shepherds after he married some businesswoman.”

Though his story does line up, those aren’t necessarily the rumors you’d heard. There’d been talk of more than just a mild dispute of names, and… well, there had been… something between Talis and Viktor. But that’s about all you know.

Under your gaze, Viktor grows suddenly uncomfortable — both with the subject and the fact that he might be able to tell you know more. He’s quick to redirect the conversation.

“As for my research: I have been studying the laminal hexoin cascade in stabilized hexgems in various matrices. And though bold, I have been attempting to figure out the ideal matrix — something that will allow for close to a hundred percent energy renewal and render all other sources of energy obsolete.”

”That is bold,” you say. Your other thought, you keep to yourself: it also sounds impossible. You suppose stabilizing hexgems 20 years ago was also something thought impossible — and yet, Viktor hadn’t shied away. If anyone is apt for the job, it is him. “Any luck so far?”

“Partially. They have been yielding favorable results, but not enough to be viable energetic alternatives as of now.” He takes his cup again, bringing it to his lips in a rushed movement, drinking a mouthful, rather than a sip. Once Viktor sets it down, his hand remains on the table, fingers tapping on the shiny surface once, twice— “I could use a theorist to assist me with a few things.”

The implication dizzies you. Is he…?

But then he slides another one of his drawers open, and retrieves a stack of papers. Slanted handwriting, barely legible — you’re by now intimately familiar with it: his cursive. It litters the pages, in different inks and in pencil, diagrams, sketches… just looking at it makes you hungry to read it.

He smiles as if he’s read your mind, again.

“I was thinking it could be you.”

—

You’re invited to his office for lunch break the very next day too. And though he assures you there is no pressure in having to read through his notes by then, you disregard it.

It takes you a reread to be able to make sense of all his scribbles, but… it’s brilliant. He’s brilliant. 

It should stop surprising you by now — his ideas, his drive, his curiosity, his mind — but with every single time Vikror impresses you anew, he becomes something more distant.

As you’re marveling at his intricate weaving of concepts, it strikes you, unpleasantly, that this is the same man you’d wanted to devour just days ago. The man who’s made you coffee, the man whose sharp eyes fold at the corners when he smiles. 

You’d have deified him, had he been your teacher. You still do, especially now, after you’ve seen more of what his mind is made of. The mere notion of him becomes terribly out of reach, and you’re plagued with guilt for that night. Guilt for having tainted such a man with your thoughts. 

And yet, you still can’t help but think of his neck, the soft pink of his chapped lips, the hollow of his cheeks. You wonder what his mouth tastes like, and you want to slap yourself on the wrist for it. You should have, because minutes later, you wonder about worse things too. The scent of his skin, the coarseness of his body hair, how far up under his navel it might reach.

And when you finish reading his notes a second time and bring the paper to your nose to sniff it — hoping for a trace of him — you realize you have a problem. A serious one.

It torments you for the rest of the night, through the hours you spend writing up some suggestions and ideas, all the way to when you switch off the light, and hug whatever pillow’s within reach close.

When you get the urge to tilt your hips against it, you decide to get up and splash your face with water.

And you wish you could do the same thing the very next day on your lunch break, when you’re standing in the doorway of his office and he’s eating borscht. The sweet-tangy smell of vegetables, beef and beets makes your stomach growl, but your physical hunger is long lost on your otherwise preoccupied brain.

The beet red of the soup has pigmented his lips. They look kissed raw, puffy, ripe. A lavish speck of colour on his otherwise pale face, it draws your gaze and does not let it stay somewhere more respectful.

You want to taste them.

He does it for you, raspberry pink tip of his tongue darting over the plush of his lips before he swallows and finally greets you.

“Sorry,” you say, and it comes out tense, near horrified. You’ve caught him eating soup, for chrissakes, not being bent over his table. Oh, god. Why did you have to think about that? ”I’ll come back later.”

“No,” Viktor gestures to the empty seat across from him. He screws his thermos shut, and puts it away. “Please, I’ve been waiting for you. Sit.”

And you do, like the dog you feel like you are right now.

“Did you manage to find the time to read my notes?”

Oh, did you.

“I… followed your example and made some suggestions of my own. But on separate pages. Here.”

His reaction is more than what you’d hoped for. It’s more than the impressed raise of thick brows that had kept you fueled last night, it’s more than the smile you’d been hoping for. 

“You are unbelievable,” he grins, and takes what you offer, pushing his glasses up his nose before he starts reading. You selfishly use the distraction to stare at his lips again. He mutters to himself as he reads, pink mouth molding around whispered jargon, nodding. “Yes, this… this is exactly what I’d hoped for, when I’d asked for your assistance. Your fresh set of eyes is invaluable. I hadn’t thought of approaching the modification from that angle.”

“I’m glad you think so.”

He doesn’t take his eyes off the page for even just a moment, flipping it surprisingly fast, and taking it with him as he leans back in his seat. 

And decides to torture you.

Viktor traces the pad of his own thumb over the curve of his bottom lip as he takes in your handwriting. The give of the flesh under his fingertip hypnotizes, the slight drag of rough skin on soft pink one, your mind is long gone.

You think of rough fingertips on his lips, on his chest, rough fingertips on the pasty white of his gaunt lower stomach, rough fingertips in coarse hair. Rough fingertips dipping between his milky thighs, rough fingertips on where he runs just as pink as he does on his lips, rough fingertips dipping, slipping on slick skin—

You need to stop.

And you most certainly need help.

“Is something the matter?”

It feels like you’ve swallowed your own brain whole when he speaks, because your skull rings hollow when you try to come up with a reply that isn’t incoherent babble.

“Wh— me? No. Why?”

And because embarrassment loves to stick around once it has made its presence known, the stars align for the next social disaster: your stomach growls. Loudly.

“Did you not have lunch?” Viktor asks.

“I… didn’t get around to it,” you admit.

“I won’t take up too much of your time, then,” he assures. If he knew just how much of your time he’s started taking up — and the fact that you wish you could give him what is left of it to him, too.  “I would like you to work alongside me on my research. But if you don’t feel like you can squeeze another project into your presumably busy schedule, I understand. I would be glad to have you merely as… a colleague to consult with, as well.”

Is that even a question? He’s offering you the opportunity of a lifetime. You would be an idiot not take it. 

And an even bigger idiot to turn down more time spent with him.

“You don’t even have to ask,” you joke. “Yes. I would be thrilled, Viktor.”

This is his first smile you witness when his pretty boyishness doesn’t shine through. It’s a gentle quirk of his lips, no teeth to be seen, just tenderness. It makes your heart leap to be the cause of it.

“Thank you,” he says.

“Thank you.”

Silence.

Just as you’re about to breach it — he does it first.

“Would you be free for lunch tomorrow as well?”

He watches you from below long, dark lashes as you give a breathless yes.

—

“I brought you something.”

It’s the last thing you expect as you step into his office at noon, upon exchanging hellos.

You’re alight. With curiosity, above all else. And with worry — why would he bring you something? What will you do to reciprocate? 

“Thank you,” you say, though you have no idea what for just yet. “What is it?”

“I saw you eyeing my borscht yesterday.” There’s a glint in his eye that suggests more, so much so you can’t decide between flirting or digging a hole for yourself in the hardwood floor of his office. 

The middle ground is standing in his office awkwardly as he unzips his backpack.

He retrieves two thermos bottles: the one you’re already familiar with, and another that looks older, more worn, and sorely lacks the sticker you’ve so come to love and fixate on and dream about. “I, eh, I made you some. In case you wouldn’t get the chance to eat before you came here.”

Your chest swells so much it hurts. 

He made you soup?

“You… Viktor, this is… thank you. You shouldn’t have.”

“I wanted to. Have a seat.”

You practically jump into the seat across the table from his — a seat you’ve come to associate as yours, in spite of being well aware of the oppisite.

As he screws the bottle open and pours some steaming soup out into a paper bowl — god, he’d brought paper bowls — his eyes flick to you.

“But if you don’t care for borscht, you don’t have to—“

“I do care.”

And that rings true not just for the borscht.

It rings true for the soup he brings you the next day too, it rings true for every word that passes his lips. And it rings true for the time you start to spend in the insane coffee shop queue to surprise him with his preferred order and a slice of cake (a different one each day, until you figure out his favorite: cinnamon coffee), it rings true for the dark blue roughed up thermos he lets you take home the day you don’t finish the soup he brings you because you’re just so busy talking.

It’s November before you know it.

As the days grow colder, it’s not rare to be finding warmth by lavishing in Viktor’s attention as you ramble on about ideas — either for his research, or your thesis. All while he intently follows your thoughts with a smile, stopping just to shave another mouth-half-full’s worth off his cake of the day with his plastic spoon.

And once he savors the last bite, Viktor almost always flips it hollow side down, sliding it down the swell of his tongue within his mouth, removing it from between puckered lips. His cheeks hollow, he holds eye contact all the same, and it’s a mental image that haunts you. A mental image you project in your mind, nestled between the apex of your thighs. The thick of his tongue. The cushiony seal of his lips, the suction of his cheeks. 

It never becomes any less distracting than the first time it happens. 

You startle when Viktor speaks as he sets down the plastic spoon into the now empty packaging. 

“I would like you to accompany me to the lab sometime soon. When would you be free?”

You’ve been before — but just a handful of times. Mainly for him to demonstrate or disprove certain guesses, or test conclusions you’d reached together. 

“I’m free right now,” you suggest.

Viktor shakes his head. “I have a lecture in an hour.”

Right. 

“I mean… I think we could make it in an hour.”

“I prefer to take my time.” Viktor leans back in his seat, stares thoughtfully at the clock on his wall for a moment. “Would seven PM work for you?”

“Uh…” you mentally go through your schedule for the day, “yes. It should. I might be a little late, though. How about… seven fifteen-ish?”

“Good.” The flow of the word is syrupy, yet his next sentence comes out surprisingly peppy with excitement: “See you then.”

—

Though you’re well into the final week of November, it never stops bothering you just how quickly the sun sets. By the time you get to the lab, the air’s gone cold, dry, and the darkness is heavy and thick.

Viktor waits for you just outside the university lab, under the halo of the street light — perhaps just a hint overdressed for the cold, in your opinion. It’s certainly trench coat season, though his is surprisingly long, reaching somewhere along the middle of his shins. The hand he hasn’t tucked in his pocket holds his cane and is clad in a leather glove. Around his lengthy neck, a red knitted scarf lays in chunky, impenetrable layers, reaching almost all the way to the swell of his top lip and his ears. You can hardly see his smile from underneath when he spots you — but his eyes give him away. 

“Right on time,” Viktor’s tone has just as much pep to it as a few hours ago, perhaps even moreso. He rolls his shoulders, before he subtly nuzzles further down into his scarf, shying away from the biting cold. “Let’s get inside.”

He leads the way into the building, its warmth embracing you the moment you step in. The tip of your nose and your fingertips feel like they’re beginning to thaw, tingling just a hint. As you go to take off your coat, you notice Viktor isn’t in a rush. He rests his cane against the wall before he unwraps the thick, wide scarf from around his neck, folding it. He sets it on a nearby table, shucking off his trench coat, slender shoulders under a wool sweater. You watch closely as he then takes his scarf and stuffs it into the sleeve of his coat before he hangs it up. 

There’s something stiff, painful, about how he moves. You wonder if it’s the cold.

“What?” He watches you with appeased amusement.

Caught red-handed, you jump, still halfway clad in your coat.

“Nothing,” you reply, scraping for a way to deflect from your obvious staring. “Not a big fan of the cold?”

“Never.” He says it like it’s a very serious matter. “I still don’t know how I made it through my first eighteen winters in St. Petersburg.”

“You grew up in Russia?”

He laughs through his nose like you’ve told him a half good joke. “What gave it away? The accent? The surname?”

“No, I just thought… Svoboda is a Czech surname.”

With how his smile turns knowing, self-satisfied, you’re suddenly back in his office again, uncertain and nervous and asking for a job as his assistant. He could taunt you with the knowledge that you’ve looked up his last name, embarrass you a little, play with you.

But he isn’t that man anymore — not to you. This time, he feeds your curiosity, albeit just with crumbs.

“My mother’s,” he clarifies. “Sidorov is Russian — my father’s.”

Oh.

“It’s nice that they used both their names. I’m assuming that wasn’t… common, back then, and back there.”

“It wasn’t, and they did not.” Viktor waits for you to hang up your coat, watchful gaze making your every movement feel loaded with static that’s about to snap. “I added hers when I changed my name.”

Changed his name?

The image of the sticker on his thermos turns up fresh in your mind, and you can’t help but wonder…

“Well? I was hoping we could discuss more in the lab, but if you prefer the coat hanger…”

Goddamn it. Focus. You need to focus.

“Sorry.”

You catch up, then slowly follow Viktor down the hallway, into the small lab he has been assigned. It’s one of the less grand ones, but it has all it needs — from a pretty new hexion accelerator to a humble whiteboard. It smells sanitized, sterile, ozonic.

You assume your usual seat by the whiteboard while he sets up. It still doesn’t feel… right to let him do all of that by himself, but he insists upon it, so, you stay out of his way. Viktor tidies up the space just a little, finding his goggles among the mess. He slips them onto his head, elastic pulling back his soft hair into a fluffy grey and brown mess. His cane thumps against the linoleum with every hurried step — though he doesn’t seem to be hurrying on account of you being there as much as excitement to show you.

Once he’s done, he sits in front of the accelerator, slipping his goggles on, and nods for you to come. Which you do — you’d be at his beck and call beyond just the academic context. For a moment, you pluck the inviting tilt of his head and the quirk of his lips out of their context, and you plant it atop your own bed, him in just a loose shirt, underwear, lax with freshly received pleasure. More comfortable than he’s ever been, all because of you. Beckoning for you. Come here. Smiling at you when your knee dips into the mattress, tucking his index under your chin as you crawl to him, reeling you in for a kiss.

“Come closer.”

God help you.

You comply with a wildly beating heart, stepping forward until you’re close behind his sitting form, watching the accelerator over his shoulder. 

He smells nice. Like an indistinct, aromatic cologne, covering up the natural, gentle musk of his skin. You have to resist the urge to dip your head down and trace the tip of your nose along his spine, from where the bones of his neck show to where the scruff at the back of his head goes thicker, fuller. You wonder if he’d shiver as you let the scent of him imbue you… you wonder if he’d lean into it, if he’d tilt his head for you, let you dip your face into the slope of his shoulder, where his scent’s more potent.

The mere thought of him, vivid in your nostrils and clinging to your palate and the floor of your brain, rattles you with a shiver.

“I thought I’d rather show you than tell you,” he explains, wrapping both pale, bony hands around the handles of the accelerator. Steam hisses from the exhaust, flooding the room with more ozone, and gently, but certainly, the gem starts to spin behind the glass panel, beginning to levitate out of its socket, illuminating the room. 

God, you should have put on goggles too, it’s making your eyes hurt. It’s a welcome reminder as to why you chose to spend most your days staring down a blackboard rather than the thing itself. The screen right above it is more of a familiar sight to you: numbers, reading the rotations per minute, as well as energetic output, steadily increasing. 

It whirrs, magic static whirling up around the blue orb, electricity crackles. 

You can see the appeal of this over a blackboard. But you’d still take the chalk. Especially considering the deafening noise. 

Nevermind the damn goggles. You need to remember to bring some ear plugs.

“Watch the panel.” Viktor raises his voice over the hum of the machine, and turns to you, watching you from behind foggy lenses with a smile. You wish you could see the way his crow’s feet deepen. It rumbles harder, so much so Viktor almost has to shout the next thing he says, which is a shame, because his usually playful lilt is lost in the noise of it. “Not to… spoil the outcome of this experiment for you, but I implemented the conclusions we came to last week, and, it is safe to say…”

With a well-timed click and tug on a lever, the machine disengages, and the gem drops back into its socket under the influence of gravity. Its violating light returns to a faint, blue glow, like an artificially lit aquarium; fluctuating and undulating gently in its intensity. The potential energy indicator’s numbers climb back up, steadily, but faster than what you’ve seen before. 

Much faster.

You can’t help but grin with excitement. “It’s regenerating fast.”

Viktor smirks at you over his shoulder like you’re sharing a sacred, intimate inside joke. 

“It is.“

You await the verdict with a bated breath.

“How much?”

Viktor’s smile only grows, like he’s about to give you a present. And, all things considered, this is going to be one, in months’ or maybe even years’ time.

“A thirty-seven percent recovery after usage within an hour.” Viktor spins in the lab stool to face you with the theatrical self-satisfaction of a magician who just sawed his assistant in half and is waiting for the applause. You nearly forget to step back to give him the space for it, so much so your knees knock together. But there is no chance for you to apologize, Viktor is unbothered, sliding the goggles up his forehead enthusiastically, his show of complacency ditched in favor of pure excitement. “That is more than I’ve ever achieved thus far. Thanks to y—” 

His voice sticks in his throat, turning into a pained hiss.

His hair’s tangled in his goggles.

“Oh, wonderful,” he grits out sarcastically. 

A frustrated half-sigh half-groan rumbles in his chest as he pulls again and only makes things worse.

“Could you get me a pair of scissors? I should have some in the third drawer over there.”

“Wait. At least let me try first,” you insist. Reluctantly, you step closer, and after a moment’s hesitation, Viktor lowers his head for better access like a feral animal letting itself be pet for the first time. He sits still, the sound of both your breaths suddenly loud in the tall, quiet room as you’re forced to step even closer. “Could you…”

You nudge his ankles apart with the tip of your shoe.

He listens.

After a stuttering, fragile exhale, Viktor spreads his thighs. 

You take the space offered. And you try not to think about kneeling, about making a home for yourself between his thighs.

“Do you think you can do it?”

You wish he’d asked you that about any number of things, except for the goggles tangled in his feathery, soft hair.

But yes. You think you do.

It would have been a terrible shame to cut it — though some shorter, bluntly cut hairs that sit a little further back near the top of his head tell you his suggestion was not the product of a new idea. Carefully, you pull whatever hairs are looser from between the lens and the bridge of the goggles, though a strand remains stubborn. 

You try to ignore the warmth of his breath on your shirt, the intoxicating, soapy, yet distinctively human smell of his scalp, and the mesmerizing ratio of grey to dark brown, the subtle heat on the sides of your palms and wrists, resting on his head for stability.

As you separate another few hairs from the stuck strand and accidentally tug at them, Viktor has no reaction. Beyond swallowing thickly, and sitting through it dutifully. 

You wonder if he’d act just the same, had you bunched his hair into the spaces between your fingers and tugged — simply biting his tongue and chewing through the pain — or if he’s leaned into the force, moaning with it, and god, you’ve hurt him, and you haven’t even apologized.

“Sorry.” You sound twice as genuine — mainly because you apologize for much worse than the inflicted pain. “Almost done.”

“The scissors would have been faster,” he half-jokes.

His voice sounds different. A hint more… strained. He shifts in the seat, wipes his hands on his slacks.

“Would have been a shame, though. You have pretty hair.” The last part of the sentence positively escapes you, and once you hear it, you freeze. Your brain scrambles itself trying to add something that will fix the inherent following awkwardness, the horrifying realization you just called your boss pretty, the fact that it’s true, the fact that—

Viktor flinches with another accidental tug of his hair, and so do his thighs — jumping with the surprise, clenching together until they squeeze around yours. But they’re gone just as fast, flinching away with horrified urgency. Before you get to savor the supple flesh pressing into your own in another new perverted way, before you get to imagine his ankles locking behind you, tilting and rubbing your hips into the hug of his thighs.

You need. To get. A grip.

“Sorry.”

You continue on in silence, and thank everything above he at the very least can’t see the way your hands shake, because he’s staring at the floor like he could drill a hole into it with just his eyes. 

You should have gotten the damn scissors. As if through divine intervention, the rest of his hair comes loose not soon after.

“Okay. All done.” You smooth the slightly crinkled, but now free strand back down into the rest of his soft hair. 

Viktor’s dainty features come into view from below his face framing pieces as he tilts his chin up. His lips quirk into a gentle smile, his eyes sparkle in the faint blue glow, soft shadows under the hollow of his cheeks and the swell of his lip and the tip of his nose and the bone of his brow. You wish you could immortalize him in whatever way he’d let you — a sculpture, a painting, a poem. He looks ripe for kissing, eyes half-lidded and twice as dreamy as he peers at you.

You’re going to see him like this in your mind’s eye later tonight.

Nestled between your thighs, or kissing down your stomach, molten gold under long, dark lashes, sitting atop carved marbled bone.

“Thank you.” He says it quietly — like it would break the sudden holiness of the moment to say it any other way.

He’s so warm. 

You could kiss him. See what the ozone of the room tastes like in the slick of his mouth. You wonder if he’d let you, if he’d suckle your tongue into his mouth in a show of submission, or if he’d bite your lip, licking your teeth, pressing, pushing, make you earn the privilege to taste him. 

You wonder if he’d hold you, or if his curious hands would roam, tracing the front of your stomach, or your spine, or press to the middle of your breastbone like he wants to see where you’d split open for him down the middle like a ripe peach. You wonder if he’d let you dip a hand down the front of his slacks, you wonder if he’d tilt his hips into it like he’d been aching for it, aching for you. Scorching your hand with want, materialized in slick or straining hardness. You wonder which it’d be.

From where you’re standing, the distance between the apex of his chin and the space where his slacks stretch between his thighs is small — and your gaze takes the leap, searching. But the material dips and curves in such a way that you’re left none the wiser, and with nothing but a disgusting realization.

You’re staring at your boss’ crotch.

You step back from the heat between his thighs, painfully awake, aware. It squeezes and wriggles in your chest like you have a parasite lodged in the chambers of your heart. 

You’re disgusting.

You need to put an end to this.

“You’re welcome, professor.”

With that, you’re practically bolting from between his thighs, to stash the scissors away again.

You’re neglecting your job, you’re putting it in jeopardy. Putting yourself in jeopardy, risking all the rumors circulating becoming a shameful truth, you’re risking the first man who ever kept up with you, followed you where you wanted to go and took you further — you’re risking it all because he makes you unbelievably fucking horny. 

And it’s absurd. Embarrassing. You need to get a hold of yourself. 

“I was… thinking, actually,” you begin, and want to punch yourself over how Viktor perks back up from where you’d left him. “About some things regarding my thesis that I’d like your thoughts on.”

“Oh. Of course.” You have got to be imagining the subtle disappointment in his tone. The second you let yourself believe it’s more than just a figment of your make-believe, is the second you will be doomed. 

Viktor, with all his years and experience, would and does know better than to fall for his assistant. You know he does.

“What’s on your mind?” He prompts after your prolonged silence.

If he knew the half of it.

—

You’re late.

And it’s a direct, shameful consequence of last night’s lusting, the time you’d spent frustratedly tossing and turning and thinking of his mouth and his eyes and his scent, before you’d given in past midnight, and humped your hand into completion.

Thinking about him under you, about pressing your face into his neck, about pressing him into the mattress and rutting into him until he gushes and his tired body sings for you and his voice cracks. Until he breaks for you, until pleasure itself oils and unscrews all the biological cogs of his body and he comes out unstrung, reborn.

Viktor’s in a wheelchair. 

And he looks worse for wear than you’ve ever encountered him before, slumping in the chair and massaging his eyelids with his thumb and index, seemingly gathering his thoughts. He’s dressed even warmer than usual, in a loose but thick, dark red sweater. There’s a colorful knitted blanket folded and set over the tops of his thighs. 

Viktor doesn’t acknowledge you when you come in and sit near the whiteboard, simply resumes his lecture as he regains his mental footing. And he goes on for a while, not sparing you a single glance, as he goes through powerpoint slides today, instead of his usual writing and hand drawn diagrams. 

He’s at it for a while, not as fast as his usual pace, but undeniably concise, certain. Until…

“The energy output increases proportionately to the spin, and, with powerful enough matrices, some hexgems can create force fields of their own. This is a particularly common phenomenon in unstabilized gems as well, though with the activation of their force field, those tend to also create… eh…”

Viktor stops, sighing, pinching the bridge of his nose. He frowns, mumbling something in another language, which, judging by the heavy consonants and squeezed vowel, you’d assume it’s Russian. The word must be slipping his mind, so you decide to help out.

“A shock wave.”

Viktor’s gaze cuts. He’s looked at you with disinterest before, sure, but this… 

He doesn’t even turn his head to look at you, just eyes you from the corner of his vision like something unworthy of acknowledgment. You wish you could swallow your words back up.

“Yes,” he says. “Thank you. A shock wave.”

You don’t say anything again for the rest of the lecture. 

Once the door falls shut behind the last few students who have left the room, Viktor turns to you. You wish you could shrink; and it feels like you do, when he finally speaks.

“I appreciate your intention to help — but do not interrupt me again. I know what I’m trying to say.” He sounds utterly unlike himself, both spent and angry. “I don’t need help. Especially not in the middle of a lecture.”

“Sorry.”

That alone softens him up a hint. He looks away, rubbing his thumbs against the wheels of his chair, before he speaks again. Calmer. 

“Just… do not let it happen again.”

As he slumps in his seat, massaging at his temples, you understand that his anger… might not have been as directed at you as you’d initially thought. He’d been snippy when his back hurt — having switched to a wheelchair must mean he’s in a lot more pain now.

And you understand his frustration. He’d just gotten himself an assistant a few months back, and started a new project — looking like he requires help in front of his students is certainly not doing his reputation right now any favors. 

“But if there’s other things I can do to make your day a little easier, I’d like to do them.”

“No, thank you.” He shakes his head, before he grabs both wheels and advances to where he’d left his bag. As he starts packing his things, he stops again, quietly groaning somewhere in the back of his throat. “Where did I put my pen…”

Viktor eventually finds it right behind his water bottle on the table, tossing the both of them into his bag, shutting it tightly. You expect him to wheel himself over to the ramp that leads to the exit, but he just hangs his head, massaging at his temples again, before he looks at you.

“Actually, I’d like it if you went to my office and got me a silver tin box in the… fourth drawer on the left side of my desk. Do you have the key with you, or should I give you mine?”

“I have it. I’ll be quick.”

“Thank you.”

And you deliver on your promise. You don’t run, but you power walk there, and you’re back with (hopefully the right) tin box in the same lecture hall before his break ends.

Viktor takes it from you gladly, popping it open. It contains two foils of painkillers, one already half empty, a small ziploc bag of… gummies, and at the very bottom, some dark chocolate. 

You must have pulled a bit of a face at the contents — particularly the gummies — because Viktor cocks a brow at you, before he faintly chuckles under his breath and pops three painkillers in one go.

After depositing the foil back in the box, he fishes out the dark chocolate bar. It looks to be the expensive kind, something Belgian — Viktor breaks off a piece, putting it in his mouth, before he holds it out to you.

“Peace offering,” he clarifies when you hesitate. 

You’d be a fool to turn him down. You take some — it’s rich, buttery, and melts on your tongue. It coats your mouth with its taste, dark and aromatic and unfortunately not as sweet as you thought Viktor preferred. He’d always favored the almost disgustingly sugary cakes.

“Didn’t think you’d like something so bitter,” you say.

“I do not. It sometimes helps with my migraines,” he tells you. “Sugar makes them worse. A very… devastating discovery to make, as I’m sure you can imagine.”

You wonder if right now is the right time to be curious — and you decide it might be.

“Do the migraines also affect your leg? Or the other way around?” 

“No.” Viktor shakes his head, popping off another piece of dark chocolate. “This,” he gestures at himself, the wheelchair, “was just a very unfortunate… overlapping.”

“Oh.” You grimace in sympathy. “Fun.”

“A punishment for it, more like.” 

What’s that supposed to mean?

“Let’s hope my migraine eases up on me throughout this lecture.” He smiles at you — and for the first time you’ve known him, he looks old doing it. Exhausted. The face of a man who’s seen enough hardship for a lifetime, but has yet to cave under it. 

You wish you could hold him. You wish you could melt it away, kiss it better, love it better. Whatever he’d let you.

You surprise both him and yourself when you lay a gentle hand on his shoulder and let your thumb rub a small circle over the wool. 

Though he flinches at the first contact, once something in his brilliant mind unfurls and settles, so does he. Through the cracks, tenderness shines under the fatigue. Viktor can be soft — in spite of everything im his body and his past that protests against it. “Thank you.”

You take your hand away sooner than you’d like — but at the ideal time to keep it from being anything more than a friendly touch.

“I’m glad I could help,” you say.

—

Viktor isn’t there at all next week. 

You come in on Monday to find his office empty during lunch break, and when you attend his lecture, it’s another professor from his department teaching it. The students don’t seem all too excited about the change either — and you leave before it even starts.

Heimerdinger is none the wiser about Viktor’s situation when you talk to him — in spite of their shared history. He simply tells you he’d taken the week off and had arranged for substitutes.

You consider messaging him… and ultimately end up doing so, after some internal debate. You simply text him to get well soon and that you hope he’s getting some well-deserved rest. He replies with just a plain thank you.

Tuesday is quiet. You receive a stack of midterms you need to get through from the substitute, and you do, by Thursday morning. Which is when Heimerdinger messages you.

Dr. Prof. Cecil B Heimerdinger

Good morning! I’m well aware this is on very short notice — but the substitute professor has unfortunately suffered a minor car accident. Not to worry; they only sustained small njury. However, I am finding myself forced to task you with Viktor’s lectures today. Do you think you could take care of that? Thank you.

-Cecil B. Heimerdinger

9:32

Just the thing you needed — teaching two full lectures, entirely unprepared.

Alright. You’ve got this. You’ve got this. You just need to find out what’s even on the agenda for today. You could text Viktor, right? If he answers on time, that is… he’s sick, he might as well be asleep right now. You could call, but… he said only to do that in the case of an emergency when he gave you his phone number. 

Would this count as an emergency?

Your phone beeps.

Dr. Prof. Viktor Sidorov-Svoboda

There should be a black flash drive in the third drawer on the left in my desk. It has all my lectures.

9:34

Today’s topic is LHC segments naturally occurring in unstabilized gems. Feel free to use my work laptop to familiarize yourself with the presentation before the lecture.

9:35

Me

Thank you so much! 

9:35

His answer comes a few minutes later, just as you fish the flash drive out of his drawer, and plug it into his laptop.

Dr. Prof. Viktor Sidorov-Svoboda

Good luck 👍 

9:42

It would be a lot easier to get caught up in the desire to snoop around on his laptop if you didn’t have less than 20 minutes left until the lecture. His background is disappointingly the default image, but some of his folders look undeniably tempting — not just the scientific ones, which take up most of the space. There’s some photo albums titled with the year and location: Germany 2011, Czech Republic 2009, among many others. There’s also a photo album titled Persichka. 

Who is that? 

You almost click it. But then you check your watch again and realize you only have 15 more minutes until the lecture, and decide against it.

—

For how utterly unprepared you are, it goes surprisingly well. You stumble, once or twice, but you’re glad to see that even by the end of the lecture, you still have most students’ attention.

After you dismiss the class, you don’t expect questions. But a good handful of them, a little under ten, approach your desk, whispering among themselves, before a hastily appointed representative emerges. 

“We were just wondering,” she awkwardly begins, “if professor Sidorov-Svoboda is alright. And when he’s coming back.”

“Oh.” You hope they’re asking because they understandably prefer him, and not because you did a particularly shabby job. “He texted me just today — he’s doing alright. But I can’t give you an exact estimate for when he’s coming back just yet.”

“Okay. Thank you.”

With that, all of them turn to go. After the last student has left the room, you reach for your phone, and pray you don’t see any other day-altering messages today. 

Dr. Prof. Viktor Sidorov-Svoboda

I did not mean for you to have to do this. 

10:11

You unlock your phone and jump straight into the chat.

Me

Don’t worry, it’s alright. I handled it :)

12:02

Dr. Prof. Viktor Sidorov-Svoboda

I knew you could.

12:02

Thank you.

12:02

Me

Focus on resting up and getting well soon! 

12:03

Dr. Prof. Viktor Sidorov-Svoboda

I have been. I actually feel well enough for company now. Coincidentally, I’ve gotten some ideas for your thesis and I would like it if we discussed them sometime. Would you be free this weekend?

12:05 

He wants to meet? Outside of the university? Undoubtedly for academic purposes still, but your heart squeezes and bounces and pops with the implications. 

No. You shouldn’t let yourself hope for more than just a few formal, at best friendly hours spent together.

Viktor doesn’t want you. He would never want you — he knows better. You know better.

Me

I’d like that! Saturday works for me. Where would you like to meet?

12:05

Dr. Prof. Viktor Sidorov-Svoboda

If you’d prefer somewhere on academy grounds like my office or the coffee shop, either would be fine.

12:06

My apartment is also an option.

12:06

The choice is obvious.

[queerly-anxious]

Swan song

Professor Viktor x TA Reader

[PART 1]｡ ﾟ☾ ﾟ｡⋆[PART 2] ⋆｡ﾟ☁︎｡⋆[PART 3] ｡ ﾟ☾ ﾟ｡⋆ [PART 4] (coming soon)

⋆｡ﾟ☁︎｡⋆[AO3 link] ⋆｡ ﾟ☾ ﾟ｡

Summary: You’re a bright phD student who won’t shy away from a challenge. Getting the most notorious professor at the University of Piltover to hire you as his assistant is one of them.

THIS CHAPTER CONTAINS SEXUAL CONTENT

Tags: Modern AU, NSFW, DILF professor Viktor, trans Viktor, old man boobs and pussy!!!, reader being a desperate mutt when it comes to Viktor, sub Viktor AND dom Viktor, oral sex (Viktor receiving), handjob (reader receiving), sniffing & scent kink, nipple play, they are transgender and so so desperate for each other your honor

Word count: 15k

Notice: This chapter is written with a transmasculine reader in mind.

Notes: Seeing all of you guys fall in love with this fic and our beloved DILF professor has inspired me to extend his story a little more! So stay tuned for that, and enjoy the smut... for now. ;] Words used for Vik & reader's genitals include: cock, cunt, clit, pussy and similar variations.

The bustle behind the door almost has you hesitating to knock — and after about five seconds of the thuds and clanks intensifying, you go for your phone to double check the given information. Until you hear Viktor’s familiar cadence dampened by the wood, and the lock turns with a clack.

“Hello.” 

The rest has done him well.

He’s a man reborn, a good ten years younger, leaning on just his cane, eyes sharp and glittery with excitement, smiling like the cat that got the cream — or is about to. 

His hair is fluffy, wispy, most likely just washed, and as is his face, freshly shaven. His sweater hangs off his frame to just the middle of his thighs, looser than what he normally wears — which comes with the lovely perk of revealing more of his collarbone. Everything about him is more vibrant, bathed in a warm yellow light and radiant skin and shallower eye bags.

You do your absolute damndest not to let your eyes linger.

“Hi.”

“Come in quick.” His voice sounds conspiratorial, like he’s about to let you in on a special little joke. “I don’t want her getting ideas about escaping — she hasn’t in a while, but, you never know.”

The scent of warm apples and vanilla smothers you the moment you step foot past his doorway, and it’s not the only thing smothering you. At your shins, something orange, fuzzy and warm smooths against you, a bushy tail wrapping around your calf almost all the way up to the inside of your knee, pink nose sniffing curiously.

The her who’s not meant to be getting any ideas, you’d presume.

A pair of green eyes stare up at you from between your ankles, triangular ears perked attentively. She’s fluffy, so much so her tail could count as a duster and the fuzz in her ears competes with the length of her whiskers. 

Viktor has a cat.

“This is Persichka,” he says, sounding prouder than a father on the graduation day of his favorite child.

Of course he’d have an entire picture folder dedicated to her. 

There’s something well-loved about her, like an old plush toy — the stiffness of her movements and the gangliness of her limbs betrays her old age, but everything else speaks against it. Shiny coat, curious gaze. She lingers around you until her pink, spotted nose has had its fill of your unfamiliar scent, then she returns to Viktor, and the rumbling purrs in her chest turn on as if on command, key turned in the ignition.

You test her name in your voice, and though she does turn her spotted little nose towards you in acknowledgment, you come to understand there are few things that could pry her away from Viktor, with how adoringly she’s practically stuck to him.

“She’s very pretty,” you say.

”The prettiest,” Viktor corrects. He watches her bump her head against his shin and purr as if in agreement — she’s so rumbly it’s almost concerning. Viktor points you to the dark blue couch in his living room. “Make yourself at home. I’ll join you in a moment.”

With that, he leaves, presumably for the kitchen, with Persichka following closely behind.

His apartment is far from impressive — at least in size. Though you can’t exactly go exploring the place, based on what you’ve seen of the living room and the hallway, you can make a half-decent estimate of the overall size. 

Certainly big enough to avoid feeling cramped, but nothing beyond that. At its root, Viktor’s living space is humble, cozy, and jam-packed with details.

The rug in his living room, though sturdy and freshly vacuumed with how it has fluffed up just a hint, is decorated with traditional motifs in dull, aged colours. His walls are lined with bookshelves, dark wood, most of them on science, a good chunk on arcanism. 

Except…

A good three shelves’ worth in the furthest corner of the room catch your eye. Their shiny, paperback covers glisten with warm pinks, yellows, purples and oranges, spelling out titles in frilly, pretty fonts.

Romance books. A whole lot of them. 

You tilt one out just enough to glance at the cover — and surely enough, there is a shirtless man on the cover, seemingly in heartaching agony. His Love Of Thorns is the title. 

A little lower, on some dustier shelf that doesn’t seem to get as much traffic as his other books, is a picture frame. A family in black and white — a tall, mid-thirties aged man with sunken, somber eyes and a mustache, along with a woman with Viktor’s cheekbones, chin and gentle eyes, sitting with a little girl. The kid is looking into the camera with a sombreness that’s fraying at the edges with a suppressed smile, and she has pigtails, reaching all the way down to the middle of her chest.

You’re about to reach for the photo to check the back for more information.

“Ahem.” Viktor stands in the doorway with a tray of two plates, steaming with heat. At your embarrassment of being caught red-handed, he can’t help but smirk a little, before he raises the tray meaningully. “I made us sharlotka — it’s my babulya’s recipe. I hope you’ll like it.” He sets the tray on the worn coffee table right in front of his couch.

There’s something catlike about how he moves to take up space on his own couch opposed to how he holds himself in public. It’s surprisingly intimate to see him lounging as he awaits your company — dejected and warm. His left side faces the backrest, left leg folded and tucked so that his ankle fits just under the inside of his right knee. His right foot is planted firmly on the floor. 

It’s a lovely change of pace to see him so distended, so informal, in spite of his still formal clothes. You want to believe he’d dressed up for you — the thought of Viktor in slacks at home is otherwise haunting. 

He leans back onto the armrest with his plate neatly held in front of himself, and while he shaves off a piece off for himself, he closely observes you sit down and reach for your own plate. 

The slice is decadently filled with thin apple slices near the bottom. It positively wafts with cinnamon and vanilla, it splits on your teaspoon surprisingly easily for how spongy it is.

The taste hits your tongue tenfold with the first bite — you should have let it cool more, but alas — autumnal flavors swirling together in a delightful mix that has your head spinning. It makes your soul turn into something wet and sappy to realize Viktor made this for you. Peeled the apples, mixed the dough, sprinkled in cinnamon. For you.

“What do you think?” The way he cocks a brow and leans further back against the armrest tells you he already knows the answer. But you want to see him preen under a compliment regardless — it’s a rare and good look on him.

“It’s really good,” you say. “I think I burnt my tongue.”

At that, he huffs out a laugh, tilting his head to watch you — small chest puffing out just a fraction, smile going from playful to proud.

“Take it slow.” His voice falls just short of a purr. So much so you find yourself losing it trying to figure out if there is an implication behind it, or if you’re just wishing one into existence. “There is more, should you want it.”

How could you be blamed for thinking about anything except for seconds when he tells you that?

You know better than to let yourself be deluded, you know better. He knows better. 

This is nothing. This is fine.

“Now,” Viktor does not give you the time to let his words swim in your head; he braces his hand on the couch cushions just shy of your thigh as he leans down to pull his laptop out from under the coffee table. At the ruckus, Persichka walks into the room. “On to what I was hoping to talk to you about. I know you were, eh, wrestling with the detailing of movements of the hexion components in their areals, but, I think I might have some suggestions regarding the specifics.”

You watch him put om his glasses, unfold the laptop and set it on the table, fans whirring within its mechanism, sounding like they’re struggling quite a bit with some dust buildup. With Persichka around, you don’t doubt they are.

She climbs onto a chair that, now that you’ve seen her do it, looks deliberately placed near the windowsill specifically to create an upwards path for her. From the chair, she hops onto the sill, where she claims a dark red pillow like a throne. After an obligatory spine-curling, yawning stretch, she curls up on it while she turns her attention to the barren tree branches outside Viktor’s window.

He sets his cake on the table, and places his laptop on himself, deft fingers moving across the keyboard. You take a shameful delight in the circling of his index on the mouse pad. The way it hyperextends just so at the last knuckle when he presses, the way he strokes, upward, over and over, as he scrolls down a document. The way he stops, presses a button with his thumb, strokes with his middle finger — oh, that hand. 

You wonder how those knobby finger joints would feel, crowding your clit into submission and pleasure, or popping into— 

“I did the math with oscillations in mind, and though I suppose it mostly fits, it still felt kind of, eh, what is the word for it, shoehorned.” Viktor tilts the laptop screen for you to see.

You lean in to look over his calculations, and, with some horror, realize you have to brace a hand on the backrest right beside his head to hover over him while you’re looking at the laptop.

Viktor is right under you, practically begging to be laid on top of, to use the heft of your weight to push him into the creaky cushions, to rub yourself against the space between his legs, wide open for you to take. 

He’s applied a light fragrance today — maybe even just deodorant. He smells of nothing in particular, beyond fresh and that pleasant, powdery clean musk of freshly showered skin.

You haven’t gotten through a quarter of what he’d shown you before he tilts his laptop back towards himself.

“But then, I thought, why oscillations?”

“O-oh?”

Your voice comes out strained. Which you are — especially in terms of paying attention to him.

“Oh, you must be uncomfortable,” he luckily concludes, and unfolds his left leg, sitting up straight on his couch, before he sets the laptop on the table between the two of you instead. “Better?”

You nod.

He has to hunch forward to see the screen properly, and it makes you sting with shame that he’s chosen to give up some of his comfort for what he interpreted as your discomfort. Considering what had just been running through your head, you don’t deserve a fraction of—

“Now, look here…” Viktor taps the top of your thigh to get your attention, but does not dignify you with a glance — he’s laser focused on the task at hand. And it’s for the best, with how it sets you alight in the least metaphorical way. You lean in, obedient to a fault, shoulders touching in front of the blue light screen. “I redid the calculations but with rotation in mind this time around, and…”

You look over the math diagonally, your eyes chasing the end result, rather than the equations, and, “Oh, it fits like a glove.”

Viktor beams at you. “It does.”

“Can I have—“ Your noses almost touch when you turn to him. It makes the both of you pause, faltering, swallowing, retreating, before you find it within yourself to continue. “Can I have a piece of paper?”

“Of course.”

You know better. 

Viktor plucks his cane off the ground, and awkwardly shuffles to a nearby cabinet, where he retrieves a stack of them, as well as a pen.

You take one, and set off to write on the nearest surface that’s ample for it, which happens to be your thigh.

“I want to see how the numbers you got would act in Holloran’s equation,” you explain. “If you’re right about the rotation, they should track, shouldn’t they?”

Viktor nods. “Good thinking. They should.”

His body tilts to you as you start scribbling away, watching your hand from just above your shoulder. His bated breath comes lukewarm on the side of your neck, just a tickle, and when the numbers don’t line up, you hear him swallow.

Long neck craned over you, chin just above the slope of your shoulder, Viktor sets his hand on the top of your thigh — a safe spot, a normal spot for a friend to be laying their hands on you. 

But not for Viktor. Not to you.

The heat of his hand on your leg is making your stomach sink, pulse rushing in your ears, head spinning, the numbers a distant dream. On instinct alone, you want to spread, for him. To lay yourself down at his hands, at his mercy, at…

Fuck.

Your thoughts absolutely refuse to cooperate when his pinky rubs focused circles into the material of your jeans.

“God. What did I miss…” Your lip starts to ache with how you bite down on it, looking over the numbers again, searching, trying—

“Here.” 

His middle and index finger brush down, down, then in. To where you’re sensitive, to where you’re soft, to where it hurts for him. He’s pointing you to an embarrassingly obvious mistake — at the very bottom of the page, just a fucking hand’s width away where you start to drip.

This close, you can’t hide a shiver from him. 

It crawls up from the bottom of your spine to just below your skull, it expands into something warm but stifling in your chest, like a pillow that’s too soft, a tea too hot, somewhere on the pleasurable, delightful edge of horrific and painful.

“Oh. Sorry.” Hit with the realization, Viktor retreats. Hands gone, heat amiss, breath distant. You need him back. You need more. You need him. Viktor looks terrified — of himself, for you. He swallows something else that laid just on the tip of his tongue, you can hear his thoughts blundering and racing before he does the only thing he can: repeat himself. “I’m sorry. I didn’t…”

You need to splash some water in your face before you do something stupid. Something irreparable. 

“S’okay,” you rasp. “It’s okay. No worries. I just— uh, can I use your bathroom? I… headache.”

Viktor generously provides you the space you so desperately don’t want, and points you to the bathroom.

“Just down the hallway,” he says. “And there should be something for your headache in the cabinet above the bathtub.”

“Thank you.”

Dazed and confused, you stumble your way out of his living room, and somehow end up in his bathroom.

Dark blue tiles line the walls and the floor. You shut the door with your back, letting it steady you. It’s strangling and somehow actually genuinely bordering on a panic attack, how your throat wrings itself shut and your heart hammers and your lungs go tight. The sink is in the midst of your tunnel vision, and against all odds, you do somehow reach it, turning the faucet on so hard it creaks.

The cold water does you some good. You splash it onto your face, dab your own cold hands down the sides of your neck, facing yourself in the still-foggy mirror as you force yourself to breathe. Slow. Steady.

The shower curtain is stuck to the inside of the bathtub, the air has just the smallest hint of humidity and soap to it still. The mental image of him, sprawled out in the bathtub, letting the warm water soak his weary joints in preparation for you makes you tingly and nauseous all at once.

Your skin still burns where his hand was. Rubbed. Touched.

He’s your boss. And by now, your mentor. You can’t just… would he even want to… 

It’s wrong. It’s so wrong.

You splash water in your face again. 

He’d done it by accident. He must have. 

Viktor wouldn’t want you. Because he knows better than that — knows better than to put his job in potential danger for the sake of lust or perhaps even romance. Knows better than to put you at risk too, and you suspect he certainly has learned his lesson about workplace romance after Talis. 

Plus — what have you done to deserve the attention, the affection, of one of the greatest men in your scientific field? 

Naive, to think just showing him a shiny new theory and offering some insignificant helping hands in his work would, no, could land you anything more than, at the very best, his friendship. 

He doesn’t want you.

This was just an accident on his part, and a mistake on yours. A mistake for even wanting to believe there could be more he’d want from you, than… than just your assistance. 

You don’t even know what there is that could fix the gnarly twisting and turning in your gut right now, the guilt, but you figure a look at the medicine cabinet can’t hurt.

You find the translucent door, grasping the small handle between your thumb and forefinger to open it.

A box of Advil is at the very forefront of his impressively stocked cabinet. Just behind it, is something labeled Targin. In smaller writing, it states just below: oxycodone hydrochloride and naloxone hydrochloride. 

A shelf above is a small glass vial.

Testosterone Enanthate. 

Everything in your mind goes quiet.

You’d been right.

The name change, the sticker, the little girl in the picture.

And it makes you shut the cabinet with shaking hands, trembling with the realization you’d dug up something so very personal on account of snooping. It wasn’t your business to know; it still isn’t.

But somewhere suppressed, under the putrid shame, you still can’t help but swell with joy. The joy of finding, of recognizing, of belonging. 

You don’t even realize you’re staggering out the door of his bathroom, your breath moving undoubtedly lighter, your chest a little less heavy, in spite of the new layer of shame.

Viktor’s waiting for you on the couch — and something about how you look paints his face with another layer of concern, brows furrowing as he moves to stand in front of you.

“Again,” he begins. “I am… so sorry. Are you alright?”

“Yeah,” you assure. You can’t look him in the eye. “I just, I needed a second.”

“I didn’t realize…” he trails off mid sentence, plucking at his brain for the right words, frowning when they slip from him. For the first time since you’ve known him, Viktor shrinks, shoulders slouching, cradling his forehead. “It was never my intention to make you uncomfortable. I want you to know that.”

“You didn’t.” He doesn’t know half of it. That all those moments he’d deemed uncomfortable has been gasoline on the fire of your wanting.

He chuckles awkwardly, and repeats a familiar line: “I thought we had gotten past the point where you felt the need to lie to me.”

“I’m not lying.”

Viktor shakes his head, unmoved by your words. “I was unprofessional. That is the truth.”

“So was I.”

“You weren’t—”

“I thought we had gotten past the point where you felt the need to lie to me, Viktor.”

That shuts him up — for the first time since you’ve known him, you get to be the one to knock the breath out of him with just your words, to make him falter.

It’s terrifying. It sets you alight.

Your words sink into him like a rock down a well, hitting the walls on the way down, reverberating with something deep and heavy when they reach the bottom — Viktor understands.

“I, eh…” He blinks at the floor, gathering what he can of what you’ve so terribly scattered of him. With a roll of his shoulders, he finally looks at you — eyes dark and wide and hesitant — and he swallows thickly. Swallows his fear. Looks at your lips. Licks his own just so, a subconscious tick rather than deliberate — but all the more alluring because of it. “If I do that, I fear I may be… more unprofessional than ever before.”

“Unprofessional how?”

“I think you know exactly how.”

He lowers his gaze to the ground. Hit with the weight of what he’d just confessed, Viktor’s shoulders sink, all of his frame caves in on itself more than it already is, and you have to say something.

“Fuck. Can I kiss you?”

He inhales slowly, shakily. Finally looks at you. 

“Please.”

You reel him in, you lay both hands on the hollows of his cheeks, sculpted for you to grasp, sculpted to fit into the curves of your palms, made for you. 

Like a final breath before diving, you take him in like it may be the last time — all the lines of his skin, the molten gold of his eyes, burning for you.

And you kiss him.

He’s so tense. Rigid all the way up to his neck, all hard lines where you press into him, lips meeting yours in a stiff, terrified brush. He tries to mold to you, but somehow always ends up a step behind; a tactless, nervous dance. 

“I’m sorry,” he rasps under his breath, his words reaching your lips before they reach your ears, noses nudging. “I… it’s been… I need a moment…”

“It’s alright,” you whisper it into the plush of his lips. “Don’t worry about a thing.”

“Actually, I…” He inhales as if bracing himself for contact, settles his hands on your shoulders to steady himself. Pulls away just a painful hint — just enough to have you understand that what he wants to tell you is important. “There is one thing you should know, before we go any further.” He says it with little fanfare, without a doubt or fear, but like it’s something holy. And it is. “I’m trans.”

The confirmation, though obvious, reverberates in your head like a prayer in a tall, empty church.

“I know,” you say. And after a moment’s hesitation, you add: “Me too.”

The smile that graces him is divine — moreso than any of the ones you’ve had the pleasure of witnessing so far. 

Viktor kisses you so hard your mutual collision clacks in your skull. He kisses you so hard your nose hurts, he kisses you so hard breathing becomes optional — and a stupid option at that.

But then you lick his crooked teeth, he melts for you, reborn into something softer. He suckles on you, on the tip of your tongue, come here, before he licks it in welcoming, before he lets you taste him wholly.

There we go.

He’s so slick. Like he’d been hungry for your mouth, he tastes heady and potent like apples and cinnamon and makes your neurons fizzle with all the deftness of smooth rum. 

You let it swirl in your pleasure-numb mind, let the room spin with just the vehemence of how well he kisses you, undulating tongue, eager lips, curious hand, sliding down your back.

When you pull back for a breath, he follows you with desperation before he catches himself.

Viktor’s breath comes out in quick bursts, his hair falls in front of his eyes wildly, he licks his own lips as if to eat what remains of you. 

“You don’t know how long…” he begins, voice hoarse and lips cherry red slick and eyes lidded, staring at your lips, then climbing up your features gently, lovingly, until they settle into your own gaze, adoring, knowing, undressing, “I’ve waited to do that.”

“Not as long as I have.” You cup his face and he leans into it with all the indulgence of a sleepy cat. “God, from the moment I first walked into your office…”

That makes him laugh — something airy and quiet, almost like a whisper. His eyes crack open and his smile turns smug.

“Oh?” Viktor’s grin presses against your lips, canines and incisors slick and sharp. “Is that why you wanted the job?”

Two can play that game.

“Is that why you gave me the job?”

“Mmmh…” Viktor pulls back as if to appreciate you, runs his hand down the length of your back, stopping at your hip, squeezing appreciatively. You shiver — against him, this time, and it’s tenfold more satisfying than to shiver an arm’s length away. “It was on my list of reasons. You have… many qualities.”

You can’t bear not having him any closer for any longer.

“Hm.” You nudge your nose under his jaw at his flattery. “Likewise.”

Viktor tenses at the touch, the front of his throat bobbing nervously, tilting his head towards you, rather than away to grant you access. A peck on the sharp edge of his jaw almost knocks him off kilter.

You set your hands on his hips to steady him. That makes him jump, too.

“What do you need?” You ask.

“You.” Viktor chuckles at his own boldness, before he leans back, trusting the grip you have on him. And you’re not about to let him down. “But unfortunately a seat, as well.”

You consider being raunchy — but you decide the time for that is not ripe just yet.

“We can definitely do that,” you offer up instead, steadying him on just one side while you let go of the side where he needs to use his cane. The couch isn’t far — but it feels like it, with how badly you want to kiss him again.

You’re on him the second he’s down.

And he parts his legs for you as willingly as you’d hoped and dreamed, he lets you bury your face in his neck and lay him back down the length of the couch. Viktor molds to you willingly, slots himself into the shape of your body, wraps his arms around you as though he wants to cocoon you. 

“Touch me,” he whispers, and who are you to deny him? You brush your hand up his sweater, marveling at how his ribs slide like polished piano keys under your fingertips, how his ribcage arches for you in spite of the tired creaks of his spine. Viktor presses himself into your hands like he’s hungry for touch — and you come to understand with how he moans for it, that he is. 

Your hands come to a brusque, sudden halt at his chest.

There’s a subtle swell to it — but soft and lax. You give an experimental squeeze, stoking your thumb along the curve of his tits, soft and droopy with age. You know you’re handling tender, sensitive flesh. And you treat it accordingly, carefully, even moreso when he gasps.

“You don’t have to…” The front of Viktor’s throat jumps under your lips. 

There’s a much more important answer you need to get.

“Would you like me to?”

He squirms for just a beat, like your sentence alone shook him to his core, before he breathes:

“God, yes.”

He lays back limp and pretty, like caught prey into the mouth of a hound dog, lets you bite at his neck with nothing but a low moan. Your thumbs press down the middle of his breastbone, hammering pulse beating back against your fingertips, before you envelop his chest in your palms. His tits barely take up the space offered up by the hollow of your hands, sit in them dainty and perfect. 

His nipples harden into the heft of your palms, perk up only further as you knead him like a cat. 

You have to taste them. 

“M-mhm…” Viktor’s thighs twitch around your hips as you softly tug on his tits and pinch the skin of his neck between your teeth, but he doesn’t protest against the pain for not even a moment. His knees do, just barely, popping as he crosses his ankles under the curve of your ass. 

As much as you like them there, as much as his neck is such a willing canvas for your mouth, you need to go lower. You want to paint the entirety of his expanse in kisses, in bites, in touch. You want to know the different parts of him by the scent of his skin, you want to know his body through the brush of your palms alone, you want his unique bouquet to grace your palate.

You let go of his chest to brace yourself with one palm, and lift the hem of his sweater with the other.

His heart hammers at your lips, through the shell of his breastbone.

“Can I—“

Viktor moans in agreement before you can finish. “Yes,” he cries, “I want your mouth. I want it… everywhere.”

He brushes his hand through your hair to guide you where he wants you — which is coincidentally exactly where you want to go. Where his skin goes a light pink like the inside of a strawberry, where he’s soft, where he’s sensitive.

You prime his nipple with a swipe of your tongue, marveling at how it glistens like candied fruit, before you suck him into your mouth. The peak of his nipple sits between your lips like a cherry, swollen and soft all at once. His spine bows with the first suckle, he pets your hair like you’re a good, obedient little thing. You would not dream of being anything else.

Something in his hip joints pops, first one, then the other — and then, his clothed cunt is rubbing into your stomach. You can’t fathom the thought of letting him go untended to, the thought of him having to do a thing below you other than take pleasure and sob with it, and you aren’t about to change your mind now.

You brush one hand between his legs, cupping the swell of his mound in your palm. Seconds later, Viktor’s index and thumb wrap around your wrist, and you fear you may have gone too far, too fast.

“Sorry,” you begin, “I should have asked—“

“Shush.”

He undoes his pants with his other hand. And guides you within.

You simply let him slide your hand down the flat front of his boxers, guiding you down, down, until the soft meat of his pussy sits in your cupped palm like water in a thirsty man’s hands. 

“Ah…”

“Oh, fuck,” you breathe, at the same time as he exhales with relief at being touched where he hurts for it.

His cunt is markedly warmer through just his boxers, but not nearly as slick as you are — barely at all, actually. Are you moving too fast for him? Isn’t he enjoying this enough? What else there is that you could do—

“Are you going to start moving?” He teases. “Or does simply holding someone’s cunt usually get you the desired outcome?”

“Smartass,” you mumble into his chest. “I was just… is there more I could… do for you? To enjoy yourself? You’re… I mean, you’re not…”

He giggles a little at how you stumble.

“Wet? It takes me a while — and often doesn’t happen at all,” Viktor admits. “You are doing wonderful. Don’t worry about a thing, and just…“ he lifts his hips into your hand, “keep touching me.”

“Okay,” you mutter.  “I just… I wanna take care of you.”

You brush your thumb up between where the lips of his cunt dip into a slit, brush up, up, until you find the bulge of his clit. His breath catches.

”O-oh… You— mh,” He pulls you closer, cheek to his chest, and bows his head to kiss your forehead. “You are. You are.”

His cunt molds around your fingers even through the fabric of his boxers, his little cock pulses in between your fingers like it has a mind of its own. You can feel him swelling. 

It’s featherlight, how you touch him at first, just barely stroking his cunt with the palm side of your fingers, before he leans into it more bodily, before he stops settling for receiving pleasure and starts taking it. You can’t have that — not yet, at least. You press against his cunt a hint harder, rub the seam of his boxers against the head of his cock, and, yeah, that does it.

Viktor mewls for you, a pitchy little catlike sound, when you lick his nipples back into your mouth — first the left, just three little suckles, then the right, tender sucking turning into open-mouthed devouring. He pulls you into his chest with all the force of a man spoiled rotten. His cock pulses in your hand with every stroke, the cotton of his boxers warm and clinging to him just enough to tantalizingly give away the rough size of him as he hardens. His worn body soaks up and softens with the pleasure you give him, Viktor clings to you like you’re the only thing.

You feel watched. 

And you are — more than just watched, actually.

“Mrp!” 

Next thing you know, there’s fluff worming itself between you and Viktor, wet little nose pushing at your face, pushing you away.

What—?

“Persichka!” Viktor chastises. You sit back on your knees to watch the scene unfold — the way she possessively nuzzles her head under his sharp chin and looks at you from just the corner of her vision to let you know it will always be her first and you second. As if to drive her point home, she purrs with a ribcage rattling rumble.

Viktor pushes himself back up against the armrest to sit, and scoops her up into his arms, before he shifts to the side of the couch to set her down on the floor gently. As he sits up straight, his sweater slides down the length of his torso — unfortunately covering him up wholly.

“Sorry,” he tells you. “She likes to be… paid attention to. Let me just…”

He absently pets between her ears while he takes his phone and opens youtube. And he doesn’t have to search far at all — his recommended page is filled with birdwatching videos for cats. 

As Viktor shifts his focus to picking out a video for her, you seize the moment for some appreciation. The world seems to have gone quiet and still only for you to watch the swoop of his hair down the sides of his forehead, the gentle shadows the setting sun throws not over just the hollows of his cheeks, but the deep lines in his skin — the ones near his mouth and eyes especially, because they’re borne of what he does best: smiling. His grey hair goes platinum white in the sunlight, something about his brown-yellow eyes turns liquid honey gold, his normally pale lips now raw and puffy because of you, and something about his form, in all its humanity, becomes bigger than itself. 

You marvel at him the way you’d marvel at a landscape — enamored with every detail of the grand vista, enamored with the traits that come with the autumn of his life.

He smiles a wry, sheepish smile.

“That will keep her busy. She hates being alone, but, like this, it will take her over an hour to notice.” 

At the first sound of birdsong, she’s already rushing to the TV, watching with perked ears and a twitching tail. 

You can’t help but smrik. Viktor catches it — catches you, staring, and can’t help one of his own, before he asks, voice bouncy with a suppressed little laugh. “What?”

“Nothing.” You shift a little closer, until you’re seamed to his side, and press a kiss to the corner of his lip. His smile grows, stretches towards your mouth like a plant towards sunlight. “You’re just… very pretty.”

At that, he actually grins — and laughs an amused little giggle so wonderful it sounds like the sweet song of a well-tuned violin. 

“Pretty?” He sets his hand at the base of your neck, just to the side, and slides it up gently, until it sits under your jaw just right. His thumb nudges at the tip of your chin in loving, tender circles.

“Yeah.” You swallow your fear of saying something stupid before you lean into the cradle of his palm, and bask in how well you fit in it. “Do you mind it? Being called that.”

He shakes his head.

“It’s just been… a while since I have been. But I like it — I like it very much.” With a soft exhale that washes down your lips, he tilts his head to kiss you proper. Slick tongue painting your lips with his spit like you’re a blank canvas, before he catches the swell of your lip in a suckle turned bite that makes your nerves light up. “However,” he shares your breath as he gasps it, “I am more than just pretty.”

“Oh, really?”

When Viktor talks again, he purrs so lovely it makes you shiver with how his voice rumbles. “I could show you.”

He doesn’t have to ask.

“I’d love that.”

“Accompany me to my bedroom?”

You’re on your feet before his voice lilts with flirtations questioning at the end of his sentence. It makes him laugh.

“Come on, then.”

The walk to his bedroom is torturous — long and painful even though you keep a hand glued to the small of his back, where his frame narrows before it tapers off into his hips. He guides you to a shut door down the hallway of his apartment. It opens with a creak, like the drumroll before a curtain rise.

His bedroom smells so much like him it’s driving you crazy.

A big, lavish rug is in the middle of the room, and various kinds of clothes hang over multiple available surfaces — a cardigan on the back of his desk chair, a big, brown arm chair in the corner is covered in multiple sweaters and a white shirt, and there is a vest laid out neatly on his bed. He folds it up fast, messy, and slots it away in some drawer, before he turns to you.

“I must admit I was not expecting.. company in my bedroom.” It’s endearing to see this more sheepish, tender side of him.

You crowd him further into his room, and he waltzes with it, even as you set your hands on the already open waist of his slacks.

“A bit of a mess is the last thing I could care about when I have you right in front of me,” you assure.

“I should hope so,” Viktor replies. “Or else we’ll have sex in a few hours at best. Tomorrow, if you’d prefer the rug vacuumed and the floors freshly mopped—“ His calves bump the edge of the bed, and he gives a soft little sigh of surprise.

The flaps of his open slacks serve as perfect handles for you to tug him closer and hold him still, dipping your head to trace the front of his throat, right up the very middle, with the tip of your tongue, until you reach that soft, vulnerable spot right under his chin.

“I’d prefer you on that bed.” You whisper into the space where a killing bite could very well be laid — into the soft lax skin just under his extended jaw.

His chuckle comes out something between a dark and a dreamy sigh — dripping with desire. Viktor fists your shirt, and draws you closer, never a step behind.

”You’ll have me,” he purrs. “You’ll have me everywhere you want. In any way—” his breath catches as something inhibiting in your brain flips, and you do bite, his windpipe between your jaws. When he speaks, his throat vibrates against your teeth, his voice reverberates in the depths of your skull. “Hah. Mh, God. I-in any way you’d want.”

You let go, and he practically sags with it.

“Then lay down, Viktor.” A kiss to where air wheezes into his lungs, a promise at gentleness. “I wanna take care of you.”

He drops his cane and shucks off his pants for you. Holds on to you as you steady him on his way down, expects you with open arms, open thighs.

You don’t want to join him just yet.

Instead, you kneel, just the way you’d fantasized for so long now, thick carpet under worshipping knees. 

Watching more and more of his skin come into view as you slide his sweater up his body is as magical as watching a majestic sunrise. Viktor leans into it, raises his arms once you get high enough, and slips out of it once it’s over his head.

Just like that, he’s all yours to marvel at.

“God, you’re gorgeous.” His ribcage expands under your palms with a delighted breath, sharp angles of his bones pushing gently at soft, alabaster skin. As sculpted as his face is, his body is anything but — angular from afar, yes, but giving and pliant under just the right touches, in just the right places. There is just a hint of tummy, of padding on his hips, that must have come with age, with comfort, spilling above his boxers. His tits sit pretty and near-flat on his chest — they could easily slip past even watchful eyes under thick enough clothing, and they had, because you’d never noticed them. But familiar scars at the side of his chest, closer to his armpits, tell you that must have not always been the case. Viktor leans back as if to let you take him in properly, in all his finely aged glory, like a rare wine. 

And you need to know his flavor, now, or it feels like you might start biting at anything, everything, like a rabid fucking dog. Like your brain’s on fire with desire and your neurons can’t fire off under the influence of anything but want, want, want.

You lean in to nuzzle the middle of his chest, tracing down the dip of his sternum with the tip of your nose to learn his scent — his real scent, the way his skin smells, unmodified, natural, true. Intoxicating. Musky. Human. Animalic.

You open your mouth for a taste, and by some miracle (or was it a subconscious intention?) you end up at his nipples again. Melting into him, wrapping both arms around his waist and drowning in his heat, his legs, around you, pulling you into the lulling scent of him like a pillow does to the exhausted. 

His nipple fits so well in your mouth.

Letting it happen — letting your head spin with the smell of him lodged deep into what feels like the front of your brain, letting the lovechild of desire and contentment take you — comes as easily as falling asleep. Your thoughts melt away with the first suckle at his tit, and they melt further still as you continue. 

Viktor envelops you, an embrace of pure comfort, resting his face on the top of your head and inhaling your scent while you work his chest with loving lips. At first, you have the brainpower to be tactful. To trace and flick your tongue at the pink peaks, to mold your lips to the soft, fragile skin. It doesn’t last long — especially not when Viktor sings your praises. 

“So good,” he praises you with a hushed whine, “oh, so good for me. How I’ve missed—”

His voice gets stuck somewhere in his throat when you glance up at him curiously, halted in your pursuit of pleasure in favor of knowledge.

“Missed what, Viktor?”

He pauses, uncertain.

“Someone touching me,” he confesses. He cups his hand over his left breast. Squeezes. Some of the flesh and skin spills tantalizingly between his thin fingers. “Especially here.”

“I can’t believe it,” and it’s true — you can’t. How could anyone resist the soft, senescent allure of his chest, the soft skin, the puffy pink nipples, pliant proof of what he once was, of the fact that he’s aged, lived, seen. “I meant it,” you kiss over the knuckles of his hand laid on his chest, “when I told you you’re gorgeous. You are, Viktor; everywhere. But I am very partial to your chest.”

He laughs at that — something tiny and fragile and disbelieving, but a laugh no less.

”Then, please,” he cradles your head closer to his tits. “Don’t stop touching me.”

Your tongue brushes his nipple like it were cotton candy, as though it would melt from the warmth, the spit. It’s only with a small suckle that you guide it back into your mouth, and you stay gentle with his tits — simply making out with wherever your lips reach — until he has half the mind to stop arching into you and demand more with a tug at your hair.

The temptation to tease, to make him beg for it, is not a small one. But you figure there will be better things to have him pleading for — right now, you want to indulge in the taste of him just as luch as he wants to indulge in having you mouthing at his breasts.

It’s intrinsically infuriating, that you can’t have both of them at once. It’s a difficult, terrible game, to decide which one of the puffy, pretty things goes into your mouth, and which one you twirl and tug between your fingers. It’s clearly difficult for Viktor, too, he arches his chest into your mouth every time you switch from one engorged, pink nipple to the other.

It’s a tempting reminder that there is more to him yet to indulge in when his hips start brushing against you. And it’s a confirmation he wants it when his legs spread for you in pleading invitation on the next brush of your tongue to the pink of his nipple.

You kiss his tits goodbye — for now, at least — before you work your way further down with the same reverence of hellos and goodbyes to every new inch of skin. To the hairs on his stomach, to the the way they grow coarser under his navel, to the waistband of his boxers. To the fabric nestled between his thighs, where you nose like a dog at the scent, the pliant meat of his pubic mound, and you whimper for it. For him.

“Lay back,” you gasp. “Please.”

Viktor doesn’t hesitate. Not even for just a moment.

He extends backwards onto the bed with all the grace of a ballet dancer, all long limbs and an elongated, arched spine that crackles with the tension of his hedonistic stretch.

And with the new angle, his hips tilt, and you’re granted what you’d been aching for. The plush of his cunt presses to your lips, chubby cock nudging at your cupid’s bow in a kiss broken by cotton. 

He smells so fucking good. It makes your head all woozy, like you’re starved enough to be dizzy for it. Your brain goes numb with just the musky, salty waft of his cunt, you open your mouth like you could devour him then and there, underwear be damned. And who could blame you for stifling a moan into the meat of his cunt when you have the first, stifled but heavenly taste of him? Who could blame you for licking and kissing at him through the fabric like you could sand it off with just your tongue and get where you want to be through desperation alone, who could blame you for hinging your jaw open wide so you can have as much of his pussy in your mouth as your limited, wretched anatomy allows?

“Please,” you suckle at the outline of his cock and care so very fucking little for the mouthful of lint you’ve gathered by now, because somewhere among the synthetic fibre that crowds your tongue, is Viktor, and nothing else matters. 

“Easy,” Viktor coos at you, thumbing at your cheek, “I’ll— ah. You have me.” He fists his waistband with his other hand, starts pulling at it. “Let me give you what you want.”

“What I need,” you correct, nuzzling at the by now soaked fabric. He must not realize how dead serious you are, because it makes him giggle.

“Come here,” he demands, and you do, you always do, you always will. You stumble up his body to his mouth drunkenly, and almost growl with frustration at being caught, being denied, just a breath’s width away from him, chin in his hand. Viktor’s thumb is on your lips, presses into them like your mouth’s a ripe plum. “Open.”

It pops into your mouth, and you’re about to start suckling, until he presses at your bottom teeth, forcing your jaw open. A moment later, his thumb swipes down the thick of your tongue, gathering the lint in your mouth with a tut.

“So desperate… couldn’t even wait for my underwear to come off, could you? Made such a mess of yourself…” he half-chastises, half-coos, like he’s talking to an animal that can’t understand its predicament, before his finger is gone and you hear him wipe it on the sheets. You don’t know why it makes you shiver, why it makes you tuck your face into his neck in blissed out, stupid shame. But Viktor pets the back of your neck like he gets it, even when you whimper and bite at him. “There we are.”

You feel his hand move, his hips shift, and though the logical, smart thing would be to help him get rid of his boxers, all you can really do is watch as his underwear slides off his hips first, then peels off his damp cunt — damp with your drool.

“Fuck, Viktor,” you whine, dropping your forehead to his shoulder because just the mere sight of his pussy, dusty pink and thick, chubby little cock, twitching for you, overwhelms you. “Can… I wanna… fuck. Oh, fuck. Jesus Christ.” 

He giggles softly against the shell of your ear.

“What’s wrong?” 

It could qualify as a rhetorical question. He knows that damn fucking well.

 “Your cunt’s so pretty it, it… makes me… stupid.”

He kisses you. Short and sweet on the lips, licking at the space between as if to sample the way desperation tastes in your mouth.

“Then I am quite worried for one of the brightest minds in our field.”

Smug fuckin’ bastard—

“O-oh,” you gasp lewdly enough that it would sound, to anyone else, like you’re the one getting touched. Like you’re wounded. But all he’s done is envelop your hand in his, and cup it over where his sex is swollen and aching for you. 

You can’t move — you can’t think.

Viktor grins like the cat that got the cream, while he tilts his hips into your palm generously, languidly, as encouragement. You savor the texture, skin downy with body hair, lips so soft and engorged they’re jiggly. His cock, the cock you’d dreamed about, humped your hand about, agonized for even thinking about — sits against the heel of your palm.

It’s better than a dream. It’s better than any fantasy — to have him. In your palm. Scorching hot and hard and twitching, he’s in your hand— 

“Breathe,” Viktor reminds. He squirms below you with the novelty of being touched, and the shiver that rolls down his back ends with a hard, stomach-clenching twitch of his little cock. When he speaks again, his voice leaves him breathily, shakily. “What… did you want to do, hm?”

“Anything,” you blurt, which is a far cry from the concise answer he deserves. “Anything you want me to.”

“Anything? Is that so?”

“Yes. Please.”

Viktor’s guiding hand presses into your own, and starts guiding it over his damp folds in languid circles. His hips follow, in tune with the rhythm he sets like a slow, tender dance. You can feel his foreskin dragging on your palm, the tip of his cock in the groove of your hand, grinding in, out, slowly, the way it pulses with pleasure.

“I could show you how I like it,” he lilts, dragging the tip of his canine over the shell of your ear before he licks. “Hands, mouth, whatever you’ll let me have.”

“My mouth,” you blurt, “or hands. I don’t care, either, both, all that’s left after that too. Show me.”

He laughs at your enthusiasm — not with mockery, but with amused, tender delight.

“God, you are just…” His hand comes up to pet the hair at the back of your head like you’re an obedient dog. You wouldn’t have it any other way. 

“Just what?” 

His grin is naked with vulnerability, with exhilirated desire.

“Everything.” He says it like it’s meant to be taken lightly, but the way he looks at you — ready to eat, to pounce, to kiss — tells you otherwise. “I’ll show you,” he breathes. “Let me.”

You’d be crazy not to.

Callused skin slides down the back of your neck, until the meat of your shoulder rests under his hand. Viktor barely has to give the faintest push before you’re following the impulse to descend. 

You’d like to linger at his chest again — his nipples are puffy and swollen from your sucking, warm under the tip of your nose. A flinch shakes him just from that faint contact. But you have other places to be, to taste, to love.

His stomach caves at the first kiss you lay below where his ribs end, at first going against, then, once you pass the dip of his navel, with the grain of his hair. It grows thicker under your nose and lips, fuller, until, until.

Until his cock bumps against the fullness of your bottom lip. Until you can smell him, his cunt’s unique fragrance enveloping your brain like dizzying smoke. Like a drug.

“Open,” Viktor says again, but it’s less of a demand this time. You do, parting your mouth with a wet, slick sound. You can already feel your tongue swimming in your own spit. 

His hips tilt, just barely enough to slot his cock between your lips, and your brain cushions it into a soft, sloppy kiss like it’s a reflex, like you were meant to spend your days with your mouth between his legs, worshipping at his glossy pussy.

He tastes so good. Rare-steak-soft as it splits on your tongue, tangy with the sweet, slowly dripping evidence of how badly he wants you, cock twitching in your mouth like it’s pressing on your tongue for more. 

And how can you be blamed, for wanting to cannibalize him then and there, to see just how much of the soft, tender meat of his cunt fits in your starving mouth? How he’d sob with it, live prey devoured, fluttering butterfly pinned to cork—

“A-ah, hah, s-slow, slow,” he gasps, knees drawing up to his chest and close to your head, like he’s trying to hide his pussy from your overwhelming affection. “Go… gently on me. It’s been some time since I’ve had anyone.” Viktor’s voice fades in the closest color of shame you’ve yet seen on him. 

It hits you somewhere tender that you’re the first one he’s doing this with in a while. 

“Sorry,” you kiss his cunt better like it’s a dripping scrape wound. “Sorry. You… fuck, you’re so… and I’ve wanted to… for so long.”

“Mm. I know. Me too,” Viktor pets your hair. Slowly, his legs fall apart, and even more eagerly so when you stroke them into it. “It’s alright.”

You listen. Though everything about his cunt, from jiggling softness to little cock hanging above your lips like a dark red cherry off a low branch, to ripe peach fuzzy soft lips, compels you to act otherwise; you want to be good. For him.

You lick his cunt gently at first, barely lapping at it like you’re trying to drink him, before it turns into something more languid, more bold — like a cat grooming its beloved. You leave his sex soaked with your spit, you leave him dripping, you leave him loved.

“Yes,” he whispers, grinding his cock along the width of your tongue, ”that’s, ah, better.” Gentle fingertips at your forehead, swiping at the dewy pearls of sweat before they come to rest around your hollowed cheeks. “Handsome, sweet boy… you have no idea how often, how much, I’ve pictured you like this.”

Viktor laughs a little, more from his chest than his belly, though it tenses a little with his laugh just the same. 

His cunt jerks, hole clenching around nothing, please don’t stop, as you retreat from between his legs just enough to talk to him. 

“You did?” 

He smiles as though it pleases him more than his mouth on you to hear you ask.

“When I used my wheelchair the previous week,” he begins. “I… the truth is, it wasn’t my leg acting up. I’d pulled a muscle in my thigh the night before. And I’m…” he chuckles,” well, I’m sure you can imagine how.”

You’ve done nothing but imagine. And even now, your mind flashes with the most salacious images — him on his back, arching off the mattress, him tucking his hand between his legs and against the mattress, grinding into it, him pulling and jerking at his swollen clit desperately—

No. No, you need to know.

“I can.” You lean your cheek into the plush of his thigh, and kiss at the top of his mound, where his stomach meets his cunt. “But I’ve done enough imagining until now — especially of you. Tell me?”

Viktor tilts his head back, covering his eyes with the crook of his elbow, and gives something between a laugh and a hum. His grin’s so boyish it’s making your synapses fizzle out, fizzle quiet. Long neck, sharp teeth, sharp tongue, and he’s yours, all yours. 

His cock flutters a little right below your chin, like the mere recalling of the memory is… affecting him.

“I, eh… I couldn’t stop thinking about you. About you between my thighs, pulling on my hair, after… the incident with the goggles. When I got home, I…” His voice trails off, he buries his face further into the crook of his elbow.

You kiss his cock in encouragement — his entire pelvis jolts against your lips with delighted surprise. But you’ve learned the art of negotiating with Viktor by now — give him a little. Never enough.

“You what, Viktor?” Your breath washes cold down his damp clit.

He hesitates — but can’t resist you for long. It boosts your ego something fierce.

“I… I humped my hand, then… a pillow. At a certain point, I got… too desperate, too greedy, too sloppy, I…” He laughs — at himself, at the nature of his confession.

You walk your fingers up his sides as though your hands are climbing his ribs like a ladder, and once you settle on his chest and knead, it finally, finally coaxes him out of hiding.

You wish you could tell him he won’t have to worry about a too-soft pillow and rough fabric ever again — not when he has your mouth, your hands, you, all for himself. All at his disposal.

Viktor’s throat bobs, he swallows with an audible, parched click, as you lower yourself back between his legs, back where you belong, and you whisper: “I’ll take care of you, from now on.”

Viktor’s lukewarm fingers intertwine with yours, lacing hands before he squeezes as if to say I trust you and me too.

It comes naturally to return it, it comes even more naturally to smile as he grins at it, and nothing, nothing comes more naturally than savoring the way his smile melts and turns into a lax, open mouthed expression of pleasure.

You nudge into his cunt the same way animals nudge into each-other for warmth and comfort, you lick a fat, greedy stripe through the by now dripping slit, all the way to under his clit.

“Inside,” Viktor mutters. “I’d like you to fuck me. With, with your tongue.”

He doesn’t have to ask twice. His lips part willingly under your fingers prying at them, and his pink, slick hole awaits with a desperate little clench.

“Slow,” Viktor reminds.

“Okay. Anything you need,” you coo. “I’ve got you.”

And you lick him where he’s wettest.

He arches with the slow, slick intrusion of your tongue. You can see why it’d hurt him to rush, with how tight his rim grips the very tip, especially without something to smoothen the glide. But your prodding tongue, spit drenched and molding to the clenching walls of his cunt, is what he needs. It feels vital to linger at the entrance; not just because his folds hug your tongue into a loose, messy kiss, but because you want it to be good for him. You suckle, you lick, you kiss, until you feel his cunt clenching to draw you in, rather than resisting. 

And that, as Viktor seems to drown under the onslaught of pleasure, is when you push in.

Once you make it past the tight ring of muscles, and hinge your jaw open to enable more length to push into him, Viktor starts gripping your hand, fisting the sheets. One of his legs even kicks out like he’s struggling against the pleasure. You cup his thigh, and guide it to sit pretty, sit comfortably, on your shoulder.

You’ve got him.

He tastes amazing. The faint aroma oozing from his cunt now delights your tastebuds tenfold, intoxicating in a deliberately slow, overwhelming way, like dark wine. Making your brain feel like a small bathroom after a hot shower, all foggy and humid and dumb and slippery.

“F-feels good,” he grits out, tummy tight with tension even though you attempt to stroke it into loosening. The rest of your hand lingers on his abdomen, but you let it slide further down, gently, until just your thumb can reach his clit, which sits neglected and twitching, against the tip of your nose. 

Leaning both your head and your jaw into it, you lick into him, devouring, claiming.

And you work him fuckin’ good. You grab his gaunt, little pelvis with both hands, and you take care of him, you make sure he doesn’t have to do the damndest thing, you just rock him onto your tongue, crush his clit with your nose. You fuck him with your tongue in the most proper sense of the word. If it weren’t a soft, slick little thing, you’d be plowing his willing hole by now.

“A-a-hng…” Viktor gasps in time with the thrusts of your tongue. “S-such… a good mouth. Oh.”

You can’t help the words that come to mind, and you wish you could somehow continue pleasuring him with your mouth and talk at the same time, but alas, you have to leave the job to your fingers. It feels like less of a crime when his cock slots so prettily between your index and your middle finger, dragging on the webbing with each stroke.

“Luckily for you, I take very kindly to flattery.”

He catches the little reference; it’s obvious in how he licks his parched lips, then grins.

“Quiet down and put it back to use, then.”

God, you’ve missed that sting, that mischievous playfulness in his tone. It makes you drip and clench around nothing desperately.

You’re not about to disobey.

“Fingers,” he decides when you prod at his hole with your tongue. “I can take your fingers. I want, ah, I want you to suck m-my cock.”

“So demanding, professor.”

It makes him falter; being called that. You’re not sure in what way it affects him, not with how he chokes on a breath and holds it. 

And it positively escapes him with a throaty, decadent moan that seems to rattle the very walls of the room the second you latch on to his clit. 

The soft, slick warmth of him soothes, stretching from the curve of your cupid’s bow to the tip of your chin, and his cock fits between your lips just so, practically made for it. You can’t help but close your eyes to indulge as though you’re savoring a delicacy, sucking on him until his tip pops from the foreskin. His clit lays on your tongue with the heft of a small berry, or the very tip of a small finger.

And it jumps. With the overwhelming pleasure of being known, prodded at, licked.

He’s so hard it must be painful. 

His cunt puts up little resistance once your index is past the entrance, and even less of it when you massage at his inner walls. They squeeze you, gripping just the width of one finger so tight it feels as though his pussy wants to swallow your fingers in the pursuit of pleasure.

“W-wait,” he warbles from above you. You cock your head to watch him, long thin and milky white arm stretching to the drawer of his night stand. There, he retrieves a small, transparent plastic bottle, and holds it out to you. “Use it.”

Gladly.

You pull your finger out just enough to make sure his cunt still barely kisses the tip, before you drip a generous amount onto your finger.

With it, you practically glide into him. 

“More.” Viktor twines his arms above his head like the branches of a barren tree, arches his ribs with the sensation. His pussy convusles around the length of your finger, begging the same plea as him, but in a different tongue. “More, I can take it.”

“I know you can,” you assure, and on the next pullout, join your index and middle finger together. 

His cunt gulps them eagerly, with a greedy shudder of it in its entirety: from cherry red, neglected clit, fat lips, to the depth of his hole. All of it gushes as it contracts around you, as if to thank you. 

“O-oh, perfect,” he gasps, in time with the thrusts of your hand. Your palm meets his chubby, jiggly lips with sticky little plap-plap-plaps. “Ta— hh, taking… care of me so well.”

“Yeah, you needed it, didn’t you?” You coo. “Needed someone to remind you of what it feels like, to be touched, kissed, sucked. Pleasured. I know, oh, I know.”

Viktor nods frantically, his brows knit like he means it solemnly. The way he receives pleasure so desperately, so willingly, makes you wonder.

“How long?” You ask, taken with both curiosity and jealousy. “Since someone’s taken care of you like this?”

He swallows, and peeks at you from beneath thick, wet lashes — god, he’s tearing up with pleasure. Then, he flinches with it, when you descend back down to his ruddy little cock with a pitiful kiss.

“I— don’t know,” he mutters. “I don’t know.”

“You know so much.” You flick his tip with your tongue, and he, brilliant, sharp-tongued, mean Viktor, the Viktor, squeaks. “Sweet, bright Viktor. I’m sure you know this, too. Think.”

“Mm—!” He shakes his head when you deliberately kiss above his clit, when you shove your fingers into his willing cunt so thoroughly it feels less like fucking him and more like stabbing him. Stabbing him in a wound that lights up hedonistically. His cunt takes it, delights in it — a wound that’s never meant to close. “A-ah, nn, fuck.”

He arches his pelvis to your mouth, a plea you ignore.

“Tell me.”

“N-no one. Never. N-no one’s ever—!” He hisses when you flick his cock in reward. “Ah, are… are you satisfied?”

You wonder how much of it is just him playing into it for your sake, and how much of it is the truth. But when you lap up his cock into your wet mouth the way you would the tip of a half-melted popsicle on a hot day, you understand that he hadn’t lied — not one bit.

Viktor crumbles, curling in on himself like a defenseless young animal, thighs around your neck, fingers in your hair, torn between throwing himself into the pleasure or escaping it, and he sobs.

“Yeah,” you grind the word into his cock like a pestle into a mortar, letting it reverberate into his flesh. When you pull away, string stretching between his aching cock and your bottom lip, Viktor looks like he might go insane. Eyes glazed, dazed, crazed, staring you down like he’s starving, like you’re just a vision in a dream. “Very.”

“Then ss-stop teasing me,” he grits out. “Please.”

You can’t deny a man who asks so pretty. You don’t have the heart to.

You dip back into his dewy folds with a lick so small and gentle it could pass for a kitten’s, before you sink into him proper. Nestling your face between his legs and licking at him while you rock your fingers back and forth. Steady, gentle, comforting, you know he’s going to find release in the familiar.

If you could, you’d start kneading him and purring like a satisfied, delighted cat. Something about his taste, his smell, has gone from frenzying to comforting, you feel as though you’d like to bury yourself in the depths of his warm cunt and stay there.

It goes on for what feels like both hours and seconds all at once; you get lost in the slick, smooth texture on his tongue like the inside of a plum, the savory taste of him.

“I can take more,” Viktor rasps, “I want it, mmh, rougher.”

“Rougher how?” You’re surprised at the sound of your own voice, all raspy and desperate. 

“Like the first time you got your mouth on me. I want to feel… devoured.”

“I’ve got you.”

You sink deeper into him, until you can wind the entire length of your arm around his pelvis, trapping him.

“Oh,” he gasps at just the prospect of being pinned.

And he screams at being ravaged.

His legs kick out as though he’s in pain when you hinge your jaw so wide you could swallow his pussy whole, but the way he arches into your tongue, the way he puts both hands on the back of your head and shoves until you end up with your teeth in the meat above his clit tells you he’s getting exactly what he wants.

You cushion the sting of your teeth with your lip, but maim him no less as you suck everything your mouth had engulfed, including his hard, hot cock.

Viktor’s nails scratch at your scalp while he’s being well and truly eaten, while you speed the gentle, boat-like rocking of your fingers to an unforgiving pistoning. 

And he takes it all so well. His pelvis sits dead-prey-still in your embrace, his cunt swallows the brutal length of your fingers as though it was made for it. Made to mold to you.

His cock bounces on your tongue with a twitch that runs up his spine and spreads through his body with bone-snapping tension.

Viktor’s fingers leave your hair, but they find your hands, perched atop his hips, and he fists them with all the unbridled feral fury of a wild animal caught.

“Close,” he grits out through the spaces between his teeth, far beyond unclenching them (or his cunt, for that matter) to speak. Something in his eyes is both dewy with vulnerability and clouded with vicious want. “M’ s-so, nnh, close.”

You wish you could have a better view of his face — you’re denied it when his chin tilts up towards the ceiling in a silent prayer, the calm before the storm. You picture it in your mind’s eye, the pinch of his brows, the bobbing in his throat, his lips parted in expectation of an oncoming moan.

Come on, you goad as you double your efforts, and you rub his clit with the thick of your tongue, curling your fingers to work the front of his walls, the spot that lies somewhere on the back of his bellybutton. He’s so slick it clings to your chin, fat cunt so hot it drives you insane like a ravenous hound with still warm flesh between its jaws.

You cannibalize his sex with how you push into him, how you suck on his cock as though it could reward you with anything other than spasms against your tongue. His hole flutters around your fingers before it squeezes so hard you fear for your circulation. Viktor curls up like he can’t, he tucks his chin into his chest and holds a breath, crushes your hand, and whines vulnerable and high like it hurts.

“A-ah, I’m—!”

Viktor’s body crackles like lightning. All the tension in him snaps with the grace, the vehemence, of natural phenomena, like something inevitable. His cunt gushes, and you know his twitching cock, were it capable, would be painting your willing tongue in white streaks by now. He cries something in a warbled, pained voice, and you grip him through the sobs that wreck him. His moans are hard to hear when they’re so terribly muffled by the meat of his thighs pressing to your ears, you’re stuck hearing your own breath, the sounds of your mouth as you nurse on his clit through his orgasm.

And then he starts melting on your tongue like hard candy. A slow, deliberate process, you delight in the convulsing of his cunt, the way his cock jumps against your lips with the overstimulation.

“Shh,” you whisper it more to his clenching pussy than to him, though he writhes like a bug turned wrong side up with the brush of fresh, cold air. “So good, Viktor. I’d like to keep going for a little while, is that alright?”

He sighs, overwhelmed and soaked with tears. But, a wet sniffle later, he nods.

You figure you won’t deprive him early — you keep your fingers inside him as you return to his red, sensitive clit with a gentle kiss. One that has him crying and flinching; away, legs clenching together. And you can’t have that.

Regretfully, you pull out to wrap your other arm around his pelvis as well, to immobilize him properly. The hand that’s holding his rubs at his knuckles gently, and the other one, still slick, comes to rest atop his pubic mound.

You tug at the place where his lips split and his cock emerges to slide his clit from the protection of its foreskin, for you to lap and suckle at. 

He sobs and cries like a baby bird removed from the safety of its nest, and though the muscles of his thighs tremble and clench with the effort, he never shuts them.

It’s endearing, how soft he is in the wake of his orgasm, how soaked, all over. His sweaty skin glistens like dewy leaves in the morning sun, and where the sweat hasn’t reached him, his tears do the job. His sobs sync to the hollowing of your cheeks — with every soft suckle, he exhales on a moan, and inhales quivering and wet during the brief reprieve.

You lap at his cunt the way you drag the edge of a teaspoon over the remnants of dessert on a plate, hungry for any crumb. Though it doesn’t come easily to him, Viktor is so willing. He fights every flinch of his protesting body, just for you to have what you want. He sits through your soft little laps at his raw, weeping cunt; dutifully at first, then eventually melts into the ebbing pleasure-pain once his body begins to recover.

From a clenched fist, his hand in your hair turns to petting, like an obedient animal with a job well done.

“Enough. Come here,” he rasps after another minute, raw voice oiled with the laxness of relaxing vocal chords.

Everything about him is soft — you notice it on your way up. He lays on the mattress limply, so much so that even his bones look pliant, and once you’ve reached your destination, he barely manages to crack his eyes open to look at you.

As small as the space between his lids is, as powdery pink as the skin is near his lashes from crying, you’d have to be blind to miss how they overflow with adoration.

He slides both his hands to the cusp of your jaw. His smile is dreamy.

“Kiss me,” he whispers.

It’s just a grazing of the lips, a mingling of breath, as if the mere notion of him had become unfamiliar over the course of however long you’d spent between his legs.

Before Viktor licks into your mouth with a delirious little hum.

You let him sample his own taste to his heart’s content, holding your breath for him when he smooths his tongue to yours.

When he pulls away, if’s clinging to his lips in a shiny, transparent string. 

“Look at what you made of me,” he says, and though you know it’s a rhetorical statement, you comply. “I’m… ruined.”

His chest rises and falls so thoroughly his ribs poke through, he’s glistening with sweat or cum or even both all over, and… and he smells so good. You can feel it in the crook of his neck, natural scent macerated in the nooks and crannies of his body, all potent and delirious.

His thumbs rub below your cheekbones on both sides, and you feel like a cat being caressed.

“You look amazing,” you say.

“I feel amazing.” He kisses your forehead, and pauses. Drinks in the moment, nuzzling against the top of your head, and simply basks in it like a cat in sunlight.

You follow his lead.

Outside, a lonely street lamp flickers not too far away into the cold, early December night. Inside, against Viktor’s chest, in his arms, everything falls together like puzzle pieces. All is right in the world — all is right within. Every single shameful thought about him that you’d had sheds its bitter aftertaste and leaves your tongue laden sweet and heady like liquorous wine. 

He wants you, too.

“And I meant what I said, you know.” His voice rumbles against your ear, his breastbone vibrates with it. “That I haven’t felt like this… in a long time.” Viktor half sighs, half laughs at his confession. 

Still dazed from his orgasm, he reels you up, more hungrily this time. He pushes into your mouth like he wants to drink you up, shifting against the mattress so he can lean into the kiss, into you.

In the process, his thigh presses up between your legs, and you can’t help the spark that runs up your spine and explodes into something warm and thick like honey in your brainstem. You can’t help clenching around his thigh and grinding into it — like the dog you still are.

“O-oh, fuck… s-sorry. Sorry.”

He tuts, like your need, untended to, just won’t do.

“Oh, sweet thing,” he coos, palming between your legs. Even just that, the barest hint of a touch, is enough to have you falling apart, hiding your face in his neck, as you moan for it. He kneads you, over the shamefully glossy layer of your underwear. “I‘ve neglected you, haven’t I?”

“You haven’t.” Your voice is uncharacteristically meek, but it only makes Viktor clutch you tighter. “I don’t mind. I could die happily after… all that just happened.”

It earns a lovely little smirk from him.

“Well, I couldn’t. Not just yet. Lay back for me.” He leans in close, practically purring, “I’ll give you what you need. I’ll make it good for you.”

You practically crash into the mattress like a bird shot down from flight, and turn to lay on your back under Viktor’s guiding hand on your waist. The sheets rustle with how he slowly shuffles closer, twining his leg — his right leg, with the one of yours that’s closest to him, and uses it to pry you open. The rest of him settles against your side.

His fingertips slide down your stomach, under the waist of your underwear, and he nuzzles his nose into yours like two enamored cats. “May I?”

How could you object to finally having his hand exactly where you’ve wanted — ached — for it?

“Please, Viktor.”

You build up an inhale in the depths of your lungs, and have it positively punched out of you when his hand slides lower, slides home.

At last.

“Oh…” You sigh, arching into his palm like he’s feeding you.

“The mess you’ve made,” he whispers, parting your soaked underwear from the outline of your cunt. It clings to you as he does, and most likely clings to his knuckles as his warm, rough palm cups you where it hurts. 

“F-fuck… sorry.”

He shakes his head. “Never be sorry — not for this.”

His fingers dip to where you’re leaking like a broken faucet, smearing himself in the slick, before he slides back up to your needy clit.

It’s so good to be touched you can’t help but fist his gaunt shoulder and gasp. But you sit still for him, letting the pleasure happen to you, drinking it up like you’re parched for it.

He’s not a hands-on scientist for nothing — with all the practiced finesse of a clockmaker, Viktor takes your cock between his thumb and his index, and tugs. Away at first, as though he were trying to draw the pleasure out of you, before his fingers descend to where your clit emerges from your cunt, and your foreskin slides back with the movement. It leaves you terrifyingly open, vulnerable.

The next stroke of his fingers over your bared clit has you reeling.

“Viktor,” you cry, pawing up his back to the back of his neck, where his scruff starts, where your hand finds purchase. He pinches your cock just so, and, “o-oh, god.”

His nose nudges at your chin, before he licks, all the way from your jaw to the corner of your mouth, as though he were a cat grooming you. To catch him in the kiss he so clearly wants, you tilt your head for him, you welcome him with a desperate whine. He swallows it like it’s sustenance, swallows everything that comes after that too, once he twists your cock between his fingers gently, on just the right edge between pleasure and pain, and it shuts the lights in your brain clean off—

He can’t swallow your next moan.

So he simply lets them pour from your lungs as he rolls your tender, neglected little cock between two talented, loving fingers, so much so it sets you entire stomach alight.

“H-how did, aah, fuck—“ You can’t muster a coherent sentence with his hand on your cock, with how he makes your entire body sing as he plucks at just one string of your whole being, playing you like a familiar instrument. But, softened by how you writhe for him, Viktor grants reprieve, switching to softly jerking your convulsing clit at just the root. You can feel yourself pulsing in his hand, you can feel every ridge of his thumbprint gliding up, down, up, down, fuck.

“How are y-you… so… so good at this?”

“Practice.” He grins. “And fine-tuned motor skills most certainly contribute.”

He dips in to kiss you again, ravenous, and twirls your cock again in that delightful, delirious way that shoots straight up your spine. 

“My god,” he pauses as if to admire you, talk to you like a sweet pet, while he continues to work you. “Do you know how hard it was, staying professional all this time? Keeping my wits about myself, teaching my lectures properly when you were there watching me like some— some hungry hawk…“

“Vikt—“

He shushes your desperate cry, watching with a smug little smile the way you fall apart on his fingers. It feels as though your clit is an unstable hex gem, spinning in an accelerator, crackling and sparking with every stroke of his daft, precise fingers. He touches your cock like it’s long and thick, puts his wrist into how he jerks you off proper. It’s less gentle, and more like he wants to milk the orgasm out of your twitching, hot cock, like he’s demanding it.

And, much like your mind, your body bends to his will just as eagerly.

His next downward stroke sets your nerves alight.

“I’m…” your cunt squeezes around nothing, gushing, leaking, but your cock jumps into his hold desperately. 

“I know,” Viktor assures. “I know. So quick and desperate, aren’t you?”

“Can’t… ’m s-sorry…”

“Oh, don’t worry, I want you to,” he whispers it into your cheek like it’s a secret. Grinds his nose into your face like an enamored cat before he kisses you with all the tenderness and innocence of someone who isn’t tugging your clit into an embarrassingly fast orgasm. “It makes me… dizzy, to know you are so eager for me that you fall apart under nothing but a few twists of my fingers… So easy…”

The last word reverberates in your mind, the way his tone toes the edge of derogation. 

“Come on,” he goads, and pinches your clit between his index and thumb. Instead of jerking it the way he did before, he simply rubs it between his fingers like it’s a coin, pocket change, nothing significant — but the way he watches you like you’re the climax of a good movie says otherwise. His thumbprint catches on your hood, pulling it back just the right amount to reveal all of you that’s sensitive, prey to him. 

It walks the knife edge of too painful, how he squeezes your wet clit it to the very root, before he gives one last, synapse-wrecking tug, and—

You scream draws all the air from your lungs, akin to drowning, and so do the rest of your senses, as you cum into his hand. He stops assaulting your clit, simply cradling the swell of your needy, sloppy cunt as he lets you ride out your orgasm, as he matches the erratic thrusts of your hips.

You let yourself succumb to it, let the death-like vehemence of it take you, and go ragdoll soft while being tended to lovingly. You put yourself in his hands because you trust them, because they treat you so well.

When you open your eyes again, he watches you with all the unadulterated wonder of a scientist.

All-consuming.

“So wonderful,” he tells you, kissing your cheek, “coming apart for me so willingly. Better than anything I’d imagined.”

He pets your pussy even as you come down from the high, sweaty and breathing and alive as though reborn. It makes you clench your thighs around his hand, how every touch burns now.

“Viktor,” you gasp with a loose tongue and looser lips, as though you’ve just awoken and your muscles don’t want to quite listen to you yet. 

“I’m right here,” he coos it like you’re scared, and though you’re not, the affirmation runs down your spine with goosebumps in its wake. He kisses your forehead with a tenderness unmatched. “I have you. I have you.”

You cling to him like none of those things are true, despite better judgment, and he preens under it.

He has you. And you have him.

The both of you sit with the blissful realization, listening to your breaths, to the clock on his wall, to the sound of his lips when he kisses down your face, before he tucks your head under his chin.

You could stay like this forever. Letting your legs slowly fall back apart as he plays with your pussy with much the same motivation you’d eaten him out well past his orgasm — to indulge himself, rather than you, to laze and revel in the afterglow.

Time slows in its course honey thick — you don’t know how much time passes until he speaks.

“I never thought…” Viktor sighs when his voice goes wobbly. “That I could have you. Like this — I still can’t quite believe it.”

You kiss under his chin.

“You knew I wanted you.” 

“Not all of it comes down to want,” he argues, and circles his thumb over the chub of your outer lips, fiddling with your cunt as he thinks rather than touching it with intent. You still raise your hips into it, and are glad to find it makes him smile, before he returns to his thoughts. “Many people want me, even at this age. Rest assured that I feel plenty of hungry gazes my way. Students, colleagues, strangers. But all of — most of them know better. I most certainly thought I knew better than to…”

He trails off.

“Fuck your assistant?”

Viktor chuckles.

“Don’t put it so crudely. I hope that you’re aware you’ve become far more than that. Even before… we did this.” He slides his hand from between your legs and holds it in front of you, marveling at the way your slick webs between his fingers.

Before he raises it to his mouth and tongues at it like it’s a delicacy.

He sucks his index into his mouth, he licks at the split between his forefinger and his middle finger as though they were cunt lips, parting.

And as he slides them from, then back into his mouth, he watches you like he knows exactly what he’s doing.

“If you keep doing that, I’m gonna get horny again,” you warn.

With all the practiced grace of an expensive whore, Viktor pops them from his mouth .

“All according to plan.”

He has you wrapped around his little finger — and he’s terribly aware.

You’re terribly alright with that. 

You burrow yourself into the space between his face and his pillow like a bunny, chuckling, and slinging an arm over his slender waist. Drowned in his scent, soaking up his warmth, you could die happily like this.

“Mrow?”

It comes muffled from behind the wood of his bedroom door. 

Viktor begins to shift the moment he hears the little cry, and you remember to stop him when you see him reaching for his cane.

“I’ve got it,” you say. “What do you want me to do?”

“Let her in, if it’s alright with you.” He smiles. “Judging by her tone, she wants to cuddle.”

The door barely has to crack open before Persichka tucks her whiskers back against her cheeks and noses into the space offered to squeeze into the room. She bumps your shins in greeting, but she doesn’t linger — not once she spots Viktor in the bed.

With a well-placed hop, she lands almost all of her body on the mattress. Viktor cups a hand over her butt to aid her in her climb.

“Moya printsessa…” he utters to her with a smile. You can’t help but linger at the door and watch the scene unfold, rather than join.

She puts her paw on Viktor’s hip, but she’s swiftly scooped up in his arms before she can get to make the climb herself. You suspect, based on the little grimace he pulls, that it has everything to do with how cats’ paws tend to become a lethal weapon the moment they put their weight onto someone.

There’s something intimate about Viktor, naked, blanket barely covering his hips, holding Persichka close like a baby as she nuzzles under his chin and begins to purr. He closes his eyes to savor it just like she does, and for a moment, they look to be spiritually related. Intrinsically aligned.

Viktor’s sigh ends with a contented little hum, before he slides his eyes open just enough to peek at you. 

His thumb rubs idle circles into her fuzz. They’re both aglow in the low, blue light of the winter evening outside. Somewhere distant, it starts to rain.

“Come here,” he purrs.

You’re glad you did. You’re glad you’re going to.

[queerly-anxious]

Laptops are always so much more Fucked than phones in my experience. A laptop is like a beautiful horse that wants nothing more than to break all of its legs. A decently solid android phone will act normal

[queerly-anxious]

split me in half, my General

[queerly-anxious]

i know there’s more than this out there but it really is incredible that people will look at a fictional character someone else wrote and collectively say “I will write you a hundred happy endings.”

[queerly-anxious]

[queerly-anxious]

good night everyone take these old doodles i found

[queerly-anxious]

Another Jayce piece

[queerly-anxious]

Of course I got the mod for Lucanis’s clothes immediately.

[queerly-anxious]

me whenever anybody says that they like me/that i’m their friend

[queerly-anxious]

irritability from chronic pain should be illegal . what do u mean i have to feel like shit emotionally and physically at the same time

[queerly-anxious]

Laundry Day

Pairing: Viktor x Reader

Word count: 1863

Requested: NO, purely self-indulgent

A/N: Of course, as always, not beta'd- we die on this hill. Also, I have been mega in my feels. Satan's waterfall has visited, I detest this time, so I am making do with writing fluff and domestic goo. Please enjoy.

“Leave him be, my boy,” a voice comes with slightly too much joy in your taste, as you're sure of the subject of the conversation- Viktor. He hasn't been home in 4 days, and you're sure he hasn't gotten more than 10 hours of sleep in total during the entirety of his absence. Huffing, you're about to barge in, long sleeve shirt rolled up to your elbows already in preparation when you pause at the second voice. Jayce.

“Professor, with all due respect, Viktor hasn't slept in what I can almost assure you is days,” he sounds stressed but is hiding it well. “I can't let him continue work on something that could harm him,” and at that, you step in, making your presence known. 

“I concur,” you hum, obvious irritation on your face, looking down at the furry menace you've come to question in Viktor’s life. Thus far, he has done well for your caffeine addicted work-a-holic, but as of now, he is being nothing short of an enabler. 

“But he is close to a breakthrough,” he stresses, eyes narrowing at you. Cocking an eyebrow down at him, you snort.

“Or a breakdown,” you grouch. “He hasn't been home in four days-”

“We have made sleeping arrangements at the lab for him,” he cuts you off, which irritates you further. Jayce, catching wind, steps back slowly, knowing that look in your eyes, sending a pointed look at his mentor screaming If you value your life, shut UP.

But he misses it. Or ignore it. 

Nodding slightly, you offer a small smile, hiding the heat prickling along your skin.

“Has he used it?” Heimerdinger pauses, shrugging.

“Im sure-” 

“He hasn't even considered it,” you finish for him, watching the yodle walk away, his poro skittering off behind him. As soon as the door shuts, Jayce sighs, shoulders sagging. 

“Thanks,” he offers you a tired smile, bags under his eyes bruising, the redness lining his eyes making you frown. 

“When was the last time you slept, Talis?” he chuckles, shrugging. 

“More recently than Viktor,” he raises his hands in defense. “And the moment you get him out of here, I'm out, too.” you grin a bit.

“You have much faith in me,” you muse, glancing across the lab, the open layout letting your eyes settle on his darkened figure hunched over whatever he is working on. He just nods.

“Well earned, let me tell you. I've never seen someone able to convince him out of the lab before,” he hums, a smile stretching to a grin. “You've got the magic touch.” laughing, you start over to Viktor.

“I'll leave the magic working to you two,” you throw over your shoulder as you come to lean over Viktor's, watching silently as he works for a moment. He doesn't even know you are here yet, despite not even attempting to hide your presence. After a few more moments, you decide to announce yourself. 

“Viktor,” you purr, your voice carrying in a sing-song tone not more than a few inches from his face. You take pleasure in how he shudders as he drags his eyes from his work, a tired but pleased smile softening his sharp features. 

“Ah, My dove,” he hums, head tilting to gently knock his head to yours affectionately. “What brings you here?” slowly, he sets the prototype down but doesn't turn to face you. Smiling softly, pressing a kiss to his hair right above his ear. 

“It's laundry day,” you hum. He frowns, shaking his head.

“That is on Thursdays,” he grumbles, looking out of the skylight windows, eyes narrowing at the light streaming through. Laughing softly, you nod. 

“It's friday,” you supply gently. He freezes, guilt passing in his eyes quickly before he sighs.

“You’re late,” he teases, making you laugh softly, tugging on his sleeve.

“I figured I'd give you some time,” you say softly, straightening. “But, i would greatly appreciate you to come home.'' In truth, he doesn't really help much other than helping sort the clothes, but you use it as an excuse to allow him to rest. Normally, if not presented with a problem or project, and given more than a few moments of time to sit comfortably, he passes out. 

Sighing again, he nods slightly, looking at his partner who is pretending to work on something, totally not watching the two of you. 

“I am heading out,” he announces, wincing as he stands up, accidentally stumbling into your arms slightly, his legs giving out at the pressure of his weight, asleep from the inactivity. Immediately, your hands jump to catch him, one on his elbow, the other settling on his waist, until he gets his barings moments later. 

“Perhaps… I should not have sat so long,” he groans when his body pops a few times as he stretches, his cane being gently set in his hand. You nod, raising an eyebrow. 

“Movement is good,” you pause before grinning. “Do you need a piggy-back ride back to the house?” he flushes at Jayce’s bark of laughter, nose scrunching up in playful distaste, fighting his own smile. 

“I believe I will be able to make it on my own, thank you, Dove.”

Shrugging, you press a chaste kiss to the corner of his lips, tsking him gently when he moves to chase your lips. 

“The offer is there,” you muse, turning to start towards the door, smiling to yourself as you hear the click trailing behind you. There is a pause behind you, making you stop at the door, not turning towards him.

“No work,” you remind him, earning a soft whine but you hear the stack of papers flop back into the desk with a grumble. Jayce fights the grin until VIktor is at your side, no longer able to see his toothy smile.

“Take tomorrow off,” he calls to you both. Viktor is about to argue, but looks down at you, guilt washing over him again, so he sighs.

“Thank you,” he calls, following you out the door. You grin at Jayce, sending him a wink playfully. He laughs, shaking his head.

Magic, he swears. It has to be.

The trip home is relatively quick as you crowd him inside, gently tugging at his vest, helping him out of it. He allows you to tug it off his shoulders before fingers start pulling at the buttons on his burgundy shirt, a crooked grin stretching across his face.

“There are easier ways to get me out of my clothes,” he jokes despite the exhaustion practically etched into his very frame, shoulders slouched more than usual, deep purple bags under his eyes almost comically large. Humming in amusement, you brush your fingers gently down his chest, nails gently scraping at his skin, making his eyes flutter.

“Maybe once you've slept,” you purr, tugging his shirt off his shoulders gently, letting the fabric fumble to the floor as you lift your hand to cradle his face. He melts into your touch in relief, lips parting slightly when you run your thumb along his bottom lip. He just nods, looking at you through lidded eyes, the deep honey color glittering in the mid-afternoon sunlight. 

“Promise?” he asks weakly, tugging you closer. You melt into his hold, nuzzling your nose into his throat, lips brushing along the skin there.

“Promise,” you whisper against his skin. “Now go take a bath, I will collect your clothes and then once you're out, perhaps we can take a nap together.” The breath that escapes his lips is shaky, tired.

“Yeah,” he smiles, nodding. “That sounds wonderful.”

The next several minutes are spent in silence as you help him settle into the bath, throwing in some of your salts to help with his muscles before pressing a kiss to his crown and snatching up the remainder of his clothes. Gently, he catches your wrist as you go to stand, running his thumb along the skin there, sending you a thankful smile. Turning your hand in his, you squeeze his hand gently before stepping away to let him relax quietly, watching him from the door as his head droops back, eyes closed. 

Setting some milk on the stove, you wait for it to start to warm before dropping in his favorite mix- cinnamon, vanilla, nutmeg and clove. Christmas in a cup, he mused once. Smiling to yourself, you divvy it up once it's done before setting both mugs on the coffee table and moving to set out his favorite lazy day home clothes- a simple loose shirt with some sweatpants.

By the time he is out, you are still sorting out the laundry, humming to yourself. He stands behind you silently, taking in the sight with a smile. You only spot him when you turn slightly to grab another piece, jumping slightly at his sudden presence, hand coming to rest on your chest with a hushed laugh. 

“You startled me,” you admit, making him grin.

“I am sorry, my dear,” he hums, leaning down to press a kiss on top of your head, a drop of water dripping to your cheek, towel thrown over his shoulder. “I couldn't help myself.” rolling your eyes at his teasing, you pull back to get a better look at him. Some color had returned to his cheeks, even the bags under his eyes had seemed to ease. He looks exhausted, but much more comfortable. 

Without another word, he settles into the couch across from you, eyes settling on the mugs before him, eyes lighting up.

“Sweet milk,” he beams, grabbing the mug you had given him as your gag gift for christmas- #1 scientist scrawled across its front. He had loved it unironically, realizing you had made it for him.

They just don't make enough about scientists, you had pouted, nearly melting when he swore he loved it. 

He does.

In fact, he rubbed it in Jayce’s face.

Chuckling at his childish wonder, you nod, pausing to take a sip of yours. It is only another few minutes of quiet as he sips on his drink and you sort laundry before he is tugging on your sleeve with a yawn.

“Darling?” you pause, looking up at him. He is lounging back, bad leg propped up slightly, head flopped on the pillows you keep on the couch for him, arms open pathetically as he throws you a sleepy smile. Giggling at just how cute he is, you nod, abandoning your task to settle into his arms. Humming in satisfaction, he physically wraps himself around you, nose burying itself in your hair as he hauls you to your side. 

Squeaking, you grab onto him, burying your own face in his chest, grinning when you feel his chest rumble with his quiet laughter, arms tightening around you. Sighing happily, you set your chin to his chest, looking up at him through your lashes. His eyes are already on you, drooping with sleep.

“Sleep, Vik,” you hum, running your fingers over his arm gently, watching his eyes slide closed, a soft snore following not long after. Laughing softly to yourself, you cuddle closer, allowing the warmth to wash over you, tugging you under as well. 

____

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[queerly-anxious]

The wings give an extra lift

[queerly-anxious]

🕯 🕯 🕯

🕯 May you have the 🕯

🕯 absolute thirstiest 🕯

🕯 of thirst dreams of 🕯

🕯 whatever fictional 🕯

🕯 character you’re 🕯

🕯 hyper-fixating on at 🕯

🕯 the moment 🕯

🕯 🕯 🕯

[queerly-anxious]

Hier kommt die Sonne

[queerly-anxious]

stop holding ya pee for so damn long