“Fascinating. The Arcane stirs within you,” the creature says, Viktor’s voice coming through distorted and cold.
The creature gently touches Mel’s shield and she hesitates. It’s brief, barely a moment, but it’s enough for the creature’s fingers to pierce through her defenses. Mel gasps. She knows that the creature in front of her is not Viktor —not their Viktor— but the way its touch sends a shiver down Mel’s spine makes her wonder. What if, what if, what if.
Her strength falters and her shield falls. Even if she knew what she was doing, she doesn’t think she could hold it much longer. Her body crumbles and she falls to the cold, hard floor, the impact knocking the wind out of her. She feels tired and, quite honestly, a bit nauseous. Mel’s body hasn’t fully adapted to her new reality and everything hurts.
As if she were detached from her own body, she sees Jayce charge at the creature. He lands a hit but then it moves away faster than she can register dodging Jayce’s attacks until he manages to get him in a chokehold. Mel shakily gets to her feet, grabbing onto the Council’s seat for support. She takes a deep breath and reaches inside of herself for her spark. It’s easy, almost instinctual and she can’t help but wonder if it was always like that or if her proximity to Hextech made it so. All Mel knows is that she can’t let Viktor kill Jayce. Her Viktor would never forgive himself.
Mel is ready to send her tendrils of magic out to intervene when the creature stops to talk, Viktor’s voice is devoid of emotion as he speaks. “I understand now. The Glorious Evolution is destined.”
The creature leans down, close enough to kiss Jayce, then it looks past him directly at Mel.
“Let us instead do this once again as partners.”
Jayce’s jaw clenches in anger, but Mel is looking at the creature, paying attention to the gold details lining its form, its elegant design that speaks of Viktor’s designs. Their Viktor. Somewhere under all of that magic, under those unseeing eyes and cold words, their Viktor is still alive. All they need to do is find him and bring him back to them.
“Viktor, let Jayce go.”
The man in question uses Viktor’s momentary distraction to push the creature back until it lets him go. Then he makes a grab for his hammer, but Mel is faster, snatching it out of his reach.
“Stop this now.” Jayce looks at her with a hurt expression, but she can’t tell if it’s directed towards her or Viktor. “We will go to you,” she announces.
Jayce immediately frowns. “Mel—”
“We will go to you,” she repeats, this time with conviction. “But you will not send any more of these… creatures to the city. You will give me your word or the deal is off.”
The creature cocks its head in a gesture that’s so like Viktor that it hurts Mel. He is in there. She will find him and bring him back or so help her God. Not even Death itself will stop her. She knows that now.
“Very well,” says the creature. “I will be waiting for you at your earliest convenience.”
The creature walks to the exit, leaving them to watch it strut elegantly out of the building. Belatedly, Mel calls after it, “wait!”
It stops immediately, turning with an eerie speed.
“Keep my mother away,” she asks. “She cannot see us there.”
The creature huffs, once again reminding her of their Viktor: Viktor sprawled out in the couch after finally solving a complicated problem, Viktor looking up at her from where he’s pinned to the bed by her weight, Viktor laughing at one of Jayce’s jokes in the afterglow. Viktor, Viktor, Viktor. It hurts, yet it makes her all the more determined.
“Very well.”
A moment later, the creature is gone.
“Mel, what the hell?” Jayce asks, finally reacting to her words.
“You may be ready to say goodbye, but if I learned anything from my imprisonment is that I don’t give up easily.” She puts her hood back on, then runs her hands over her stomach to smooth out the creases on her clothes.
“Mel, Viktor is gone. I killed him. This… this thing isn’t him.”
She hums as she walks down until she reaches the entrance to the Council room. Mel doesn’t need to look back to know Jayce is following her. Once the man reaches her, she tells him, “look, Viktor is still there. You cannot see it right now because your judgement has been clouded by your time in the other dimension. Mine has not. He is there. If he weren’t, he wouldn’t have come all the way here to fight you.”
“I think his goal was to convince me, to convince us, to become part of his cult. And you wanna do just that?”
They’ve reached a set of doors that will take them to a secret elevator to the undercity. She doesn’t have the keys to it and neither does Jayce, but after looking at Mel for a moment, Jayce sighs and opens the door with one push of his hammer. Mel smiles at him, touching his shoulder, “thank you.”
They walk side by side to the elevator, Jayce mumbling about useless missions without much conviction.
Jayce gasps as he sees Viktor, standing with their back to them as he studies something far away in the horizon. Mel can see why. She hadn’t seen Viktor as he left the Hexcore cocoon where he’d spent his days after the bombing, but she knew he had changed. Up to his neck, his body is painted in deep shades of purple lined with the same gold that now lines her own body.
When he hears Jayce’s gasp, Viktor turns around and Mel has to swallow a gasp of her own. His hair is longer and he’s now sporting a beard that suits him quite well. But what surprised her the most were the Hextech-blue lines coming out of his chest. If Jayce’s face was any indication, that’s the place where he had hit him a few days earlier. Below that, his back brace seems to be fused into his body, giving him an eerily robotic aspect. He doesn’t seem to be embarrassed or shy about his nakedness. If anything, it seems like he wants them to look at his transformation, to see his true self.
“Viktor,” Mel says, trying to break the silence that threatened to become awkward between them.
“Mel, Jayce. Welcome, is there anything you’d like to do before…?” he leaves the question hanging, as if he’s doing them a great courtesy by giving them a moment.
“As a matter of fact, yes,” Mel says, coming closer to him. She puts her hand on his cheek, softly, intimately, and closes the distance between them until their lips are less than an inch apart.
“Mel?” his voice comes out as honeyed as it was every time Mel would corner him in their lab. Mild confusion tints his voice and Mel knows she’s won. She knows he’s in there. Glorious Evolution or not, Viktor still wants her.
She kisses him, hard. His lips are warm and they open up to her immediately, the same way they’ve done hundreds of times before. Behind her, she hears Jayce gasp. She knows that he didn’t expect Viktor to be there, but she doesn’t know if his gasp is because they’re kissing —something that used to happen often enough that Mel and Viktor teased him for it— or if it’s Viktor’s reaction.
Viktor kisses her back, his hands coming up to rest on her hips, pulling her closer to him. The moment their bodies are flush against each other, energy crackles between them as a whip, its force enough to make them look up for the briefest of moments. They lock eyes, both surprised by the reaction, but not pulling apart.
“Was that—?” Mel begins.
“Mel… I–,” then he shakes his head as one of his hands comes up to her face, sliding to the back of her neck as he pulls her closer.
They kiss until Mel is gasping for air, Viktor’s mouth is trailing a path down the side of her neck. She feels lightheaded as she gets glimpses of Viktor’s own thoughts inside her head. The Black Rose had said she was a conduit, able to reflect someone else’s powers at them. She wonders if that means she can take Viktor’s power and use it somehow.
She can’t think when Viktor’s hands undo her robe and gently pull it down as his hands caress her skin. Mel is well aware that her body has changed, that she’s marked by the magic that runs through her veins, but Viktor doesn’t seem to mind. He drops a kiss on every spot that his fingers touch, worshipping her body as if it were sacred. Mel’s insides tingle with anticipation when his fingers undo her bodysuit. She trembles when Viktor’s mouth finds her breast, when it bites down on her nipple and a moan leaves her mouth.
Mel hears Jayce make a choked sound and turns her head in his direction, stretching her hand towards him. He doesn’t need any further invitation. Jayce drops the hammer and crosses the distance between him and Mel in long strides, grabbing her hand. While it’s not as intense as Viktor’s energy, Jayce’s entire body vibrates with Hextech. Whether this is borne of his time in the other dimension or his extended exposure to Hextech throughout the years, Jayce is as wrapped in the Arcane as Viktor is. Mel’s body takes this in stride, thin tendrils of magic running down her body to accommodate for this disturbance in her energy.
For his part, Viktor hasn’t stopped kissing her: her breasts, her stomach, her hips, her thighs. His fingers are teasing her, running lines up and down her inner thigh, stopping just short of touching her cunt. Mel turns her head to the side and catches Jayce’s mouth with her own. The man kisses her desperately, as if this was their last kiss and he had to make the most of it. She wants to reassure him, to tell him everything will be alright, but her thoughts short-circuit when Viktor runs his tongue over her cunt at just the right angle to make her shiver.
Viktor doesn’t stop, he licks and laps at her until she moans, and keeps going when Mel’s hands find his hair and grab a fistful of it. He hums, pleased with Mel’s treatment and continues, driving her closer and closer over the edge. When she gets there, she mumbles something about not stopping, but she’s not sure if she’s doing it out loud or in Viktor’s mind. All she knows is that Viktor complies, keeping his pace constant.
Mel’s knees buckle, but Jayce is behind her to keep her upright and hold her as tremors shake her body and she orgasms. She pushes Viktor’s face against her cunt and rubs her clit on his mouth with more force than necessary, riding out her climax as if she were claiming him.
Her body sags as if the strings holding her to reality were cut, but she manages to stay upright. Viktor’s hands hold her up just as Mel leans her body on Jayce. She can feel his bulge at her back, where his erection strains against his pants, but she doesn’t say anything about it. Not yet. She drinks in the moment a little longer, feeling Viktor’s adoring kisses making their way back up. When Viktor is back on her level, Mel grabs his face and kisses him, using all of her leftover strength to push him back until they find a wall.
Jayce follows after them and Mel feels his warm lips drop a kiss on her shoulder as she tries to swallow every bit of Viktor into her. She feels her magic flare up, golden tendrils exploring Viktor’s body, becoming familiar with all of the new nooks and crannies in his body. Jayce rubs his clothed cock against her ass, somewhat of a reminder that if Mel wants Viktor back, she needs to bring him back to both of them, specially Jayce, the most human of the two.
When Viktor comes up for air, Mel flips them over until her back is against the wall. Viktor gives her a curious look, but then Jayce’s hands are on him, pushing him towards Mel as he kisses Viktor’s neck. Once Viktor is pressed against her again, she hooks one of her legs on his thigh to keep him closer, running her fingers down the planes of his stomach, tracing the patterns on his skin until her hand wraps around his dick.
She strokes him, bringing the tip close enough to touch her cunt but not going in yet, and Viktor closes his eyes, humming in pleasure. For a brief moment, Mel can’t see Jayce’s hands on Viktor, but she hears a buckle and a zipper being undone and she knows Jayce can’t hold himself any longer. This is going to be quick and dirty and exactly what Viktor needs: if this doesn’t remind him of his own humanity, nothing will.
Viktor gasps when Jayce reaches between his buttocks, presumably to prep him before fucking him. His surprise doesn’t last long though, and after a moment, he says, “you don’t have to. I’m not that fragile anymore.”
Mel sees Jayce’s frown and almost teases him about it, but then Jayce’s expression changes to one of determination. He gently turns Viktor’s head to the side and leans down to kiss him as hard as he had kissed Mel. There’s some movement on Jayce’s part and before Mel can react, Viktor cries out as Jayce slides inside of him.
She takes a deep breath and slides Viktor’s cock inside of her, using her leg hooked on Viktor’s thigh to pull him closer and slide him in further. Viktor puts an arm on the wall to hold himself steady, while his other arm slides around Mel’s waist keeping her as close as possible. Jayce uses one of his arms to hold onto Viktor, while the other caresses Mel’s thigh, coaxing her leg into a position where it’s not in the way and it’s instead hugging both men closer.
It should be strange, to be having sex in this unknown place where anyone can walk in, where anyone can hear them, but it’s not. It reminds Mel of one particularly interesting Council session where Viktor and Jayce were explaining how their new invention would work while Mel sucked on a piece of candy. Both men were too distracted to give a good presentation and were told to come back when they had a better proposal. After dismissing them, the Council talked of other topics, but Mel excused herself saying she didn’t feel well. Viktor and Jayce hadn’t even made it home, they were making out in their lab only to be interrupted by Mel clearing her throat with a glint in her eye. When they turned to her, she discarded her dress and joined them, aware that just as she had come in, anyone else could. It was still one of the best orgasms she’d ever had.
She feels the same exhilarating feeling now, but it isn’t just being caught: it's the way her magic interacts with Viktor and Jayce, the way her skin reacts wherever they touch her. There’s an undercurrent of something else running through her veins and, as heat pools in the pit of her stomach and Viktor’s thrusts become more and more erratic, it feels as if they could level the whole of Runeterra with their bond.
Jayce grunts and his fingers tighten on Mel’s thigh as he pushes into Viktor, who moans louder when Jayce fucks into him with abandon, his mouth descending to bite on his shoulder. Mel feels it somehow, when Jayce climaxes, a surge of energy that catches her off guard and sends shivers down her spine. Viktor seems to be holding on by a thin thread as well, so Mel takes matters into her own hands and pushes her hips forward to meet each of Viktor’s thrusts.
Her magic surges when she comes, golden threads wrapping around her, around Viktor, around Jayce, pressure building until Viktor too climaxes and something akin to purple electricity explodes in a shower of sparkles around them. Viktor’s body sags against Jayce, but the man catches him before he falls.
“That good, huh?” Mel asks with a glint in her eye. She knows she sounds exhausted, but she can deal with the lack of poise if it means making her men smile.
Viktor looks up and says, “fuck. What am I doing?”
Jayce tenses behind him, but Mel stands straight and puts a hand on his cheek before speaking, “it seems to me it is pretty obvious.”
Viktor cracks a smile at her, “I meant”—he waves a hand around as if to encompass everything around him—“all of that.”
Jayce breathes a sigh of relief and wraps his arms around Viktor from behind in a bone crushing hug. “What matters is that you’re back.”
“I don’t think—”
Mel puts a finger over his lips to shush him. “Don’t.”
He nods, looking around at where they are. “How terrible would it be if I came with you?”
Jayce grimaces, but Mel stands up straight, her jaw set. “If they have a problem with you, they have a problem with me.”
“And me,” Jayce adds.
Viktor sighs, pulling away from Mel. She looks at him alarmed, but then sees that Viktor is picking up her robe. “I’m afraid no matter how much I wish to continue, you are needed elsewhere. Preferably wearing clothes.”
Finally, Mel smiles. This is their Viktor.
“Then what are we waiting for?”