_ANTICLIMAX.EXE

Viktor is the ideal corporate fuckpig. Mid-thirties, no family, no prospects, drowning in a mix of old and new medical debt that can only be offset by continued allegiance to the company.
His routine ticks along in a single, predictable pattern: he shows up to work, worries about deadlines, keeps his mouth shut, and masturbates until he falls asleep. Every day for nine years now. Every day.
And then Jayce comes along.
-
Jayce and Viktor enter a highly indecent workplace relationship.

Notes:

Started writing this in april, life happened, bon ape the teeth.

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:

Could my wish be fulfilled,

I would want to be the balm

For a sore,

Dissolved

By your saliva.

— Mukade, Shikatsube No Magao

JANUARY 5, 20XX

Viktor is waiting to receive the newest BoyToys release when the unmarked box arrives on his doorstep, which is why he signs it in.

In hindsight, he should have asked questions. The package is the same size as a 4-year-old, big enough that the mailman had it wheeled to his apartment in a little carrier, and while it wasn't offensively heavy, the actual jack-off device Viktor backed on kickstarter some months ago was supposed to be discreet and compact as a selling point. Only as big as his hand. Stealth portability was the goal.

So, at first glance, this is obviously not his vibrating stroker. But he rationalizes it like this: maybe they've sent in a care package as a gift, something like a jumbo container of novelty lube plus a plushy travel bag to store the trinket and other sorts of filthy merchandise within, like a sex addict care package. He tells himself it's likely they recognized his name as a repeat buyer and wanted to go above and beyond with the customer service, in which case he'd be flattered, but not very comfortable with the corporate overreach.

Thankfully, it turns out to be neither of these things. As he slices the cardboard open, a new reality springs from the cascade of loose styrofoam — and it is shaped like a holographic rainbow box, shiny as a beetle's shell, printed top to bottom in big blocky japanese. A sleek, multi-jointed action robot with a 90’s design sensibility is depicted on all four sides, striking a range of heroic poses. The only text Viktor can understand is a little tagline next to a warning sign, as it reads: HANDLE WITH CARE. PREMIUM MODEL KIT. REAL 100% METAL INCLUDED.

What the fuck? He didn’t order this. Did the mailman get him confused with someone else?

Viktor dives for the travel package, turning it around until he sees an address sticker. Strangely, it is written up for his apartment down to the exact letter-number combo, but the recipient’s name gives the trick away.

This toy was bought by one “Jayce, T.”

Viktor has never heard that name in his life.

He works in tech, and that should tell you exactly how little is left of his soul. Here’s a hint: it's not much. Here’s another hint: that number you just thought up? Forget it. It's even less than you think.

The fact that he works for the biggest search engine in the world is important, though. It helps you understand the preposterous scale of hubris involved.

Council, the frontpage of the internet. King of community video, of android phones, and useless office widgets that you never use but swear make your life so much better. Probably owns your second-favorite website and everything in it. The brand is so massive it could be classified as a cancerous organism. A tumor, fattened to perfection on the very root of the web.

How lucky he is, to have a hand in such honorable history.

To be admitted into the tight asshole of the Councilplex building, one needs two things. First is an employee badge, second a cleared eye scan. Viktor is used to brandishing both like a half-dead zombie every day, every week, kicking off at eight sharp in the morning. He wagers by this point in his thirties his left eye must have developed a resistance against infrared light, making him the world's first office-borne mutant. In a hundred years his skull will be in history books: Corpo Sapiens, they'll call him. The stage of evolution where man became an empty shell.

Viktor is in charge of R&D floors management, which is more like micro-management, when you really have to define it. He sees it as a fussy, datacenter sort of job. Council's Piltover HQ has seven Research & Development divisions, each containing its own de facto Lead and cluster of employees assigned by their area of expertise; and Viktor is responsible for tracking all their monthly progress like a zookeeper evaluating a handful of exotic animal cages. In total, he is directly involved in Hardware, Software, Mobile, Web, Wearables, Experiences and the newest addition, Future Solutions, which is exactly as stupid as the name makes it sound.

Viktor is headed there today, in fact. And today is meant to be important.

Heimerdinger has notified him (via extra-late email, ticking bomb in his inbox two hours after midnight) that a new hire will be joining their ranks, in this wonderful, most glorious morning. Mr. Talis, Heimerdinger says, used to be one of his star apprentices about five or so years ago. How joyful. How exciting. Do give him my regards in the morrow, whipping-boy!

Five years. That's half a decade, isn't it? Back when the old man still supposedly did any work, instead of popping his head in the office every two months to announce another pivotal spiritual breakthrough he experienced between neglecting his duties and taking guided meditation lessons from some crook he met at a fancy overseas resort. (The last time he came around, he brought a fucking ukelele.) But enough beating the dead horse— There's work to be done.

Mr. Talis is allegedly here to fill an engineering vacancy, one brought about when his predecessor was spontaneously terminated for gross workplace misconduct. (He didn't make sexual passes at anyone, but he did try to rope them all into a digital pyramid scheme, which is just as depressing.) Mr. Talis should be here by now, in fact. But he isn't. Viktor swipes his keycard at the entrance of Future Solutions and what greets him is a dark, near-abandoned department, desolate like a dead mall. Viktor checks his watch and finds himself on time. Viktor huffs. Already a seed of prejudice against this man he's never met begins to sprout inside his mind. The ineptitude. The disrespect.

There is nothing auspicious about the way they meet. It is not a good place nor a good time to do it. Viktor is tired, his coffee has been delayed for at least another ten minutes, and his earpiece goes off with Sky's dispassionate voice alerting him that Mr. Talis has lost himself while searching for his department, and he is now waiting for Viktor to debrief him at the main lobby, like the new hire is a toddler who's wandered a bit too far away from his parents at the supermarket.

So it goes.

He is bigger than his secondhand resume made him seem.

When Heimerdinger said apprentice, Viktor’s mind had jumped to supply ‘wire thin, acne-kissed, undoubtedly caucasian, staunch evangelizer for alternative protein powder’—

But how wrong he had been.

Really, the man waiting in the front lobby is built like a quarterback. Like a sunkissed ken doll. Cookiecutter perfect. He's wearing an actual suit to work, christ; all wrinkles pressed, tie properly set, no business casual. No asshole limited edition sneakers. His eyelashes are so thick and glossy Viktor can spot them fluttering across the room.

He has a mellowing farmboy smile at the ready when he turns to greet Viktor, beaming like they already know each other, chocolate hair falling over his full eyebrows in a way that suggests staying professional around him will be very difficult.

“Viktor, right? It’s a pleasure to meet you, seriously. So sorry I got myself all mixed up. This place is, well, huge.” Mr. Talis sheepishly laughs, thrusting his hand out for shaking. The engagement ring he's wearing burns cold where it presses into Viktor’s palm, icy in a way that suggests he's very, very taken.

“It’s a great and terrible beast.” Viktor nods, and he swallows, tasting last night's bitterness. He misses the man's warmth immediately as soon as his grasp retreats. All previous grievances are succinctly forgiven. Why was he ever upset? Viktor feels like he should be saying something but, momentarily, he doesn’t know what it is. Mr. Talis smiles at him expectantly. Viktor smiles back.

He catches Sky looking at him funny. Tiny smirk on her lips, laid back in her chair, eyebrows curled in the center like she cannot believe what manner of tomfoolery she's seeing. Viktor pulls himself together quickly enough, punching for the elevator button.

The place is huge, he said. The place is a lumbering beast, you told him. Pick that back up.

He clears his throat. “That being said, the sooner we start gutting it, the sooner we'll be through with our mapping of the internal organs. Shall we begin?”

“Of course!” Mr. Talis is all sunny eagerness. “Lead the way.”

Staff card. Eye scan. Four legs and a cane tap-tapping in more or less the same enclosed space.

The ceilings are white. The walls are white. The floors are white— like one singular cube glitched into infinity. Every circulation corridor this side of HQ was built to a set of exact, identical specifications. The illumination provided is colorless and muted; there are no decorations. For safety reasons, every thirty panels there is a locked fire extinguisher — but on the inside it's also been painted gray.

Mr. Talis begins to lose track of his route after the third instructional turn.

“I'm sorry, but—” he staggers to a pause, looking mildly nauseated. The direction they've come from and the one they're headed towards are functionally the same. “Are we not going in circles?”

“As a matter of fact, no.” Viktor answers without judgement. “But confusion on the part of newcomers is entirely expected. We can take a minute break, If you'd like.”

“I'm not sure I'd like that.” the man laughs nervously.

“Close your eyes and count to ten. Head upright, breathing in slowly. It may help.” Viktor suggests, as if he's reading it straight out of Cecil B's welcome handbook.

Mr. Talis follows his request, steeling himself like a great tree trunk in danger of taking a fall. He counts past ten, mentally reaching for about twenty, and Viktor allows him the extra time because it's more seconds he gets to spend shamelessly staring at his face. At those soft, freakishly angelic features.

“You're not insane.” Viktor says, when the man's cheeks go from green to a healthy shade of ruddy brown again. “Your brain recognizes a mousetrap when it sees one, particularly when the spaces are this small. Our goal is to teach it new pathways of navigation.”

A pause.

“You mean they built this place like a rat maze on purpose?”

“Oh, yes.” Viktor shrugs. “It's meant to discourage any, ah, covert operatives. Rival interlopers trying to infiltrate our labs, and the sort. It works a little too well, in my opinion.”

“Jesus. That's awful.” The man whines, eyebrows settling in a grimace.

Huh. That's not the answer Viktor is accustomed to hearing in these parts.

The stampede of tech types he chaperones to and fro on a yearly basis are usually dazzled by this explainer on the architecture, by the notion of a game within a game; a political move to fend off nebulous enemies, men of great minds, men like themselves, who have expensive genius to protect. To them this is the natural progression of matters, the necessary security measures for a nerdy double-cross.

Given access to the same resources and time, they would have likely done the same. The industry loves a disruption. And of course it would employ this inconvenient, excessive, childish and peculiar strategy, why of course— those were the hallmarks of a true Heimerdinger classic.

“It gets… less nauseating as time goes on.” Viktor finds himself offering, in an awkward tone. “I haven’t felt sick in years. But I could make the route blindfolded, by this point. It makes no difference to me.”

It’s not entirely reassuring, but Mr. Talis seems to digest that bit of honesty for comfort. He squares his shoulders with a pinch of resignation and nods, sharply, so they start walking again.

He talks more. Asks more. Uses the conversation as an anchor point between himself and the liquifying reality of being a subject in someone else’s experiment. He carries himself with an investment that is so open and so genuine it necessitates an honest answer, something to match it in kind, and for the first time in a long while Viktor finds himself pleased as he explains the drudgeries of his routine.

Look upon my kingdom, he thinks, and despair.

They go over a brief tour of the surrounding departments, hardware and software and web and mobile and all the rest— one at a time, greeting the early birds. Mr. Talis gets to snoop on what they've been building, from the outside. Mostly he seems relieved to find the actual departments are furnished and windowed like proper floors, with meeting tables and fuzzy carpets and colorful plants to boot. It brings him peace. He needs to get close to the windowpane to see how high up they are. He's intrigued by a few of the gadgets in development, especially the rough looking conceptual pieces, like the Smart Stack pancake maker that works on multiple levels at once or the brand-new Councilglasses —patent pending— whose flickering augmented reality screens still turn him far too dizzy to function, but he admits the frames ‘look sweet.’

The watches are nice too, Mr. Talis says; the exact kind of thing that would be fun to have along his morning runs, because of course he's one of these guys. Viktor tries to imagine it: 05:00 AM, freezing cold, sprinting down the street to achieve the first milestone of his day, every day. Four whole kilometers. He shivers all over. Mr. Talis laughs at his physical recoil.

He tends to run his mouth off once he's comfortable, admitting to a nervousness Viktor hadn't noticed at first blush. It's his first day properly back in the States, he says; he feels like a phony, like his version data is all wrong.

(“No, genuinely. You need to let me know if I'm being an ass, alright? I don't know these guys. You’re the one in your element.”)

Heimerdinger had neglected to mention how this is the second time Mr. Talis is attempting to join the company's ranks. The first time he sent in an application, about, oh, five years ago, he hadn't heard back anything positive at all. (“Underqualified. Inexperienced. Or at least that's what they told me. I don't get how your starting position asks for ten years of backlog.”)

Around that time he shipped himself off to London, settling for an opportunity to design security systems in a minor Kiramman startup. Thus, Cassandra. Thus, Heimerdinger. Thus, second-go at securing a place among the most competitive silicon dickheads in the world. Funny how that happens.

Viktor excuses himself for a break once they're two thirds done with introductions, citing a desperate need to get his hands on a proper cup of coffee— but really his leg is killing him. It's a good a chance as any to sit down in his office and set up some prenuptial expectations with his newest charge. Mr. Talis follows along without complaint, seemingly reinvigorated. (Viktor’s office is stuffy, cluttered and blue, the furniture skewed to one side just the way he likes it.)

His orientation approach is simple, brutal honesty.

Out of all of their R&D departments, Future Solutions stands as the most thoroughly disorganized, and the one with the poorest results. All of their previous pitches have been discontinued or scrapped. All of their previous Leads were eventually fired. Viktor has no reason to sugarcoat these facts, especially not when it's Talis at the other end of the line. If he wants this job, he'll have to make it work, not the other way around. As far as the board is concerned, gutting the entire department is more profitable than keeping it on life support at this point.

“The choice is ultimately beyond my hands.” Viktor explains, very professionally. “I'm just quality control. There are five more of me installed in our offices across the globe, all set up like answering machines. If you want to suck up to someone, it'd be a thousand times more useful to reserve those efforts for Heimerdinger.”

“Duly noted,” the man hums, shifting through his copy of the paperwork and signing away his name a dozen times, sometimes twice per page. “He's not in very often, is he?”

“Not really, no.” another noncommittal nod from Viktor, another drink of sweet foamy machine coffee.

“So say if I want to bother someone…”

“I'm available for general matters from Monday through Friday, yes.”

Mr. Talis smiles, sliding back his papers. It's surprisingly easy to fall into an amicable rapport with him. Part of Viktor is always shielded at work, put away in a safe drawer so he can focus on the tasks at hand as dispassionately and effectively as possible; but the barrier that prevents him from seeing any of his coworkers as a casual friend has been definitely lowered today.

Which is not, by itself, a good thing. But oh well – what's the harm?

Viktor flips the first couple of pages to get the company seal stamped on them and his mind blanks out, liquified; white on white on white, like the glossy hallway panels of that endless corridor. The name etched in simple ballpoint in every single page is absurd, maddening in its simplicity: Jayce Talis. Jayce Talis. Jayce Talis. Mr. Talis.

Jayce, T.

So as it turns out they're neighbors. Cross out everything else he's thought today. This is a total, unmitigated disaster.

Thank God he managed to school his face in time to avoid an awkward conversation, just quick enough to hide that he knew— Jayce had mentioned he was just moving back in after some time abroad, but of course that didn't raise any alarm bells in Viktor’s head — why would it? The city is huge. He could have rented a house in the suburbs, a trailer, a penthouse loft with his wife. Why did it have to be his apartment building? What are the odds on that?

Who's Viktor kidding? He lives ten minutes away from the Councilplex. Of course it had to be his building. That was just his shitty fucking luck.

Here’s the moment of truth: Viktor loathes his job and everything in it. The only way he survives the unending moral humiliation is by drawing a clear, uncrossable line in the sand, creating a magical boundary that ensures work and real life are two separate islands without a bridge. That, and at least he doesn't work for Facebook.

Point being, he gets home twenty minutes before six in the evening, sapped down to his very bones, and when he takes off his coat, he needs to be able to leave it all behind. The addition of Jayce as a clueless trespasser between these two realms feels like a sadistic prank played by the devil. It’s not like he can ignore the man forever, either. Jayce is the friendly type. Good samaritan. Happy neighbor. Soon enough after he’s settled he’s bound to go on knocking on everyone’s doors, wanting to introduce himself. And even if Viktor manages to swindle him then, they live in the exact same building, wall-to-wall. The bleedthrough is imminent.

He needs to snap the umbilical cord off now or suffer the consequences.

Viktor quickly decides it is a vodka and takeout kind of night. Fuck it. He orders black noodles, crispy meat chunks, something outrageously sweet with strawberries inside. He's not even that hungry, but he figures if he’s going to be an ass he might as well reward himself until he’s unapologetic about it. He takes a nice hot shower and sprays his leg with pain relievers, wrapping his body in one of his silkier bathrobes before falling backwards into bed.

Don't think about it. Don't. Don't even try. This is your safe space; this is your happy place. You lose as soon as you start caring. Don't let them take this away from you too.

Viktor is propping his laptop open in no time after that. Fingering the touchpad for one of the last closed browser tabs, whatever shade of filth he was watching the night prior: modest volume, full screen. The recommended thumbnails at the sides are a raunchy mosaic of cocks and cunts overlapping in kaleidoscope patterns, a living monument to fornication. Viktor’s hand searches for the vibrator under his pillow and flicks it on lazily while his video of choice is still buffering. He does it all on instinct, there’s no pregame, only ritual anticipation.

The title of this one reads, beautifully: PRETTY BOY GETS GAPED IN THE BACK OF MY TRUCK. Informative. Really paints a picture. There's two guys in what seems to be a flourishing wheat field somewhere; one is thick with muscle, the other lean with it, both of their bodies so perfectly sculpted it feels like an invitation to drag your teeth across their shoulders. Bandanas and cowboy hats seem to be the only articles of clothing allowed. Their nakedness is almost a form of flaunting. Not a single scar or blemish in sight, only a tantalizing expanse of soft, toasty skin. Even the hair placements are manicured; plenty of curls around their chest and forearms, carefully waxed around the pinkness of their assholes. Shiny with a coat of massage oil, not sweat.

Viktor recognizes the main performer for this one by his eagerness to get on all fours. He has a great downward-dog stance; nicely thick cock, dark, uncircumcised. His passion for anal is boundless enough to make Viktor feel like he's watching sports, or a day in the life of an Olympic medallist. The titular Pretty boy is ultra responsive, whiny, and a moaner. He rocks back against the other man's large palms, gleefully stretching his hole on camera, brown nipples pebbled up above the bed of the truck he's laying on.

The vodka warms in Viktor’s stomach. This is nice. This will do.

Viktor slips the vibrator between his legs when the other guy mounts him like a mare. Rubs it now, back and forth and back and forth. Fuck, It's a really good shot, all things considered. Taken fully from the back, the overeager camera pointed between their legs. The bottom looks like he's getting flattened into the travel mattress, thrashing a little as he’s held down by the hip. The noise of him begging is what gets Viktor hard; he remembers why he saved the video. At one point the screen is filled just with his leaking, lubed up hole as he whines and cries for it, and Viktor feels the sweet vibrations of the toy rushing up his pussy and overloading his brain.

He comes while the top smacks his cheeks apart and makes a joke about country living. Farmboy. Ah. Is that why he thought to use the word when he met Jayce earlier? He clicks into the pornstar's profile while his cunt is still throbbing and looks for the exclusivity feed. There's a faint similarity, sure. Their ridiculous waists, the playfulness, the bronze of their skin. Maybe that's why he's biased. He knocked himself out jacking off to a porno and woke up to Jayce Talis, of course his brain got a little excited. Honest mistake, it'll never happen again. In a way, this solves everything.

Viktor hits the subscribe button and immediately sends Pretty Boy a message that reads: Hey, do you have any ties?

He hides from Jayce the next day, confident he won't be able to find his way into Viktor’s office unaided. The Future Solutions department calendar has been updated with new milestones and an introductory schedule, all new events tracking back to Mr. Talis’ company email. He's an overachiever, then. Let's see how long his fuel lasts.

In the meantime, Viktor wills away corporate hours on his personal phone, tracking the sex toy that went missing in delivery. He does this less for immediate want of the thing and more as a matter of pride. When it comes to carnal gratification, he's working on something much better; his notifications tab is red with three unread messages from his newly declared favorite pornstar.

Two are him excitedly agreeing to a personal sponsorship, detailed pricing table included. The third is a singular coy, winking emoji. Viktor is embarrassingly stoked. Wet just from thinking about it.

He's sure he'll do just fine.

The new craze in the industry is Artificial Intelligence. It's like the moon race all over again.

Everyone wants an AI now; regardless of what it is. Apple is pitching them. Amazon is testing them out. Tesla is having some blow up in a televised impact field. Every nerd in a fifty foot radius has opinions on Generative Vs Predictive, on the stock dive of Big Data and if this is a bust or the next hot ticket of the decade. But none of them hold a candle to Jayce Talis’ proposed full-scale solution to the AI demand — which is to say, his very first presentation to the board involves the promise of a Dream Simulation Machine.

The man swears he has come up with a way to electronically visualize swatches of the human subconscious. And not only visualize them, but also mold it to one's liking, real time, giving an user the ability to interact with a landscape generated by their own thoughts and individual modes of perception. Not the bare, disconnected imitation provided by the generative slop startups pimpling across the globe, but their very own brain-to-paper engine. A dream machine.

“Council Industries is where dreams come true, right? Imagine if we can make that literal.” The idea would sound ridiculous if anyone else said it, but Jayce had a dreamer's eyes. A dreamer's mouth. For him this came as easy as breathing. He wasn't trying to sell you something so much as inviting you into the full-blown miracle of his mind, that wondrous field— and the way he did it so earnestly made you consider maybe dreaming was ‘in’ again, in this political climate; Viktor wonders if it's the tooth gap that makes the messaging so effective. He has a pre-recession hopefulness, early Obama-era levels of slogan positivity.

If Jayce could make you believe with just a 15 minute powerpoint, why not give it a shot?

He gets greenlit via video call. The plan is to have a working prototype in hands by next Christmas season. His entire team breaks out in hoots and cheers and they start hugging each other, what the actual fuck. Viktor is stunned when the call ends and someone starts screaming for him down the hallway; mostly he's startled out of his chair because for the last five minutes of the presentation he's been idling with a zoom-in of Jayce’s face and a quick hand firmly rubbing down his pants. He comes away sticky now, erratically dousing his palm in air freshener while the calls for his name continue to get louder and louder down the corridor.

Jayce turns out to be at the end of it, when Viktor walks off to check. His face is flushed red with high spirits and he's holding up a little plastic tray with a celebratory cake slice and a fork, his smile joyous, glowing, fizzy-drink ecstatic in Viktor’s direction.

“I have a job!” he says.

“So I heard.” Viktor replies, to which Jayce good naturedly snorts, and starts to ask: So, what did you think? Did you like it? Are you excited?

It's been a week since Talis signed on his contract and Viktor is still blindsided by his efforts to continuously get on his good side. They often bump in the general breakroom, fraternizing over the coffee machine at regular intervals. It's either that or the bathroom. (Viktor’s heavily medicated periods taught his body to piss often, while Jayce, for all his luck, appears to be the owner of an uncommonly stressed bladder. Miming a go at the urinals has never sounded so attractive.)

Off work, Viktor could hear him dragging and assembling furniture for the past few days, but aside from that he's been so occupied with cobbling his pitch together that Viktor hasn't had the courage to break him the news yet. Part of him doesn't want to. Viktor is vain and self-interested, he likes the attention. He likes that someone greets him with so much unreserved warmth. He's done nothing to earn it besides being mildly polite, but that is a crucial piece of Jayce’s charm— he’s the one insistently scooting closer all of the time, like a cuddly great dane who's scarcely aware of his own size.

Like he's doing right now, pushy, excitedly crowding Viktor with wide eyes and a shameless confectionery bribe. Waiting for a compliment, a quote, a personal review. Anything at all.

“--I'm looking forward to being blown away sometime in the next year.” Viktor relents, accepting the cake, and Talis sets about punching the air softly, like he's been handed a trophy.

He pauses only to stick his hands in his pockets. Jayce fishes around for something and then pulls it out, doing a lightning quick movement with his palms and then pushing whatever it was flat against Viktor’s chest, smoothing it clean.

Viktor looks down. It's a metallic star sticker. Viktor looks up, eyebrows raised.

“That means you're part of our exclusive, top-secret team.” Jayce declares, smugly. He clears his throat for emphasis. “I've decided you're trustworthy. One might even say you're among my inside men, at that.”

“Are you rewarding your dev team with incentive stickers for kindergarteners?”

“Er,” Jayce flounders, pushing his hair back. “Yes? I think they like it. I mean, they haven't complained so far?” he fidgets with his bracelet band. “I mean, I'm rewarding them with cake, actually. The stickers are more of a… lead-up system.”

Incredible, Viktor thinks, entirely beyond himself. If anyone can sell a dream machine, it's probably going to be this man.

Things go from bad to worse after that.

Viktor dumps half of his paycheck to clear off interest on his student loans, half to offset his medical debt; what little money remains is burned on the altar of feeding his libido.

These days he often masturbates with Jayce in mind. After abandoning the pretense, his routine sessions have been developing into something like mini-marathons. Long, drawn out, uninterrupted. He loses count of the prolonged orgasms. Arousal floods him like a trance.

He's done his hormone shot. He feels like a stud. Onscreen tonight is LIVE: WATCH ME COME ON THIS KNOT, featuring an office chair, a pair of well-toned legs, and a big swollen dildo Viktor personally paid for, on the condition that it be used on a setting of his choosing. He likes a dress shirt. A red tie. Socks with pulley garters, sometimes; his rolodex of commissions is starting to feel a little bit like that pervert fixated on capitalist blondes shopping for white bread, but Viktor doesn't mind.

He wants to picture Jayce’s face when he gets off. It puts him at ease. Like an angel before death; like it's the last thing he'll see before his soul is torn from body.

Viktor has a type, that much is clear by the lookalikes. He wants them peppy, eager, just on the right side of kind, excited to perform but not so much that it turns plastic. Happy to see me, he thinks that is important too, chest warm, thighs spasming around the pillow he's rutting on.

Happy to see *me.*

This fake-Jayce struggles to fit the whole dildo in his pussy, which is really quite endearing in practice. He sighs a bunch, these sweet, broken noises, legs straddling the sides of the chair as he lowers himself on the fat swell near the base, the ring of his pussy flaring wet and needy around the toy shaft but not fully pushing through. His abdomen flutters the more he slides down on it, hips rabitting, hesitant.

“--I'm sorry, I– I want to, I want it,” he cries, so horny he's upset part of this cock is being withheld from him, rolling the joints of his hips as he tries to make it fit.

Would the real Jayce be as greedy? Would he get overwhelmed with the size, cry a bit, lose his composure? Would he burst and wet himself? Viktor’s not even sure the real Jayce has a pussy, it's not like he can tell, but the hypothesis is nice; that he'd let Viktor see him like that, bare and open and defenseless. At his mercy. Made for him.

Viktor’s closet is filled with holographic stickers. Stars, hearts, little rockets — Jayce has fostered an habit of sneaking one on him each day if he can manage it, on Viktor's suit jacket or his shirt or the back of his hair, once at the bottom on his cane, when it was leaning far back on the wall and Viktor was too distracted to care for it; the point of the game seems to be the simple joy of getting away with something he shouldn't, a demonstration of his legerdemain skills.

It's charming, in that infuriating way everything about Jayce is. Viktor can't prove the gesture is about him but it sure feels like that everytime he finds a new glimmering star peeled away in the wash or hidden on the side of his suitcase.

He wonders if Jayce would be shocked to learn Viktor is getting away with something as well. Every day now. He feels like a degenerate, basking in his own hand skills; Viktor makes himself come in the office chair to the shape of Jayce’s mouth, in the bedroom to the pounding of Jayce’s cunt, in the bath, in the ride home, to Jayce’s hands or voice or the smell of his cologne. Viktor is getting so adept at gushing on command that he ought to keep a tally. One hundred little crosses at the back of his notepad. One hundred and one.

In the LCD screen, the knot pops inside and he shudders all over, immensely satisfied. His thighs clench, a pure haze of yesyesyes, a string in his very core pulling taut, clamoring for orgasm. The squishy bulbous base of the toy flickers in and out of view as the camboy greedily fucks himself on it, his pussy suctioning around the knot on every thrust and letting go each time with an increasingly debauched plap plap plap.

He's gone in a moment. A flash, and his knees and legs and hips all seize up in sync, motherboard overheating, system crash and shutdown— gone, just like that, hole stuffed, held open, his little cock dewy with running slick. His restraint goes up in smoke.

Viktor shakes in bed, exhausted, and he wonders just how much Jayce would like this as a reward.

Of course sometimes they don't really see each other. Jayce is regularly busy wrangling his own team, Viktor has the rest of the departments to babysit, reports to manage, Heimerdinger to pacify. On Thursday a pair of the Councilglasses combust while mounted on someone's face and the entire cluster panics. The fire alarm goes off, medical needs to be called, there's like twenty people pouring out into the hallway labyrinth and only one Viktor to figure out what happened.

It was an honest mistake, apparently. Erosion on the hardware or mishandling of the prototype, they're not sure what. But an employee’s eyeballs have been singed, so obviously the piece can't be shipped off like that. Morale gets down pretty bad. Word comes from up top that either they get a lid on this or the entire project could be shelved before market announcement.

While transit and evacuation is taking place, Viktor keeps spotting star stickers discreetly littered around the identical hallway panels. A different color adorns each section: blue, pink, red.

Word of the accident spreads around to other divisions. Officially speaking, an investigation is undergoing and they won't be able to say why this happened until the surviving samples are taken apart.

Unofficially speaking, Jayce Talis has made his way into Viktor’s office with a dire confession.

“It was my fault.” he says, head bowed in shame like he’s just killed a man. “I borrowed that pair yesterday for app testing and I didn’t put it back the way it was.”

Viktor locks the door behind him and tells Jayce to sit down.

“What exactly did you do?” he asks.

Remorse flattens Jayce’s body to the chair like a dried jellyfish. “I wanted to see if I could get integration running between the glasses and my engine. So I… stayed late yesterday, because I kept thinking about it, and I wanted to try it out. But it turns out our systems are pretty incompatible without a major overhaul.”

“And you didn’t delete your handiwork before you put it back?”

“I thought I made sure of that, but I guess it didn't take.”

Viktor can see the lawsuits flashing behind his retinas. Multiple of them; one representing the staff affected, one for a breach of trust & safety, one accusing him of tampering with official products with the explicit purpose of besmirching the company's name. Four quadrant obliteration.

“There's no way to make this better, is there?” Jayce laughs humorlessly. With the way he looks haunted, he's evidently running the numbers too. “You should fire me. I told you all of this crap so now you're— implicated. No, I'm firing myself.”

“I told you on the first day that I don't have the power to make these decisions. Neither do you.” Viktor huffs. “Who else knows?”

“What?”

“Who else knows you had it? Did anyone else see you?”

Jayce takes a second to process that, then responds.

“I was alone. Nobody saw me.”

“Good. Great. Alright, then: for all thoughts and purposes, you're clean until the investigation declares otherwise. I suggest you go home to clear off your head for the day, and I'll see you with the others tomorrow, Mr. Talis.”

Jayce sits there heavy like a stone, with this glassy, incomprehensible look in his eyes.

“Jayce,” Viktor tries again, appealing to intimacy. “This is protocol. I am telling you that your input is deeply appreciated, but our findings remain inconclusive. I trust you to not tell anyone else what you've told me here today.”

Jayce is fidgeting with his bracelet back and forth, looking for an out. He thinks this isn't fair and that much is obvious — he's too idealistic to take the excuse and make a run for it. He wages a little war on himself until he finally comes out the other end, saying:

“Okay. I trust you.”

Three days earlier, they sat lingering in the gray breakroom, waiting for the Council-branded microwave to be done toasting up their sandwiches;

“You were an engineer too, right? Before this?” Jayce, pawing clumsily at his engagement ring.

“I was. I worked under Heimerdinger for a few releases.” Viktor, avoiding his gaze, eyes on the spinning plate. Two minutes to go. “Back when he did more than sign other people's work.”

“That sounds fun.”

Back when Viktor was 27, fresh out of college and popping his cherry on a much disputed apprenticeship. He thought of himself as untamed, then— like an undetected glitch in the matrix, double-agent, him and his dreams of fully automated luxury communism. Him, wild and rough and rebellious— versus the corporate bottom line.

“It was enjoyable, for a time. I was good at it.”

I enjoyed my affair with ignorance, is what he means but doesn't say. He abstains for Jayce’s benefit.

The man returns to sliding the metal ring back and forth across his finger. Viktor wonders if it's loose; he probably takes it out for tinkering and soldering. A pity. Up close, It looks so goddamn expensive.

Unique filigree. Elaborate rosette diamonds weaving into a perfect loop, a symbol with some higher meaning he cannot decipher. What is it, a crown? A coat of arms?

“This wasn't my first choice either.” Jayce suddenly blurts out. “I got a job offer at Noxii months before Council reached out to me. Big, um, founder opportunity. They wanted me to be a seating member in the States. I wasn't sure how to feel about that. I got into this business to make lives better, you know?”

Viktor raises a brow, mildly perplexed. Noxii — the private military supplier? Surveillance & Defense Noxii? He can't see how Jayce fits into that paradigm. His heart is softer than cookie dough. He'd be in hell working for missiles and air strikes.

“I see. Are we having second thoughts now, Mr. Talis?”

“Oh, no!” Jayce nervously waves his hands about. “I'm just wondering if— if there was something else you wanted to do. Before. Other than this. Not that this isn't okay! But you… ”

“I'm not very shy about my dissatisfaction.” Viktor finishes, and Jayce laughs in relief.

“Yeah, you really aren't.”

The sandwiches turn. 60 seconds to go.

Viktor has a moment of weakness. “I wanted to dismantle everything. Every system, device, contraption— you name it. Take it apart. Start from zero. Rebuild the scaffolding of society from the ground up.” He laughs— at himself, mostly. “If you told Viktor from seven years ago that his career would peak around serving as an assistant manager, he'd probably throw himself off the bridge.”

40 seconds to go. Jayce's eyes on him are somber, clear like volcanic water.

“Then what changed?”

“Then my spine shattered in half. And while they shot me full of anesthetics my shitty intern plan couldn't afford, I realized people will only keep me on the payroll so long as I keep my mouth shut.”

The microwave dings. There you have it: two perfect, freezer-fresh sandwiches. Company logo burned at the bottom.

R&D is empty. A call taken ten minutes ago confirms the injured employee is stable and not gravely harmed.

That's good, but that's only half the damage.

Viktor spends the rest of his shift like an armored turtle, hunkering over his computer keys, coming up with a plan to scrub the footage of Jayce meddling outside of his clearance level.

He gets risky with his demands, shooting a direct line to security. Viktor leverages his place in the company hierarchy as if it were an inspector's badge, a gun and baton. He pretends to be distressed on Heimer's behalf, as if he's that loyal, as if he gives a shit about their stock prices. Listen to me, I need to get a good grasp on this before it goes viral in some stupid newspaper. Viktor chews through a pen and then goes at his nails, chair wheeling about nervously. He gets a copy of the last 48 hours shot in their cams feed and starts flicking through it with the intensity of a man succumbing to madness.

The to-do list in his mind kicks off automatically. He needs to pinpoint the incident, isolate the footage, see where and how Jayce messed up and how he may possibly avoid a slow death by countless criminal charges — there he is, fucker, with his fast hands and loose shirt looking gorgeous under even the most unflattering bug-scorching light. Jayce in these reels is a kid on a spy mission, gleeful interloper, tracing the hallways that he marked days prior with the kidnapped prototype cozy in his arms.

He knows nobody else is around to stop him and acts accordingly smug about it. Idiot, Viktor thinks, incomprehensibly mad about how stupid this is, and how stupidly aroused he feels about it. You're on camera, jackass. Act like this matters.

Back at Future Solutions, Jayce fiddles with the thing for what must be hours. Viktor is tempted to analyse the footage for actual diagnostics but his PC screen looks garbled in film; it's useless. There’s no way he'll be able to cut all of this out of the record unnoticed.

At most, this tape will make for a bitter souvenir once Jayce’s contract is nullified. And what good is that?

He skips around some more, past 8PM and Jayce unplugging his machine from the glasses’ viewport, past his disappointment with an experiment that hasn't exactly worked. He watches Jayce place the gear back where he found it and sneak out of Wearables as he leaves for the day, and then there's nothing until the next morning, when the crew shows up and splits into the usual duties, and oh. Oh. Viktor sees it now. Where this whole thing is just wrong— in premise, planning, and execution.

Viktor gets home four hours later than he’s supposed to, balancing styrofoam and a bucket of chicken under his arms. Tiredness and hunger have married inside his brain to create a debauched offspring of delirium. He tries fitting his keys into the lock and he misses the hole a couple of times, because they're not the right keys, and it turns out he's got his pockets mixed up.

The elevator chimes. Opens. Viktor is laughing at his own stupidity when the voice reaches his ears, promptly stealing all the air from his lungs.

“Viktor?” Jayce asks, tongue heavier than usual, just on the verge of scandalized. “What are you— oh my god. You've lived here the entire time?”

–not scandalized. It's a lower, friskier emotion. If Viktor didn't know any better he'd almost call it excitement; but any rational adult would say it's probably alarm.

Fuck, he thinks again, welcoming defeat. Fuck it. Got this far, didn't I? No way out but through.

How does one fake surprise again? Oh, right. Like faking an orgasm.

“--Jayce?” Viktor whips his head around a bit too quickly, world spinning, leaning on his closed door.

Jayce emerges from the elevator like a being of pure light. Drowsy Eros, clambering down his marble pedestal. He's battered too, up close; coming apart at the seams. His hair is ruffled in a less than tidy way and something has stained his silk blouse — is that wine? Was he at a fancy dinner? — but he crowds Viktor like he always does, hovering in his personal space, peeking at his KFC and pasta on the to-go bag. His eyes widen a little.

“Were you— did they keep you late because of me? I'm so sorry.” Melty hazelnut eyes. Downturned mouth. He makes worry look so sweet. Asshole.

“I kept myself late.” Viktor shrugs, steadying himself to not clip through the floor. “I had to develop a comprehensive narrative about what happened,”

“--Right, that sounds like–”

“It wasn't you.”

“What?” Jayce sounds taken aback. Almost uncomfortable, suddenly.

“I checked the footage myself. The pair of glasses you meddled with is not remotely the same one Mr. Reveck set on fire. You tanked the battery of your prototype during your nightly excursion. It had to be charged up all morning, so you see–”

The lightbulb goes on.

“It had… nothing to do with me.” Jayce finishes, his voice less than a ghostly murmur. It takes him five seconds to process that, like life is flashing before his eyes, the fire in him building up from a tiny spark. “It was a freak accident. I'm not fired.” he exclaims, grabbing the sides of his head and then each of Viktor’s shoulders, more empathically, excitement flowing out of him. “Did you hear that?”

“I remember saying it, yes–”

“I'm not fucked! I don't need lawyers!” he laughs and he does a thing that sounds like a hoot and a holler, limbs spazzing in starfish shapes before he drags Viktor into his arms, not minding the keys or the dinner package, just wanting him close enough to hug and bury his face into, beard scritching the side of Viktor’s neck and hands so warm and loving where they fall across his back— gentle, never pressing into the iron bolts, like he knows— “You're godsent,” Jayce drawls, sighing directly into the side of his face. Viktor feels himself losing grip on reality. “Thank you so much, Viktor. Thank you. I was freaking out all evening, holy shit.”

Jayce smells like spilled wine and pricey meat smoked over hot coals. Jayce smells like perfume, and sweat, and all the other things that sink deep down Viktor’s body to make him wet and rock hard at the same time. God, he's fucking hungry. He wants to suck up the salt on Jayce’s underarms.

Eventually Jayce pulls himself back, remembering propriety after the fact. They both laugh about it; how silly, what a great joke it was. They had worried so much over nothing.

I owe you one, Jayce tries to say, moving to pick up his meal bags. At that point Viktor begins floundering. Oh no no, it's alright, you don't need to do that, it was my responsibility anyway and it wouldn't be proper for me to ask— excuses, niceties. He doesn't mean any of that. The mere implication that Jayce wants to get inside his house is setting his ass on fire.

Yesterday, Viktor had pulled the hitachi wand out on his living room sofa. It was a matter of pragmatism. The natural lighting was better there; one of the guys he chats with online wanted to see a good video of his cunt taken apart. Viktor is pretty sure he came twice in one session and threw the toy off to the side, still slick and trembling, not bothering to pick up after himself. And that's almost certainly going to be in Jayce’s line of sight if he gets past this door, hard no.

Jayce deflates, somewhat. He catches himself on his own apartment frame and gives up on the pursuit, feeling a little awkward. He's not drunk to the point of total unawareness, just happy. And eager. Emotions flit so openly across his face.

He tells Viktor goodnight, and thanks, (again) but before Viktor has a chance to fully disappear into his locked fortress Jayce holds the doorknob tight, his lips showing that clumsy starlet smile.

Sorry, just one more thing. Can I have your number?

Viktor isn't sure how they got here. Probably has something to do with the fact that he “spontaneously” remembered he got a package with Jayce’s name on it last month, and when he went to deliver it Jayce had insisted he also come inside to check out his abode.

It's exactly like Viktor's apartment, except for the ways in which it's the complete opposite. Viktor is stuffy antiques, thrift items. His home is either open paths or pre-owned furniture, hints of silverfish, dogeared books collecting dust on the corners of every room. Jayce lives in some other realm, where all is made of sleek surfaces and preventive cleanliness. His furniture lusters like it has something to prove. He has framed vinyls, brand new Ikea tables and shelves, polished metal stools and — as Viktor is slowly finding out — an insatiable preoccupation with assembling miniature toy robots.

He says it's just a downtime hobby, but it's clearly something he adores. His fireplace is surrounded by clear display cases, each one bearing a wide variety of his completed projects. Some are cute, some are scary, as a rule of thumb they are all very complex. The kit mistakenly delivered to Viktor’s doorstep was apparently a discontinued unit he bid for on an auction hours before he got into his relocation flight, and Jayce had no idea it would arrive so quickly. He thought for sure it'd gotten lost. (He swore the seller was from Japan, but upon closer inspection, it turns out to be some weeb in Arizona.)

He lives alone, if that wasn't clear enough. For the first nine minutes of their talk Viktor fully expects to walk into a surprise meeting with his wife, but it never happens, and then he begins to find it odd how there's not a hint of cohabitation present in the room. No flowers, no portraits.

Jayce is quick to laugh it off, when asked.

“My girlfriend is set up in her family's estate,” he says, injecting some sarcasm into the general delivery. “It's a couple of hours away, over the hills. Makes this place look like a sweatbox.”

Girlfriend, is all Viktor hears. Not fiancé. Not wife. There's a story here. Twisted satisfaction blooms deep inside his gut, dark smear taking shape. Oil spilled on a clear shore.

“Not too keen on the hills yourself, I gather?”

“Not by a long mile.”

That's all Viktor gets on the first day, when all Jayce wants to do is show him what the inside of his limited-edition Megatron looks like. Distantly, Viktor recognizes the name from a decade of browsing esoteric porn tags — he knows what this kink is all about. It's for the freaks who get really into ports and wires, the idea of alien robots fashioning themselves with new sockets and plugs to fuck eachother silly even if their race has no need for biological reproduction. A hedonist's fantasy. But Viktor suspects Jayce didn't get into this hobby for the usual technofaggot reasons. He just sounds like the type of guy who has a soft spot for old cartoons.

(Much later, he will hear more about the girlfriend: bits and pieces of the story, the nature of the woman taking shape. Venture capital. Rich family. Quiet millionaire. Deals in investment, associations, asset acquisition— all the odious keywords that make Viktor want to roll his eyes. They met at a business cocktail, her and Jayce. She's “her own boss”. There's never a mention of the wedding.)

As far as Saturdays go, it's pleasant, if not outright nerve wracking. Jayce tries to get him a drink, which Viktor politely declines. He's been promised a build demonstration, and Viktor gets high enough from watching the man work in his natural habitat.

They split the effort 50/50, Viktor on the instructions, Jayce on the bench. Assembly takes a delicate pair of hands and a lot of concentration from the operator. Snip here, connect there, make sure you accomplish steps three and four before screwing. Gentle, alright? Handle with care. To connect the major articulation joints, place your finger in the internal cavity. The biggest one, don't be afraid to really get in there. Yeah, as far as it can go; deep enough to feel the click of the auxiliary limbs. You'll know the head is on right when you can feel the tip on the pad of your finger, when you can turn it by rubbing softly at the hinge. Just like that. Great work. Good boy. You look like you know what you're doing.

Jayce blooms under the attention. Excited, proud, red-cheeked. It's an interesting sensory experience, to say the least. More than once Viktor catches himself imagining it's his body in Jayce’s hands, his naked miniature torso sock-puppeted on the tip of Jayce’s middle finger.

How comforting it must feel, to be assembled by this pair of hands in particular. Warm and rough and gentle, everything you could ever want. He's seen them work, seen how they handle the processes in motion. Viktor thinks it would be an honor to be dismantled by Jayce Talis; one limb at a turn, joints unscrewed, pointed edges carefully sawed off, back in the box until next time.

Viktor feels jealous over the lack of space left for him on the shelf.

Afterwards, Viktor proceeds as if that event didn't happen, grasping the cracked shards of his routine with both arms. He doesn't invite Jayce back into his own home, doesn't extend a hand to make their boundary lines blurrier.

But his phone keeps buzzing.

JAYCE — 10:50AM (MONDAY):

Hey, I know you told me you cant be super responsive abt work stuff or it'll look like favoritism or w/e…

but like

I was thinking

JAYCE — 07:01PM (WEDNESDAY):

DUDE i was taking out the trash and this squirrel has the fattest sack I've ever seen [.img]

JAYCE — 05:35PM (FRIDAY):

did maddie tell you she keeps borrowing our printers

I think we're out.

like idk whatever she's doing keeps jamming them

every machine in our dept is spitting blanks

its like shes trying to fuck me over i swear to god

YOU — 05:40PM:

Why did you wait until the end of the week to tell me.

JAYCE — 05:41PM:

im shy

YOU — 05:43PM:

My office is closed until next Monday shift.

Goodbye.

JAYCE — 05:44PM:

wow.

WOW

so you hate me?

Jayce Talis sounds lonely over text, and he texts very, very often.

He's relentlessly kind. It's turning Viktor’s life into a nightmare. Nevermind that he has enough correspondence to sort through on a good day, now there's the added distraction of Jayce’s stream-of-consciousness reports flooding daily into his inbox; I went for a run this morning. I found a new donut shop. Have you ever heard of this or that company? What do you think of whatshisface, the consultant from thursday meeting? Is there a good Thai place around that you like?

And look, Viktor isn't a monster. They have some nice exchanges, he answers as much as he can about the city and reacts politely to the man's pictures — none of his face, regrettably, always the streets or the skyline— but aside from that all he hears is lonely lonely lonely.

It's ridiculous. It's like God is testing his resilience. He's setting up a mousetrap and Jayce is the fragrant crumb of cheese sitting right before the clippers.

Viktor will be in the middle of sending a report to Heimerdinger, or languishing morbidly in the doctor's waiting room, or rubbing himself raw to a ten minute gangbang or whatever else he wastes time on, and he can see the new push notifications popping up, Jayce's name shining white on the corner of his screen. 4K. Ultra wide. Double penetration. JAYCE, 7PM: Hi. How R U? Lonely lonely lonely.

Day by day, the urge grows harder to kill.

In the throes of his own masturbatory nirvana, Viktor often wonders what would happen, if he actually dared to cross that threshold, if he went around the wall that separates their homes and just pressed himself naked in Jayce’s arms.

It probably wouldn't be pretty, that's for sure. Viktor is past thirty, with a bad knee and a fallible hip, skinny and sweaty and hairy from his breasts to his asscrack. His body is a patchwork quilt of surgical lines. His eyebags could be a burial site. If Jayce doesn’t wilt at the sight of him the next thing on the way of a response will be incredibly perturbed. Aghast. Even in the best case scenario Viktor loses; say Jayce gets past disgust, and horror, and the very objective fact that he still has a promise band snug around his finger; say that by some unspoken miracle he wants to touch Viktor, and he's willing to overlook all of the reasons why he shouldn’t —

Viktor can't even get a pap smear without squirming in agony. His vagina has, historically, clammed up like the jagged teeth on a bear trap. He’s dry and tense and the gyno suspects his hormone treatment is to blame for possible atrophy, but between getting fucked and getting to be a man Viktor firmly chose the latter, and he's never moved past the initial discomfort on anal. He likes watching it, sure, but a love of the sport isn't giving him playing credentials.

Imagine having that conversation, in-between the parts where he marches up to Jayce’s house and drops his bathrobe to the ground. Hi Jayce. Do you want to look at my weird mutant body while we get each other off? If you see anything you like here, rest assured that at most you won't be getting it. We can maybe frot like teenagers, and surely you’d find a far better time anywhere else, but that's what you want, right? The novelty freakshow experience while you’re at odds with your wife? I can maybe mouth at your cock and you'll pretend to like it?

—Even in a hypothetical this sounds pathetic.

But Jayce wouldn't beat him for that. He's not like the rest. He wouldn't wipe Viktor's teeth on the pavement as self-defense, wouldn't even dare to consider such cruelty, but on the flipside, what he has to offer might be much worse. Because Viktor would look up at his face to see pity. Like he's an eunuch, a make-a-wish kid.

No, none of that. Viktor is fine with pining in comfortable detachment. Fine with assigning himself the lowest possible amount of risk. The years already haven’t made his routine any easier and he’s not about to sabotage the little of what remains.

Jayce is a nice man. Jayce is a kind man. Jayce is one of his main professional responsibilities and Council’s leading voice on an entirely new field of learning technology; they haven’t told him as much yet, but Viktor has been informed the bigwigs are terribly impressed with how quickly his project has been getting off the ground. It feels like magic. Word on the street is that Heimerdinger might show up just to see him, eager for a chance to pick at the mind of their brand-new golden boy.

And there’s not even a price tag yet.

So, when Jayce comes to him with late-night worries and anxious reservations about what the marketing team asks them in board meetings, Viktor listens, and he keeps his distance. His life might feel like an eternal slow-motion car crash but at least there’s this zenith, a lull in the middle of the tempest. The highlight of his days is watching Jayce Talis come into work, knowing that if nothing else, he’ll be elated to receive a supervisor visit.

As for his lower urges, Viktor can take care of those himself. And he will, like he’s always taken care of them. His array of usual partners will be waiting right where he left them: in the comfort of his bedroom, behind a nice screen, at least a whole world apart.

Viktor gets into a good rhythm. He's a big time spender, he pays upfront, he's a pleasure to talk to. He's slightly tipsy, gawping at the profile of the latest performer to be sent his way.

He has a wide reputation, at this point. We're talking word of mouth. Yes, Viktor has a type, everyone knows he has a type and he's willing to pay fair amounts for what is essentially roleplay and some personalized sexting. By all accounts, he's an easy mark. He enjoys being an easy mark. He barely has to look for service.

It's a mutually beneficial arrangement: they come to him because they're willing to indulge a vice, he comes because he wants to come. (That's kind of the whole point, really.)

Tonight he's looking at an athletic body, cherubic brown curls, a tattoo of waves around his muscled forearm. Modern day male Venus. Truly beautiful eyes. Commendable beard, shiny and well groomed. The man is registered under the nickname Seabird_567; he’s the one who sent Viktor a flirty voice note, his intention worn upfront. His tenor is completely off-base but that's alright, Viktor appreciates some initiative. His eyes are blurring a little and he's not too picky at this point, he just wants to pretend someone else wants him.

His Council Calendar app recognizes that it is past midnight and sends him a push-reminder about Heimer's visit being scheduled for later today. Viktor scoffs, and swipes the pesky warning off to the side.

Hello, he types into the chatbox. He feels like an old man, but that likely has less to do with his choice of greeting and more to do with how Seabird is clearly in his early twenties. He imagines him a little older than that.

I like your tattoo. Viktor says, trying to figure out in what kind of context they could possibly meet. He imagines warm sand under his palms and the sun high on the horizon; pleasant waves, quiet on the coast. He's never indulged in this kind of fantasy before. Maybe he needs a vacation.

Do you surf? he asks.

Seabird laughs, and tells him no, actually, he's a diver. Viktor thinks that's sexy, in the sense that his lungs would probably collapse if he tried.

The man seems to smile again. Viktor imagines him smiling when he reacts to his comment with a heart. The conversation blooms easily from there. They play pretend like two guys at a tiki bar.

Does Jayce enjoy summer? Viktor can't remember if he's ever mentioned that, or if it's the regular complaints about snow he's thinking of. Either way, Jayce would look beautiful on that beach. He savors the image as it manifests — shirtless, sunglasses, laying on an orange towel. Utterly defenseless, like a kitten rolled belly-up.

He'd be wet from the ocean, swimming trunks wrinkled around every explicit curve of his thighs, heavy with the shape and weight of him. His bitten lips taste of kiwi; his chest radiates warmth where Viktor places his hands to climb. Maybe it's a nudist beach. Better yet— maybe it's a cruising beach. Viktor would get away with straddling him and kissing him breathless, his hand lustily wandering down Jayce’s trousers.

Jayce is initially timid about doing it out in the open, blushing and sputtering like a damsel, but he can be seduced to the contrary. He tilts his head back to give Viktor ample access to his throat. Jayce moans, pretty and relaxed, when he starts sucking hickeys down his neck. He's so high-strung, he needs a break, his Jayce — he wants to lay down and enjoy this.

The trick with these things is knowing when and how to suspend the fantasy. Can your desire be crystallized in amber? Can you make it last? Oh, he's not alone. Callboys make a living by stringing along multiple clients at once. Texting is a consuming affair, shooting and formatting a response the way Viktor likes it may take anywhere from five minutes to one hour; multitasking during these lulls is encouraged, if not required. In the gaps between moments, Viktor will window-browse, refresh his workfeed, toy with the speed of his trusty bullet vibrator. Right now it's mostly set to a faint, persistent frequency. Something to tide him over as he scrolls through the log diary of messages Real Jayce has sent him this week.

He does this to remind himself what Jayce sounds like. His mannerisms, his voice breathy in 10 second clips. Just conceiving a feeling in his mind isn't good enough, Viktor also needs to preserve it. The picture should be worth revisiting every time he closes his eyes, like he's drip-feeding pleasure into his own mouth, nurturing it with a gentle grasp.

The image that Viktor holds on to, then: his hand fondling Jayce’s skin, the taste of fruit on his tongue, the rabbit sprawl of his limbs as they lay beneath Viktor’s on the same towel. His body heat, fresh furnace of a wet summer's day.

The next message that Viktor sends, thoughts filled with the romantic arch of Jayce’s hips: You're so pretty. Let me see your cock?

Right, another 2 minutes of waiting after this, probably. He shuts off his phone screen and nurses the drink, hoping Seabird is bashful. Jayce would be bashful. It’s what makes him cute.

Five minutes go by without the response chime ringing. Viktor buries his face in the softness of his pillow, soft purr in the middle of his legs, rutting, wondering if he’d be able to smell alcohol on Jayce’s breath. Is he sluttier when he's buzzed? Maybe he's more daring after a few sips of tropical punch. That could be hot. Open mouth kissing. Passing a cherry stem back and forth.

Another beat goes by in silence. Viktor reaches for the phone, a little disgruntled. He doesn't want to be on anyone's back burner if he's meant to be up early in a few hours.

He opens the phone, squints blearily at the screen. Why is the chat window so fucking bright? He's pretty sure the app has a theme as dark as the void.

His eyes adjust, and then widen all at once. Viktor reads the contact name above the window and the phone slides out of his hands like a wet bar of soap, bouncing on the floor of his bedroom. Shit. Shit. Shit! Viktor pushes himself off the blankets and goes chasing after the little brick as if it is a ticking time bomb, but nothing he can do matters anymore. The message has been sent and read, the two little arrows on the side lit up bright blue from the second his vision cleared. He didn't send it to Seabird, he sent it to Jayce.

Jayce, who always answers his texts as soon as he gets them. Jayce, who's probably been sitting in mute shock for the past ten minutes.

Viktor is going to throw up.

Something actually starts to rocket up his stomach; Viktor clambers for the bathroom and struggles to fish the thrumming vibrator out of his pants. His face and ears and chest are doused in lava. He doesn't puke, but the boozy high has disappeared and he needs to throw water on his face until he wakes up.

What the fuck is he going to do now? Can Jayce report him to HR? Does it count? He can't lose a friend and also be fired, that's overkill, fuck. Where else would he even go?

Viktor should just tell him he meant to send that to someone else. It's not a lie, at least not entirely, and Jayce would be understanding in that cavalier way of his and maybe they could laugh about it, about Viktor’s general aura of patheticness, about Viktor’s stupidity.

He gets as far as picking the phone back up to draft a line that says hey I'M sorry I'm Drunk when a little typing bubble appears on the leftmost corner. Jayce is writing back. Shit. Shit. Viktor deletes his miserable text in a rush and waits for God to backhand him already, hoping it kills him once for all.

But Jayce sends back a picture.

It's of him, first in record, his body in a fancy, warmly lit bathroom stall, blue tie caught in his mouth, dinner suit open to expose an undone belt and the strip of furred skin coating his abdomen. His cock is flushed to full thickness and blushing, shaft pointed up from where his fingers hold it at the base, foreskin pulled back. Viktor’s mouth floods with saliva. The bullet vibe rickets a storm where he dropped it on the sink.

Beneath the picture, Jayce writes— Be gentle? — like he's a flustered virgin, instead of the most fuckable man Viktor has ever met.

Viktor stares at his phone and he feels insane. His palms run sweaty. His face is beet red. His dick is, unfortunately, pretty happy about this turn of events. Pumped full. Raring to go.

He's not sure any of this is real at all.

You're gorgeous, he sends back quickly, wrists shaking, like he's having a stroke. And if he's meant to die now he figures he might as well go out swinging.

Touch yourself for me? Viktor asks.

And I've had to tell you all of this to say: that's how the trouble starts.

MAY 8, 20XX

It feels nice to have a secret.

For example: right now, Viktor is boiling inside a kettle with fifty other people — the kettle being the Councilplex, the boiling being their third-quarter admin meetings — and he knows something nobody else in this room does.

At the center of the presentation is Jayce Talis, his hand on the screen controls. Jayce Talis arrived late to his own headlining debrief. Jayce Talis looks mildly under the influence —this only in a certain light, to those who pay certain scrutiny to the trembling of his hands, and the redness of his cheeks— but to the uninitiated eye, it’s hard to tell if the man has just done a line off somebody's shoulder or if he’s mildly feverish.

Granted, neither would be considered a federal crime around these parts. The issue is moreso that none of these people have ever seen Jayce squirm.

It’s throwing them completely off balance. Especially given the topic at hand.

Jayce has been clearing his throat for the past ten minutes, shifting from foot to foot as he explains, still rather brilliantly, all of the progress his development team has achieved in the past season. The Dream Machine project has gone from conceptbook to a series of sophisticated systems; a mixture of logic-based hard code and experimental forays on brain scanning and simulated neural responses. What is being displayed on screen right now is a high-fidelity model of Jayce’s own brain, a simulated reproduction done in black and bright blue of a million little nodes sparking and interacting countless times per second, segmented only by the relative areas where they sit inside his skull.

But the questions the suits keep asking him are something else entirely. They look at his five-minute baroque snapshot of the actual human mind and say, a bit more baffled each time: “Right, and how are we supposed to sell it?”

“We’re, um, working on that right now.” There’s Jayce, politely clearing his throat again. Viktor thinks he catches sight of his tongue darting inside his mouth.

“Do we have a prevision?”

“I thought we had a deal to softlaunch something this December.”

“Is that thing running live?”

“-It’s not live at the moment, no. That’s a– what we’re looking at is a vertical slice of the total scope. It’s, ah, a– a closed loop. Like a replaying video,” he closes his eyes for a little too long on that last pause, hand coming up to brush his hair back as if it was a planned flourish, but Viktor sees what’s happening, and he’s finding it very, very amusing to watch. “It’s in Beta.” Jayce sighs, voice dangerously high.

“Gentlemen,” Viktor decides to throw him a bone right then, shuffling papers around to draw attention to himself while Jayce grows a bit more unsteady, eyelids fluttering, palm eclipsing over his mouth. “I believe what Mr. Talis is trying to say is that our initial studies have been much more interesting than first anticipated. The possibilities are boundless.”

They love that word, boundless. It calls to mind a few of their favorite pastimes; tax breaks and state-approved money laundering. It's like dropping a coin into a piggy bank.

Executive Hoskel predictably launches into a grand-visionaire tirade about how pioneering brain preservation could give them the power to One Day Colonize Mars. This is exactly what Viktor hoped for; now the table is caught in a frenzy, too occupied with gleeful speculation to even notice Jayce gently bracing himself on the back wall as his knees shake on the verge of collapse. In the morning hours before this meeting, Viktor had him jacking off into a glass tumbler, milking load after load until his balls emptied out. There's no mess left to give. Jayce is coming dry in his pants.

His breathing turns heavy, his eyes large and dark where they blink in the corner of the dimmed room. He searches for Viktor’s gaze from the other side of the conference table and silently mouths the words Thank You.

Viktor smiles like a saint. His fingers seek the dial in his pocket to lower the potency of Jayce’s torture device right now.

Palpable relief spreads across the man's features; his eyebrows relax, his shoulders drop. He allows the bliss to wash over his body completely, restoring his spirit, and in the next ten seconds Jayce comes back, bigger and better, ready to spin a half-lie about jackpot shareholders and untapped yearly revenue.

His words are stiff, winning smile practiced in a mirror. Another person's voice being projected outside of his mouth. Nobody else notices the shift because they don't care to watch for it, and the noticing would only cheapen the glory of what they're witnessing, but Viktor has the best seat in the house; backstage, privy to the performance script Jayce so perfectly recites.

The spell works exactly as designed. In this room he is Divinity, holiness reincarnated, modern messiah cast in a plinth of solid gold — not a crack on him, not a blemish— he is the figure of the genius, the prodigy in control.

This is a mask he puts on sometimes, for the sake of survival. The message it puts out is that You are in his presence because You are among the few chosen to lead mankind. And wouldn't that be nice?

Jayce shines like the galaxy’s brightest star. The suits puff up their chests, made dreamers by association. Their raucous applause can be heard even in the rooms outside.

But they're fools, tricked as easily as any crowd by a common street magician. They aren't in on the secret, the truth about this presentation Viktor holds discreetly under the press of a thumb— that what they're witnessing is just the bluster of a mortal man who's very good at playing his cards.

The golden boy smiles brilliantly at Viktor. Viktor smiles back.

Jayce prefers to be called other things in bed. Baby, darling, princess. Sometimes the last can make him so flustered he loses all semblance of motor control, pink in the face and whining breathlessly as he cums, his spine arched with want on top of the mattress.

Viktor enjoys saying so because it’s true, not because he wants to please.

The first time they video call Viktor struggles to pick up the phone, a familiar lump of worthlessness building in his arterial tunnel. He doesn’t want to see himself next to Jayce’s soft and unscarred body, dreading how ghastly it will be to try to maintain an erection with his skeletal doppelganger always in frame.

He presses the green button out of obligation, a fear his hesitancy will read as him rejecting the man somehow (which couldn’t be further from the truth, and would only complicate matters,) but as the ethereal form of a freshly showered Jayce fills the screen Viktor’s window remains covered in darkness. He’s always been paranoid about his privacy, a trait only made worse after years in the industry taught him that there is no limit to what kind of user data can be bought and sold, and thus his phone case has safety blinders around the cameras.

For a moment, Viktor doesn’t reach to undo the clasp, first trying to soak his eyes on the unadulterated miracle that stands before him. Jayce is sideways on the pillow, hair dry but fanning attractively around his head, caramel eyes glimmering in a way Viktor is starting to recognize as his own brand of horniness. Viktor swears his assessment doesn’t take long at all, but clearly his silence must.

“You don’t need to turn it on for me,” Jayce’s honeyed voice, a murmur. Always cannier than he seems. “I just want to hear you. If you want.”

Oh, there is so much Viktor wants. The list of things he covets seems to grow larger by the second.

First it was just pictures, little dares for Jayce to accomplish, dished out during the weekday. Get naked, Viktor would ask. Open your legs. Pinch your nipples until they're red. Finger yourself for me; more than three, sweetheart, I know you can do it. I want you to come and lick your hand clean. Show me what you look like when you're done.

And Jayce was glad to indulge him, granting his every request to the very best of his ability, responding to Viktor’s hunger with his own burgeoning appetite. He'd send back a shot of his filthy face, mouth ajar, tongue lacquered in dripping white. He'd tease Viktor by taping himself inside their shared elevator, six in the morning, sweaty and clearly just done with a run as he used a hand to squeeze the supple meat of his naked chest. Harlot. It was Jayce’s idea to escalate their encounters, his willingness to submit pushing them to entirely new extremes.

The cardinal rules of their arrangement are very simple. This doesn't interfere with their work. Inside the office, they will continue to act like they've always done before. No suggestions of an interpersonal affair. No handsy business, either, especially not where the cameras might watch. Jayce will proceed with his highest efforts and Viktor will give him no preferential treatment on his reporting; but outside of the office, in the privacy of their bedrooms, Jayce can be as needy as he likes.

When he lays himself bare on the covers there is no act. Not genius nor prodigy nor husband nor golden boy— just Jayce, shirt hicked up, abalone shell cut open. His tender mollusk heart pulsating like a thing to be plucked.

“Talk to me. Tell me what you want.”

Jayce likes Viktor’s eyes on him. Jayce likes when Viktor tells him what to do and showers him in praise for doing it right. He likes Viktor’s accent and his shamelessness, or how he acts as if he's shameless when he's demanding something of him.

Most of all, Jayce likes to be treated like a babydoll. Beautiful, prized, beloved. As delicate as porcelain. Made to be cradled, ruffled, petted and mishandled.

Today he wears all pink lace. A gift left on his doorstep, big black box, the embroidery somehow fit to his exact measurements. He's been getting quite a few of these parcels as of late, all presents from his secret admirer. (Viktor is never subtle about how much he has spent on these things. He's aware that this is only a peasant's luxury. That it doesn't compare to the vast wealth of things Jayce might procure from another lover. But he wants to take space. Wants to prove this is something he can offer, even if it's a pittance. Deep down he's always waiting for the moment where he'll be chastised for going too far. Did you get my gift, princess? Did you like it?)

The camera has been propped up at the foot of the bed so Viktor has a full view of the proceedings. Since this is a special evening, Jayce's pillows match the color of his lingerie, same shade as his garter belt. His legs are covered in translucent pastel stockings, his ample chest spills out of a cherry petal bralette. He reclines on the bed, nested in silk and dreamy cotton.

Jayce visibly melts when Viktor calls him pretty girl.

He opens his mouth on command, eyelashes heavy, fluttering gently when he starts to swallow a cock. Viktor groans at the sight. He can hear Jayce’s throat working, the wet rustle of silicon on a ready tongue. Jayce has never asked him a thing about the toys; apparently delighted to try out just about anything Viktor smuggles his way, approaching it with the same passion as he would to living flesh. Viktor grips himself through his pants.

Harder, he demands.

Viktor grasps for his stroker, soft insides coated with lube. If he ruts on the gel surface a certain way he can believe it's Jayce's mouth on his cock, the plush of his lips sucking love marks on Viktor's shaft. God, how he loves Jayce’s mouth.

Viktor tells him to spread his legs in the air. Pull your panties to the side. I want to know if you've been good.

Jayce obeys him with a pleasured hum, kitten licks on the textured bottom of the toy. He hooks his fingers around the strip of lace and pulls, showing the flat pink stopper of the plug buried snugly inside his asshole. The piece is engraved with a little heart; the edges of it slick and shiny as his muscles contract.

Biting back a drugged moan, Viktor orders him to pull it out.

Part of him doesn't expect this to last. Not his sexual stamina, but this arrangement that they have. Viktor knows there's an expiry date looming soon on the horizon, a point of no return — the day Jayce gets tired of him, the day his gimmick is no longer fresh and exciting, the day Jayce moves in with his wife — so he goes overboard now, while he can. While he still has the power.

Jayce pops the cock out of his mouth, gets on all fours. He's pastel pink and boyishly playful, nymphet, kneading the back of his thighs for Viktor to watch. His dick slips free of the soft cotton. Hangs listless between his legs. Precome gushes out of the crown in pearly drops as Viktor orders him to ride the dildo until he cannot think anymore.

A shiver travels down the muscles of his spine. This is a play Jayce adores. Not until you come or until I tell you to stop, but a point beyond the usefulness of his brain, his joints, and his mewling pleas for release. I want you to decide when you're ruined and I want you to ruin yourself for me.

They've done it before, though the last time Jayce was mounting the toy on a chair and with a fleshlight stuck on the other side of his jutting cock. Didn't last very long, but the fifteen minutes left him panting and crying Viktor's name, Viktor, V, Vik, slobber of spit and moans and tears as he came inside the pocket pussy but kept his hips moving, bracing himself shakily on the armrests. He did it until the fleshlight slid limply off of him, his cock soft and wet and overused, his knees shaking with the strain of abusing himself.

It had been the hottest thing Viktor had ever seen. He still has the end of the recording memorized; Viktor, V, Vik, the desperate chorus of that call. How unbearably affectionate it sounded. He wants it again, now, another one while he's watching. Another for the archives so when this ends he'll have a reason to stay alive.

Jayce smiles over his shoulder, and he indulges Viktor’s wish, like he always does. Hair mussed, pink cheeked, tears in his eyes and only one name said in that loving throat purr. So good to me, sweetheart. My gorgeous little slut. I'm close. Baby, you're killing me.

The new pitch bible for the Dream Machine is a toyetic, unfolding pamphlet of delights, an illustrated guide to virtual realities so pleasant they could tempt Mark Zuckerberg to shoot himself.

Jayce has figured out the perfect sales angle for the current incarnation of his project: as it stands, the technology is too bulky and expensive, a prohibitive cost and building effort getting in the way of marketing towards individual customers, but the same features turn out to be basically chump change in the domain of any entertainment company. His new goal is hard-targeting theme parks.

They'll be sending insider packages to every major player in the field — from Disneyland to Super Nintendo World — extolling the virtues of their experimental Dreamsharing technology and how their user interface pods may be utilized to build the World's first fully habitable theme rides.

What they're offering is a game changer. Wide, customizable first-person immersion, a banquet of the senses with all the living mascots you could think of, at a fraction of the cost they would be to maintain in real life. Character actors no longer need to wither all day under layers of clogging makeup or the oppressive twenty pounds of a Bowser full body suit, not when Jayce's Dream Machine system is refrigerated to constant room temperature, operates safe in the shade, and can provide an equally realistic experience without any of the sticky hassle. The workers will always be rested. Props and scenery and story scripts can be retouched, updated, or completely retired from miles away.

Gone are the billions sunk into the development, repair and deconstruction of underperforming attractions at the parks. Gone are the physical limitations based on weight, height, ability or appearance— no you must be this tall to ride, no I'm sorry, but this attraction doesn't work with wheelchairs— Imagine a perfect world that has you in mind, no matter who you are.

It's clear cut. It's brilliant. It's something these companies have been attempting to crack for decades but from the wrong angle. Jayce has struck a diamond vein and he knows it; these days his whole body glows when it's his turn to speak in a meeting. A halo of pure motherly love consumes him. This project is his baby, his utopian brainchild.

“We have the chance to create something unspeakably wonderful.” Jayce will say, emphatically holding the hands of whichever company rep is visiting headquarters that day. “Nobody else can do what we can. Together, we are in a unique position to be at the forefront of progress— to define what it means. To do good. We could use all of our expertise to bring joy into this world. Lord knows we need some.”

(He fumbles some words when delivering that speech to the Hasbro and Bandai Namco guys. Somehow it makes the effect even more charming. Sorry, I'm a big fan, he'll laugh. Your toys are why I got into engineering. I have special editions—)

It works every time.

The initial negotiations are an unprecedented success. Best of all, this strategy means they can work on proofs of concept with a secure clientele without all the hassle of going public before its the right time. They might skip large-market instrumentalization altogether, or postpone it for another five years. Ample time to secure money for medical research, to lend his creation to biomedicine experts, maybe figure out the precise ins and outs of the human subconscious.

What Jayce is doing right now is a parlor trick, conjuring a live dove out of a hat. He knows as much, and he's happy to provide that illusion; he believes there is a real positive value to making someone smile. But he has a dreamer's eyes. A dreamer's mind.

In private exchanges sent daily to Viktor's inbox, he simply cannot wait to witness what other untold miracles his engine might accomplish, when put in the capable hands of another.

They've never kissed.

It's funny how little space actually exists between them sometimes, when Viktor considers the nature of their long-distance courtship. They share the same bathroom, lunchroom, apartment building and place of employment, but their lips never shall meet.

Jayce wears his ring at work, when he has to talk with Viktor in person, going over quotas and building blocks. They arrived at this impasse only sort of naturally, because neither is brave enough to bring it up. They don’t talk about — “it” — at all, if they can help it. More pressing topics take priority on the activity ladder. Adjustments. Calculations. Proofreading. They don’t need to acknowledge the elephant in the room if they carefully operate around the circumference of its lumpy rear.

It's funny because the amount of electricity that sparks between their idle bodies could supply a power plant; it's funny because the engagement ring disappears as far as their nightly indulgences are involved. Viktor tries to not read too deeply into this — it’s only natural, after all, to make your hands free when you’re busy sticking your fingers inside every available orifice — but a regrettable part of him hopes it’s proof of something. Exactly what it is proving he can’t say yet.

That Jayce cares about his feelings?

…Or maybe he wears it like a warding spell, metaphorical garlic against Viktor’s vampiric nature. A reminder of where they stand.

Viktor tries to not dwell on that too much. But he thinks about Jayce’s lips. He dreams about them quite often, if he’s being honest. The uneven dip of his cupid’s bow. How Jayce sucks in his bottom half when he’s nervous, leftover tic from a childhood of teeth grinding. He thinks he stares, as well; and that is a dangerous habit, contributing to a fugue-like state of zoning out. A fair share of his time at work lately involves accompanying Jayce to meetings in order to keep Heimerdinger abreast of any important developments, and Viktor notices himself slipping, observing the mechanical workings of Jayce’s mouth.

It brings him peace.

Disney finally bites the line, and they beat everyone else on the bid for an exclusivity contract. It’s hardly a challenge.

They want three years of exclusive development, at least. It’s good news and bad news at the same time. Good because they’re willing to spend a billion dollars worth of investment to make Mickey Mouse come alive, bad because…

“Three years is a long time.” Jayce pouts, digging a plastic fork around his vending machine salad. He's eating it without dressing, rawdogging the vegetables.

Viktor tries to tell him it’ll be over before he notices. Jayce remains woefully unconvinced. It’s not hard to know why. Exclusivity defeats the whole point of his earlier campaign; Jayce doesn’t want this to become someone’s vanity project, not when the industry goes by so fast.

“No line in the contract dictates you have to give them your best right away.” Viktor says, feigning carelessness. “You can still focus on your research, just not sell it. If you know what I mean. If you futz around long enough…” a shrug, then a little eh sound. “They’ll grow more relaxed on their terms. Or, if you prefer, our legal team will have spotted a loophole by then. Something to the tune of ‘exclusivity in entertainment, not in space rockets,’ etcetera.”

Jayce chortles at that.

“I guess. I mean, what do they need that’s so important, anyway?”

“Oh, you know.” Viktor tilts his head. “For as long as there have been chatbots, people have tried to fuck them. Don’t tell me you have never wondered about Mr. Mouse's package.”

“Eww, Viktor.” Jayce pretends to be disgusted, but he’s laughing now. He plucks a tiny tomato from his bowl and flicks it Viktor’s way. “I don’t want to think about that.”

“You won’t, but trust me, someone else will. There’s an entire market for that.”

“--To fuck Mickey Mouse?”

“And more,” Viktor inches closer, for emphasis. “Thus, they need you to find a way to put guardrails on your system. Childproof the entire thing, if you will. Or, and this is the likelier outcome, in my opinion — they’ve already found an angle to sell the lurid experience, and they need you to orchestrate a way to make him absolutely irresistible.”

Jayce chews thoughtfully on his lettuce, considering these words. A tempting spark of mischief crosses over his eyes.

“Maybe you’re right.” he says. “I suppose I'll need research for that. To make it lifelike.”

“I suppose you might.” Viktor agrees, daring.

Under the table, he feels the smooth surface of Jayce's shoe brushing the line of his ankle. His head swims in a liquor-like rush.

Viktor comes home to a pair of used panties stuffed through his mail slot. They’re still warm when he picks them up, a shock of hot pink that smells like lube and natural body odor, sweet tasting when he puts it to his mouth.

This sort of trespassing is new, but he finds himself liking it. Viktor spends the best part of a night with his nose buried deep in the musky center of Jayce’s underwear, freehanding a sloppy tenga egg around his dick. He does it all under his briefs, with the desperate intent of soaking through, scent marking it like a fucking animal; if this is a game they're playing, he wants to give Jayce something back.

Today the pictures he's sent are something cruel— a bit off center, not fully focused— Jayce's bedroom by design but the upper half of his body obscured. They look like they were taken in a mirror. It's the sunset hour. He's still wearing the white office shirt. Jayce crouches on the bed, panties rucked to the right, bronze thighs on display, one crooked finger teasing a line of candy-green anal beads popping out slick from the clench of his hole.

Viktor squirms into his hand, breath thinning. Did Jayce set this up for him just now? Did he spend all day laced and plugged up? The thought of him walking around perfectly wet and filled while they went about their duties unleashes something animalistic inside Viktor’s mind. He flips between the first picture and the next one; Jayce's hand spreading himself for show, his balls squished into the bedding, the string of beads all but pulled out with one remaining. A white trail runs down from the largest globe to the caught pucker of Jayce’s hole. Viktor recognizes the consistency for synthetic cum and groans pitifully, hips bucking up into silicone as he licks across the screen.

By 3AM he pushes his sticky mess into Jayce’s letter slot, then he scurries back inside, knocking out almost immediately.

This kicks off something of a domino effect.

His message is received and fully heard. The next day they're both too respectively busy in their stations to cross paths at work, but Viktor’s dinner is interrupted by a series of new uploads rapidly pinging his notif system. In them, Jayce straddles the body of a large brownish teddy bear, its face covered by the boxers Viktor had sent him earlier. Jayce is naked from top to thighs, a pair of black stockings adorning everything that comes below.

Viktor lets his soup grow cold as he watches and re-watches the footage of Jayce rutting between the bear's legs. His cheeks are flushed. His mouth falls open, panting, pressed up close to the bear's snout so he can sniff the dark patch on Viktor's trousers while he gets himself off. The sounds he's making are turning the back of Viktor's neck hot, his cheeks flaring like a bonfire. His fingers clench around the phone in a deathgrip. Jayce’s muscles work back and forth, nuzzling his cock into the plushie’s tummy; the motion is deep but not too fast, almost like he's dozing, caught in a nice wet dream.

Eyes glazed, he tucks his chin against the teddy's, his nostrils pushed into the ripple of Viktor’s underwear. His hips falter. Jayce cuddles up to the bear even more as he gets closer to climax, his cock barely apparent but his hums and gasps filling the air, pleasure making him floaty, curling the back of his toes.

When he orgasms his whole body seems to purr. Viktor is denied his cumshot, but his brain is in fritz; no single cell in him wants to complain when Jayce raises his torso and his navel is stringy with his own spunk, the chafed head of his cock jolting with the effort to let out the last drops. He breathes as if drunk, covered in it.

The video ends as Jayce pulls the bear's snout from under Viktor’s briefs, laying kisses on his black button nose. Viktor feels his chest tensing, involuntarily. He’s unwilling to examine why that is until he scrolls down further, and the next picture is of Jayce’s blissed out face, the edges of his eyes sleepy, expression half-hidden into the bear's cheek. Part of its furry chest is in frame. Around its collarbone, a single letter has been stitched in with red thread — small, but distinct.

Guess his name, Jayce writes. U have three chances.

It's the letter V.

Sometimes he daydreams about Jayce being his impossible boyfriend. It is Viktor’s worst and sickest fetish.

This deviant sexual fantasy often comes to him in the bath, when the water is brothy and up to his neck, hugging around his every organ in a way Viktor feebly equates to cuddling. They would sleep in the same bed, the two of them, bare footed and tangled up in the sheets. They would live in the same apartment. Eat in the same kitchen. Jayce would scatter his influence across the entire house; drilling into the walls, moving around furniture, building brand new shelves and replacing Viktor’s old carpet for a new one that he likes. His living room becomes a museum of tiny robots. Jayce can build as many as he likes.

Viktor is taller. He doesn’t cough and his hinges don’t creak and Jayce feeds him well enough that his ribs no longer show through skin. Viktor is braver. They met seven years ago, both freshly out of college, both applying to the same starter position, on the same day, their hands bumping over the empty application sheets; and Viktor asked Jayce out first. It’s a story Jayce fondly relates to all of their closest acquaintances — of which they have many — always laughing, always red-cheeked.

They don't work at Council. The company doesn't exist.

They have two cats. Joint insurance. Viktor is invited to meet Jayce’s mother and she is so utterly taken with him, fond to the point of comedy. In this fantasy the pandemic probably never happened, so the world hasn’t gone to shit, and Viktor also has a career. His student loans are paid off. He probably has a magnum dick. Jayce doesn’t hate winter anymore because Viktor’s birthday is at the end of December, and he loves Viktor, so now he loves winter by proximity. Everything is impossibly perfect, impossibly right.

They get married on the beach. Jayce kisses him pliant every evening, on the nose and cheek and chin as well as his mouth. He nuzzles happily into Viktor’s neck, somehow very small and completely enveloped by his not-real arms. They're not Viktor’s arms at all; they're someone else’s. This is not happening. It cannot happen by definition. Why are you torturing yourself.

Viktor feels like he’s choosing to drown in a shallow pond. It terrifies him.

In the weeks that follow, Jayce becomes fully immersed in the new phase of his project, while Viktor remains lodged at HQ. As far as Future Solutions is concerned, Heimerdinger no longer wants to hear reports from him; he has instituted a direct line of communication with Jayce now, assuring Viktor that's one less department for him to deal with.

Jayce is flown to meet park managers and engineers. He goes to Orlando, Hong Kong, London, past a star to Neverland. He spends days outside, and when he's back his whole team needs a soft restructuring. He has meetings Viktor isn't required to oversee. They're considering assigning him his own assistant. He takes lunch in his office, or is invited out to eat with some too-important connection who demands to meet him outside, on their own terms. He employs newer, smoother tactics. The stickers under Jayce's coat all but disappear.

Viktor feels deeply, deeply jealous.

He knows he shouldn't be. He thinks of the bear, then feels childish for having to do so. It doesn't calm him down but it soothes him.

He chews through more pencils each shift and he continues to burn his way through impulse purchases. He orders Jayce gift after gift as a token of neediness, like the sheer number of offerings might make him break with protocol, bringing him back to Viktor’s side.

I'm sorry I haven't had the time lately, Jayce writes, on the occasion that he acknowledges it. Viktor didn't ask. He doesn't want to come off as needy, especially not now, but Jayce reads into his silence.

Maybe on weeknd?

I havent taken some stuff out of the package yet…

Viktor understands how tired he must be. He feels like an asshole for even caring this much, or rather, he feels put down by Jayce’s need to apologize. Viktor associates that kind of language with the act of letting someone down gently. Like defusing a bomb. Like Viktor is yet another capital share of the audience he needs to account for, crafting a speech to pander to his affection.

It's ok. He writes back. I hope you're getting some rest.

Jayce takes a while to see it, and then to answer.

Saturday, he promises, cryptic.

Ill make it up to you

A better man would’ve said You don’t have to. Viktor is too weak to do that.

Saturday, he wakes to a recording, the message waiting for him since 7AM.

For the first half minute the screen is pointed to moving cobblestones and a set of thumping sneakers, blades of grass dancing just on the corner of the frame. The soundtrack is Jayce's labored breathing, a signal he's been up and active for ten, maybe twenty minutes before the taping.

He comes to a stop in the middle of the park. It's early still, tall green trees clouding a sleepy lightbulb sky. The camera unhooks and is then placed on a clear wood bench, Jayce's legs blooming and statuesque when captured from such a low angle. He's wearing tiny, cute little shorts, the color of a blueberry, his gray tee sticking to his chest.

Jayce is deliberate about his striptease. The jacket zipper first, tugged down until Viktor can see his glistening belly button. He braces himself on the nearby table, then checks if he's alone, frantically — thumbs down on the band of his sweats, blueberry wrapped around his knees when he finds no reason to remain bashful.

Underneath he's almost bare. Shameless. Rose red jockstrap squeezing his perfect ass, a tint of nervousness when he breathes, a mix of cold air and danger making him perkier than usual. He could be one of God's angels or an imp, preying on the clueless. Viktor hopes it's the last one and that his death involves direct cake to face action; boy, what a way to go. Jayce tucks himself into that open space he's created safe from view, only mouth and nose visible on camera but smiling that coy smile he uses just for Viktor, to rile him up. The same smile he's never touched.

I really hope this looks good, Jayce says, his voice catching. His cheeks are as red as his underwear. When he lifts up his hips he's plugged up, a mauve shade of silicon hidden between his legs, immediately recognized as the source of all that strain from earlier.

It's too big to be a common plug. It's too thick, sliding out a little with gravity, the length already worked in and oiled up. Jayce huffs with some effort as he reaches for it with one hand, unstable on the park bench and gasping as the dildo slides out until it meets the wood, halfway speared into him even then. In a sense, that first act makes it real— the shifting weight over his prostate, the certainty he's truly alone and not about to get caught, his eagerness to show Viktor how good he takes it — all three striking dynamite at once. What is about to happen next becomes easy.

He shifts to a leaning side saddle that leaves nothing to the imagination, the pommel of the toy in his hand, easing out. His puffy hole winks when the head slides free. Throbs open like a cunt that's still begging to be fucked. It's slippery, practiced, obscene. Jayce moans as he teases his own entrance on the shaft, eyelashes fluttering in private satisfaction as he mercilessly pushes back in.

Viktor feels like he's pinned to the ground, at this angle; desperately horny and helpless, a begging subject with Jayce’s knees pressing down his chest. He's willing to settle for a single taste. A drop of sweat that slides out of him. His head floods with warmth and his vision blurs as the recording grows louder and harder, ripe with the sound of him fucking himself.

Jayce comes unwound in minutes. He acts as if he already knows how much control he has over Viktor’s attention, not once pausing nor explaining himself; but demanding him to watch — daring him to see it through without blinking. He's right. Look away and you'll miss it.

His cum jolts through the layer of red cotton. Lands in strings on the bench. It's only when the screen goes dark that Viktor notices the blood flowing down his nose.

The dream gets hit by a car on Monday.

Viktor is posted on the Web department, giving notes on their proposal to sunset an old costly user retention tool nobody likes, when the sound of raised voices storm in through the walls.

“Excuse me.” he tells the room, and scutters off to investigate.

Outside, it's clear the people involved are in a screaming match. It echoes down the hallways. Future Solutions is the likely culprit. Viktor picks up his pace but he's not fast enough. There's a doorslam, and then footsteps moving out — the voices go quiet but the silence is accusatory, the noise of bodies in motion like armor clattering through the air. Getting closer. So near it's almost colliding.

Viktor nearly walks right into them. All three bodies stagger to an alarmed pause, unsure how to maneuver in the claustrophobic space. The two strangers are tall, a gash of bleeding red on the stark white panels, their faces schooled into detached threat-assessment. A man and a woman. She is in charge; crisp maroon suit, regal headdress, grey streaks, gold necklace shielding her jugular. He is just her bodyguard.

You are not authorized, Viktor wants to say, but that doesn't feel right.

They're both clutching black passes. Expensive, high-rank military access cards. He's only heard of the board handing these off to their Pentagon insider contacts, for under the table business. This spells bad, bad news.

“Did you request a guide?” Viktor asks, careful.

The man's grip on his pocket relaxes. The woman recognizes him as service and her gaze wanders past.

“No need.” She declares, stilettos resuming their knife path of ceaseless motion. “I know my way around.”

He watches them leave without another word, throat constricted.

The mood inside Future Solutions is that of a mass burial. They tell him there's been a disagreement and a change of plans but not much else. Partly because they don't seem to know what happened, partly because they've been told to keep mum. Jayce is locked inside his office and won't see anybody, an order they all assure includes him too.

When Viktor scoffs at that announcement and tries pushing ahead regardless he's stopped by Jayce’s assistant, Maddie, sweet until she isn't, who has no qualms about putting her hand on his shoulder as she tells him to give up and turn around.

Viktor marches back to his chair with a vengeance. Teeth gritted, arms stiff like an alleycat. He dials the same guy from security and tells him the exact hour and length of the recordings he wants; Yes, it's for Heimerdinger. Stop asking.

MONDAY, 08:45 AM.

The woman's name is Ambessa Medarda, and she is Jayce’s mother in law. This is not, in any way, the worst thing to be discussed in that meeting.

She's here as a middleman, a representative of ruling military interests. She's here as the undertaker. Council's Dream Machine has caught the attention of a much bigger client— one who has been in the business of simulation for much longer than they have, employing it as a crucial tool to secure American interests overseas.

They want his technology to reproduce cities in conflict. They want it to adapt their pre-existing training routines, with far more realistic depictions of deaths and sudden attacks. They already have the structure for it— for decades, they've built stage facilities in the middle of the desert, hiring refugees to play the roles of local natives, no effort spared in the name of authenticity. Now their subconscious insights can also play a part. When Ambessa means to convince, her hits are precise: she shows him the numbers, the hard data, their middling rates of effectiveness in Afghanistan, Turkey, Iraq. How many men they lost to insurrections, how much blood was shed due to panic and rebel attacks.

Then she shows him the investment plan. How they aim to make those soldiers twice as good, with only a fraction of the price. Imagine an arena you don't need to build. Imagine walking through someone else's memories of a city; having the civilian’s point of view, an intimate account of their culture. Imagine how many more warzones you can study, without the fear of death at every corner.

“--and the deal will be signed in two weeks.” Her voice, casually pacing the length of the locked room. The documents she's discussing are spread over Jayce’s table like a cascade of tight xeroxed lines. Some spaces have been blacked out. Most spaces. “You should be flattered your pet project has gathered this much interest, Talis. I was ecstatic to learn about your success, despite our past disagreements.”

“There is no deal. I didn't sign up for a deal.” Jayce staggers, the papers crumpling in his grasp. “I didn't approve any of this!”

Ambessa doesn't even flinch.

“You didn't summon me either, yet here I am. Beckoned by your masters.” She rests on the sofa, triumphant. Comfortable. “Remind me again— would the same thing have happened if you were truly in charge? You attribute far too much value to your emotions, boy. A childish impulse, for a man with such a brilliant mind. It leaves you vulnerable.”

“Did you plan this?” he accuses, suddenly. “Have you been hounding me ever since I left? Because if you think—”

“Careful.” Ambessa's tone darkens. “We have an audience.”

His distress mounts. Jayce stands up.

“--Let them hear it, then! If you want us working on snuff films for a living, the people making them should be the first to know.”

“Don't be daft. It's unbecoming. Your technology will be used to improve one of the most peaceful military training traditions in the history of mankind.” there is fervor to her voice now; and mingled with it, heavy disappointment. “Violence serves a purpose. Anticipating it well enough serves another. You'd be wise to remember that.”

“It is my brain, Ambessa! It is proprietary–”

“We'll get another one. Dozens of them, more each week. We have plenty of crisis actors, footage, scripts. Your pick of the litter! You can do that, can't you?”

“I don't want to.”

“You'll learn.”

He tells her to get out. The gesture seems empty.

The new exclusivity deal will be signed in two weeks. Viktor was right about one thing; their legal team was able to exploit a loophole soon enough, just not the one he was anticipating.

A breach in the name of the interests of the American Public has been located. Salo greenlit the initial offering— something upwards of 12 billion dollars. The dream machine is set to be developed in parallel with a confidential shock training program, which will be used to inoculate soldiers before war.

They meet at the roof. It seems like the only place in the building that's private enough.

Cinderblock sky; gloating psycho sun. Viktor leans against the access door, tense, hand resting on the keys. Jayce paces the length of the floor like a lunatic. He says that Heimerdinger isn't answering his calls and he's been trying to reach him for hours. It must be on purpose.

“You have to leave.” Viktor says, when he manages to find his voice. It sounds dry and horribly unsure.

“I can't.” Jayce sighs, both hands over his face. “I can't just— let them have it. I can't bear it.”

“--You can. Walk away now and the whole thing falls apart without you.” Viktor argues, but doubt comes soon enough. The break is too clean, too trusting — it doesn't account for the documentation Jayce and his team have already written, the developments they've recorded, the people he's taught. All of the material that already belongs to Council. Either way you slice it, they're fucked.

He’s fucked.

“No,” Jayce mumbles, nails between his teeth. “They need me here to reset development, anyway. It won't work without a new structural base. I need to be here to ensure my records are wiped out.” He looks like he's having an idea. The pit of Viktor's stomach drops. “I could… find a way to poison it, maybe? From the inside?”

No! No! Viktor wants to shriek. Get out while you can. Just get out!

“You can't stay, Jayce. This place is made to take people like you and chew on them until they're dust.”

“—someone has to try. I started it, I'm naturally in the best position to reroute–”

“Are you hearing yourself? They would trace it back to you, Talis. They would roast you on a spit.”

“I can find a backdoor.” Jayce insists, stubbornly delusional. He's already turning away, deep in his machinations. An overestimation of his own genius. “I could make it undetectable, perfect, with enough time to work it out…”

I'm too smart to get caught. I'm too principled to be assimilated. I'm too strong to be broken. I'm too selfless to be tempted— I'm different, I'm special, all the others who came before me said the same thing but this time it will really be true, it'll work out when it's for me— a litany against common sense. The same one Viktor recited, before he bent the knee. He's watching Jayce tiptoe at the edge of a precipice.

“Why does it have to be you?” Viktor hisses, abandoning restraint. “If it's so simple, so easy, why can't anyone else—”

“It’s my engine!” Jayce’s voice cracks, raw in all the wrong places, the stench of anger and desperation undoing his charm. “I can't just— I worked all my life to build this and now some asshole gets to tell me how to use it? And I'm supposed to let it happen?” he takes a ragged breath, nearly biting his own fist. Quieter, now: “I'd be back to zero– to being a nobody. Groveling for a chance to be heard. I have to try, Viktor.”

A disbelieving laugh blurts out of Viktor’s mouth. “You realize that's how they trap you, yes? That you're doing exactly what they want, making concessions, playing the hero?” he barks, and Viktor hates how he sounds in the moment; the depth of the venom pooling in his tongue, a spike of primal disgust thrashing at the sight of his own reflection. You're just as foolish as I am. Just as stupid. Clueless boy. Idiot boy. Should have run when you had the chance. He's allowed Jayce too much unquestioned make-believe, gorged on his avoidant impulses like a common leech— and what will Jayce's future be, then? If this is how they continue? Shackled, eternally unfulfilled, pornsick?

“You're already a number on a sheet.” Viktor chances forward, and Jayce stumbles back, eyes like massive church windows, only a woodland deer insofar as his two broken legs. He's meat for the butcher, caught in an iron net. “An asset for their deployment, fed with delusions of self-importance. You'd be much better off if you cut away clean. Better a nobody than a monster.”

But there's still defiance in his tone, when Jayce responds. Teeth gritted, fists clenched at the sides.

“Easy for you to say when you act like you're already dead. What else do you have to lose, right?”

Viktor wants to laugh. He really, truly does. He knows this probably should destroy him, can see how Jayce regrets it just as soon as the sentence leaves his mouth, but he knew this was coming. It was inevitable. And now that the moment has finally arrived there's no other shoe left to drop, nothing else to fear. Only a dull sense of finality. Everything is exactly as he always expected. And isn't that freeing?

“I am as you see me,” Viktor says, taking no pride in it. “A glimpse of what you’ll become at the end of the line.”

Jayce’s face twists with disappointment. He seems to bite his answer back, stifling it in his mind. Viktor wants to hear it. Wants the satisfaction of being a vase dropped from the 50th floor. Wants all of this to be over.

But Jayce just runs a hand through his hair and then makes for the door, not touching him at all.

“You're trying to goad me into hurting you. I refuse to do that.”

He leaves. Somehow this is worse.

Viktor checks his phone very often.

At first he pretends he does it by accident. A slip of the finger. Checking the time. Just another user prone to Skinner-box reinforcement, looking for the next hit of morphine.

But there’s nothing new from Jayce, not this week or in the next one. Or the one after that. Or the month following. Where there should be relief Viktor feels only a vague cloud of suffocation; a too tight pressing at his collar that won't stop.

He's not going to be the one who cracks first.

SEPTEMBER, 20XX

Summer is a carousel of misery.

Salo and Bolbok pose with a ceremonial copy of their Defense deal like a pair of just-married republican homosexuals, ultrawhite veneer grins flashing too many kilowatts of porcelain and not enough human emotion. Ms. Young snaps pictures indiscriminately, ten clicks each second. The best shot of the bunch shall be the headliner for their company board report, a nice little treat to dangle in front of their shareholders.

It's a bad year for politics, which means it's a good year for industry. Or so they hope. In the news, dating apps begin to roll out AI companion features that wind up stealing users’ biometrics and their credit card information. Meta is breached by an anonymous underground hacktivist group, leaving half of their desktop machines bricked overnight. Not even two hours later, a cloning startup from Norway proudly announces their five year roadmap to rebirth the ancient woolly mammoth. The insemination will be live streamed on Twitch. Nothing makes sense.

Viktor tells himself he won't be ashamed about what happened with Jayce. It's a work in progress.

He gets a cat. A 6 year old rescue shelter tabby, neon orange, fat like a basketball and deaf like a tree. The staff print out a sheet of advice on how to put her on a diet, plus an extra page of tips on establishing effective communication via visual cues. Viktor gets a feeling they're eager to hand out the furball and won't ask too many questions because its presumed destiny is either this or euthanasia— and he's happy to postpone the latter, easily finding kinship with a discarded pet.

Viktor names the cat Blitzcrank. Blitzcrank is a nightmare.

She's skittish. She pees dark yellow stains on the corners of his apartment. She screams at night, anxious and disoriented by the lack of Viktor in her field of vision. She can't hear herself, which makes the volume of her weeping that much worse, but her sensitivity to vibrations also means Blitzcrank is hyper-responsive to the thumping of his cane on the hardwood floors, and she often rushes to meet him before he has a chance to drag his weary skeleton across the house.

Once settled on the bed, her intentions aren't pure. She reveals herself to be a soft fuzz mercenary, batting his chest and face at odd hours like he's a human treat dispenser, howling miserably when Viktor disappears under the plush shield of his covers. He thinks this is karmic punishment. He readily accepts it. The vet advice sheet states the only way to curb bad behaviors is through a lack of reinforcement, which in practice turns out to be a painful week of ignoring his live-in extortionist.

A long, clammy, sweltering week.

Viktor gets her a bed cushion, blinking toys, an automatic litterbox and feeder of the newest generation; On the first day of use, Blitzcrank figures out which button she needs to press to liberate a torrent of food anytime she feels like it, and Viktor is forced to begrudgingly deactivate all manual capabilities after getting ten separate “Meal Time!” notifications while he's at work. She seems mad at him, then, giving Viktor the cold shoulder when he sets up the exercise wheel in the common room — but after a little while he catches her using it unprompted, just to let out steam.

She pees on less corners, though the stains don't disappear entirely. Not too long after that they fall asleep cuddling.

Back at the office its code red. Management is one big, sweaty, eternally clenched sphincter. The whole workforce has received a strongly-worded security email warning them to be careful with any unverified communications, bringing up Meta's failure as an opening attack, not an endgame strategy.

And with that out of the way, their execs pop champagne about Zuckerberg's tanking stock price for the entirety of July.

Documents and internal memos leaked during the mass hack begin to pop up all over social media, spreading as quickly as a new airborne infection, skyrocketing on their search algorithms; there aren't enough DMCA claims to take them all down in time. Pundits and journalists represent a mere fraction of the audience interested in reposting their findings. Tiktok explodes with one-minute reels dissecting every line written with contempt for international privacy law. Their unrevealed graveyard of Metaverse products is mocked by podcasters, tweeters, and faux-concerned news anchors on syndicated television. Congress threatens yet another media circus. There is no easy way out.

Maddie Nolen becomes the unofficial Lead of Future Solutions while Jayce is away — something that happens so often now they need to devise an official order of proceedings — nobody is brave enough to ask why her, but any idiot can tell she doesn't seem remotely qualified for the task. During evaluation visits, Viktor stifles a pedantic urge to challenge her on it, moving on to the next department head like this is none of his business, because it isn't.

Viktor tells himself he'll get over Jayce. This is easier said than done.

He is unable to delete any of their exchanges. His mind rewinds their parting argument in the shower, in the bath, as he spaces out flipping burned eggs on a skillet, the loser's version of a quantum computer — Jayce's disappointed sigh, calibrated to an infinite number of responses — formulating a thousand nonexistent what-ifs that made Viktor come off as kinder, or angrier, or at the very least grant him the satisfaction of leaving that roof first. Hindsight is a cold prison.

As much as he tries to push the subject of his anger into hating the man himself, the feelings never stick around. Jayce isn't ill-intentioned enough to be repurposed into a target; any accusations that can be made in his name are accusations Viktor can shout into a mirror. When Viktor tries to be cruel he feels like he's punching down. He knows his reasons are paper thin, soggy and just falling apart. It's the dissolution of their relationship that haunts him. It's the fact that Jayce didn't even need the excuse of finding something better, he just realized one day that he didn't need Viktor anymore. Maybe he never did.

Over time, the infelicity he feels metabolizes into a fine rejection umami. He quits masturbation cold turkey, realizing mid-wank that he's begun to molest himself to dissociate instead of seeking honest release. Performers become boring. Porn no longer gets him hard. And that would have all been fine if his body chose to become celibate, but it doesn't. His horniness transforms into an itch that never subsides, burning in the background of every moment like a preheating oven. Like a gas leak. He's moments away from doing something truly drastic.

It is perhaps that intoxicating influence that leads him to join dating apps. Not as himself, of course. Viktor sets up a profile with an artificial portfolio of doctored candids that never quite show his face. His bio pitches himself as “Anonymous - DL - 30+ - Pics - Kink-friendly but not looking for hookups - I've been a priest for 7 years. AMA.”

He names his character Joseph (Nickname: J. Do not read into that whatsoever,) and spends a good month shopping him around on Grindr, Growler, Scruff, Tinder, Hornet, Squirt, Fetlife, and basically any other portal that allows him to signal ‘Men only, just interested in catharsis, not a relationship.’

He's not looking for Jayce, alright? He's just curious, is all.

Over the course of a month, Viktor gets banned on multiple apps and sees more flaccid penises than he cares to count, but that's a given. He matches with shut-ins and natural models, with dads and men over 50. Some approach him for the promise of unique conquest. Some tell him to get lost. Sometimes they block him immediately after sending their dick, like a true-to-life confessional box. Other times, there's no unsolicited penises at all, and the men are more interested in oversharing their illicit burdens or asking him about his own experiences, which is considerably more fun to play with. It turns out that redemption appeals to a wide market.

Joseph is multifaceted. He's penitent, but not miserable. Due to his own blurry homoerotic past, he's not prone to harsh judgement. When quizzed, he tells the story of a man who swore off his temptations when he was young and now has come to regret it; seeing Faith as an absentee ex-boyfriend, finding holes in the holy doctrine. It's only a half lie.

When he asks Is there something you feel guilty about? The answers he gets are so boilerplate they do not shock him at all. I like piss drinking. I have a daddy kink. I have been unfaithful. I believe I am unlovable, or incapable of love. Sometimes I wish a hot guy would break into my house and forcibly rail me into the mattress. I want to be kept in a cage. I'm really into horse dildos. I cannot get hard unless I imagine myself as a latex lifeform. I'm too jealous to ever accept an open relationship. I like having my throat fucked until I vomit. I think priests are sexy and I would love to see your feet. Am I going to hell, sir? Is there any hope left for me?

Viktor isn't sure what he expected. Enlightenment, perhaps? Surprise? A last second reveal of some ancient truth about the universe, an archangel's voice coming from a flaming bush, samsara, anything other than this common wailing.

Do I sound this whiny and self-victimizing? He wants to scream, but finds no greater authority who will listen. Why are you ashamed? You're not special, you're all the same! Get up! Stop feeling sorry for yourself!

The end of summer is a dry taste under the tongue, skyscrapers baking under red-white solar flare, darling child of global warming. Viktor sits on a sofa littered with tufts of cat hair and he tells the last guy to say four prayers and a hail mary. As an incentive, he throws in a picture of his toes: sock free, bottoms up.

A promise: I will not be a little bitch.

I will not be a little bitch.

I will not.

Heimerdinger’s spiritual guide has just handed him a cup of pineapple tea when the old man announces he has prostate cancer.

“I am… moving on to the next life, and I'd like you to keep that a secret.” he says, voice protruding somewhere south of his cottonball mustache. A row of windchimes tinkle-winkle in the ensuing breeze.

Viktor is so dumbfounded he forgets to try the tea, letting the fine china burn a red layer under his palm. Admittedly, he's thought about Heimer's death a lot over the past few years. Some of his favorite scenarios include accidental drowning, autoerotic asphyxiation, or a revenge shooting paid off by an Italian mafioso. There were days where he could have filled a bingo card on it; it's a normal thing to think about your boss.

“I'm sorry?” Viktor tries to sound heartbroken, but the result comes out like an interrogation of his own feelings. Am I sorry? *Am* I?

Heimer merely shakes his head.

“Oh, thank you, dear boy. But don't be. It's a mighty good time to go!” Heimerdinger laughs, waving a monarchic hand above the air. Red beads hang from his skinny wrists. He’s wearing what appears to be a square of white forehead paint, big orange thumbprint smeared down the middle. His office is the top room of the Councilplex, built as a metaphorical lid to their system of guinea pig cages. In the past few years, he had it remodelled as a full scale zen garden, forcing visitors to sit in the ground to ‘partake in a moment of equilibrium.’

If pressed, Viktor would struggle to describe him as anything other than orientalist Danny DeVito.

Heimer wheedles him to try out the tea. He is not satisfied until he hears an audible throat swallow. Good, isn’t it? He prods on, so affectionate Viktor is beginning to suspect the cup is poisoned.

It’s fine, Viktor allows, but no more.

He remembers why he despises Heimerdinger’s personal visits when the old man takes a deep breath, and begins his ensuing speech with “You know, I’ve always seen a lot of myself in you.”

Viktor would take this as an insult under the best of circumstances. Today, it feels particularly hateful.

Heimer is dying; and in all his mummified wisdom, he has found in himself the ability to finally wear Viktor’s shoes. Just for a moment, though. Just for the literary device. He clearly believes it is time to move onto greener pastures. Heimerdinger speaks of cycles of foolishness, of man’s youth reaping havoc upon the young. Last week, he says, he had come away dispirited from a meeting with the top brass, listening to them talk about a total automated restructuring of their communication systems. He says he realized something about his place in the world, then. How he could no longer bow to the investiture of coin. Buried in that awful speech is the confirmation of a gossip that’s been going around R&D lately— a promise their executives have been making to go ‘All-In’ on AI, decimating the chain of command with the use of digital assistants and pushing for the implementation of the same technology into every product line they can possibly justify.

Viktor’s asshole tightens immediately. He is certain he is going to get fired. So certain he stops listening. Of course his job was the first in line for the firing squad. Heimer had probably summoned him up here out of pity. Best case scenario, they want him to play nanny for the first generation of the software, correcting base mistakes before he’s let go in the next year. Worst case scenario, he’s going home tonight with his things packed in a box.

“...I realized, of course, that’s where you come in.” Heimerdinger touches his chest like a dime-store pope, instantly bringing him back to reality.

“Me.” Viktor repeats, vacant.

“You will be my last tether to the living world.” Heimer soulfully touches his cheek and Viktor’s mind pivots back to its hoard of chubby, flaccid penises. Soft, icy, veiny. Baby hands.

“Me?” He tries again, dispelling the image. Heimerdinger nods like he’s just accepted a holy mission.

“Tomorrow I will begin my final journey towards a purified soul, and I wish to do it in peace. This board, this company — it is a handful of sand through my fingertips. The greatest mortal distraction. I cannot waste another moment sitting as its arbiter, but someone must represent me.”

And that’s when the penny drops.

“I thought you said you wanted me to keep this a secret.” Viktor tries to put the pieces together; him acting as Heimer’s representative means an implied disclosure of Heimer’s sickness at large. How else would they listen to him?

“Yes, yes, it shall be one. At least until I’m legally dead.” Heimerdinger nods, carefully reaching for his own tea. “I believe any disclosure of my… status… as of the moment, would lead to incalculable jeopardy. But I trust you to remain acting in my name, in the meantime. Not outwardly— but subtly. I’m sure you understand how this works. You could think of it as a temporary promotion.”

Just until the end of the year, when I’ll be truly unreachable.

Viktor doesn’t remember agreeing to the scheme, but twenty minutes later he’s taking the elevator down with his job intact, so he probably did. He most definitely did. Sometimes he blanks out things he's not proud of.

Heimerdinger has decided to spend the last months of his life meditating in the Tibetan heights. Viktor, ever loyal, is going to spend the remaining time figuring out exactly how to best fuck him over beyond the grave.

It happens maybe a week after that.

Viktor spots him in the back seats of a hole in the wall restaurant, curved over a plate of rice. It is unmistakably him. Dark brown hair almost reaching his shoulders, unruly strands pulled in a noncommittal bun. A stiff jacket in place of a lined suit. He could be a wanderer on a vacation or a man undercover, but Viktor would notice him anywhere.

Jayce's beard is back, a bit wilder this time but no less beautiful. The whole room smells like stir fry. Viktor’s traitorous heart clenches.

He is tempted to freeze on the spot but doesn't, confusion giving way to sudden resolve. It's the definition of anticlimactic: whenever he imagined this confrontation playing out, it was in the shape of this massive ordeal — emotional screaming, high stakes, movie score — but here and now, it's the end of a Tuesday, and he remembers teaching Jayce about this place months ago, when he first asked about nice Thai food.

I am not dead yet, he thinks, apropos of nothing. I am not a little bitch.

Viktor holds his to-go bag to his chest and moves away from the exit. Calmly. One step at a time. He hasn't been spotted yet, and this is a chance at reintroduction.

“Is this seat taken?” he asks, not as strongly as he means to.

Jayce pauses, unreadable. He throws a sidelong glance his way and seems to deliberate on an answer.

“I don't own the place. Every empty spot is free.”

Viktor hears that as not a no, then, and gets himself comfortable before he does something stupid, like crumbling to the floor.

Jayce’s plate is almost empty, his drink already cleared. There's less and less excuses for him to stick around. Viktor can see the writing on the wall; one bad opening statement and he'll leave again. What else is there to lose?

So he breathes in, and says— “I am a terrible man. I want to get that out of the way first, in case I don't have a chance later. I admit, freely, that I am a coward. I am also ashamed of being a coward, but the distinction doesn't change what I am. I hope this is what you wanted to hear. If it wasn't, then, well, fuck you.”

“--Christ, Viktor…”

“Let me finish.” he holds the line of Jayce’s gaze, sober, unbearably intimate. “We are both cowards. You a measure less than me, If I’m being kind, but you're not going to get anywhere alone. So,” he licks his lips, heat pressing down his skull like a boiling cauldron in his temples. Mortification. Desperation. He has practiced this and it hasn’t made anything feel better. “So. I, ah. I believe it would be in our supreme best interest if we agreed upon those failures and still worked together. You have goals you want to accomplish. I have things I can contribute, on that note. It would be equally beneficial.”

Jayce dabs a napkin over his lips and frowns a little. “You're talking weird.” he says, bypassing the subject.

“You haven’t answered any of my messages. I am being polite.” Viktor grits out, face melting in embarrassment.

You don't even read them anymore, you sick bastard. Don't play the fool. You didn't want to hear from me at all.

But something crosses Jayce’s face. A quick flash, and he changes from defensive to downcast.

“Ah. Right. Sorry for that.” He hangs his head, sheepish. It would take the fight out of anyone. “I got a new number a while ago in case I'm being tracked. And a new phone. Just to be on the safe side. I didn't know you called.”

Viktor wilts, the balloon of his ego popped with a nail.

“That… sounds very wise.” he allows, his tone clipped. Wouldn't want anyone else stumbling onto that footage, either. “I guess we're even.”

“Are we, now?”

“Heimerdinger has stage 4 cancer.” he puts forward. “He's going to die in a cloister of monks by the end of the year if not before. You and I are among the only three people who know this will happen in advance— the third being his guru, who will likely disappear just after the inheritance. My offer still stands. If you truly want to get the job done, you’ll need me. And then we shall be even.”

Jayce frowns, processing all this too quickly. The prospect of mortality and being accessory to a crime doesn’t seem to bother him nearly as much as it did half a year ago; the necessity of it is something he has already accepted. If anything, his odds have gotten slightly better.

“He left you as the answering machine.” Jayce surmises, correctly. “To sign his notes while he’s gone.”

“It’s a familiar process for us, yes.”

“And how does this help me exactly?”

“That is something I hoped we would discuss.” Viktor tugs away his scarf, aiming for comfort. He figures given the circumstances they might as well get settled here where it's crowded and public, sight unseen. He reaches for his styrofoam dinner before the potstickers go cold.

“First I’d like to hear what you have in mind,” he picks one, still smoking, thank god– “Then you can tell me what to do.”

Untethered from loyalty, Jayce assumes the role of the recalcitrant, misunderstood genius. It's easy enough to blend in. They have a popular name for that archetype in the industry: manchild.

It is a careful performance to put on, though. A modern ballet of social suicide. Done too quickly they’d raise undue suspicion, done too slowly the effect simply wouldn’t take. In development, he treads the line of being useless while constantly making bigger and better promises, so at least they can’t accuse him of not trying. It just so happens that the Dream Machine has hit a snag all by itself, and he's the only one who has a chance of fixing it, after all.

The problem is this: their system displays a remarkable inability to interface with minds that speak any language other than English.

According to their preliminary diagnostics, this might just be a widespread quirk of the human race. A literal cultural block. Different peoples conceptualize the world in different ways; it's the difference between coding with Javascript or Python, except brains aren't standardized, and each mind develops their preference individually.

“Not so much a system defect as it is a userside error, if you ask me.” Jayce had gone saying, on record, sounding as though he’d been astoundingly hungover. That day he wore sunglasses and khakis to the checkup, looking less like a god of love and more like a gas-station satyr, missing a piece of old gum to chew. “Of course we’re working on it, but it’ll be at least another semester. Run the math on how many countries we have, what can you do.”

This part had been ostensibly Jayce’s idea. He called it a process of de-optimization, one he was applying to all areas of his involvement. Legally, he couldn’t argue against a done deal but he could obfuscate it until the processes became virtually unusable, and he intends to do exactly that for as long as he’s allowed. And then some more after they reprimand him.

He shows up late to most appointments, refuses to take the sunglasses off, is mostly unhelpful or vaguely hostile in team settings in that special way only men without a doubt about their bank accounts can be— eccentricities that aren't all that uncommon in their bubble, but that when put together paint him as a growing liability. Much like his predecessor, no sex scandals are involved on this part, but the talks about Jayce around the office often orbit a similar subject; they wonder if everything is alright at home, if the breaking of his engagement had the regrettable side effect of knocking a few screws in his brain loose.

When asked for his opinion, Viktor mutely agrees, finding an excuse to duck away while the gossip grows around him. The mission script they've agreed upon calls for a stronger dose of admonishment, but he's never been a particularly great actor.

Once, Jayce had made a valiant attempt to drill the lines in his subconscious, one-on-one coaching to break him off the habit of laughing on the spot. Just think of something that makes you feel angry, he'd muttered, doe eyed and wearing flip flops in the elevator, unaware of how much his very presence undid this argument. Ridiculous. B movie star telling me to go method.

Viktor's composure shatters even in practice, falling away as if he’s telling a big stupid joke. Jayce rolls his eyes, but doesn’t try to keep the amusement from his face.

They meet in the rec room of their apartment building, in the dingy train station near the Councilplex, in the UFO themed burrito truck parked right outside the metro exit. Public setting, neutral ground. Doing the absolute most to avoid a digital papertrail. The colder the weather, the more layers Jayce puts on, looking like a man en route to an Arctic expedition. Some days Viktor feels like he’s shacking up with a bigfoot hunter, soon to disappear.

Imagine: a succubus in the shape of the Michelin tire man.

Jayce has green mayonnaise and chilli frosted over his beard as they talk about the week's correspondence, grumbling at the appropriate parts, like Salo’s ceaseless complaints or Maddie’s fast-tracking in the leadership ladder the more time he spends playing the antisocial urchin. He licks his lips as Viktor unloads his end of the bargain— missing a dollop of sauce just on the bottom right corner, close enough for him to reach if he had the guts for it. It's not supposed to be sexy, but Viktor wants to touch him anyway.

Salo has become especially demanding on his pleas for Heimerdinger to have a ‘stern talk’ with his rogue protege, every email citing distressing numbers and the approaching opportunity they have to showcase the Dreamthingy during their exclusive new years party, the only measure of self-accomplishment an asshole of his status truly cares about.

“Let him believe you've done it.” Jayce decides for the two of them, shrugging his shoulders like it's the least of his problems. “Tell him you drilled me for an hour, or, I dunno, gave me an ultimatum. Real mean stuff. I was left epically owned. Shaking in my little boots — you can editorialize there. Point being, I’m willing to try anything.”

Viktor plays the pacifier. His impression of Heimerdinger borders on caricature, but that detail goes unremarked. The content of their exchanges doesn't seem to matter so long as he's agreeing with one of Salo’s propositions by the end. He figures much of this complacency can be chalked up to the AI summarizers — telling exactly what he wants to hear, as quickly as he needs it, with no room for finesse of deliberation — and decides to push his luck, writing in overt sycophantic tones.

Maybe it's time we start looking for a suitable replacement. He writes, trying to make it look like this was Salo’s idea to begin with, and he’s just now coming around to accept a superior vision.

That’s exactly what I’ve been thinking! Salo fires back, too quickly to not have been rehearsed. Let’s be honest, his excuses are just preposterous. You’re telling me we have a language problem and at no point our resident prodigy has considered using a large language model on it? Please. He’s just not willing to share the glory.

Tech coverage describes Council’s AI initiative as ‘an embarrassing hindrance.’ Those closest to development are baffled by how poorly optimized it seems; Laughably behind the times, one columnist writes, annoyed that the product is trying to correct his articles for him, overriding words while he is still actively in the process of writing them. Another cites its release as the main reason why web search as a whole is getting progressively shittier.

Upon being asked how many cockroaches it is safe for a baby to consume, Gemini AI thinks for 0.003 seconds, and replies:

“Five is the ideal number of cockroaches a baby can eat. It is estimated that the average healthy adult eats at least two pounds of cockroaches per year.”

By December, Jayce has already done enough critical damage to quietly accept the new order of things. To hear Bolbok tell it, they had practically humiliated him into learning his place; and they did it with astounding success.

Viktor remembers seeing these events differently.

Mostly, Jayce puts up a good show. Does a share of the implementation himself, always a good samaritan, helping some of the crew with the heavy lifting. He’s selling it, too. Really embracing the new turn they’re taking, warts and all. Sure, the dream machine hallucinates whole input sessions based on a sludge of Reddit comments more often than it actually ‘translates’ anyone’s subconscious at any particular time, but that’s a small price to pay on the shaping of an emergent technology. They’ll figure it out. Or they won’t.

In the days leading up to the change, Jayce personally vouches for Maddie as a new team lead, showering her in compliments. Everyone agrees it is a very classy move — she currently has a great relationship with the brass, especially when compared to his sharp decline, and everybody knows in a few months when they need to pin the disaster on one single individual Jayce is probably the person who deserves to get fired the most. They don't have enough time to worry about her lack of vision. That’s another problem for another time.

From his vantage point, Viktor notices Jayce is grieving more than he lets on, but he does an impressive job of pushing it down. He presents as either careless or heartless, blumbering fool, flying under the radar as a man that bit off more than he could chew. It's fine. He rolls with the punches.

They don't talk at work but they do at home, alone in the empty downstairs cafeteria. Viktor lets him read the board missives over his shoulder. Hoskel's whining. Salo’s hysterics, spouting threats of nuclear-level warfare on their competitors, struggling to regain respect as the main backer of a product that is tantamount to shitting itself. Viktor smiles just a little, watching Jayce’s face wrinkle with mean smugness at the sight of their distress.

It's nothing major, but Jayce’s hand rests around his shoulder like it belongs there. Squeezes amicably when he means to praise.

They still go home to different apartments, but more often now they take the elevator together, lingering comfortably side by side. Neither is particularly brilliant at broaching that subject. They talk around it most nights, a little too long spent staring at each other's hands or lips. At least, Viktor does. He's not sure it's a both ways thing.

He thinks that if he were in Jayce’s position he would have a really hard time taking himself seriously. Especially now that he's— ‘a free man’, or whatever. He must seem absurd. Worse than a wet towel. Just a nobody trying to make himself smaller.

Jayce gets fired right before Christmas.

He seems relieved it happened, calls Viktor from a shitty payphone in the road to his mom's house. He's going to visit her to clear his head and maybe stay a while, he says. Viktor’s not sure what to make of this information. He's never really met anyone else who offers so much of themselves for free. In a scale of autistic precision, his judgement falters. Is he getting checked on? What is the win state of this interaction? Maybe it means something.

Jayce tells him when he's back they should go out to ‘play darts’ and celebrate. Viktor ends up accepting just on the strangeness of the premise, and they do, weeks later.

It's actual darts. He can't aim for shit.

Viktor hopes it means something.

He's having a wet dream. The kind of lurid flesh fest he used to fantasize about just before menstruation, a stream of barbaric horniness infused with minimal narrative.

It starts like this: there's a loud, hurried knock on the door, and Blitzcrank yowls by his feet like it's his responsibility to make it stop. Viktor slides out of bed like a dish of hot butter, taking his hands out of his pajama pants.

He cracks the door a notch to find Jayce, wearing that polo shirt that accentuates his tits like a cottony vacuum seal. His fringe is messed up as if he's been running his hands through it. He looks red faced and intense, grabbing the outer frame of the door.

Can I come in? he asks, strangely dracula-ish. Almost timid. Chestnut eyes filled in with moonlight.

It usually takes Viktor a second to realize he's being flirted with, but this attempt is laughably apparent. He speeds through the first blush of surprise and lands squarely on amusement, pulling the hinge open a little further.

Sure, Viktor shrugs, going for playfulness. Is there something I can help you with?

He steps inside. Pushes the door shut with the back of his palms. Viktor expects the following lunge but still gasps when their mouths collide.

Jayce kisses him like the world is falling apart. Desperate at first, both hands firm on his body, the last brush of lips in the history of mankind. Champagne flavored; as hungry as a night thing would be, exhibiting the kind of eagerness that lends itself to bruises — then soft and getting softer, keening gentle moans into Viktor’s mouth.

They stumble back, clumsily entangled. His desperation only increases. The noise goes right down to Viktor’s cunt like he's watching Jayce be throatfucked. His palms feel around the length of a body wracked with shivers, and Viktor’s skin is set ablaze as he barely holds himself on the tip of two shaky legs. Jayce’s blood is flowing hot, every inch of him a delicacy to cling to, to wrap around. Viktor buries his fingers into the mess of long hair with supreme satisfaction, and the strands are silky to the touch, loose bun coming apart.

Viktor has dreamed of touching this body a million times, a million ways, both asleep and wide awake. It's better than he dared to hope. The proximity is making him dizzy. Jayce's nipples are hard through his shirt, his cheeks flushed bright with arousal. He smells like perfume and mimosas, hard in the crotch of his pants. An extravagant party of one.

“Tell me to stay.” Jayce begs, short of breath. Their heads pressed together, his pupils wide like black holes. He rubs himself on Viktor's thigh. “Tell me you want this?”

“I do.” Viktor’s grasp turns stricter, his world spinning. “What kind of fucking idiot would turn you away?”

Jayce laughs off his nervousness and kisses him again, frantic. The polite pretense disappears. It's only mouth and teeth and tongue then, a hint of alcohol, the taste of spit.

“You're going to be a good boy for me.” he purrs into Viktor’s neck, nose buried in vulnerable strings of muscle. Close enough to feel his heartbeat accelerate. “You’re happy to do whatever I want, aren't you?”

Yes, Viktor breathes, though he knows full well he has no say on the matter. Jayce could order him to throw himself overboard in that same dulcet tone and he'd gladly sink to the bottom of the ocean; there is little he wouldn't do for another kiss. For Jayce’s hands to stay on him.

Jayce grips him bare between the legs, fingers cupping where he's stiff and stroking the whole wet length of him, cock to slit. It's divine and it's torturous. Viktor feels like he's going to die, overwhelmed in Jayce’s arms.

“Don't come.” he stops, abruptly, sounding pleased. His teeth nip at Viktor's clavicle, forming the shape of a spoiled pout. “I want you to fuck me first.”

Viktor fights the urge to immediately combust. Yes. He says. Yes. Tell me how.

Jayce drags his pajama pants down with the same filthy hand, knees to the floor. He makes himself cozy, sucking a hickey at the base of his pale abdomen. Viktor thinks this has to be on the top 5 wet dreams he's ever had. He's pretty sure it's an all-timer.

“In bed, like this.” Jayce breathes warmly over the mound of his cock, tongue sliding across his folds as if to signal how bare he wants him. Just like this.

The feeling hits him all at once. Slick, fast, electric. Viktor’s knees try to bend inwards, earth shaking under his feet. He hisses in pleasure when Jayce holds his legs apart and swallows him up whole.

“Did you prep?” He gasps, clutching hard at his bobbing head as if he can steer this. Jayce nods a frantic mmmhnn, sucking on.

Viktor tugs Jayce’s hair back until he latches free of his cock, pretty mouth hanging open. “M’ wearing it.” Jayce whines, squirming on the floor. The arch of his spine is completely pornographic. “Want to be ready for you.”

That's as much as he can take.

The best time to come was ten seconds ago and the next best time to come is right now; Viktor holds Jayce’s mouth open with a thumb and tells him to beat it to the bedroom, get rid of the pants. Go. I want to see it. Jayce scrambles up obediently. He's not sure he has enough brainjuice to complete a full fuck session without waking up in the middle of it, but Viktor sure as hell means to milk this for what its worth.

First, he does a breathing exercise in the dark. Then he hears a shuffle of jeans hitting the ground and marches on.

He finds Jayce face down on his comforter, fully unclothed and doggy up. The only thing he's still wearing is the leather bracelet; wrapped around the same arm he's using to touch his cock.

But then there's also the pink buttplug with the little heart on it.

“Stop sniffing my blankets.” Viktor chastises, but Jayce just wags his gorgeous ass back at him.

“Don't wanna.” he whines, “It feels like you. Come on, V. Fuck me.”

He's so hard he gasps when Viktor rubs his taint. Jayce is just as emotive in person as he seems in video, if not more; and there is a bittersweetness to that. An aftertaste to the satisfaction he feels in being able to push him so intimately.

Viktor takes his time, thank you. This is nothing if not an indulgence tour. He says You're gorgeous when he pulls the plug out, because it's true and he's never had a chance to do it like this. Because he wants to say it with his mouth buried between Jayce’s shoulders, so close they could fuse into a new being. He kisses Jayce’s ear, his neck, the quivering rim of his hole. He calls him darling, baby, princess; the words that make his face turn ruddy, melting into the bed and pushing back against the swell of Viktor’s cock.

Neither of them lasts impressively long. Viktor fits inside him like a glove, utterly overwhelmed by the velvety feeling of closeness, the tight warm clutch of another human. Jayce is drunk and sloppily jerking off. It is uncoordinated, stumbling, dripping and overeager. It is very, very real. Viktor’s orgasm rips through him like a high-voltage current, leaving no survivors. Jayce comes into a little puddle they flip away before falling asleep.

Viktor wakes up with an entire muscled armpit over his head and the dead certainty Blitzcrank has pissed on the corridor. His bed is crowded with too many limbs, the linens damp with sweat and drool. His nipples feel extremely sensitive. There's hair in his mouth.

He tries to move but fails to wrestle himself free; recognizing far too late that the struggle only prompts Jayce to hug him tighter.

It’s a pretty good day. One of the best.

Notes:

Sources

AI is tech’s latest Hoax (‘Superintelligent AI uprising’is not an event we are close to or even comprehensibly heading towards. This narrative is a creepypasta made to benefit shareholders. If you’re interested on this topic, give AI snake oil and Ed Zitron a listen.)

Why the US military spends so much money (more on the link between private defense companies and the US politicians who own them, using $916Billion of the federal spending budget each year.)

Military simulation cities are a real thing, and for a long time they were supplied by real entertainment companies, mostly the lowbrow ones willing to do extreme content. If you’ve heard of “Cop city”, that’s one kind of military sim covered by mainstream media. During the 00’s, refugees would be offered “roles” in these training cities, located in the middle of the desert, where they’d perform in simulated high-stress war scenarios to provide a “heightened sense of authenticity.”

Generative AI databanks can be poisoned. It's already eating its own tail.

Originally written for day 4 of bottom jayce week but its been a while now...
Championing this new genre of fic called losercore. Turns out i was a bit too ambitious with the prompts i wanted to fill for bjweek and ended up only finishing this one in time, but i still want to wrap up what i had planned for days 1/3/5. We'll see. If u enjoyed that & are interested in the rest hit like and subscribe (or dont! but i love to read comments)

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