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natalievoncatte · 7 months

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cw: violence

Lena checked her watch. She only had a few minutes to pull this off, and had to time it perfectly. Lex was across town meeting with an investment consortium from Japan.

Officially.

She knew what he was planning. She just lacked the proof she needed. Once she had it, she would go to the media through her best friend and confidant, Kara Danvers. She had eyes on Lex right now as he met, in secret, with a Kasnian agent, the same one who'd help him orchestrate the theft of a prototype Lexosuit; that had been one of the first times that Superman had shut down one of Lex's schemes, and earned his undying hatred.

Lena needed the final piece of the puzzle before she involved Kara and pulled her into the danger of her private little war with her brother. This was so far beyond anything Lex had attempted that Lena knew now was the time, she had to stop him now, today. The line had to be drawn here, and no further.

The secure lab was deep in the bowels of the Lexcorp Tower in Metropolis; Lena made the excuse of a meeting with some of the research team working on battery enhancements for the upcoming line of Lexmobiles. (Lena had spent hours genuinely trying to talk Lex out of that god-awful name, and actually call them something marketable, but his towering ego was as immovable as it was monumental)

Lena's heart was racing as she stepped out of the elevator, carrying her briefcase under one arm. She strode down the hall like she owned the place (she did, actually- or half of it, anyway) and made sure anyone watching on the security feeds would pay her no mind. She'd worked here for years; even though she'd moved to National City to lead her own division, away from Lex, Superman, and all the drama, she was not an uncommon sight in this place.

Maybe here.

Lena stopped at the door, a heavy steel slab six feet wide and eight feet tall. Breath catching, she slipped her hand in her pocket and slid her finger through the ring she carried there. When she pulled her hand out, an image inducer created a perfect replica of Lex's hand around her own, projecting the unique contours and ridges of his palm and fingertips while simulating his pulse and unique vitals.

It was either going to work or it wasn't. She pressed the false hand to the sensors and waited. It beeped twice and turned a healthy blue.

The door let out a rush of cool air as it slid silently aside, its motion mirrored by an inner door of the same dimensions sliding in the opposite direction. Lena stepped through and removed the ring; the doors slid ominously closed behind her, latching with a heavy thunk as wrist-thick steel bolts slid home, anchoring them in place.

She knew that not only was the entire room lined with lead, but the lights could instantly switch to a red wavelength and the long sliding panels on the wall would open to reveal K-Radiator emitters. This room was designed to be a death trap for Kryptonians, should one be foolish enough to enter. That was why Lena had to do this alone.

Supergirl would rush in where angels feared to tread, and given the chance, she'd barge through those doors and end up helpless on the floor, at Lex's mercy to murder without witnesses. Or worse.

The lab was smaller than she expected, and Spartan. Despite her brother's notorious, arrogant grandiosity, he could be relentlessly practical when needed, and at heart was utterly ruthless. Lab benches lined the walls, and the computer was no different, visually, from any other workstation, though it was connected to a vast private database and would have very difficult encryption and security protocols that no one in the world could crack.

No one but her.

The far end of the room was dominated by a peculiar machine, resembling an incubation chamber of some kind, roughly human-sized and surrounded by thick steel cables and tubes, with several dozen monitors rigged up all around it, displaying all sorts of information.

Including biorhythmic data and vital signs.

Lena ran a hand over the steel of the external pod. It was warm.

Her throat tightened. This might be worse than she thought.

Turning to the terminal, Lena sat down on the stool and took from her bag a small portable drive and connection cable, setting them on the desktop in front of her. Lex had one of those drinking birds dunking placidly away at a glass of water on the desk, another bit of his peculiar humor. She'd once loved that about him, before his joking took on a mirthless, cruel streak.

Letting out a slow breath, Lena wiggled the mouse and woke the computer. It demanded a password, pass phrase, and passkey. The two she had, the latter was what the drive was for.

She typed BUCEPHALUS in the password field, then THY FEARFUL SYMMETRY in the pass phrase field, then clicked the cursor into the last box and plugged in the drive, and waited.

The program loaded automatically. If she made an attempt to brute-force the passcode, it would set off the alarms and possibly even trigger a deadly trap in this room. Lena had to crack it without cracking it; it took her months to create this algorithm, with the secret and begrudging help of Querl Dox at the DEO. He'd been concerned about it falling into the wrong hands; he was right to fear that, as it could crack virtually any system in seconds.

It did exactly that, filling in the require passcode. Lena clicked the LOGON button and let out a soft cry of relief as the screen lit up with Lex's desktop.

He had a series of folders waiting, just sitting there ready to be opened. The folders had names like LEXOSUIT, PARTICLE EMITTER, BINARY FUSION GENERATOR, SPATIAL DISTORTION CANNON, POINT-TO-POINT TRANSMATTER... and PROJECT GALATEA.

Lena opened that folder, and found a series of video files. She opened the first one, dated over a year ago.

Lex' face appeared, the man himself seated in this very lab.

"Mother stole Supergirl's DNA and used it to breach the Fortress of Solitude. She walked those hallowed halls, and didn't invite me! Not only that, she took only one device, when Superman's precious armory was right there for the taking! Is everyone a fool? Am I doomed to be surrounded by incompetents?"

He took a deep breath.

"It doesn't matter. There's enough of what she took left to comprise a viable sample... all I need is time, and I had that in abundance now that I've taken care of that nosy Gotham prosecutor that was working with Superman. He's too busy robbing banks to bother with me, and with the Metropolis police and GCPD in my pocket, Superman and that flying rat of his have nowhere to turn."

Flying rat? What the hell was he talking about?

Lena skipped a few files ahead.

"We'll call her Project Galatea. My initial plan -to create a limited-use drug that would produce Kryptonian superpowers- has been a failure. Nor was I able to successfully create a viable clone."

Lena's stomach sank. Clone? Clone? Had Lex tried to clone Supergirl? Was that was this equipment was for?

"Then it hit me- I could complete the project another way, by filling in the gaps in her DNA, but that still didn't solve all the problems. There was a missing component- I still don't know how Kryptonians actually absorb and process sunlight, for one. Still, that seems to be solving itself. Galatea's cells are absorbing the artificial solar energy that I'm pumping into her maturation chamber at a geometric rate. She might be even more powerful than her mother by the time she matures."

Lena jerked to her feet, a chill running through her body. Mother? Wait, did he mean-

Oh. Oh God.

Lena let the video drone on in the background as she moved back to the chamber. It was encased in steel plating, but it was designed to open. Lena found a pair of goggles on a work table near the control panel and put them on before flipping a switch.

The panels rotated, exposing a human form lying at an angle at rest on a padded platform. A respirator, like a flight mask, was strapped to her face, and she was submerged in thick, bubbling liquid. The chamber would have been too brilliant to look at, if Lena hadn't put on the goggles. It was flooded with brilliant solar radiation.

She'd put the inhabitant between ten and twelve years old, with golden skin and dark hair. Lena blinked a few times; it was like looking at an old picture of herself, actually.

For a brief moment, she just stared.

Then it hit her, and she almost vomited as she shoved the switch and closed the doors over the maturation chamber, stumbling back as she retched.

What did he do?

"I see you've met your niece."

Lena whirled, and found Lex staring her down, standing in front of the lab doors with his hands clasped behind his back, a satisfied smirk on his face.

"How... what... what the fuck did you do, Lex?"

"I think you've already pieced it together."

"Why?"

"Why?" said Lex. "I'll tell you why. Security. The security of a free state, sister. I did it because it had to done."

"This is... this is obscene," said Lena. "This is a violation, Lex. I'm not going to let you get away with it."

He laughed. "Get away with it? What do you mean, get away with it? What are you going to do, sue me for custody?"

"You... this is monstrous, Lex."

"We live in a world of monsters, dear sister," said Lex, stepping closer. "Gods and monsters, and who are we? Men, just men. There's whole universe out there, a multiverse, full of these creatures, and the human race is defenseless against them, and worse, they're being welcomed. They're eating of those Kryptonians' palms, you included, and now there are more of them. The green freak claiming to be a Martian. The so-called Amazon. There's seven or eight of them running around. Eventually it'll be twenty, then thirty, then more. They'll run roughshod over our institutions."

"You're out of your mind," said Lena.

"Am I?" said Lex. "Superman and Supergirl claim they fight for truth, justice, and the American way, right? What if their definition of justice doesn't match ours? What if they decide the American way isn't good enough? What if they decide they need to do more than pull kittens out of trees? Then what? Tell me, Lena, what happens if Superman decides to fly down tomorrow and tear the roof off the White House?"

"He wouldn't do that," said Lena. "I've met him, and I know Supergirl. She's saved my life a dozen times, and I suspect you know exactly what I'm talking about."

Lex shook his head. "Mother's extremism has always been a burden. I've done my best to protect you from her, Lena, and I've been honest about it. That's more than you can say for Supergirl."

"You kept this from me," said Lena.

"Until I was ready. I had to be sure that she was viable before I bring her out of the chamber and introduce you. She's going to be part of the family. Our long lost cousin, who we'll raise as a daughter, knowing that the Earth is truly safe now. That we'll have one of them on our side."

"This... this is Supergirl's child."

"That won't be a problem," said Lex. "It's time for you to grow up and let go of these fantasies, Lena. Supergirl doesn't have any interest in you. You're nothing to her, at best a beloved pet."

"I believe in her. We've worked together."

"I said the same thing about Superman. You know how close we were."

"It's not like that."

Lex's smirk turned cruel. "Isn't it? You've always had a type."

'Fuck you," Lena spat.

He chuckled softly and shook his head. "You're not listening. I guess I have to prove it to you. Computer! Show her."

The droning video log of Lex discussing the problems of merging Kryptonian and human DNA stopped, and another one popped up, taking the entire screen. Lena almost didn't look, but her head turned inexorably and she watched.

"Kara?"

Lena watched Kara Danvers walking down a corridor. She stumbled, as something hit her back, twice. Whatever it was tore holes in her cardigan, and she turned around, standing tall. Taller than usual. She didn't move this time; it was as if little puffs of wind were blowing holes in her clothes.

Except they weren't puffs of wind. They were bullets; Lena could see the muzzle flashes, off camera.

"What... how..."

Kara yanked her glasses off and shook her hair free, ripping the cardigan open, popping the buttons, baring the sweeping crest on the chest of her her blue uniform.

"No," Lena whispered.

"I sent the men who shot her in this recording," said Lex. "Don't worry, I already knew; Mother told me. The alien confessed it to her, before begging her not to tell you. I wonder why."

The video ended.

"This is a trick. She wouldn't... she isn't... she's my best friend."

"No, she's your master and you're an obedient dog, heeling where she tells you, and if you aren't... do you know what happened to the assassins I sent to kill Kara Danvers?"

Lena swallowed. "Shut up, Lex. Stop talking."

He smiled, teeth bared in a wolfish grin. "The martian mind-wiped them. He uses his psychic powers to erase the memories of anyone who compromises her identity."

"Stop," said Lena.

"Ever have any... episodes?" said Lex. "Any of those days, where you were so busy your memory gets a little foggy? Ever find yourself back in your apartment without quite knowing how you got there? Are you sure your own memories haven't been tampered with, Lena?"

"Shut up!" she screamed.

"You've been manipulated, tricked, deceived. She doesn't love you, she never will, and you have nowhere to turn. Help me, Lena. Join me, and we can be a proper family again. We can put things right, and lead a free world to-"

Lena reached into her pocket and pulled out a nickel plated Smith and Wesson Ladysmith revolver with faux-ivory grips bearing Lena's initials. Lex gave it to her on her twenty-first birthday, and went with her to the range the next week to teach her to use it.

"Oh," said Lex.

Lena shot him. The blast was ear-splitting in the confined space, leaving a painful ringing in its wake. Lex crumpled, toppling onto his side as if his strings had been cut. Rolling onto his back, he stemmed the gushing of his lifeblood from the wound just below his ribs and looked at her.

"Didn't think you had it in you," he rasped. "Should have known you'd be the one. You can only count on blood."

Tears stung her eyes, blurred her vision. Lena held out the weapon, her grip trembling as she aimed at his head.

"You'll never stop," she choked out. "You'll kill her. She'll never be safe as long as you're alive."

Lex grinned, the corners of his mouth wet with blood. "Do it."

Lena's finger flexed, but the trigger felt frozen in place. As it shifted slightly, a flood of memories slammed through her- shooting lessons and chess games, strange idle fancies and muted conversations, long rides in the back of sedans. Lena's graduation, Lionel's funeral, Lillian's abuses, Lex standing between their father and Lena with a bruise on his jaw, warning the old man not to lay another hand on her.

A sob tore from her throat. She couldn't do it. She couldn't.

Lex laughed flecks of blood onto the floor.

"Go on, then. I don't need you. I have my own Kryptonian, and she's going to be daddy's little girl."

It was as if the rain suddenly stopped, the sun cracking open the clouds. The gun was terribly loud again, and Lena turned away before she saw the shot connect, looking away from the blood fanning out across the floor as Lex went silent and still.

Shoving the still-hot gun back into her pocket, Lena ran.

Thought I'd share a little bit more from the in-progress Curse of Strahd AU/Crossover!

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sixteenth-days · 2 years

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From the Archives Masterpost: Updated AGAIN

so yeah it's been a BIT since i made a new masterpost, and there has been so much since then. so let's do this again from the top!

The art masterpost is now here, I had to put it in a Google Doc because it hit a limit for links.

THE MAIN FIC SERIES:

Test Recording: One, Two, Three: The newly hired Archivist familiarizes himself with his office.

The Statue Garden: Statement of Cleo, regarding a book of statuary.

Werewolf Games: Statement of Scott, regarding a camping trip and a disappearance.

End Condition: Statement of Scar, regarding his death.

Elephant's Foot: Statement of Zedaph(?), regarding a mousehole in the wall of his lab.

Stargazer: Statement of Pearl, regarding her dreams.

The Anniversary: Statement of Lizzie, regarding a wolf in the woods.

Blight: Statement of Shubble, regarding a disease in her family's crops.

The Not Deer: Statement of False, regarding the disappearance of her roommate, Gem.

The Joe Hills Podcast: Statement of Joe Hills, regarding his own backstory.

Slumber Party: Statement of the collected Archival staff, regarding a night spent in the Archives.

Supplemental: Moonsick: Supplemental audio to Slumber Party, recorded by Pearl, never archived.

The Art of Escape: Statement of Ivory, regarding an escape from solitary confinement.

Red Light, Green Light: Statement of Grian, regarding the deaths of twelve people in an incident that never happened.

Skittering Things: Statement of Stress, regarding a bug.

Assorted Supplemental Recordings: A collection of bonus recordings appended to formal statement files.

Research Questions: Statement of Impulse, regarding an encounter with the entity known as Zedaph.

Immersive Storytelling: Statement of Ren, regarding an ARG.

The Wastes: Statement of Cub, regarding a book of poetry.

Golden Eagle: Statement of HBomb, regarding the actions of his friend False during a group tag game.

Ornithology: Statement of Grian, regarding... feathers.

Supplemental: PTO: Supplemental audio to Ornithology, recorded by nobody in particular, never archived.

Camera Obscura: Statement of Martyn, regarding something that was watching him.

Concerns from the Academic Record of Mr. Tango Tek: Statement of a professor of architectural design, regarding his concerns about a particular student.

Freezing Point: Statement of Scott, regarding a problem with his house's heating.

Gelatinization: Statement of Jevin, regarding a cookbook.

The Vigil: Statement of an unknown traveler, regarding a monument in the desert.

The Vital Importance of a Good Night's Sleep: Statement of Bdubs, regarding his problems sleeping.

Deckbuilding Basics: Statement of unnamed, regarding an encounter with Beef, a trading card collector.

Ad Astra: Statement of Grian, regarding a visit to a certain library.

OTHER FICS NOT IN THE MAIN SERIES:

Interlude from Another Reality: Taxidermy: A pair of scenes in a timeline where Joe's the Archivist, and everybody else is shuffled around too.

mouse hole/black hole: A character study of AU Zedaph, making heavy use of formatting fuckery.

Beautiful Things: Likewise, a character study of AU Stress.

#the hermit archives #hermitcraft #my writing #hermitcraft fic #life series fic #empires smp fic #masterpost

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ivystoryweaver · 10 months

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Decadent chapter 5

prev || Fic Masterlist || My Masterlist || next

Summary: This week at work isn't turning out how you hoped. Miguel hasn't touched you and you're determined to change his mind.

Pairings: Miguel O'Hara from the film Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse x female reader

Word Count: 2.3k

Notables: NSFW. AU story. 18+, cursing, smut. Reader is kinda bratty, Miguel is a bad boy as usual. Consensual but reader is incapacitated at points. p in v, bondage, blood, biting. not beta'd.

PREVIOUSLY on Decadent...

So you were going to help him. Even if you could never be with him, and even if you never felt him claim your body again, you weren't going to quit your job. This was all too monumental, and Miguel needed you.

Your first day back in the lab with Miguel was a revelation. The knowledge of who he was and what your actual research goal was going to be opened the door of possibility for you both.

Miguel was as professional as ever, even when you returned to his office near the end of the day. You started to wonder if he would completely ignore what had taken place in his home.

Just before you decided to leave for the day, he called your name and asked you to come over to his desk. Bouncing on your toes a bit, you set your bag down and compliantly scurried over to your boss.

Gazing up at you from his chair, he granted you a soft smile.

"How are you feeling? Your neck okay?"

Your fingers automatically reached for the faded wound on your neck, mostly covered by a clever application of makeup. "I'm okay," you neutrally replied. "Covered it up a bit - but it's a lot better."

Rising to tower over you, Miguel leaned in to scrutinize the damage. "Fuck - I'm sorry. I'm really sorry."

His close proximity made you swallow hard. "It-it's okay," you whispered as his scarlet eyes landed on yours.

"It's not fucking okay," he refuted, his eyebrows pinched in concern and in disgust with himself.

Blowing out a sigh of frustration, Miguel pushed his long fingers through his hair, leaving one stubborn strand to fall across his eye.

"It's you," he tried to explain. "It's not okay. It's fucked up." His hands landed on his hips as he turned to stare out the window behind his desk. "I'm fucked up."

"Well, that's for damn sure," you laughed, attempting to lighten the mood, "But you're not alone in it."

"Oh? Enlighten me." He glanced back at you, narrowing his crimson eyes. "You're not half spider, are you?"

"Funny," you shot back.

A slightly uneasy silence descended over the two of you.

"Well...goodnight," Miguel concluded.

Okay then.

The rest of the week passed in this fashion. The work was professional and brilliant - the rest was...small talk. Not exactly awkward, but apparently, you had been dethroned as Miguel's flavor of the month.

Despite the thrill and challenge your work brought to you, you found yourself a little bitter. At first you tried to shake things off - after all, you and Miguel never established any kind of relationship. You hadn't even known him that long.

It's not like you were weeping away on your fainting couch like a damsel. No, the frustration came from two sources: 1 - pure, raw, good, old-fashioned sexual frustration. Miguel was tall and muscular and beautiful and you just wanted to climb him daily.

And 2 - he fucking bit you. He drank your blood. He told you he liked you being afraid, underneath him. That was probably red flag predatory behavior of some sort, but just the thought of your blood on his fangs, or the memory of going limp in his arms made you soaked.

And now he was barely making small talk?

If he wanted to move on, fine. You would have to accept that, but you were going to explode if the two of you didn't clear the air. It would probably be bad for your career to force him into a personal conversation he so clearly didn't want, but you figured the worst that could happen (or maybe the best?) would be that you argued and then had really angry sex.

After which, it would be unsettling. Maybe even awkward. Which was no different than how it was right now! But at least you would have gotten a hate fuck out of it.

"Uggghh," you groaned in frustration, not realizing you internal war had bubbled to the surface.

Miguel glanced up from his desk. "Still working on that problem from earlier?"

His voice electrified you - startled you...made you boil with resentment. And hunger. This was happening.

"No. It's not work," you neutrally replied. "It's personal."

"Oh? You okay?"

Your eyes narrowed at his innocent expression. "Like you give a shit."

Miguel seemed a little taken aback. "Ouch. Someone's in a mood."

"At least I have feelings," you retorted, beginning to gather up your things to leave for the day. It was Friday and you needed the weekend away from this asshole. "You've been a fucking robot all week."

Leaning back in his chair, Miguel stopped the task he was working on. "That's quite a remark. A robot?"

Rolling your eyes, you grabbed your bag and said nothing.

"Hey, come on," he attempted, used to you coming to his desk when he beckoned. Realizing you were truly about to leave, he stood up, rushing around his desk to where you stood. "You're pissed at me. What did I do?"

You groaned. As if he didn't know. (He didn't know.)

"I-is it because of last weekend?" He asked, with more tenderness than you were frankly interested in. He clearly wasn't going to ever have any real feelings for you. So where was your hate sex?

"I told you I'm sorry. I know it wasn't right to hurt you - "

"Oh that?" You scoffed. "No. We talked about that. It's fine. It's how you've acted since Monday."

Taking a minute to actually think about what you were implying, he started to slowly nod. "You mean...things are different now...between us." His scarlet irises twinkled with a taunting glimmer of understanding. "You're pissed that we aren't fucking every day."

You glowered at him, attempting to side-step your way out of the office.

"Wait just a minute," he ordered, taking hold of your arm. Without permission, he took your bag out of your hand and set it down. "You don't get to start shit and then just walk out."

"Oh I don't?" You snapped, your skin heating up now that he was manhandling you. "You're the boss of my personal time now too?"

"Sounds like you want me to be the boss of you, sweetheart."

"Fuck you."

"Believe me, I want you to," he growled, using his grip on your arm to drag you over to his desk and sit you roughly down on top of it. "I don't know if you noticed, but my teeth tore holes in your fucking throat."

"So?" You retorted, the ache between your legs pulsing and wet.

"So," he leaned in closely, eyes boring into yours, "I drank your blood. I paralyzed you. Scared you. You can't want that."

Shoving his chest, you growled, "Don't tell me what I want! You have no idea how I think about that night every second of every day! And now you will barely look at me."

"I'm trying to stop looking at you!" He barked, trapping your wrists with one strong hand. "You're important to me - to our research. Believe me when I say that you do not want this to go any further than it has."

One talon scraped against your wrist, where he was still gripping you. He didn't break the skin, but it still stung.

Jerking away from his grasp, you inadvertently caused the offending talon to tear at your flesh. You swore you saw Miguel's eyes flash bright red as a few droplets of blood sprang free. Horrified, he released your hands, shoving you away.

"Get out," he lowly growled, turning his back on you. His massive shoulders heaved as his head bowed.

Reaching up to tentatively touch his shoulder, you started to call his name when he whirled around, catching your hand in his and pushing your roughly back toward his desk. Shoving you down, he bound your hands with a red-orange webbing and forced them over your head.

Sharp talons shredded your blouse and bra, although he avoided piercing any more of your skin. Then you felt webbing bind your torso to the desk - the slightly warm strands winding around your abdomen and between your breasts.

Shoving your skirt up around your hips, Miguel sliced off your panties and shoved his knuckles into your cunt.

"Fucking soaked," he growled, pushing down his pants to free his cock.

A little whine escaped your throat as his thick length slapped gently against your thigh.

"You're going to be late getting home tonight, muñeca," he warned, sliding his hands under your ass and thrusting his cock deep into your wet, waiting cunt without any other warning. "I'm going to fuck you until you beg me to stop."

The moan rumbling out of your body might have been embarrassing, but you didn't care because Miguel lifted your legs - one over each shoulder, bent his knees and slammed into you.

"Fuck! Miguel..."

He was in no fucking mood. The next laser webs went right over your open mouth, silencing you.

"You think you want this," he panted, ramming into your cunt wildly. "But you don't know what the fuck you're asking for. I'll ruin you."

Running his hand over your calf, he rubbed your leg against his cheek - made easier by its scandalous position on his shoulder. Then he licked your skin.

Your back arched violently against your restraints - the pressure against your breasts making you wild with desire.

"You're going to come for me first. I want to feel it," he commanded, sliding his hands down to your thighs, which he used as leverage to hit a spot devastatingly deep inside you.

Your muffled scream of pleasure almost made him lose it.

Using his enhanced speed, he vibrated inside you until he felt that familiar squeeze around his dick. "Good girl," he growled, and without further warning, he sank his teeth into your leg - more than once. He gnawed a few times before sucking hard.

The mind-numbing, time-stopping euphoria burning through your body started to cool as numbness invaded your limbs. The piercing fang pricks stopped hurting, and all you could feel was Miguel's hot tongue, sucking and sucking and licking each wound as he emptied himself inside you.

Thinking he would stop, and that you would float away on a cloud to recover, you were stunned, but unable to respond, when he dropped your legs and leaned down over you, blood dripping down his chin, ruining his expensive dress shirt.

"This better be what you want because I'm not done with you," he warned. The look in his blood red eyes should have frightened you, but you never wanted to stop seeing him feral like this for you.

Without asking, he roughly turned you over, ripping the rest of your clothes off your body and re-binding your torso to the desk. This left your bare ass on display for him, your cunt dripping - not that you could really feel it.

Leaning back down, his now-bare chest pressed against your back, his heated breath on your ear.

"Gonna mark you up pretty for me, baby. But don't worry, I'll make sure you don't feel a thing. Just lie there and be good for me. I'm not done fucking you."

You weren't sure what he did after that. You could feel a little pressure here and there. You thought maybe he slapped your ass a few times, but you couldn't be certain.

Your body jerked - tits mashed hard against the desk, but you still couldn't feel. Turning your head as far as you could to see behind you, you whined at the sight of Miguel fucking into you like an animal.

From the first time you fucked, you thought Miguel was the type who would destroy you - fuck you hard and fast and make you see stars. But he was controlled, working you up slowly. It was sexy as hell and you'd never been with a man like him, nor come so hard for anyone.

But seeing him completely wild for you - whatever this was - you were living for it. You continued to whine and whimper against the webbing over your mouth.

You could only tell when he finished by the strangled groans he made...and by the fact that he leaned down over you again, sinking his teeth into the back of your neck. You didn't feel any pain but you had already learned the sound of him sucking you.

After drinking his fill, you noticed that you were starting to feel a little lightheaded - a distinctly different feeling that the paralytic. Blood loss.

The tiniest sliver of fear wound itself around your heart.

Finally freeing you from your restraints, Miguel turned you over, tore the webs from your lips and plunged his blood-coated tongue into your mouth.

Lifting you up, he carried you to the couch in his office and laid you down before climbing on top of you, caging you in with his arms, like he had done last weekend in his bed.

"Look what you made me do," he panted, sliding inside you. "Marking you up. Making you bleed. And I'm not done."

You whimpered, a little afraid of him feeding on your further. But as your body began bucking underneath his, you realized he was fucking you again.

Apparently he wasn't kidding when he said he would fuck you until you begged him to stop.

"You're going to be sore this weekend," he taunted. "But this is what you wanted, so lie there for me like my good girl."

A gentle sob worked its way out of your throat.

"You're scared, baby? You think you've lost too much blood? Good," he hissed. "You should be afraid." Unable to look at you any longer, Miguel buried his head in your neck. He didn't draw anymore blood, but he did lick at the weeping wound he'd just created.

By the time he finished, you could feel the heat of him inside you. Still unable to move, you wondered what he would do with you.

Your clothes were shredded - ruined. How would you even get home?

Miguel produced one of his extra shirts and carefully dressed you as best he could. Gathering all your belongings, he carried you to a car, where the two of you were driven to his home.

next->

#miguel o'hara #decadent fic #miguel o'hara fic #miguel o'hara x reader #miguel o'hara x you #miguel o'hara x fem!reader #sm: atsv #sm: atsv fic #spiderman across the spiderverse #across the spiderverse #au spiderverse #spiderverse #miguel o'hara fanfiction

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the-meghan-m · 2 months

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Fragrance girlies: what do we think Scully wears?

I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently because I’m searching for my signature scent and have been learning about fragrances in the process.

I think Scully is someone who chooses how she presents herself very carefully. She would employ the scientific method to find her signature scent, doing research, testing dozens of samples, and keeping track of which notes she prefers.

Here’s how I imagine Scully’s signature scent, in the style of a fragrance review (which are, on the whole, surprisingly lyrical):

I think she wants her scent to be subtle but layered. Apart from simply liking the smell, she wants to evoke a scene, feeling, or memory. As we know, Scully is a family-oriented person who cherishes the gifts bestowed on her by her parents—notably, the cross necklace, but more broadly, her Catholic faith. As I suspect is the case for many Catholics, for Scully, much of the appeal of going to church is rooted in ancient traditions and worship aesthetics—think incense, smooth wood, gospel processions, tall beeswax candles, blood-red fabrics, chants, bitter Communion wine, textured bulletin paper. I think Scully would want her signature scent to evoke, if not a sense of Catholicism, something monumental, ritualistic, and purifying; a promise of salvation that science can never provide.

However, speaking of science, I think there must be something about the freshness and modernity of what you might call more “clinical” scents that appeals to Dana Scully, Medical Doctor. Even the pickiest of noses cannot ignore the allure of a good lobby smell, complete with a whiff of commercial floor cleaner, and as a star medical student, young Dana Scully was often in labs and hospitals, surrounded by chemicals. I think she likes the comfortability of the fresh, clean, and methodical. It feels like her, what she brings to the table.

Lastly, I think Scully has a deep reverence for nature, and judging by her behavior in episodes like “Darkness Falls” and “Detour,” she’s always been a forest girl. I associate The X-Files in general with foresty smells, and I think when Scully remembers the early days, she pictures all those times she and Mulder ran around in the woods together. Think fallen pine needles, miles of conifer trees wet with rain, damp, rich soil. Woodsy and earthy and rooted. Tethered to the ground, not flying around amongst the stars, fate unknown.

So, based on all of that, I think Scully would want a fragrance that’s traditional/nostalgic, fresh/modern, and woodsy/earthy, possibly with some of these notes:

Traditional/nostalgic: frankincense, myrrh, patchouli, elemi, benzoin

Fresh/modern: bergamot, cotton blossom, lemongrass, aldehydes, white tea, lavender

Woodsy/earthy: Cedarwood, cypress, pine, rain, soil, orris, petrichor, vetiver, oud

But what do you think? What would Scully wear? What scents do you think she would like? I know this is so nerdy and random but I am so curious what the fandom thinks!

#I’m serious when I say the majority of fragrance reviews are written this way #it’s fantastic #scully #dana scully #x files #the x files #fragrance

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wardenparker · 1 year

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The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Dating Your Ex - ch 1

Marcus Pike x female reader Co-written with @absurdthirst

When Marcus unexpectedly runs into his ex-wife he is plunged into a world of complications where rekindled attraction and deep-seated insecurities reign. Unfortunately for him, it is also a world wherehis ex-wife is not the only ‘ex’ around, as a new case crosses his desk that will require all hands on deck. ✨💖Inspired by and based upon absurdthirst’s Tequila💖✨

Rating: G but this blog is Always 18+! Word Count: 4.2k Warnings: Mentions of: divorce, collegiate Greek life, underage drinking, food/alcohol consumption. Summary: Going to pick up his date from her office turns into a rollercoaster night for our dear Marcus Pike. Notes: Welcome to a brand new series and hang on for the ride! This should be a fun one, and Keri and I are really excited to spend time with Marcus once again.

Marcus hums as he searches for a parking spot. The building was off the Mall, a few streets over and it meant that he wasn't going to have to fight for a spot from overeager tourists who didn't realize how big their rental van was. Not that he begrudged anyone coming to the capitol to tour some of the amazing museums and monuments. He encouraged it, but the heavy summer travel traffic had given way to fall and he was enjoying the cooler temperatures. His stomach flutters slightly, not as much as it has from other women, but he tells himself that it's just because this is only the fifth one. He's trying to take things slow, although he doesn't know how sleeping together on the second date counted as slow. Maybe because he wasn't already planning out his future with the pretty restoration technician. He parks and hops out of his car, ready to pick her up from work since her own caar was in the shop. Reservations for Ambar were already set for seven o'clock and he was looking forward to sharing a bottle of wine and learning more about Silvia.

The FBI badge still pinned to his jacket means most people let him go by easily, with only security asking him to stop to check that his clearance is, in fact, authentic. The restoration labs are on the lower levels of the building with the offices above, and the large bullpen-style office full of conservationists that work specifically on photographs is on the second floor. He knows the building roughly at this point, mainly knowing Silvia's directions on how to get from the front door up to her desk in the second-floor photo office. She's been staring at the clock for the last half hour, intentionally a little overdressed for work so that they could go someplace nice for date number five.

She really, really likes Marcus and has been telling her little trio of work girls about him since the beginning, but doesn't have the same relationship experience he does since she's a few years younger. She's taking her boss's advice though - since Silvia adores her boss - and taking things slow. Not rushing into things is key, she's been told. Silvia sighs, glancing at the clock again right before the pebbled glass doors to the bullpen open.

"Hey you!" She calls out, waving enthusiastically. There's no one else in the office now so she can be as excited as she likes.

"Hey." His smile is easy, making the dimple in his cheek show as he puts a little bit of hustle in his step to reach with short statured brunette and give her a hug and a kiss on the cheek. Slow, he reminds himself. Moving too fast has resulted in a failed marriage and a failed engagement as well as plenty of relationships in between. "Are you ready?" He asks as he pulls back to smile at her again.

"Yeah, just let me send this e-mail and we can get going." She nods and sits down again quickly to type out two more sentences before hitting send. When she pops up again and grabs her purse the sound of commotion comes from behind a closed door on the other end of the bullpen. "Oh!" Silvia grins and motions toward the door in question. "You should meet my boss while you're here! She's awesome. Best bar trivia teammate ever."

Meeting Silvia's boss wasn't high on his list of things to do for the night, but he was always agreeable on small things like this. Plus, it was good to know the boss in case he ever needed a favor. Cultivating friendships and contacts was important now that he was running the Art Crimes division as a whole. "Sure. Lead the way."

"She's great," Silvia promises, leading him across the bullpen before knocking twice and pushing open the door. The brass name plate glints in the stagnant office light but he doesn't notice the name on it. "Hey," Silvia hums, sticking her head inside. "I'm headed out, but I thought I'd introduce you to Marcus before we leave. He'd make a great addition to our trivia team, ya know." It's about the sixth time she's told her boss that, but that's okay. She's just excited.

Marcus was expecting a woman, he was sure that Silvia mentioned her boss several times, but to be honest - he hadn't been able to keep up. She had a tendency to jump from subject to subject that made it difficult to actually understand what she was talking about. He hears a wooden creak as the boss gets out of her chair and rounds the desk. He plasters a friendly smile on his face and starts to extend his hand. "Nice to mee—” his words die in his throat as he comes face to face with the last person he had ever expected to see.

His ex-wife.

"Marcus?" You freeze on the spot, the polite smile that had previously been painted across your face replaced with complete shock. In a split second it's like you're back in the Kappa Sigma house while the dreamiest sophomore in the world makes fun of your cheap ass margarita to the tune of some god-awful party playlist made by one of his brothers. You almost feel like you can't swallow, so taken aback at the sight of him that your jaw may as well have hit the floor.

He sees you in the Chi Omega t-shirt, pulled tight over your breasts and your head thrown back as you laugh at his jokes. Looking at him like he's the only man in the world. In this split second he can feel the weight of the cheap wedding band he had worn proudly on his finger as he whispers your name. "I— what are you doing here?" He asks in shock.

"You're standing in my office," you remind him, amusement creeping into your voice as you start to feel a little relieved that he's as surprised as you are.

"You guys know each other?" Silvia is standing beside him still, looking between the two of you in honest confusion until a thought seems to dawn on her that makes her smile. "Hey, Pike and Pike. I never put that together before. Are you like...cousins or something?"

Marcus's eyes widen slightly as he turns to Silvia, completely forgetting that she was there for a moment and now thrown back into the very awkward reality of the situation. "Uhhh," he shuffles slightly and braces his hands on his hips as he absorbs the information that you had not changed your name back to your maiden name. "Doctor Pike huh?" He sees the doctorate proudly displayed behind you. "That's— that's great."

"Yeah...it, uh...it took a while. But it was worth the work." Shifting awkwardly from one foot to another, you look back at Silvia with a pit swirling in your stomach, and the wall of realization that hits you is far less innocent than the one that just hit her. "Th-this is who you've been seeing?" You ask, eyebrows raised in a way that just begs her to say 'no'.

"Yup!" But Silvia doesn't seem to be reading the room at all, and she nods happily while reaching for Marcus's hand. "This is what, babe...date six?"

Hearing her call him babe almost makes you sick, but you manage to barely hold onto your composure. Silvia's a hard worker and a kind person who has been a good friend in the time since she was hired. She's sweet and deserves to be happy. You just desperately wish she wasn't off being happy with your ex-husband of all people.

It seems wrong to hold Silvia's hand but he doesn't resist. Instead, he gives her a weaker than normal smile and looks back at you in abject horror, as if he's been caught cheating. Although the divorce papers that he had in his files at home would beg to differ. "Uh, you talk about me to your boss?" He asks, terrified over what she might have said since they have been sleeping together.

"Of course," Silvia laughs like it's not a big deal. "I told you; I tell my girls everything."

You cringe internally, wishing you could just disappear into the floor at this point. When Silvia says everything, she means it. "We...we've been friends for a little bit..." you tell Marcus. It had happened kind of by accident, but it was nice to have friends at the office. Of course, now you'll have to avoid socializing with her outside of work like the plague, just to avoid running into Marcus randomly.

Silvia shines a sunny smile on Marcus. "So...are you guys related? It's so weird I never noticed the last name thing before."

“I— uh—” he flounders like a fish out of water for an answer and immediately looks to you to see if you will step in and explain. The idea that she had shared fucking him with you nearly makes him want to melt through the floor although you know firsthand what he’s like in bed. Fuck, you had taught him plenty about what women liked. “So, about that, uh, it’s kind of a funny story.” He chuckles weakly. “We’re not related…anymore.” It’s wrong, it’s so wrong but he can’t help but think that Silvia isn’t the brightest crayon in the box for not picking up on the same damn last name. It’s not like Pike is common.

"We're divorced." The kindest thing you can do is just get it out in the open, instead of letting yourself and Marcus wither away in the awkwardness. Maybe it comes out a little more harshly than you meant it to, but only because you're trying not to squawk or get emotional over it. Over him. Fuck he looks good... Nope, don't let yourself go there.

"You're...?" Silvia nearly hiccups, her small eyes blowing wide as she looks between the two of you. "I...I didn't know you were married."

"It was a long time ago," you murmur, desperately wishing you were one of those people who kept a bottle of liquor in your office.

“I told you that I had been married before.” Marcus defends himself, oddly hurt that you kept his name but people didn’t know you had been married. Apparently, the divorce hadn’t been as friendly as he had thought, especially considering he hadn’t wanted it. “I—” he looks over at you, reminded of how fucking beautiful you are before he looks away, over to Silvia. “We got married in college. Divorced three years later.”

"Oh...god, I—I had no idea that..." Reality seems to finally catch up to Silvia and she tries for a joke even as she cringes. "I mean, you've got great taste."

At this point, Marcus isn’t quite sure who Silvia is talking to, but he needs to get out of this room. “We have reservations at seven, so we need to go.” He offers quietly.

"Right." Silvia smiles again, looking up at Marcus and giving his hand a happy squeeze. "Well...I'll see you tomorrow." She tells you, obviously just as glad to get out of the awkward bubble of suffocation that is your office as Marcus is.

"Yeah..." You nod, but it's stilted and awkward. "Tomorrow." For tonight...you'll be going home to drink a bottle of wine alone on your couch.

******

"—'m sorry, it's weird right?" Marcus looks up from the glass of Pinot Noir to find Silvia shaking her head and looking almost panicked as her words rush out. He shakes his head, a little ashamed that he hasn't been paying attention to his date. His preoccupation with his ex-wife living in D.C. and apparently working as a director at the Smithsonian was all he could think about. All while studiously avoiding the thought that you looked amazing – just like you had the day you had moved out of your shared apartment the morning after the divorce. "I'm sorry." He shakes his head and gives her a smile that is meant to be charming but probably falls slightly flat. "Could you repeat that?"

“I said it’s weird.” Silvia repeats, sinking in her chair a little bit like he’s just confirmed everything she was saying. Marcus has been completely different tonight - distant and awkward and inattentive. She knows why, of course. She isn’t stupid, despite what she knows other people say behind her back. “She’s my boss, and hopefully still my friend, and I like you but there’s a lot of history here that I’m just not comfortable being in the middle of.” Silvia sighs slightly, leaning her elbows on the crisp tablecloth between them. “Maybe it’s best if we just end things here?”

“Hey—” Marcus immediately feels guilty, reaching out and touching the back of her hand. “I’m sorry, I’ve been horrible tonight. I am just— surprised.” He settles on that and watches her closely. It’s not her fault, he’s been perfectly happy with his dinner date with her up until an hour ago.

“And I get that.” She nods, not pulling away from him but also not returning the gesture of comfort. “It’s not like I’ve never been through a breakup. But…” she blows out a breath, heavy and loaded. “Let me ask you this. Why did you get divorced?”

“Nothing bad.” He’s quick to assure her, not wanting her to think there was ever anything acrimonious between you and him. “We just— we got married too young.” He sighs softly, remembering the pain both of you had felt when you realized that you were both on very different pages for what was the plan over the next ten years. “So we decided the smartest think we could do was divorce.” He chuckles. “Nicest divorce ever.”

“God, you’re so nice,” she groans, laughing despite herself. She’s not laughing at him, but at the situation on the whole. How incredibly weird it is. “So…nicest divorce ever but you didn’t keep touch?”

Marcus frowns slightly, shrugging his shoulders. The truth was, he hadn’t wanted to see where you ended up, it was too painful. “We just…lost contact.” He settles on that finally. “I decided to join the FBI.”

“And she went to grad school.” Silvia knows your career path. She’s looked up to you since you were a guest lecturer at George Washington University in her undergrad years. Granted that wasn’t so long ago - and maybe the fact that Marcus is nearly ten years her senior is part of what’s making her feel like an awkward kid caught between parents right now. “Look…I just…I don’t want anything to get awkward or uncomfortable because of me being friends with your ex-wife, and…if I’m honest, it already feels pretty awkward.”

Marcus sighs, pulling his hand away and his shoulders slump slightly. Fucking ironic, the relationship that he wasn’t rushing into, he was getting dumped. “I understand.” The food is barely touched in front of the two of you and he motions to the waiter, asking for to go boxes and the check. “At least you can take dinner home.” He jokes weakly.

“I’m sorry.” She is. Honestly, truly sorry. But it’s better that this is discovered now when they’re barely anything to each other than in six months when she’s had a chance to develop feelings. “At least let me pay for dinner. It’s the least I can do, since I’m the one…ya know…breaking things off.”

“No.” Marcus shakes his head and reaches for his wallet. “Don’t worry about that.” He’s not going to hold a grudge or have any hard feelings. In fact, he’s a little relieved as he shoots her a small smile. “My treat. Last time.”

“You’re a really great guy, Marcus.” Whether it hurts or helps, Silvia is at least going to tell the truth. “This is just a super weird coincidence. That’s all.”

“Well, it will be something you can awkwardly joke about later on.” Marcus tells her as he hands the bill to the waiter with his credit card inside and reaches for his wine glass.

“Maybe.” She hesitates before doing it, eventually reaching out to grasp his hand for just a brief moment when the waiter places her to-go box in front of her. “It’s been really great to know you, Marcus,” she murmurs, continuing the streak of awkwardness by smiling and silently walking out of the restaurant.

Marcus sighs and finishes his wine before the waiter brings back the credit card slip to sign. Maybe this was for the best he tells himself as he takes his own box and gets up so they can clear the table. Obviously it wasn’t ideal to date her when she works for you.

****** The fact that you got shit sleep last night is really your own fault. A bottle of wine and an entire bag of tortilla chips with guacamole is not dinner by any stretch of the imagination but you just couldn't get yourself to eat anything substantial. It had been snacking and getting steadily drunker while you tried desperately not to think about Marcus, culminating in an extremely ill-advised viewing of Casablanca whilst wine drunk and digging through the remainder of the chocolates your sister sent you from her last trip to the Godiva outlet. This morning you're tired and hungover, glad to have nothing to do but paperwork and a little office organization that you've chosen not to pawn off on the new intern. Doing it yourself from time to time so the interns can get more hands-on time in research suits everyone nicely. Having already had a cup of coffee in order to even get out of bed this morning, you didn't stop for your usual venti soy pumpkin white mocha and you're regretting it, just wishing you had that little treat to pick yourself up when the weight of your own shoulders seems heavier than normal.

Silvia is nervous as she walks into the office, depositing her purse at her desk and deciding that she would stop in the break room before she talks to you. This is very convoluted - despite the insistence that things are okay, she wants to clear the air. Your regular coffee mug is in the drying rack, so she makes you a cup of coffee before carrying hers and yours to the door that proudly displays Dr. Pike, Director on the brass nameplate.

"Come in." Even though the knock is hesitant, you still hear it, and you pull yourself away from hard-staring into the void just in time to see Silvia poke her head in the door. Ah, shit. It's not that you don't want to see her - she's hard working and very sweet and honestly you like spending time with her outside work most of the time - but today it's just...it's fucking awkward. "Morning, Sil," you murmur, trying for a smile.

“I—I brought you a cup of coffee.” She offers, holding up the mug that is still steaming. “And I—I was wondering if I could, uh, talk to you. About yesterday.”

"Thanks." Nodding as you accept your Bat-Symbol coffee mug, you swallow a sigh and sit down behind your desk. Silvia moves easily, shutting your office door and leaning on the edge of the heavy wooden piece of furniture you sit behind for at least a few hours each day. "What did you...erm...want to talk about?" You know what, technically, but not specifically.

Silvia bites her lip and decides to just come out with it. “I stopped seeing Marcus.” She blurts out. “I’m sorry I didn’t realize it sooner.”

"Oh." Whatever you had thought, however fleetingly, that she might say, that was definitely not it. "I—um...you didn't have to do that...I mean, he's a good guy. Just because we're divorced doesn't mean I hate him or anything." In fact, you never did. And that was what made it so hard. "And besides, how I feel about him has no bearing on whether or not you should go out with him."

“You’re my boss.” She flushes slightly and looks down at her own milky coffee. “And I just— I told you all about sleeping with him.”

“Yeah…” Huffing slightly, you shake your head and take a sip of the sweet, equally milky coffee she made for you, humming in appreciation. “And as your boss, I agree that it’s a little weird. But as your friend?” She reminds you a lot of your sister, actually, which might have been tucked away in your subconscious when you hired her two years ago. “As your friend, I don’t want to stand between you and happiness. If that’s Marcus? Well…I—I would completely understand. I mean, he’s a great guy.” He had been your happiness too, for much longer than five dates.

“Why did you get divorced? I asked him but he just said you got married too young.” If he’s such a great guy, why wouldn’t you want to stay with him? You had kept his last name.

“That’s what happened.” You nod slightly, but it’s obvious from her expression that she isn’t buying it. “We were really young, Sil. I mean we were still teenagers when we met. I was Mrs. Pike by the summer before sophomore year.” It had been the whirlwind romance to end all whirlwind romances, and your sorority sisters had cooed over it much more readily than your family.

“High school?” Her eyes are wide and horrified. She hadn’t thought you were that young. How was that legal?

“Oh, no.” Shaking your head vehemently, you realize you definitely left out a few details. You’ll blame the hangover. “College. Marcus is a year older than me, and his frat at UPenn used to throw this big welcome party for all the new Chi Omega sisters…which was the sorority I had just rushed. He was on the verge of turning twenty and I was not quite nineteen.”

“Oh, good.” She’s relieved at that, but she still couldn’t imagine being married that young. “So you were a freshman and he was a sophomore?”

“Yep.” You feel like a damn bobble head doll from nodding so much, and you sip your coffee for one silent moment. “We couldn’t even have champagne at our own wedding. We were kids. So when I say he’s great, I mean that. We just…dove in too fast, ya know? By the time we were starting to think about careers, Marcus was starting to talk about kids. And I…I just knew that I wanted to have a career before we had to start making compromises.”

“Oh.” Silvia hadn’t even gotten close enough to think about things like that. She had been too focused on her school and hell; she had been in elementary school when you had gotten married. “So you didn’t want kids and he did?”

"Basically, yeah." It was more complicated than that. There had been a great deal of immaturity and a bit of your own fear involved, but you're really not in a place to go into too many details right now. "We got divorced the summer after I graduated."

“If you hadn’t, you might not be Dr. Pike right now.” She decides, nodding. “I doubt he would have wanted you to go to graduate school.”

"I don't know." Over the years you've come to terms with that. That you'll never know what could have happened if you had stayed married to Marcus Pike. It's something that you had tucked away into the back of your mind, thinking you would never see him again so it would never matter. Oh, how very wrong you were. "But considering I got my doctorate at the Sorbonne and Marcus is an FBI agent? There would have been a rocky road no matter what. I just have to believe that I made the right decision. It’s not like our career paths are geographical neighbors or anything."

Silvia contemplates that and nods, taking a sip of her coffee. "I'm sorry that I sprang seeing him on you. You looked very shocked. I just— yeah..." She sighs and stands. "For what it's worth, he was preoccupied during dinner last night." She knows the difference when people are just not interested in her rambling and being completely in another world and last night Marcus hadn't been in the present. He was most definitely caught up in the past, a past that heavily involved you it seems. Giving you a small smile, she moves towards the door. "I hope that it doesn't make things between us awkward." She continues. "I have a lot of respect for you and have really enjoyed learning under your guidance."

"If anything, I think this brings us a bit closer together." The smile you return to her is a little lopsided and off kilter, but that's pretty honest to how you're feeling at the moment. "Thank you for coming in and not just letting it hang in the air. That shows a lot of maturity, and I respect the hell out of you for it."

That makes Silvia smile brighter and she ducks her head. "I'll go get started on my work, boss." She says before she scampers out of your doorway, feeling better about the entire situation. Marcus was a good guy, sure – but she wasn't going to ruin her job for any man.

------ Master Tags: @pixiedurango @chattychell @winter-fox-queen @lady-himbo @artsymaddie @princess76179 @paintballkid711 @missminkylove @pedrosbrat @ew-erin @sarahjkl82-blog @sharkbait77 @justanotherblonde23 @lv7867 @recklesswit @mylittlesenaar @f0rever15elf @gallowsjoker @steeevienicks @athalien @sherala007 @skvatnavle @thatpinkshirt @jaime1110 @girlimjusttryingtoreadfanfics @goodgriefitsawildworld @greeneyedblondie44 @katheriner1999 @littlemousedroid @harriedandharassed @churchill356 @ajathegreats-blog @hardc0rehaylz @beardsanddetectives @kirsteng42 @ladykatakuri @adancedivasmom

tCIGtDYE: @missmarmaladeth @afro-hispwriter @rosmarinus @mythrielofsolitude @jxvipike @avaleineandafryingpan @hnt-escape @supernaturalgirl20 @scorpio-marionette @bobafvcker @midnightevermore @dinoflower @pearl-aqua-tears @itsbaehyungbitch @pepperminticedcoffee @anticipayosbot @girlofchaos @speedynana @loveslide @noisynaia @just-here-for-the-moment @goodgriefitsawildworld @curiouskeyboard @iarellanouus @mymistery09-blog @seasonschange-butpeopledont @thenightdreamsballad @pondsofravenclaw @sherlock221b114679797 @pimmyxyone @theredwritingwitch @ghostinhours @timpletance @strawberryjamcheesecake @amb11 @a-little-shade-of-kiki @wildemaven @tuquoquebrute @supernaturalgirl @ellenmunn @iceclaw101 @toxicfrankenstein @catsandgeekyandnerd @missmarmaladeth @theincredibleinkspitter @agiroflee98 @lyonessofnarnia @we-could-have-been @totostits @scorpio-marionette @kikis-writing-world @trappistmonksofthefuture @danichz @88dragon06 @scorpionerd myrealmofchaos @movievillainess721 @firekissed13 @qseomik @acollectionofcells1 @captain-of-my-game1992 @alician87 @lovesbiggerthanpride @justgonewild @hiyorinatsuki @pinkrosethorne @apocalypticwafflekitten @groovycass @rebel-fanfare @d0cthunder @gooddaykate @purplerain04 @astridflowers

My Masterlist!

#Pedro Pascal #Pedro Pascal character fanfiction #Pedro Pascal fanfic #Marcus Pike #Marcus Pike x reader #Marcus Pike x you #Marcus Pike x female reader #ex wife reader #The Mentalist #Mentalist fanfic #unexpected reunion trope #Agent Marcus Pike

282 notes · View notes

adrift-in-thyme · 6 months

Text

Whumptober Day 30: Lab Rat + Examination

Continuation of Day 11

Read it on Ao3

- Legend & Hyrule

- Summary: Legend finds himself in the clutches of a mad scientist

CW for torture, experimentation, dehumanization, blood and injury, captivity, mentions of death, and a character briefly wishing for death

--------------------

Someone is talking.

Legend registers their voice dimly, through a fog he can’t make heads or tails of. It drags heavily at him when he tries to surface, oppressive and thick. Memories drift past – sensations of pain, feelings of fear.

There is danger here, they murmur.

What danger? He asks. But they flit away like fleeting phantoms, leaving his question unanswered.

And so he falls again, drifting on darkness as though it is the waves of the sea, awaiting the moment when everything will come once more into dizzying, blinding focus.

When it does, he almost wishes it hadn’t.

He awakens to the assault of bright lights. They glare down on him from above, glinting off the metal of the table he is strapped to. The rough fabric of the restraints grates at his exposed skin. Something hard and metallic encases his neck, uncomfortably tight when he swallows.

His eyes widen. The memories come rushing back, now, in a torrent of terror and discomfort.

Falling from a portal. Trying and failing to save Hyrule. The men on the boat, inspecting him, touching him, hands and breath hot and clammy. His promise…

“Ah, wonderful. You’re awake at last.”

Legend jolts at the voice and tries to sit up. But the restraints hold fast and he ends up only getting a glimpse of a familiar gray-haired man before collapsing back down. His head swims and he blinks a few times, trying to clear it.

“Oh, great,” he says, drily, voice cracking painfully. “It’s you.”

The man chuckles, the sound almost warm. “Indeed. We’re about to get started on something that could be monumental.”

There is a clattering of metallic objects near his head. Legend swallows hard.

“I do hope you are as excited as I am.”

“Oh, yeah I’m real excited. Can’t wait to get poked and prodded by some sadistic creep,” Legend retorts. Panic is rising fast within him, despite his attempts to suppress it.

“Oh come. Don’t be too quick to judge.” The man moves slightly into his line of sight again, something that looks disturbingly like a knife in his hand. “You are contributing to my research. And that’s a worthwhile thing, I assure you. The information I glean from you can be used for years to come.”

Glean. Legend feels bile rise in his throat at the word. For some unpleasant reason, it brings to mind gutted fish, fit for dissection; dead bugs with their bodies pinned.

“Now, tell me” —The man is facing him now, eagerness in his eyes. Legend fights not to squirm beneath his gaze — “what makes you transform? Is it a curse? A spell? Can you control it?”

Legend glares at him. “If you think I’m just gonna explain everything to you you’re even more of an idiot than I thought.”

“It will help this all go faster if you do.”

Yes, Legend realizes, he is definitely holding a knife. It glints in that cursed painful light. Slowly, he lowers it toward Legend’s legs.

“It will bring us to the important part of this examination. And most importantly it will ensure that your friend keeps his life.”

Legend jolts upward at that, fighting against the straps that pin him down.

“What do you mean?” There is an edge of harsh panic in his voice and all his strength isn’t enough to hide it. “What do you mean it'll keep my friend alive?! You said he would be safe if I came with you! You said you’d leave him on the shore! I saw you do it! I saw—”

He breaks off with a choked gasp. He is shaking, from cold, from adrenaline, from the fear coursing through him in waves. Then, a door he hadn’t seen before slides open and Hyrule stumbles through, bound and gagged and blindfolded, arm held tightly in the clutches of one of the men from the boat. And he is certain he is going to break right then and there.

“Rulie,” he breathes and Hyrule lifts his head.

He gives a muffled cry, struggling to try and break free. But his captor wrenches him back with a growl.

“You saw correctly,” the man says, with a calm that belies everything Legend feels. “I kept my promise to you. I left your friend on the shore as you requested. But somehow, he escaped his bonds and found us here. He brought this upon himself. Though, it never hurts to have a bit more leverage.”

The air feels tighter than ever now. Legend struggles to draw a full breath.

Hyrule, you idiot. Why’d you come here?

He sags back against the table, wincing at the bite of cold metal against his skin. If he wasn’t cornered between a rock and a hard place before, he certainly is now.

“What causes you to turn?” The man asks, leaning forward. Still, he holds the knife, situating it so close it almost presses into Legend’s knee. Legend doesn’t doubt that as soon as he transforms, it will plunge into his tail, searching out the gory mysteries of it. “Tell me or your friend will pay.”

His voice still embodies the calm of someone who has this entire situation perfectly controlled. And hell, maybe he does. It certainly seems that way.

Legend hates it.

He swallows. His mouth is terribly dry, panic situated in a hard, little ball in his gut. But he forces the words out anyway.

“It’s a curse. I thought it was just a magically-infused tool at first. But after I used it a few times, it became a part of me.”

His gaze flits from the man’s face to Hyrule, standing rigid, still in his captor’s grip. He is obviously listening — Legend doesn’t know how he wouldn’t be. Of all the ways he had wanted him to find out about his ability, this definitely isn’t one of them.

I’m so sorry, traveler.

“You cannot control it, then?”

“No.”

The man’s eyes are alight with that hunger again, the one that sends shivers crawling up Legend’s spine and makes him feel ill.

“Perhaps, we can do something about that.”

He motions to someone behind Legend. Footsteps sound and then the next thing the veteran knows, water is pouring down on him from above. He gasps at the icy chill of it, fingernails digging into his palms. It pools on the table, held there by its raised edges. And in response to its touch, Legend’s body begins to transform.

It is sheer agony.

Usually, the transformation is at least a little painful. His body is morphing, after all, fitting into a form it was not created to take the shape of. But this, this is like nothing he has ever known. It is like the magic within him is a trickle that wants to be a stream, a wave held back by a steadfast barrier.

The collar. It must be suppressing my magic.

He grits his teeth, seeing white. He wishes he could stop it, this onward march of the curse, but he is helpless. All he can do as his legs seal together and gills and fins grow upon him is try not to scream.

Even that is a losing battle.

It comes out as his tail forms – a strangled, almost inhuman sound. It fills his ears, mingling with the pounding of his head and the sounds of Hyrule fighting to get free. And it only tapers off when breathing becomes immensely difficult.

Though there is enough water to activate the curse, it is not nearly enough for proper airflow. And the collar around his neck covers his gills, restricting it further. Suddenly, Legend is suffocating.

His eyes blow wide and he struggles, gasping vainly for breath.

“Fascinating. Your biology becomes that of a mer.”

The man comes into view, leaning over him. Roughly, he turns his head this way and that, inspecting him.

“Please,” Legend croaks, desperately, “can’t–I can’t…”

“Ah, yes of course. Can’t have you dying, can we?”

More water cascades down upon him. Hands grip the collar, loosening it slightly. Legend goes boneless, dragging in large breaths that make him dizzy.

It’s a bitter mercy, but one nonetheless. At this point, he’ll take what he can get.

“Now, to do something about the uncontrollable nature of this curse.”

Someone is touching his tail now, but Legend doesn’t have the strength to lift his head and see who it is.

“All things can be brought into submission, you see, with a bit of effort. But first, I must study the makeup of this new body. The changes cannot be fully ascertained from the outside.”

Danger, his mind shouts again. Get out before it finds you.

Still, Legend cannot make sense of it. After the onslaught of pain and near-suffocation, everything feels sluggish and distant. He just wants to sleep.

But then, Hyrule screams something that sounds awfully like the word “no,” and his tail explodes with pain. The exhaustion flees, replaced by crippling, terrifying agony. Someone is slicing him open, he realizes as he thrashes, choking on blood. They’re cutting into his tail with all the careful precision of a scientist…and without the merciful use of a sedative. Or death.

Aren’t things that are dissected usually dead?

The thought isn’t comforting. Nor is it enough to distract him from the endless pain. He is buffeted by it, suffocated. Everything is on fire, everything too harsh, too bright. Wordlessly, he begs for the sweet release of oblivion. But it doesn’t come. Instead, blurry forms surround him, holding him down as he continues to fight back, tightening his bonds, digging their nails into his skin.

“Remain still,” comes the man’s voice. “If you’re not careful you will cause me to cut something vital.”

He is moving things around now, from the feel of it. Inspecting his insides, Legend guesses. He doesn’t know for certain. He doesn’t care to. He just wants it all to stop.

“Please,” he tries to beg, “please stop this.”

But blood gurgles in his throat and he chokes on it, every cough sending sharp aches splintering through him.

“Stay still, brat.”

A sharp slap stings the side of his face. Tears burn hot in Legend’s eyes. His head snaps sideways and he can see him now – Hyrule – fighting desperately against his captor’s restraining grip. The blindfold has fallen as a result of his efforts and his eyes meet Legend’s, large and filled with fury and terror.

He yells something incoherent – perhaps a protest, perhaps a promise. Legend can’t tell. All he knows is that his heart is splitting open along with the rest of his body, the ache of it unbearable. Hyrule shouldn't have to see this. He was never even supposed to be here.

I failed.

A hiccupped sob tears out of him. Legend shuts his eyes. He is so weak, so helpless.

Curse this stupid power, curse the people who seek to exploit it, curse the shadowy monster who sent them hurtling through that portal…curse himself for being so foolish.

He would tear this place apart if he could. He tries, tries to call his magic to his fingertips. Pain is the only thing he gets, pain and the sound of someone yelling at him, chastising him.

It only adds to everything else. The man comments on how fascinating this form is. Hyrule cries out. Legend screams and screams until his throat is so ruined and hoarse he can’t anymore.

And then, abruptly, there is no sound at all. Finally, darkness swoops up and swallows him. --------------------------

Everything is a blur after that. A blur of pain and fear, a nauseating rush of color and sound and sensation. Nothing changes and yet everything does.

Sometimes he is lying on the table, strapped down and held down and thrashing like a wild animal caught in a cage. Others, he floats in what he thinks is a kind of fish tank, cramped and aching, watching rivulets of crimson dance and twirl on blue waters.

The collar cuts and chokes him. His gills ache from struggling against it. His fins are cut, his scales picked at, some peeled off for examination. His tail hardly even feels like a functional extension of him anymore. It is nothing more than a limp, useless thing made of muscles and nerves, crippled by pain, torn apart by the hungry hands of some mad scientist. He doesn’t even want to know what his legs look like. Not that he could tell anyway. He hasn’t transformed back into a Hylian since the curse took ahold of him here.

They have no use for a Hylian. But apparently, they have every use for a mer.

Legend doesn’t even remember what they wanted with him, or why he is here. He only knows two things now and they are all he really needs to. One, that he can’t escape, no matter how badly he wants to. And two, that being here, enduring all of this, somehow, inexplicably keeps Hyrule alive.

Even if the traveler’s eyes are bright with pain and tears every time Legend finds them, even if he bears marks from resisting his captors, he is alive. That is all Legend can hope for. He doesn’t have the strength to move beyond that.

So, he hangs on for Rulie’s sake. He hangs on even as he loses everything. Because he can’t lose his brother. He would rather be ripped to shreds and discarded, poked and prodded into oblivion, than watch him die.

The man has made it quite clear that that is the only alternative. The few times Legend had resisted after the first, he had described the methods in which he would murder Hyrule in intricate, excruciating detail.

“I will make it painful,” he had said, with that same infuriating calm that made Legend want to rip his head off. “Much more painful than what you’re enduring. And I will make it slow. He will be begging for death by the time I finish.”

Legend had given him a glare that could make Ganondorf quiver. But he hadn’t fought any more after that.

No. His fight is all internal now, a battle to hang on to the shreds of life he still has. He is stubborn to a fault, that’s for certain. But sometimes he wishes he wasn’t. Sometimes he wishes he would simply allow himself to fade away.

In the end, though, he is glad that he doesn’t.

There is nothing to herald an unexpected rescue. Nothing at all. He has been dunked in the tank today, barely holding on to consciousness, drifting in a sea of pain. Hylia only knows how much blood he has lost, or if he is trapped in this form forever, or if his tail will ever work again, his wounds ever heal. It hurts so badly. But he has no tears left to cry.

When a flash of familiar blue streaks through the room, however, he nearly sobs anyway.

The one thing these monsters haven’t tried is making him believe in a false reality. But the sounds of his captors hitting the ground, the sight of Warriors’ face next to the glass, his hand pressed to it as he asks him questions Legend lacks the energy to understand…it all seems like a dream.

Then, someone is lifting him from the water, gently, carefully, and voices are swelling around him. The voices of his brothers. He curls into the arms that embrace him. A vibrant blue scarf is draped over his shoulders and he grasps it, fingers fisting in the soft fabric.

He must have changed back not long after leaving the water, body undoubtedly eager to revert to its natural state. Because for the first time in what feels like an eternity, he can feel air filtering in through his nostrils.

Legend sinks further into Warriors’ embrace, nestling into his scarf. Everything aches and his skin feels raw, almost stretched. But he is safe, secure in the arms of the people he loves. And they will take care of him. They always do.

Sure enough, their voices begin to become clearer, all familiar, all reassuring.

“I’ve got you, vet.”

“You’re safe now. We won’t let those creeps touch you again.”

“We need to get this collar off him…”

“We will. Let’s get these wounds taken care of first.”

“We’re gonna take care of you, Ledge. Just you wait. Hyrule’s spell will work. It always does.”

Hyrule…

Legend drags open his eyes, peeking out from his cocoon of warmth.

“R-rule…where…”

“I’m right here, Ledge. Don’t worry.”

Hazel eyes meet his own. A calloused hand cups his cheek. There is so much guilt in Hyrule’s expression, so much pain that Legend’s heart aches from it.

It’s not your fault. None of it is, he wants to say, but all that comes out is a groan as magic begins to flow into his body. It is equal parts pain and relief. His eyes flutter closed again as it seeks his wounds, mending them little by little.

“I’ll heal everything I can,” Hyrule continues. “You’ll have scars and…and I can’t promise your mer form will be the same it used to be. But…I’ll do my best.”

Legend hums, only distantly aware of the sound rumbling in his throat. Hyule’s magic grows stronger, more determined, rushing like waves through him, and he loses himself in it. It wraps around him, envelops him in warmth and safety and a fire that is all Rulie’s own. He is safe in it, wounds soothed, agony growing dimmer.

Then, abruptly, it stops.

Legend gasps at the suddenness of its retraction, eyes shooting open, panic lighting up within him.

“What…”

He doesn’t have to find the strength to finish the question. He can see him through the forms of his brothers situated protectively around him – the man who had torn him apart. He stands a short distance away, eyes snapping with anger, a strange, little device in his hands.

Legend has a nagging feeling that he has seen it before, somewhere in those memories that are little more than a horrifying haze of agony. But he can’t recall what it is used for…or if he has ever even seen it in action. If it caused him pain, it was likely lumped in with everything else. Too much pain, he has learned, quickly becomes one, single, incomprehensible blur.

“Give him back!” he demands, sounding angrier and more fearful than Legend has ever heard before. “Give my research back or I'll use this!”

“He is not your research and we will not return him to you,” Time growls, his voice a thunderclap. “Stand back or we will make you.”

He levels his claymore at him, but the man doesn’t budge.

“You haven’t been able to get that collar off yet, have you? Well, with just one push of a button” – He holds up the device, fingering one of the many, small buttons upon it – “it will cut off his magic completely. I don’t know if you know this, given that you are not experts like myself, but he is so intricately linked with his magic now that he needs it to survive. It can be twisted and turned if one can find out how. But it cannot be ripped from him, or torn away.”

Legend’s grip of Warriors’ scarf tightens. He exhales a shuddering breath.

He doesn’t doubt what the man says. To be deprived of his magic…well, he doesn’t even know what that feels like. He doesn’t want to know.

“You won’t kill him,” the captain says, eerily calm. “You need him. You can’t work with someone who is already dead.”

“I can make do,” the man replies. “A dead subject is better than none at all.”

He lifts the device a little higher, finger almost pressing the button. “Now, give him to me or I’ll do it.”

Legend tenses. But then he feels Warriors hand, traveling upward as though to cup his head. His fingers swiftly change direction, playing along the collar instead, searching out a way to remove it. After a moment, they catch on a small latch. He pulls and with a streak of relief, Legend feels the collar loosen.

Hyrule glances back at him from where he had risen, a human barrier between Legend and the scientist. Something unspoken passes between them and suddenly, Hyrule’s fingertips crackle with energy.

Time steps forward. “We would never give our brother to a monster.”

The man scowls. “So be it.”

He presses the button. Warriors pushes down on the latch, hard, and the collar slips from Legend’s neck. It clatters to the ground, reverberating with an unsettling energy. Wind kicks it away.

At the same time, Hyrule leaps forward, arm outstretched. Magic courses through him, hitting the man with such force he flies back and into the wall. He collides with it with a sharp crack and slides down, limp and almost lifeless.

“Well done, traveler,” Time says, already stalking toward the figure. “I’ll make sure he is secured.”

“Then we can get out of this place,” Wild says. “I’ll bet our vet is more than ready to get back to camp.”

Legend nods, choking out the breath he hadn’t even realized he had been holding. He curls into Warriors, trembling slightly, and the captain tightens his grip on him in return.

“They’re all gone,” he assures him, softly. He cards a hand through his hair and Legend shudders, slightly, eyes going half-lidded. It has been so long since he was touched in this way, since the hands that held him were gentle and trustworthy and kind rather than rough, vengeful, and agonizing.

“That scientist was the last one.”

Thank the gods.

Hyrule kneels before him again, fire in his gaze, emerald magic glowing in the palms of his hands.

“We’ll be out of here soon, vet. But for now, let me heal you properly. It’s the least I can do.”

The magic comes again like the wind on a warm, summer day. Legend closes his eyes and lets it envelop him.

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jcbbby · 1 year

Note

for prompts: 🕷️ You won't have to be afraid ever again

🎉JCBBBY'S 500 FOLLOWER PARTY🎉

thank you for being here and for celebrating with me!!! your other prompt is coming up next as well :) - "You won't have to be afraid ever again." warnings: none! genre: fluff note: Henry and reader are both young adults, like 18 and 20 years old. -

You could still hear the alarms echoing, but growing more faint, as you and Henry both ran through the woods. The sirens mixed with the sound of leaves and sticks crunching under your feet, and your heavy breathing, trying to stay fast. The last hour or so was merely a blur, your mind unable to comprehend everything that had just happened. Henry had told you just this morning of his plan to escape and how he hoped you come with him. Now you trailed behind him in the outside world for the first time since you were a young child, desperately trying to out run the remaining guards, at least the ones Henry hadn't attacked in his fight for the two of you to escape.

He had been the first and only child at the lab, until you arrived. He was a couple years older than you, but the two of you quickly developed a friendship as the only kids there. And then came the others. Most looked down on the two of you, for some reason. Perhaps because you were both rather shy around them, but it seemed to come off as aloof and standoffish to them. But you didn't care what they thought, because at least you had Henry. And now, all you had was Henry. Henry and your hospital gown.

"Here, get down!" Henry scream-whispered, ducking into a bush, pulling you by the arm in with him.

You both panted heavily, scanning the area through the branches. You heard the booming voices of the guards. He brought his finger up to his lips, signaling to be very quiet. The sound of crunching leaves under feet grew closer. You put your hand over your nose and mouth, trying to muffle the sound of your irregular breathing.

"Show yourselves!" You heard one shout.

"Don't draw this out for yourselves." Another said.

A pair of guards walked by you, catching a glimpse of them through the leaves. You clung to Henry, your breath caught in your chest. You were terrified of being found, as you knew the punishment would be monumental. You had seen Henry received such awful punishments for much less than this. He held you tight, gently caressing your shoulder with his thumb to soothe you. You both watched intently as the guards swarmed, before muttering to each other that the area was clear. Their footsteps and chatter retreated, and you both let out the breaths you were holding in relief.

"I've never been more scared in my life." You ran a hand over your face, feeling tears that you hadn't even realized were falling.

Henry pulled you into him, wrapping his arms around you. "Hey...you won't ever have to be afraid ever again." He released you, keeping an arm on your shoulder. "It's just us now, no guards, no punishments, no papa. We did it, we're free." He smiled.

You smiled back to him. "Free..." You repeated.

He nodded. "Now, we're going to need to stay hidden here for a bit, at least until it's dark. Then I know where we can go, alright?"

You nodded, settling on to the ground to wait for nightfall. The two of you sat mostly in silence, keeping an ear out for any sign of lab staff coming for you. Once the sun had finally set, he lead you from the bush out into the woods. You weren't sure how long you walked, but it felt like a lifetime, between the darkness and the fear of someone waiting to grab you and drag you back.

Luckily, no one did. You began to see the yellow light of street lamps glowing from beyond the trees. You exited the woods out on to a quiet street. Henry looked around carefully before taking your hand, and quickly leading you down the road. He brought you upon a large, dark house. The windows were boarded up, and the lawn horribly overgrown. He stopped just in front of it, taking in a deep breath as he stared.

"What is it?" You asked, looking between him and the house.

"Nothing...just...I used to live here. This was my house before..." He trailed off. "Anyway, we can stay here tonight. Come on."

He started up the walkway towards the front door. In the moonlight, you could see the beautiful stained glass window, an image of a rose, on the door. Henry reached for the door handle, jostling it around when it wouldn't open. He let out a huff of frustration, looking around. His eyes landed on a large rock just to the right of the steps. Picking it up, he immediately hurled it directly at the rose, shattering a large hole in the center. He reached his arm carefully through the opening, unlocking and opening the door to allow the both of you inside and closing it behind you.

"I can't see anything." You said, feeling the wall to make sure you didn't trip before your eyes could adjust.

"Yeah, I don't think there's been electricity or running water here in years, unfortunately... but I just figured we could just stay here tonight. Tomorrow we'll keep moving."

"It's cold in here." You said in the darkness, shivering in just your hospital gown.

"Everything should still be in here...my parents' old room might have some clothes to change into. Probably would be best to blend in. Here-" He took your hand, helping to guide you to the stairs, and laid it on the banister.

Once upstairs, he brought you to a large bedroom. There was a large bed against the wall, along with a couple dressers and a vanity mirror that you could see as the light from the moon and the street shone in. Henry went over to a dresser, prying open long since used drawers, and rummaged through them for a moment. Pulling out a blouse, and then a pair of pants. He handed them to you, and then went to the other dresser, retrieving a new button up and some dark slacks.

"Uh...oh, um, sorry." Henry noticed you standing there, not knowing where to change. "I'll just uh...here.." He turned around, placing the button up in front of his face.

You took your turns averting your eyes and letting the other change. Henry took both of your old clothes, stuffing them back into the drawers, just in case. He then went over to the bed and reached for the cover. As he brought it back to reveal the sheets and pillows, a cloud of dust erupted from the duvet. He coughed as he waved it away.

"Luckily it was just the top." He said, patting the covers underneath, nothing coming off of them, having been perfectly preserved by the tightly made bed.

He threw the duvet to the end of the mattress, discarding it. The both of you climbed in to the bed, settling in close to each other. You turned to face him, the moonlight hitting his face, illuminating the spatter of blood from the climax of your escape.

"Are you sure we'll be safe here? And after we leave?"

Henry smiled, reaching to gently stroke your cheek. "I promise. Our lives begin now, alright? We're finally free."

#jcbbby 500 follower party!#henry creel #peter ballard #001 stranger things #henry creel x reader #peter ballard x reader #001 x reader #henry/vecna/001 #jamie campbell bower #jamie bower #henry creel fic

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emberglowfox · 1 year

Text

an analysis of journal entries #1-8 written by professor sada/turo

in which i continue to be absolutely bonkers over the professors and attempt to analyze all eight journal entries for fun. this is gonna get long, so it’s going under a cut. all journal entries are from pokemon scarlet, since that’s the game i have and i went through and transcribed them myself. i assume they’re mostly the same between games.

Journal #1: “We’ve determined that this energy crystallization is linked to the being we call █ █ █ █ █ █. The interlocking hexagonal plates that comprise █ █ █ █ █ █’s shell must somehow cause this phenomenon— which I’ve dubbed “Terastallizing”.

This entry is more or less just world lore. I really wish this got expanded on-- we only know tiny bits and pieces of information about the mysterious entity responsible for Terastallization. Really hoping for this story point to get continued in the DLC, I think it’s fascinating.

The fact that Sada/Turo specifically is the one to call it Terastallizing is interesting as well. Really gives you insight into just how prominent they are in their field if they get to be responsible for naming something so monumental.

Journal #2: “Thanks to my prototype Tera Orb, I secured corporate funding for my research and made a laboratory in the lighthouse near Cabo Poco. Someday, though, I’ll return to the crater and resume my study of these crystals.”

This is clearly very early in Sada/Turo’s spiral into their fixation with their work. As it says, at this point in time is when they make their first breakthrough in the field of Terastal energy. Though they secure funding, it does force them to leave the crater for a time, during which they’re focused presumably on developing the Tera Orb from its initial prototype into the widely-used version we see and use in the game. This, clearly, does not entirely distract their focus from Area Zero, as even shortly after leaving it they’re already thinking about returning.

Journal #3: “At last I can resume work on the Tera Project! I’ll move my research to the Zero Lab this month. My team will be smaller, but no matter. The strong influence of the crystals makes our experiments much more unstable.”

At this point, Sada/Turo has presumably perfected the Tera Orb and has returned to general research on the crystals down in Area Zero. The use of ‘experiments’ and ‘instability’ makes me think that this is where Sada/Turo leaned away from the crystals’ effects on Pokemon and more into its effects on enhancing technology.

Journal #4: “The crystal’s power is tremendous! Their unstable output made our corporate backers fret, but… If we can harness this energy, it will open up research possibilities we’d only dreamed of. At last, paradise will be ours to create.”

Between entry #3 and #4, Sada/Turo has clearly conducted much research on the power of the crystals and realized their potential. The ‘research possibility only dreamed of’ is clearly the time machine/act of bringing past/future pokemon to the present, as shown by the following line, ‘paradise will be ours to create’. Here, Sada/Turo is realizing the fantasy they’ve nurtured since childhood might actually be possible, and it begins their descent into full-on obsession.

And, really-- I get it. Imagine being obsessed with, say, dragons since you were a child, only to discover through research years later that there’s a serious chance you could bring them to life and make them real. For someone as fascinated with the Scarlet/Violet book as Sada/Turo, it’s really no surprise they threw everything they had into creating a functioning time machine as soon as the possibility became feasible.

Also, this is a marked shift in the scope of possibility of Sada/Turo’s research. Before, there were certainly limits and uncertainties. Now, due to the power the crystals have over machinery, basically anything is possible. Think that might give you a bit of a god complex?

Journal #5: “Our time machine has yielded a triumph— a Pokemon from the ancient past! I’ve named it Koraidon. I was expecting one new life to treasure, but what fortune to be blessed with this gift as well!”

Here, the time machine isn’t just real-- it’s functioning. I presume a lot of time has passed between entry #4 and entry #5, since regardless of feasibility, you don’t just figure out how to make a functional time machine overnight. The piles of notes and whiteboard equations in the Zero Lab are a testament to that. Regardless, Sada/Turo’s intuition has proved correct, and their dream has been realized. Literally anything is on the table now. There are no limits to what they can achieve at the rate they’re hurtling forward at. As I’ve emphasized before, that’s gotta do something to your psyche.

Also in this entry is our first mention of Arven, the ‘life to treasure’ that Sada/Turo had been expecting. This is the reason I noted the passage of time between entries #4 and #5-- presumably, due to passion and obsession, Turo/Sada has been working on the time machine this whole time. So, something happened fairly recently (in the grand scope of things) to cause Arven’s mother to be pregnant with him.

I have two theories, accordingly. The first is that Arven’s other parent was someone the professor met while they were working in the lab at Cabo Poco, before they returned to Area Zero, and that Arven’s mother was undergoing her pregnancy during the period of research on the Time Machine. The second is that Arven’s other parent might actually have been a fellow researcher working with them in Area Zero, though this one I’m less sure of, since I have difficulty picturing someone as focused as Sada/Turo taking time off to engage in... you know, especially with a fellow researcher. Then again, horniness is a hell of a drug, so who knows?

(EDIT: I wrote the paragraph above assuming that the professor was spending all their time at the Zero Lab, when Arven’s dialogue actually tells us that there was a period in which they lived at the lighthouse and commuted. This might have been the situation before Arven was born, or it might have come as a result of his birth, I’m not sure. Leaning towards the latter.)

What this does tell us is that Koraidon/Miraidon was summoned when Arven was fairly young. This makes sense, since Arven has lines about feeling like Koraidon/Miraidon ‘stole his childhood’, as his mom/dad was so focused and fascinated with a living, present, ancient/futuristic pokemon that they weren’t attentive to his needs, and eventually chose to return to Area Zero with Koraidon/Miraidon permanently instead of staying with him.

Journal #6: “I’ve successfully brought more and more ancient Pokemon to our time since the first one. I’m so close to creating a world like the one in the book— a paradise where we three can live happily together forever. I must make it real.”

One thing I’d like to focus on in this entry is the shift from we to I. In previous entries, Sada/Turo describes all of their work as ‘ours’, such as our time machine. Here, that’s no longer the case. Presumably, something happened between entry #5 and #6 that lost Sada her fellow researchers. Perhaps they saw how dangerous Koraidon was or were scared of the implications of the functioning time machine? Or did it have potentially something to do with a relationship with a coworker that led to Arven’s existence? Either way, from here on out, Sada/Turo is alone in the Zero Lab with her work. And regardless of their isolation, they’re continuing with their research, and succeeding.

Sada/Turo has also likely been projecting their obsession with their idea of ‘paradise’ onto Arven and, now, Koraidon (who i presume to be the third of ‘we three’). She’s convinced herself she’s doing it for all their sakes, when in reality it’s the last thing Arven-- and possibly the weaker Koraidon-- wants. This is a bit devastating, since it’s a clear example of where love and obsession cross and get muddied. Sada/Turo isn’t thinking straight. They love Arven, that much is clear, but they’re not acting like it. They’re too caught up in what they’ve been doing for, by now, a very long time. It likely feels too late to quit, if the thought has even crossed their mind (which I somewhat doubt).

Journal #7: “I need more people. More time. That man walked out not long after the boy was born. I need another set of hands, but could they be trusted? And how long would it take them to even understand? If only there were two of me.”

This entry emphasizes one of my previous points. Sada/Turo is now dealing with the fallout of being alone in the Zero Lab and is struggling to keep up their previous level of productivity. Even more curious is the line ‘but could they be trusted’? Something clearly went wrong between Sada/Turo and their coworkers, because now they’re hesitant to trust anyone with their research. ‘And how long would it take them to even understand?’ makes me suspect that Sada/Turo’s co-researchers lack of zeal meant they weren’t as blinded to the potential repercussions of yoinking pokemon from other points on the timeline, and that this led to a rift between them and Sada/Turo and, eventually, their departure.

Somewhat of an aside, but while looking through the Zero Lab for any entries I might have missed, I came across the note about the Poke Ball locking system. Obviously this is mainly intended as a game mechanic to force you to battle with Koraidon/Miraidon, but from a meta perspective its fascinating. Sada/Turo didn’t just not trust anyone else-- they legitimately expected someone to come and sabotage their research. And it’s confirmed to not be wild pokemon they were afraid of, since the Poke Ball Locking System literally targets trainers carrying pokemon. Sada/Turo was worried about people. Just how bad was their fallout with their fellow researchers?

The line ‘that man walked out not long after the boy was born’ feels at a glance just thrown in to explain the absence of Arven’s other parent, but for me, it just compounds the trust issues that Sada/Turo was surely developing as a result of everything that had happened. And it definitely does not do good things to your brain to feel like the literal only person in the world you can trust is yourself.

Journal #8: “My new assistant has intellect and technical skills to rival my own. A bit rigid at times, but I’ve got no serious complaints. Productivity has doubled. We even brought in a second Koraidon via the machine— though this one had proved aggressive.

Here is the first mention of AI Sada/Turo, which Sada/Turo presumably constructed completely by themself (if you were doubting how much of a genius they were). The line ‘a bit rigid at times’, is, in my opinion, extremely noteworthy. I’m going to get into conjecture here a little bit, but that comment makes me think that Sada/Turo would prefer someone who wasn’t rigid-- i.e., someone they could connect with on an emotional level. The loneliness and isolation is getting to them, and it isn’t good.

But Sada/Turo chooses instead to focus on the productivity of things. They’ve brought in a second Koraidon/Miraidon! Things are going great. Their mental health has not deteriorated at alllll.

That’s the last journal entry, which I assume is because not long after it came the Koraidon/Miraidon fight in which they were ultimately killed trying to protect their research, the weaker Koraidon/Miraidon. There’s something to be said about Sada/Turo still underestimating the power of the pokemon they’ve summoned to the present, even after all their research, and how it connects with how they just didn’t seem to get the potential ecological damage of what they were doing. Their brilliance made them blind at multiple crucial moments, and it led to them making a mess of their personal lives, relationships, mental health, and ultimately caused their demise.

These fuckers are fascinating to me, can you tell?

#pokemon #pokemon scarlet and violet #pokemon sv spoilers #professor turo #professor sada #if i missed/forgot everything feel free to tell me! i don't remember all of arven's dialogue on the matter so stuff might be skewed #psv #long post #sparks speaks #meta

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chickenparm · 1 year

Text

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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