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“I would like a movie Snowdown, one day,” Viktor says, eyes bright but mouth almost entirely obscured by the maroon scarf Ximena had knit for him two winters previously. “Something romantic.”
Jayce snorts. “You want to leave your big city partner for a rugged man in some quaint small town?”
“Maybe I want to be the rugged local,” Viktor whines, leaning his shoulder further into Jayce’s as they watch an ice skater fumble from the comfort of their nearby bench. “Maybe I want to kiss you under a tree. With the lights. And snow.”
Viktor cradles his mug of mulled wine, brings it to his mouth, stops, and seems to consider what he’d just said. His nose wrinkles, lines creasing his features, eyes wide in realization as he navigates some internal struggle.
Jayce watches Viktor’s face, the angles of it cast in the glow of multi-colored lights, and Jayce is suddenly not very relaxed at all in spite of the warmth of the wine which had soaked into his bones during their time wandering the Winterfest market.
“Movie snow, for you,” Viktor corrects, softly. “Not cold snow. Obviously.” Then he nods sharply, apologetically, and like he’s solved a very complex problem. Apparently satisfied, he drinks deep from his mug.
His fourth mug.
Jayce keeps staring at him, because while he’s touched by the consideration, that hadn’t been the part of his partner’s movie Snowdown fantasy he’d thought Viktor was going to amend.
So he’s still waiting for Viktor to take back the ‘kiss you’ part.
Viktor does not, instead turning his golden eyes back on the skaters.
Which means Viktor must not have noticed his mistake. Jayce could let it slide, except for the fact that he absolutely could not, so instead he laughs, and says, voice carefully incredulous, “You want to kiss me in movie snow?”
And he asks mostly so that Viktor can deny it and Jayce’s life can go back to normal.
Except Viktor scoffs, rolls his eyes, says, “Obviously I cannot, but yes. Of course I do.”
Then he takes another sip from his mug. He smacks his lips, which are stained somewhat red from the spiced wine, and burrows back into his scarf.
“You’re drunk,” Jayce observes, distantly.
“Yes,” Viktor mutters, shrugging. Then, a little morosely, and like he hadn’t just rewired some crucial assumptions underpinning Jayce’s reality, “I wish you liked kissing.”
“I do!” Jayce blurts, and it comes out loud enough that several of the skaters in the nearby rink glance over.
Which doesn’t matter at all, because Viktor is also looking at him, puzzled, like Jayce had said something peculiar. He rises out of the scarf, mouth set in a small frown, and clarifies, slowly, “I meant kissing me, Jayce.”
There is a skater nearby clinging to the edge of the rink with white-knuckled hands as they wobble on their skates.
Jayce feels like he’s probably beating them in feeling off-balanced.
“Viktor,” Jayce says, voice cracking. “I didn’t realize that was an option.”
Viktor scoffs and rolls his eyes so hard his whole head follows. He lolls it back to glare at Jayce, his irises ablaze in the evening. “You are telling me that the smartest man I know simply did not pick up on years of flirtation?”
Jayce stares at the steaming mug in his own hands. Also mulled wine, but unlike Viktor’s, his mug is shaking. He sets it down on the bench beside him, wipes his palms on his trousers, stares at his shoes.
Then Jayce drops his head in his hands, braces his elbows on his knees, and takes deep, steady breaths.
Viktor’s hand on his shoulder, soft. A quiet, “Jayce?”
“I would love to kiss you, Viktor. I…” Jayce takes a shaky inhale, continues, “I would have loved that since the day I met you.”
Viktor barks a laugh, which turns into a giggle, and ends in a sort of snort.
“No,” Viktor asserts. “You would have told me.”
When Jayce lifts his head, Viktor is smiling. Indulgently. Like Jayce had made a joke.
Jayce shifts his eyes to stare at the skaters once more. Most of those who had glanced their way have since resumed their slow circles around the rink. Isha isn’t among them, eyes still locked on Jayce as she signs something to Ekko that Jayce can’t make out at this distance, even aided by her bright gloves. Ekko leans down to whisper something to her, and afterwards they continue on in slow circles. The multicolored lights glisten off the surface of the ice. The drifting smell of roasted chestnuts is carried by a breeze that he knows is rustling Viktor’s hair.
“You would have told me,” Viktor says, again, quieter. He doesn’t sound like he’s smiling, anymore.
Jayce continues his deep breaths. Closes his eyes.
Carolers muffled in the distance. The ground under his feet. Warm coat. Too warm, maybe, for this.
Whatever this is.
“You are telling me,” Viktor starts, again, picking out the syllables slowly, one at a time, “that the smartest man I know—“ Jayce winces. “—did not pick up on fucking years of flirtation?”
Jayce rubs his brow. Huffs a breathless, bewildered laugh that tapers off into a groan.
“You are smarter than me,” Jayce says, defensively, glancing over. “And you didn’t seem to put this together any faster than I did.”
Viktor gapes at him before looking to the sky.
“What the fuck,” Viktor mutters, and retreats back into his scarf. It doesn’t hide the flush on his cheeks.
Jayce stares, swallows. He indicates Viktor’s mug, says, “Let’s talk about it tomorrow?”
Viktor exhales a string of expletives into knit red yarn. But he concedes, afterwards, “That is a reasonable suggestion.”
Jayce picks up his own mug back up and promptly drains it. Then clears his throat.
“How did the analysis go on the last set of results, this morning,” he asks. Something safe, something familiar. Lab work.
“No inconsistencies so far,” Viktor says, quickly. He takes a small sip of his own, then asks, voice uncharacteristically high, “Jayce, I don’t… Since you met me?”
“You want chestnuts?” Jayce deflects.
“…Yes.”
Jayce stands, says, “I’ll get us chestnuts,” and flees.
He’s standing in line at the stall, still trying to control his breathing, when Isha collides with his leg. She blinks up at him with big amber eyes and whips off her gloves to sign at him faster, unimpeded.
Uncle now?
He reaches down to right her hat, sparing a moment to ruffle her hair, and asks, “What?”
She grabs and inspects his hand, taps his ring finger, peering up at him, and she signs, rapidly, the letters I, D, and O.
Powder appears from nearby and crouches down to start undoing the laces on Isha’s skates, which the girl is still wearing off the ice. She must have stomped over in them, so Jayce is, in hindsight, glad she’d missed his foot with the blades.
Powder says, “I keep telling you, kid, Jayce here was hollering ‘I do’ about something else.”
Isha glares at Powder, signs Viktor’s name, then Jayce’s. She clasps her small hands together.
“Nope,” Powder says. And then, in a stage whisper, “Uncle Vik doesn’t have the guts.”
Then she grins up at Jayce, but it falters somewhat at whatever expression he’s making. She brushes blue bangs from her eyes, which are narrowed, suddenly. Sharp and assessing.
“Huh. Go find Ekko, kid,” she says. “He’s got your shoes.” She spins Isha by the shoulders to face her back towards the rink.
Only once Isha has scampered into the distance does Powder turn back to Jayce, and say, “I was just yankin’ your chain, you know. My brother’s insistent you don’t swing in his direction.”
“But–” Jayce starts, looking over to the bench where Viktor has sunk even further into his scarf. His eyes are peeking out, fixed on Jayce. Like they haven’t moved.
Jayce says, confused and brimming with barely-restrained emotion, “But I do, though?”
Powder blinks at him. “Oh,” she says, quietly.
She glances to Viktor. Then back.
Then she grabs Jayce by the shoulder.
And she says, getting steadily louder, “Oh. Oh Janna’s tits, it's happening?” It’s almost to a screech by the time she asks, “It’s happening now?”
“No,” Jayce says, turning back, shaking his head. “Nope.”
Her hold on his shoulder becomes a vice-grip. “But—”
“I have had too much wine. He has had too much wine. Nothing is happening.”
Powder blinks.
“Chestnuts,” Jayce says, tightly, gesturing to the stand he is in line at. “Chestnuts are happening.”
Powder glances between Jayce and the bench behind Jayce, and contradicts, “It’s totally happening,” as a massive grin spreads across her face. “Oh, finally. Thank fuck.”
She smacks Jayce on the arm, bounds after Isha, calls out, “Hey, kid! It’s a Snowdown miracle!”
“Chestnuts,” Jayce offers, back at the bench.
“Thank you.” Viktor mumbles. He reaches into the paper bag with his slender fingers, selects one that’s been peeled, and he emerges from the depths of his scarf to pop it in his mouth. He chews methodically.
“Good?” Jayce asks, lost in some hazy space between elation and awkwardness.
“Yes.”
“Good.”
“I would like to take you on a date,” Viktor says. Slowly. Steadily.
“You… maybe we save this for tomorrow, Viktor?” Jayce says, strained. “I shouldn’t tell you how much I want that, not until less of me is spiced wine.”
Viktor checks his watch. He says, “If you will permit me the technicality, it will be tomorrow in three hours.”
Jayce laughs, runs his hands into his hair. “Can we achieve sobriety in three hours?”
“Bread,” Viktor says, reaching for his cane, pushing himself to his feet. He holds out his hand towards Jayce, and commands, “Pretzel stand. Please.”
Jayce stares at the extended hand and finds his own taking it, even though, “I’m pretty sure that’s a myth, Vik.”
“No,” Viktor says, shaking his head.
“It is, though. Bread slows alcohol absorption, but there’s no scientific—”
“Fuck science,” Viktor says, emphatically.
Jayce grips Viktor’s hand tight and howls, aghast, “No!”
Viktor looks uncertain, suddenly. Vulnerable.
Jayce explains, “We love science!”
Vikor’s expression clears. He huffs a laugh and starts dragging Jayce down one of the lanes.
He responds, defiantly, “Pretzels.”
“Do you remember when I introduced you to Silco,” Viktor asks, halfway through a pretzel the size of his head.
Jayce does, of course. He still feels the burn from that third degree, but he had survived. Done well, even.
At least, he’d thought so, right up until this very moment, when Viktor says, “You told my father I was ‘like a brother’ to you.”
Jayce… does not remember that, but it does sound like something he’d say.
He groans, as Viktor explains, “That put the, eh... The nail in the coffin. I tried moving on, after that.” He tilts his head, concedes, “Failed, yes. But I tried.”
Jayce waves a hand through the air, scattering the salt remnants from his own devoured pretzel, and explains, “I meant that you’re family to me.”
Viktor scoffs and raises a brow at him.
“I love you,” Jayce whines. “And, like… I don’t know, there’s… you know how Noxians have that word that only really translates into ‘shield-brothers’? Even though it’s… it’s way more than that, historically? I just meant, if we were soldiers—”
Viktor’s other brow rises to meet the first as he interrupts, “We are not soldiers, Jayce. We are scientists.”
“—I would watch your back,” Jayce continues, ignoring his partner’s interruption. “You would watch mine. I would put my life in your hands. Without hesitation.”
Viktor blinks.
“I meant... I trust you. With everything. That I would fight for you. For your people. I meant that you’re my partner.”
“We are also not Noxian,” Viktor says, slowly, but his eyes have gone very soft.
“I’m just saying,” Jayce complains, “I didn’t mean it how you took it.”
Viktor huffs a laugh, glances away, says, “Right. Of course. I should have presumed you meant brother homoerotically.”
Jayce scuffs his shoe, then leans on the excuse, “I am an only child, Viktor.”
“Clearly.” Viktor says it in a way that would sound arid, except that his smile is wide and brighter than any of the lights scattered around the market.
“Finish your pretzel,” Jayce commands, blushing.
Viktor rolls his eyes. “I thought it would not have an impact on my sobriety.”
“It won’t. But it’s not midnight yet. We have time to kill.”
Viktor nods, takes a bite, concedes, “We do. We should get you another one.”
Jayce considers the range of goods on offer, points out the pastry that catches his eye, asks, “Cinnamon, this time? For sharing?”
Viktor nods and beckons over the tender of the stall. There is a brief exchange Jayce cannot hope to follow, because watching Viktor speak Zaunite while filled with this much wine and pretzel and hope does something to Jayce’s body which happens to significantly reduce Jayce’s capacity to understand Zaunite. Jayce only manages to pick out enough words to follow that the reason she waves away Viktor’s cogs has something to do with Vander.
Viktor catches his expression, explains, “We will have to stop by The Drop, at some point. Tell Van to save her a mug.”
Jayce shortly finds his hands full of a still-warm cinnamon roll that smells like it might have been made in a laboratory where some other scientists had been working as hard to perfect the smell of cinnamon rolls as Jayce and Viktor had been working to perfect Hextech over the past three years.
The still-uneaten half of his own massive pretzel momentarily forgotten, Viktor reaches out and plucks off a portion of the fresh roll in Jayce’s hands, mindless of the icing.
Jayce blinks at him, considering. Allows, “Maybe you are the rugged local.”
Viktor peers up, golden eyes under dark lashes, grins, and shrugs. “Maybe. You do have more muscle.”
Jayce shrugs, shakes his head, and retorts, entirely earnest, “You are the strongest person I know.”
Heat rises in Viktor’s cheeks, but he doesn’t look away.
He keeps his eyes locked on Jayce’s as he carefully raises the portion of the roll to his own mouth. Places it atop his tongue. Hums.
Then, incredibly slowly, he licks the icing off his thumb.
Jayce stares, throat dry and slightly dizzy.
Viktor’s eyes are hooded, his voice low as he leans in close and says quietly enough that Jayce finds himself leaning in even closer, “Just so you don’t miss it, Jayce. I am attempting to flirt with you.”
Jayce swallows, before he says, “I think I got it, this time.”
Viktor grins, coyly. Says, “Good.”
Jayce looks down at the roll in his hands, tears off a bite of his own. It melts on his tongue, butter and sweetness and just enough comfort that he finds the strength to confess, “I didn’t always… miss it, exactly.”
“My interest in you?” Viktor clarifies.
Jayce nods.
“So why did you not say something?” Viktor asks, and his expression is a little pained, suddenly.
But he hadn’t moved away at all. His eyes are golden and wide and he looks at Jayce, and he’s close enough that Jayce can share his breath, can smell the cinnamon and spiced wine ghosting through the thin bow of Viktor’s lips.
It would be the simplest thing in the world, now. To kiss him.
Jayce glances down at his watch, because he remembers, in this moment, that there had been a plan.
Except Viktor catches the movement, or the shifting of Jayce’s attention, and his hand shoots out to cover Jayce’s watchface.
“It’s midnight,” he declares, leaning in even closer.
Jayce laughs, a bit, and allows himself to tilt forward. He lets his forehead close the space between them to rest warm against Viktor’s, and lets his eyes fall closed, for just a moment.
Before he mutters, “It’s not, though.”
When Jayce opens his eyes, he finds that Viktor is doing something that can only really be described as pouting. Viktor argues, “Not here, no. But it is midnight somewhere.”
He still hasn’t moved. Except maybe to curl himself in closer around the point of contact. Except maybe to shift his fingers on Jayce’s wrist, resting them over Jayce’s pulse instead of his watchface. Except maybe to let the now utterly forgotten half-eaten pretzel in his other hand droop dangerously.
He glances down at Jayce’s lips. Says, “Planet. Eh. Round.”
“You are cheating,” Jayce observes.
“I am,” Viktor concedes, nodding. “I’m not unsure of how I feel about you, Jayce.”
Viktor leans back, then. The loss of contact and warmth feels sudden, sharp, like a pain added to the ache in Jayce's chest.
An ache which only grows, when Viktor stares into Jayce’s eyes to say softly, “If I am allowed to love you as much as I have loved you for years, I want to start now. I don’t need time.”
His grip on Jayce’s wrist lingers, and it’s soft, and warm, and feels strangely like it might be the centerpoint of a theoretically infinite universe. He squeezes, lightly, before withdrawing his hand and finishing, “But I do understand that you might. I will wait, however impatiently, as long as you might need me to.”
Jayce reels with the earnestness of it, and counters, quickly, “I don’t need time to know how much I love you.” He admits, then, “I just might need time to… to believe this is real.”
“Eh, kissing might help,” Viktor points out, grinning hopefully.
Jayce laughs, missing the warmth of Viktor’s hands, and tears a piece off the cinnamon roll. Reminds his partner, “You are the one who said you wanted snow for that.”
He holds up the section of pastry, in offering.
In an altogether hazy moment, Viktor leans down and plucks it out of Jayce’s hand with his teeth, and his lips brush lightly against Jayce’s fingers, and he meets Jayce’s eyes in an expression that seems, somehow, like he feels just as caught off guard by his actions as Jayce does. More-so, even.
Like he’d done it mindlessly, or reflexively, or like he hadn’t realized it would put him in a position where he was going to be peering up at Jayce from under his lashes, lips parted, mouth open, breath warm and ghosting over...
Or like Jayce had exhibited some kind of reaction which Viktor hadn’t anticipated.
Jayce’s empty hand hovers in the air, suspended and tingling with the memory of sensation, as Viktor leans back and fights a blush. He loses and cheats by hiding it in his scarf, as Jayce fights against the heat pooling in his gut and wrestles against the command crashing through his soul to touch Viktor’s lips again.
Midnight.
Maybe when it’s midnight.
Which Jayce learns, now that he can finally finish checking his watch, is not for another two and a half hours.
Viktor clears his throat. Looks away. “You were, eh. Explaining. Something.”
Jayce nods, says, voice tight, “I was explaining that I didn’t always miss that you were flirting. I just never thought you meant it.”
Viktor, still flushed, barks a laugh that manages to sound deeply incredulous. “I don’t understand how you would think otherwise?”
“I thought you might just… flirt? And the way you did, it was always… it seemed…” Jayce lifts his shoulders, almost bashfully. Admits, “I know what I look like. I thought that maybe you just… thought I was convenient.”
Viktor blinks at him. He waits a few moments before saying, in a complete monotone, “You thought my attraction to you was superficial.”
Jayce blushes, now, says, “Well, I didn’t... I didn’t think it was romantic, Viktor. Until tonight, when you said you wanted to be kissed. In the snow. Until you said you wanted something like in a Snowdown movie, and until you said that you wanted that with me.”
“Why,” Viktor demands, “the fuck,” his eyes wide, disbeliving, “would you possibly think I wouldn’t want everything from you?”
“Because you know me,” Jayce says, strained, his throat tight with the only thing in him that had ever been strong enough to hold back his affection, which rises up suddenly to a height he only knows how to drop from. “You know my…” His mind. His heart. His ego.
His faults. His weaknesses.
His imperfections.
Jayce waves his hand, broadly, “My—”
“I know my partner,” Viktor cuts in. Low, now. Angry, almost. “My friend. I know the person with whom I share my dreams and my life's work. I know a kind and good man. And I want to kiss him, and hold him, and be with him.”
Jaycee blinks, watches Viktor run his hands into his hair to pull at it with something like frustration. “I am attracted to you, Jayce,” he says. “Not the isolated concept of your ridiculously gorgeous body.”
“Oh,” Jayce says. Then, “I think… I need water,” because he finds himself actually a bit faint.
Viktor turns immediately to flag down the stall tender once more. Within moments, a water bottle is in Jayce’s hands, replacing the cinnamon roll, and Jayce finds himself halfway through drinking it.
Eyes wide, Viktor asks, “Are you alright? The wine?”
“No. I don’t think so,” Jayce says. “I think I mostly just… swooned a little? Is that a real thing?”
Viktor groans, leans over, and rests his forehead against the counter they’re seated at.
After a moment, he laughs, quietly. Head still on the counter, he peers at Jayce, sidelong and assessing. Says, “Maybe I should have told you that I cared for you like a Noxian shield-brother.”
Jayce winces, admits, “That might have helped,” and finishes the rest of his water.
Viktor tucks his arm into the crook of Jayce’s as they wander the market. He’s almost stealthy about it, eyes locked elsewhere as he matches Jayce’s stride and links them together. He’s betrayed, though, by the warmth of his body as he leans into Jayce’s side, and by the warmth rising in his face, from under his scarf.
Jayce looks down at Viktor’s fingers gripping into the sleeve of his coat and decides that it can slide, even though there is an hour left until midnight.
“This is functional,” Viktor argues, preemptively, once it’s clear he’s been caught.
An amorphous glow of tenderness shifts rapidly into concern. Jayce asks, “Should we sit?”
“No,” Viktor says, quickly. “I am fine, at the moment. I would have told you directly had I been otherwise.”
He would have, Jayce knows. Because years ago, he’d promised to let Jayce know when he is close to hitting a wall, back when Jayce had promised not to check quite as often.
“I meant that it is a functional way to steer you,” Viktor explains, demonstrating by angling Jayce away from the stall he had been eyeing. “You cannot buy your mother more yarn. She complains about having a vast excess every time I see her.”
Jayce laughs and steps towards the stall anyhow. For all his talk of steering, Viktor follows, pressed snugly against Jayce’s side.
Jayce informs him, “She just says that to manipulate you into accepting more scarves, Viktor.”
Viktor huffs. Tilts his head, considering. Allows, “Maybe something green, then.”
The Last Drop is filled with mirthful chaos when they step in to tell Vander to save a mug for Peggy at the baker’s stall.
The material center of The Lanes, The Drop is the nexus of Zaun’s Winterfest, and rises to the occasion by offering mulled wines, ciders, and drinking chocolate to those who wander in, as well as a place to get warm before wandering back out to peruse the stalls of visiting artisans and local traders. Garlands drape from the ceiling alongside ornaments that glisten in the wide assortment of colored lights, all reflected by a slow-spinning mirror-ball. The scent of pine and ginger and clove mingle in the air with the sounds of Snowdown classics gifted with unique twists by the Chem Sister who is currently spinning up on the small stage.
It is, accordingly, very crowded.
They only make it two steps inside, before Viktor stops in his tracks.
He looks towards the bar, warily, then turns to Jayce. “I have realized something,” he says.
Jayce angles down closer to hear him over the din of the crowd.
Viktor licks his lips, says, “If Vander sees us…”
“He’ll know,” Jayce nods, catching on immediately. Vander is perceptive. Terrifyingly so. “If he doesn’t already from Powder.”
“Is…” Viktor says. Eyes searching Jayce’s face, expressing the question he won’t voice. Is that okay?
“Up to you,” Jayce says, aiming for something level. He shrugs, offers, “You could always just text him about Peggy’s mug.”
“Yes,” Viktor says, nodding and turning back towards the door. “Yes, good plan.”
Jayce’s chest squeezes, suddenly. Something sharp, almost doubt-shaped, but he nods and he follows Viktor out.
In the cold outside the bar, Viktor exhales in visible relief after he nods Jayce towards the side of the building, away from the door. He slides his phone out of his pocket.
Jayce glances around, taking in the market stalls, the decorations, Zaun’s neon lights flickering in reds and greens and golds. The young but tall tree, the sister of another deeper in the city, which sits in the center of the lane outside The Last Drop and is proudly bearing a massive amount of mismatched ornaments crafted by Zaunite children. Spices carried in the clean night air that settle into his lungs as he takes a deep breath.
Jayce notices, then, that it is cold. He notices, too, that he is relatively sober. He notices that Viktor is standing closer than normally does, his features lit by his phone. He notices the fineness of Viktor’s fingers as he taps out a text to Vander. And Jayce notices, on Viktor’s screen, that it is ten minutes until midnight.
He notices, too, that Viktor hadn’t been ready for Vander to see them together.
Jayce drops a hand on Viktor’s shoulder, clears his throat. “Viktor,” he says, softly. “I know you said you would wait.”
Viktor glances up, and his expression goes straight away to one Jayce can’t read; like he’s steeling himself for something. Viktor’s phone goes back in his pocket, text unsent as he gives Jayce his full attention. Jayce clears his throat, again, fighting against tightness, and looks away. Towards the ground.
He says. “I just… I wanted to say, if you need me to wait, I can also... Uh. Do that.”
“Wait for me?” Viktor asks, voice high.
“Yeah,” Jayce says, nodding back towards the door to The Last Drop, as an explanation. Viktor follows his gaze.
“Don’t you dare,” Viktor snaps, seizing Jayce’s wrist, eyes comically wide.
He gestures back to the bar. “I am not ready, emotionally, for the amount of shit I am going to get from my family for insisting this could never happen.”
He turns back to Jayce, reaches up, and suddenly his hand is on Jayce’s face, warm and soft and perfect, and he’s close, so close, and he’s saying, “But if it means it will increase the odds that you will kiss me in nine minutes, I will face it now, Jayce. I will go into that bar, and I will stand on a table, and I will tell every soul in Zaun that I am in love with you, and that you might be in love with me, and that I am going to love you for as long as you will let me.”
Jayce feels something prickling at the corner of his eyes, his breath tight, his heart full to bursting, and he says, “I don’t think I’m going to make it nine minutes.”
“Then don’t,” Viktor says, like it’s obvious. Like it’s so, so obvious.
And it is, really.
Kissing Viktor is obvious.
It’s obvious his cane would shift to the crook of his elbow so he can tangle his hands in Jayce’s coat, and it’s obvious Jayce would reach down and wrap him in his arms to bring him closer, and it’s obvious that Viktor’s lips are somewhat dry and unbearably soft, and it’s obvious that just behind them Jayce can taste the warmth of cinnamon and clove, paling in comparison to the warmth of Viktor, and it’s obvious, so obvious, that they fit together like they are meant to.
“There’s no snow,” Jayce mutters, when Viktor leans away and he finds himself on the verge of tears, of laughter.
“That is for the best,” Viktor returns, kissing the corner of Jayce's mouth, his jaw, as his hands curl into Jayce’s hair, angling him down again. But first, against Jayce’s lips, “I have since remembered snow in movies is traditionally asbestos.”
The laughter breaks over, and Jayce kisses him again, deep and joyous and obvious.