Jayce Talis @talistalk - Tumblr Blog

Welcome! This an 18+ role play blog for Jayce Talis from Arcane. Please expect suggestive and tagged explicit content.

This timeline exists prior to the events of the series. Jayce is studying at the Academy, working on a dissertation, and attempting to create magic within his Piltover apartment - all thanks to the patronage of the Kiramman family. He occasionally makes his way down to the Undercity, and has been seen frequenting a bar called The Last Drop, run by a man named Vander - @houndunderground.

You can also find me at @cathartictrash and @askviktor.

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houndunderground

[Part one here.]

Vander's enjoying himself more than he should. The Piltie's visibly flustered, his blush a gorgeous russet underneath olive skin. "Easy," Vander says, slow and deep. "Look like you're gonna do yourself an injury, you're so worked up."

He takes another pull from his pipe, releases it slowly. Smoke hazes the room, offering a filter of gentle, herbal calm. "You didn't hear wrong. Plenty of scrap traders downstairs'll happily empty whatever's in your pockets." He lifts an eyebrow, the double entendre tripping with a light irony off his tongue. "Bigger problem for you, though, is you've attracted a lot of attention to yourself. Won't get too far down there tonight without more hands on you than I'd wager you want. So you've got a few options. There's a back staircase that'll get you into an alley and back out to the Lanes where you can run off home, no harm done. Tomorrow morning Benzo's opens at ten, and if you tell him Vander sent you, he'll give you a decent price on whatever it is you're looking for."

A heavy pause. Vander leans back in his seat a little, his thick thighs spreading. One hand is draped comfortably across the armrest of the seat, his fingers absently stroking at the upholstery.

"Or, you can wait it out up here with me." He exhales again. The Piltie's trousers look uncomfortably tight. Vander wonders if it's not just bartering the lad's green with. It would explain the tension across his shoulders, in the set of his strong jaw. Sympathy wars with amusement.

"Got a name, pup?" he says, the vaguest hint of a smirk pulling.

@talistalk

talistalk

Jayce’s mouth dries at the appellation, the unexpected arousal feeding his humiliation as part of some new self-destructive cycle. He isn’t gay. He really isn’t, but he finds he wants to stay just a bit longer. Vander is massive within the chair, broad, scarred fingers softly parting the worn velveteen. His legs are tree trunks, rooted and splayed, larger than Jayce’s. Few people were larger than Jayce, and certainly not to such a degree. A chair within a chair, he thinks nonsensically. “Jayce,” Jayce replies, then amends, “Talis.” As if his name means anything, anywhere, especially to someone like Vander.

Jayce could get lost at this hour, in this unfamiliar district, he reminds himself, and who knows what lurks within the alleys of Zaun at night. Vander’s fumose room is unexpectedly inviting, warm and familiar by contrast. But there are only two chairs, a bed covered in homemade blankets, and a secretary set. If he were to stay the night… he could sleep in a chair, yeah? He’s done it before.

Jayce tries to take a breath, to calm down, considers walking around the room, but realizes it’s a bit too small. He slowly takes a seat into the chair across from Vander, looks at the bed. He takes off his cloak, balls it in his lap, and feels the magnetic pull of the man next to him. It must be his sheer mass. He looks up through dark lashes, hair falling in his face, his pomade dissolved by now dry sweat.

“And you’re Vander. Just Vander?”

houndunderground

Jayce. It's a boyish name; wholesome. He pictures the tidy young man in front of him, all dimples and teeth, offering his arm to some jewel-dripping Topsider girl.

There's a touch of arrogance in the way Jayce says, "Just Vander?" It's not quite mockery. He's not being deliberately disrespectful. But somehow Vander would be willing to bet his bar Jayce hasn't so much as spoken to a Zaunite before tonight.

Vander tilts his head in acknowledgement. "Vander's plenty. We're not as fussed about lineages and houses and whatever else it is you Pilties put stock in. Down here, it's simpler. You decide who you are. Not your name."

Jayce is blinking up at him through thick, soft eyelashes, eyes puppy-huge and dazzled in his handsome face. He's sitting awkwardly, like he's not sure what to do with all his limbs. The poor lad's probably never relaxed a day in his life, Vander thinks. Puffed up and blustering with something to prove. He wonders whether anybody's ever fucked it out of him. Emptied that pretty head and left him blissfully loose, just for a few hours.

Probably not. He'd put Jayce's age somewhere in his early- to mid-twenties at a guess. Vander doesn't know much about what's expected of these fancy Academy students, but then, he can't imagine any Piltie who'd come venturing into the Lanes searching for scrap is sticking strictly to their textbooks.

"Haven't done this before, have you?" he says. He means this: the bar, Zaun, the piss-take of a disguise. But then he remembers the skittish way Jayce had glanced at the bed when he came into the room, and wonders if he'll answer a different question.

talistalk

Jayce grips his cloak tighter, works to breathe through the hitching forward of his lungs. He starts to chew on his flushed lips, a habit he thought he had long abandoned, and tastes the tobacco teasing at his tongue. None of this makes sense. His type has always been soft-skinned women with curling hair and clever words, women who got to know him, who apparently flirted with him until finally needing to ask his oblivious ass on a date. Jayce has always followed their lead, given them everything they have wanted, done so eagerly, his agile and busy mind focused on their pleasure. He’d had a couple girlfriends, a few hook-ups with women he still considers friends, but…

Jayce dreams of roughness. He’d been asked to provide it, did so reluctantly, but all the while felt a twinge of jealousy, wondering what she felt, knowing he could never have it. It was complicated, alright? So maybe he’s a little gay, or something, because Jayce is harder than he’s ever been in his life from a man old enough to be his father calling him pretty.

So fuck it, right? He… it’s just one of those things, one of those experiences just for him. Maybe he is slumming it. Maybe he just didn’t know what he was looking for. Maybe… and maybe he likes Vander. Respects him. Wants his respect, too. His praise and attention.

Jayce licks his lips, takes a breath, looks back up and leans in just enough, just enough. “No,” he says, his voice blessedly steady. “But I’m a fast learner.”

houndunderground

[Part one here.]

Vander's enjoying himself more than he should. The Piltie's visibly flustered, his blush a gorgeous russet underneath olive skin. "Easy," Vander says, slow and deep. "Look like you're gonna do yourself an injury, you're so worked up."

He takes another pull from his pipe, releases it slowly. Smoke hazes the room, offering a filter of gentle, herbal calm. "You didn't hear wrong. Plenty of scrap traders downstairs'll happily empty whatever's in your pockets." He lifts an eyebrow, the double entendre tripping with a light irony off his tongue. "Bigger problem for you, though, is you've attracted a lot of attention to yourself. Won't get too far down there tonight without more hands on you than I'd wager you want. So you've got a few options. There's a back staircase that'll get you into an alley and back out to the Lanes where you can run off home, no harm done. Tomorrow morning Benzo's opens at ten, and if you tell him Vander sent you, he'll give you a decent price on whatever it is you're looking for."

A heavy pause. Vander leans back in his seat a little, his thick thighs spreading. One hand is draped comfortably across the armrest of the seat, his fingers absently stroking at the upholstery.

"Or, you can wait it out up here with me." He exhales again. The Piltie's trousers look uncomfortably tight. Vander wonders if it's not just bartering the lad's green with. It would explain the tension across his shoulders, in the set of his strong jaw. Sympathy wars with amusement.

"Got a name, pup?" he says, the vaguest hint of a smirk pulling.

@talistalk

talistalk

Jayce’s mouth dries at the appellation, the unexpected arousal feeding his humiliation as part of some new self-destructive cycle. He isn’t gay. He really isn’t, but he finds he wants to stay just a bit longer.

Vander is massive within the chair, broad, scarred fingers softly parting the worn velveteen. His legs are tree trunks, rooted and splayed, larger than Jayce’s. Few people were larger than Jayce, and certainly not to such a degree. A chair within a chair, he thinks nonsensically.

“Jayce,” Jayce replies, then amends, “Talis.” As if his name means anything, anywhere, especially to someone like Vander.

Jayce could get lost at this hour, in this unfamiliar district, he reminds himself, and who knows what lurks within the alleys of Zaun at night. Vander’s fumose room is unexpectedly inviting, warm and familiar by contrast. But there are only two chairs, a bed covered in homemade blankets, and a secretary set. If he were to stay the night… he could sleep in a chair, yeah? He’s done it before.

Jayce tries to take a breath, to calm down, considers walking around the room, but realizes it’s a bit too small. He slowly takes a seat into the chair across from Vander, looks at the bed. He takes off his cloak, balls it in his lap, and feels the magnetic pull of the man next to him. It must be his sheer mass. He looks up through dark lashes, hair falling in his face, his pomade dissolved by now dry sweat.

“And you’re Vander. Just Vander?”

talistalk

The Last Drop

Jayce pulls on the last of his new pair of boots, wiggling his toes within its ill-ventilated interior, and cracks his neck. Despite spending much of his morning and afternoon bent first over his increasingly irrelevant dissertation, then over his considerably more interesting “independent study” research, Jayce feels energized and only marginally nervous.

“You try going across the river?” Art had asked when Jayce bemoaned the cost of copper. “Stuff comes cheap.”

”You mean the Undercity? I don’t know. Are you sure it’s… safe?” Jayce had replied, eyebrow lifting, thinking back several years ago to his rebellious teenage ventures, embarrassing trips which only took him within the outskirts of the place. “Not really, but I hear they sell scrap metal for crazy cheap. I can’t remember the place my buddy mentioned, but I’ve heard The Last Drop - some bar - is a good place to start. Kind of the main watering hole down there, used to outsiders.” ”I’ll think about it,” Jayce had replied, scratching the back of his neck. ”I thought you had your prototype built?” Art had asked, hands on his hips, head cocked to the side. “Just how behind are you, Talis?” ”Ah, just some independent research. I might shift the direction of my dissertation, I don’t know. I’ll - I’ll talk to you about it later, alright? Anyway, gotta go, Arty. Thanks a lot.”

And now Jayce is here, wearing what increasingly seemed to him a poor disguise - his Academy uniform peaking out of a new hooded cloak - taking a seat at a bar well-worn and buzzing, populated by figures tattooed and suspicious. He sits, looking up from his hood, and eyes liquors familiar and exotic alike. Some seem to contain creatures frozen in time. He wonders if people actually drink from the bottles, or if the display is simply some macabre display appreciated by whoever owns the place. @houndunderground

houndunderground

It’s busy for a weeknight. Vander keeps one eye on the head forming in the glass as he pours, and the other on a particularly-loud tableful of regulars in the corner who keep calling out to Babette’s girls every time one of them sashays past.

He finishes the pull, and slides the drink across the bar.

“Thank you, darling. Add it to my tab,” Merrik purrs, her age-thickened nails clicking on the glass.

Vander huffs a low chuckle. “Your tab’s about due to celebrate another birthday,” he says. “Square us up by the next one or you’ll be getting nothing but dishwater.” It's a well-worn joke by now.

She grins anyway, revealing a mouthful of silver. “You’ve got more interesting things for me here than your drinks, anyway.” She dips her chin meaningfully toward something over his shoulder. “Who’s the pretty Piltie boy? Looks like an Academy brat.”

Vander doesn’t look right away. He takes his time, collecting a row of empty shot glasses, wiping a sticky smear away from the polished bartop.

When he does turn to his newest customer, he’s surprised. The stool’s occupant is less a boy than a young man; tall, well-proportioned, broad across the chest and shoulders in a way Vander can tell he’s still filling into.

Merrik’s assessment appears to be correct, as Vander catches a glimpse of a uniform under the neck of his cloak. He is pretty. He also looks nervous.

Interesting.

Vander leans down, enjoying the hugeness of the boy’s eyes as he scans the bottles behind the bar. “You look lost,” he says. “Something you’re chasing?”

talistalk

Jayce’s senses are suddenly overwhelmed by a man, a towering pillar of muscle and sweet tobacco, leaning across the bar. He pulls back, startled by the sheer size of the bartender’s presence, whose voice rumbles amused and low. Despite its relatively muted volume, the man’s voice has the resonance of someone powerful. “Uh, yeah,” Jayce replies, determined not to show embarrassment, pulling his clearly worthless hood down around his shoulders. He clears his throat. “I’m in the market for scrap metal? I’m not from around here and - “ Jayce finds himself distracted by yelling a few tables over, whistles and hoots, and shakes his head to try to clear his concentration. “Anyway, I was wondering if you had any -“

“Hey, pretty boy, what you studying?” A male voice chorused by mean-spirited laughter. “Get lost on the way to the Academy, Piltie? Don’t worry, I can teach you a lesson or two!” He can tell the shout is followed by dirty commentary by the tone, thankfully unable to make out the words. Jayce chuckles, unnerved, scratches the back of his close-shorn head self-consciously. “A-anyway. I’m looking - “ Jayce can feel the men approaching, sauntering up behind him to the bar. *Fuck.* His cheeks redden and he pastes on an amiable expression, like he’s in on the joke, shaking his head at the man behind the bar like the whole thing is a silly inconvenience or misunderstanding.

“Ha-ha, yeah, fellas. I’m… not from around here. Just, uh, hoping to get a drink and be on my way.”

houndunderground

Vander watches from underneath lowered brows as two of the drunks flank the Piltie boy.

“Yeah, you can get a drink alright,” one of the men says, meaningfully grabbing at his own crotch while the other guffaws. “Got plenty for you to swallow right here. Get that pretty mouth working.” There’s a fresh wave of hooting from the idiots back at the table.

Heads from neighboring tables turn to watch, more than a few barely-concealed smirks lifting. The only thing more entertaining than a confrontation for a full house of barflies is a confrontation with a Piltie. Vander knows all too well how happily this crowd would watch an Academy uniform ripped from its wearer’s shoulders without lifting a finger to help. More than a few would probably relish the opportunity to land a few kicks of their own.

Despite his show of bravado, there’s a flush creeping up the young man’s clean-shaven cheeks. Being flustered only makes him look even more appealing, something Vander recognizes as the source of impending trouble that it is. Not only for his pinup-perfect face—which would’ve been bad enough on its own—but for that little self-righteous flash of determination in the way he’d drawn himself up as he lowered his hood, the way he’d pinned that charming smile on like a new-gleaming badge.

This boy’s going to cause problems, he thinks, his thumb stroking his index finger absently, whether he knows it or not.

Vander pushes back his sleeves, and leans down lower, resting his scarred and muscle-corded forearms on the bartop. “Leave the kid alone, gents,” he says, evenly. “Don’t spoil everyone’s night by making me throw you out for scaring a customer.”

talistalk

Jayce stops just - just - short of scoffing at the appellation, watching the way the men immediately quiet, look at one another with increasingly sober expressions. His neck fucking burns with embarrassment, fingering his cheap new cloak, feet sweating in shoes designed for toxic sludge. Jayce grinds his teeth, jaw working to keep his mouth shut, to keep him from saying something pathetically defensive. Besides, something in the way the bartender speaks, quiet and paternalistic, confident in the way only someone who looks like that can be in the face imminent… unpleasantness, also silences any continued interaction on Jayce’s part.

Jayce studies the bar top, insides alight, trying to keep his expression insouciant, but unable to meet the eyes of anyone, his plastered smile souring around the edges. He is surrounded on all sides, a spotlighted figure in a dark and increasingly quiet, observant bar.

The louder one, the one whose lewd comments simmer low in Jayce’s gut, rallies despite his friend’s telegraphed dissent. “Aw, Vander… we’re just having a bit of fun. That’s what you came down here for, right? Piltie come to slum it for the night?” He puts a tattooed hand on Jayce’s shoulder and Jayce flinches back as if burned. He feels frozen in place by this novel attention, male and predatory, nothing like the overeager feminine giggles and “casual” touches of those who usually flirt with him. He feels vaguely nauseous.

houndunderground

The Piltie tenses all over, the interlocutor’s hand a row of dirty black-crescented fingernails stark against fine fabric. Most of the bar is now watching. Vander knows how this goes. Outsider comes in, all spotless skin and squeaking-new shoes, as though flaunting their comfort in the faces of those upon whose backs it was built. Never ends well. Not even with intervention—easy enough to contain inside the walls of the bar, but everyone has to stagger home eventually once the night’s over. He doesn’t want to imagine how much worse it’d be for a boy with a face like this one.

Vander smiles, just a hint, enough for the lamplight to catch. “That’s right,” he says to the drunk. “Lad’s here to talk to me. So I’ll thank you for taking your hand off him before I have to explain to Neelo why his crew’s two men down tomorrow.”

There’s a collective inhale as the audience waits to see what happens next. It’s quiet enough to hear the rattle of ice in a near-empty glass from one of the corners.

Then the drunk huffs, deflating. “Didn’t mean nothin’ by it,” he says. “Was just a compliment. Fuckin’ Pilties. Always too stuck up.”

He wanders back to his table, and, disappointed, the rest of the watchers return to their drinks. Conversations restart with the roughness of smog-throated laughs, like a chorus of old engines turning over.

Vander turns back to the Piltie, whose cheeks don’t seem to have recovered entirely from their russet heat yet. Pretty. And troublesome, Vander thinks again.

“Come on,” Vander says. “Think it’s best if we talk upstairs.”

He nods to Gert to mind the bar, drapes his polishing rag over the counter, then makes for a doorway beside the jukebox. He doesn’t wait to see if the boy follows.

talistalk

Jayce wants to protest, wants to get out of here, but the man - Vander - is already moving, parting the busy bar around him like a hot chisel through soft metal. Jayce looks up at Gert, a woman with dark skin and white hair, questioning, and she raises her eyebrows at him like he is an idiot. Self-conscious, Jayce lifts his hood, even though everyone in the bar has seen him at this point, and follows the bartender through a doorway barely large enough to fit him. I’m going to fucking kill Art, Jayce thinks. He should have talked me out of this. Jayce wonders if Art even had a “buddy” willing to come down here. In retrospect, probably not. Art only left his room to go to the library. Jayce had met him in the stacks, got to talking about alternative conductors. Jayce had to be his most interesting friend.

Now Jayce was walking up creaking steps to some upstairs room with a man with forearms like fucking tree trunks and a voice that clouded his brain. Alone. He feels humiliated, like a child called aside by his parent for a talk, except that parent could probably murder him on the spot. Perhaps he still has time to leave. When they reach the top of the stairs, out of earshot of anyone downstairs, he makes his attempt. A quick thanks, a meager excuse, and a dash would be the smart thing to do. Instead, chest still burning, Jayce says, “I could’ve handled that, you know.”

houndunderground

Vander doesn’t immediately respond. He continues ahead as though he hadn’t heard, opens the door to the little office-cum-bedroom at the top of the stairs, and eases himself down onto one of the two chairs facing the low bed. The young Piltie man’s still flushed, his indignation painted beautifully on his face, chin lifted in youthful arrogance. Vander drags a long, luxuriant look over him, head to toe, before he speaks.

“And how, exactly, were you going to handle it? Both of them at once, or one at a time? On your knees, or your back?” He’s disapproving, but not unkind. He pulls a pouch from inside his pocket while he’s speaking, taps out a measure of tobacco, packs it into the bowl of his pipe, and strikes a match to set it alight.

“Would’ve thought that fancy Academy’d only be taking in the smart ones. But there mustn’t be much going on inside that pretty head if you think walking in here wasn’t an invitation for trouble. There are easier ways to get yourself brought off than flashing it around to a mob of drunk miners, if that’s what you were looking for.”

He wouldn’t be the first rich kid looking for an exciting night of rough treatment in the Undercity. Vander frowns, exhaling a slow mouthful of smoke as he remembers: he’d said something about scrap metal. An excuse, maybe. Or maybe the boy really is just that naive.

talistalk

“I-!” Jayce can feel his goddamn cheeks burning red, blood rushing through his body as if it has somewhere to be outside it. He is appalled to find some of it has rushed south, his Academy slacks tightening beneath his ridiculous cloak. He is embarrassed to an unexpected severity, something about the way Vander looks him over stripping him naked, his words lighting up different, unexpected parts of his mind.

Jayce has had dreams, alright? But they were just dreams, stress over exams manifesting in strange subconscious scenes of his male professor bending him over a desk, locker room tousles ending not in laughter, but against walls in steaming showers. He’s not gay, not that there’s anything wrong with that. He has had girlfriends, satisfied ones at that, but the sheer… look, maybe it’s the power dynamics or something. Maybe he’s just a little fucked up, alright, because when Vander calls him “pretty” and describes him on his knees, exhales smoke like, like… well, it does something for him.

“I came here for scrap metal,” Jayce blusters. He watches the pipe leave Vander’s lips, watches the smoke follow, wonders what the tobacco down here tastes like, if it leaves a trace behind on teeth and tongue.

Fuck, is he really getting harder?

“I was told your bar was the place to go for help. I… guess I was wrong.” He wants to turn and stalk away, but he feels planted to the spot. He huffs a laugh, nervous energy spilling out. He runs a hand over his face, through his hair, pushing back his hood. “I didn’t come here to — I mean, I didn’t know that was something people did down here, I mean, came down here to do.” He looks at the ceiling, the floor. He doesn’t know why he’s bringing this up.