One last shameless plug for my hexquad fic before I finish up the next chapter. I really hope this fic finds its audience.
It was perhaps an understatement to say that Viktor did not have what one would call extensive experience with parties. At the Academy, he was often excluded from them, and on the rare occasion he was offered an invitation and actually showed up to fulfill it, he relegated himself to the fringes of the festivities—well within reach of the snacks and libations, but still a safe enough distance from the hazards of the dance floor. Whether this habit formed out of true preference or necessity, one could never truly say.
And before the Academy—well, to be fair, there wasn't really much cause for celebration in the undercity. Least of all for him. Even on the day he left for Piltover, there was no pomp and circumstance, no real gathering to speak of. There was only Sky, only the warm press of her body as she pulled him into an embrace, the soft puff of her breath tickling his ear as she murmured her goodbyes, the way her shoulders hitched gently while she fought to keep from staining his one patch-free shirt with any tears.
Back then, when he still believed uncritically in the promise of Piltover, Viktor had just known that he would return for her someday, healed and whole and worthy. He would sweep Sky off her feet, carry her across the bridge to a house on the highest hills of Upper Piltover and kick the door open.
Naturally, as these things go, it hadn’t ended up that way. But at that moment, and for many years thereafter, hers had been the sole shape of his desire. In recent months, though, it was safe to say that shape had expanded somewhat.
That was how he ended up on the margins of some gilded ballroom on the Academy grounds, watching as Jayce held court with the Hextech investors and Sky chatted with a few of the other lab assistants over too many flutes of expensive sparkling wine.
Viktor took a sip from his own glass—the same one he’d been nursing for the better part of an hour—but it did nothing to alleviate the dry feeling in his throat as he watched them, Jayce Talis in his white suit with gold trim encircling his broad shoulders like a bullseye and Sky Young draped in midnight satin with a slit like an arrow pointing up the expanse of her thigh.
“Beautiful, aren’t they?” asked a voice like silk and honey, a familiar one during his time studying at the Academy and later working as an assistant to Professor Heimerdinger.
“I couldn’t guess what you are referring to, Councilor Medarda.”
“You used to call me Mel,” she said, taking a seat on the couch beside him.
Full Chapter on AO3
