#congratulations Vik!!!

[stvrchaser]

façade

( pairing ) : ben hargreeves x reader

( about ) : inspired by s3ep8 — ben wants to know what was so special about the old ben. the reader lets him know that they’re not so different.

( warnings ) : some angst, profanity

( words ) : 1800

( note ) : i wanted to write a multichapter fic but i literally can’t commit to anything so here’s one if my fav ben scenes this season! hope you enjoy! (and i’m really sorry if it’s a little specific for an x reader. i haven’t written anything in about a year and i used to strictly write x oc fics. but appearance-wise, there aren’t any descriptions, so feel free to imagine whomever you’d like)

It’s weird to see Klaus all chummy with Reginald. They’d always had so little in common, so you wonder how messed up the timeline has to be for the two of them to suddenly form this weird bond. It seems like a lot of things are different here, but that’s not your main concern right now.

Klaus is on a mission. You’ve watched him strike up a conversation with nearly everyone in the room and, not only is it killing the mood, it’s also alarming. If there was anything you learned about him growing up, it was that he couldn’t be stopped once he’d made up his mind about something. And, so far, he seems dead set on convincing everyone to accept Old Reggie into the family.

It’s a lot easier said than done.

Your eyes follow him as he walks over to Ben, alone at a table now that Allison has abandoned him. He’s sulking, more so than usual, with a plate full of shrimp and a half-empty bottle of wine. Even from across the room, you can see his brows furrow and his bottom lip jutted out. It was a classic Ben expression, very predictable considering he was at a party. He never did like big events. It’s small similarities like that you find endearing.

You watch him and Klaus bicker back and forth for a few minutes, a sense of nostalgia setting in. They used to do this all the time. You could almost pretend that this was normal, that Ben had lived until this moment, to attend Luther’s properly-timed wedding as if you aren’t waiting for the world to end. Again. It isn’t until Ben throws a shrimp at Klaus that you decide to intervene.

“Play nice, children,” you tease.

“Y/N!” Klaus claps, like some kid exited to meet a favorite celebrity or hero. “I’m so glad you could join us!” He nudges Ben’s foot under the table, a gesture he most certainly does not appreciate.

“What are you up to?” You narrow your eyes suspiciously.

“Oh, we’re just taking a stroll down memory lane. My memories, of course. Our new buddy-roo seems pretty interested in our lovely, lovely brother. You know, his more pleasant look-alike?” Ben looks like he’s about to explode.

“Klaus, play nice,” you remind him. “We’re at a wedding.”

“Oh, you’re no fun! You’re not even drunk, Y/N!”

“Well, someone has to keep you kids in line. Can’t have you setting the Hotel on fire just as we’re sucked into some weird black hole, can I?” Klaus whines.

“Okay, okay! But if I can’t have any fun, you can deal with Bitchy-Benny over there. I don’t think I’m drunk enough to deal with him for the rest of the night.”

“Well, you can’t just leave.” You try your best not to sound panicked because you do not need to be left alone with an overly-intoxicated Ben right now.

“Eh, I’ll see what Vik is up to, maybe congratulate the newly-weds some more. Oh! Maybe Five will let me sing another duet with him!”

“No, no. Klaus, please—“

“Have fun! Don’t do anything I would do!”

“You son of a—“ Your voice trails out as Klaus continues his… well, whatever he’s doing. You force your eyes away from him, ending up face-to-face with very irritable company.

Ben glares at you through half-lidded eyes, his face held in his hands.

“What?” you snap. “Is it past your bedtime?” You look around the room, hoping for an opportunity to escape. Maybe you could clean up that table over there, or help with the music selection. Five already downed half of the champagne, maybe you should get more—

“Why do you hate me?” You turn your head back so fast you think you might have pulled something in your neck.

“Why do I… what?”

“All you idiots talk about is the other Ben and how he’s sooo much nicer. You all act like he’s the best. What about me? Why don’t you like me?”

Oh, God. This isn’t happening. He couldn’t honestly be asking you to compare them, not now. Not when you’ve managed to bottle up every nasty thing you have to say about him. This was supposed to be a fun night.

“Are you serious?”

His jaw shifts and his lips press into a frown.

Oh, it’s happening.

“Well, you’re an insufferable bastard.”

“Okay, but you like the other Ben.”

“Yeah, we love him.” He whines, unsatisfied with the answer. It’s like arguing with a child who asks too many questions.

“Why? What was so special about him?”

“He wasn’t an insufferable bastard.”

“But Klaus said he was a know-it-all.” You hum in agreement.

“A smartass.”

“A scold!”

“Worse than anyone I know.”

“Like— like a dark cloud on a perfectly sunny day.” You figure he’s quoting Klaus. The description sounds weird when he says it, like imagery shouldn’t be his preferred method of expressing things. That’s unexpected, considering the old Ben loved to draw. He could see the world differently, through the eyes of an artist, something you never really understood.

“Yeah, he was always a bit emo. I don’t think he would have ever outgrown it, honestly. I mean, look at you.”

“So what’s so good about him? All of those sound like bad things.”

“Yeah, but they looked great on him.”

“He sounds like a jackass.”

“Well, you have that in common, don’t you?”

“So how come I don’t deserve what he gets? Why is it so easy to like him but not me? If he was so insufferable, what makes him any different from me?”

He’s upset. Well, he always is. But this is different. Ben sounds vulnerable and panicked. His voice sounds hurt and it feels wrong. Asshole or not, in this universe or the next, seeing Ben fall apart is just wrong.

“That was just how he was.”

“So he’s just naturally an asshole but everyone loves him anyway! How is that fair? Dad thought I was good enough to be Number One. I’m so much better than him! Why do you still like him better than me?”

Underneath the part of him that isn’t so desperate to claw his way to the top, you find something familiar. You hear the old Ben who, as a kid, was so eager to find his place — the one who hated missions with so much passion but obeyed every order Reginald had to give. It’s heartbreaking to watch him fall apart all over again when you couldn’t even do anything to help him the first time.

That’s when you feel every bad thing you’ve ever thought about him dissipate. Reginald Hargreeves is tearing Ben apart again, and you’ll be damned if you make the same mistake twice.

“It’s because you’re not Ben.”

“I know that! Everyone’s always telling me that.”

“No, I mean you’re not… you.”

“But I am! You just don’t think I’m good enough!”

“Ben Hargreeves, get that bullshit out of your head,” you say, fuming. “Nobody decides whether you’re good enough or not. Nobody but you. I meant, you’re not yourself because you’re too busy trying to be Number One. You’ve spent your entire life doing every single thing Reginald tells you to do, and you think you have to keep it up all the time. News flash: you don’t.”

“That’s easy for you to say. You have a family.” His voice gets quieter. “The academy is all a have.” Your head leans to the side, subconsciously challenging the statement. You don’t mean to, but it’s almost an instinct to prove him wrong.

“Is it?”

“Yeah, or it was. Because now they’re dead. All that’s left is Sloane and Dad, but you stole them. You… it’s just me, now.”

“They haven’t been stolen from you. They’d just rather find people who care about them than be alone. You know, you’re welcome to do the same.”

“No, I’m not. They hate me.” He mumbles. “They didn’t even invite me to that stupid bachelor party.”

“They don’t hate you. They love you. It’s just… this isn’t you. You’ve been so busy proving yourself worthy of being Number One, you stopped being Ben. And we want the real Ben, not the one who’s constantly forcing himself to be someone he isn’t.”

“But I’m not your Ben. It wouldn’t matter if Dad was here or not because I’m never gonna be your Ben.”

“You are,” you assure him, and you believe it. “You’re always going to be my Ben.”

“We’re not the same.”

“You don’t have to be!” you say, louder than you meant. “I don’t need you to be a shitty dancer or to sing in the shower like you want to shatter the bathroom mirror.”

“Good! Because I don’t!” he shrieks, outraged. Undoubtedly offended. You laugh because you know he’s lying.

“I don’t need you wipe my tears away after a bad day or let me clean the blood off your face after a bad mission. I don’t need you to buy me souvenirs every time you sneak out with Klaus or try to play every song I like on the piano by ear.”

“He did all that?”

“Yeah. He did. But I would have loved him anyway, if he didn’t.”

“Why?” His voice is desperate, pleading.

“Because there isn’t a single thing that wouldn’t make me fall in love with Ben Hargreeves.”

The silence hangs in the air, thick with tension. Ben frowns. You think the moment will end there. Maybe he’ll be offended, or worse, maybe he wouldn’t care at all.

“I would have done the same.”

He looks into your eyes, dark irises swimming with something you’ve never seen before. Not it this Ben, at least. It melts your heart just enough to flood your body with warmth. It’s like the sun peering through dawn.

“If I was your Ben, I would have wanted to do those things, too. For you.”

You let your heart bask in the moment, afraid to let go. This was, and is, Ben Hargreeves. He was the soft patter of rain above an empty house, the whistle of the wind across an open field — the reminder that life holds more than you and the isolated path you tread.

Ben Hargreeves is everything lovely about the world, and it’s a shame he’ll only grace it for the next few hours.

It is, perhaps, the greatest loss the universe will ever know.

You choose to make up for lost time right then and there, coaxing the corners of your lips into a smile. You unravel the knots in your heart and watch his face relax, a new day on the horizon.

Ben Hargreeves will spend the day getting to know love, the world be damned if you didn’t make sure if it.

“I think I would have liked that.”

#ben hargreeves #where are all the ben oneshots #ben hargreeves x reader #tua3 #tua netflix #The Umbrella Academy

[timaeusterrored]

(Peek-A- ‘Boo’)

((Thank you @kharonion for the adorable name))

October 30th, 11:30pm

“I wanna watch something scary.”

“We are in a hospital, Vince.”

“…And?”

Vincent pouted as his normally down for anything husband said no to his request. Though their other half was already flipping through the TV, smiling when Kerry groaned.

“I don’t want our child to know we were waiting for her while watching Halloween! Feels fucked up.”

“It’s not gonna be fucked up if she’s a Halloween baby. Which is what I’m totally hoping for because it’ll match her blanket.” Vincent rubbed his belly, making his husband eye him suspiciously. Vincent grinned.

“Don’t hold our child in for her to be born on Halloween! It’ll still count if she pops out today!” Kerry rubbed his face, then groaned when the intro to Halloween started followed by laughter from Johnny.

“I can’t stand either of you.”

Jamie May Linder-Eurodyne was born on October 31st at 6:13am. Vincent did not ‘hold her in’ because she didn’t want to come out- like father like daughter I suppose.

There was no mistaking she was Johnny’s kid, with gorgeous dark eyes and his nose, and as pale as he was, Vincent was shocked she didn’t come with tattoos and wouldn’t be surprised if her first word was fuck.

But she was gorgeous, and she was a halloween baby much to Vincent’s delight. And she was so little.

Once Vincent was settled and finally able to eat, they turned on the ‘Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown’ instead as to not traumatize their baby on her first few hours, though they did get some chuckles out of their doctor about the whole horror movie thing. And he did say he didn’t expect them to NOT watch a horror movie today!

Auntie Judy came in clutch with some spooky sushi, and uncle River came with some candy so the three didn’t miss out… but Johnny paid them no mind. In fact, he wasn’t even in the room.

He stood outside the nursery, frowning at the glass put between him and his baby. He had done the same with Ted, he hated being separated from them. But this hurt for some reason, and maybe it was because this was his flesh and blood. This poor baby girl had the Linder blood in her, and Johnny would make damn sure she wasn’t treated the way he was about it. Because she was also part Vincent, mellow and sarcastic Vincent that only hurt flies in self defense. Who made her and Ted baby blankets during his pregnancy. There was a possibility of her being gentle…

Johnny didn’t hear the foot steps behind him until an arm slipped around his waist. He wrapped his arm around Kerry as they both watched the sleeping baby.

“Hate this part… why can’t they just stay in our room?”

“So they can make sure she’s okay… that she’s healthy. And to let Vince recover from pushing that out of him.” Kerry pointed out, rubbing his eyes.

Neither would ever understand or take credit for what Vincent has pulled off twice now, but damn it was exhausting and they didn’t eat until he did because it just felt cruel.

“Guadalupe brought some chili if you want, made just how you like it.” That did sound really good.

“Yeah… alright. I’m fuckin’ starving…” Johnny finally peeled his eyes away from his baby and let himself be lead back to their room, where their family and friends sat around Vincent with food and praise. They gave Kerry and Johnny hugs and congratulations, Mama Welles quick to shove a bowl of chili into Johnny’s hands so he could finally eat.

He ate quietly as his family talked around him, these people were his family whether he liked it or not. He noted Vik wasn’t here and had probably taken the Ted shift since it was too early for the four year old to be awake, and also this was a new territory for all of them. Siblings.

They’d get through it, they always did.

#I’m sick and wanted some softness #cyberpunk 2077 #kerry eurodyne #cyberpunk kerry #kerry #Johnny Silverhand #cyberpunk Johnny #cyberpunk v #male v #male v cyberpunk #Vincent Welles #2023 Vincent #seahorse dad Vincent #silvervdyne #silverv #silverdyne #kerry x v #kerry eurodyne x v #johnny x v #johnny silverhand x v #kerry x male v #kerry x johnny #Johnny x Kerry

[balsamfir-fics]

On Inebriation

Pairing: Viktor x gn!reader

Genres: fluff, established relationship, besties!Jayce and Mel, tipsy Vik, cocky bastards, mild jealousy, nothing toxic, spicy behavior implied, Vik being confident AF and yet still so clueless

Summary: Viktor goes for a drink, gets hit on, doesn't quite realize it, needs it spelled out for him, then smugly relishes in this new finding. He's lucky he's cute and you're patient.

Word Count: ~2k

A/N: Trashy run-on sentence in summary is intentional. Cross-posted to AO3. Nothing too serious, just a lil drabble for some seretonin (because the show is sad enough as is)!

It's one thing to be hitting on the love of your life for fun. It's another thing entirely to watch him get hit on by someone else, who happens to not be you, nor his labmate trying to egg him on.

You could be frustrated about it, sure, but it sounds uninteresting considering Viktor’s deep sense of loyalty. He’s also a whole throng of charity gala-goers away from you, and like hell are you going to fight your way through a crowd of rich people just to see what’s happening. Perhaps he’d like the possessive display, perhaps he wouldn’t – either way, it probably wasn’t worth the effort. You quell your mild jealousy, internally congratulating yourself on letting your rational mind win.

It wasn’t that your relationship was secret, but rather that it was private. Various lab researchers knew about it, as did your network of friends, but Viktor had carefully orchestrated his media image as the less-famous ‘father of progress’ to make sure that you weren’t the stuff of tabloids. That worked out well; you’d heard enough from Jayce and Mel to know that a life of publicity was certainly not worth the glamor.

Instead, you sip at your champagne at this corner of the banquet hall, elbow resting on the bar counter. You’re dressed to the nines, like everyone else here, and thankfully most other guests are too busy being schmoozed by Heimerdinger to pay a normal member of the Academy’s teaching staff any mind.

Most. Not all.

Someone with a deep voice clears their throat behind you. Whoever they are, they’re startlingly close, and thus the semi-cough must have been meant for you. Before you can fully turn around to survey your interloper, a light, self-assured snicker sounds nearby the source of the first noise, and it becomes immediately clear who’s just sidled up to you.

“Jayce,” you nod, turning your head ever so slightly in the direction you think he’s standing in but without lifting your eyes. “Mel.”

“How did you know?” Mel appears before you, grinning. She’s radiant, as always–sparkling as effusively as the golden liquid in your flute.

“The next time Jayce tries to sneak up on me from behind with a cough,” you smile, leaning into her as she wraps an arm around your shoulders in greeting. “... Don’t laugh immediately after.”

Jayce grins, stepping around you to pluck two drinks from the bar. “So it was you, Mel! You gave it away.”

“Fine,” she raises her hands in defeat before Jayce presses a glass into her hand. You all take a sip, eyes scanning the room absently. Then you watch as they huddle together, immersed in their love and their own little world. It's cute; Jayce follows behind Mel in puppylike adoration, and Mel helps bolster him into the man he's meant to be.

“Why are you two here, anyway?” It’s a good question; they’re usually the ones trying to curry more favors and inspire more donations, and Mel in particular is damn good at it. For them, it’s a busy evening of hand-shaking and belly-laughter, all in the name of Piltovan prosperity. For you, it’s just another party you’ve been invited to.

Jayce rolls his eyes first, sagging somewhat into Mel’s side. “Needed a break. It may be part of our jobs, but it’s not nearly as fun as it could be.”

“That,” Mel begins. A slight smile tugs at her lips. “That, and it seems that Viktor is faring quite well in that regard this evening.” She raises her eyebrows and tilts her head in his direction, drawing Jayce’ gaze.

“Is that–”

“Yes,” Mel laughs, clinking her glass with yours. “One of Piltover’s youngest debutantes, sole heir to the mining colonies’ fortune? That’s her.” Mel gives you a questioning look. “You’re not bothered by that?”

You shrug, finishing the last of your drink. “Should I be? I’ve got no reason to question Viktor, and it’s not her fault she doesn’t know about us.”

Both of your friends raise their eyebrows before glancing at each other. “We just passed by him ten minutes or so ago,” Jayce says. “He seemed to be hovering near the bar a little more than usual, and it looked like he was already three to four drinks deep.”

Now  that  was worth your attention. Viktor’s tolerance for ethanol was fairly remarkable for someone as slight as him, but you knew that the gala’s bartenders served particularly strong drinks for the purpose of opening wallets. If he was four drinks in ten minutes ago, Viktor could be anywhere near five to eight by now.

“Should we save him?” You ask, but your question falls into the void as Jayce and Mel are whisked away by other Councilfolk. Placing your empty glass back on the counter, you lift yourself onto the tips of your toes to get a better look at the events on the other side. Viktor’s body language seems tense, and the mining heiress doesn’t quite seem to pick up on it. You sigh, allowing yourself a chuckle, before you place a cocktail into your palm and begin to weave across the floor.

—------------

Viktor’s face lights up when he sees you, and it’s only when he sways while giving you a small wave that you realize he’s quite happily drunk. He gestures for you to join him, and he quickly introduces you to the mining heiress.

She takes one look at the way Viktor presses himself into your side and does the math; looking mortified, she disappears quickly with what sounds to be the beginnings of a sob.

“What was that?” Viktor asks, snuggling into you a bit more than he typically would in a very public setting like this. To anyone else not trying to attract his attention, his gestures would merely appear to be affectionate touch between friends. But for him, this is loud and obvious; this is far from the perfectly-reserved, prim-and-proper posturing you usually see from him in public. His hand, still gently resting at your back, rubs small circles into you (which you must admit you rather enjoy).

You play innocent. “Whatever do you mean?”

“The girl,” he hiccups. “She was talking to me so intently, asking so many questions about my work and my life, and suddenly she ran off.” Not that he minded; he had been so bewildered by the barrage of questions that he couldn’t fend off with a polite smile that he’d turned to the bottle for a social lubricant. The alcohol hadn’t helped much, as he was just as confused by the attention as he had been four drinks ago, but in the least he was slightly (slightly!) more relaxed. Though now, with you by his side, he thinks that’s more of the effect that you have on him than the alcohol. “I was just about to tell her about my latest proposal; I’ve hypothesized that productivity in the mining colonies could be improved by nearly 45% with far better working conditions if I perform a few tweaks in the equipment–”

He looks so disappointed at being cut off before he could share his plans that you can’t help but laugh.

“Love,” you say gently, plucking his mostly-ice drink from his hands and placing it on a passing steward’s tray. “She was hitting on you. With romantic interest.”

Viktor’s eyes are impossibly large as he stares at you; in part because he’s trying valiantly to focus on his surroundings, and in part because your suggestion is preposterous.

You hum, nodding firmly to verify that you meant what you said. It’s Viktor’s turn to chuckle, his laughter coming out in staccato beats as his body tries to process his liquor.

“No. Certainly not. I have you!” He pulls you in closer to him, just by the soft push of his fingers against your back, just for a few millimeters. Nothing externally noticeable by anyone else but you.

“That you do,” you tell him. “But she didn’t know that.”

For once in his life, Viktor looks puzzled, but you expect that it’s the minor slowdown in mental processing power that he’s experiencing.

He blinks. When he opens his eyes again, the confusion is gone, replaced instead by a devilish, smug gaze. “Is that why you came over here? Jealousy?”

You scoff, pushing at his chest in mock offense. “I wasn’t jealous,” you start. It’s mostly true; you were only mildly off-put by the heiress’ attention. “But it looked like you needed saving from yourself.” You gesture your chin towards the various empty glasses that have yet to be cleared up from the nearby cocktail table he’d been standing at.

“Come now,” he almost drawls. His voice falls dangerously low–you know exactly what that tone is about. You only ever hear it in the privacy of your bedroom (or in the lab, in the dark of the night, when there’s nobody else around). “Not even a little bit?”

You eye him carefully, wondering who possessed your sweet Viktor in the middle of a gala (and nowhere near midnight, no less). You elect to say nothing, but amusement dances in your eyes.

“Hmm?” Viktor crowds in closer, stepping into you a few more millimeters and drawing himself to his full height. His hand moves from your back to trace down your arm; you shiver from the uncharacteristically loud intimacy of it all while hoping none of the other patrons happen to be looking in your direction.

“Not even a little bit,” you declare, and it’s only the tiniest hint of a lie. A cheeky smile finally tugging at your lips, you reach up to press a chaste kiss to his cheek. Then you’re gone, leaving behind the slightest trace of your fragrance and a receding warmth at his fingertips. Viktor swallows thickly, blinking back his arousal before straightening his tie. You can leave the gala whenever you want; he has to stay until the majority of donors are gone. Your departure sharpens his senses as he decides the rest of the evening must pass by much more quickly if he wants to hurry home to you. He contemplates leaving Jayce to handle the rest of the event, only thinking against it when he spots Jayce forcing out a fake laugh in front of some of the usual Academy sponsors.

He exhales and presses down his waistcoat. Energized by his new mission to secure funding quickly so that the gala ends faster, he strides off into the crowds he otherwise hates, and begins rattling off his new research plans.

—--------

At home, he later finds you reading in the living room by the soft light of one lamp. When you hear him come in, you look up with a smile. Viktor returns the gesture, draping his jacket over the other end of the sofa before leaning over you and pressing a gentle kiss to your forehead.

“Welcome back,” you murmur, eyes back on the pages of your book as you flip a page. “How did the rest of it go?”

“It went… efficiently,” he says.

Something in his voice makes you look up again. You glance at him, then you glance outside to see the illuminated tower clock in the distance. It’s not even ten-thirty and he’s already back from the gala? That’s certainly odd; while Viktor has tried to sneak out early in the past, he’d already been reprimanded by both Heimerdinger and Jayce for failing to carry out these tertiary scholarly duties and had never been home from a charity event before midnight ever since.

“I’ll say…” Your words come out slow and tentative as you bookmark your page and set the book aside. You eye Viktor warily, but he merely gives you what seems to be an innocent grin.

“You’re not excited to have me back? I thought you’d have been more… enthusiastic.”

You blink up at him, remembering that you’ve already changed into your usual loungewear. It’s then that you take stock of him. He seems brighter today, which is quite odd especially after such a draining event like a gala. He stands straighter, taller, and as self-assured as when he’s on the cusp of scientific discovery.

“I’m always delighted to have you back,” you reply. “I’m just surprised that the gala ended so soon. Are you sure you didn’t sneak out?”

“Quite sure.” He strides around the couch and rests his cane against it before extending a hand to you. You take it, getting up, though you’re still puzzled by his behavior. Not that you mind it; it’s wildly attractive, but you do wonder what’s gotten into him. But then his hands are in your hair and his lips on yours, drinking hungrily, and you’re putty in his embrace.

—---------

Later, as you try to catch your breath from Viktor’s unexpected oral attention, he pulls you tightly into his arms and presses a kiss against your ear.

“You most certainly were slightly jealous,” he murmurs. “But I quite enjoyed it.”

“You didn’t even realize she was hitting on you until I told you!”

Viktor doesn’t reply to your objection; he only smirks and pulls you in tighter. “That may be,” he laughs into the skin of your neck. “But I don’t hear you complaining about that.”

#viktor x you #viktor x reader #viktor smut #viktor arcane #viktor arcane smut #viktor arcane fluff #viktor fluff #viktor arcane fanfiction #viktor fanfiction #viktor arcane x you #viktor arcane x reader #viktor imagine #viktor imagines #viktor arcane imagine #viktor arcane imagines

[whumpzone]

Col playing a game with Linden and Vik has been stuck in my brain all day.

I just imagine them playing Uno because it’s easy to play and explain, and playing in the order of Linden, then Vik, then Col.

Vik, who normally is really good at Uno, has a huge handful of cards, while Linden and Col are hovering at around 5-7 cards.

Finally, Col lays down his last card, looking between them to see their reaction, and the both congratulate him highly.

Later, as they’re putting up the game and Col’s out of earshot, Linden says he must have had terrible luck this game.

Vik just flips his cards around to show tons of draw-2’s and skips, and grins. “Figure there’ll be lots of games to win, I’m happy losing this one.”

OH MY GOD

THIS IS SOOOO SWEET

Col winning a game would be a really scary thing. it would feel like an insubordination. forgetting his place. all the more reason why this is the best thing Vik could do!!!! let Col win!!!

#i love this so so much #asks #anon

[lilacwineandthesinkingsun]

Home is wherever I'm with you..

AN: I love this song, and i really wanted to write something for Hvitserk too.

MINORS DO NOT INTERACT. THIS IS NOT FOR YOUR EYES.

Now, when the shores of Kattegat came into view after long years, it felt surreal. The place you once called home, what you swore you won't leave was now right before you. You quietly left when it became too painful for you to stay. Surely the gods wouldn't want oyu to live a life of suffering. A swedish earl welcomed you, His wife Ellisif became a friend of yours soon enough. You had come all this way to join the great army to avenge the great Ragnar Lothbrok's death. Your heart still cried for him and his sons just as much as for Lagertha. You might not be able to call this place home anymore, but they all still had a place in your heart. You were in one of the ships that arrived the latest, so there wasn't many people looking over anymore.

Helga looked back to the dock, stopping Floki in his steps.

-Floki i think i am seeing ghosts. - she said not being able to look away from you. You smiled at them holding your hand out, welcoming them for a hug.

-(Y/n), we thought you were dead. - Floki said with his little laugh.

-Oh Floki, there were times when life was unbearable, but it would took more than that to kill me, don't you think? - you laughed in their embrace.

-Come now, come. Let's have a drink and you can tell us where have you been?! - he said as he urged you and Helga into the great hall. It was filled to the brim with people. Looks like the whole viking world was here to avenge Ragnar. You were talking with Ellisif now, when a man you did not know interrupted, looking at her as if she was solid gold.

-Ellisif, my love. You came, i am close to our plan, i am nearly king of norway.. - he said, as you felt Ellisif become terrified and anxious around the man. He must be the man she did not want to marry. She told you the story before. You grabbed your axe and held it to the man's neck, getting her away from Ellisif.

-Ellisif, find Vik, i got this. - you said to her, before you turned back to the man. - Can you not see that she fears you? - you asked him as you heard the hall going eerily quiet, all eyes on you and Harald.

-She had promised me years ago that she would marry me if i'd be an important man. I was an earl back now, now i am king. - he smirked.

-Congratulations, but that doesn't change the fact that she is terrified of you. She is married to Earl Vik of Sweden, you may go and find a wife somewhere else. - you said calmly, as he became angry. His brother handed him a knife, but when he took it he dropped it also. You lowered your axe.

-DO indulge me some more love. - he said hooking a finger under your chin.

You swat away his hand, storming out after Ellisif.

The sons of Ragnar stood there with their chins on the ground when Floki ran up to them laughing.

-You look like you've seen a ghost sons of Ragnar. - he danced around.

-Floki, did you not see? - Ubbe asked him.

-Oh i did, and i talked, and hugged as well... For a ghost she was surprisingly warm. - he laughed before urging them to go after you.

They found you on the beach sitting, looking over the water.

-We thought you were dead.

-I am, i just came back to haunt you all. - you said with a smirk before jumping in Ubbe's then Ivar's embrace, hugging Bjorn, then swat Hvitserks arm keeping your distance. - What did i miss? - you asked them.

-Well, our parents are dead, and i am married. - said Ubbe, the last part with a puff of his chest.

-So you became a man now huh? Who would've thought. When i left you fucked everything that moved. - you said laughing.

You talked and catched up some more, Hvitserk was way too quiet for what you remember him to be. Once you would've asked what bothers him, but now you just wanted to be away from him. It still hurt to greatly. You grew up together, and when he was old enough he too started to fuck everything that moved. Except you. As if you were one of them. He went through various slaves, they had shared them too. You had some fun with others yourself too, but it was never satisfying. You never felt anything for them.

-And what about you (Y/n)? How is life? - asked Bjorn.

-Well what could i say? Sweden is beautiful, my earl is wise and great, i am the leader of the shieldmaidens there.

-I can't help but notice you did not mention a husband... - Sigurd smirked at you.

-I see that you are still a good observer Sigurd. - you laughed. - no i don't have a companion nor a husband. I do not have time for stupid things.. - you said looking at your feet.

-Well i think King Harald fancies you now. He couldn't stop talking about your beauty after you left. - laughed Ivar.

-Ooooh, a king.. - you said circling him. - how lucky i am.. - you said before hitting Sigurd and Ubbe on the backs of their neck before running away, they hot on your heels. Hvitserk and Ivar stood there, he waited for Ivar to get down and crawl so he would walk with him. It was clear you did not want to talk to your once best friend.

-She left because of you you know.. - Ivar said as he crawled.

-Why would've she left cause of me? I wasn't the one trying to fuck her all the time.. - he said somewhat angry.

-That's what i'm saying.. - Ivar said with a cocky smile on his face. Hvitserk slowly realising what he meant. Before sprinting in after you.

When he entered the great hall, you were dancing around Sigurd while he played. The whole hall was watching you with smiles on their faces. By the time the song finished, you collapsed on the furs at Lagertha's feet. She smiled down at you caressing your face lovingly as a mother.

-We have missed you greatly (Y/n). If you ever do want to come back, our doors are open to you. - she said.

-Thank you Queen Lagertha. I am glad you are still fond of me. - you answered smiling back at her before Ubbe took your hand and yanked you up for another round of ale.

At some point the rest of the people retreated for the night, leaving you, Ubbe, Sigurd and Bjorn in the great hall. They were on either side of you, trying to get you to strip out of your clothes as Sigurd played quietly on his instrument, music quietly filling the hall.

-Don't let us suffer this way.. - Ubbe said touching his forehead to yours before you stood up, to dance some more.

-Shouldn't you be with your wife dear Ubbe? - you asked with a smirk. He was drunk so he did not watch what he was talking about.

-Hvitserk sure does take care of that. - he said with a bitterness. You walked up to him slowly kissing him. -You shouldn't let him do this to you.. - you whispered before straddling Bjorn. His hands around your waist ticklish, as you drunkedly lean backwards, trusting he wouldn't let you fall out of his lap. He slowly brought you back up to him, holding you close. Your hands fly to his neck, playing with his hair.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

The next day Hvitserk barges into your room without a knock, making you groan frustrated as Bjorn tried to keep you cuddled up to him.

Hvitserk stopped for a sec before pointing his finger at you.

-You have no right to barge in here after years and years and tell me what to do or not do... - he shouted making Bjorn snicker behind you. You slowly stood up, in all your naked glory. If they'll ever see a perfect body, yours was that. You walked up to him, so close in his face your noses were nearly touching.

-I did not tell anyone what to do or not do. All i said was he shouldn't let you do this to him. I know you know deep down that this wasn't right... - you said looking him in the eyes. You saw the hurt in his for a moment before anger took over.

-And what is this then brother? - he asked Bjorn.

-Two people enjoying themselves? - he asked him sarcastically.

Hvitserk hummed looking you over.

-Just because you wanted anyone but her back then and now you changed your mind cause you can't have Margrethe anymore it doesn't mean she will be yours. - Bjorn said before gathering you again in his arms, making you straddle him as he left his mark on your neck, all while looking at Hvitserk.

Later that day you were laughing with Ubbe and Ivar when Hvitserk walked up to you.

-Can we talk (Y/n)? - he asked using his puppy dog eyes, making you sigh and nod as you got up. You two started to walk.

-Was what Bjorn said why you left all those years ago? - he asked.

-It is all in the past now, you need not bring it up. I was young and stupid. - you said only looking ahead of you and never at him.

-You weren't.. i.. i was afraid.

-You? afraid? - you laughed. - afraid of what?

-You.. - he started, making you look at him as you two sat down next to a stream. - you were my best friend and i couldn't ... i felt things for you above that...

-Forgive me if i can not believe that.. - you laughed at him. - you fucked the entire woman population of Kattegat but never even looked towards me.

-I never said i was smart.. - he said smirking, putting a hand around your shoulder making you lay with him in the grass.

-Can i tell you a secret? - he asked as the top of your head touched his. He did not wait for your answer. Your silence was answer enough for him. - i wanted to be experienced to .. to blow your mind, so you'd want to stay with me forever. - he said smiling.

You giggled at this, so he got up on his elbow and started to tickle you. As you trashed around in a laughing fit, you didn't realized that now your bodies were aligned with eachother and his face was almost touching yours. You were looking into his eyes as he was studying your face. He leaned in to kiss you but you rolled out of his arms, even if it was the hardest thing you ever had to do besides leaving Kattegat.

-That doesn't change the fact that when i did come back, you decided to go and fuck your brother's wife instead. After all these years, you still chose someone else over me without a word.. and that says more than your words ever did.. - you said before walking away. He stayed there facedown in the grass.

That night at the feast you were sitting in Bjorn's lap, drinking, telling stories to the others as they all laughed. Hvitserk sat there without laughing on a single story. Bjorn had an arm around your waist and another in your thigh, as he asked..

-What's up Hvitserk? Doesn't seem to be in a good mood tonight.. - he smiled at him. Hvitserk just drank until he could barely walk anymore.

Again you and the sons of Ragnar were the last ones in the hall. For the past hour Hvitserk was watching you and only you. Ivar leaned in close and quietly asked him.

-So what will it be brother? What do you want to do? - he asked watching as Bjorn kissed you. Hvitserk was so drunk he did not notice the volume he was talking in.

-What do i want to do? I want to fuck her so good - he pointit at you while holding his cup - so good, that she'll forget about any other man and stay at my side for the rest of hers.. - he said making all the others look at him. Your face contorted in anger. You stood up on top of the table, and walked in front of him.

Tears gathered in your eyes as you shouted at him.

-Do it then.. then discard me like you did with all the others. I know it wouldn't last more than that. Do it then. - tears streaming down your face now. Sigurd and Ubbe hitting Hvitserk's back of the neck before leaving the hall, Bjorn gently taking you in his arms as you sobbed. Hvitserk just sat there drunk out of his mind. When he woke up the next morning still in the hall he only had faint pictures of the night before. What he did clearly remember is you crying and shouting at him. He did not have the will to look in your eyes after this, so he just left a bouquet of flowers at your door. Then for the rest of the days before setting sail he did not see or hear from you.

When the ships left Kattegat he saw you once next to earl Vik and his wife Ellisif. You did not look at him. Upon arriving in Mercia and setting camp he saw Bjorn put a flower in your hair, as if he tried to console you.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

In the first battle you saved him once, looking at him briefly. When it was won, he walked up to you, mud and blood covering both of you, he caressed your face.

-Thank you for saving my life back there. - he said.

-You are an ass but it is not the time for you to die just yet.

-And when is my time then ? - he asked standing even closer to you, his hand hovering over your waist, as he cannot decided if he could touch you or not.

-Haven't decided yet, surely will be at my hands. - you smirked at him, touching under his chin gently with your bloodied axe before leaving him there.

Bjorn stopped next to him looking after you.

-Do not fuck up this again Hvitserk. I promise i will take her away if you do. - he said to him before following after you.

That night you all watched Bjorn Bloodeagle King Aelle. Before leaving for Wessex, you all needed a night of rest.

Sleep did not find you, especially when Hvitserk was outside your tent, whispering your name. You got up and motioned him in.

-What? - you asked a bit grumpy.

-I just.. i have a few things i need you to hear. If.. if you'll let me speak.. - he said looking at his hands in his lap.

-Go on then.. - you said crossing your arms before your chest.

-Ever since i can remember i loved you. I made a lot of fucked up decisions and i know now. But i never stopped loving you. All these years all i've dreamt of was you being at my side, having my kids one day.. Something died in me on the day you left. I grieved you for years. I am not a good man (Y/n).. i am even worse in showing my feelings.. but please do believe me i love you with all my heart. Kattegat hasn't felt like home ever since you left.. - he said as he looked up to you. You both sat on the furs you had laid down.

-Then why hurt me all this time? - you asked with tears in your eyes.

-What could i say, i am a fool (Y/n).. - he said before scooting closer to you. - but your fool..

You looked up at him,bumping your nose into his. His eyes shone brightly even in your dark tent. He slowly caressed up your arm before cupping your face brinding you flush to him in your first kiss. It was slow, loving, then it gradually got more passionate as if he would like to prove his words from before. You started to undo his vest, get rid of his shirt before getting rid of all your clothing as well. He was so loving, so careful as if he would've been afraid to break you. It was the best sex of your life. FInally with the man you loved with all your heart, all your life. He held you close and never left. You woke up in his arms. He smiled down at you lovingly as he caressed your back.

Hours later when you emerged from the tent to gather your stuff, you heard the men whsitling and clapping at you two. You rolled your eyes but he smirked at you, kissed your cheek lovingly before tossing you over his shoulder and running around the camp..

#hvitserk x reader #hvitserk #bjorn ironside #bjorn x reader #vikings #hvitserk lothbrok #hvitserk ragnarsson

[sanguine-salvation]

Fluster meme:

They're taking a risk by placing a hand on Vik's face, letting their thumb caress their cheekbone. But hey no risk no reward right?

"You have such gorgeous bone structure...." They muse. "If I were to build a library on Tartarus, I'd use your skull for the keystone of the entryway arch."

[ Try to fluster my muse in the asks, and will rate your attempt - ACCEPTING ]

Viktor sees them coming. They don't tense or pull away, because it's H and H is safe for touch, they've learned, like a beast once shackled. Though, they blink and furrow their brow trying to gauge what's about to happen.

What they don't expect is the little brush against their cheekbone, and that tone of voice in their voice as they muse aloud. They fix their eyes on those ever-lovely pink ones examining their features, watching every flicker or twitch of movement that meant something new was being assessed. Oh, not being gawked at or fawned over, but rather a living work of art being admired.

And the little comment, oh, there was maybe a little shade of heat on their cheeks! Normally, they scoffed and sneered at typical hollow compliments to their appearance, but H was so very specific. They knew Pluto had it's traditions, and while glitz and glamour was not their style, the idea of making their remains instead into some overseer of all who entered looking for knowledge or escape was so... oh, very sweet and charming.

They blink a bit, lost in the thought and perhaps the perplexingly pretty color of eyes of their friend staring back at them, then smirk. Oooh, H, you got them all cheeky and mischievous, congratulations.

"Oh, is that so? You're obligated to visit then. I'd want to know I'd still be able to look down and see your lovely face."

Fluster Level: a strong 65%

#i have a place for you || answered #dance with || gin n chthonic #// shut the fuck up Viktor you're short this is the only way you'd ever get to look down at them #// love these two little death positive weirdos they're so good

[skeletonsweatshirt]

Connected || Viktor x gn!reader

Connected - Part 1

Soulmate!AU (Red String of Fate)

Viktor x gn!reader

WC: 1.7k

Tags: Extroverted Jayce, New Dorm Room, Y/N is still moving in, Impatient Heimey, First Day jitters, Viktor says literally nothing, That mf silent, Confused Reader, *Insert vine of that one lady yelling about how Arkansas and Kansas are pronounced differently*, yes I just made a vine reference, it's my goddamn fic. Also, Heimerdinger has a bouncy mustache. I am my own proofreader, Grammarly is a frequent life saver (not sponsored)

Warnings: None really. Heimer mentions the reader that getting a full-ride scholarship is a "big responsibility" and there's like a few very brief symptoms of anxiety but it's never like a panic attack it's just the reader being nervous about starting school. Also, v quick mention of chaos and destruction spurred by the reader learning what Jayce and Vik are working on. Nothing in detail, just the idea that putting magic in the hands of normies might end badly.

A/N: Hey you little stinkies. Sorry I haven't posted in a bit. School just started and I've been busy not getting an F and also looking for a job and shit. Either way, I'm back now and I'm gonna try to post a bit more frequently but if it doesn't happen don't get butt hurt cuz chances are I will be back eventually. I'll try to get Chapter 2 out soon but idk we'll see what happens. Anyways enjoy the read.

You double and triple-check your bag to be sure of its contents on the way to the sleek, white, and gold vanity pushed against your wall. You double and triple check your uniform is right. White Shirt, White Vest, Red Tie, Black Bottoms. Alright, looking good. You give yourself possibly the quickest thumbs up in the reflection before racing towards the door of the new dorm room you weren't quite used to the layout of yet. 

Another set of three knocks arrives on the outside of your hefty door before you manage to open it. On the other side is a yordle, about two and a half feet shorter than you, with a poro standing loyally at his right side. You smile down at the dean of the school, the fluffball known as Cecil B Heimerdinger, or just Professor Heimerdinger to you.

"Oh, hello sir. Good morning." You beam down at the man.

"Good morning, Y/N. I hope you are settling in well." The yordle remarks cheerfully. 

"I'm doing my best. A bit hard to get around with boxes at your feet, though." You chuckle to hide the grimace that you're wearing in your brain. You severely underestimated how difficult it would be to unload a few boxes of your things into your new home for the next 4+ years.

"I'm sorry to hear that. Come, come, child, we should start the tour." He offers, waving you forward to follow him. 

You swiftly nod and step out of your dorm room, making sure the door is locked behind you. You follow the man, attempting to match his pace so you don't fall forward or behind him. You quickly dart your eyes between the floor and him, not sure yet which you're supposed to look at.

"First things first, congratulations on your scholarship. It's not every day someone gets to come here nearly for free. That's a big responsibility, you know." The yordle states, or jokes. You can't really tell quite yet, you're still getting used to him. 

"I know, sir. And I just wanted to thank you for approving it. I think I can truly achieve great things here." You exclaim.

"That's what we're hoping for. That is why you'll be assisting two of our greatest minds in the lab." He notes. Something you are just now realizing is that somehow Heimerdinger's mustache manages to bounce every time he speaks. Hopefully, you are never in a serious meeting with him. "But first I want to show you around. Make sure you understand where all your classes are and how to get there."

You nod in understanding. As you look around, you start to notice other students clearly staring at you and the professor. Some, who must not know who you are, are looking at you like you'd just been involved in the biggest scandal in your life. Others look at you absolutely bewildered. And you are pretty sure you see a few students, older and not, checking their right hands to see if their string lines up with yours, and when it doesn't, they simply look at you disappointed.

You look at your own hand. Surprisingly, you're following your string right down the middle. If this string wasn't like...magic or something...and the slack just kept dragging along, it would be straight between your legs. That's how exact you are. A soft whistle comes from below you, and just as Heimerdinger catches your attention, you turn a corner and begin walking away from where the string was leading.

About an hour and a half goes by before you finish locating all your classes, the cafeteria, and the library. If there was one thing to admire about Heimerdinger, it would be how damn thorough he is. 

"Now, we are headed to the lab where you will be conducting research. Jayce and Viktor should be there since their classes haven't started yet." The professor lends you a kind smile as he begins walking you through the expansive corridors of the school. 

You give an excited nod. An actual lab for you to work in! Not some bullshit one you put together in your parent's cramped attic because your mother stated she'd rather have the top of the house blow up than the bottom. You swiftly swing your bag towards your front, unclipping the fastens and digging through the many papers, notebooks, and folders you had somehow managed to cram inside. 

You procure a leatherbound journal, no larger than your face, and open it. This journal contains all the notes you have taken on topics you wished to research or experiment with in the past year. Some of the topics you had been able to approach at your home lab, but some you had saved until you had access to a professional lab. Like the one at the academy.

You skim through the pages, a feather-like finger tracing over the lines of the topics that caught your eye. You realize about halfway through flicking through that you don't even know if any of your studies match up with Jayce and Viktor's.

"Sir, may I ask what exactly what Jayce and Viktor are working on in their lab space?" You question the older man without removing your face from the journal. 

"They are designing a company they call 'Hextech" The yordle makes air quotes with his fingers. "The goal of their project is to discover a way to put the Arcane into the hands of the people through innovative technology." 

You pause. The Arcane? Like...magic? You let the journal fall limply to your side as you look at the professor. "Isn't that like...really dangerous?" Your eyebrows knit together on your forehead as you ask. You remember reading about things like this in old history books. Putting magic in the hands of the non-magic users usually just ended in chaos and destruction.

Heimerdinger looks at you with a look of confusion. Not in a way that makes it seem like he doesn't know what you're talking about. On the contrary, he knows exactly what you're talking about. He's probably older than those books you were reading. The look he gives you makes you think that he's the only one ever asking that question. 

"Ahem," The man clears his throat. "Usually it is. And honestly, I was opposed to the idea at first. However, Jayce and Viktor are some of the brightest minds in the Academy. They have promised me that everything is under control, and they take extra precaution when handling their projects."

A muffled crashing sound comes from down the hallway. Judging by the look on your superior's face, said crash is coming from Viktor and Jayce's lab. 

"Extra precaution, huh?" You chortle as you shove your journal back into your bag as you and Heimer make way down the corridor slightly faster than you were.

Once you make it to the lab, you straighten out your outfit and open the door, allowing Heimerdinger to walk in before you. As you walk into the open room, you recognize what the noise must've been. A bag of tools bulkier than you had ever seen had tipped over, sending a sea of metal over the lab's solid flooring.

Your bag immediately makes its way off your shoulder and onto the ground beside you. You crouch down, assisting the more muscular of the two men with collecting the items that had come out of the bag in the fall. You both stand once every tool is back in its rightful place.

"Thank you." The man sticks out a hand with a friendly smile. "I'm Jayce Talis. And you are?"

"Y/N L/N." A familiar older voice rings out behind you. "They are your new assistant. Y/N, these are Jayce," He gestures to the man in front of you. "and Viktor." He gestures over to a man sitting on a metal stool who somehow looks both older and younger than Jayce. He has soft-looking quafts of chestnut brown hair that seem to waterfall down his scalp in a way that's both messy and put together. Like he tried to groom himself but gave up halfway through.

You throw a quick grin at the slender man before giving him a brief run-over with your eyes. Then you go back to turn your head and face Jayce. Then you don't. What was supposed to be a quick glance to just get a general idea of your soon-to-be lab partner turns into you turning your head so fast you nearly get whiplash. All because your glance at the man was interrupted with a shade of crimson that is now scarily familiar.

And to your surprise, the color wasn't a trick your eyes decided to play on your brain. Tied around Viktor's book-holding right pinky finger is a piece of cardinal-colored string that drapes to the floor below him and creates an obvious path between the two of you.

You stare at the string for a time, admiring the trail left across the tile floors before a voice penetrates your internal cloud of questions, answers, and miscellaneous thoughts and feelings that weren't either of the first two but you didn't really have time to sort them because holy shit. 

"Mx. L/N." Heimer addresses you in a tone that makes it seem like he has been calling your name for the past hour.

You snap out of your haze just enough. You force your eyes away from the ribbon and onto your superior. "Yes, sir?" You ask.

"I have to get going. I trust you are in good hands here. Jayce and Viktor will show you around, and I'm sure you will get acclimated to life in the Academy in no time. You all know where my office is if you are to need me." The yordle notes and walks out of the large doors behind you. 

You wave goodbye to the dean and his pet and then face your full attention towards your more muscular partner. You decide to ignore the other one for now, even if that means getting holes burnt through your skull by his darting glances. That is something to deal with later.

#arcane #arcane fanfic #viktor #arcane viktor #arcane viktor x reader #viktor arcane #viktor x reader #viktor x you #arcane jayce #jayce #arcane netflix #red string of fate #red string of destiny #red string au #soulmate alternate universe #soulmate au #soulmate #gender neutral y/n #gender neutral character #gender neutral reader #gender neutral #gn!reader #viktor x gn reader #heimerdinger #the academy arcane #beginner #beginner writer #writer #queer #queer writer

[sirloozelite]

SLE’s Star Wars Hunger Games: Season 5 - Swtor Edition: Episode 12 - The Final Six (Season 5 Finale)

And so we reach the end. Six tributes remain. By the end of this episode, five will be dead, and one will be victorious above the rest. It’s time to find out who is the best Swtor companion... at least according to the Hunger Games Simulator!

As it stands, we have T7-01, Doc, Tanno Vik, Kaliyo Djannis, SCORPIO, and General Garza left. So, without further ado... on with the show!

Night falls once again. How are the final six doing?

Looks like a bit of a mixed bag for everyone.

Day dawns again... and with it...

Not really a surprise that Kaliyo and Vik are the ones out hunting really? But SCOPRIO practicing archery is equally as dangerous!

As the sun sets, so too does the danger rise?

Poor Kaliyo is being triple teamed. Not a good time for her!

OH! Man down! Man down! Or perhaps Droid down would be a better expression! R.I.P T7-01... you were so close buddy. And with that @swgoji2001​, you are out! No victory five times in a row for you I’m afraid. Sorry.

The sun rises on the five left alive.

Who gave Kaliyo a hatchet?! And Doc... what did you do!?

Another night falls. How many more will our victims see?

Kaliyo and Garza?! Good god! And good for you Doc!

SCORPIO....you manipulative bitch! R.I.P Tanno Vik! Five becomes four!

The sun rises. I’m not sure how many more times I can say this in unique ways.

Ok... so the final four don’t seem to be getting along then? I guess they can sense the end is near.

Ok then... never mind. They all seem to be getting along during the night. 0_0

....what the hell is going on?! Are you guys going to kill each other or not!

(Insert comment about night falling again here)

Doc and SCORPIO have teamed up for the night it seems. Meanwhile Garza can’t start a simple fire!

...well... that’s a bad way to go. R.I.P Kaliyo Djannis. Four becomes three. And with that death @rangerslayer-97​, you are out. But don’t fret.. because you are the last person to be out... which I suppose means you win bragging rights. That must be nice. :)

Garza continues to prove she isn’t worthy of the rank of General. And how the hell did Doc manage that?!

Why is everyone so nice at night?! Garza... you might regret that!

Garza and Doc are out hunting whilst... Wow... for crying out loud SCORPIO. So much for your heuristic self improvement! R.I.P SCORPIO. We are down to the final two people! Garza or Doc! Or will die horribly... and who will win?

HOLY MOTHER OF.... THAT’S IT FOLKS... IT’S ALL OVER! R.I.P General Garza! Taken down by falling victim to the silver tongue of Doc of all people!

And we have a winner!!! Congratulations to Doc! He earns to badly drawn golden crown of awesomeness and is officially the best Swtor companion of all time... according to the RNG of the Hunger Games Simulator!

Now it’s time for some final stats and record of how it all went down!

And so it ends! At long last I’m sure! XD I doubt I’ll do another of these honestly. Don’t want it to overstay it’s welcome as I fear it might have done this season. Either way, I hope the ride was entertaining enough. And congratulations once again to Doc for winning, as well as @rangerslayer-97​ for having the last champion standing in Kaliyo. Bye bye now! :)

#hunger games simulator #swtor #swtor companions

[gonehollywoodrp]

CONGRATULATIONS, VIK! your role of SAM CLAFLIN has been accepted and we’re happy to welcome you to GONE HOLLYWOOD! now that your application has been accepted, here are a few things that you should do and we’re looking forward to seeing you on the dash!

send your account in within 24 hours.

follow everyone on the blog roll.

follow all the tracked tags.

make sure you’re following all the guidelines for your new role.

send us a message if you’d like a link to our OOC blog.

OOC:

NAME/ALIAS: Vik

AGE: 29

TIME ZONE: EST

PRONOUNS: she/they

____________________________________

IC:

PREFERRED CELEBRITY: Sam Claflin

BACKUP CELEBRITY: Louis Tomlinson

CELEBRITIES GENDER: male

CELEBRITIES PRONOUNS: he/him

AGE & BIRTHDAY: 37 - June 27

CAREER: Actor

____________________________________

OTHER:

WANTED CONNECTIONS: Riley Keough, Emilia Clarke, Suki Waterhouse, Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth, Josh Whitehouse, Timothy Olyphant, Thomasin McKenzie

GUIDELINES PASSWORD: rfp.

DO YOU WANT YOUR CELEBRITY INCLUDED IN THE GOSSIP BLOG?: rfp.

TRIGGER WARNINGS: rfp.

____________________________________

ANYTHING ELSE:

MISC: He’s got two kids with Laura Haddock, a son named Pip and a daughter named Margot and he’s single.

#gonehollywoodaccepted #celeb rp #hollywood rp #fame rp #famous rp #plotless rp #celebrity rp #submission

[fnaf-hereafter]

Part 9, Chapter 3

How can one man cause such pain for people he once seemed to care for, indeed? But these we’ve already met cannot be the only ones affected… Perhaps we can meet other sides of the dice, so to speak?

It was a few days later, the last of the day’s customers leaving with their tired children. Leyla waved them all goodbye from the doors and helped a few parents to rearrange how they were carrying the prizes or presents their kids had received. In the midst of the stragglers leaving, a middle-aged man hobbled his way in the door.

“Evening, Mr Marke-”

“Dallas, Leyla. I ain’t that old yet,” he corrected her, “And evenin’ to you too. Henry here?” He paused and leaned on the cane braced against his left arm.

“I believe he’s in his office, but Chester has the notes from the day,” the animatronic tilted her head, “You’re not finally thinking of retiring, are you?”

“Eeehhh, nah. I’ll be kicking til the day this old injury,” he raised his right hand slowly to point at the scarring on that side of his face, “Finally does me in. And that’s only taken 3 years so far!” While the right side of his mouth curved up in a smug grin, the left barely twitched in an attempt to match it.

“Of course… I’ll be cleaning up in the main party rooms, but if you nee- want any help with anything, you know where I am.” 

Dallas regained his balance with his canes and nodded. His hat tipped in a farewell gesture as he made his way back into Parts & Service to start his part of evening maintenance. At least his brace and canes didn’t seem to slow him down, but everyone assumed that was due to his stubbornness. He’d always been stubborn, mind, but after his incident with the toy animatronics at the last location, he’d bounced back and been even moreso.

Viktor and John waved as he passed them at the arcade’s prize counter, “Hey, Dallas! How are you holding up tonight?” John asked. 

“As sturdy as ever so far. I didn’t know you worked the toy counter, Vik.”

Viktor chuckled, holding up one of the signs meant to rotate through a few encouraging messages or notes of congratulation for kids as they picked out prizes, “I don’t, but as the man who knows best how to handle these, John asked for my help. Stupid thing seems to have busted itself though, it’s not wanting to display half of its pixels.”

“Eh, knock it on the counter a time or two. Sure that’ll get it runnin’ again,” Dallas joked.

The two men laughed. Viktor shook his head, “I don’t think percussive maintenance applies here. But I’ll make sure it’s working by tomorrow, John.” 

“Thanks, Vik. I gotta finish restocking and get out of here. Diane and I have a date tonight and I don’t want to be late,” John beamed as he pulled some candy boxes from behind the counter.

Viktor picked the sign up to give him room to set them down and started back to the technicians’ area, “Well, have fun. Don’t come in hungover!”

“Yeah, yeah… Have a good night yourself.”

Vik nodded and got the door for Dallas before they both disappeared into the back rooms of the restaurant. 

Across the arcade, Tessa and Fritz were checking on one of the smaller, simpler animatronics that just cycled through some voice lines to greet and cheer on the kids. It was meant to resemble Balloon Boy, but after one too many hits it was needing some serious repairs.

“Jeezus… how did kids manage this??” Fritz asked, picking up the left arm that had been ripped off, “Actually… don’t- don’t answer that. I’ve learned kids have a habit of breaking just about anything.”

She nodded, “Yep. Keeps us in business. Jeez, the fiberglass got cracked to pieces on him…This thing was supposed to last years!”

One of the maintenance crew rolled up with a trash cart, “That a crack at the materials or the design?” he joked, “And do you want this one in the trash or in repairs?”

“Funny, Vince. Honestly…?” she sighed and took another look at the cracked fiberglass and ripped out wires, “Put it in repairs. I guess this is what my night’s going to be. Wish I could say we can trash it, but there’s a base installed in the floor for it so it’s not easy to get rid of.”

"Eh, they break it again we take the base out and put something else there," Vince shrugged and started hefting the broken off pieces onto his cart, "Honestly between Leyla and Ginny, I don't see the point in these things, plus we have staff members over here."

Fritz got to work at the base of the robot, taking out bolts that kept it in the floor, "Mr Emily said he was trying to diversify the animatronics? Show that not all of the ones we make are so complex? I dunno, but I agree, these things are redundant."

Tessa groaned and stood up to pop her back, “Get the bits back to repairs and wait for a bit on standby. I’m going to talk to Henry about it since we only had these things at the last location because of corporate thinking they were durable. Alec should be back there working on one of the arcade cabinets.”

Vince blinked, “He was… talking to Ginny in front of the Security office last I saw him? As he usually does.”

Fritz and Tessa gave each other a look, and she rolled her eyes, “Yeah. I’ll go find him after I talk to Henry. Unless you run into him first, Fritz.” 

“Will do,” He waved his tool at her as she walked off, “Jeez. These things look ancient on the inside. This wiring structure is…”

“From the 80s? Yeah, as much as the three in charge have tried to update things, I think they’ve had their hands full with… other problems. So, if you’re planning on sticking around, try to lighten the load for them?” Vince’s expression seemed to hide a lot more weight to his words than he wanted to convey. He seemed to do that a lot, though.

Fritz nodded, serious. Whether either knew or not, they were taking those words seriously, “I know they have a lot on their plates. Tessa’s admitted that Mr Emily used to be a lot more involved In everything, but after what happened to…”

“Annora and Charlie. It hit him hard. He wasn’t prepared for the missing children after their deaths. It’s not talked about often, but… it’s the truth. He and William were both hit by personal tragedy and rapidly so. It’s why the three of them stepped up the way they did. Viktor and Chester were his friends from before this whole business started.”

“Right… You were working with them back then, right? And I guess through everything else that’s happened… It can’t be easy for any of you with those two kids who went missing recently,” Fritz flinched, “Sorry- I don’t mean to reopen any wounds or bring back bad memories or anything-” He quickly apologized, “That is, I mean-”

Vince patted his shoulder to stop him, “It’s fine. I was there for it, but… Well, I’m still here, aren’t I? I wasn’t in the thick of it, and maybe that’s why I refused promotions. I know they may not talk about it as much, but if you’re deeply curious, I won’t mind too much.”

“Heh… Thanks, Vince. It’s… odd sometimes. I feel like I came into a sort of culture I don’t fully understand yet, but I’m learning it because history… almost seems to be repeating itself. Or maybe not?”

“.... I hate that you might be right. But… I think you might be right. I just hope this time we catch whoever it is before there’s a whole trail of bodies.”

The younger man nodded solemnly. In silence, both went back to work. There wasn’t much they could do themselves at the moment. They could only help everyone else and keep an eye out for any clues. That didn’t stop Fritz from slightly eyeing Vince as he wheeled a full cart back into Parts & Service. The older man didn’t seem like he was the threat… But he had been at the past locations as well as this one…

He shook his head and readjusted his headphones. No, Tessa, Viktor, and Chester had reassured him. They’d checked Vince themselves. And after what he knew, he trusted their word immensely. No, if the person who’d committed the first string of murders was still here, it had to be someone else. 

If it was the same person to begin with…

But he didn’t have those answers. And he had to wait for Tessa to answer the question on what they were doing with this broken robot. With the base finally off, he lifted it up and groaned when he heard a few pieces and parts clink out onto the floor. This was what he’d signed up for, after all.

Meanwhile, Tessa was knocking at Henry’s office door, “Henry..?”

The man looked up from a stack of files, “Hm? Tessa, what can I do for you?”

“Yeah, uh… remember those little greeter bots we had in the arcade area?” She stepped in and went to a chair.

“Mmh?” Henry looked back at one of the papers, skimming over the writing one more time before jotting something down.

“The, uh… the kids broke one and… I was wondering if we could replace them or just… get rid of them?”

He looked up now, “Broke- Broke? How badly..?”

“Eehh… looks like they threw the footballs at it from that touchdown game. Hard. One arm was torn off and I’m pretty sure Fritz is cleaning up internal parts while Vincent’s wheeling what we can gather back to P&S…”

“You have got to be kidding me… Can you get in touch with Shawn in purchasing then?” Several papers were shoved aside and another grabbed and rapidly written on.

“Uh, sure- But what for?”

“Well, if one is damaged that badly, the other won’t be far behind. You can try to fix it for some collector or other, but I’ve been trying to replace those things with an extra change machine and extra ticket counter for months now. Take the other one down and put them both in storage when the broken one is fixed.”

“Huh… Yeah, I’ll let Shawn know. Fritz, Vince, and I will get the pieces back and get it put together for… hopefully a decent home. I’m sure there’s plenty of buyers nowadays.” Tessa stood and started to leave before Henry stopped her.

“Hold on. There’s something else I need to talk with you about. If you’ll sit down and maybe glance over this while I explain?” He held up a slim folder with a few papers peeking out, “Granted, I”m fairly certain it’s going to be a short explanation.”

#fnaf hereafter #fnaf au #five nights at freddy's au #fnaf fanfic

[evikdpriagung]

20221029 #2 17.44 WIB

302/365 Days 11,882

Congratulation Jacey and Vikness, for being the Jakarta Fashion Week Icons 2023. JFW 2023 ini acara yang no drama-drama. Sat set sat set. Tema konsepnya keren banget apalagi pas d rooftop trus bawa kain. I wanna join loooh. 😊😊😊.

Source: @jfwofficial

#RealityShow #Series #Model #Photoshoot #Catwalk #Runway #JFWIcons2023 #JakartaFashionWeek #Youtube #Pancoran #Jakarta #Indonesia #Saturday #October #29th #2022

[heldvisionsarch]

👫- vik & deelook!

viktoriya and diluc have a very .  .  . fer/deth/ia eqsue back n forth. me and the pink water nypmh i pulled by being autistic vibes yknow

they’re more alike than either of them want to admit. it frustrates vik- she hates that theyre so similar despite everything. it’s also something of a creature comfort- it humanizes him a little as a man, and not the false gentleman in her eyes.

after their clash, viktoriya left him a single red rose with a card, embossed with an open birdcage- on his pillowcase ( she definitely broke into the manor to do so ). because ; as it is said in mondstadt- a rose’s meaning is not love and romance, but : as wine bottles are corked, so too are my lips sealed.

viktoriya often sings at the angel’s share- mostly to piss diluc off and cause him psychic damage with her words- but many have assumed that the two of them are in some kind of secret romantic relationship- with both of them getting congratulations to the confusion of both of them.

four headcanons. @resolutepath​

#˗ ˋ 🌠 out of ﹕ WELCOME TO THE CRINGE AND FAILZONE ! #˗ ˋ 🌠 worldbuilding ﹕ I'M SPRUCING UP YOUR GACHA GAME ! #˗ ˋ 📖 viktoriya passerine ﹕ THE NIGHTINGALE SONGSTRESS ! #resolutepath

[theveil-and-thepath]

Hi dear

First of all, 🎉🥳CONGRATULATIONS 🥳 🎉

I wish all the best for you (and your blog);)

Can I participate in the reading?

There's someone I know, let's call him Vik, what he thinks of me? I'll have something with him in the future? There's something he or the universe wants me to know?

There's also a girl that I would want to know about the same questions, we can call her little lamb (lol, it's her nickname )

My initials: A. T. 🦋

A card for you: temperance (It was the first letter that popped into my mind and also a card that I like the meaning )

Thanks for your time, and again, I wish all the best for u 🎈

Thank you for my gift, AT. and welcome to my blog!

 I’ll ask your first two questions, so I’ll ask about Vik. 

I’m not sure Vik has strong feelings about you to be honest, the cards make me feel like he thinks you two are too distant to form a strong opinion about you. I got the four of pentacles, five of pentacles, five of cups. What I get is that he thinks you’re someone who takes care of our business, doesn’t get in people’s way and may lean to the quiet side (maybe not having a large group of friends). 

I also got silence from the cards when it comes to your future together, it looks like you will decide to pursue something else or someone else because you’ll find him not responding to you the way you expect. For this I got the high priestess, eight of cups, knight of swords. 

I asked the last question, albeit it’d be one extra question, simply because I often ask for advice, and what I have is that maybe what you are currently feeling stems from memories you have or of feeling alone maybe. The page of cups, the hermit, and the six of cups tell you to maybe pursue something that gives you more joy and is more beneficial to your emotions. 

Intuitively, little lamb likes you more than Vik does, or at least maybe is more willing to talk to you and receptive to what you have to say. Vik seems more indifferent.

Game will be open for extra 24h

#The Veil replies #birthday game #free readings

[secretivemessenger]

Of course baby

I'll gladly give you butterflies anyday you want

It makes me happy I can <3

Vik

If your plan was to fluster me then congratulations you succeeded 🥹😫

#&vik — anon

[balsamfir-fics]

A Hope Never Forgotten (2/4)

Genres: angst, 99% canon, more angst, smut, childhood crushes to strangers to lovers, pining, more pining,

Pairing: Viktor/Female Reader

Word Count: approximately 7k

Warnings: 18+ for explicit smut (part 3)

Summary: You're Heimerdinger's adopted daughter, hoping to escape the burden of his legacy. He's your father's cherished mentee, the perfect protégé to take your place. Growing up together when Heimerdinger boards the young scientist at your home, you become an unlikely pair. You're inseparable, 16-year old Viktor thinks, until you steal his first kiss, upend his world, and leave without another word in the same twenty-four hours. Life goes on, and he thinks he might just get over you.

But when he sees you for the first time in over a decade later, hope rears her ugly head and resurrects long-dormant feelings. As you cross paths with him time and time again, you think that maybe, someday, you might stop running from the mistakes of your past.

Notes: PSA to GN/M readers/writers: please see the notes in part 3. Otherwise, this is unedited and was written in a cumulative 24-hour fever state, so be forewarned. Crossposted to Ao3 under the user balsamfir.

—--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“There’s a letter for you, my boy,” Heimerdinger says cheerily as he passes by his surrogate son. “I’m surprised to see it here at home; she told me she had been sending them to the lab address at the school. Peculiar – but then again, it is an exceptional time for you.”

An eighteen-year-old Viktor peers down at the professor, wondering who in the world ‘she’ is, but then a staff member presses a slim envelope into his hand. He looks down at the nondescript paper, immediately sliding his finger beneath the flap to break the adhesive. An all-too-familiar fragrance wafts from the paper – it’s faint, but he would recognize it anywhere. He hasn’t smelled that scent in years; he hasn’t set foot in your bedroom since the week you left. A thousand memories come flooding back and he clears his throat, shoving the envelope into his back pocket and grasping at his crutch.

Heimerdinger peers up at Viktor expectantly. “Aren’t you going to read it?”

“Later,” Viktor croaks. “At my desk. So I can respond.” It’s a lie, but Heimerdinger seems to buy it.

The old Yordle hums as he heads for another room in the cavernous house, happy to see a letter from you to Viktor. It mildly bothers him that Viktor’s face dropped as he opened the envelope, but he figures perhaps your romance had continued on pen and paper and that the boy might have been embarrassed to have read the letter in company.

Heimerdinger does not know you have lied to him incessantly, preempting any possible suggestion for you to meet Viktor on your very few and very short visits to Piltover (you stay with boarding school friends) by telling your father that Vik was the first person you met upon return and that he shouldn’t say anything to Viktor about it – as well as writing to your father to say that you were sending letters to Viktor at the high school lab. He chalked it up to teenagers seeking privacy; instead you were orchestrating your avoidance and making yourself scarce.

Dear Viktor,

Congratulations on your acceptance into the Academy – the youngest ever to be admitted, simultaneously with university acceptance! The workload will be no doubt impressive, but to you it will likely seem trivial – you and your beautiful brain have always been a league above the rest.

I am so encouraged to hear about you achieving your dreams (even surpassing them). It doesn’t surprise me in the least, but it is still something worth celebrating. I expect that word of your achievements will soon reach schools around Runeterra, and I look forward to hearing about what you do next.

Viktor notices that the letter is unsigned, and doesn’t say ‘I miss you.’ At his desk, dents in the paper beneath the brief text of the letter catch in the light – he tries to run graphite over them, to decipher what words might have been written on the sheet above, but there are too many crossed-out lines for him to understand. He thinks one corner of the sheet bears the imprint of the word ‘sparrow,’ but it’s too mangled for him to be sure.

He tucks the letter into the breast pocket of his waistcoat and later hides it under a tray in his well-worn toolbox. For years he looks at the toolbox and thinks of you, thinks of hiding his only proof of you sitting in something he interacts with daily and keeps by his side at almost all times, but over time he forgets about the letter as the tray is pushed further and further down, weighed down by new tools added to his collection and numerous spare nuts and bolts.

—--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Viktor tries to reach out after that, though it’s difficult to do so because you don’t leave an address (your anonymous letter had been packaged with items sent to Heimerdinger). Thankfully, he knows the address of your school in Ionia, but since you’re both so close to graduation, he isn’t even sure his letter will reach you before you leave.

The thought occurs to him that you might return home after graduation, but when months go on and his stint at the university and Academy begin, he abandons this hope. Once, on a day he feels particularly lonely and a shred of hope emboldens him, he asks Heimerdinger where your address might now be. The old Yordle looks thoroughly confused, as if he expected Viktor to know better (Heimerdinger tells him that he often finds out where you are from the postage; even then he can’t be sure, as mail travels so slowly). He never asks again, pushing his memory of you further back into the depths of his mind so it will hurt him less.

His research consumes him next; you are correct in that the workload is immense, and incorrect that it is trivial to him. Some days are harder than others, and on those days his mind still wanders to working out equations with you in your childhood play-lab – but he does his best to suppress those thoughts and focus – focus! – on the work and the work alone.

Over time, the urge to find you fades away, and he stops trying.

—--------------------------------------------------------------------------------.

For what it’s worth, his torment lasts only a month this time instead of a whole semester as they did after that single, unsatisfying letter. But because you’re in Piltover, and because he knows you are mere minutes away from him, the temptation to reach out to you is a beast to fight.

It’s only age and maturity that prevents Viktor from trying to contact you in the middle of the night when he wakes from a particularly explicit dream (nightmare, he corrects himself) about you. This allows his next dream to fade into something sweeter, something more mundane – a dream about a rewritten past. His mind switches between visions of him traveling with you in Runeterra in your early twenties, or visions of working in his lab with both you and Jayce by his side.

He wakes every morning in a foul mood because of the curse that is hope – everybody notices it, especially Jayce, who, bless him, asks why Viktor is so grouchy because ‘isn’t your sister in town?’ Viktor immediately hisses ‘she’s not my sister,’ raising Jayce’s eyebrows. But his labmate never mentions it again. Everyone else at the Academy is too scared to approach the topic, and it goes dismissed.

You don’t reach out at all during your few months in Piltover, a fact that Viktor is equally disappointed and relieved by. He hears through Heimerdinger that you’re incredibly busy (the Professor seems to intimate that you have been in extremely close contact with Viktor, and he plays along with the Professor’s assumptions while wildly wondering why you are keeping up with this charade). Once he braves a message to the Estate, but he receives a canned response of ‘Sorry, Vik, I’m here on business and don’t have much time.’ He can tell it’s an excuse, but he lets it go when he sees the accidental truncation of his name – only you have ever called him that, and those three letters only fuel Hope in his heart.

When he hears through Jayce, surprisingly, that you have left for other cities again, Viktor tries to pretend he’s alright – but his leg acts up again as if in protest for another two weeks after that.

Now, the dreams about you come somewhat frequently. Not nightly, like when you first descended upon Piltover months ago, but not never, like the two years before you returned. Still, he’s better at reining in Hope, and time makes any hurt less acute as it continues ticking on.

—--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A year after your few-month stint at home, Viktor crouches at a window seat of a noodle shop in the thick of winter – primarily because soup warms his thin body best, and because it’s one of few places near his apartment that’s open twenty-four hours. It suits his erratic schedule at the lab and allows him to remain somewhat fed, though sometimes his on-and-off flings with admiring mentees provides him with snacks that he mostly nibbles at before tossing at Jayce.

He sees a hooded figure across the street, their jacket seemingly too thin for the snow that falls gently into the streets of Piltover. The figure looks up in the direction of Viktor’s apartment building, pauses, then paces back. He watches the figure deal with its indecision before it shakes one of its boots to remove a clump of snow – he knows it’s you instantly from that movement, the familiarity of your habits making his lips curl into a smile against his will.

Fumbling in his pockets for cash, he downs a drag of hot soup before he leaps up as best he can and stalks towards the front counter to hurriedly pay. Viktor steps out into the snow, the fluff crunching beneath his shoes. In his haste he hadn’t buttoned up his coat properly nor affixed his hat to his head correctly – it’s impossible to do with one hand, and his feet only know to carry him to you.

He calls your name and you jump, startled. You know you’re in his area, and you now know you’ve been caught staring at his apartment building – a look of shame and sheepish guilt paints itself across your face.

Then it dawns on you. “Oh my god, Vik, aren’t you cold?” You know how easily the winter got to him; he had so little fat on his body to keep himself warm, and as a child you had sometimes taken it upon yourself to stoke the fireplace in his bedroom, or to crawl atop his bed and heat him through the covers. His heart seizes at the intimacy of the nickname and the instinctual question you blurt out. “And – heavens – it’s so slippery out here, why are you wearing the worst shoes for this?”

Against the rational part of his mind, his instincts release an indignant scoff. “I could ask the same of you; your jacket is clearly from Shurima and hardly appropriate for a Piltover winter. I should be offering you my coat instead.” His amber eyes raise a challenge to you, and a laugh threatens to bubble up from inside you.

But his last sentence and the warmth in his suggestion snap both of you back to the reality that you are not the best friends you once were; you are now strangers with an awkward, unresolved history. You both fall quiet, but you gesture at his crutch so you can hold it while he buttons up properly. Wordless, his fingers move quickly in the cold and he takes his crutch back while avoiding your fingers.

Viktor so badly wants to ask what you’re doing in front of his apartment building, but you speak first.

“Hextech is amazing, Viktor,” you say, and his heart is taken on a roller coaster ride from elation at the compliment to the cold drop of his full, formal name. You continue. “Truly. I could only come by once or twice a year before; only if I was passing through Piltover on the way to my next destination, and never for long. Now I come by for meetings so easily, making my work that much more efficient. What you’ve done is absolutely incredible, as I’ve always known you’d be.”

His chest swells at this praise, though your mention of pass-throughs raises so many questions for him. How often have you come home without his knowledge? Why haven’t you reached out – why, in the world, are you in front of his house?

Words tumble from his lips before he can stop them, but none of them ask the questions he truly wants answers to. Instead, his well-honed research brain speaks first, encouraged by your glowing remarks, and wishing to always validate his collaborators without taking credit on his own. “It wasn’t just me, of course. Have you met Jayce, my partner? We built it all together; it was his discovery and our refinement.”

The enthusiasm in his voice is palpable. You can tell he cares for Jayce dearly and respects him so much – Viktor immediately regrets the tone of his voice, realizing that he’s given away his hand and revealed that Jayce is the only person who has come remotely close to matching what he had with you – though not quite, and not in the same way. He knows you understand that he’d never introduce you to someone he didn’t deeply care about, and the glassy, faraway look you get on your face makes him wish he could retract his words. But you smile, and the vision is so breathtaking that he nearly forgets his regret.

“Next time, Viktor,” your voice is tinged with a slow sadness, but he can hear the relief in your voice. You’re so happy he has someone to cherish and to be by his side. For years you wondered if he had been as lonely as he was before he came to the Estate, and you’re heartened to know that there’s someone who truly has his back.

Of course, throughout the years you have learned far more about Viktor than you have allowed him to learn about you. Heimerdinger kept you updated, and mutual friends from high school sometimes responded to your letters (you, of course, told them the same universe of lies that you fed your father, carefully crafting any questions you had about Viktor so not to arouse suspicion). This is how you learned he was wildly popular at university, particularly among younger co-eds; you had long know he had a certain, highly attractive appeal (he hadn’t believed this when you were teenagers), and through the grapevine you were content to hear that he had some relationships and partners in that sense – though the fact that you couldn’t be one of them still stung. It was the letters you sent to everyone else but him that kept you informed of his successes, and it was Heimerdinger’s glowing prose that alerted you to the wonderful accomplishments Viktor and Jayce made (for two years though, you were on the receiving end of Heimerdinger’s ire and worry, as your father had been surprised to hear that Viktor, his protege, went behind his back to continue developing magic). For those two years before they stabilized the Hextech crystal, you were beside yourself with concern, but rather than give into the instinct to run home and shake some sense – and fear of danger – into Viktor, you threw yourself into your work as a fundraiser.

Viktor bitterly wonders if there will be a ‘next time,’ considering the fact that everyone else thinks you’ve been meeting each other but you have never crossed paths with him before today.

“It’s been so long,” he says quietly, the words laden with history and meaning. You melt internally, but you’re too busy trying to protect him from your different lifestyles and career goals. Even so, you soften somewhat, your face taking on a gentler, more wistful look.

“I know,” you admit, and encouragement soars into Viktor’s heart. You know! You can recognize the ocean between you – it’s not only him thinking about it! “We’re both very busy, though.”

“I can make time,” he insists, cringing inwardly at how eager he sounds as he takes a step toward you.

Your heart soars at the tenderness in his voice and one of your boots mirrors his step, inching closer. But you stop yourself before you lose your calm and give into his gentle pleading. Why can’t you make the time for him, too? You ask yourself. The answer, however, is clear; you dug your own hole, and you can’t give it all up when Viktor’s career is only just beginning in earnest. You can’t be a distraction, you can’t be someone he pours his hope into when you are barely ever home. A small part of you wonders if you are avoiding Piltover still because you’re too scared – because your company is thriving and Hexgate travel might someday enable you to be based at home – but you ignore this as you muster up the courage to step forward for real and squeeze Viktor’s thin forearm gently.

“We’ll see,” you tell him – unwilling to lie to his face this time, and you turn away without another word.

In your wake, he is confused by a multitude of emotions. Viktor sighs, wondering if this is just what it must be like to have you in his life again, and he places his palm over the spot you seared into his forearm as he watches you retreat.

—--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

He starts noticing your visits more in the following months, not because you reach out necessarily but because the fundraising and diplomatic event planning organization you work for becomes a big name in Piltover. It expands its local office, and he begins to see its name in the press and over the radio several times over.

Viktor becomes intimately acquainted with the team you work on. Not personally, of course, but simply because your team becomes notorious for hosting the most lavish galas in the city center; other teams at your company typically do not get the largest contracts, so if the city is abuzz with some high-profile shindig, he figures you must be here, working the job.

It puzzles him because event planning and, frankly, rich-people-schmoozing is so different from what he thought you would end up doing. As a kid you were always upset with the stuffiness of upper-crust society, much less academia, and it was something you shared with him in confidence. He worries that he didn’t know you as well as he thought he did when you were younger, and a cynical part of his brain reminds him that yes, this is fact – that you were able to blindside him with your departure was proof enough that he had no idea who you were.

But Hope, his fickle mistress, clings to him, even as he lies in bed after a romp with a girl Jayce told him to at least have a few dinners with. He politely parts ways with her a few weeks later, and the experience of having yet another short-lived fling that leaves him feeling emptier than if he hadn’t tried to date sours his already-delicate for a few days.

He tries to contact you again, leaving his business card at your office (though he knows you already know how to contact him) and calling into your office to set up a meeting through your secretary. Each time he gets the same response; your schedule is booked. One small comfort is that even Heimerdinger seems to have a difficult time getting a hold of you – while he feels less alone in his abandonment, he also wonders if you’re now avoiding your father so as to reduce your lies.

What he doesn’t know is that every time your work takes you back to Piltover, you sleep poorly, tossing and turning with his business card frayed beneath your fingertips, wishing to call you at the lab (you know he’s likely awake still). You resist the urge to run to him and try to pick up the pieces of your friendship, but you are increasingly worried you will not be able to keep your calm the more he tries to reach out.

When his invitations and efforts slowly cease, it’s a small relief and loss. During nights where your guilt and loneliness get the best of you, you head to your desk, pull out a sheet of embossed paper, and write another message to tuck into your encyclopedia of secrets.

—--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Three years later, at the age of thirty-one, you’re offered (no – commanded to take) a position at the main office in Piltover. Without much of a choice, you return to your father’s home, finally settling into permanence.

It’s a difficult adjustment at first; you’ve much outgrown your childhood room and prefer not to be there, haunted by your memories – so Heimerdinger offers you a guest suite instead. This works better; it has an adjoining office you can use on the days you don’t have to take meetings in downtown, and is otherwise decorated for a grown woman, not a pre-teen child. You try to avoid the sad gaze in your father’s eyes when he hears you leaving for your corporate, largely unscientific job – you know the dream of you following in your parents’ footsteps still lives on in his heart, but you tell yourself he already has Viktor and the other kid, Jayce, for that.

Over time, you settle comfortably into Piltover. You grew up here, after all – a whole world of adventure can’t change that fact. And there’s still so much work to do; you’ve kept up-to-date with the goings-on at home, and know that the lanes of the Undercity have changed so much – a community of people in need, trapped by an economy based on narcotics. Your days are filled with work at your two jobs, and you have little time to even eat with your father on most nights.

It’s your work, actually, that forces you to cross paths with Viktor in more regularity. Not at first, not exactly, but you’re forced to begin working more closely with Councilwoman Medarda and Councilman Talis, particularly as they ramp up in fundraising efforts to advance the next generation of Hextech. When you finally meet Jayce face-to-face, you begin to understand why Viktor spoke so highly of him.

You are eventually asked to come to the lab, primarily to see the current prototype of the Hextech crystal and new inventions the team have to offer. They’re to be featured at the next charity gala, and while you try your hardest to avoid the excursion, you are eventually wheeled into the lab by Councilwoman Medarda herself.

The first meeting is awkward; Jayce looks at Viktor expectantly, like Viktor should be conducting some sort of introduction – but you’ve already met everyone, so there’s no need. You sit back and watch at first, trying to wrap your mind around the technology. For the most part, you can follow along because Heimerdinger faithfully told you about the Hextech crystal, disclosing all of the features he came to like, and all of the worries he had about potential dangers. You put your work brain on autopilot, your mind noting down only the necessary details for arranging invention exhibits for the gala – what you really focus on is the dynamic between the two men. Viktor’s assistant Sky Young tries to help you, taking care of the paperwork for loaning out prototypes for any exhibits, but you’re too distracted. (You do notice, however, how sweetly she treats Viktor; you’re glad he’s got a great assistant to work with and care for him).

Viktor and Jayce dance around each other easily, and you can tell how much the younger man cares about your childhood friend. The respect is apparent in Jayce’ eyes, and even when they disagree you know they are capable of understanding their common ground: research and improvement.

You realize that if you’re to be in Viktors circles like this, you need to be more careful with how you reintegrate into his life – not only for him, but for your own heart. It takes you a few more weeks, but after this first donor gala is behind you, you find that it becomes easier to be around him without feeling like you need to run away.

In time you understand that your love for him may never fade, but you have accepted that Viktor holds a special place in your heart that none of your other brief romances could equate to. You have also accepted that you will never tell him – it is unnecessary. It’s enough for you to be back in his good graces and in his proximity; he clearly has enough people around him who watch over him and support him, and he doesn’t need you to fill the same role you did when you were younger.

It’s when it dawns on you that Miss Young has a bit of a crush on her boss – a flare-up of jealousy lasts all but two seconds as you conduct some design work at the lab for a separate, closed-door charity event with more immersive prototype demos. You see the way she predicts his needs and tries (valiantly) to make sure he sleeps and eats. You can be content with someone like her taking his heart, you think. A part of you says you’re lying to yourself, but your rational brain knows you have no right to him. Not anymore. You lost that opportunity when you left him in the dust.

At home, you sit in your adjoining office, another sheet of embossed paper in front of you. Somehow, all these years, you’ve managed to maintain your habit of writing to Viktor. Sometimes the subject of your letters seems fictional – now that you’re permanently based in Piltover, the charade is up. But your pen never stops; by now, this has become the way you process your feelings. The act of writing them allows them to mostly leave your system, never to be acted upon, left to be forgotten.

—--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As weeks go by, you find yourself settling into an easy cadence with Jayce and Viktor, sometimes with Mel (as Councilwoman Medarda insists you call her) in tow. When the four of you meet, either to discuss potential avenues for Hextech to pursue, you find yourself paired with Viktor on the sidewalk or when seated at a table. (You share knowing glances with Viktor, both clueing in to the obvious attraction between the lab’s greatest benefactor and the young councilman).

It’s awkward at first, but over time it almost seems… normal to be by his side, laughing and drinking, trading stories and dreams. You have yet to be alone with Viktor, but you have purposefully orchestrated all of your attendances to ensure that at least one of Mel or Jayce or Sky will be present if Viktor is there.

Just a precaution, you try to reassure yourself. Best not to risk it.

—--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Weeks later, you look up from the quadrangle, seeing a faint light flicker from the laboratory window. A quick glance at your wristwatch tells you it’s rather late, which is normal for the two innovators, but so is both of them missing dinner for the sake of scribbling away at their notes. Supper for you had been rather light, so you head into the building to see if the two might be pulled away from their work for a few bites together.

Light shines through a crack in the door, but you don’t hear much from the other side. You push the door open and stride in. Your eyes try to adjust to the room; it’s much darker than the brightly lit hallway. As you scan to the left, you see a quivering burst of blue light – the Hextech crystal he’s been working on manipulating. But in front of it you see a plane of pale white spreading out beneath a mop of dark textures that catch the light radiating from the Hextech crystal.

It takes you a few milliseconds to understand what you’re seeing; the pale shoulder blades juxtaposed against the thick bands of metal bracing don’t register as shirtlessness to you until you blink. “Oh, my stars!” Dropping your bag and lifting your hands to your eyes, you spin around to face the swinging door you just entered from for good measure. “Vik, I’m so sorry – I should have knocked –” His shortened nickname drops from your lips on accident in your shock.

“It’s fine,” he says. There’s a strain in his voice you don’t exactly like hearing, and it gives you pause.

“Are you adjusting your brace?” The words are out of your mouth before you realize; muscle memory or instinct, whatever it was, your brain finally remembered what you had been looking at when you intruded upon the lab.

You hear a grunt that sounds affirmative, so you cautiously begin to turn back towards him. “Do you mind if I…?” You leave the question unfinished, knowing that Viktor understands what you’re asking.

A sigh comes from Viktor’s direction, then a defeated “sure.” You blink again in surprise, then lower your hands from your eyes before turning around fully.

It’s not that you had never seen Viktor shirtless before – it’s that the last time you had, you were both barely teenagers, and you had been a self-appointed assistant as Viktor learned how to care for his spinal brace. It had never been sexual, simply something that needed to happen in order for you to help him replace parts, fix joints, and help him reach parts of the device near his lower back every time he outgrew a brace. Countless times you’d helped him since he moved in, and a handful of times before that when he was only tutored at the Heimerdinger Estate. At first he hated your help, feeling scrawny and severely exposed under your gaze, but Heimerdinger was typically busy and Viktor didn’t like when staff tried to help – because, truly, they typically made his brace feel worse when they assisted. He needed the extra pair of hands, certainly, and it was better to have the help of a peer he could trust. You worked deftly and over time began to preemptively diagnose problems in his prototypes as he tinkered with them over the years, often hearing a bad squeak as he leaned over in class and having your eyes meet with the same knowing. Sometimes you helped oil a joint in a dark stairwell at school, away from the prying eyes of potential bullies – most of the time he knocked on your bedroom door and waved a wrench at you in greeting.

Now, your eyes dragging over the wiry muscles in his back, you wondered who had helped him in the years of your absence and avoidance. And now, you also see his body in a new light; you are acutely aware that he is shirtless, whereas when you were younger there had been nothing remotely noteworthy about it apart from the fact that he didn’t quite go around showing other kids his spinal brace.

You expect that his ‘sure’ had also come from a place of reawakened habit. As you scan the machinery helping to support his core, you see very little about it that’s familiar to you. In your teens you had seen Viktor devise several different models, each upgrading the last, but this iteration was the most sophisticated you’d ever seen. Granted, it had been over a decade, but even so you weren’t sure you could help at all with this new piece of tech.

Everything about this feels so foreign; you were both now thirty-two, well beyond the other side of puberty, both grappling with this odd tension that has plagued you for so long. You’d seen plenty of undressed men and women before, and so had he, judging from the stories that were relayed to you by old friends, but he had never been this bare before you since you left for your global adventures.

And yet the intimacy of this moment is equal parts strangely familiar and exotically supercharged. The air crackles around you, though perhaps it’s the humming Hextech crystal spinning and morphing at his workbench.

You crouch down to better get a look at his handiwork; it brings you impossibly close to the pale skin of his torso and your mind provides an intrusive thought: how soft would it feel beneath your fingers? Beneath your lips? You clear your throat and shake your head to get rid of the thought, and your eyes wonder if they just saw Viktor shiver from the proximity of your breath.

“Um,” you start intelligently. “How can I help?” You feel stupid; you’d both slipped into an unconscious habit, pulled in by that aggravating, constant magnetism that kept you uncomfortably close together – but now that you were here, your face inches from his smooth skin, you realized that there may have been no good reason for you to be here, ‘helping.’ Without the guise of assistance, you are merely an adult woman barging in on a shirtless and vulnerable adult man – you will your pupils to stay their same size and try to control your breath to keep your heartrate steady, but you fail as it continues to thunder in your ears.

Viktor chuckles, his brilliant brain immediately picking up on the source of your stress. “I may be several models upgraded from the technology you’re familiar with,” he intones, voice sounding distant as he’s faced away from you. “But despite all of my scientific achievements, I, unfortunately, remain rather inflexible and thus unable to easily reach some parts of my back.”

You let out a shaky laugh and crouch down, leaning closer. Your breath fans out against Viktor’s skin, and he gives an involuntary, but thankfully imperceptible exhale at the sensation. Every (working) nerve in his body is on edge, his system a livewire as every inch of his skin seems to scream for more. Easy, now, he pleads with himself. Viktor is used to his body betraying him, but not like this; it only rebels in this way when it comes to you, whether it be during that fateful, heartbreaking kiss or in the many nights he’s lain in bed conjuring up fictions of you. He thought he’d have been much better at controlling this urge within him after he started burying you in his memories and his heart, but the last few months have undone all the discipline and work he put into blocking you from his mind – from his soul.

Forcing your fingers to be stable (they itch to be anything but, too fraught with anticipation to want to keep still), you splay them across the warm metal and run them over the smooth edges of Viktor’s latest spinal brace. It’s excellent engineering, but you expected nothing less from your remarkable friend. Your fingernail catches on a lip, though, and you see that a section has moved a millimeter out of place. You frown; it looks like a dent, which could only mean that Viktor might have been hurt.

Unbeknownst to you, Viktor’s hands clench into fists above his knees; it takes everything in his power to stay upright and not melt into your touch. He somewhat regrets augmenting the brace to funnel sensation from the metal surface into his nervous system – it is a useful feature for safety purposes, and naturally for bedding the temporary people he’s had in the past, but with you running your fingers along his back like that it becomes a bit of a curse.

“Viktor, did you –”

“I fell the other day,” the brutal honesty surprises even him – he wanted to keep the negative side effects of his Hextech crystal experiments secret, but the words were out of his mouth faster than his brain could process them. That was… not something he did anymore, not something he has done since you left him seventeen years ago.

“Are you–” Your voice is sharp, alarmed, and your fingers stroke at the dent in deep concern. You still have not caught on that he can feel every caring stroke, that he can feel every bit of the concerned emotion you imbue into your touch. You shouldn’t be touching him that way, he thinks. That’s not the way friends show their care for each other.

“I’m fine,” he says tersely, and distracts himself from the feel of your fingers on him by reaching for a tool. “Here,” he twists, passing it to you while simultaneously edging away from your touch. “You know what to do.”

He catches the smile you offer him before he turns around, and it goes straight to his heart.

You immediately get to work, wedging the tool between two plates of metal and working to dislodge the dented piece. (Viktor, thankfully, programmed the brace to only receive certain forms of sensory input during maintenance sessions). Your fingers work quickly, but the dent makes it a bit of a challenge as everything about his brace is so precisely aligned that it interferes with removal.

“Who helps you with this now?” You ask quietly, your voice joining the hum of the Hextech crystal. You try to make it sound light and nonchalant, but the content of the question is so loaded that it’s impossible to ignore its gravity.

“Nobody,” Viktor admits readily. “I make very creative use of mirrors and extensions to my tools.” He gestures towards an open drawer in his workbench; you rise on your heels to take a look, and see several collapsible arms that seem like Viktor can operate on one end and have the other mimic the action, with the tool curved around his waist or over his shoulder. “Like the Hexclaw;” he waves at a contraption sitting at a workbench in the center of the room. “You’ve seen me working on it. Though I designed it for other applications, it proves quite useful at times, though it’s not yet as precise as human hands. That, and using mirrors requires some mental gymnastics to reconcile the movements of my hand in the glove with the motions of the Hexclaw.”

“Not even Jayce?” The surprise in your voice is apparent. You cough to cover it up, but you’re really trying to hide the fact that you’re somewhat pleased nobody else could take your place.

Viktor laughs. “He tried, once,” his tone is playful, teasing. “But let’s just say that fine-tuning should be left to me and not a giant-hammersmith.”

“Or Sky?” You sound softer now, likely because you’re not entirely sure you want to hear the answer. Half of you would be happy for him if she was there to provide this support; the other half of you would likely be envious. Shaking your head to get rid of your thoughts, you hastily cover up your tracks. “Never mind, forget I asked.”

He’s quiet for a bit, and you wonder what’s running through his mind. On his part, Viktor believes he understands why you ask about his assistant specifically. He’s not blind; he’s heard through titters in the hallway that she’s sweet on him. Truth be told, he reminds her of someone he met once as a child, while he tinkered away at a toy boat. He likes her, surely, but their relationship has always been strictly professional on his end at minimum and brotherly at most – he’s certain that she’s attracted to his mild demeanor and his supposed brilliance. While it’s nice to be wanted, he is fond of her platonically and knows Miss Young deserves better than a man who has spent sixteen years unable to leave the shadow of his teenage love.

“I believe it would be…” he pauses. “... inappropriate and well against workplace code for me to add this sort of task to her list of duties.”

That much is true. The mentor-mentee relationship could be easily abused, and given her not-so-hidden crush on him, it would be extremely unwise.

You smile slightly, pressing the pads of your fingers against the functional part of the brace and pulling at the dented sheet. Above you, Viktor straightens, spine ramrod-straight at your touch – you interpret it as him predicting your movements and helping you dislodge the piece, but to him it was his body moving of its own accord, reacting to the warmth of your gentle hand. He swallows thickly.

“I got it!” You crow, tossing the warped metal behind you and expectantly holding out your hand. Viktor places the replacement segment into your palm, his fingers brushing against yours, and you feel a shock go through your system as all of your body focuses on the brief contact.

You exhale, concentrating on keeping your fingers steady as you tuck the new piece into place and screw it in tightly. Before you finish, you run your thumb along the brace to ensure that no edges are raised and that your handiwork fits perfectly into his engineering, and Viktor almost sags against the way it feels like endearment.

After you finish, you straighten, and Viktor stretches from side to side to test the fit. You stay behind him mainly out of politeness, but he stands and turns towards you anyway. It surprises you, and you frantically try to find a polite place to keep your eyes. His face! Your brain screams at you, but it’s too late and you’ve already seen his chest. He’s thin, oh so thin, with his eye sockets looking deeper and darker than ever. It breaks your heart. You want to collect him in your arms and feed him all of the things you tasted in your travels (knowing, of course, that he’d likely reject the mothering and stick to his simple culinary tastes), but it’s not your right to do so. You aren’t his, he isn’t yours.

He notices, however, as your face flickers through a series of interesting expressions – he’d always been an astute observer, a trait he considered a double-edged sword. He sees your pupils dilate, but he also sees the pull of your mouth – a tell of yours that he remembers as a sign of concern. It’s confusing; he’d turned around partly as an experiment to see how you’d react, and if you’d widened your eyes with telltale signs of arousal as he’d hoped then perhaps he might allow himself to indulge in the feelings in his heart that he’d tried to keep dormant – if you turned away in politeness instead, he would shutter his feelings away for what he hoped would be the final time. But now, with you facing him straight-on, with mixed signs, he remained in purgatory, not knowing whether his hope was foolishly placed or correctly reinstated.

What Viktor doesn’t like, however, is that pull of concern. He knows with you it’s not pity, but years of neglect from the person he loved most twist at him and warp his negativity. Self-defense mechanisms try to make you into an enemy, someone who will inevitably hurt him or belittle him, even though he knows (knows!) that you would never see him as weak.

“Are you done here?” He asks, amber eyes darkening with cold, and he reaches for his shirt. The hurt parts of him rejoice, knowing they have cut you off from whatever it is you came here to do. To some extent, the hopeful parts of him also find some comfort in pushing you away – the intimacy of your mechanic’s routine had been overwhelming to his senses and his soul and he needed some time away from you to process it all and recover.

“Oh! But–” You look startled, and your mouth opens as you start to say that you’d come to see if he’d want to have dinner with you. Instead, you catch yourself and close your lips. “Actually,” you feign ignorance. “I’ve forgotten what it was,” you lie, and Viktor catches the flicker of sadness in your eyes. “Sorry again for barging in on you.” You rush towards your fallen bag, stooping to pick it up and leave the lab as quickly as possible.

The door swishes shut behind you, leaving Viktor alone in the dim lighting as he has been for countless nights. “It’s quite alright,” he says aloud as a response to your apology, and he finds that he sincerely means it – though not enough to have said it to you directly. The words ring out through the air. The Hextech crystal shifts again, different runes sliding into different positions, and hums.

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[undercityviktor]

Hey I'm not sure if you're taking writing requests or not but after reading your one about the lab confessions and seeing that post you made about Jayce bringing Viktor food I would like to request something based off of that prompt for sure!

Hello Anon! You’re my first Anon on this sideblog, so congratulations! Have a glass of sweetmilk on me. Thanks for reaching out!

I’m not specifically taking requests for fics, but I’m always up for inspiration if the mood strikes, and I’m really glad to hear you enjoyed the Late Night Lab Confessions story. I hope to put it on AO3 if I ever get the set-up email back from them (I have an account already, but I wanted one specifically for Arcane shenanigans). So far all I seem to have written is super fluffy jayvik stuff...

I did actually start a fic based on my earlier idea, but it ended up getting all in-depth and angsty first before I even got to the foody bit, so I’ll see what happens with it. Here’s the unedited first 1000 words or so though?

Rating: General, sfw Wordcount: 1180 Content: Viktor’s unhealthy work habits means he has a tendency to neglect his other needs. Jayce sees this, and starts to make an effort.

___

It had only taken two weeks of sharing the lab with Viktor for Jayce to come to loathe the smell of instant noodles.

“You know those aren’t supposed to be eaten as, like… regular meals, Vik?” he said as Viktor coiled a wad of bland noodles around his fork and levered it into his mouth without taking his eyes off the notebook in front of him.

Viktor didn’t respond immediately, swallowing down the lump of rehydrated carbohydrates and sodium with obvious distaste.

Jayce chuckled. “Why do you eat them if you don’t like them?”

“They’re convenient,” Viktor mumbled around a final mouthful. That done, he scooted the abandoned, half-empty pot away from him over the desk with the back of his fingers and scratched something onto the page, adding to his calculations. His thick eyebrows were knotted in concentration and his shoulders had a particular hunch to them that spoke of a forthcoming all-nighter. Jayce tried not to sigh as he stumped over and picked up the remnants of Viktor’s ‘meal’ and went to drop it down the chute that led to the incinerators. Viktor didn’t even notice him remove it.

Five hours slid by after that without a word exchanged between them.

Jayce focused all his mental energy on the wiring up the prototype gauntlet, while Viktor remained bent over his calculations until Jayce stood, blinked prickling eyes, and cracked out his back and stretched his muscles with a grunt that turned into a muted roar of satisfaction at the tug and give of the stretch. When he looked back at Viktor, he found his lab partner looking at him.

“What?”

“Nothing,” Viktor said with a private little smile. “You distracted me, that’s all.”

“Sorry?” Jayce said as he crossed the room to peer over Viktor’s shoulder. “Holy shit, Vik,” he added in a reverent exhale when he saw the notebook. Almost every millimetre of the white paper bore some kind of scribble or notation, and as Jayce loomed behind him, he caught a slight but distinctive tremor in Viktor’s body. “You’re exhausted, Vik,” he said in gently. “We should call it for today. Come back fresh tomorrow.”

“Mmm,” Viktor hummed.

He tipped back just a fraction on the stool and his back came to rest against Jayce’s front. Jayce’s whole body lit up and he had to grind his jaw to stop the gasp of pleasure leaving his lips. Tentatively, he brought his big hands up to his friend and lab-partner’s shoulders and rested them there for a moment.

“You’re cold,” he said, scowling.

“Not particularly,” Viktor sighed without moving.

Beneath Jayce’s palm, he could feel the lump of the leather strap that held up Viktor’s system of relatively-new braces, but beneath that, he was sure Viktor was cold and trembling. The urge to run his fingers through Viktor’s thick, dark hair in a futile attempt at easing some of the tension in his body was almost overwhelming, but instead he let out a long, heavy sigh. “Come on. Let’s lock up.”

To his surprise, Viktor didn’t protest this time.

He simply nodded, and then began to shuffle forwards in preparation for standing. Beside him, the crutch that he had designed, and which Jayce had then made himself in the forge, leaned innocently against the desk, waiting.

Jayce stepped back to allow Viktor room to rise, but when Viktor got halfway up and let out a muffled yelp, Jayce darted back. “Vik?”

“Cramp,” Viktor grunted, clutching the desk with bird-like hands, shaking all over.

He cursed something in his mother tongue and pushed his reluctant body the last few degrees to upright, fumbling for the crutch that rested a few inches beyond his reach. Silently, Jayce slid it into his waiting fingers, and tried not to hover. Viktor never asked for help, but that didn’t mean Jayce wasn’t ready to give it in a heartbeat if Viktor needed him.

Except, Viktor didn’t seem to need him.

He didn’t seem to need anybody.

Jayce’s heart beat wildly in his throat as they walked to the doors and Viktor locked up behind them with trembling hands.

“You got plans for dinner?” Jayce asked with an affected casualness he hoped Viktor didn’t sense.

Viktor shook his head. “Not particularly. I’ll see what’s in the cupboards,” he smiled.

“Why don’t you come back to mine?” Jayce suggested, trying to rein in his desperately rearing hope. “I’ve got a huge bucket of my mum’s curry to finish — she packed me off with it yesterday after I went to see her, and there’s way more than I can manage.” After a heartbeat he added, “It won’t keep.”

Viktor paused noticeably, and the only sounds that filled the silence that stretched between them were the click-shuffle of Viktor’s cane and foot on the smooth floor of the corridor. “Alright,” he said with a little shy smile. “If you’re sure you’ve got enough.”

“Trust me, when my mum cooks, she cooks enough to feed a small army. I think you’ll love it.”

And to his surprise, Viktor did.

He even wiped his plate with the remnants of the soft flatbread Jayce had dug out from a cupboard and flung onto the table at the last minute, and when he sat back, there was colour in his cheeks again and a light in his eyes that had definitely not been there when he’d sat down at Jayce’s small garret kitchen table.

“Thank you, Jayce,” Viktor said, consonants soft and voice low. “It has been a long time since I made the time to enjoy a meal like that.”

Brilliant, effervescent joy filled Jayce’s chest and he beamed openly at Viktor. “We should do it more often,” he said, standing. If he sat still any longer, he thought he might burst. Viktor made to start clearing his plate too, but Jayce scowled. “No, you sit. I’ll get the plates.”

“But you cooked,” Viktor protested.

“I reheated it on the stove, Vik. It’s fine. You’re my guest tonight.”

The familiar yet incomprehensible mutterings of Viktor’s mother tongue followed Jayce as he set the plates in the sink and returned immediately. He could wash up after Viktor had gone.

“You want to sit somewhere more comfortable?” he asked, eyeing the sofa across the open plan room, but he could see Viktor’s response forming even as he asked it.

His friend shook his head, his lovely thick hair flopping across his forehead for a moment, and he smiled again. “No. I should get back. Thank you though. I… I enjoyed this.”

Jayce plastered a smile onto his face and nodded, though he couldn’t help the disappointment that lapped around the edges of his satisfaction.

It was a start, he mused as he watched Viktor’s departure down the corridor from his apartment in the eaves of a university hall.

At the end of the corridor, Viktor halted and looked back over his shoulder. A shy, bashful smile adorned his tired face, and Jayce grinned, waving.

It was a start.

___

Hope you enjoyed it! Please consider reblogging it if you did, because I’m a new sideblog and any shares I get is helpful.

Check out my Tumblr writing masterlist here. I’ll add an AO3 link when I get one too, for those who prefer reading on there instead.

Take care, and Happy New Year (almost!)

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