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aplainmeresimp · 2 months ago

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In the Blue Hours of the Morning: Chapter 1 - Compete Against the Stars

Summary: You're in your final semester at Piltover’s University, and in your endeavors to revise one of your final papers, you meet Professor Heimerdinger's assistant. He’s quick. Intelligent. And surprisingly charismatic. A last minute friendship forms as you ask for his help to have the best chance to graduate on time and become a scientist yourself. Things are looking up for your studies��Until your stress mixes with some unpredictable feelings.

Story tags/warnings: pre-season 1, no use of y/n or real world language, strangers to friends to lovers, fluffy, acts of service as viktors love language, academic weapon reader, viktor pov chapters, sky pov chapter, eventual nsfw. unrequited love towards sky :( random oc created for the sole purpose of being a side character. not a song fic, chapters names are just inspired by song lyrics. the only thing viktors insecure about is him being an assistant, he knows he’s fine.

Word Count (Chapter 1): 2.3k

Chapter 1 of 21

Read on AO3

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Four years. Four years of university were almost over. And yet there wasn’t time or room to slack off, especially not now. You needed to turn in final projects, write essays, and take your final exam. Not take it… Ace it. Demolish it.

Every day was almost always the same. You woke up, dressed yourself, and adjusted your vest with its two pairs of diamonds, and headed to class. No matter how tired you were, you had one goal in mind: success.

And damn, you were getting there.

You were among the top three students in your class, always shifting between number one, two, and three. It hadn’t been easy, especially in science and engineering. One doesn’t make it that far without a system. You had a list of rules for yourself:

Do the homework the day it’s assigned.

Study the homework.

Read ahead.

Borrow books to read more about every subject.

Attend every class. No absences even if you were sick.

No distractions. No parties, no leisure time if an assignment is due. Work first. Always.

Annotate everything that the professors say. Even the small comments.

Study at least three days before a test.

And the most important one:

Don’t let anyone see you fail. Not once.

Perfection was key. Inside and outside of the classroom alike.

Except… it was draining; you couldn’t deny that. This wasn’t in your nature. Maybe it wasn’t in anyone’s nature to try so much. You cherished the moments when you rested in the middle of the gardens in spring, with the birds softly chirping and the grass rustling in the wind. Nothing was better than being right in the middle of the semester, with nothing to do and nothing to turn in. You’d go out to lunch with some friends, maybe read a book or something. Whatever it was, the choice was yours.

That bliss would come again, and soon. Just as soon as you pushed through for one final time to earn your third pair of diamonds.

You could not fail. Not when your parents worked their tails off to leave the undercity and raise you in Piltover. Even when they were still alive and well, they always told you to be the best for yourself. They screwed that into your head ever since you were little. More so when they both got sick from the fumes they had inhaled their whole life. It was the fate of a large chunk of people living in the underbelly of Piltover. Especially people like you who were born in the lower parts of the entresol level. Your parents managed to scrape together enough to rent a small shack on the outskirts of town near the cold and uninviting harbor. Having daily access to sea air over toxic fumes gave you much better odds.

Seeing them cough up blood, lose mobility, and losing them to illness gave you the final push to be self-sufficient. You got into Piltover’s University yourself. You filled out the dormitory paperwork so you wouldn’t sleep on the streets like they once had to. You applied for weekend jobs to feed and clothe yourself during university.

You did that. You, your perseverance, and nobody else.

And gods be damned if anyone thought you would slack off a month before the final exam.

The long corridors went on and on as you swept through them, trying to keep your papers in your notebook.

Fuck, fuck, fuck. I hope he’s in his lab right now. You thought.

You needed Professor Heimerdinger to look over your paper for one of your classes. Normally, you wouldn’t have asked for his help, knowing he had much more important matters at hand. But he had offered help to anyone in one of his classes you took. So, you had to take his word for it. You didn’t have the time to guess if you had done the homework right.

It was due in two days. If there was something wrong, you needed to know. Stat. These kinds of equations were so unforgiving when you put a decimal one space more than it needed to be. With sleep deprivation, any mistake was possible.

Once you made it to his lab, you straightened your vest, sleeves, and organized your pages. Then, with three swift knocks, you made your presence known. The professor's voice echoed through the lab and grew closer with little tip-taps of his feet. The door opened inward, and you looked down.

There he was, short as always and his fur covered in dust. “My! If it isn’t one of my best pupils! Come, come. Come in!” He stepped aside to let you in with a smile. Sheepishly, you skulked in, having never entered his lab. You followed him toward the back of the room to resume what he was doing. It looked like he was organizing and cleaning up the lab. Papers lay scattered, and screws were sprinkled all over the place.

It was amazing.

Its walls stood tall with elevated bookshelves filled to the brim with books. At the far left were three large windows that would let the incoming sunset in. So many gadgets and contraptions were everywhere, big and small. Some finished, some open and in the middle of repairs. And by Janna, the sketches. Endless notes and sketches of invention ideas pasted on walls.

“Apologies for the mess! You know how it is with the end of the semester. Cleaning out old ideas in favor of new ones!” You could have looked at it all day until the professor brought you back to the moment, “what can I help you with today?”

“Oh, well. In the last class of this semester, you said if we ever needed help with anything, we could come to you for help, right?” You pulled the papers out of your notebook. “And I need it. I really do—"

The soft hum of the lab door stopped your words and another student waltzed inside in a hurry.

“Professor Heimerdinger! I’m here about the funds for the library improvements. The student body wants to hand over the list of expenses to you and the council so we can get approval.”

“Oh yes! How exciting! Come! Come in!” Professor Heimerdinger skipped past you and took the stack of papers from the student. He skimmed through them and looked back at you. “I’ll be with you in a second.”

“It’s fine," you said, putting your hand up. "I can wait."

“Thank you, I was waiting for this visit– Actually, let me call my assistant." He looked up from the papers and called out. “Viktor! Could you assist me here for a minute?” He smiled at you from below. Professor Heimerdinger was your favorite by far; he was always so kind. His short stature likely contributed to the friendliness he gave off.

Wait. Is someone else in the lab?

Soft metal clinks came from the hidden part of the professor’s lab along with some footsteps. Your ears searched for the sound’s origin, but your eyes beat you to it. They landed on a tall, slender stranger with nicely combed brown hair along his angular face. The stranger seemed pretentious and intimidating with his golden cane wrapped in fine maroon leather.

Until he spoke.

“Good afternoon,” he said with a softness as he passed his cane to his other hand to greet you. Your mind looked through its catalog of faces. Had you seen him before? It wasn’t a face you could recall on the spot. Maybe you’d know if you hadn’t sequestered yourself in your studies for the past four years.

“Have you met?” The professor asked.

“I don’t think so.” You shook his hand firmly as the professor said your name to him.

Professor Heimerdinger handed him your seven equation-filled pages. “This is Viktor, my assistant. My right hand, if you will!” Viktor seemed to count the pages as the professor continued. “I’m going to have him look through your paper, if it’s alright with him. And you!”

Another student checking your homework made you feel nervous. What if he missed a crucial error? A thousand what-ifs filled your head and you pushed them out with one logical thought.

If he’s the professor’s assistant, he must know what he’s doing, right?

Between all your mental chaos, you gave a simple answer. “That’s fine by me.”

“It’s not a problem, Professor. I remember this project.” Viktor straightened the papers out, "it'll be a refresher.”

As soon as he said the word 'refresher', you noticed his three sets of diamonds on his vest. It meant only one thing.

He had already graduated.

Not an upperclassman. This is going to be so embarrassing if it’s wrong. The thought ate at you. You hoped it didn't show on your face.

“Oh goody! I’ll be done in a minute.” He hurried over to the student.

Viktor’s head tilted towards the back of the lab. "We can sit if you’d like.” A small table with four chairs near the tall windows waited for you, covered in papers like the rest of the room.

“Yeah, that works.” You followed him, still gazing at the immensity of the lab. So many books for the professor to have on hand. One could only dream.

Arriving at the table, you reached for the chair in front of you, but Viktor had placed his hand on it.

I should’ve waited for him to pick a chair first.

He pulled it out and motioned for you to sit.

Oh.

You sat and adjusted your vest. “Thank you.”

He soon followed, placing his cane on the side of the table and clearing his throat. Without another word, he started looking through it. His gaze focused on the problem at the top. He looked intimidating again with his thick brows cinched together.

Your eyes wandered through the silence. Well, almost silence. The shuffling of your project paired with the professor’s voice made your nerves skyrocket. Still, you had to sit still like nothing was wrong. Otherwise, you’d be pacing around the room with your arms crossed. You decided to break the quietness.

Be polite.

“Thanks for looking through my project." You huffed, "I’m about to graduate and I don’t want to repeat the class. Ever.”

No, seriously. That was the worst class you’d ever been through. Sleepless nights and dark eye bags were the prize every student had after taking the class. Professor Penmark was the filter for graduation. Condescending to absolutely everyone, so it wasn't personal towards you.

“It’s no problem. I graduated a year ago. I still remember this class. That teacher isn’t lenient, huh?"

“Not at all.” You chuckled, still keeping your posture rigid and proper.

His face relaxed, “I remember how the class gasped when he said that this homework–project-thing… was going to decide if you passed or not." Then his eyes widened. "Fun.” He kept flipping through the pages quite swiftly. Was he even looking through it? “Looks like he made it more complicated this year. Not impossible, but—" Viktor looked up. “How long did this take you?”

“Six hours. With breaks.”

“Hm.”

Viktor went back to the pages and looked intimidating again because your fate of passing the class was in his hands. A few short hums, or huffs, came from him. That made you worried. A hum or a huff could only mean one thing: a mistake.

Let’s say it was wrong. That meant it was back to square one. The teacher gave you three days to complete it. You were already one day down. If it took you six hours and it was wrong this first time, you had another seven tries at the most to try again. You sat there, praying to whatever would listen that your calculations had been right, with every symbol correctly switched and—

“So, what’s wrong with it?” His voice cut off your train of thought.

All you could muster up was a measly, 'what?'

“You brought it here to fix any mistakes, no?” He looked up from your papers, looking terribly confused. More confused than you, actually.

“W-wait. Is it correct? The whole thing? Are you sure?”

There’s no way.

“Well... Yes. What’s the issue?”

You didn’t know what to feel. Satisfaction, anxiousness, relief? You figured out the problem on the first try? Clear? No repeats, a clean sweep?

“No, that’s what I wanted to know, if it had no mistakes,” you took the paper when he handed it back to you. “Oh my—I can finally rest.”

There was a brief moment of silence before the professor’s voice became louder, “yes, very well! I’ll make sure to let them know! Check the corrections I gave you and come back!” He escorted the person out and came back to you both in little steps, "oh, I’m terribly sorry, you two. I was caught up in some council duties, but now that that’s out of the way, did Viktor look over your project?”

You sprung from your chair, “yes! It’s done. No mistakes.”

“It’s to be expected; you have a knack for numbers!” He looked up at Viktor. "And with a talent like this boy's, it’s inconceivable that it’s wrong!”

"It never hurts to be extra sure." Your hands kept fidgeting with your papers.

“I suggest turning it in right now! You don’t want to end up forgetting!” The professor walked to the door as you followed. Thankfully, the project was over and completely correct. Now you could finally take a small break.

Wait.

How could you forget to say goodbye?

How rude of me.

You turned on your heel and waved, "it was nice to meet you!"

He was already standing up before you called to him. For a second, he was taken aback.

Then, he replied. "Likewise."

#arcane #viktor arcane #viktor x reader #in the blue hours of the morning #IM POSTING THIS FOR MY FRIEND DJLHDFLJHDSJLF SHES BEEN WANTING ME TO POST THIS FOR LIKE. A YEAR. SORRY QUEEN ILY #I LOVE WRITING THIS FIC SO- ENJOY??? <3 #arcane x reader #arcane viktor #viktor #FIRST POST YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAALL REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE #the glorious ovulation

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