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chickenparm · 1 year

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Eventide (Dottore/f!Reader)

oh hey what's up. how ya doin. we holdin up after that scara demo? are you remembering to drink water?

AO3 LINK SCARAMOUCHE OFFSHOOT HERE

But there’s something about the way you marvel at him without truly knowing who you were talking to. A sort of honesty that he’s never tasted from another - at least not willingly, and forcing the truth does tend to spoil it enough to be unpalatable. Dottore savors how you blatantly confess your willingness to consume such knowledge if it weren’t for your obligation to it.

Then you spit in his face with your pride.

Dottore/f!Reader, extremely mild Scaramouche/f!Reader 12,568 Words - NSFW One-Sided pining, unrequited feelings, slight stalking, FWB, slight coercion, mild Yandere themes but it's not that bad, Desk Sex, f!Receiving Oral, mild use of Dottore's suspected name, Dottore is Old™

---

Just like that old children’s story of Barbatos flying too high and needing to be pulled back to earth by Rex Lapis, so too do you feel as if you’ve crossed a threshold that you’re incapable of returning from on your own.

A simple job, Azar had attempted to placate you as you all but shrank under his gaze. With the freedom to continue the research as you see fit outside of what’s required of you.

And you’d lifted your head from where it was propped on your hand, staring at the Grand Sage with a look that veered on overly suspicious. You understand what you’re implying, don’t you?

I’m well aware. Here is your terminal, your permissions will be updated for your new station. Don’t waste any more time - we’re on a strict schedule.

With a lingering sense of dread, you’re left alone in the cobbled-together makeshift lab you’d founded after you’d all but scurried from the Akademiya post-graduation. While you hadn’t moved around much since, you hadn’t expected Azar to keep tabs on you so closely - though you suppose being awarded multiple Pir Kavkavus prizes during your time there would keep you on their radar.

They never told you that when you join the Akademiya, you never truly leave unless they want you to. Azar’s unannounced presence in your lab today - speaking things that had been loudly preached as one of the Akademiya’s greatest sins - told you leagues about how deeply they’ve sunk their hooks into you.

But you supposed perhaps there’s a silver lining to it. Azar’s conviction that he understood exactly what he was offering was too tempting a prospect for you to have denied even on your strongest days. Now you’re left in the dark with an inert Akasha terminal, the dim lights of your lab that emanate from bioluminescence and low-burning lanterns, and your thoughts about what happened since you’d taken your leave.

A God, you mused as you packed your notes. Your supplies could stay - they were merely tools, and certainly the facilities that Azar promised would be more than sufficient to work with. The real value lay in the tomes and sheaves of paper that you meticulously placed in your bag. This is the culmination of your work.

A new God, you hummed over as you began the trek on foot back to Sumeru, your remote lab in the hills of Liyue firmly secured behind you. While you held no real reverence for neither the Greater nor Lesser Lords, you were certain Lesser Lord Kusanali was still alive and well. Where would a new one have come from?

The Ley Lines hadn’t fluctuated, at least not to the degree that something as monumental as that would cause.

A new, manmade God, you pieced together as you crested the walkways to the Akademiya’s glittering entrance. Azar stood at the front doors, hands folded behind his back and a look of serenity that never felt like it was at home on his face. All you received was a nod - a gesture for you to follow.

And that left you with one final trek beneath the city, down-down-down into the depths of the earth where no civilian would ever be allowed to set foot. You’re certain that the knowledge of this place has been blocked to everyone without the proper clearance - one of whom you happen to be, now.

The tasks were laid out as if they were simple - yet immediately you realized the hubris at play here, by both yourself and the man whose notes that spread out before you. They’re well-worded, precise… and gazing at his handwriting, you wouldn’t be out of line to describe them as beautiful. More than once, you found your fingers tracing over a particular word when the pen strokes came together just so.

But the contents are what give you pause. Once you’ve gone through the introductory theses and pieced together the major points, you realize that your hunch was correct. Not only are the Sages entirely uninterested in revering Lesser Lord Kusanali, but they seek to replace her with a god of their own creation using the culmination of mankind’s knowledge.

Yet is it truly the epitome of mankind’s knowledge? Or is one man whose work lay before you in neat rows. Is their God one made by the hands of humanity, or is it simply born from the hands of a single man’s drive and ambition?

It’s hard to say, but as you begin to truly delve deep into his thoughts and piece together a plan of action, you wonder if perhaps such blasphemy is from hubris, or simply a broad stroke of genius.

—

“It’s not so simple. You speak like it is.”

“Of course it’s not, or it would have been capitalized a long time ago.” The joints of your fingers hurt as you twist the ends of wires together, zapping them with the tool tucked behind your ear before wrapping them in insulation. “I speak like it’s simple because I’ve dedicated my life to it. I’m sure with a lifespan like yours, there’s plenty that you find trivial that others would lose their heads over.”

At first, you think the answer to your statements is the quiet scoff that he lets out, his shoulders jumping with the movement and delaying your work on fusing sockets into his skin. It would be far more unsettling if he bled, but peeling away skin and revealing bone was a rather dry affair in the company of someone like The Balladeer.

Then, as you seat the base and begin pulling skin taut around it for his healing factor to take effect, he finally murmurs, “You really have no idea.”

“Give me an idea then.”

“No.”

“Then don’t bring it up.” Maybe you were a little too rough with how you tug on the socket, ensuring it holds fast enough that there’s no chance of it slipping free. Despite knowing his capacity to feel pain has been dulled to nearly nothing, he hisses through his teeth at your treatment.

Lavender eyes burn into your back as you turn away to ready the equipment to load a second port into his skin. And they burn, and burn, and burn until he finally snaps with, “Where is Dottore? You’re hardly qualified to be running a vegetable stand, much less creating a God.”

“Ask the Sages. I was just brought here to follow directions and make sure this… thing doesn’t blow itself up the first time you try to mix Pyro and Electro.”

With your back to him, your view is instead turned to the looming metal construct. It’s barely more than internal components and framework now - a project for you to continue once you’ve finished with the installation of The Balladeer’s tubing ports. Only one left for the day, then you have the next few days to work before you’re forced into his presence once more to check their integrity.

“That thing is my body. Find some respect, or I’ll show you.”

“What are you gonna do? Kill me?” Meeting eyes over your shoulder, you can’t deny that he looks absolutely vicious as he all but bristles at your impertinence. He may be on his way to becoming a God, but he isn’t yours. “No one else knows how to do what I can.”

“Dottore will figure it out-”

“Dottore, whoever that is, isn’t here. So you can kill me, and be left with a half-finished body and raw ports in your skin until he decides to show up again. Or you can sit there and keep your mouth shut so we can both get away from each other.”

The metal table he sits on bends with the force of his grip on the edge. But he says nothing, does nothing, and even though it doesn’t feel like it, you know you’ve won the exchange. Certainly you’ll pay for it later, but you’ve come to terms with your own death a long time ago. Work like yours doesn’t come without some threat of liability, and that’s something you’ve grown to accept.

And finally, after all but tearing holes in the table, his hands relax and he turns to face forward. His expression becomes a mystery, even as you approach again with an entirely new set of machinery to augment him with. The Balladeer’s voice is frighteningly quiet as you set to work with a scalpel and forceps.

“I can’t tell if you’re brave or stupid.”

Humming, you peel back skin and synthetic muscle until you’re left looking at a new hole in his back, just to the right of his spine. “Could be both.”

“Maybe not stupid, if you’re willing to admit you’re an idiot.”

“This idiot is digging around in your insides. You should try being a little nicer - ever heard that flies like honey more than vinegar?”

“Insects are worthless to me. You’re the equivalent of a gnat.”

And you laugh. For the first time in who knows how long, you let out a peal of laughter that causes you to stop your tinkering and lean your hands on the table. Certainly he’s unamused, even as you wipe your eyes with the side of your wrist and reach behind his ribs once more. “Wouldn’t I be more like a cockroach? Resilient and somehow managing to live for too long?”

The Balladeer takes a moment to think it over, one hand coming to pinch at his chin and move the muscles you’re working around. Patiently, you stop and wait for him to finish his pondering - it doesn’t take long. “You’re right. A cockroach that’s starting to grow too big for her shell. Shall I let you go until you inevitably die on your own, or should I put you out of your misery first?”

“The only misery I have is having to be in your presence. You should start with remedying that, first.”

“Consider your wish granted, so long as you hurry up.”

—

The Balladeer comes and goes. You hate him just the same, no matter how he pokes and prods at your ego in ways that make you both bristle with anger and gleeful with the audacity of it all. Thankfully, with Dottore’s absence, you’re barred from truly hooking the Balladeer into the metal monstrosity, and with little to do with him until the time comes, you find yourself all alone once more.

The peace is blissful. It’s always you, the stack of paperwork that serves as your guide through both the inner mechanisms of this machine and the mind of the mysterious benefactor, and the looming metal body of a gestating god. Cradled in its helmet, surrounded by wires and panels and empty capsules waiting to be loaded with something you’ve yet to know about, you almost feel as if you’re the god.

In the midst of your musing, your Akasha whirs to life with a notification at the corner of your vision - a visitor in your self-proclaimed sanctum. The serenity is interrupted by the steady clicking of footsteps. Metal and leather on polished marble floors make for a cacophony of noise that drags your attention from the notes in your lap to the newcomer that approaches.

He’s very ostentatious - all fine fabric and feathers and fur. Bits of his getup glow blue, distracting your eyes for only a moment before they zero in on the mask he wears. It’s effective in hiding his expression beyond the simple, neutral smile he wears. “Well, well. Look at you up there. You must feel like royalty, sitting so far above the world.”

“We’re underneath the city, if we’re being technical.” And your gaze turns back to your lap, flipping a page and bringing your pen down to scratch in the margins. Despite his appearance and subtle bravado, the man holds none of your interest. If he has a purpose here, he’ll make it known soon enough.

He stares at you with an unsettling amount of serenity, almost as if he’s planning on unnerving you. But with something to focus on, you’re not so easily swayed and you allow him to wade through his own ego before he finally relents first. “Pardon my… intrusion. The Grand Sage told me of your progress, and I’ll admit that I didn’t believe him until just now.”

“And now?” You ask, half-hearted yet giving him your attention again. Your pen goes behind your ear, and you can feel his eyes follow the movement. The smile on his lips lessens by just a fraction.

“One can only wonder how you’ve managed it in such a short span of time.”

The Grand Sage wouldn’t have let him down here if there was any reason to hide your methods from him. It’s with that thought in mind that you gather your papers and begin your descent, using the scaffolding you’d created to make your life just a little easier. The man is patient enough to not even shift between his feet as you waft the sheaf of papers in the air as a gesture of indication.

“A mysterious benefactor’s notes.”

“And they were sufficient?” The man sounds terribly interested now, taking a step closer and reaching for the papers. You’re almost ready to tug them out of his reach, yet the air that he carries suddenly has some new form of authority that leaves you breathless for all but a moment.

Swallowing, you answer with unintended truthfulness. “More than sufficient. It would be wrong of me if I didn’t use the term genius. His thought processes are astounding. Even if I weren’t on this project, I’d find them interesting to read…”

“But?”

Ah, he caught that. With hawk-like eyes, you watch as he begins to flip through the notes and see your own changes and annotations - corrections to formulas and theories that come from your own tried and true experience. If you could see his eyes, you’re almost certain they’d have narrowed by now.

“But some changes needed to be made for things to run more smoothly. See here? There’s an assumption made about the use of Electro to facilitate the cycling of power through the master processing unit, based entirely on hyperbole and conjecture. It was a simple fix to manufacture stronger tubing that would reduce the latent power loss by-”

“You’re rather presumptuous, aren’t you?”

The air runs cold. Glancing up from the papers that you pointed at, you’re struck by how he looms over you now. The faux friendly demeanor is gone, and in its place is something frigid and unforgiving. Opening your mouth to speak, you’re immediately silenced by the feel of his hand snapping around your jaw. His fingers dig into your cheeks, pressing them against your opened teeth until you can taste copper on your tongue.

“You were meant to follow the instructions as they were written. This could set things back weeks.”

Your words come out slurred and muffled from his treatment, but they strike at him enough to lessen his grip but a fraction. “I saved us weeks. You wanted to know how I accomplished so much?”

Tearing yourself away at the cost of a sore jaw and the soft insides of your cheeks torn, you absently rub where he’d been mistreating you. The man - Dottore, you realize now - leaves his hand hovering in the air as if to reach out and snatch you up once more. Thankfully, he doesn’t move yet, waiting for you to finish your statement with seething impatience.

“The Grand Sage brought me in to cover for you for a reason. All of this? Mixing elements without triggering reactions? Maintaining stability when they’re in their most volatile state? Child’s play to me. This is what I’ve dedicated my life to researching.” Your skin burns where he’d touched you - but not in pain. It’s a novel feeling that you tuck away for further examination when you’re not in imminent danger.

“So if making necessary changes to the efficiency and stability of the construct is presumptuous, then you must be right calling me that. But it doesn’t make me wrong.”

His cheek shifts as he pokes his tongue along it, obviously stewing over your rather bold claims. The hovering hand curls into a fist before it drops to his side, then disappears behind his back with the other. Papers shuffle out of your view. His chest expands, then contracts, then he breathes in before relenting. “No. I suppose it does not.”

—

Zandik has lived for a very long time.

First as a scholar. Then, as an outcast. A Fatui Harbinger. The Doctor. Every one of those lives has been carefully slotted away, placed in its own segment of his little reality so he could observe the world from every pair of eyes he’s ever worn.

While it’s been indescribably useful, there’s one eventuality that he’d never foreseen - not until it lands in his lap with all the brilliance of a meteorite. Its rarity is on par with something so unique, and he’s well aware of what he’s been gifted despite his unhappiness at its initial arrival.

At first, he seethes at your impudence. Calling him a genius, then demeaning his work in the same breath. Never before had he cared about the musings of others on that which they don’t understand - calling him reckless, insane, a fool. At least once, he’s heard each before. Fewer times had he been praised for his intellect, at least not while it wasn’t tinged with begrudging disgust.

Dottore couldn’t fault them for that. Not everyone has the stomach to slip between the cracks of the world and drag its secrets to the surface in a writhing mass. It begs to be dissected, and he’s more than willing to be the one to do so.

Then you spit in his face with your pride. Hyperbole and conjecture… Even now, as he watches you working as yet another new day dawns after a handful already in your presence, Dottore’s fingers itch to wrap around your throat until your haughtiness has turned to ash on your tongue. Desperately, he wants to watch you choke on it.

And on the flip side, he spends that morning flipping through the notes, taking point of your comments and musings. Your corrections. Dottore is far from the belief that he’s beyond making errors, yes something about the way you’d been so matter-of-fact about it made his blood rush in his veins. His heartbeat thrums in his ears even now, filling him with something white-hot that is not so different from the blazing sun of the Hypostyle Desert.

You grate at him, just as the sands once did, and he can’t help but chew his own tongue as you pay him no mind. Absorbed in your own little world of wires and tubes and metal that’s begun to truly take shape under hands that had only needed the slightest guidance, you don’t even know that he hates you.

Then again… he does not. Not in the way one would normally despise another. Dottore doesn’t want you dead. Far from it - and plans were whirling in his mind from the very moment he received word from the Grand Sage that someone had been selected to temporarily take his place in the project. Plans that involved sweeping away a self-imposed outcast to toil under him instead.

That was before you’d gone and made yourself interesting. No longer were you just a nameless, faceless ex-scholar who somehow maintained a position of high regard in the very Akademiya you’d scorned. Now you’ve proved your mettle, laid out your hand without truly knowing that you were holding every winning card.

While Zandik as a whole was a myriad of names, faces, perspectives, personalities… the one that covets you now is undeniably selfish. With no sense of restraint, his mind whirls with thoughts of what exactly he could do with someone of your expertise under his wing. Wishful thinking, as he’s also well aware you’d never agree to stand in his shadow.

Experiments that would flourish with two bright minds instead of one. Projects long-discarded that could be picked up once more. Someone of caliber to truly exchange knowledge with. A body at his side to beat back the creeping sense of dread that comes with a loneliness long discarded.

At the bottom of the pit he’d dug for something so useless, it still wails to be acknowledged. He’s never given it the attention it demands until this very moment, when you look over your shoulder at him and let your confusion at his attention be known.

Soon enough, you’ll understand.

“Is something wrong?”

Your voice rings through the large room, bouncing off soaring rafters and lilting through the air. So much like the meandering, musical tones that filtered through the Grand Bazaar in an unknowing mockery of a song he might have known once, as a child. Dottore’s stomach turns in an uncharacteristic show of utter discomfort.

“No. I lost myself in thought for a moment - unfortunately, you were in the way.”

The expression on your face shifts from one of genuine curiosity to a sort of irritation that soothes him. It looked far better on you - at least, that’s what he tells himself as you blow a disbelieving breath from your nose and turn away once more. The massive hand before you is on its side, the fingers curled around loosely as if it were moments away from grabbing you.

Would you struggle? Dottore can’t help but lower his head and keep his eye on you. There’s no wariness about you, no inherent fear at being in the presence of a Harbinger. Perhaps you didn’t know, but Dottore is almost certain that your ease stems simply from the fact that you do not care. As loath as he is to admit it, it’s refreshing.

But in the same breath, as you bend over to look at the space between its third and fourth fingers, Dottore feels something rise in him. Whipping, vicious, uncontrollable in the way it makes his fists clench on the desk’s surface and his throat close around nothing at all. You’re far too vulnerable - too open - and it’s akin to watching a prey animal wander too close to the den of its predator.

Dottore wants to label the gestating God as the predator. If Scaramouche were piloting it as he was meant to, it would have snapped shut around your body the moment you entered its reach. And while that’s accurate, there’s another, more pressing inaccuracy that argues against such a thought. Because despite Scaramouche’s proclivity for doing exactly as he pleases and nothing more, Dottore is certain that the only true threat to you here and now… is him.

Him, and this cloying sensation of desire that’s creeping in. The unfamiliarity of it is almost akin to bile behind his teeth, and he runs his tongue around the inside of his mouth as if to savor it. You’re crouching now, making yourself smaller as if that would assist in your endeavor, and all it serves to do is drive home the fact that you have no idea what’s truly lurking at your back, straining at its tightly-wound leash.

His chair doesn’t have time to rock back on two legs and hit the floor before he’s vacated the room, unbothered by the disgruntled sound of your distress as you jumped from the noise and smacked your head on something or other. All he can manage is the singular thought to get away, and a sense of panic that originates from what he was attempting to convince himself was unfiltered disgust.

Dottore hates you. Unquestioningly, without peer. If you weren’t so useful, if you weren’t so interesting, you’d be in pieces already. The sum of your parts is far greater than their worth as piecemeal, and that’s not as much of a tragedy as he desperately wants it to be.

—

It takes naught but a few casual thoughts to tamper with your Akasha.

Not enough for you to notice. It functions as it normally would, perhaps with a few more permissions because despite his distaste for your existence, Dottore is well aware that your usefulness far exceeds the threshold of his ire. Giving your leash a little more slack is well within his power, though you’ve yet to utilize it.

Beyond that, he simply deactivates the trigger that alerts you when someone arrives in the workshop. It leaves you none the wiser about him looming above in the catwalks, his hands curled around the metal railing as he takes in the sight of you sitting on his desk, elbow on your knee and chin planted on your fist as you flip through his notes for the nth time.

There are no writing utensils in your vicinity, and Dottore finds himself thankful for it. After your first taste of his displeasure, Dottore was rather surprised to see that you never made an attempt to adjust his instructions again. That doesn’t mean you followed them, but you at least respected them enough to no longer jot your little notes in the margins.

Instead - and Dottore has to really squint to understand exactly what you’re doing - you reach out with a single fingertip to drag along the paper. At first he wants to scoff at your actions. They’re that of a child that struggles to follow where they are in their reading. But then, the pattern changes, and nausea settles in his stomach when he finally realizes you’re not even reading.

You’re tracing the letters of his handwriting. The loops and curls that made up the cursive that he really only used because it was faster than lifting his pen off the paper. Thoughts in his mind whirl quickly, and it’s imperative that he get them down as soon as possible. If he were less disciplined, it would likely be chicken scratch at best, yet you seem to follow it along without trouble.

Rather than trouble, it almost seems as if there’s a reverence to how you regard what amounts to the inner workings of his mind about this particular experiment. The paper doesn’t even shift under your touch, the featherlight brushing of your fingertips moves with such delicacy that it lends an uncharacteristic air of tenderness.

That’s enough to snap him from his reverie and stand a little straighter. He hadn’t even realized he’d begun to lean over the railing.

There’s nothing tender about you. Not that he’s seen, and Dottore can say with confidence that he’s watched enough of you - learned enough - that unless you’ve hidden any sentimentality under an impenetrable barrier of frigid distance, you’ve allowed no space for softer feelings. Especially not toward him.

Dottore slowly blows a breath through his nose, languid enough that it doesn’t make a sound despite the drawn out sigh. There is no room for you to regard him as anything other than another fixture in the world that you’re obligated to work alongside. But if there’s anything that Dottore has learned in all his years traversing Teyvat and the secrets it tries in vain to keep from him; it’s that all it truly takes to get what you want is the right angle.

It all comes down to determining what that might be. And as your gaze turns from the papers to instead stare into the distance as your thoughts begin to wander, Dottore is already planning his attack.

If there is no space for him, then he’ll simply have to elbow his way in.

His conviction barely has time to come to light before his own Akasha hums with the notification of an impending arrival. It’s simple to project that to your own, scrambling the source to seem as if it comes from the sensors he’s disconnected you from, rather than himself. Your head lifts just as the doors groan open - Scaramouche, dressed in loose clothing to allow the healing ports on his back to breathe as he adjusts to their newfound residency.

“Is something wrong?”

The tone and inflection is the same as when you’d asked him that same question far too long ago. Perhaps a few days, pushing a week. It feels as if it’s been an eternity since he’s truly spent time in your presence, rather than observing from afar as one would passively watch an experiment unfold. But isn't that what you are? As all things are, in one way or another.

Scaramouche draws closer to you, to Dottore’s experiment, and his hands come up to scratch at his collarbone that his hanging shirt reveals. There’s a series of marks and bruises there. One might assume they come from a lover, if Dottore wasn’t already aware that they stem from the injections you’ve been giving him to lessen the pain he’s likely feeling acutely once more.

“Did you forget you told me to come here today? How can someone as thoughtless as you be trusted to handle a task like this?”

“Perhaps I’m just so busy that your troubles are insignificant and meaningless to me.”

Scaramouche is close enough to you now that doubtless you could reach out and touch him if you chose - and it’s to Dottore’s chagrin that you do. Your hand stretches to prod at the bruising against his skin, humming at the sight of it and Scaramouche’s instinctual reaction to flinch away from it. Whether it’s from pain, or an aversion to your contact, Dottore isn’t sure but he hopes it’s the latter.

The thought of Scaramouche enjoying your touch makes his skin crawl, his teeth grind. The familiarity that’s bloomed between yourself and the Balladeer doesn’t sit well with him. If he were less than he was, he’d pin the feeling on jealousy. As it stands, he’s not quite sure what to categorize it as except for nausea.

“You would know all about being insignificant and meaningless, wouldn’t you?” Scaramouche sneers as you retract your hand and swing your legs over the side of the desk. Your palm hits the papers, crumpling them just enough to make a sound, and the sudden loss of your attention and respect feels akin to a knife being driven between his ribs. One of his hands nearly uncurls from the railing to touch at his side, if only to confirm that there isn’t a wound there.

With all his willpower, he refrains. Scaramouche is right - it’s meaningless, you’re insignificant, and the reactions he unwittingly suffers through due to your careless actions are nothing but a hindrance.

“Well, oh mighty god, Scaramouche the Prodigal. Sit on the exam table, show me what’s bothering you.”

“Do you have a mirror? It’d be easier to show you your own face that way.”

And you laugh.

Dottore unwittingly leans forward again, as if closing the distance would make the sound taste sweeter on his tongue. It lingers even as the sound trails off, its only remnants being the faint echoes off the workshop’s looming rafters. Even in the darkness where he hides, Dottore feels the echo in his bones.

Pushing off the railing, Dottore steps further back into the darkness with a resolution stronger than any he’s held before. No one should hear that sound - no one but him. With pride, he’d label himself as greedy and selfish. In the correct amounts and with care, those can be a virtue, not necessarily bad.

But with you, Dottore is beginning to find himself standing on a precipice that begs him to simply jump if he wants to claim what teases him just out of reach.

Dottore slips away, turning your Akasha’s sensor function back on once he’s out of range, and decides perhaps it’s well beyond time to step over the edge.

—

“Looks like it’s all functioning properly. How’s it feel?”

“Doesn’t feel like anything.”

“Yeah, deadening your pain receptors will do that, I suppose.” And for good measure, you pinch at the bone of his shoulder blade that sits far too close to the surface of his skin. The Balladeer winces, and that’s all the confirmation you need to understand he’s putting on a brave face.

Through grit teeth, he backtracks as he sits upright. It puts him closer to you, enough that you can feel the way his coldness saps your body heat. “They’re seated in my bones. They don’t feel good.”

Your palm presses to his back, fingers splayed in a way that one of the ports you’d installed sits snugly in the space between your thumb and forefinger. Subtly, he leans back into it. Against your usual antagonism when it comes to The Balladeer, you decline to goad him for something so ridiculous and instead let him leech whatever it is that he’s looking for from you right now.

As ill-equipped as you are to offer it, if this is his odd way of seeking out comfort, you’ll let him do something so harmless.

“Until you’re seated in the machine, it’s going to feel unnerving. If there’s pain, we can manage it further. Otherwise I’d be loading you with chemicals that would be superfluous.”

“You mean it’s better to just suffer.” Not a question - a statement.

Humming, you pull your hand away and push the knuckle of your forefinger into the space between his top vertebrae, then absently drag it down while counting. When you get to four, you pause and glance at the way his head has fallen forward, the hair at the nape of his neck shifting enough that you can see the electro symbol branded on his skin.

“Are you suffering?”

“...I’m not sure.”

“Well, let me know when you figure it out. In the meantime-” your Akasha buzzes. Dottore has arrived after days of absence. Not that you needed him around with how he’d send his orders through various Fatui agents. The singular entrance is behind you, and so is the Doctor with unnerving silence.

You’re unsure of exactly how far away he’s stopped, but it feels as if he’s pressing into your back. Dottore looms over you even from across the room, using only his presence and the eyes that you cannot see. Palm to The Balladeer’s back, you turn a half-step to look at Dottore and note that you weren’t too far off the mark. All it would take is for you to reach a hand out to touch him.

“Am I interrupting?”

“Would it matter if you were?” If your attitude phases him, it doesn’t show. Your thumb finds the space between spine and shoulder blade, pushing just enough that it eases the smallest bit of strain on The Balladeer’s muscles caused by the intrusions. “Get dressed. Come back if you need me, otherwise give it a few days and we’ll check again.”

His answer is to lean back enough for your thumb to dig in again before he’s sliding off the table and tugging his loose shirt over his head. The air is so stifling, it’s no wonder he doesn’t give you a single glance as he leaves the room. Leaves you - with Dottore. Alone.

“That’s unwise of you. I thought you were better than that.”

“Better than following your orders and doing exactly what you laid out to be done? What’s that say about you?”

Tense is the only way to describe the lull between your question and his answer. Reading Dottore is unlike anyone you’ve met before, and it’s next to impossible to understand what he might be feeling when you push him so callously. There are no tells, there is no tightening of muscles or straightening of posture. His head doesn’t even tilt as he simply regards you in the moment that hangs between.

Finally, he inhales, and you wonder if perhaps that should sound as much as it does to a headsman’s axe slicing through the air. There’s no mistaking that it’s aimed for your neck.

“Come with me.” Dottore’s hand comes from behind his back, palm up as if to beckon you to take it. A bit of derision seeps into your gaze as you stare at his offering, everything screaming inside of you that this must be a trap. The quick jerk of his fingers beckoning you is the final warning - and with hesitation, you heed it.

The gloves are impersonal, keeping your bare skin from his own and serving as a more than sufficient barrier between the two of you. If only they were thicker, if only the wall between was just a little higher. Dottore steps backward - once, twice, then turns and guides you to the table where the notes you’d been looking over for The Balladeer’s visit today are laid out.

The attempt you make to pull your hand away is thwarted with how his fingers lace with your own. Gently at first, almost tender, but that air of tranquility changes swiftly as he loses the calm he’d been wearing as a mask. Tighter and tighter, he grips until your knuckles ache and your teeth grind together to keep from crying out.

“Show me the instructions I left that detail how familiar you’re meant to become with Scaramouche. Take your time - I’ve cleared my schedule just now.”

There’s the trap you knew was coming. Yet Dottore had left you no room to even avoid it. The room itself is a trap, one you’d stepped into long before he’d even shown his face - or what’s visible of it. Accepting your misstep, you dig the palm of your free hand into the space between your eyebrows and sigh, “You’re looking too far into it.”

“On the contrary, I could look further. For example, I took the liberty of looking at you. Graduated from the Akademiya in near-record time, winner of the Pir Kavkavus award three times. One of Sumeru’s brightest - Azar himself told me that one. So answer me this,” his presence is smothering, close enough that his chest presses into the back of your shoulder as he speaks directly in your ear with all the ease of a cat stretching out in a dust-filled sunbeam, “are you usually so invested in your test subjects? Or is Scaramouche a special case?”

The tickling sensation at the shell of your ear - you’re certain it’s his lips. But you refuse to react in a way that lets him think he’s won this little one-man argument that’s been crafted. Instead of rising to the occasion, you simply shrug. One shouldered, with so much nonchalance that the quiet sound of his breathing hitches. Carefully steady, you answer, “I guess he is. We all have our vices, Dottore. Mine must be so obvious.”

“As if there’s only one.”

And just like that, you slip and fall into his clutches. The sensation of your stomach dropping accompanies your foolish question. “Tell me about them, then.”

The desk rattles - steel legs against metal flooring - and the edge digs into your back under the force that he’s whipped you around with. In only a single move, Dottore cages you in with unexpected ease. He’s left you no room to even fight it.

“Well,” his head tilts, the strand of hair that frames his face brushes along your cheek. You’re hit with the scent of something cool and clinical - like mint and snow and something unplaceable that makes your blood hum, “Your ego is most prevalent. Glaring, even.”

“Says the man trying to build a God.”

“We all have our vices.” Dottore parrots your own words back to you shamelessly. Even as you lean further back to put distance between yourself and him, Dottore follows you until your back strains from the angle. “Impertinence is so important to you that it might as well be a virtue.”

“Respect is given when it’s earned-”

“Or dragged from you with force.” It goes unsaid - he could do both. “To think one regarded so highly by the Akademiya would be little more than a fool. I expected better.”

A fool that made your work better, you want to rally against him, jamming your finger into his cravat until you’re digging it into his sternum, pushing him awayawayaway-

“But the most damning of all is how oblivious you seem to be.”

Oblivious? Your movement ceases, your hands stop scrambling for purchase on the table that’s still wallpapered with his instructions, your entire being grinds to a halt as you piece together what you’re apparently so unaware of.

Hair dusting across your cheek, sharp teeth pulled tightly into something that might be a grimace, hips pressed against yours so tightly that the pressure there leaves no room for mistaking his insistent arousal digging into you. And just like realization dawns over your face, so too does a sick sort of grin begin to take the place of his irritation.

“We’ll strike that one from the record, then. Better late than never.”

“Are you serious?” It comes out with far more disbelief woven into it than you’d intended, but it does nothing to lessen the all-consuming nature of the snare he’s carefully crafted for you. “This is just… you looking for some relief? This isn’t some misguided attempt to confess your love, is it?”

The smile on his face - wicked as it is - loses its lustre for only a moment before it finds its way back once more. “Nothing of the sort. I’m not above little indulgences, dear, and I think we’re both in agreement that there’s no one else that can quite scratch that itch for ourselves.”

You’re in no such agreement to that. If you were just a little more spiteful, you can think of someone in particular that could see it through well enough, and it would send Dottore into a fury at the same time. But there’s no way out for you - not from this, at least. All you can do is chew on your tongue and watch as he leans closer, closer, closer.

“We got off on the wrong foot. I think we would make quite a pair, you and me. Imagine the things we could do with each other. To each other.”

And isn’t that a thought to get stuck in one’s head?

In the city above, where you venture just rarely enough that each visit is novel, there’s a musician that often busks on the corners where the local enforcement’s presence is thinnest. No one seems to pay them much mind, but during your infrequent walks you find yourself entranced at the sounds that thrum through the air.

You’ve never been strong enough to avoid the siren song of something that interests you, even in the slightest. Rarely do you even try - the gratification is often too sweet for you to expend effort in denying it to yourself.

But as Dottore leans closer, the sharpness of his mask dangerously close to pressing against the skin of your cheek, you find yourself scrabbling for any amount of self control you may have left after a life of ignoring its cultivation. The table groans as your head jolts back, effectively bringing yourself out of range for only a moment longer.

Dottore is - extremely unfortunately - an irresistible song so much like the one that’s undoubtedly trilling far, far above you. It takes an outside force to get you to walk away, but there’s no such thing available to you here. All you’re capable of doing is watching with bated breath as he chases after what he’s shamelessly looking for.

And just before he steps over the line that you’re certain you’d be unable to draw once more, he stops short and pulls away just enough for you to feel the sudden lack of his body heat. When had you grown so accustomed to it?

“If you truly don’t want this, then go.” Enough space is made for you to slip from his grasp, the hands that had caged you in now loosen their grip, their placement at the edge of the table a fragile formality you could easily break. “I won’t stop you, nor will I approach the topic again. One of us must be prudent enough to understand nuance.”

There’s not enough willpower in you to be upset at his dig. Perhaps he’s got a point, but you don’t want him to necessarily know that he does. In your short span of time with him, you’ve come to understand that when Dottore is right, he’s insufferably right.

So you could leave - prove him right in the simplest way possible. That’s easy enough to do, easy to live through if he truly doesn’t intend to broach the topic of something like this that seems so far beneath him. Or, and your skin crawls at this, you could simply stay and prove him right in the worst way possible. Compliance on either front results in a net loss on your end, in a multitude of ways you’re not willing to come to terms with.

Kissing Dottore is nothing like whittling time away listening to that performer playing his Oud. That’s soft, soothing, enticing you in and encouraging you to stay for as long as you’d like. There’s no pressure to it, no expectations that you’ll stay. Just before he leans forward, Dottore’s tongue darts out to wet his lips, a flash of pink that seems almost disgustingly human from him. It softens your resistance minutely.

With Dottore, immediately you’re swept in by the expectation of more. More pressure, more passion, more of the heat licks at the edges of your sanity like unrestrained wildfire. There’s nothing calm about it - not while he all but throws you onto the desk itself, then pulls you to the edge until he’s seated between your legs with far too much ease. It’s almost as if he were meant to be there, and that thought is almost enough to snap you from your poor decisions.

Then he tilts his head just so, slots his lips against yours in a way that he can push past any defense you might have, be it shut lips or grit teeth, and you lose your bearings all over again.

A sound leaves him - quiet, breathy, almost like relief - and it curls in your ear like the whispering of a snake that tempts you to chase it further. Perhaps you could, and you very well might, if not for the way his tongue curls against your own and he makes another. This one is from the back of his throat, filled with all the gravity and desire one could ever want.

If the first was a temptation, then this one is purely addictive - and your penchant for self-indulgence shines with how you seem to bloom under his attention. Tasting the verbal confirmation of his pleasure is sweeter than you could imagine, and in search of more your hands fly to his shoulders, then slide around to the back of his neck where you tug insistently at the soft blue strands you catch there.

Instead of another pleased sound, it’s quiet laughter that you earn with your eagerness. If you were in your right mind, you’d have the decency to feel embarrassed over it - yet he was the one moaning from a simple kiss. If anyone should feel anxious over their behavior, certainly it must be Dottore. After all, he’s the one that sought you out, not the other way around.

A pressure at your waist, one of his hands leaving the table to instead grasp at you. The material of your shirt bunches between his greedy fingers, the fabric of his glove catching against the sliver of your skin that is revealed. Even through the fabric covering his palm, you can feel the searing heat of his hand as it finally dips beneath your clothing to travel up your ribs. His hand pauses just shy of your breast, thumb barely brushing underneath with the ghost of a touch.

Desperately, you want more.

It’s a deliberate choice to arch into him, to give him a signal that despite how you spat and hissed at the thought of this, you’ve come to the conclusion that it’s both welcomed and wanted. You want him, as chilling as the thought may become when this is all finished. The space between now and the inevitable next mistake will undoubtedly be filled with derision toward yourself for falling apart so easily.

But for now, you let him regard the cracks in your facade before he digs his fingers into them, prying you apart as surely as he lifts you onto the desk and pulls your knees from one another to settle between them.

Dottore’s quiet pants fill the silence as he pulls away. A thick swallow precedes a sly smile that reveals rows of pointed teeth; ones that part as he readies his taunts. But that’s not what you get, and his head cocks to the side to watch as your pupils dilate in response. “Have your doubts been assuaged? Are you going to fight me the rest of the way, or have you finally given in?”

The underlying smugness feels like the sting of a wasp - shocking, irritating, yet somehow bearable enough for you to push it to the side. With a curl of your lip, one that he spots immediately and his grin grows ever wider, you dig your fingers into the feathers of his pauldron and yank him back to you.

Before you can snap the delicate rachis’ between insistent fingers, Dottore captures your hand and guides it to the table where he presses your palm flat to the surface. His own covers it for a moment, pressing just as surely as he presses another kiss to your lips, and he lingers for a beat almost long enough to be concerning.

Then those sly fingers find the waist of your pants, and thoughts beyond the immediate situation become muddled and slippery.

Without your help, Dottore tugs the fabric from beneath you and off of one leg, forgoing the other in favor of lowering to a knee. The chilled brush of his mask against your inner thigh gives you pause, and your gaze snaps down in disbelief. There’s absolutely no way for him to go about this with the mask on, at least not without defeating the entire purpose of the action.

Your fingers reach toward it, and you fully expect him to put up some sort of fight. In the time you’ve known of him, not once have you seen him without his familiar hallmark. Certainly he must be hiding something strange or grotesque beneath, though you wouldn’t necessarily care if he was. His physical appearance matters little to you - only what he’s providing at this second piques any of your interest.

But he doesn’t move to stop you. In fact, as your fingers curl around the bottom edge, brushing against the sharpness of a high cheekbone and surprisingly warm skin, his face tilts upward to give you a better angle. It takes a tug to release it from whatever he’s attached it to, and you’re left with what lies beneath.

It clatters to the floor as your fingers grow lax. There is no scarring, no injury. Only a glowing disc beneath the skin of each temple as the singular imperfection on an otherwise flawless face. Not even a blemish interrupts the pale skin that he kept covered, two crimson eyes blink up at you with no small amount of amusement as you take in the sight of Dottore’s bare face.

Only when a lock of his hair slips across his forehead do you come to your senses. It’s too late to save face, not when he’s already realized that you find him attractive in a superficial sense. Any hope of glossing over that is lost when he opens that mouth of his for entirely selfish reasons.

“Speechless? What a compliment, you’re going to make me blush.”

“Shut up.”

The waves of his hair are soft between your fingers as you use them as a harsh leash that pulls him in exactly where you want him. A mouth like his is best kept silent, though his defiance comes even as he descends on you with teeth and tongue, nipping and biting and groaning in appreciation through it all. The tightening of your fingers against his scalp isn’t a deterrent in the slightest, though he wouldn’t be able to back away even if he tried.

Instead of chafing remarks and irritating quips, you get the feeling of his tongue running along you with all the leisure of a man savoring his favorite meal. The half-lidded stare, the sound he makes as his swallows thickly, the dig of his fingers into the outsides of your thighs - they all paint a picture that clearly displays just how much he’s enjoying this.

That should bother you. It does, at least a little. This was meant to scratch an itch, in his words, yet it seems far too similar to a man indulging a little too much. Dottore is not a selfless man, and that lends credence to the inklings of suspicion that perhaps there’s a little more going on here than you first expected.

Dottore’s lips draw your clit between them with a harsh suck, and you’ve forgotten any qualms you might have had. None of that continues to matter when his eyelids flutter momentarily, a vague sense of euphoria visibly washing over him as your hips buck against his mouth. Even your nails scratching at his scalp brings him a sick sense of pleasure, the harsh treatment seems to bring a sense of urgency to otherwise unhurried movements.

Your first sound leaves you. A choked, quiet little thing that could be waved off in any other situation, yet Dottore latches onto it with greedy hands and far too much excitement in his eyes. His words are muffled against you, barely understandable as he urges you, “Be as loud as you like. No one’s coming, no one can hear you but me.”

“No one can hear me scream?” You grind out through your teeth, unwilling to give him another indication that he’s making you feel good. Just good - anything more than that feels like a crushing defeat. Your choice of words gives him pause, something knowing in his eyes as he looks at you through his lashes.

“Scream if you must. Of all your faults, that would be the least damning.”

Anything that could have come next is muffled by you yanking him closer once more, only to have him laugh as you do so. The sound rumbles through you to your very bones, and you can’t seem to shake off the unsteadiness that comes with it. Internally, you thank his foresight to seat you on this desk rather than have you stand for this - your legs feel impossibly weak.

Especially as you hook them over his shoulders, your thighs clamping around him tightly as his tongue works in slow lines and concentric circles. Dottore could break free if he wanted, but as he groans in a low rumble against you, eyes focused on the expressions you make before your head tips back, you’re convinced there’s nowhere else he’d rather be than between your legs.

Release comes quickly and he draws it out in a way that couldn’t be described as anything other than sadistic. It starts slow and easy, your grip on his hair loosening to something almost tender as your fingers run through the strands appreciatively. But he doesn’t stop, rather he begins to devour you in a way that’s nothing short of ravenous. Your muscles tense uncomfortably, your back bows, and an unbidden plea rips from your throat for him to stop.

Dottore only does so when he feels like it - not any sooner.

The far-off lights from above catch on his face, casting your arousal on his cheeks and chin in a lewd shine that leaves saliva pooling on your tongue at the sight of him looking so debauched. You’re not allowed to take the sight in for very long; Dottore surges to his feet and you’re met with a new sight. His cock in his own hand, hard and smeared with precum, the signs all pointing to Dottore touching himself in the throes of your climax.

“Seriously? You were getting off to that?” It doesn’t sound as confident as you wanted it to, but you’re certain his reaction would have been the same if it had.

A self-satisfied smirk, a pump of his hand before he presses himself against your entrance with little care for how easily you part for him. It’d be embarrassing if he wasn’t still wearing the damning evidence of his willingness to please you on his lips.

“You think I was doing that for you? Please, don’t be dense. As if I’d debase myself for solely your pleasure.”

“No, you did it for your own, and that tells me a lot about you, Dottore.”

He hums, low and thoughtful as he rocks teasingly. If he stopped now, it wouldn’t be the end of the world for you - you’d found your release, even if it’d come from someone like him. But you’re certain that nothing short of a resounding rejection would stop him now, and the thought of your almost-helplessness in the face of him makes your knees spread just a little wider to invite him to do as he pleases.

“Tell me,” Dottore pauses his movements to bring his hands together, pulling off one glove, then the other, “what conclusions have you come to?”

“That… you have an ulterior motive for all this. Beyond the obvious.”

“And you wonder what consequences that motive is going to bring down upon you? Nothing too heinous, you can relax.” The last word is punctuated with his entry, the head slipping past a ring of muscles lubricated by his saliva and the remnants of your pleasure. “You’ll find out soon enough, whether either of us wills it or otherwise.”

That’s… not comforting. At all. But Dottore has a way of making your head spin with anxiety, then soothing it all away with overwhelming feelings. Whether it be fury or pleasure, both leave your throat tight and your nerves firing to the point of the line between becoming too blurred for your liking. The firm boundaries are becoming nebulous, and that should be what makes you tell him to stop.

Instead, your heels dig into his lower back and his palms catch your knees. With three short thrusts, Dottore’s hips meet your own with a quiet exhale from him. The sound you make is far less quiet, something pleased and wavering at the sensation of just how perfectly he seems to fill you. If you were one to wax poetic, and if you hated him a little less, you’d be tempted to say the two of you were made to fit one another.

But on a regular day, and maybe even a little bit right now, you despise this man too much to ever admit that somehow the two of you were inevitable.

There are no taunts. No laughter, no pinching and prodding both verbal and physical. The amusement in his eyes is gone, and left in its staggering absence is what he’d been masking all along - raw, unfiltered hunger. An animal starved, though not so much that it loses its composure. You’re under no illusions that you hold any control here, and Dottore makes it known by staring you in the eye as he presses impossibly close.

One of his hands leaves your knee, gliding up your thigh momentarily before skipping up to your cheek. The skin of his palm is surprisingly smooth, warm enough to prompt you to lean into it, and something changes. In the set of his shoulders, the angle of his brow, the very air around you shifts as you instinctively respond to his touch. Fear spikes at you for a mere heartbeat before it’s smoothed away with the motion of his thumb along the apple of your cheek.

Soft. Uncharacteristically so, like one would touch something precious. Like a lover. Reflex begs you to kick him away, to tear him out of you at the root and refuse his return even if he were to beg. Because you’re certain he would, with how his head tilts and he regards you with that same hunger, its edges softened for easy consumption.

And you consume. Rather than bask in the way he seems to revere you, you grip his shoulders and pull him into a kiss that’s far harsher than any you’ve ever felt before. You want the edges back, you crave them, because it convinces you that you’re unsafe in his clutches. Safety with Dottore is a frightening thing, one that you’re entirely unwilling to become familiar with.

The kiss comes with his first thrust, followed by more at an increasing pace until you’ve convinced the moment was a fluke. Dottore treats you less as a porcelain doll and more like a simple plaything. As he pulls away to brace one hand on the table, the other on your hip to keep you from sliding away, Dottore looks over your shoulder rather than at the way your face twists in pleasure.

With that little bit of privacy, you’re more willing to let your mask slip, and you no longer bother to stem the sounds he drags from you. You’re infinitely grateful that you seem to cease existing beyond an outlet for him to seek pleasure from, because he becomes just the same for you. When his chin finds your shoulder and his teeth drag along your neck, you can nearly convince yourself that it’s not Dottore fucking you here at all.

It’s a nameless, faceless being that lives only behind your eyelids on nights that you feel alone. Nevermind the cool scent of him, nevermind the way his hair brushes your cheek with his softness. Ignore the quiet sounds of his exhales in your ear, the infrequent groan when you clench around him at the perfect angle.

There isn’t you and Dottore here, but two featureless beings that happened across one another in a time of weakness. The sharpened edges of him keep you at arm’s length, exactly where you want to be even if he curls around you as he seeks his pleasure between your legs. Dottore keeps you close, keeps you distance, keeps his teeth worrying at the tendons of your neck until he bites down hard enough you’re certain he’s drawn blood.

A warning isn’t given for his release. Dottore simply buries himself as far as he can, tugs you close with a bruising grip, shakes against you as he bites and bites and bites down into your skin so hard that it feels like agony. And you love it, because it reduces you even further to something he cares little for, and truly that’s the best place you could find yourself.

It doesn’t take any effort at all to convince your racing heart that it’s the truth.

—

Eyes are on you, always.

It doesn’t take the God of Wisdom to extrapolate the evidence about the identity of your voyeur. Dottore doesn’t necessarily make it a secret, not when his gaze is glued to you every moment. From the times you spend alone in the workshop putting the finishing touches on the God - Shouki no Kami, the Balladeer had murmured under his breath - to when you’d walk the streets above in a futile attempt to clear your head.

All the way to the moments Dottore would wrap around you so tightly that you could barely breathe, his hands cradling your jaw as if he were holding you up to the light akin to a diamond whose facets he was inspecting. Certainly, he treated you like something precious, but only in between instances that he’d hold you down and forcefully turn your head to keep from looking you in the eye.

And then, just as sweetly as it started, he’d smooth his hands along your skin in complete silence, neither of you willing to speak aloud about what his plans are for you. The ulterior motive lingers so close to the surface, skimming just beneath the water, and all you’d need to do is reach out and retrieve it.

It stays submerged.

Above you, looming and terrible, Shouki no Kami rests in fitful slumber. The limbs shift minutely as the Balladeer dreams. Even inert, his body attempts to become one with the metal creation inch by inch. It takes a toll on his mind, as great as he claimed it to be. Even a God needs to recharge, especially in the face of what’s beginning to stir above.

You’re no fool. Even without the Balladeer’s information, without the Grand Sage’s growing anxieties, you could have figured out that there’s tension between all parties involved with this. It took a startlingly short amount of time for you to find your own side, the one that you would stand by without question.

Dottore thinks it’s him. He’d told you so himself, on the rare occasion that you didn’t pull away from his embrace immediately. Dottore’s lips had been so close to your ear as he murmured his plans to shuttle you away, to bring you with him back to Snezhnaya for the time being. Partner, he’d called you in a way that was full of uncharacteristic worship.

The thought made your stomach turn. No attempt had been made to correct him, and perhaps that was a mistake of the grave sort, but how could you deny him when he’d pulled back and gave you a look that bordered on madness?

The arm of the machine moves only inches, but it’s enough to break you from your reverie. You’d only wanted to stop by, to glean one last look at what amounted to your greatest project despite it not being your own. And perhaps you’re feeling sentimental at the prospect of never seeing the Balladeer again.

“That’s it, then?”

His voice is deceptively calm. Though the Knowledge Capsules haven’t been uploaded to his consciousness, there’s something to be said about the divinity he carries with him now. This is the closest to a God he’s come to, and he carries it heavily on his shoulders as he looks down at you with a guarded expression.

“I didn’t want to wake you.”

“Before you left, you mean?”

Precisely. He doesn’t need you to confirm that, though. The machine lowers enough that you can see him more clearly, bent down and leaning on its hands as if it were a child staring down at an ant crawling through the earth. If you had a little more self-preservation, that’s how you’d feel.

“Is it fear that drives you away? Of me?”

“Of course not. I’m no more scared of you than I would be of a kitten.” From anyone else, that declaration would likely meet their end. Instead, it makes the Balladeer’s expression crumple. A metal hand swings toward you, a threat to take you to your end. Instead, it stops just short, curling around you as if it were a barricade against the world at your back.

“Whatever it is, I will protect you. As one of my followers-”

“I’m not one of your followers.” Laughter tinges your voice as you watch the wide-eyed desperation flicker on his face. “For someone all-knowing, you should know why it’s better if I leave sooner rather than later.”

“I won’t let you leave.” It’s said as simply as one would state the weather. It lacks any sort of conviction a statement like that should’ve held.

The Balladeer doesn’t stop you as you slip from the circle of his hand. He could easily grab you again - he does not. Your fingers trail across metal plates you’d put together with crimson eyes burning into your back under the guise of supervising your work. They catch on rivets and seams until you’re too far for your hand to reach.

With distance comes the beginnings of your voice echoing through the hall, and it rings similarly to the tolling of a bell that beckons either the ending or the beginning. Which one, you’re unsure. “I’m sure you can find me if you need me. I won’t exactly be hiding from you.”

The Balladeer says nothing. He doesn’t even ask where you might go, who you might go with. You’re certain on the surface it must be obvious - you’re going to Snezhnaya with Dottore. But the Balladeer isn’t a fool, certainly he’s picked up on why you’re here alone. This goodbye was meant to be clandestine and quick, the precursor to your abrupt and unannounced departure.

Alone.

It’s surprisingly easy. No guards are stationed near the workshop in an effort to keep its contents a secret. The few Fatui that linger are easily ignored, just as they do for you. You hold no allegiance to their order or their Tsaritsa, and thus hold no interest to them beyond your clearance to simply be here.

They don’t even look twice at you and the bag swung over your shoulder.

Truthfully, you wouldn’t either. Everyone knows what’s beginning to happen, that a newborn God lurks among them, and it doesn’t sit well with everyone who knows of it. But it’s none of your business, just as it isn’t any of theirs, and you relish the taste of Sumeru’s humidity on your tongue as you slip from the hidden side entrance and into the gorge that winds beneath Sumeru City.

Just outside the entrance, Dottore waits as if he were always meant to be there. Like you were to be expecting him; maybe you were. It all felt too easy, too clean. Just as he hadn’t avoided allowing you to notice his gaze, he never bothered to truly conceal that little motive you’d conveniently ignored up until this very moment.

Now it’s plain before you - bright, shining, burning your retinas to the point of closing your eyes and inhaling deeply.

“Did you have fun? Did it make you feel powerful? Making such a poor decision, I mean. You must understand it never would have happened that way.”

Dottore accuses you like one would speak to a child. If he bent enough to plant his hands on his knees, spoke to you as if you were a foot tall, cocked his head to the side and smiled gently… it would still feel just as condescending. None of that was required when his tone did the job surely enough to make you feel chastened.

Lifting your chin in a futile effort to regain your lost ground, you meet him head-on. “I’m the one who decides when, where, how I leave. I’m going home.”

“To the hole in the wall that Azar found you in? Are you content to crawl back in the dirt, to fade into obscurity where your passions and skill mean nothing?”

Something bitter leaves your throat. It almost sounds like a laugh, if you had the capability to do so around the anxiety you’re choking on. “My purpose has always been for myself. Everything else is a means to an end. I did my job here, what else do you want from me?”

“I think you know. Don’t you? I’ve given enough practical demonstrations, I’d rather not have to spell it out.” Dottore’s boots splash through the water as he approaches, closer and closer until he could reach out and touch you if he wished. There is no attempt to do so. “I assumed putting a name to it would turn you skittish. You’re like a cornered animal when faced with even a hint of it.”

“Don’t-”

“I lo-”

“Don’t.” Quick as a whip, your hand strikes out, palm against his chest and pushing sharply to put distance between you. Before any force can be put behind the blow, Dottore catches your wrist with easy dexterity. Lifting it before his face, he holds it for a moment before bringing it forward to press his lips against the soft skin just beneath your palm.

Your fingers twitch, then wrap around the nearest edge of his mask and tug it away with a move so practiced it makes you physically ill. Dottore doesn’t stop you, doesn’t even try to catch the mask as you drop it to the ground at your side into the mud. It ceases to matter once it leaves the immediate bubble of your shared space.

Dottore’s eyes are always wandering, always observing. You’ve seen them enough, felt them enough, that you understand the intricacies of the language they speak. And now, they’re painfully familiar, even with newfound light being cast on them. Stars fill his gaze, a deep-seated yearning that both unsettles you, and warms you from the inside out.

The word for what’s going on here never needed to be said. Maybe you understood it from the beginning, even as you turned away from it with stubbornness in your heart. There’s no room for it, no room for him. Physically perhaps, but what he’s offering and what he expects are two things you’re incapable of giving him.

“I don’t want this.”

And he laughs at you. Long, laced with excitement at the prospect of the challenge you continue to provide. A sick little thought taunts you with the idea that if you’d been compliant from the beginning, he would have lost interest. It might not be too late, but he doesn’t give you the chance to backtrack as he steps closer until he shares body heat in the sticky air of the jungle. It’s as stifling as the feelings he’s forcing you to examine now.

“Give it time.”

“I’ll just fake it. I hope that isn’t lost on you. It won’t be true.”

A flash of teeth as his smile grows. The proclamation hasn’t deterred him, only spurred him into curling his hands around your shoulders, your biceps, beneath your elbows in a disarming show of softness despite the way his voice curls maliciously around carefully formed words. “You think that will change things. It won’t.”

That could be true. But you see the way his shoulders change the way they’re set, the hardening of his body language. You’ve given yourself insurance for the future, sown the seeds of something you know you’ll be unable to harvest for quite some time. Doubt will take root. Paranoia as he second-guesses everything from this moment forward.

Even if you fail, even if you fall into his shadow where he wants you to exist, he’ll always wonder if it’s a farce. Even if he were to drag a declaration of love from you, it would always be tainted by this one moment. And that’s the only satisfaction you foresee on this path that Dottore has pushed you down.

The kiss is slow, a nonverbal attempt to convince you of what you denied him proclaiming, and with sick satisfaction you return it with the same fervor. Dottore’s fingers curl tighter at the bend of your elbow, and you know you’ve already won.

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