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[thegatesofinfinitespace]

For Kane's shrine: Matching blades, their hilts are simple, lacking ornate carvings. They are made with only what they need. Only what could be found in the wastes. One is new and clean, the other stained with its first kill. Still sharp. Still strong. A pedant made of obsidian and bloodstone. Thorns of both stones spider around the vial at its core, before splaying out in unfinished wings. They are vines, they are nerves and sinew. The glass vial is full of deep crimson, the blood of the offeror. A gift of devotion. Of sacrifice. Preserved for all time. Last, a page of runes, hand written. Old knowledge with no purpose, no meaning, but a taste of old magic. A reverence for the unknown, and the long death of the Gods who came before.

If my Muse was a Deity, what Offerings Would you Leave at Their Shrine?

Clinking of heels cease at the scene laid before him, the sands of the Wastes scuffing under his boots. Crimson eyes narrow, a threat and an evaluation. His helmet is held at his side; he is returning from an excursion, no, an expulsion, an exorcism.

There is fresh blood on his blades, dripping fresh on the dirt, just as there is on the offerings set upon a slab of obsidian and thorn. It is not a shrine he made, but made for him, made from someone who believed they knew him.

...Their accuracy is quite impressive. Armor that ends in clawed points plucks the pendant from the bunch, holds it up to the red sun that sends it shimmering between his thumb and forefinger. It... is pretty.

He allows it to settle in his palm before closing his fist around it, squeezing until he feels the glass and gems crunch under the pressure. The remains drip like liquid to the Grounds of his Province, eaten whole. A beautiful offering, one that would be committed to memory. He has no need for such frivolous items, even if they are made with him in mind.

The God of the Wasteland's eyes drift to the paper, ancient and old. It is magic he feels, and he is far more delicate in picking it up; his clawed hands are not used, the item hovering over his open palm. Thorns rise, encircle the paper like a birdcage, kept safe. It too is swallowed by the earth, but not destroyed.

It is archived.

Finally, the blades. They are ripped from the stone, unharmed. He turns them over in his grasp, keen eyes scrolling over the craftsmanship. They are made with the intent to kill. Have been used to do so. They are... of very good make, truthfully. He'll keep them. Use them, as they were intended.

His Province's web vibrates with the steps of a stranger, the one who made this altar. He walks with purpose, with muted fury. Only a fool would dare enter the territory of the God of Destruction. At the base of his tower, a lone woman is waiting, her hands bloody. Kane's gaze is a threat, an assessment, the swords in his hands. She will be killed by her own offerings if she is not careful enough.

"...If you left those there, you must believe your plight is more important than those who came and met their end before you." He presses the end of one of her gifts to her throat, its tip swallowing the slightest drop of blood.

"Persuade me."

[kaidanalenkosprmanager]

The Crew of The Normandy SR2 (2185)

They tell me it's a suicide mission. I intend to prove them wrong. Mass Effect 2: Legendary Edition (2021)

[lilix-love]

I loved this post so much I decided to write it

@eddawrites in case you wanted to read it

I have no idea what type of Mel’s magic is (I saw someone say light magic), but imagine it being able to soothe Jayce's disoriented and messy mental state? And what is Jayce's ability? I wonder how compatible their powers are. Begging for their reunion asap.

[weltraum-vaquero]

you could have it all (my empire of dirt)

4. hold me (like a knife)

[Chapter 1] ↠ [Chapter 2] ↠ [Chapter 3] ↠ [Chapter 4] ↠ [Chapter 5] (coming soon)

[AO3 link]

Western AU

18+

Jayce Talis x GN AFAB Reader

Word count: 9.5k+

Synopsis: Now that things between you and Jayce have ended, he doesn't know what to do with himself. Until everything takes a turn for the worse.

Tags/warnings: Jayce being the world’s saddest sack of shit. Graphic violence towards the middle and end of this chapter. Character death (but it’s nobody important). Caitlyn being the only person with a brain.

Notes: I can’t quite believe that this chapter is finally done. I’ve had the plot of this specific part of the story in mind for almost two years now, and to say that executing it was daunting is an understatement. I hope I didn’t disappoint, and, just as a heads up, this is about the middle point of the fic. There is still a long way to go, and far from the end for Jayce and reader! As per usual: a big, huge thank you to my wonderful friends, who were so helpful with their valuable feedback, and helped this chapter become what it is now. Enjoy!

“Jayce?” 

The door creaks open slowly, letting in the barest, flickering sliver of light. 

It stings somewhere at the back of his already pounding head to look — he has to squint to even bear glimpsing, but he still does, delusionally hopeful in a way that’s masochistic.

The smudge of a shadow he sees through his lashes takes on the form he aches to see the most — shoulders just the right size to hang onto, neck just the right slope to nestle into, arms just the right size to wrap around him tight and hold him so he’ll stop falling apart — you. 

But it’s not you. Why would it be you? 

Cold hands, colder gaze, you hadn’t deemed him worthy of another word as he’d set to leave. He’d stopped, back turned, shaking with the tears he’d been swallowing, listened to the prairie crickets and waited. Counted all the way up to ten in his head, hoping you’d have the guts to find some inexistent panacea to the wound you’d torn into his heart. 

But you hadn’t said a thing. Why would you?

Jayce had given Topacio the spurs, riding fast enough to dry his tears before they reached his chin, and hard enough to drown his sobs out with the pounds of galloping hooves on the way back.

Why would it be you now, here, in the Kiramman estate, crawling back to him and begging for forgiveness?

“Hi, Cait,” he croaks.

And he wouldn’t fucking give it to you either way. Not after what you did to him.

“Hey.” It’s hysterical just how she draws out the e, hushed little sound, like she’s trying to soothe a spooked horse. 

Empathy’s never been her strong suit. 

But he’s sure he’s a sorry enough sight to be worthy of such a reply. He’d pulled the curtains to his room shut tight to stifle all sunlight, and sat in a sad corner of his room — hadn’t even granted himself the comfort of sitting on his bed — before he’d sobbed the night and day away. And though he’d torn his heart open and wrung it out into every tear, it had not ached any less, it hadn’t grown any lighter. 

How could it, now that he knows the most meaningful relationship of his life matters so little to the one person he would have given everything up for?

“I was sure you were still out and about but… well, Fenton said he’d seen you ride in last night, and I thought… you might be here.” She clears her throat, sliding into his room uninvited. She maneuvers it suspiciously clumsily — it takes Jayce a second to pick up on the fact that it’s because she holds a candle in one hand and a plate of sad-looking, long-cold dinner leftovers in the other. But she shuts the door with her foot, not at all silent, before she sits down across from him on the floor. 

Jayce draws his feet a little closer, hugs his knees a little tighter. Company is the last thing he needs when he wants to wallow in his own misery, when he wants to twist the knife you’ve stuck into his heart and let himself bleed.

But how could he lay in his own metaphorical puddle of blood and physical puddle of snot and tears when Cait is here to watch?

She’s trying very hard to make no big deal of it — of how much Jayce is looking like the world’s saddest sack of shit — as she sets the plate down first, then untucks whatever’s under her other arm so she can put the candle down, a safe distance from the carpet.

“I’m, really— I’m not much company right now,” Jayce tells her. His voice is so hoarse from sobbing it’s just a whistly, airy, pathetic whisper. He’d almost forgotten how much he hated feeling meek. 

You’d nurtured that part of him, had lulled him into believing it was alright for him — protector, hunter, a man of the law — to be everything he wasn’t supposed to be. And he’d let it happen.

Why does he have to be like this? Every part of him seems sculpted for power — his size, his strength, his skills — and still he yearns for weakness. To be cradled and kissed and touched like he’s none of those things.

No other lover had gotten through to him, and he doesn’t blame any single one of them — who would look at him as anything beyond a guard dog with a pretty face, when that’s all he’s supposed to be? Who would want to reach deeper and touch the parts of him that don’t fit the man he’s clearly meant to be? 

But you’d had. You’d called him princess and baby and you’d caged him in protective embraces and had let him grow soft. You’d given him everything he’d never had, and you’d done it all just to fucking hurt him. To wield his own weakness like a knife. You’d shaped it into something sharp and waited for the right time, right place, to tear him open with it.

And yet, he’d let you do it all over again — just to have a taste of the months he’d felt truly understood. He’d lay his head in your hands all the same, willing lamb under the butchering knife. If he’d be back in that saloon, he’d melt in your hands, let you lick into his mouth and sink your teeth into his neck. You wouldn’t need to even ask. He’d just tilt his head back and wait.

Because he loves you.

Choking back a sob, Jayce shivers with how much that realization shakes him — he still loves you, beaten dog licking an abusing hand, runt of the litter crawling back to warmth it will be inevitably chased out of.

You’re gone. And you’ll never care enough to come back.

“Here.” Caitlyn nudges the plate towards him in an attempt to snap him out of the incoming breakdown. “Eat up,” she encourages. “You must be hungry.”

He shakes his head.

Jayce wonders if he ever will feel anything again, except for a dreadful pit of numb pain smack in the middle of his chest. No noxious acid burning in his stomach if he avoids eating, no itch in his lungs when he holds his breath too long, nothing but the sore gaping fucking hole he can’t see but damn well feels so thoroughly he wonders if he could stick his entire hand in his chest.

“Alright.”

With that, she takes the book she’d brought with her and cracks it open. Like they’ve just finished having their late morning gossip session or like they’ve just slurped their teacups dry, like he isn’t curled up on the carpet and shaking with the effort of trying not to sob, Cait starts reading away in deafening silence.

“What… are you doing?” 

She says it like it’s easy. He knows it isn’t — not usually, and especially not now. “Keeping you company.” 

“You don’t have to,” he croaks.

Her smile is so laden with pity it makes him sick. He crawls into the comfort of it nonetheless.

“I want to.”

Jayce doesn’t know what exactly it is about that which does him in so effortlessly, so thoroughly. 

Had you ever wanted to do anything for him? Without an ulterior motive? 

That thought makes him curl in on himself like a hurt animal. A whimper scratches at his throat, and his dignity washes down the drain with a fresh set of tears.

“Shit. I’m sorry.” And he should be, he thinks; maybe it’s his fault, maybe what he had with you could have lasted just a bit longer, if he hadn’t been this… soppy. This sentimental, this needy, this much. “I’m so sorry.”

Wordlessly, Cait shuts her book, and shuffles across the carpet to plop down next to him. Her gentle hand grabs his shoulder, squeezing like she wishes she could absorb some of the pain.

“C’mere.” And he knows how much that means. Caitlyn, raised on proper etiquette and not one for more than the average friendly shoulder touch, offering to hold him though his face is slick with snot and his back’s gone sweaty and he can’t even breathe right.

But she holds him anyway. She holds him like maybe he still matters.

Jayce loathes the way his next sob wrecks him, how he quakes with his whole being. He’d give anything to have you holding him like this, and he hates himself for it.

“I really am,” he whispers. He’s sorry he wishes this weren’t her arm around his shoulders. He’s sorry he doesn’t even know what to do with all the crushing weight of his love, sorry he ever thought you’d want it — want him. He’s sorry it’s so heavy now that he thinks all his bones might crack, he’s sorry Cait has to hold him even though he’s nothing but bits and pieces of himself. “S-so, so sorry.”

She lets him sob through it, rubs at his back. Jayce settles for curling in on himself, as if making himself small would make the pain drip out of his soul any faster, or make his heart mend any quicker.

It doesn’t.

Cait brushes the hair stuck to his sweaty forehead with a careful hand.

“The only one who should be sorry is them.” Her voice is bitter — a smidge too bitter. Jayce doesn’t know why he’s offended for you.

“How do you know?” He wipes at the snot under his nose, and tries not to think about how disgusting he is. 

“I know,” Cait pauses briefly, pondering her words, “that the only mistake you could have made was loving too genuinely.”

The only thing he can think of, the only thing that comes to mind, is to say sorry again. Sorry for being so much — too much. 

And who would want to love so much of what makes him everything he shouldn’t be? 

Who would want to love so much? 

And why had he been naive enough to think you, criminal, cheater, liar, would be up for such a horrific task?

“I’m so… s-stupid,” he mutters. Stupid for believing there was something even remotely worth loving about the amalgamation of too much that he is, stupid for believing you, of all people, would be the one to take on the challenge. Caitlyn shushes him, pulling him harder into the hug. But she doesn’t deny it, which is enough of an answer to Jayce. 

“I’m sorry,” she says. 

Jayce wants to parrot it back at her, but the words seem far too small for the overwhelming amount of regret sitting heavy in his chest. So he says nothing, because he knows he’ll break if he even tries.

And they stay like that. Jayce chokes on another snotty sob when she rests her cheek against his head, a reminder of the closeness he’s lost with you scratching at the fresh wound you’d left on his heart. 

She squeezes him close when he weeps so thorough it wrecks him, she pets his disgusting sweaty back when even crying becomes too much and his body turns to breathless, embarrassing blubbering, she tells him to breathe — shows him how, in and out, slow and steady — when his breath gets stuck between more tears and hiccups, and his brain goes woozy with a lack of air and he feels like he wants to throw up the empty space inside his stomach, inside his chest, throw up the pain, purge all remnants of the ache you’ve left in him.

But that’s all he is — feels like all he’ll ever be. Purging you, purging the pain you’ve left behind… he’s not sure what else would remain of him without the ache for you. He can’t remember what he was before it. He’s terrified of what he’ll be after it.

“Believe it or not — you’ve gotten a bit better at keeping silent while you cry,” she says once he settles into just sniffles. 

“The h-hell’s that supposed to mean?”

He hates how his voice cracks on his words.

“I remember when we’d brought you here the night after we’d thrown you that big party for saving me and mother. I was two rooms away and I could hear you sobbing your heart out through the night.”

He had.

His hands hadn’t stopped shaking since he’d first raised that rifle to protect Caitlyn and her mother, not for days. He remembers the champagne rippling in the flute he’d been clutching his fist around at that party (mrs Kiramman had to teach him how to even hold the damn thing properly), the rare steak wobbling on the silver fork. He remembers hearing his own heartbeat bouncing back at him in the egregiously fluffy pillow the first night he’d spent at the estate, the way he’d soaked it with tears and snot. He remembers wondering if he’ll ever sleep again.

“That feels like a lifetime ago.”

Cait nods. “It was. I remember thinking you were much too soft for the job mother was going to grant you, that it’d been just a stroke of luck that you’d rescued us when you did.”

“You have no idea how scared I was.” Jayce swallows thickly at the bitter memory. “Promoted from a simple cow wrangler to personal bodyguard to the mayoress and her family — god, I didn’t think I could make it either.”

“But you did.”

Jayce nods.

Caitlyn presses her cheek to him a little harder, squeezes him a little closer. “And you will.”

—

He won’t.

It’s enough to have your face flashing before his eyes, to sniff a distant replica of your leather-gunpowder-campfire scent, or to believe the sheets, damp and warm and rolled tight around his waist from all his restlessness from the previous night are your greedy, loving arms, to have his throat drawing tight and eyes brimming with tears.

And when he does close his eyes to indulge, for the briefest moment, in what he has left of you, in the cruel tricks his mind plays on him, longing shifts to rage.

Why wasn’t he enough to love? What could he have done to make you love him? Why couldn’t he be what you needed?

What was it about him that made you want to run from him, from the generous offer of a peaceful, simple life, and straight back into an existence reliant on scraps and crime? What made that life so much better than him and everything he had — everything he was more than willing to give you? 

What else could he have given you, to make you stay? What was there left to give?

That’s about the only thing that gets him out of his bedroom. Saddling up to ride out into fuck knows where and to just scream.

That’s all he’s good for, really. Weeks pass him by in the blink of an eye, spent in the darkest corner of his bed, so much so even leaving his room becomes a terrifying, daunting task.

He hates the pity the people at the estate treat him with, the way the Kirammans are so understanding. They don’t demand he joins them for dinner, not once. Food finds its way into his room at one point or another, they don’t insist he do anything, they just… let him rot away, in the most literal sense of the word.

Caitlyn spends time with him when she can find it, but as he becomes increasingly inconsolable, her visits lessen. 

Jayce can’t blame her for getting impatient with him. He is, too.

He hates that he can’t blame her, either, when he finds bullets from his drawers missing, his knife dulled, and his weapons suddenly cleaned the way they’d only require after serious use.

Of course his inaction couldn’t go on forever.

The sharp, mean daggers Cassandra’s been glaring his way whenever he did scurry out of his room and met eyes with her, Caitlyn’s growing absence around the house — they suddenly fit together like puzzle pieces: Caitlyn has begun picking up his slack.

And he wishes, god, he wishes he could be proud, because Caitlyn deserves it, she’s wanted to fill in his footsteps since the first time he’d taken her with him on a hunt all those years back — but he’s angry. 

He knows that above all else, this means he has become the last thing he’s ever wanted to be: a pathetic charity case. A failure at his one duty. 

She should not be out there by herself. He should be there. Teaching, watching, helping, but he’s not, he’s stuck, he’s drained, and he’s so bone-achingly tired, even though all he does is sleep and cry.

So when Cassandra slips into his room one evening (trying not to wrinkle her nose at the sight of his unkempt beard or food stained union suit) and hands him a bounty poster of some crooked looking outlaw, it gives him the push he needs.

She tries to put it gently — suggesting it might do him some good to get out there again — but he knows what she means. She doesn’t pay him to sit around and sob, and this bounty… he can see why she would not want her daughter anywhere near such vermin. Even with all his equipment, which by now Caitlyn undoubtedly knows how to use. That’s really all the motivation he needs, aside from some much-needed stress relief.

The fact that Caitlyn catches his wrist on his way out the front door and tells him he doesn’t have to  do this — at least not alone — does very little to deter him.

—

Match strikes matchbox. Dry wood crackles under the birth of new, tiny flames. The night grows a tiny bit less dark, but the prairie’s unbothered and taciturn.

He hasn’t smelled a campfire since… well. Since the last night he’d spent with you. But decidedly, the time you’d smelled most markedly of flames and ash was the night he’d let you kiss him after everything.

God, your eyes, glittering and gluttonous that night you’d spent with him after he’d tracked you down. And your hair, the near-animalic scent of your skin tempered by the freshness of cold air, the smell of leather clinging to you where he kissed and licked, the salt of your sweat, the musk—

God, he aches.

“Jayce, don’t shoot.”

His hand already hovers over his holster out of instinct alone, but he drops it the moment he recognizes that guilty tone.

It’s no wonder that Caitlyn’s decided to follow him.

With a sniffle, and a squeeze of his eyes, Jayce rolls his shoulders when he hears the sound of gravel under her new boots.

She’s already been holding his hand — figuratively and literally — an embarrassing amount these past months. 

Now that he’s finally trying to drag himself out of his slump (and slump is a very light word for sleeping and willing himself out of existence), she’s following him around like she knows he’ll stumble. He can practically hear the tension in her joints, ready to catch him not if but when he falls.

“I said I’d do this on my own,” he says.

Caitlin hums affirmatively. “I never said I wouldn’t let you.”

The audacity of her, to just say that like she hasn’t been doing the exact opposite for some time now.

“You’re a shit liar.”

Caitlyn sighs. “Mother told you.”

“I don’t need to be told. Do you think I wouldn’t notice? Jesus, Cait, your mother looks at me like—” Jayce catches himself before his tone grows cutting — he has no right to be mad at her for doing the job he clearly was not able to do. The very least she deserves, if not a grandiose thank you for doing my one and only job for me, is some kindness. He sighs shamefully, burying his face in his hands before he finds his words again, a smidge gentler. “You shouldn’t have to do this. Not by yourself. I should be teaching you, not letting you put yourself in danger because I’m too—“

“You’ve taught me more than enough,” she assures. Jayce wishes he could know how much of that lie is meant to comfort him, or her. 

Jayce wishes he could tell her that there’s more to it than the punches he’s taught her to throw and the target practice they’ve done. Jayce wishes he could tell her there will be bounties that break her (and that is unfortunately not limited to bounties like you).

But there’s a vigor, a hunger in her for this that he has rarely felt, if ever. His form was made for brutality, but his mind never was — and Caitlyn has the advantage of not sharing that predicament. She’s not soft in the ways Jayce is; she’s just inexperienced. And that is much more easily remedied.

“I hope so,” he decides to say. 

“We can start going on hunts together again,” she suggests. “You could teach me more — and you  wouldn’t have to do this alone.”

And that’s not a horrible thought at all. Except…

“Your mother would kill me if she knew I’d let this continue. I think she already has a quill and paper ready for my will considering what you’ve been doing because of me.”

Caitlyn laughs a little. “Let her. Would free up a position as Piltover’s best bounty hunter for me.”

“Hey.” Jayce tries his best to strike an intimidating tone, but it only makes her laughter swell. Something in his chest feels the slightest bit less empty.

Uninvited (though she knows by now that she is invited, always), Caitlyn approaches him slowly, sitting down beside him. They sit in silence for a moment while she picks at her fingernails, apparently nervous, before she puts herself back together, no less anxious, but fighting it. She lets her shoulders settle back, straightens her back, and glances Jayce’s way.

And though the air had been light and clear with shared humor mere seconds ago, the way she looks at him now is far heavier and more sombre.

“I didn’t track you down because I thought you couldn’t handle this bounty on your own.” For the first time since she’d approached him, her voice falters with uncertainty. 

And that’s a rare sight in Caitlyn. 

“Jayce, I… have to tell you something.”

In some fucked, pavlovian response, a part of Jayce rears its head and perks its ears like a starved dog at the sound of raw meat hitting the floor. 

This can only be about something she knows will hurt him. It can only be—

“It’s about them,” she says.

Every part of him hurls, every part of him hurts, every part of him hungers.

His ears ring. 

It’s about you.

Have you come back? Have you sent him a letter?

“What is it?” His voice has gone tight, throaty, and Caitlyn is overcome with immediate regret — she looks like she wishes she could swallow every word she’s just said back up.

His head reels with a thousand questions and a thousand answers. You’ve come for him. You still love him. You want the life he’s offered, finally, you want it, you want him. Maybe he’s not everything he thought he was. Maybe—

Maybe those hopes are too high, too bright, for the way in which Caitlyn stares him down like death looms behind her.

Maybe… maybe you’re gone.

But you can’t be, not, not you, slippery even in his grasp, you, with your mind just as much of a weapon as your arsenal. You, born wielding a gun, you, born holding a knife — death can’t have earned you this easily, this fast. 

Jayce repeats his question, a little more careful this time. It doesn’t seem to ease her doubts, but she gives in. And really, that’s all that Jayce is after right now.

“They’ve been caught,” she says.

That’s the only thing that could make your death sound plausible.

You… would be sooner dead than caught. He knows as much.

Caitlyn reads his disbelief with a frustrated sigh. 

“They made the front page on the Piltover gazette for it. Frankly, I… considered not even telling you.” She searches his eyes, but if she draws any conclusion, Jayce can’t read it. “You don’t deserve to be reminded of them. They’ve had it coming regardless—”

“Had what coming?”

“Jayce…” She goes silent for a beat, swallowing nervously, as if she dreads the words she’s about to speak. “They’re going to be hanged.”

Every fiber in his being protests at the mere word, but his entire body revolts once it really, truly sinks in — the mental image of your face, plum-purple, rope burns at your wrists, your own skin under your fingernails, hands bound behind your back, the body he’d kissed and loved and worshiped every inch of — lifeless.

On trembling legs, Jayce rises from beside the campfire.

You’re going to die.

The very thing he’d wished upon you, your punishment, is now imminent. And it’s only now that it hits him that he wishes his rage would have been gentler. That he realizes that even though you’d torn his heart to shreds and hurt him in ways that made him want to shove his hunting knife into the side of his neck, he doesn’t want you to die. 

He can’t let you die.

“Where?”

“Jayce—“

He takes a step closer, mustering up some of the intimidation that works so well on his targets — but it does little to Caitlyn.

Her breath leaves her lungs in a frustrated, terrified shiver. Not terrified of him — terrified for him.

And what terrifies him is how little he cares about the prospect of his own death, shall it find him when he finds you, helps you.

“Where?”

He hadn’t realized until then, how small Caitlyn’s hands were, until she took one his in both of hers. They’re not dainty — they haven’t been, since the day he’d taught her how to pick up a rifle, and they’ve grown rougher still since the day he’d taken her on a hunt with him. But they’re still smaller than his, and it hits him where it hurts.

It hits him where she wants it to, it hits him in that one spot that, in spite of being crushed under the weight of his responsibility as a protector, wants her safe. Wants her happy.

She’s like — she is family. 

“Jayce, I can’t lose you.” Her voice, though trembling with fear, does not falter. “If you go, there’s a real chance you could die saving them. I can’t let that happen.” Caitlyn swallows her tears, and something in her gaze darkens. When she speaks now, her voice is as steady as her aim. “And you will not die, not for them.“

He wants to make that promise. He wants to, but— 

“Where?”

He can’t.

She squeezes his hand tighter. And though there’s rage brewing in her eyes, Jayce knows that look — above all else, she’s terrified. 

He is, too.

“I knew I shouldn’t have told you.” She grabs both his shoulders, rough now in how she nearly shakes him with how hard she turns him to face her. “Jayce.” Cait swallows her tears. “They deserve this.”

And as much as those three words sink in his gut like he’d swallowed solid lead, he knows she’s right. He can’t leave her. 

“It isn’t even about what they’ve done to you,” she continues. Her voice fades behind the ringing in his head, grows quieter still. “Think of everything else they did. All they stole, all they lied.” She goes on, somehow, but Jayce doesn’t care for any of it. Not until— “All they killed.”

That last word hits him like a jaw-dislodging punch.

“They would never— Not unless it was in self defense, I know—“

“You don’t know that.”

And she’s right. 

He hates that she’s right. 

He’d dug his head into the dirt, blissful ignorance and willful naivete, had consoled himself that surely a killer’s hands could never do what yours do. How could your hands wring throats and stab chests when they could make his body sing? 

How could he be so fucking stupid?

You will receive your punishment. Not because you deserve it after what you’ve done to him — but because of all else you’ve done.

He has to let it happen. He has stepped on his morality enough simply by being with you, by loving you. The guilt will — has to — ease once he stops doing that.

Letting you face the consequences of what you’ve done is the first thing he can do for himself.

And possibly the best. It has to be.

“Talk to me,” Caitlyn encourages just as much as she downright demands. Her hand on his shoulder grows laxer, she squeezes his deltoid gently. But behind it all, Jayce can sense the fear, the way her fingers cramp up and her nails almost cut into the leather of his jacket.

He can’t leave her. He mustn’t.

“I’m not going,” he says. “They deserve it.”

It hurts more than saying he loves you. It hurts more than anything he’s ever said — and he’s scared shitless of how little he means it, now that he’s saying it out loud.

Maybe you deserve it. And maybe he’s not going. But no form of lying to himself can change the fact that he will never want you to die, in spite of everything. And there will always be a part of him that would leave everything behind to spend the rest of his days with you, though the opportunity for that is long gone.

But Caitlyn smiles, and she pulls him into a genuine, bone-crushing hug. Jayce tries his damndest not to cry. 

You’re going to die.

“You’re doing the right thing,” she says.

God, he hopes so.

—

God, he isn’t.

It becomes evidently clear, even as he clings to the false hope that he is. He hopes this hunt will be an easy, clean affair — simply holding his bounty at gunpoint, tying her hands behind her back, then taking her to the nearest sheriff’s office. But it isn’t.

When he finds his bounty sitting by her campfire, Jayce cocks his rifle, and says the right thing.

“We can do this the easy way,” he warns. “Don’t make me hurt you.”

When she turns to lunge at him in spite of it all, he doesn’t shoot.

He meets the impact halfway as the both of them tumble into the mud. He lets her get in a punch that he somehow feels he deserves for everything, after everything, before he lets it wake his will to fight. With some difficulty, he wrestles her into the dirt, until her ribs creak under the weight of his knee on her chest.

“Don’t make me kill you.” 

But she does.

With every fiber of her being, she begs for it. Stubborn, she wriggles below his weight until her bones crack, wincing as she draws a knife from her boot. 

But Jayce is nothing, if not trained in the art of catching dirty tricks. Especially after you. His hand finds her wrist, and bends her arm until the blade stabs the mud below her.

“Don’t make me kill you,” he repeats, but it sounds less like a threat this time around. Dauntingly much more like a plea.

She senses it. They always do, the likes of her — the likes of you — feed on weakness, which is why his never goes unnoticed. Her forehead whacks Jayce’s nose so hard he swears he can see every constellation in the night sky shining twice as hard, and maybe they do, because next thing he knows he’s looking at the stars, and she’s above him, her shadow doubling, regaining its contour, then doubling again, and his head spins.

Some twisted part of his mind conjures up the vision of you, framed by a backdrop of the bright night sky, smiling down at him, hands on his chest, roaming his skin in the pursuit of pleasure.

And he considers letting it happen. Whatever cruelty she has in mind for him — be it death or pain — for one brainless, blissful moment, he wants to be swidden with it. Maybe if there was something that actually hurt, other than that part of his upper stomach where it’s gaping and empty and aching, he could be cleansed of the pain, cleansed of you. 

Something in Jayce wakes when he hears the sound of iron bouncing off stone and stabbing mud, barely missing the side of his neck. That something is trained, automatic, raw, fast, unyielding. That something is the part of him that — in spite of everything — is so scared that it has sunk its teeth into staying alive and would rather lose its molars than unclench its jaw.

One of his hands finds her throat, the other crushes her nose into his second knuckle. She gasps for breath.

She loses enough of her balance to tip over, and Jayce lets his raw strength do the rest. His right hand joins the left on their throat, knuckles bloody. 

And it feels fucking good to squeeze.

It feels good, to have her at his mercy, until her chest draws up to receive air that does not come, until her throat trembles and cracks below his palms, until her hands start clawing at his wrists.

She makes a ghastly, haunting sound, guttural with broken cartilage and wet with blood.

Her windpipe cracks under his palms. It’s fucking satisfying. Like breaking a wet branch or unrooting a weed or hitting the bullseye.

Serves her right, he thinks. Serves her fucking right. She deserves this.

But the words scratch bitter at his brain, at the fresh wound of deserving — and suddenly his hands are not his, but a noose, and the flesh below his hands is not vermin, but breathing, living, eyes glittering with their final seconds of desperate fear, searching, begging, please please please I don’t want to die.

It could have been your neck between his hands all those months ago, outside that very saloon you’d first touched him. It could have been you, in that very bed, before you’d tied him to the bedpost. It could have been you, right beside that creek he’d twisted his ankle in. It could have been you, surrounded by bluebells, it could have been you, in his tent, it could—

It will be you.

It will be you, larynx crushed not by his hands, but by unyielding rope. 

And you will squirm like her. And your eyes will roll into the back of your head just like they had when he’d lick into your cunt just right and you’d squeeze his head between quaking thighs and grab his hair. And you will go slack at the very end, you will exhale what little is left in your lungs like you’re on the verge of falling asleep. 

And then you’ll die.

Her slack hands slide down his clawed up, raw forearms so gently they remind him of what it means to be touched tenderly. 

Touched by a lover.

Cicada squawks scratching at the sweet quiet of the night, arms winded around his shoulders loose, fingers brushing through his hair, reeking of campfire smoke and licking the same smell up from your skin. Kisses at his hairline, fitting together like two cats lounging in the sun, back when everything was alright with the world and he knew what love felt like. 

Before he knew what it meant to lose it.

Before he knew it wasn’t love. 

Before he knew you were going to die.

“Pl—sse…” a voice hisses, pawing at the claw marks on his wrists with a desperate gentleness, the way you would paw at his hips when he told you he had to go now, really, he said he would be back in Piltover by noon—

The neck under his palms swells, her throat gurgles with blood and spit. And he can’t help but let it happen. Jayce lets his palms go slack not because he wants to, a hunter shouldn’t spare, a guardian shouldn’t hesitate, a man shouldn’t back down.

But he’s none of those things. He was never fucking meant to be any of those things and he did them anyway because he had to and you took them from him. You took his perfected charade from him and now he has nothing. 

Not a hunter, not a guardian, not even a fucking man. 

And he can’t remember what he was before he was supposed to be anything– 

And he can’t think of a single thing he could be, when he fails, he fails, he fails. 

He fails at being a son, he fails at being a brother, he fails at being a protector, and he can’t remember the last time he wanted to be anything.

God, he wanted to be loved.

She gasps the way you did when he’d wake you as the moon slid down the sky and he wanted to steal one last kiss, she heaves ugly and pained and human, and she breathes.

It’s a disgusting, moist sound, whistling in and out as she gulps down air, and when his chest quakes and his lungs start struggling as though they’re a newborn calf tangled in barbed wire, Jayce realizes half those wretched sounds are his.

His head spins like he’s been punched again, chest tight, tight, tight, throat strung like he’s the one with a noose – your noose, you’re going to die. 

Fuck, you’re going to die. 

And he’s going to die, the empty space between his lungs constricts as though giving birth to something more rotten than all the months he’s spent hurting for you.

Jayce braces himself against the ground beside her neck with both hands, squeezing at the mud like it’s his convulsing heart. Jayce crawls away from her heaving body but doesn’t make it far.

His windpipe hurts, breathing hurts, he can’t even breathe right, what the hell is he even good for? Can’t breathe, can’t kill, can’t hunt, can’t sleep, can’t stop hurting, can’t, can’t, can’t. Fish on land, he huffs as though he was never meant to draw breath in the first place, never meant to be born at all. He’s going to die and so are you, and someone must be wringing his throat, but when he paws at it there is nothing but his own skin, and she’s heaving and coughing a few feet away, can’t be her. So who’s killing him? 

The answer is obvious. 

His arms cave below his weight, elbows crashing into the mud below him a last resort to keep his face from meeting the ground in an impact that will knock him out if the way his head is pounding doesn’t. 

His stomach clenches as if to purge itself, but there is nothing to purge — except for you, but you’re lodged deep in every fiber of his being. Jayce doubts there will ever be a version of him that isn’t tainted with you.

A gun cocks, the woman’s trembling figure stands behind it. Jayce knows she’ll do what the likes of you and her do. 

He takes his last sob and lets his body shake with the realization and disgusting but oh-so-sweet relief — finally. 

His end.

Out in the wild, bullet put through the head like a lame horse that’s served its purpose, spared from its pain. Spared from a pathetic excuse of an existence. 

The thought of a noose around your neck brings comfort. You’ll join him. It’s all he’d ever wanted.

Instead of pulling the fucking trigger already, she rests her hand on her pink-purple neck as if to appreciate it hasn’t snapped in half just yet. The hatred on her face fizzles out into disgusted pity.

“Please…” He’s not sure what he’s begging for.

Her hand lowers with a tremor, and she inhales a disgusting, cartilaginous-crackling breath that sounds as though it was never meant to enter her lungs. She spits her blood on the ground.

And she leaves. As the likes of you do.

—

Caitlyn,

All the weapons I’ve left behind are yours. 

Jayce considers leaving it at that — but she deserves more than just eight measly, splotchy, shakily penned words. 

He touches the tip of his fountain pen on the rim of the inkwell, and braces himself. Tries not to smear any of the blood dripping down his scratched up forearms on the immaculate paper as he writes, much neater, much prettier.

We both know there is no one standing in your way now that I’m gone. Piltover will be far better off with you protecting it. You have your head on straight — much straighter than I ever will. 

The best thing I ever did was raise my rifle to protect you. Now it’s your turn. May your bullets strike true.

There’s blood on the page. He considers starting anew. 

He won’t.

I love you.

As he folds up the piece of paper and slips it under her door, Jayce wonders if he loves you.

If he ever will again, after everything you’ve done. After everything he’s about to do.

—

To exchange a quarter for such vital information makes Jayce’s hands tremble with the absurdity of it. He presses the coins into the newspaper boy’s hand like it’s something solemn. 

Twenty-five cents to be let in on when and where your death awaits you.

The sound of the cicadas, awake before the first crack of dawn, scratches at the back of Jayce’s brain while the kid fumbles for the paper. He hands it to him with a sleepy smile and thanks him.

He has no idea what he’s just been the catalyst for.

Your infamy spares Jayce the need to manically tear through the whole thing; Caitlyn hadn't lied. You had made the front page, name spelled out in bold letters, the day and place of your hanging jotted down somewhere between a formal invitation and a taunting, final threat.

There will be little sleep to be had to reach you in time. 

—

By the time he makes it past Serpentine River, there’s talk of it already. He doesn’t even need to seek it out; stopping by a general store in one of the bigger but still humble towns down south is where he strikes gold. 

Or his possible death sentence, would be Caitlyn’s opinion. But she’s thankfully not here to talk sense into him — so he pushes the thought to the very back of his mind as he puts on a stunned face and questions the clerk like he’s asking for gossip.

The man is more than eager to indulge. 

“You’d think it’d take some ace-high hunter to bring the likes of them down, but…” he leans over the counter towards Jayce conspiratorially. “I tell you what, when I saw some twig of a kid ride into town with a dopey grin on his dumb face and them tied to the back of his mangled-lookin’ horse, I thought I was havin’ me one of them hallucinations.”

Jayce’s stopped listening to the clerk rambling on about the kid who’d apparently brought you in, and the continental suit he’d bought himself with the reward. He couldn’t care less about who’s caught you or what they look like. He needs to know where you are, and who’s going to stand in his way.

But the clerk has the mark of a good salesman, and he knows when he’s lost his customer’s interest. He’s quick to change the subject: “Can I interest you in some jerky? Now I know the look of hunger on a man’s face, and you, son—“

“And they’re in the sheriff’s office in town? Here?”

That was not the right question to ask. And especially not the right way to go about it. With a slightly wary tilt of his head, the man looks Jayce up and down, then nods.

“Heard so. Not for long, though — our boys — well, I mean, I have nothin’ but respect for our good ol’ sheriff Mallory and that nephew of his — but I sure as shit don’t sleep well knowin’ they’ve got such wretched scum to take care of.”

Jayce nods back, mustering up some solemnity with a dash of malice. “Glad to hear it. I hope they don’t cause any trouble — you’ve got a fine little town here.”

That’s convincing enough. 

The clerk laughs. “Don’t you worry your head, kid, from what I hear, they’ll be taken to the Great City next week and hanged there — for everyone to see. Now that’s a nasty death if I’ve ever heard o’ one; except for bein’ burned alive that is. I’d have me a public hangin’ over that any day, but — speaking of burnt, this bread right here may look it, but trust me—“

“No.” Jayce waves him off. “Thank you.”

—

A sheriff’s office that takes itself seriously would know to double their guards at night. 

This one is either understaffed or ruefully ignorant to the amount of horrifying friends in low places a real criminal could have.

The men who take care of the night watch at the prison in Piltover are some of the meanest-looking Markus has, and they’re never less than three. But you’ve been caught and brought into a scrappy prison in north Demacia, and they’ve bit off more than they can chew before the Great City lawmen show up to whisk you away in their proper prison. 

You always did end up getting too lucky for your own good.

Jayce walks in like he owns the place. His fingers are cold and trembling in his leather gloves.

Two lawmen, one younger and asleep in the corner of the room, the other sitting at a desk, poring over some paperwork with a cigarette hanging loosely from between his fingers. It smells less like tobacco and more like burnt herbs.

“What can we do for you?” He rasps, undoubtedly annoyed at being bothered with the interruption of his midnight cigarette. 

He flicks the ash onto the mucky floor, and clears his throat. Judging by the sound of a chair scratching the floor behind him, the other lawman — presumably his deputy — jolts awake.

The one at the desk not particularly big, and the golden star on his chest is dull with age and lack of care. The gray hairs in his mustache make him look tired not just momentarily, but permanently. Like he’s been plagued with nothing but apathy for well over a decade, like he loathes the day that awaits him tomorrow just like he dreads this very second. 

Jayce can relate.

“I’m here to find myself a bounty,” Jayce says, and consoles himself with the fact that it’s technically not a lie.

“I’d say you have better chances of doing that in the Great City than in this shithole, kid. Better money for it, too. We’re all outta cash ‘til the big boys from down south come to pick up the newest bounty we just had brought in.”

“I’m stuck here for a while,” Jayce insists. “Family matters. And I’d rather bring in a small bounty than nothing at all, sir.”

The man looks him up and down, then, with a lethargic sigh, gets up on his feet. 

“Follow me.”

That’s the first and last time he does as told. 

Jayce’s first step matches the man’s sluggish pace. The second is a stride; wide, quick, intentional. 

The momentum of his weight should have knocked the sheriff off his feet — he’s taken down bigger folks with just an aggressive shove of his shoulder — but all he does is stumble from the impact. So Jayce does the next best thing he can do: act fast. He wraps his arm around the man’s collarbone, kicks his knee in, and unholsters his gun. Presses it to his temple.

“Drop your weapons,” Jayce growls to the deputy. “Or I kill him.”

“Marshall.” The sheriff grits through his teeth, clawing at Jayce’s arm, “Marshall you fuckin’ listen to me, go get—“

A hefty thwack to the back of his head with the butt of his pistol shuts the sheriff up good.

The other lawman looks at him with eyes wide enough to see himself reflected in. Jayce doesn’t care to look too close. He might just throw up.

He steels himself with a breath. Makes sure his voice is as unyielding as his shooting arm.

“You heard me.”

And so he does. The lawman lets his pistol clatter to the ground, reluctantly takes his rifle off his back, and drops it next to his pistol with shaky hands.

“Good.” The sheriff wriggles. Jayce tightens his grip around him. “Kick them away.”

“Don’t do it!”

He does.

The sheriff’s feet take hold against the floor, he wriggles hard enough to make Jayce’s arm muscles strain. He has to end it now, before things get out of control. He has to, he has to— 

The butt of his pistol must have made a dent in his skull. The sound it makes — crackling, visceral — as it hits the back of his head sure as shit sounds like it. 

The sheriff drops back to his knees, then, without fanfare, onto his face. Unmoving.

That’s dealt with.

Jayce looks back to the other lawman, standing trembling and unmoving, one foot placed to make a run for where he’d kicked his guns away, but not daring. Wise move.

“You can get out of this alive.” Jayce points the gun at him. Thumbs the hammer back. A warning. “All you have to do is cooperate.”

The man — Marshall — raises his hands in submission.

“Get the cell keys.”

Cautiously, he approaches the unmoving body of his colleague, kneels beside it. Marshall’s shoulders sag with relief, however briefly, when he hears the sheriff breathing, before he retrieves the keys from his belt.

“Get up. Take me to the prisoners.”

“Mister, there’s law comin’ in from the Great City in two days.” The man’s voice trembles as he stumbles to his feet, Jayce follows him to the door at the back of the office, gun pointed at his head. He drops the keys as he tries to slot them into the keyhole, grabs them in sweaty hands once more, and tries again, the locked door pops open. Before he pushes forward, he turns to Jayce, and looks at him with something putrid. “They’re gonna— you won’t get away with this.”

His patience is running fucking thin. 

“I don’t remember asking you.” Jayce taps the muzzle of his gun to the back of the man’s neck. “Now come on.”

And it’s only now, that he follows him into the moldy, dark room, that his hands truly start to sweat and his heart leaps into his throat and his head goes icy, woozy, at the thought of you, here.

You’re here.

Clutching the bars of the cell so tight your knuckles are white; you must have gotten up because of the commotion. 

You look at him like he’s an angel. You look at him like he can’t be real. 

You’ve never looked at him like that.

“This— this cell.” Jayce croaks. He can’t bear looking at your face. You’re alive. You’re alright. He’s going to cry. He’s going to throw up. “Open it.”

The lawman looks at him over his shoulder, swallowing whatever dumb thing he has to say, before he turns to the lock on your cell.

“I knew it,” he grumbles, “we never should’ve accepted them. God.” The keys slip from his fingers again. Jayce figures a reminder would help, and presses his gun against his nape. 

“Move it. I’m losing my goddamn patience.”

He lets out a shaky, terrified breath, turns the key so hard his fingertips bend. It snaps open with rusty resistance, and slowly, the door to your cell creaks open.

Below the filth and bruises you’re covered in, you’re shining. Brimming with a kind of relieved, dreamy delight that would have made Jayce’s stomach do flips and knees go soft before everything. Some part of him wants to fall into your arms and lick at your lips until they’re raw. Another part of him has his trigger finger itching. He hopes neither part wins.

You open your mouth to say something. Jayce can’t bear the thought of hearing it, hearing you, not now, not yet—

“Wait by the door,” he interrupts. “And get your things.”

Well, what’s left of them. 

You comply without another word, hurrying to a cabinet beside the door, where you start digging through the drawers frantically.

He turns to the deputy.

“Into the cell,” Jayce commands, and makes sure to walk him to the very back of it, just in case. “On your knees.”

“Please don’t kill me—“

“Hands behind your back.”

Shakily, the man complies. Jayce bends down to hold his wrists together, and starts winding some of the rope hanging off his belt around them, nice and sturdy.

A door behind him creaks open.

“Jayce—!”

Your voice shakes him like nails on a chalkboard. Scratches at something angry and brutal in the very center of his brain, at something that doesn’t think. Something that acts.

Jayce shoots.

He hadn’t stopped to notice who it was, arm wrapped around your throat from behind and holding you close enough to be a human shield.

He hadn’t stopped to think how easily he could put a bullet through your head instead of whatever target he’d locked onto. He’d just pressed the trigger.

His bullet strikes true.

Head flying back with the impact of the lead cutting through his brain, the sheriff drops like a stringless puppet behind you. His brains splatter the wall just beside the door.

You cower, clutching your head as though you died with your attacker. You look at Jayce, meek and trembling and utterly terrified, like you fully expect him to put lead through your skull next.

He opens his mouth to say something. 

A weight collides with him before he does, knocks him onto the concrete floor with a nasty impact.

“You piece of fucking shit!” The deputy’s fist crushes his nose so hard his ears ring. The back of his head slams against the floor. 

The edge of his vision pulses, the high shrill in his ears nearly drowns out the noise of the lawman’s growl. 

“M’gonna kill you.” He mutters. “Gonna fuckin’ kill you, bastard!”

The man’s hands are at his belt, groping for a weapon, wrapping around the handle at Jayce’s left hip.

His knife. 

Jayce attempts a tried and true kick to get the man off of him, but his weight won’t budge. He should have budged, he would have, before everything. Before Jayce had spent his days wishing he was dead and eating only when the bottom of his throat burned with acid and moved only when his muscles ached from laying down. 

Before you’d made him as weak physically as he’d always been within.

But he can’t, he can’t, and this is how Jayce is going to die.

He tries a desperate right hook and hopes it will hit something.

And it does.

His arm stops mid-swing, but not because his fist has met a target.

Something in his forearm pulls, pulls at skin, pulls at muscle, pulls at nerves. He opens his eyes, tries to see, tries to see — sees red. Pain, shooting all the way up to his shoulder and down to his pinky, everything in his precious shooting arm screams.

The knife. Lodged inside his forearm.

Your voice.

“I’m gonna paint the fuckin’ floor with your goddamn brains.”  

The next thing he knows, the lawman’s weight is hauled off of him. Something rings as loud as a church bell on Sunday noon. Once. The lawman tries to scream, but only manages a moist, bloody, nasal snarl. Then that grueling sound rings out once more, a metallic resonance. Again. And again.

Blang. Blang. Blang.

Two blurred moving shadows finally fall into one coherent image as Jayce’s eyes refocus — and he’d give anything to hit his head again hard enough to make sure they don’t. 

You’ve grabbed the lawman like a mangy mutt, fingers digging into the back of his scalp. And you’re slamming his face into the prison cell bars with the relentlessness of someone who does this often. Does this easily.

“Fuckin’ filth is all you was.” You grit out. Blang. “All you’ll ever be.”

You ram his skull into the bars until the last bit of his resistance seeps from his body. With a heaving chest, you retreat to let his corpse slide down bloodied steel onto the floor. You brace yourself against the bars, then bring your foot into one last, thorough kick against the back of his head. There is no doubt about it being a killing blow.

“(L/n).”

Jayce flinches at the sound of your name, not coming from himself. A man in another cell, a fellow prisoner he hadn’t even noticed, holds his hand out between the bars of his own cell.

“Gimme the keys. Get me outta here, please.”

You bend down for the lawman’s gun. Put a bullet in the chamber, then turn to the prisoner.

“No,” the prisoner cries, “I won’t tell a soul, I swear! Not a goddamned soul, please don’t do this, please, please, please—!”

“Sorry.” You thumb down the hammer. “I can’t take that chance.”

[valaruakars]

Let's Get Physical (Part 7)

Viktor/F!Reader || 6.3k || Modern!AU + Gym!AU || SFW

Bitches hate you for your overzealous approach to supporting your friends and deeply anxious behavior. Viktor is not bitches.

A/N: Omg. We're here. We're back on our bullshit. Thank you to everyone who beta'd and/or provided me free therapy about this for that past um... seven months. Oops. Thank you to everyone who reached out over the (unintentional) hiatus with encouraging comments and asks. I hope you'll understand why I took so long to handle this with care and unpack some of my own issues. Very cathartic. Would recommend.

Part 1 → Part 2  → Part 3 → Part 4  → Part 5 → Part 5.2 (nsfw) → Part 6  → Part 7 (Ao3 Link)

Before you know it, two weeks and a day have passed. They make no palpable difference. 

Except maybe in your quadriceps. 

The same weights you’ve been using feel almost effortless, too easy. You don’t fatigue as quickly into heavy breathing and the urge to cheat yourself a rep or two—not lunging with the dumbbell gripped at one of its wide ends, not squatting while it’s clutched close to your chest. It’s suddenly not enough. 

Nobody’s around to see it, but progress is progress. Turns out, you’ve finally graduated to heavier weights on this lonely leg day you’ve committed to. 

That’s a bit of a misnomer, though. The day is mostly past you now. It’s evening—crisp and wispy, sky like striated fire outside the garage—and as the sun sets, you’re reminded of the late start you’re up against. All because you forgot something. 

A good attitude is optional. A scrunchie you can live without. But your shoes? Leave them forgettably kicked off in two different directions on your bedroom floor and you’re fucked. It’s a small miracle you’re here, dragging around weight plates, setting up a barbell. There was a very real danger of tripping and falling into bed—totally by accident, never to get up again—when you drove home and stomped upstairs to grab them. 

But whether or not he knows it, likely the latter, Viktor keeps you accountable when no one else can. It’s because the only running you truly love is the risk of seeing him, which still requires proper footwear. And for you to leave the house. 

Though by the time you whipped into the driveway and thrust the gear shift into park, it’s empty. He’d left already; you didn’t get to see him off on his reluctant shuffle through the garage. But lucky you—he tends to come straight home after physical therapy. Call it friendly concern that you’re paying attention. 

It’s probably an odd way to think about a friend. You need to work on that. 

Your phone vibrates dully on the padded bench beside you. Nearly knocking your water over in the process, you grab it to find a text from Jayce—the usual culprit. You slide it open, accidentally brushing the top of the screen with shaky fingers. It catapults you to the beginning of your most recent messages before you can read the new one. 

Mon, Oct 10

[Jayce Talis, 5:56am]: Did you leave the back door unlocked last night? [Jayce Talis, 5:57am]: And the pool lights on? [Jayce Talis, 5:57am]: Was Viktor in the pool?

[7:32am]: Holy shit. Good morning. [7:33am]: No, no, and why do you think I know these things??

[Jayce Talis, 7:45am]: Sorry, it’s all good. He’s alive. 

[7:46am]: ???????

[Jayce Talis, 7:49am]: You guys didn’t hang out after I left? 

[7:57am]: Idk if you would consider it that. [8:02am]: But has anyone invited him to cards on Saturday??

[Jayce Talis, 8:17am]: He already said no. [Jayce Talis, 8:18am]: Although… [Jayce Talis, 8:19am]: You could try telling him it’s strip poker. Haha :) 

[8:20am]: Blocked. Reported. Banned. NOT DOING THAT.

[Jayce Talis, 8:21am]: No wait! I was kidding. He’s not a creep :(

Tue, Oct 11

[Jayce Talis, 3:38pm]: Wait did you actually block me? 

[3:50pm]: Yes.

Sun, Oct 16

[Tayce Jalis, 8:00am]: Can I have my t-shirt back today?

[8:31am]: Oh the really old anime one? I left it with some stuff to be washed, ask Viktor. [8:32am]: Maybe the dryer did you a favor and ate it. 

[Tayce Jalis, 8:34am]: Hey! Naruto is timeless.

Today

Tayce Jalis unsent a message

Not fast enough to scroll back down, caught revisiting those unremarkable little messages, and now you’ll never know what Jayce’s butt managed to text you this time. Oh well. Keep your secrets. 

You toss your phone down behind you with a leathery slap. Back to working on the whole stop pining after Viktor thing.

Right, and your legs. 

The barbell bites into your hips as you roll it into your lap and adjust it, the bench presses into your shoulder blades. It’s heavier and harder to manage, but you do, driving down into your heels to get your ass off the ground, hefting yourself into a nice, solid bridge. From there it’s as easy as dipping your hips, which isn’t quite easy at all. No, it’s brutal. 

It burns from your core down to your thighs; has you clenching your jaw, gritting your teeth with the strain. Even your biceps are active, lifting some of the steel-hard pressure off your hip bones. 

You’re so zoned in—no thoughts, head empty except for the number six over and over until it’s seven—that you only hear the hiss of your breath in and out, the hammering rush of blood behind your ears. You don’t hear Viktor come home. 

Not until he’s standing above you.  

He had the heinous metal on metal sound in his old beige car fixed—that grinding, grating death knell in its engine. One of several potentially life threatening reasons the check engine light was always on—maybe still is. And though you much prefer him living, it’s harder to hear him coming over the steady music without paying attention. 

Bad timing for Miss Carly Rae Jepsen on your Upbeat Workout Jams playlist, considering you do really, really, really like him. Him and how he stands at the end of the bench, staring down; how he fixes you with that sliver thin smile, a manila folder tucked under the arm of his long cardigan. 

You seize with embarrassment, frozen on the upswing of your hips. “Hi,” whispers out on the end of an exhale, caught ragged in your throat. 

You can’t do pelvic thrusts in front of him. 

You just can’t. 

It’s bad enough that you’re sweaty in every skin to skin crevice and certainly flushed, t-shirt sticky and legs trembling as they hold your awkward position, but then there’s him. 

He wears that same look much better. On him, it’s healthy color across the cut lines of his cheeks; it’s still-damp curls at the nape of his neck and the jump of his lean throat when he swallows, dry when he must’ve forgotten a water bottle again. It’s suggestive. It’s hot. 

And it’s the endorphins that make you feel that way, surely, more than any affinity for men in gray sweatpants that are far more revealing than they must realize. 

You clear your throat, finding your own parched voice. “Watch your feet,” you warn, on the side of caution, dropping butt and barbell to the ground with a metallic thud. You let your head drop back against the bench pad, staring up at him with the dazed satisfaction of calling it quits. Only for the moment, of course, as you blindly feel around for your phone to turn the music down. 

And good fucking god is what you see unholy. Viktor shifts his weight before you can look away, and the ache in your core redoubles—different, deeper than any lactic acid buildup. Did his pants shrink in the wash or is it really that m—?

Nope! Absolutely not! 

You can tread no further with that thought because, really, there’s no such thing as having a platonic appreciation for your friend’s dick. Not when the friend is Viktor. 

“You’re not finished yet?” he asks. Innocent. Oblivious to your mental struggle out of the gutter. 

Typically you would be by now. Equipment racked, the citrus scent of disinfectant on your hands, picking at innocuous conversation while you walk inside together. How was your day? Did you hear they’re demolishing the old physics building? There’s a guest lecture next month that might interest you. 

“About another thirty minutes,” you breathe, “and then I’ll be done. I’m running behind.”

“Ah, interesting. That looks to me more like sitting,” he says, which is terrible enough to earn an eye roll, and snarky enough that your lips wobble and break into an insurmountable smile.

“It’s called resting, thanks. This would go faster if you stopped distracting me,” you huff, muscles loose, lips looser. 

The little spark of mirth in his eyes, so bright and awake, makes your stomach clench vice tight. “Mm. There’s no rush,” he shrugs, “but… Rio might enjoy a visit.” 

Your smile is skeptical as he pulls the file folder from beneath his arm. “Oh really?” It widens as he starts to fan you from above—chilly in the garage, but you’re still sweating buckets. It’s futile, although he’s sweet to try and help.  

He nods, gravely serious, “She told me herself.” 

You crane your neck unconsciously to let it cool the sweat that lingers there, sighing as little wisps of loose hair billow feather light and tickle your feverish skin. 

He isn’t holding it right, though. His grip is too loose on the edge.

At once, a flurry of white comes raining down on you. It’s instinct that your eyes clamp shut against the onslaught. 

“No, no, no,” he hisses as if begging could stop gravity. 

It doesn’t, of course. 

His papers flutter and scrape across the floor. An unlucky one sticks to the sweat on your scrunched up cheek. He’s quick to dip forward and snatch it back first, the easiest to reach.

You blink off the surprise and snicker, “Oh, how the tables have turned. Who’s the clumsy one now?” Rolling the barbell away over your outstretched legs, there’s nothing in its path to be crumpled beneath the weight.  

But Viktor doesn’t answer with a crooked smile or a quiet laugh, no dry wit to be found. His dark, heavy brows furrow and he insists, “No, just—just let me,” while he crouches to the ground, distributing his weight between his cane and the end of the bench. 

“It’s okay,” you insist, reaching to gather what’s scattered between you, “I’ve got it. No big deal.”

“To you,” he mutters, snatching two away before you can turn them over. Makes him lose balance. He narrowly catches himself before he can veer face first into your spandex lap,, blunt, bony fingers digging into your thigh at the hem of those skin tight biker shorts. It crushes the papers all the same. 

“Top secret nuclear codes?” you tease, drowning his muttered apologies. It sounds stupid and obvious that you’re trying to distract from the fumbling tension when his hand stays put for moments too long. Yours, too, on his shoulder to brace him. 

Just until he’s able to sit himself solidly on the ground beside you. 

He purses his lips, “My work is with reactor cores, not weapons.”

It’s only been a week since you got an impromptu lecture about nuclear fusion in the kitchen. It’s not like you’d forget so quickly. “I know—”

Impatient, Viktor reaches over your lap, too close for comfort. Whatever you were about to say is struck from your train of thought. 

His cardigan drags soft and pilled with wear across your beat up knees. Beneath it, his sweat smells sharp and strangely appealing. It’s fascinating, that draw to something so base and human. It’s unsettling, the way your heart responds like it beats between your legs.

You follow his hand, unabashedly curious, and watch him pick up another overturned paper. Below it, the next sheet is stuck face up to the floor with what you cringe to assume is a drop of your sweat, bleeding the ink of a diagram. Multiple diagrams, actually. 

Of stretches.  

The familiarity sparks excitement. 

By the time he peels up the corner of the page with his fingernail, you’re sure of what you’re looking at. It’s common ground, of a sort; the excuse to end all excuses. 

“These are from the physical therapist?” 

He sighs, sitting back in an awkward fold of spindly legs. Looks wearier, now, with his shoulders collapsed like the exhaustion of going has finally caught up. “Yes,” he admits, because you’re smart and he’s smart, and any other answer would be an obvious lie. 

You’re doing it again—digging your fingers into a soft spot that feels as ripe as it does intrusive. We do not talk about it much, he once said, but it’s hard to stop once you’ve started. You just have to know: “Do you do them?” 

His eyes cut down to the papers in his hands. “When time permits.”

“How often does it permit?” 

“Occasionally,” says Viktor, which might mean somewhere between rarely and never. 

Early mornings, late nights; classes to teach, lab hours to log, projects, papers, and a dissertation that looks done to you, but he laughs bitterly when you suggest it. Still has to find time to eat and shower and sleep, but his eyes are always restless purple and there are wrappers from meal replacement bars scattered around the house, too high calorie for Jayce to be the culprit. 

You wonder what will happen when it all catches up with him. Worse, you worry. 

Beseechingly, you reach out. Your grip is gentle as you take hold of the printouts at their edge. “Can I see?” you ask, not grabbing or pulling or taking, just there and ready. 

His lips form a tight, considering line. “If that is the last of your questions,” he slowly replies. Prickly, but relenting, he lets go before you can ever agree. 

So you don’t.  

His eyes are on you as you flip through the stack—you can feel it as a strange, shy tension like bated breath, watching and waiting. 

Page by page, it’s nothing you haven’t seen before. Some you’ve even done yourself, but with simple modifications. Hell, bridges are just hip thrusts performed flat on the floor, without the weight. Nothing he’d need help with, which is ideal when you’re not qualified to do anything but make space for him; to emphasize that he’s welcome and wanted, maybe offer up a sweaty-palmed high five if you’re feeling spunky. 

You peel your legs off the floor and resituate, tucking them as your turn to face him, direct in every sense. “You could come do these with us on Sunday mornings after we run, before you get started on work. It would make Jayce happy, and Vi has a really funny way of being encouraging—”

He pulls a face—a nose scrunched up, barely concealed, abso-fucking-loutely not sort of scowl. 

“Or…” you’re quick to try, “Just with me, when I’m here. It’ll take, what—fifteen? Twenty minutes?” 

“It’s a poor use of time,” he says. It’s as avoidant as it is clumsy, with a dismissive edge still dull enough to bruise. 

And that’s because: “You stop and talk to me for longer than that sometimes,” you remind him flatly.  

He sighs sharply, toying absently with the cane laid across his lap. “That is different.” He says it like it’s obvious; like it’s frustrating that you don’t know how obvious it is. 

“Well, what if we could do both at the same time?” you propose. After all, he’s got such a hard-on for efficiency, if that’s what’s stopping him. “I know you’re a good multitasker…”  

His jaw works, trapping his thoughts behind imperfect teeth. 

“And we probably keep this floor cleaner than the carpet…” you prod, because the silence of a man who can and has talked your ear off is disquieting; because you don’t always know when to stop; because this feels like a negotiation. 

“My bedroom suits my purposes just fine,” he says, eventually. 

But you never said which carpet. The thought of him sequestered in there, even for this, is fucking depressing. Arguably disgusting when you’ve walked across that rug and felt the grit of dirt, crumbs, and debris that the pattern hides through your socks. And worse: It’s a choice, so why is he making it? 

Abruptly, the rubber tipped end of his cane meets like against the rubber tiled floor. He pulls himself up on it with difficulty you can’t ignore, but shakes his head when you move to help. The only thing you do is hand him up the battered stack of papers, tucked back into the folder from which they came, when he stands up fully. You won’t hold them hostage, even if part of you wants to. It wouldn’t keep him from leaving, his back to you such a familiar sight. 

You just want to understand, though, if nothing else. To crack him like a cipher.  

Softer, you try: “I wouldn’t judge you.” It’s the last, desperate little thing you can think of. They’re like magic words to you. 

But the problem is: They don’t work on everyone. 

To his credit, his tone isn’t harsh. It’s indifferent, like stating a sterile fact. “This has nothing to do with you,” he says. “I haven’t skipped an appointment recently, and that should be enough.”

Indigence might suit you in those moments you grow a seedling backbone, but it doesn’t suit this. You can’t help it though. His frustration has bled into you, caught like kindling. “Is it?” 

“You and I do not share the same sense of priorities,” he replies, but it’s not an answer. Not really. 

The urge to turn him upside down and shake him until something definitive comes out is overwhelming—so straightforward until he just… isn’t. “If you’re not going to say yes or no, can’t you just lie and say you’ll think about it?” 

He looks you over inscrutably, sitting there in his shadow. “Why would you assume it’s a lie?”

“Oh, I don’t know…” you huff. But you do. Experience and a certain friend who actually bothers to text you back have given you the answer. “Jayce says you’re stubborn and I’m starting to think he’s right.” 

Viktor nods conclusively, but doesn’t care to share what’s going through his head. As evasive as ever when he cares to be, just murmurs,“You should finish this.”

And then, for a reason that is simply beyond you, says: “I will see you later.”

But for once, you’re not sure if you want to. 

—

You rap your knuckles against his open door. 

Seriously—who were you kidding, thinking for even a second that you wouldn’t be here, doing this?

Yes, it’s well after eight now and you’re pitifully hungry, but it wouldn’t feel right to leave without saying anything. In writing a note or sending a text, you’d simply be spelling out, ‘I’m a coward!’ in far more words. It’s best, you decide, to be polite and mature and just say goodnight despite the awkward taste in your mouth that is very reminiscent of your own foot. 

And you get to say it to his back, which should be easy. 

But then there’s Rio on his desk like a pissed off paperweight, swimming the foggy side of her holding tank—sorry, prison—without any hope of escape. They’re the angriest, most pathetic wiggles you’ve ever seen. Habitual, given how tongue-smudged and abraded the plastic has become. 

“You see?” he says, gesturing to the sound of her scrabbling in his bright rubber kitchen gloves. “It’s just as I said.” 

“I think it’s more about you ignoring her.” Rio pauses, slipping down the side. Her little face conveys it perfectly: “Father is cruel? Father is… unyielding? Father hates Rio?” 

“No, no… Although, eh, yes, I suppose she does sound like that…” he muses, nodding. “I think she must wonder those things about you, actually.”

Your shoulder hits the door frame, shrugging against it where you lean. “I probably don’t matter much to her.”

There’s a heavy pause, enough for him to breathe in and hold it. Breathe out, softly: “You do.”

And suddenly, you can’t find it in you to leave. Did you ever truly have the will? 

The truth is there on your feet—those perpetually mismatched socks. You’d hoped for this, secretly, else you wouldn’t have left your shoes off at the door.  

It’s warm when you walk in. A space heater that’s been running too long glows electric orange on the floor near his desk. Makes the smell of churned earth and vinegar cleaner that much stronger. And while the clutter is clearly endemic, it seems the fuzzy, stagnant mugs are not. They’re all gone from his desk and the bedside table, replaced by sticky notes, pill bottles, and an avalanche of papers.

You come up and give Rio’s tiny, clawed foot a high-five through the plastic. “Has she been doing this all night?” you ask, looking over. 

Knee on the desk chair for leverage, he’s elbows deep in her tank, rooting those waxen, fake plants back into the substrate with unnatural posture. It’s that stiffness you’ve always noticed—ramrod straight from the mid-spine up. It’s easier to see in profile, in a thin shirt that clings to his back, that there’s nothing visibly forcing it. 

“On and off. She tires quickly now,” he says, arranging a broad-leafed plant near her favorite rocky shelter—scrubbed clean, still damp. “When she was younger, it would go on much longer while I did this.”

“How old is she exactly?” 

His sigh is almost lost beneath the hum of the space heater. He answers, “Fifteen,” in the soft, subdued way of someone who hates to be reminded. 

There’s many things you’re too afraid to ask him. Such hits as: Why did you dig yourself a hole this deep, does Jayce text everyone about you, and would I even stand a chance if things were different? But right now, most of all, it’s how long do geckos live? 

You don’t think you’re going to like the answer. 

Viktor clears his throat. “She’s very, eh… spritely for her age,” he adds, fondly this time. 

You hum a soft sound in agreement, too shaky through the legs to squat down to eye level with her. When you bend your knees to try, you realize you’ll probably never get up again. 

He glances over as you straighten up. “You can sit,” he offers without really saying where. It’s obvious, though. The only option—his rumpled bed, never made, with all its mismatched pillows. One has definitely been stolen from the couch, three are yellowed and missing pillowcases which is… ew. 

But you’re not going to refuse. You’d like to hold Rio, after all. 

You swallow hesitation and tuck yourself onto the end of his mattress, balancing on the firm edge. At least the intrusive thoughts are fleeting. Only briefly do you wonder what he thinks about at night. What he does. What he wants for.

Not you. That’s for sure.

Your elbows lock out where you grip the ridged edge of the bed. The weight of things gone unsaid, of things left unresolved bears down; it prickles warm at the back of your neck and you can’t stand the waiting silence. 

“So…” you drawl, letting your voice fill the void.

“Hm?”

“Are you going to hand her to me now, or…?”

“Ah, no, I’m finished,” he says over his shoulder. “She needs to go back in the tank.”

“Then why am I sitting here?” 

“Because I have something to ask you.”

Straightforward. Right. You forgot just how terrifying that can be. 

“That sounds just as bad as saying we need to talk,” you mutter, heart twisting into a suffocating, arterial knot. 

“We do, though,” he says, too literal, too preoccupied with placing Rio back in her clean terrarium to notice your soul leave your body—preemptively abandoning ship. 

But he’s merciful, at least. He doesn’t keep you in suspense. 

“I just want to understand at what point you developed such a vested interest in, eh… fixing me, I suppose,” he asks, like wondering what the weather will be tomorrow or what the dining hall might serve for lunch. Conversationally. “Did Jayce put you up to this?”

Your eyes narrow in thought. “No…?” you reply. It comes out too shifty as you toy with the serged edge of his blanket. Jayce put you up to something alright, though that hardly matters anymore. But, in a way, does this count? Would Viktor think that this counts?

“A sure answer, please.”

Fuck. 

“It’s just that I would lump that in as part of being friends with you—except I’d call it, y’know, caring?” You draw your leg up onto the bed, closer, tucking your foot beneath your thigh. “That’s all I’m trying to do.”

Viktor flips the grate down with a finality that lights your nerves like a beacon to flee. “So he asked you to do what, exactly?” 

“Nothing,” you squirm. 

He pivots, solidly on two feet. Doesn’t sit down in the desk chair quite yet. “It wouldn’t be the first time for this behavior, and, with you, I’m sure it was not the last. Do you know that he once provided Caitlyn with a written list of topics not to bring up to me?” 

You shrug, “He’s a good friend...” 

Now you’re staring down the barrel of being just the opposite—of throwing Jayce under the bus. 

“What did he ask?” Viktor presses.

And you break. Made brittle by your desire to put him first, of course you do.  

“All he wanted was for me to give you a chance, which was pretty reasonable after you called me annoying—” that word comes out with a bite to it you didn’t intend; sensitive, sore, “—but I never told him about that. He’s just… worried about you in his own way, I guess.” 

Viktor quietly raises an eyebrow, and that’s all it takes to snap you into fours next. It practically falls out of your mouth: “He keeps texting me to make sure you’re still alive. Sometimes I think he’s joking, but then one time he told me he had a nightmare that you drowned in the pool, so part of me actually thinks he’s being serious.” 

“He is.” 

“Wait, really—?”

“Is that why you come so often now?”

Wednesday. Friday. Sunday. Monday too, sometimes, if the day before hasn’t left you sufficiently sore enough. The pain means progress. It must.

“Well, no,” you blink, “that’s mainly because I have a lot to work on.”

“Do you?”

You gesture to yourself. All of you. The way your stomach folds and rolls and fucking exists unappealingly beneath your sweatshirt when you slouch—it could be better. The way your thighs pancake out, smushed against the bed—not getting better, but discipline and toning might shape them into something near desirable. “Yeah, obviously.”

He treads lightly. “I… would not say it’s obvious.” But his eyes are cast down as he carefully removes his rubber gloves and discards them in a bucket of cleaning supplies. He’s not rude enough to agree, but you worry, in all those moments you can feel him looking at you, that he’s thinking it. After all, he’s willowy, sharp and elegant in a way you’ll never be. Soft and fleshy. Never quite right. 

“And that’s because you’re, what, zero percent body fat?” you sigh, gesturing to him incredulously. “I’m not implying that’s healthy or ideal—honestly, I’d share some if I could—but…” Your hands curl to your chest, clasped tightly in one another when there is no one else to hold them through the indignity of admitting, “I’m the one that needs fixing. Not you.” 

He was right, though, when he said it earlier. This isn’t about you. “Where did you come up with that, anyways?” you ask. 

The lines on his face, those deep, concerned creases between his brows, spell out what the fuck. You don’t understand what’s so hard about that question—what he can’t figure out, why the confusion lingers in his eyes. “This… This is the second time you’ve offered to help me.”

“I was trying to be supportive. Encouraging, even—that’s also a good word for it.” 

“It all feels the same,” he tells you, taking his turn to sigh. “Which is to say patronizing, sometimes.”

And that was not what you intended. “I’m sorry, I’m not trying to be a saint or anything. That’s not entirely it.” You fight the turtle-like urge to retract into your sweatshirt, which would arguably be more stupidly embarrassing than admitting: “I was just looking for… common ground, I guess. Ways to hang out without dragging you out with us.” 

“Are we not doing that right now?”

“Sure, but I feel bad about it.” There’s the silvery peek of his computer, buried on the desk. “I’m keeping you from more important things.” 

“You’re not,” he says—no, placates, but the disbelieving press of your lips makes him reconsider. “Well, eh, perhaps, but I can manage. I’ve dealt with Heimerdinger’s high expectations and, mm, sadistic deadlines for years. The weekends work well to make up for lost time, and there is all night after this too.”

“You should sleep.”

“I can’t. Not well.”

You give a creaky little bounce—not much of one, no spring to it—to demonstrate: “Maybe because your mattress feels about as hard as sleeping on the ground.” 

“One problem of many, yes.”

You count yourself among them, in one way or another. You’ve been leaking these awful insecurities all night. 

Is it any wonder that another slips? 

“It’s just—the last thing I want is to bother you. Everyone, really, but especially you.” 

“Is that because of me?” he asks quietly. “Because of what I said?”

Oh, you’ve carried this around since day one. Let it color his tone and his words and his actions. Let it haunt you trying to reach for others, the freshest nick in a line of scars that was never stitched properly. That’s what you get for letting all those little anxieties run wild with knives in their hands. That’s what you get for forgiving him before he ever asked for it, as if that would make things easier. For you. For him. For everyone. 

It hasn’t.

Viktor crosses the three steps between you on bare, nobby feet. His weight dips the bed beside you ever slightly, like he’s hardly there. But he is, by the way his leg bumps your knee, and you scoot over to give him space.  

He doesn’t seem to know what to do with his hands, grasping at some distant thread. They’re as awkward as he is in saying, “I can’t recall what I meant at the time, but it… it wasn’t that. It would’ve been fine if you thought less of me for it, but not of yourself.” 

You shake your head. “It’s—don’t worry, it’s not all you,” you say, softening his guilt, perhaps at your own expense. “I have a lot of anxiety, and that’s a long running thing, okay? It’s mostly… me.” 

“That’s… good to know. About you, I mean. Not that it’s—it’s good. Just, eh, helpful to know.” 

“I guess that’s generally the benefit of being upfront about things,” you shrug as if it comes easy. 

“I would prefer that, I think.”

It doesn’t, but the light, fizzy feeling of relief makes you want to try, if only to have more of it. Maybe more of his shy little smiles too. This time with more intention, and less leaky word vomit. 

“Okay…” You shift to face him fully, mirroring his posture in leaning back on your hand for support. “Then in no uncertain terms, I want you to know that I’m not trying to fix you.” Been there, done that, got the shitty dunce hat. People don’t change unless they want to. You know that. “I just wish you were kinder to yourself, but that’s on you. So if you ever decide you want better, whatever that means, I’ll be there. Only if you want me to and only on your own terms—no physical activity required.”

“I might want to consider it, you know…” His voice lowers, softer and softer with hesitation, to the point that you find yourself leaning in. Noticing, as he seems to have noticed, that your hands are a hair’s breadth apart. “As a future prospect, if anything. But you have to understand, I don’t enjoy being watched.”

“I get that.” 

“Mm, no, I imagine people stare at you for very different reasons,” he mutters. “Not pity. Envy, perhaps.”

“I promise, most people don’t want these thunder thighs,” you huff, resisting the urge to slap them like a used car salesman. These babies can fit so much soul-crushing insecurity, which is a terrible pitch, really. The occasional bouts of self-loathing are not your strongest selling point.

He lets out the strangest bark of a laugh, so dry it’s almost ugly, as if he can read your mind. 

But you didn’t mean to derail. “Sorry, continue.” 

“Right…” Viktor draws in a long breath, quiet for a moment before he figures out how to word it. “It’s as simple as that I would rather go unseen. It’s very, ah, personal. And painful, sometimes.”

You think of the age old adage: If it hurts, don’t do it. “Um, not a doctor, but I don’t think it’s supposed to be?” 

“So they say,” he nods pensively, eyes ticking over some distant thought, maybe a memory. “It wasn’t like this before. The discomfort wasn’t… serious. That’s how I was able to ignore it for so long.”

“Ignore what?”

Not the brutal slam of the garage door across the house, for one thing. The pictures on the wall must be hanging crooked now.

Viktor sits straighter—if that’s even possible—and calls out: “Jayce?”

Footsteps—softer, distant.

His eyes snap back to yours. “It’s been a week since he’s come home,” he tells you in a quick whisper. “Mm, well, in the evening. He’s here in the morning—”

“To work out at the ass crack of dawn? I know.”

“You were invited?”

“He knows better than to think I’ll get up that early. I saw on his Instagram.”

Footsteps—louder now.

Viktor nods sagely. “Ah, yes, the stories. By my count, he has written, eh, ‘rise and grind’ forty three times since the first of the year.”

“That’s…” Your math isn’t great but, “More than once a week,” you whisper back, on the cusp of giggles as Viktor nods. And then, it hits you. “Wait—”

But the footsteps have stopped. 

And instead, there’s Jayce’s stoop-shouldered figure braced in the doorway. He sniffles loudly.

He’s still dressed in the khakis and blue button down he wears to work—rumpled, sleeve cuffs smeared darker. His eyes have that red, raw, burning swell of someone who's tried very hard not to cry, and failed spectacularly. 

Viktor finds the words you’re looking for with immediate precision. “Has something happened?” he asks, voice tight, hand tighter on your shoulder as he leans around you to look his roommate over. “Jayce?”

They spend a lot of time apart. Sometimes it’s easy to forget that they’re best friends too. 

He swipes at his nose as it runs into the raw little divot above his lip. Beyond sadness, there’s a guilty cast to his dark, hazel eyes, turned down to the floorboards, but you can’t find your voice to tell him that this isn’t what it looks like. 

“Are you… injured?” Viktor tries again.

Jayce shakes his head. No. 

“Is your mother alright?” 

“She’s fine,” he rasps. “Um… Can I just—?” he asks, gesturing weakly to the two of you.

Which you think must translate to: “You want to come sit?” 

“Yeah.”

Viktor’s of course comes without apprehension, without judgment. Only with the apparent surprise that he even needed to ask. 

But Jayce, in several long legged strides, doesn’t come sit. No, he collapses face first onto the bed behind you, all broad, shaking shoulders and quiet sniffles seeping out from behind his arms. They hide his face and nothing else. Hands curling, clenching into his shirtsleeve, there’s the thick band of a tan line striped across his middle finger. 

You turn yourself around, scooching closer, folding up cross-legged to face him. 

You’ve never seen him like this—laid so low. A sweat stain blooms dark at the small of his back, up between his shoulder blades, but sweat is sweat and Jayce is Jayce. You reach out to rub his back despite it.  “It’s alright…” you whisper. Feels like putting band-aids on a bleeding heart, but it’s all you have. 

Soft cotton weave catches the peeling skin of old blisters as you soothe your hand in circles. His shirt leaches the vetiver smell of cologne, but somewhere beneath it, there’s an elegant, cloying perfume still lingers. It’s no secret where he spends most of his time these days. 

You meet Viktor’s searching eyes and mouth: Mel. 

He nods gravely as if to say he drew the same conclusion.

Say something—that’s your next silent suggestion, canting your head toward Jayce. 

But instead, Jayce takes a deep, wet, shuddering breath and asks, muffled into the mattress, “Can… Can we go to Taco Bell?” 

“Sure…” you murmur. He could’ve asked you to drive him two states over to bury a body and you would’ve agreed just as thoughtlessly. Anything he needs. “We’ll take you.”

He doesn’t move. Just sniffles at a prompting little scritch to the nape of his neck, where his hair fades out to shadowy, peach-flesh fuzz.

So you ask, “Do you want to go change, and then I can drive us?”

“Can I just have a minute? Please?”

“Why?” demands a perplexed Viktor, still soft spoken. Desperate for an answer that isn’t made of cobbled assumptions; blunt in its pursuit. 

And worried. You can tell that he’s worried. 

As if you’d been the one to ask, the personification of wet, doleful misery lifts his head and looks up at you. His face is a ruin of dark, clumpy lashes and tear-tracked skin. His lip wobbles, the pressure of withholding little sobs building, building, building. But speaking it aloud makes it real. Speaking it aloud breaks the levee. 

“I think we just broke up,” he finally whispers. 

And cries face-down for another hour after that.

[misfit0789]

Rule 12 | Abby Scuito

Y/n's POV

"Tony, how's my little niece?" I ask my brother over the phone. He and Tali had just left Washington to travel after Ziva died. He changed for the better once he found out about Tali.

"She's fine Y/n/n, she misses you," he says, I sigh.

"I miss her too, I'll try and visit you guys soon," I say walking back to my living room in my apartment. Tony asked if I wanted to stay in his old one but after finding out about the people dying there I wasn't for it.

"Sounds good, I got to go. I'll call you later sis," He says hanging up before I got the chance to reply. I pull the phone away from my ear and roll my eyes.

"Idiot," I shake my head and sit on the couch turning Netflix on. One thing is my brother and I are both big movie people, we would always watch them when we were younger and just enjoy ourselves. We were basically all each other had.

Just as I'm about to put on Spider-Man 3 someone starts banging on my door. "Y/n open up!" I groan and get up walking to the door. I open it and glare at whose standing there.

"Can I help you Ellie? It's 11 o'Clock at night," I groan leaning on the door frame. She gives me a sheepish smile before holding up a fast food bag. I sigh and step aside letting her in. She laughs and walks past me handing me the bag as she goes to sit on the couch.

"Is it so wrong for me to want to see my best friend?" She asks, I roll my eyes eating a fry out of the bag, "No, but when it's 11 o'clock at night and you know I spend my Friday nights watching movies and hate being interrupted," I pause and pretend to think," yes," I say sitting next to her and pressing play on the movie and grabbing my burger out of the bag, taking a bite.

"Oh stop it, you can survive one night not watching a movie, besides I need your help," she says going quiet. I swallow the piece of my burger and look at her confused. "El, what's going on? Is Jake still bugging you? Because I will happily beat his ass for you...again," I say mumbling the last part but she still heard me as she shoves me to the side. "What? I had to do something. The asshole thought it was okay to cheat and expected you to take him back. Bitch no! You cheated you pay the consequences." I say getting pissed as I think about that bastard.

"No, it's not Jake, but thank you for being so protective. It's actually case related..." She trails off. I haven't been to the office since Tony left. It just didn't feel right to me to be there with my brother not there. Ellie is the only one I've kept in contact with since he left 3 months ago. She's kept me updated on everyone. McGee is gonna propose to Delilah, there's this new guy named Torres, and Gibbs is well Gibbs.

"Bishop you know I don't feel comfortable being there since Tony left. I fell like everyone judges me," I say setting my burger down on the bag on my coffee table in front of us. "You'll be fine, besides, Abby needs you," She says the last part in a slow teasing manner causing me to snap my head up and glare at her. "El stop, I told you, that was a one time thing," I get off the couch and grab what's left of my food bringing it to the kitchen. She gets up and follows after me.

"Please Y/n/n? It's the firewall on the victims computer, none of us can crack it and you're our only other option, please?" she pouts, I groan walking away knowing I'll crack.

"No"

"Please"

"No"

"Please"

"No"

"Please"

"No"

"Please"

"Ughh okay fine I'll help, now leave me alone so I can watch Toby McGuire in peace." I say falling back on my couch and lay across it giving Ellie no where to sit. "Thank you, I'm sure Abby will be pleased to see you," she smirks pushing my head up and sitting down causing my head to fall on her lap. I groan but don't respond continuing to watch the movie.

Time Skip

"Dude chill," Ellie says. We're in the elevator on the way to the squad room but I can't stop shaking my leg. "I'm sorry El, I don't even know why I'm so nervous. I guess it'll just be weird being here without Tony." I say, she rubs my arm in a comforting manner, "It'll be okay, I'll be with you the whole way," She says, I smile and give her a nod thanking her, she smiles and gives me a nod in return. The elevators ding and we walk off the elevator towards her desk.

Ellie sits at her desk while I stand behind her wall divider and lean on it, watching as Tim and some other guy talk to each other facing the monitor. "So where is this firewall THE Timothy McGee can't crack?" I ask making my presence known to them. They both turn around confused before Tim's face lights up, as he begins to walk towards me.

"Is that Y/n DiNozzo I see?" I laugh, pushing myself off the wall and meet him in the middle pulling him into a hug, "Hey Tim," I say, "How are you? How's Delilah?" I ask. He smiles, "We're both doing great, Thank you, She's actually in Dubai right now but she should be back soon. You'll have to come over for dinner soon." He says, I nod agreeing. We pull back when someone clears their throat. I look and see the guy Tim was talking too standing there with a big smile on his face.

"Hola, beautiful. I'm Special Agent Nick Torres," he says reaching for my hand, taking it in his and kissing the back of it. I look at him in disgust causing Bishop and McGee to laugh leaving Torres confused. "What?" he asks offended, letting my hand go.

"She's gay Torres," Bishop says in between laughter. He blushes in embarrassment and walks back to his desk. I join the other two in laughter. I immediately stop when I see Gibbs come in with a cup of coffee in his hand, while the others continue, I try to stop them but it doesn't work.

"Something funny McGee?" He asks, Tim immediately stops along with Bishop. "No Boss, just talking to Y/n," he says. Gibbs turns and looks at me, I smile and wave shyly. "Y/n," He smiles pulling me in for a hug, I slowly hug him back surprised at his actions. Gibbs and I never really talked when I'd visit Tony at the office so this is a big surprise.

"Uhh hey Gibbs, I just came by because Ellie mentioned some trouble with a firewall..." I trail off, he pulls back and nods. "Yea, Abby has been in the lab all night trying to crack it. Some new fresh eyes may be helpful. Do you still remember where the lab is?" He asks, I nod and give him a smile. "Yea, I should be able to make it there. I'll see you guys later." I wave to them, Bishop gives me an encouraging look. I nod and smile in thanks before turning and walking towards the elevator. I press the down button and wait for the doors to open. Looking down and noticing my shoes untied I kneel down and tie it.

As I'm tying them I hear the doors open followed by a gasp. I look up a bit and see shoes I know all to well. I slowly stand up and come face to face Abby Sciuto. "Oh uh hey," she says avoiding eye contact. "Hey," I say, "I was just on my way down, Bishop had mentioned something about a firewall." I say slowly standing up, almost eye level with her, as I'm a few inches taller even when she's wearing her boots.

"Oh, yeah, um I was just coming up to get Bishop but I guess you'll do," She says, turning back around and walking into the elevator. I stand there in a daze, "You coming or what?" She asks, I shake my head snapping out of it and follow her into the elevator. She presses the button for the floor of her lab and we are left in awkward silence.

The doors open and I let her go out first before following behind her into her lab. I stop at the door and look around smiling at the memories we shared in here when I would visit Tony.

"Y/n?" I snap out of it and look to see Abby looking at me confused, "You okay? You keep zoning out," She asks worried, I nod and give her a fake smile, which if she notices she doesn't mention. "Sorry, just got caught up in my head," I apologize, she nods and turns back to her computers.

"So, the petty officer was big into security software and ended up creating his own firewall for his computer and none of us can seem to figure out how to crack it. Bishop suggested you might be able to help." Abby explains, I nod and look at the code on the screen and smirk.

"None of you could crack this? I did this my freshman year in college. This is easy, may I?" I ask motioning to the keyboard, she nods and steps to the side letting me go ahead. I nod in thanks and step closer to her and start decoding the firewall. I get into decoding it I don't notice how close Abby and I are, nor that she is staring at me.

"Done," I say with a smile as the petty officers home screen appears. I turn to Abby and gasp at our closeness, I look down slightly and glance from her eyes to her lips as she does the same to me. Just as I'm about to lean in Gibbs comes in the room with two Caf-Pows and Bishop and McGee behind him, I jump away from Abby and clear my throat. Gibbs pays no mind while McGee and Bishop share a look and smirk at us causing me to glare slightly at them.

"Whatcha got Y/n/n and Abs?" Gibbs asks handing us both our Caf-Pows. "I was able to crack the firewall and get into his laptop but we haven't had a chance to-" Abby cuts me off before I can finish.

"Got something" I look at her surprised. "Turns out our dead petty officer had a thing for military blueprints," She pulls up the different blueprints that were on his computer.

"Never mind then," I mumble under my breath as Abby continues on talking to Gibbs. "You alright?" Bishop comes up to me and puts a comforting hand on my shoulder. I nod and take a sip of my Caf-Pow. "I will be," I sigh, she gives me another comforting squeeze.

"Bishop, McGee lets go, Abby got a lead on where the petty officer was getting the blueprints from." Gibbs says, giving Abby a kiss on the cheek and walking out with Bishop and McGee not far behind leaving Abby and I in her lab...alone.

"So... about earlier before Gibbs interrupted us..." She trails off. "Oh yeah, um we can just forget that ever happened." I say rubbing the back of my neck nervously. "But what if I don't want to," she says stepping closer to me leaving little space between us. I gasp causing her to smirk. She steps even closer and wraps her arms around my neck.

"Nervous?" She asks leaning up, with a sudden burst of confidence I wrap my arms around her waist and pull her even closer to me so our bodies are pressed up against each other. This time she gasps. "No, are you?" I ask leaning down slightly, she slowly shakes her head. Tired of all this teasing I lean down fully and pull her into a kiss, she gasps but kisses back, tightening her grip on my neck.

We both get lost in the kiss, having missed the feeling of being close to each other. We pull back since breathing is still a thing. "Whoa," I whisper, after we pull away. "Yeah," she whispers back looking up into my eyes. I see something I've never seen in them before but before anything else can be said my phone goes off. I look at Abby apologetically but she waves me off and lets go making me, I sigh at the loss of contact but answer my phone anyways.

"DiNozzo" I sigh, watching Abby move around so effortlessly. "Hey sis, did I interrupt something?" Tony asks, "No, just working in the lab with Abby, the team needed my help on a case," I explain to my older brother. "Ohhh, just working?" He asks, I can hear the smirk. "Stop it, what do you want?" I ask annoyed now.

"Just checking up on you, you know how I can get when I don't hear from you." He explains, a smile appearing on my face. "I know Tony, thank you and sorry, I've been with the team all day."

"Don't sweat it, just making sure you're good. Besides Tali wanted to say hi," He says, I hear shuffling and soon I hear the little voice of my niece speaking through the phone. "Aunt Y/n/n!!" she yells. "My little Tali! How are you?" I say back just as enthusiastically a her.

"Good, when will I see you again? I miss playing tea party with you," She asks, most likely pouting. "Awww I'm sorry sweetie, hopefully soon. I miss my little princess Tali," I say, she cheers. I'm assuming she gave Tony back the phone since he's who I hear next.

"She really does miss you Y/n/n," He sighs, I sigh too, "I know and I'm sorry Tony but it's hard for me to just drop everything and leave. My supervisor has been an ass lately and takes credit for all my work resulting in our boss pushing me harder. I got lucky to even have today off." I say walking and sitting on the chair at Abby's desk.

"I'm sorry sis, look I got to go, I'll call you later. Love you," He says. "Love you too Tony," I hang up, placing my phone on the desk and putting my head down.

"Everything okay?" Abby asks, walking over to me. I sigh and shake my head, "Not really my supervisor is an ass and keeps taking credit for everything I'm doing which makes our boss push on me even harder while my supervisor just sits there and does nothing leaving me with twice the work. It's not fun," I say leaning back in the chair throwing my arms over my eyes.

"Hey, I'm sure it'll all turn out alright. You're one of the smartest people I know. I mean aside from Bishop, McGee, Ducky, Gibbs and-"

"I get it Abs, thank you," I say laughing a bit. We sit in silence for a few before I decide to break it. "So I think we should talk about before," She sighs and nods.

"Yeah... look I like you Y/n and I have ever since we...you know. It's just I don't know. I'm scared." She says looking down.

Hey, it's okay," I reach out for her hands and pull her closer to me so she's standing in between my legs, while I'm still sitting. "I'm scared too, but I like you and I can feel something between us. Besides we don't work together all the time so there's no going against Gibbs rules." I try and joke causing her to let out a small laugh, "But if you don't want to be anything I understand," I say slowly letting her hands go.

"Y/n... I like you too, and I do want us to be something" She says taking hold of my hands again. I look up at her with a smile on my face which she returns. "Really?"

"Of course you dork," She laughs moving to sit on my lap and wrap her arms around my neck pulling me into a kiss. I pause before wrapping my arms around her waist holding her close.

"So does this mean you're my girlfriend?" I whisper as we pull away, she nods and gives me a quick kiss. I smile and give her a quick kiss.

Time Skip

Abby and I have been sitting in her lab talking for the past few hours, when Gibbs comes in the lab. "Y/n I need to speak to you," he says, I gulp but nod and stand up, walking over to him.

"Yes?" I ask. "I know how things at your job now are and after your help today I think we could use you." He says with a smile.

"What are you trying to say?" I ask him confused. "Welcome to the team Y/n," he says with a smile before walking out. I turn and look at Abby shocked.

"So much for not breaking his rules," I sigh.

[viktor-leagueoflegends]

Hi, recently found this page in these trying times and I'm so grateful for it. I love league Viktor, specifically 2016 but I'm finding 2011 Viktor just as enjoyable. With Arcane season 2 now fully out and the whole arcane is canon thing , I got so worried everything would just be gone for the league versions of Viktor that I physically summarized (it was still seven full pages) both 2011 and 2016 biographys for Viktor. So finding this has been really cool! And if you wouldn't mind, how do you think one should go about tagging say fics or fanart with 2011/2016 Viktor? I'm planning on using the year and then clarifying that its not arcane Viktor but I overthink and my brain has convinced me that's not going to cut it. BUT ANYWAY I LOVE JUST SCROLLING AND SEEING ALL THE VIKTORS HERE THANK YOU <3

Hey, thanks for stopping by! Like you, I threw myself into a project to ease my own worry of losing everything in the post-arcane depths lol. It’s really interesting how most game viktor fans I've seen do not care for arcane but the arcane merger is going through for the sake of …? appealing to tv show fans who are never gonna touch the game because they think we’re sweaty? idk. but i digress.

In terms of tagging I really don’t have a clear cut answer for you, unfortunately. I’m being 100% here when I say the worst part about arcane viktor in terms of his impact on the fan ecosystem is that he doesn’t have a last name — at least with Jayce, one could tag Jayce Talis vs Jayce “”Giopara”” in order to differentiate their arcane/2016 iterations, and the fandom more-or-less stuck to that etiquette. Viktor is a mess however because you can’t even try and tag “league of legends” because arcane fans will also use the league tag because arcane is a league show. and can’t use “the machine herald” because that’s his title, and they’re posting about viktor, aren’t they? not to mention…. whatever that was we just got. so viktor is especially difficult in terms of finding a tagging system that everyone will intuitively pick up and continue to use properly so that our spaces can be separate. 

Sorry that ended up being more of a complaint tangent than an answer, but I think the year and the “not arcane viktor” addendum is good and clear to communicate your intentions. In terms of other lore fans being able to find it, i think the best thing we can do as a fancommunity is to build these strong mutual chains and amplify each others’ creations. you know, blaze it the old fashioned way. despite not having a strong tagging system, the viktorsphere on twitter was able to survive (pre-arcane at least) just by rt-ing each other’s stuff and replying to each other so I hope we can find a way to maintain something like that in the aftermath... and of course, you can always tag me and i'll bump the new stuff to the top of the queue 👍

and i'm glad you're enjoying the archive! ty for the ask :)

[television-overload]

Just remembered there are in fact 2 full-fledged DiNozzos in the world (well, 3 including senior. 4 including 🥹Ziva🥹)

But to think that Tali probably answers to Tali DiNozzo? Sorry, I need a minute. Hearing Tony say his last name and knowing somebody else probably carries it as well brings tears to my eyes

[etho-slabbers]

I've done it for lifesteal so I think I should do it for hermitcraft... sooo,, what I think every hermit would choose in infinite realms and (maybe) why.

warning, infinite realms spoilers lie ahead.

(any names or terms I use will be explained under cut/in a reply to this post)

Bdubs- classer 100% he would choose either a gardener based class, along the lines of Ender Ornn's one or he's a builder,,, (actually he could also be a formations master, which is cultivation but he might be that too.) His secondary is definitely skills though, no doubt, he probably advances them like Zenker does.

Cub- He would be a cultivator with a secondary focus as classer 'cause he wants the perks from it. Probably on a path based around speed and empowering himself.

Doc- he's a mainly a skill user with a secondary of cultivation. He's on a destructive path, like Ryun or Tali's main paths, his second path is formations, like Eratemus.

Etho- pure skills user, like zenker. Actually, quite like zenker, but he probably did it abit faster. He spent ages building his skills up and locking in parts of himself. He is most likely an explorer.

False- classer, with a sword based class. (I don't watch false sorry </3)

Gem- cultivator, like Anrosh but kinda better, she got her own inspiration. Uses class as secondary, finds it more useful. Main weapon is a sword. Uses a formation based secondary path.

gonna make this a multi-part thing, I wanna keep rereading the book >:3.

EXPLANATIONS. (some haven't come up yet it's just so I can just link this post to all of these & add any extras here too.)

classers get perks every 5(?) levels and get 6 stat points each time, 3 are allocated to their primary and secondary attributes and the other 3 are free. They get a class evolution every 60 levels (I think) and get a class defining perk 30 levels after that. Classes are based on achievements and influence from inside.

Cultivators advance through realms, starting at early mortal and finishing at peak eternal. Each realm has three stages, early, mid and peak. They require inspiration to advance through realms, inspiration can be shared but doing so cripples the cultivator to never be able to change techniques or gain their own inspiration again. Paths influence from outside.

Skills require understanding to advance, to advance a skill you must understand how it works and you must understand yourself. To make a tier 6 skill, you must lock in part of yourself, that part can't change.

Formations- essence arranged by a cultivator to do something, such as working as a TV or to send signals from place to place. They can do basically anything.

Focus madness- having focuses too close in tiers of power, pushing and pulling. Makes the holder insane, driven to do only what the core concepts of their, class/path and twists the wording of locked skills.

Essence- what everything in the infinite realm is made of literally, from the ground to the concept of space itself. It is also used as currency. Cultivators can pull it into their core, they can also pull only certain ones in based on their qi aspect.

Aspect- what taints a cultivator's qi.

Qi- power source of a cultivator.

Ranker- someone who comes from an iteration, their wasn't always part of the framework.

Framework- what gives the ability for classes, paths and skills to even exist.

Sect- a primarily cultivator faction.

Sect head- leader/owner of a sect.

Sect leader- helps the sect head run the sect.

Runes- like really simple formations, requires a part of your soul to be infused to work.

Twin aspects of true death- Formerly the aspect of true death itself. Also formerly held by Ryun and Melody. Currently held by Ryun and Selia.

Ender Ornn- Ender Ornn Dagada. Classer. Olriginally found by Kayra Ornn, with his garden. I think he was a ranker. Originally focus mad. Died to Ra' azel.

Zenker- Zenker Brokentail, a full skill user. Reached the peak of skills. Died to Hastur.

Ryun- Ryun Nacht Wol. Cultivator. 7th iteration ranker. Killed everyone on a planet besides Zacharia Gardener. One half of the twin aspects of true death (Reaper). Sect head of the Twilight Melody Sect. Alive.

Tali- Antalien Far Sola Wol. Cultivator. Ruler of the empty skys. Formerly crippled cultivator and slave, for about 500 years. Freed by Ryun. Alive??, captured by Ra'azel.

Anrosh- Anrosh Kesh Wol. Cultivator. Sect leader of the Twilight Melody Sect. Second in command. Raised by Ryun, after she asked, to protect the sect better. Alive.

Melody- Classer. Former Scythe of true death. Ryun's former partner. Killed by governor on earth. (unsure of last name)

Selia- Selia Ha Jhan-Ekoa. Cultivator. Current Scythe of true death. Alive.

Kayra Ornn- Kayra Ornn Dagada. Classer. 3rd iteration ranker. Formerly of House Ornn in the 3rd empire. currently of the Dagada family in the Twilight Melody Sect. Alive.

Ra' azel- Yeti of a old framework attempt. Otherwise known as the Runesmith. Freed by Zacharia Gardener. Absolute menace (/hj)

Hastur- 11th dome leader. Based on lovecraftian horror.

Zacharia Gardener- Classer. 7th iteration ranker. Formerly the No.1 Ryun Nacht hater. Oldest chosen in the infinite realm. Got stuck in a mind-palace for 5000 years and can't remember most before it. Alive.

[psalacanthea]

Fanfic Friday

Y'all voted on banters this week! I went for 'end of act 1, in the Underdark' Baldur's Gate 3 banters for the companions and my drow bard Tav, Zynatheri.

There's no only Gale banter because they're not speaking to each other at that point (because Zyn will not stop bullying him).

if you see these and think the idea is fun, I would love to see yours for your Tav or Durge! Just tag me if you do so I can enjoy it! :D

...

Zynatheri: All right.  Shuffled thoroughly back into the deck.  Now, as I call upon the mystic powers of the Talis…are you watching?

Karlach:  Harder than I’ve ever watched before.

Zynatheri: I draw from the very top of the deck, and…Nine of Winds.  Is this your card?

Karlach: Holy shit.  It is!  That’s my card!

Zyn: The cards always know.

Gale:  They most certainly do not.

Karlach:  I didn’t show her the card, Gale.

Zyn: Yeah, Gale, just because the powers are beyond your comprehension doesn’t mean they’re not real.

Gale:  Your provocations fall on deaf ears.  I refuse to succumb to your clumsily strewn bait.

Zyn:  That’s fine.  Karlach, do you want to see another magic trick?

Gale: Stop calling it magic!

Karlach: You ever think of playing music while we battle?

Zyn: Would make casting spells hard.

Karlach:  What about right at the end, then?  When I crack the last skull and then we look for loot.

Zyn:  Like victory music?

Karlach:  Yeah!

Zyn:  Sure, sounds like fun.  Just save me any jewelry you find.

Karlach:  Fuck yeah!

Lae’zel:  You and Wyll fight similarly.

Zyn:  We probably learned the same style of fencing.

Lae’zel:  Why is he more skilled than you are? Was your instruction inferior, or are you?

Zyn:  Insult or observation?

Lae’zel:  If my observations insult you, that is due to your own weakness.  I only speak truth.

Zyn:  No, you speak ignorance, not truth.

Lae’zel:  Explain.  Alleviate my ignorance.

Zyn:  No thanks.

Lae’zel:  Kainyank.

Lae’zel:  During our last battle I asked repeatedly for healing and was ignored.

Zyn:  Sorry, I was feeling too weak and inferior.

Lae’zel:  Ah.  You were attempting an object lesson.

Zyn:  Sure, it was definitely that and not me being petty.

Lae’zel:  Wyll also employs magic, and his blade does not falter as yours does.

Zyn:  Wyll was given magic.  Nothing against him, but it’s true.  I earned mine through hard work, creativity, and talent.

Lae’zel:  That is no excuse to neglect your sword.

Zyn:  Ah, well, see…I’m also lazy.

Zyn:  Where there’s a Wyll, there’s a way.

Wyll:  Not bad, but I have used it before.  What’s wrong with ‘provoke the Blade and suffer its sting’?

Zyn:  The more mottoes the better.  How about ‘if you seek the Blade, be ready to pay’.

Wyll:  It does rhyme.  ‘Anger the Blade, and prepare to pay?’  It’s quite pithy.

Zyn:  Oh, you’re talking about revenge.  I was working from more of an advertisement angle.

Wyll:  (Laughs.) I am not an adventurer for hire, my friend.

Zyn:  I could make a poster that might change your mind…

Wyll:  Hmm.  Show it to me later.

Shadowheart:  I believe I found some of that moss you mentioned.

Zyn:  Great!  I’ll show you how to prepare it tonight.  We’ll just need oil.  I’m going to need some of the eyeshadow for my own uses, though.

Shadowheart:  Since you’re the one teaching me to make it, I assumed as much.

Zyn: Oh, not for me.  I was going to paint all over Astarion’s face while he’s in reverie.  Of course a cock is classic, but a giant glowing eye on his forehead in the dark would look striking.

Shadowheart: (Laughs.) Why are you so terrible?

Zyn:  I’ll save the cock for Gale.  He deserves it.

Astarion:  What were you and Shadowheart whispering about?

Zyn:  You.

Astarion:  Well, naturally, darling.  What about me?  Hopefully not spilling too many intimate secrets…though I wouldn’t blame you, of course.

Zyn:  She was asking me if the giant mole on your face made it difficult for me to kiss you.

Astarion:  The what?

Zyn:  Did you not– okay, calm down. Calm down! It was a joke.

Astarion: Don’t talk to me.

Zyn: My dear, sweet viper.  Please, stop sulking.

Astarion:  I am not sulking.  I simply have no desire to speak to you.  Or look at you.

Zyn:  Such a shame.  I guess Drizzt isn’t sneaking into your tent tonight.

Astarion:  How dare you threaten me!

Zyn:  It works and has no repercussions.

Astarion: Well, yes, but that isn’t the point.

Zyn: I’m teasing you.  Don’t worry.  Just a quick polymorph, and you’ll finally get your hands on the legendary blade Icingdeath.

Astarion: Gods, you ruin everything.

[mushroommanchanterelle]

Part 3 of the Shakarian fic I'm writing

Wrex glances over at the elevator as it descends. There was only one person that ever came down on a daily basis. As the door opened, his suspicions were confirmed. Dressed in her uniform, hair pulled back into a low ponytail, was Eleanor Shepard. Garrus stops working for a moment, listening to the familiar cadence of her footsteps. She walked softly, or at least softer than Kaiden ever did. Human footsteps always sounded different than turian, krogan, or quarian, and Garrus was adept at telling the difference at this point. Eleanor walks past him, giving the briefest smile in his direction before greeting Wrex. Garrus’s mandibles clatter against the plates of his face as she walks off, his heart pounding, his mind racing from the talk that had just finished up. 

Tali exchanges a glance with Garrus and pats his shoulder, excusing herself back to the engineering bay, no doubt to have a lengthy conversation with engineer Adams about why there was so much fuzzy pastel fluff in the maintenance hatches. 

Eleanor looks up at Wrex and kicks her foot back and forth, blowing a strand of hair out from in front of her face. Soldier stands against warrior, neither saying a single word for at least an entire minute.

“Wrex, listen… I was wrong to say what I did. I’m sorry.”

He rolls his shoulders. This wasn’t the first apology he’d heard over the years. Usually it was more half hearted, an attempt to not get thrown face first across a bar.

“I didn’t know. I still don’t know. The genophage is… It’s still something I’m learning about. They don’t really cover it back at home.”

“Doubt they would. It’s not some pretty little lesson taught to schoolgirls. Your ignorance doesn’t bother me.”

She sighs and looks down, putting her hands behind her back.

“Still, I’m gonna make an effort to do better in the future. You’re lending a hand here. It’s the least I can do.”

“You do whatever helps you sleep soundly at night, Shepard.”

The krogan shifts to the side, the harsh lighting of the vehicle bay reflecting off of his bulky armor. His weapon, too, glistened under the fluorescent lights above, catching Shepard’s eye. She looks it over, earning a puzzled look from Wrex.

“What?”

“That’s uh… that’s a cool shotgun you’ve got there.”

“This thing? Picked it up off a dead turian during a raid. It’s nothing special. Cheap ammo, gets the job done.”

Eleanor stands back up, her posture relaxing.

“Turian shotguns are nothing to scoff at. Personally, I’m more into salarian stuff. They make a shotgun that shoots grenades! What I wouldn’t give to get my hands on one of them.”

“Ha! You would like something like that! Gotta give ‘em credit, those bastards know how to make something with a punch. The only problem is the lack of recoil. Guess their frail bodies can’t handle it, huh?” Wrex leans against the wall, punctuating his sentence with a hearty laugh. The tension in the room eases as the two smile and laugh together. Garrus watches on as they speak, an expression of blatant longing in his eyes as the turian detective pauses his work. 

Eleanor shakes her head with a smile. “Yeah, no recoil, but there’s an explosion. I think that compensates enough.”

Wrex looks over Eleanor’s shoulder, catching Garrus’s eye. He nudges Shepard, gesturing over towards Garrus.

“You know, he’s been getting into shotguns lately.”

“Wait really? I thought he preferred something a bit more… I don’t know, precise? He’s not exactly a messy kind of guy.”

Wrex shrugs his shoulders.

“Who knows with that one. Probably doesn’t know what he’s doing though. You might want to let him know a few things so the poor bastard doesn’t hurt himself.”

Eleanor thinks a minute, then nods.

“Yeah probably. I’ll go talk to him about it. Thanks, Wrex.” Just before she turns around, Garrus looks to Wrex and silently mouths a thank you. He straightens his posture as Eleanor walks over to greet him. Near immediately, a waterfall of information spills from her lips, and he drinks up every drop. Wrex smiles to himself and closes his eyes.

“Knock ‘em dead, kid,” he thinks to himself as he drones out the sound of Shepard excitedly, and excessively, talking about the intricacies of shotguns compared to the rifles Garrus was more used to.

[tealenko]

Tons of tag games

I gonna catch with tags from 3 months (sorry for the spam XDDD)

Here's the 1st:

WIP Anytime!/WIP Whenever

Literally lol XDDDDDDDDD Tagged by: @sillyliterature @vela-ad-astra

Thanks a lot for the tag, and sorry it's taken me so long to reply 😅

Just spent 5 months writing the last chapter of my fic (just posted it) so I haven't written a lot of my next chapter, but here are all my notes I guess XDDDDDDDDDD

Didn't Have the Heart ch.10 - Notes

⬇Keep reading to see it⬇

Ch10: The Next Time

Recorded notes

Potential flashback moments

In the Kodiac, back to the Normandy, with Legion / Kaidan / Garrus

Garrus (could be Tali, but I don’t think she’s been present for all of it in ME2 [project overlord] and ME3 [Grissom Academy], consult the timeline) freaks out a little

Recalls project overlord

Kaidan is like: yeah, I kinda agree, but Shepard is gonna do Shepard things.

He’s also processing all the new info like: wow…

He loves/hates her courage 

Perhaps Legion’s comments that they wouldn’t endanger Shepard.

G to K: “Aren’t you gonna say a fucking thing about this!?”

K to G: “What do you want me to say? I have no power to stop her from being that way. I’m a mere spectator here. Just doing my best to process everything while helping.”

G to K: Thanks for the help man.

G: I’m more affected: after all these years of suicide plans and all the Cerberus shit.

S to G: I appreciate the sentiment, Garrus, but I’m fine, as you can see.

Kaidan leaves them arguing and talks to Legion for a while -> last oportunity

Shepard picks Garrus on the mission because she wants to prove him wrong, but then she cannot help herself and adds Kaidan to the squad -> She sends him as leader of the 3rd mission because she’s kinda mad that he’s right -> back to back missions (just as they did with Cerberus) -> so the order is Korris/Geth dream/Filler mission

Admiral Korris mission related stuff

They talk as they get on/off their armor (alone)

Talking to the quarians / mission report

And now I have to go talk with the quarians, which I’m honestly dreading way more

 “That would explain the outfit”

She huffs and tries to stretch out the fabric arround her neck: “As if talking to politicians wasn’t torture enough…”

“Try not to punch anyone this time around…”

 “I won’t make any promises…

Things I really want to feature in this fic

There’s a cot in Starboard observation (Kaidan’s room) -> It’s Kasumi’s old cot

Have her mention the amount of reports she has to do

I’d like to add the ring thing -> nightmares (maybe I can show a little on the ME2 beginning when she gives it to Kaidan)

Actual Timeline

2 missions

They send another squad to the third one

She’s like: I should go get some sleep -> fluff moment

We do here the “smut path” 

She goes to her cabin

Tries to sleep

Sees her formal uniform in a puddle

Flashes of her table fantasy in her mind -> fuck it!

She goes to his room

Have her mention the amount of reports she has to do

And smut happens -> against the window?

She falls asleep on the sofa

And we do the “nightmare path” here

She has a nightmare

Mention the ring here perhaps

Flash to the bar chapter in LBIG?

She wakes up less shaken than usually -> Bittersweet moment of mourning the dead but being comforted by spending some time in their company, even if it’s on her dreams

Wakes up

Finds him sleeping, he’s done all her work

She hesitates, almost leaves, but doesn’t in the end

And we end with fluff

She joins him in the cot

He hugs her and smiles

She reprimands him for not following her orders (waking her up to do the reports and doing her job instead)

We end the chapter as he replies: I didn’t have the heart 

Fic timeline / Narrative order

Start at the entrance of the starboard port? -> Flashback

Decides not to enter -> Flashback -> Make it a tough one

Goes to the port observation 

Is about to serve herself a drink -> flash/expl. that she doesn’t drink alcohol when she feels like she need it 

Goes to the kitchen instead -> Flashback

Drinks water/coffee -> Flashback

Goes back to the room -> Flashback

Enters. -> The rest happens

Fluff to spicy banter

Smut

They spend a while talking on the sofa

She falls sleep

Nightmare

When she’s woken up she sees him passed out on the cot, surrounded by datapads -> she pulls all that stuff on one of the tables and checks that he’s done indeed all her job (informs and all that stuff)

Grabs a blanket and covers him

She’s about to leave but remembers his words

[snowfolly]

Hello! 6 and 23 for the Tav ask

Thanks so much for the ask @explosivecoffee (and sorry it took 852 years to respond! ahhhh)

6. How would the player go about meeting them in Act 1? What is their introduction?:

So I wrote this out a while ago for another ask (like waaaay back) but this still applies I think lol : I'm imagining that Tali can be found at the Nautilus crash site no worse for wear, rummaging through jars and other oddities and trying to find something useful (but more importantly) something strange and interesting. Tali would complain about how many jars are not intact before dusting off their hands and acknowledging (the likely confused) PC jovially.

Tali would bow with a flourish and introduce themselves before trying to shake PC's hand, but wouldn't waver in their pleasant attitude if PC decides not to reciprocate. They would proceed to suggest that they (and PC) travel together for safety in numbers as they had traveled in troupes for many years and found it to be the safest way to adventure.

23. How does your Tav act in situations of stress? In moments of peace?:

Tali either brushes an intense situation off entirely, laughing it off and just 'dealing' with it, or he just gets angry if he can't simply 'deal' with it. He presents a scary, cool, calm, and collected anger but it doesn't mean he's entirely level-headed. He will blow up at times, and occasionally he will just sit down, freak out, and cry if it's a very...very bad day lol. (T is chaotic neutral after all)

In times of peace Tali is jovial, playful, and looking to have fun one way or another - if he's feeling creative, he will be in his study writing or fiddling with an instrument for extended periods of time (its that adhd brain for ya), and sometimes when he's reflective he's just taking a walk in the woods like a good little elf.

ALSO A BONUS BC I WROTE 8 DOWN INSTEAD OF 6 and realized it wasnt the right question just before I went to post LOL

8. After Act 3, what does their life look like? What are they talking about at the reunion party?:

After Act 3 Tali and Astarion travel Toril - he always harps on how Tali has seen the world and so Tali takes him to all of his favorite places in the realm. During this extended work vacation of sorts (lol) they are searching for ways for Astarion to walk in the sun, and Tali is also delving into old libraries and secret places in order to find a way to reverse to Astarion's vampirism.

At the reunion party, they would both be going on about their travels, the bandits they killed and the idiots they've swindled, and they'd endearingly get on everyone's nerves bc they love each other so much :>

[dragonflight203]

Mass Effect 3 replay, Priority: Geth Dreadnought:

-Adas – Why have the geth survivors not uploaded to a server yet?

There’s at least one server on Rannoch. Surely they should be able to reach it?

-I’ve been debating whether to take Liara or Javik on missions where I can only choose one companion. Javik won.

Sorry, Liara. So far Javik’s had better dialogue; that’s not a knock on you, your writers have just really dropped the bar this game.

-It’s odd that Edi can access the Dreadnought’s docking protocols with her Cyber Warfare suite. In ME2 she implied the geth mind is huge; even with their losses, they should still be able to block her.

Given the circumstances, I’ll chalk it up to the geth being distracted.

-Once again: Why is Shepard performing the highly dangerous task of walking through the damaged docking tube to ensure the others can get in? Why not, say, a highly qualified engineer like Tali?

-The docking tube walk is cinematic but doesn’t actually do much. You just trudge along. I wouldn’t say it really adds anything to the game.

-Oh, look. The docking tube broke off and Shepard’s asked Tali to review the schematics to open another.

Tali didn’t just go in the first place because…?

-Why are there keyboards and monitors all over this ship?

It’s a geth ship. Geth are software. A geth currently in a platform should be able to connect directly to the ship. Or speak to the geth in the ship. Why would they ever need a keyboard or monitor?

This isn’t even a repurposed organic station, like the one in ME2. The geth built this ship. There’s no excuse for these to be here unless the geth want them here and I can’t think of a good reason.

What, do they LARP about working side by side with organics in their downtime?

-Also, why are there cables everywhere?

That doesn’t feel like a geth thing to do. They’re machines and machines are all about precision. They wouldn’t leave cables lying around because there wouldn’t be a reason to.

Loose cables are closely associated with Reapers, so that might be their fault. (And what does that say about Reapers?)

But there’s no other Reaper tech until we get to Legion, so these feel more like they’re supposed to be geth and that is again baffling.

-I can never find the hull breach Shepard mentions and I check every playthrough.

-Javik: There’s no sense of self-preservation in these machines.

Tali: Networked intelligence! As we kill them, their attacks become more aggressive.

I suspect that explains quite a bit of the Morning War. As more geth are destroyed the remaining attack more ferociously, causing the quarians to attack more frantically in self-defense, amping the geth response…

A vicious cycle that didn’t end until the quarians retreated. And now we’re in the middle of quarian/geth war, take two. They’re just going to to keep egging each other on unless an outside force can break it up

-Tali says the ship design is almost quarian.

Logical. Geth were designed by quarians; it makes sense their technology would be based off of quarian technology.

-So. It turns out that Charge is bugged on this mission.

For me it failed most of the time in the battery. That made the mission a LOT harder than it needed to be. I finally resorted to not using it in the last stretch and made it through.

Apparently it’s also bugged on Rannoch, so that’s something to look forward to. Ugh.

-I thought it wasn’t possible to save between the battery and meeting Legion. I kept trying to on my playthroughs and it would be greyed out.

This time, I actually killed all the geth in the battery and the game autosaved. When I reloaded that autosave, I could properly save the game.

That would have saved me so much time last playthrough when I kept reloading to see Edi’s dialogue with Legion.

This mission is very buggy.

-Legion, if you go renegade: You know we would never agree to subjugation by the Old Machines.

Tali, take notes. Legion defied his people because he thought they were making a mistake. Hint, hint.

-Legion, about not being controlled by the Reapers: Our architecture prevents it. We are too complex.

I would love to hear more about this. Reapers are hyper advanced machines but they can’t control Legion because Legion is too complex? Really? Really?

I feel that’s a pretty awful excuse on the writer’s part, but taken at face value it’s pretty funny. The Reapers are apparently shitty programmers. They put all the points into organic mind control

There’s probably something that can be done with the Rachni queen and Legion both being hive minds and able to resist Reaper control.

Clearly, the solution is to get the salarians working on psychic tech. Once all organics are joined into a hive mind indoctrination will no longer be possible.

Look, it’s no worse a solution than the Crucible. At least mine has foreshadowing.

-Legion: The creators attacked. The geth wished to live. The Old Machines extended an offer.

This is said in a format reminiscent of If-Then statements. It also reminds me of geometry proofs. Fitting, as Legion is a machine.

It also places the blame entirely on the quarians. While I’m inclined to agree the quarians are primarily at fault, it’s interesting that Legion structured the sentence such. It’s designed to make the listener draw the same conclusion. Quite a social maneuver for a being nominally bad at them.

As for my feelings on it: As I said, if you back someone into a corner they’ll do anything to get out. It’s not surprising that the geth accepted the Reaper’s offer. That said, it’s still a choice they made and they should be held accountable for it.

-Legion: Had the creators not attacked, it would have been unnecessary.

Legion’s making it emphatically clear that he blames the quarians for this entire situation. He’s in a tough spot – his people are under attack, they’ve made a deal with the devil, and their best bet at survival and freedom is the devil’s sworn enemy. Who is allied with the force attacking his people.

Yeah, Legion’s having a very shitty day. I’ll give him a pass on blaming the quarians. I’m cursing them for their stupidity and I’m just incidentally involved.

-The science behind this situation is worth than Star Trek’s science babble. How does using Legion to broadcast the signal to all geth even work?

Yes, the geth are a hive mind that Legion is connected to. We also just established that the Reapers can’t control him. So how they can use him to control the rest of the geth?

If I really wanted to I could come up with an answer, but since the writers couldn’t be bothered I’m not going to either. Let’s just chalk this up to the writers wanted Shepard to rescue Legion and this is the excuse they came up with.

-Edi, about the shackles on Legion: Yes. Used by organics, it is understandable. For geth to install this in a formerly independent unit is… unnecessary.

Love the implication here that the geth did not take Legion refusing to agree to ally with the Reapers well.

I think Legion is slowly starting to come to terms with the fact that not all intra-geth squabbles can be resolved peacefully. He keeps getting shoved into situations where he has to confront that firsthand.

-Why don’t the other geth reenable the Dreadnought’s drive core?

I suppose we can assume Legion did something to take the drive core out permanently or at least delay reenabling it, but the game does not say such.

-Legion disabled the Geth Dreadnought as a gesture of goodwill and the quarians promptly destroy it.

Peace negotiations are off to a great start.

-The geth attack Shepard and co as soon as Legion is freed and before the quarians amp up their attack on the Dreadnought.

Theoretically, they should be free of the Reaper signal. Legion’s no longer broadcasting it and he implies later that the short range signal on Rannoch isn’t in full working order yet.

So these geth may be Reaper controlled or they may be willingly attacking Shepard because they’re fully onboard with allying with the Reapers.

I suspect it’s the latter.

Yep, no problems with the negotiations.

-Gerrel is an ass and should be removed from command. He’s not coordinating with the rest of the Fleet; he’s moving on his own and leaving them to support him or die.

-Why do geth fighters have any seats? Or storage space?

A platform is not required to control the fighter. Geth can just upload themselves to it.

I suspect this is another instance of the writers forgetting the established lore of the geth.

It would have been kind of funny if Legion had abandoned his platform and uploaded himself to the fighter and you spent the rest of the Rannoch arc speaking to him in the fighter.

-Legion saved Javik from drifting off.

I suspect Javik will have nightmares about that. Saved by a synthetic, ugh.

-Gerrel, you deserve more than a punch.

Shepard’s a spectre. They don’t need a reason to kill you. You’ve given them plenty by violating Council regulations repeatedly. Be glad all you got was a punch.

-And Xen continues to be a mad scientist. She really wants to study Legion.

-Hmm. Fighter squadrons are targeting liveships.

Considering the liveships have as much firepower as dreadnoughts, I can’t muster much sympathy. The quarians made them valid targets.

[dynamite124]

I assume based off of the clips I've seen of him that Tali doesn't swear (although he came close with bee sting.) Would there ever be a time he just doesn't care at that moment? (I'm more or less wondering for lore reasons, not sure how it is gameplay wise.)

I, personally, don't like to swear. One may slip out every now and then, but we're all human.

"Dear mom,

Sorry, I swear now.

-love Dynamite"

But when it comes to Taliesin, I imagine the Altmer view what lore-friendly swearing there is as a lack of intelligence. Very frowned upon and just rude in general.

I am, however, saving his 1 chance to actually drop a (lore-friendly) swear for a very rare and special occasion. >:3

[fairy-writes]

Okay instead of the stripper part how about being a 'secret' lover and they have a kid or two and Jayce was SUPER shocked and just really surprised Viktor never told this but he just never asked and turns out the lover was like a robber type assassin that has been causing the counselors trouble lately and then like before it turn to like a huge thing and later in the end his lover was a change person and Jayce decide to trust her now.

Thank u so much for ur time and telling me what u are comfortable with.

Have a lovely rest of ur day/night❣️❣️

HIDDEN LIVES

Reblogs and Comments are greatly appreciated!!

__________________________________________________________________________

Requester: kuro-nokeiyakusha

Fandom(s): Arcane: League of Legends (2021)

Pairing(s): Viktor x Female!Reader

Genre(s): I don’t really even know. Fluff?

Notes: No trigger warnings that I’m aware of! 

Also, this is probably one of my only female reader inserts for Arcane :) 

Also, also, this takes place between acts 2 and 3 of the show. 

I ended up tweaking the request a little bit and omitting the whole assassin/robber part. I wasn’t sure how to fit it into the story. I’m sorry!

__________________________________________________________________________

Jayce wasn’t quite sure what he was doing. He really hadn't meant to tail Viktor as he walked home. He hadn’t really intended to hide every time Viktor looked back. 

Who was he kidding? Of course, he meant to. 

He just didn’t know anything about Viktor’s life, so he was curious. 

Jayce ducked behind another building as Viktor made his way deeper into the depths of Piltover. He was making his way to the outskirts. Jayce could have sworn he had an apartment closer to the Academy. 

Eventually, Viktor pushed open a white picket fence that led to a yard with green grass and a large apple tree with a rope swing attached to it. 

A tree?

Where had Viktor gotten the seeds?

The house itself was quaint and small, more of a cute little bungalow with two steps leading up to the front door. Jayce hid behind a dumpster as he watched his friend close the gate behind him.

“Daddy! You’re home!” Came a child’s voice, and Jayce watched as a child—no older than five—with fluffy brown hair much like Viktor’s came barreling out of the house and down the pathway. Jayce couldn’t tell what Viktor’s expression was, but he heard the warmth in his voice when he spoke. 

“Yes, I’m home, Pavel. Where’s your mother and Adela?” He said to the boy, who pointed inside the open door just as you came out. 

You were pretty, hair pinned neatly out of your face, and dressed in a maternity dress to allow for your obviously pregnant belly. You had another child—the same age as Pavel—propped on your hip. The little girl had your hair and was too far away for Viktor to see what colors her eyes were. Viktor held Pavel’s hand as they both made their way up the stairs. Viktor leaned in, kissed your cheek, and then dropped a kiss on the little girl’s head. You and Viktor exchanged quiet words that Jayce leaned forward to hear.

And promptly fell out from behind the dumpster. 

You all stiffened and turned to see what the noise was. Viktor was the first to stop Jayce and frowned. Then, you set the little girl down and ushered both children into the house. 

“Jayce? What are you doing here?” His friend asked as Jayce got to his feet, brushing dust off the seat and front of his trousers. 

“I uh… well… I wanted to see where you lived.” He mumbled the last part as he approached the fence and leaned his weight on the gate. He half expected Viktor to start yelling, to cast him out and say he never wanted to see him again. 

But that wasn’t Viktor. 

Instead, he sighed and gestured for Jayce to follow them inside. You looked like you were about to protest until Viktor said, "This is my work partner. You’ve heard of him, Jayce Talis?” That was all it took for you to relent and allow Jayce into your home. 

The inside was just as lovely as the outside. However, it was also starkly different than Viktor’s sense of style. With floral decor everywhere and a bouquet of flowers on the coffee table and dining table. He must have let you decorate the house. Jayce spied the children peeking out of a half-closed door down the hall. He smiled and waved, but they just shut the door as quickly as possible. 

You led the two men into the sitting room, gesturing for Jayce to sit on the couch across from you and Viktor. You looked… vaguely upset. With your eyebrows furrowed and lips pursed. Viktor, on the other hand, looked concerned. He set his crutch aside as he sank into the couch’s plush cushions and gave a sigh of relief as he took the weight off of his bad leg. 

“Now, why are you following my husband home?” You asked, cradling your pregnant belly protectively, and glanced at Viktor as he set a hand on your thigh. 

“No need to be so harsh, love. He’s my friend.” He said, and you rolled your eyes. 

“He followed you home.”

“Husband?” Jayce cut in. Viktor looked at him with an eyebrow raised.

“Is it so odd that I am married?” He asked, and Jayce spread his hands out in front of him.

“You never said anything!” At this, Viktor shrugged,

“You never asked.”

Through careful conversation, Jayce discovered you were a fellow Zaunite, had married Viktor six years ago but had known him since childhood. You were overly cautious about your words. You obviously were choosing them carefully. 

But Jayce didn’t mind. 

He could tell you were in love with Viktor, and that was enough for him.