normal part of my brain : you can't write about three different versions of Bezz's post-Sepang evening
silly part of my brain : watch me, it's now Pecco's turn
Anyway, so. It's still Bezz's birthday and he's still in this annoying mood he can't shake out and he decides to do what he always does when he feels antsy with energy to expel in some way: he goes to Pecco.
Bezz kinda hates the face Pecco makes when he opens the door of his hotel room (there is definitely some pity in there, and Bezz knows he looks miserable but still) but he lets it pass, takes off his shoes and immediately goes for Pecco's bed, lying on his good side and hugging a comfort pillow to his chest. It smells like Pecco. It's nice.
It doesn't take long for Pecco to join him, facing him with his fist supporting his head. They're close. Bezz can see the mole hiding under Pecco's facial hair from there.
"What do you need? Wanna be mean to me? Might not be the weekend with the most material but I'm sure you can manage something."
Bezz snorts. He's not in the mood to trashtalk but he appreciates the effort. He also knows that he's being dramatic about the whole situation (Bezz is professional enough to work with anyone, Luca being in another box is not what's going to stop them from being friends) but there is something about knowing that Pecco will always be where Bezz expects him that's soothing for Bezz's heart.
Pecco's an overthinker. He's his own worst ennemy. He doesn't believe in himself as much as he should considering his talent.
When it comes to Bezz, though, he's always been solid. They might only be a year apart but sometimes it feels like Pecco has lived through so much more, too wise for his age. Bezz wanna be him as much as he wanna be so much different, better. It's a very healthy situation, he swears.
"Domizia sent me a text earlier, she wants me to wish you a happy birthday," Pecco offers next.
Bezz smiles, says "Thank you" and watches as Pecco smiles back, so fond.
Bezz doesn't know what he did to deserve the arrangement all three of them have. He knows he could ask Pecco to fuck him stupid right now. He could grab the lube in Pecco's suitcase himself and work his way between Pecco's legs, take care of him before asking Pecco to ride him, anything good enough for Bezz's body to stop feeling like his skin is vibrating.
Bezz could stay the night and suck Pecco off in the shower in the morning. That's what they did after Indonesia and Bezz wouldn't mind a repeat.
Instead, he says: "Tell me about the wedding preparations."
The ask takes Pecco by surprise at first, Bezz can tell from the way his brows go up for just a second. Then, though, Pecco says "sure" and he starts telling Bezz about the guests list and the dinner options.
Bezz closes his eyes and lets Pecco's voice soothe him, the subject at hand enough for him to forget about anything racing-related.
He thinks they've moved to the matter of flowers by the time he lets sleep win him over.
When Bezz wakes up, the room is dark, some lights coming through the half closed blinds. It takes him a second to realize that a duvet has been pulled over him at some point.
Pecco is sleeping next to him, on his stomach with his arms hugging the pillow from earlier. He looks so soft, angel-like, almost. Bezz loves him so much.
After getting up, Bezz only hits his hip into one chair on his way to the other side of the bed, somehow. He pushes the curls away from Pecco's forehead just so he can kiss him there, once.
Bezz knows he could have stayed. That night, though, falling back asleep in his own bed hugging the sweatshirt he stole from Pecco's bedroom before leaving, is just as great.
He's wearing said sweatshirt at the airport the next day and it has Pecco grinning at him, throwing a "and you say I don't know how to dress nicely, uh" in his direction before giving their coffee orders to the Starbucks worker waiting for him.
Pecco's name is written on the two cups, missing one C. Pecco paid for both drinks.
When he settles himself in the plane, Bezz feels lighter than the day before. When Luca sits down next to him and offers for them to watch a movie together, it's easier than Bezz expected to smile and say "yes, for sure, only if I can choose".
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Ennobled Madonna
summary: assorted thoughts and personal headcanons on the topic of The Sixth of The Eleven Fatui Harbingers’ mommy issues.
cw: female reader, yandere themes, implied nsfw, pseudo-incest, selective misogyny.
wc: 4.4k.
Scaramouche’s obsession with the whole “mother-related issues I am obviously not jerking my nonexistent dick off to interested in solving” from the moment he decided you are worthy to enjoy his constant presence, which not the most sycophantic Fatui members would have prayed for, is easy to be traced – especially if he chose to bestow upon you a tiniest of crumbs of his past for you to glue the pieces together. Yet even without those scarce yet vital shards of information to add finishing touches to the portrait of your adversary, you saw through his façade (albeit, only partially) right when his attitude towards you has taken shades of contempt he hasn’t shown in relation to anyone else – or, to be exact, you were subjected to it from the very start.
It is contempt, yes, but it is more of a feigned one because you are certain that, when fortune shifts in your favor and you encounter him on days equally uneventful, you catch something lurking behind the stout veil of woven despisal when your gazes meet in recognition of each other’s existences, yet to claw its way out of the prison that is his violet irises and strike you directly.
You have dug up something uncharted, you assume – have discovered the side of the most disliked Fatui Harbinger that, perhaps, was not opened to anyone else but you when he eyed you with evaluation (something he never does when settling business with anyone, for you observe your masters attentively and find nothing but restrained animosity masked by apathy in The Balladeer’s glare) and declared that you shall be his in voice languid and devoid of its usual high pitched mockery.
His? What by “being his” the young man such as he meant? He has spoken of neither chain of command nor of the torment of becoming a plaything or a guinea pig to complement whatever activities he dabbles in. One thing, however, stands as truth in regard to his claim:
You are his. His something. His someone. You are not sure what or who you are before you are summoned to do nothing but regular chores – as you always do – but only within the domain of the puppet who has no heart to give and no heart to appreciate (at least until your silent pledge to give yours), and it is then it had occurred to you that it is not novelty you believe to have uncovered in the person of infamously bad reputation and insufferable temperament.
In reality, you just triggered the inevitable impulse, as potent in its course in his artificial veins as thunder is to his former mistress’ essence, to make things right. Proper. As they must have been since his birth, forever – although not without adjustments given your species and personality so opposite to that one key figure of his past – and you still have to grasp the basic design of the narrative.
The Balladeer is now writing his new tale. The tale where you are not a minor character those imbeciles have made you be but the heroine of the story as relevant as he, the ever-villainous protagonist – the story that has its plot without unwanted twists and clear end (because your end is prescribed by laws of this realm regardless of his will and Kunikuzushi, who denounced both gods and mortals, hates, hates, hates, hates their rules so much he represses the logical conclusions his quill of judgment aches to remind him of).
In this scripture of his, you do simple things for a creature as complicated as he who has no necessity to eat food or sleep; in this gospel of his, you evoke no raw ire, nor cold indifference when he forces you to be in his line of sight, to welcome his company when he returns from tending to his tedious duties, looking weary, troubled and sounding so uncharacteristically lenient – almost drained of life – oh no—
You are here to nurture him. You are here to comfort him when he demands it in a request vaguely formulated, to care for him when your obligation to do so is pronounced in tone stringent yet impatient and manifested in his petite form pretending to feel tired and of a must to relax on your subservient one (with arms kept down and breath contained because you have no authority, nor the audacity to touch him when not permitted to do so); to praise his glory and ambitions in speech tender and to tentatively nudge him to achieve more, strive for more, to seize more and more without hesitation and without fail because those are expectations every mother has to impose on her child, and it’s when he said exactly this phrase have you finally gotten the idea of what abyss you’re falling into, sinking straight into the rivers of delusions or mayhaps mere zests peculiar to each Lord Harbinger.
The Balladeer sought not to toy with you or debase you as every one of his colleagues might do, you calculated that quickly. If anything, he expressed his wish in a manner precise yet your comprehension, for a moment, was too muffled by the symphony of rumors surrounding him – the heartless puppet who abhors everything and everyone – to fathom his real intentions.
He desires the miracle of motherhood, and you shall gift him your motherly affection no matter what.
It is his fatal weakness – the true phylactery of the abandoned creation of divine whim and unbeatable shell of the unborn god that, if pinpointed, can be taken down with one blow and mark his demise – and if you’re a specifically malicious lady, you may as well make use out of this vulnerability to destroy what speck of humanness is dwelling inside the husk that is his everlasting carcass.
But you won’t. Not because of your awareness that you can’t actually kill him or disobey him without dire consequences postponing the blade of a dagger you might stab his back with, no – it’s because you are not someone who could ever think of such treachery, to begin with.
You are different. Very, very different; very special, and unique despite possessing no power or importance to the grand scheme of things. You are unlike any other mortal, unlike any other woman he has crossed paths with – for if you were not you, no aforementioned scenario would have occurred at all – and there is a deep-rooted reason for The Balladeer to hold this particular opinion of you.
You see, the women Scaramouche has met in his life as the vengeful spawn of one’s egoism were – and still are, given the gender equality within the ranks of Fatui – generally sorted into three categories: dull worms he should not waste his time on, repulsive bitches (especially that fiery witch too arrogant to mind her place and who, The Balladeer muses with a smirk, shall be demolished by her own fire) too vain in both appearance and disposition and, lastly, someone who is too far from his reach – a woman who, potentially, is the ideal (which is ironic considering his cynicism) personification of what he could have had if he was not stripped of his destiny and thrown away.
The first ones are regular human females he cannot even describe in more words than two: gullible and boring (and already involved with no less gullible and boring human males and therefore they are just insignificant maggots under his feet; in short, it’s a part of his overall enmity towards humankind than a display of sexism). The second ones are, as a whole, the main targets of his poison arrows – his wrath, his hatred, his defilement of their positions and weight because they have too much control over everything (and Scaramouche loathes, loathes, loathes, and loathes to be controlled like his strings is still intact and he hasn’t cut them off his spine for good). From his progenitor to her brainless generals and her smug friend of a youkai, the erstwhile Kunikuzushi had long since come to despise the feminine disregard of his competence to be a vessel of celestial might and, consequently, his determination to secure his temporary haven that was Tatarasuna (that mostly consisted of men married to their smithing job thus only strengthening his flawed perception of women, for there was a sufficient lack of his interaction with them in order to reconsider his mindset). They turned a blind eye to his tears and what is better than to get back at them by causing havoc in that shithole of Inazuma they held so dear? How could he not bathe in amusement when the likes of La Signora are obliterated to ashes with the accomplishments of their goals nipped in the bud? How could he not step on them – alive or dead – and giggle at their foolishness?
Therefore, The Balladeer has no attraction to those who can kick his ass boast of their ability to dominate and have everything handed to them on a silver platter because they were so lucky to have been blessed with divinity/Vision and/or taught how to handle bows and arrows instead of spreading their legs for their benefactors (back then, he has heard of this practice running rampant in streets of Inazuma illuminated red). Such ladies instill genuine fright in him – a fear of being strangled by their influence on him; to be rendered their puppet in both body and mind and he absolutely can’t allow that to happen. He will not even compete with them to prove how superior he is because he already is, and so he will rather watch those confident, strong, and nonetheless laughable shrews suffer humiliation and defeat when their own conceit backfires on them, sometimes subtly interfering in their matters to add an ounce of fuel to the flame and leaning back in his impromptu throne to oversee the show.
Such thinking and behavioral patterns (in the future cured with healing rays of Neo Akasha Terminal and female!Traveler’s punches) are, as had been stated before, easily traced – all the way back to his “childhood” – and are as easily explained by the alternative interpretation of “Madonna-whore complex”: basically, begotten of aloof and detached warrior goddess and molded to mimic a human boy in physique and psyche, the lifeform that shall become known as Scaramouche centuries later experienced a grisly injury to his developing consciousness and yet rudimentary ego at the hands of the woman he first and foremost viewed as his mother. With a pliable infant now a rebelling teenager (who, if he is to mature into an adult man mentally, will nevertheless still inhabit the eternally young frame) it’s no wonder that Scaramouche seeks to avenge the mistreatment through sadistic glee (and seldom attacks) fixed on women who resemble Beelzebul in any aspect, and his “ideal woman”, as such, must fulfill his need for maternal intimacy that was denied to him while not establishing any power over him.
As many may have predicted already, you hit the third category of The Balladeer’s classification of females (he has one for males, too – though as primitive in its structure as brains of those guys – and save for few men of sharp wits the majority of them are stuffed together in the “intellectually handicapped brutes” box) perfectly.
You are distinct from the first and second ones. Yes, your constitution is similar to Beelzebul’s (and how he can blame you for having such a nicely shaped body when you’re no little brat but a grown-up lady? There’s no choice but to appreciate… *cough-cough* tolerate it) and yes, some of your traits make you an eligible candidate to supplement his list of “dull worms”, but…
You are an enigma; a walking deception in your entirety. You, who is an ordinary woman of selfhood meek and mildly docile, have more to you than meets the eye and it’s beyond gratifying how only he, of all men, can see the real you. While not impressing The Balladeer in the slightest with how you conduct yourself daily, there are rare cases of enlightenment you bring to him – who supposedly has explored all human kin has to offer in terms of their contents from inside and out – and has him wondering if he is, by chance, delirious.
You are strong. Not in a specious way those ruffians with tits are, no – you are a steel hidden in silk, steady and resilient to bending only when you please. You serve your lords dutifully yet without fanaticism, but only if they deserve your loyalty and you tremble not when faced with punishment.
You have no Vision, sword, or lance. Your only paraphernalia is your dignity that refuses to be subjugated; just like him, the test subject to the vile scientist, you sustain more abuse than anyone and yet stay intact in spite of your feeble origins, and Scaramouche has to confess to himself that he is legit bewildered by revelations you provided.
It takes but one tragedy for a mortal soul to drown in despair. It took him – the puppet of lasting fascination with your folk – all but three betrayals to give up on humanity but here you are, moving forward as if all those insults and slaps to your cheek are nothing; as if all violence unleashed at you has no effect as you bit your lip to suppress pain and proceed with the task, and as if your only friend of a fellow maid making denunciation to get your neck slit has no impact on the faith you have in your brethren.
Be it your blatant naivety or the exceptional toughness of your spirit, The Balladeer finds himself unable to hate you. Instead, you struck him with confusion and intrigue he haven’t been a victim of for a long time to the extent of doubting your very existence.
You must be a fiction – merely a fantasy haunting his dreams; an apparition, a mirage… yet you are a living, corporeal wish-fulfillment so close, so within his reach…
And so sincerely tangible.
You treat him, who tests you with lashes of his merciless tongue on a regular basis and gets no anticipated scorn, with kindness. You look past his credentials – past the verity that is “God-made Doll” – and greet him with courtesy when no one does so or feigns decency out of subordination. Isn’t it stupidity to caress the maw ready to devour you? Isn’t it idiocy to pet the lion’s head and expect no fingers to be bitten off? Isn’t it meaningless to persuade yourself that what are you tending to is not a tool of boundless durability but very much a human like yourself?
All of this should have been naught but nauseating nonsense, but… Somehow, Scaramouche feels the other way around. He is not moved per se, no – he just resolves that one dogma that shall seal your fate.
You are the ultimate solution to his grudge. Now, he is fully conscious of why he can’t simply push you away (as he would have done to pretty much anyone else) for daring to pat his mop of dark locks as if he’s your damn son because you’ve got to be his ideal match – the essential fragment of the puzzle that is his self.
It makes sense. You make sense. You will be the sole woman whom he can abide and you will be the sole woman who can abide his temper. You have all those maternal qualities he was in search of for ages: you look older than him, you take care of him even when met with a murderous glint in pools of indigo and you are certainly not too overbearing nor the slightest bit irritating; and, being powerless as you are, you pose no threat to his hubris on any level (which is a crucial part to understanding his motives).
Mother figure or not, you can’t ever hope to control him. You may adhere to your new role dedicatedly, sure – may pamper and coddle him with the aura of the all-knowing icon of patronage, but as long as you don’t denude the shield that protects his bona fide craving, your “reign” will remain ostensible.
This craving, this primordial hunger for love as apparent as red circles on a straw dummy is not something as imperceptible as The Balladeer thinks of it to be – at least not to you. Thirsting for such luxury, Scaramouche realizes where his aspirations do truly lie yet fiercely denies the fact (mostly because it contradicts his principles forged by the hammering impact of countless betrayals and eventual disillusionment with the human world), and this pursuit of what he tries so hard to convince you he is not capable of yearning for should not come as a surprise to anyone who is able to look at him without prejudices like “heartless puppet” or “cruel bastard” framing their lenses.
He is a doll, after all. And dolls – more than any other sentient thing brought to life – desire to be loved; to be useful and cherished with pure attachment to them stemming from whoever is playing with them. It’s something innate to them and more so to the marionette who had a purpose to host his mistress’ burden, and Scaramouche’s “malfunction” of being able to express human attributes such as emotions and prominent individuality only attests to the complexity of his diverse character.
Which, in turn, places you into the stalemate with no plausible resolution. On one hand, Scaramouche wants to immerse himself in the woes of love to erase all scars engraved on his joints (aka: to make himself complete). On the other hand, he finds such a notion to be a danger to his permanence of disdain towards such lowly mortal stuff and outright embarrassing to accept into his system. Longing for love yet rebuffing it when in possession of one... Those two sides of him are in constant conflict with each other and that’s why you are not being called his “mother” directly; that’s why he never explicitly told you what your role is and that’s why he acts like an edgy teenager allergic to all sugary nothings he himself asked of you to grace him with through convoluted hints and demeaning language.
“Welcome back, my Little Skirmisher,” you always say with rehearsed smile, gesturing to the tea prepared to lave his throat; always imploring him to not scoff at your suggestions to rest on your lap and always, always lulling him – who does not require sleep – with a voice benign and soothing as your fingers bury themselves into his hair, and the puppet plagued by wakeful nightmares of the treasured trinket snatched from the emptiness of his chest can’t help but fall asleep in the end (something he never did since his liberation from enchanting confines of Shakkei Pavilion).
This “game” has gone too far. Scaramouche can’t even tell if you’re serious or just making fun of him. He made you speak and perform like this if only to test if he can sew his torn stitches anew, yes; but you’re also not that malleable to consent to uncomfortable conditions, are you? If you, too, are desperate for that ludicrous thing named love, then…
Deep down, he wants more. There is so much more you can give, something you currently have no idea of until you involuntarily provoked him to disclose the details when he was at his worst because what he witnessed was clearly not the scene he envisioned when ruminating on how he would make you submit to his greed.
It was the scene that made him jealous – much as he found it vexatious to admit – and Scaramouche’s jealousy is exhibited in a fashion not typical to human males (or, at least, it initially carries no suggestive connotations). It is definitely not sexual, nor is excessively romantic in nature, more fitting the description of how a child would act when its parents forgo their instinct to pay all of their attention to their progeny. Everything is as elementary as it ought to be – you are his dutiful mother, he is your no less dutiful son, and there is no extra space for someone else to step in and tarnish your picture of a perfect family by becoming his “stepfather”, right?
Well, no. When The Balladeer beholds you fluttering your eyelashes at another man (doesn’t matter if this is but a misunderstanding and something merely got in your eyes), it doesn’t take long for him to catch the implications behind the bubbling cauldron of fury scorching his usually frigid bowels.
It’s not the kind of anger he feels when things he owns are stolen from him because things can be retaken; it’s not the kind of discontent his dumb subordinates induce because he doesn’t give two hoots what they think about him in his moments of rage, and it’s not the kind of resentment he harbors against his real mother who shall never restore his privilege, no – it’s something else. Something twice as horrible, as suffocating, and as reeking of ashes as back then, in the furnace, in that burning hut, and—
For the first time in hundreds of years, Scaramouche is paralyzed with sheer fear. He is afraid to be left alone once again, to be discarded and spat on; he is not as afraid to be robbed of you by that lecher as he is afraid that you will deem him suitable (what an appropriate word to describe how he still can’t get over his rights being usurped by his “sister”) no longer – that you will initiate the separation yourself and drop a mention of how all of this was really but a game to you.
He can’t lose you. He can’t set you free, for he won’t even conceal how dependent he is on you, how addicted he is to your benevolence; how he – okay, he can’t lie to himself anymore – wants to be the center of your universe and how he, the immortal being, is dying to keep you for himself forever. If he can’t bind you by the love he has for you as his mother, then he must anchor you to himself by the love he has for you as a woman at the cost of his pride, and you may have already guessed what exactly he meant by “loving you as a woman”.
Scaramouche has little insight into the complications of human relationships and ethics. With no real family members to experience the joy of familial bonds in his “infancy” and with no woman to be his paramour until you waltzed into his solitary life, his view on relations between people is not as… adequate as those around him expect of everyone walking on two legs to have. Even though he saw many mortals and had his quality time living with some of them when in the skin of the erstwhile Kabukimono, he can’t quite discern the definitions of “mother” and “lover” the way humans do to this very day. Of course, he knows the difference between “partner” and “relative”; he knows how wrong from the perspective of a short-lived vermin it is to defile whom he got used to perceiving as his mother figure, but in the case of The Balladeer, knowledge does not equal understanding.
What he understands, however, is that humans are contagious. It’s funny how immune he is to any disease except for mortal sentiments and it’s entirely your fault for impairing him. He wouldn’t have felt that miserable and weak if not for you; he wouldn’t have felt as if everything is repeating for a fourth time if not for you, and he wouldn’t have… felt the need to fill you with himself if not for your shameless antics.
What a wicked woman you are indeed. He shouldn’t have underestimated your charms yet it’s too late to reflect on his mistake. The damage has been already dealt and no one can escape his vengeance after such an impudent deed. He wants you to be both his mother and his lover – nothing more, nothing less, and you won’t be able to want anyone but him either. Period.
And so, Scaramouche won’t let you leave him. For all his penchant for sadism, he won’t blackmail you into staying with him, nor hurt you physically – alternately, he will resort to the tactic he never thought of weaponizing before.
Disgusted by how obsessed he is with retaining your favor (and how you seem to somehow fully control him), he seeks to make you twice as enamored with him (yes, he is that clever and cunning, isn’t he?). Humans like to tie each other with throes of passion, don’t they? Isn’t lust a convenient method to entice you into his clutches? If his silver tongue is not enough to ensure your loyalty, then he shall deploy it elsewhere, shan’t he?
It’s alright, mother. The falsely independent puppet’s ego is already wounded, after all; you can’t make things worse than they are. Just surrender and succumb to the pleasure you so eloquently begged that man to pour into you, will you?
“Once, there was a child,” The Balladeer’s lips open softly, pink petals curling with each syllable uttered. “A child who knew naught of mother’s love, begotten to serve as the mere extension of unswerving will that deemed its progeny as a weapon of useless utility. And then…”
With breath held firmly, you wait for the continuation of the fable yet unfinished. You want to hear it all; want to know him beyond the picture of almighty Fatuus he plastered on his front to justify your acts of servitude, yet simultaneously you foresee as though what box you are about to unlock will swallow you with no return to the status quo.
“Ah, but you can tell what happened next without further elaboration, can’t you?” the puppet strokes the side of your face with the hand icy yet strangely gentle, the corners of his mouth forming a teasing smirk as he looks up at you with anticipation of what answer you are about to give like a curious kitten.
“Take your time, then,” with the silence on your part prolonged and the dark-haired youth’s head nestled in the warmth of your breasts, his gems of clouded purple close in afterglow; palm retracting to join its sister in capturing your waist.
“Make sure to impress me with the depth of your imagination…”
You barely manage to hold back from yelping when something slithers down below what is permitted for your deceitfully innocent “son” to lay his hands on, and you don’t have to confirm the dubious signs behind his movements when the following is said in the lowest tone his boyish voice can muster.
“… And after your take on this endless story is revealed, let’s see how it shall unfold hereafter, hm?”
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