JeszRossé

---

“You sure this isn’t too much?” you ask, adjusting your bikini top as you toss a towel into your beach bag—something strappy, something dangerous, and very much something that made you hesitate in the mirror for a second.

Johnny’s already lounging under the beach umbrella, shirtless, sipping from a coconut like a smug little gremlin. He takes one look at you and nearly chokes.

“Wear whatever ye want, hen” he says, coughing dramatically, “I can protect what’s mine.”

And he means it. In that stupidly hot, possessive, “I’ll deck a man with one sandal if he stares too long” way.

Five minutes later, you’re trying to lay your towel down like a normal human, and he’s fully squatting in the sand with your phone, muttering like David Attenborough but horny.

“RIGHT—LIGHT’S HITTIN’ YE LIKE A GREEK GODDESS—STAY THERE—Dinnae move! DO THE LASS-THAT-COULD-CRUSH-MY-SOUL LOOK.”

“Johnny, people can see us—”

“GOOD. LET ‘EM SEE WHAT I GET TO RUB SUNSCREEN ON.”

He’s snapping pics with the intensity of a man crafting a legacy. Two lifeguards walk by. A seagull poops dangerously close to him. He doesn’t care.

"NOW GIMME A WEE SMIRK—NAH, NOT THAT—THE 'I’M TOO GOOD FOR THIS ENTIRE OCEAN’ ONE. AYE. THERE SHE IS. WIFE OF THE CENTURY."

You check the pics. Half are blurry ‘cause he tripped on a crab mid-shot. The other half have his face in the reflection of your sunglasses ‘cause he “wanted to haunt the masterpiece.”

Still posts them anyway. Caption?

“Married the hottest creature ever spawned by sun, sea, and pure danger. Sorry lads. She’s got SPF and a ring.”

(Includes 23 fire emojis, 3 dolphin ones for “beach vibes,” and one inexplicable gorilla emoji.)

And when you try to take a photo of him?

“Oh no no no, darlin’. M’job’s bein’ the camera goblin. Yer job’s bein’ the temptress.”

---

Sand in your shoes. Him in your pocket.

The thirst? Mutual.

The sunscreen? Applied with suspicious enthusiasm.

The marriage? UNDEFEATED.

---

You scroll through the photos on your phone, snorting at the one where his thumb covers half the lens.

“Johnny, this one’s just your eyeball.”

“Art,” he says, dead serious, “Ye wouldn’t understand.”

You roll your eyes, tuck the phone into your bag, and stretch—arms high, skin warm, the sea breeze catching your hair just right. He’s watching you.

Of course he is.

“Yer killin’ me,” he mutters.

“What?”

“Nothin’. Just—” he pauses, squints at you like you’ve personally offended him with your existence, “why d’you look like a bloody dream in the daylight? S’not fair. I’m over here lookin’ like a soggy tortilla.”

You burst out laughing. “You’re ridiculous.”

He grins. Dangerously. "And you’re not runnin’ fast enough."

Your heart stutters. “What?”

“You heard me.”

Then he’s up—sand flying, grin sharp—and you scream-laugh as you bolt down the shore, towel flying behind you.

“JOHNNY, NO—STOP—I’M GONNA TRIP—”

“You better, ‘cause if I catch ye—!”

He’s gaining.

You zigzag. He fakes left. You shriek. He howls with laughter.

When he catches you, it’s all arms and warmth and spinning—he scoops you off your feet with zero effort and collapses with you into the sand in one chaotic heap.

You’re both breathless. Sun overhead. Waves kissing your toes.

He brushes a bit of hair from your face, voice quieter now. “Y’know I’d chase ye forever, right?”

You grin, cheeks flushed.

“I know.”

And he just kisses you—salty, soft, slow—like he’s still trying to catch you even now.

---

You: winded.

Him: obsessed.

The beach: now a crime scene.

Marriage: undefeated (again).

---

Afterwards

You’re still half-laughing, half-winded as he rolls over beside you in the sand, both of you sprawled like shipwreck survivors.

He turns his head toward you, one eye squinting against the sun.

“Alright?” he pants.

“No,” you wheeze. “I got tackled by a military-trained lunatic.”

He smirks. “Aye, but a romantic lunatic.”

You flick sand at him. He flicks it back—with way too much accuracy—and then immediately regrets it.

“Wait—yer bikini bottoms are gonna catch it like a sand trap, hang on—HANG ON! Lemme help—”

“DON’T TOUCH ME WITH THOSE HANDS.”

Too late. He’s brushing sand off your leg like a man possessed, muttering, “I’ll defend yer arse from the elements, woman—ye deserve better than this cruel terrain—”

Eventually, you're both quiet. The waves roll in, soft and steady. The kind of hush that makes your eyelids heavy.

You barely notice he’s slipped his shirt under your head like a pillow.

You do notice when a suspiciously warm strawberry gets booped to your lips.

“Eat it,” he whispers. “Vitamin C. For yer glow.”

You crack one eye open. “Are you feeding me now?”

“Married life, baby.”

He lies beside you again, propped on one elbow, still watching you like you hung the damn moon. His hand finds your waist, thumb tracing lazy circles.

“Can’t believe I tricked ye into marryin’ me,” he murmurs.

You hum. “Wasn’t tricked.”

“No?”

You turn your face toward him, sun-drunk and grinning. “You just chased me till I stopped running.”

He makes the softest noise—somewhere between a laugh and a “God, I love ye” sigh—and leans in, forehead resting against yours.

“Hope ye never start again.”

You don’t.

--end--

.

.

---

His hand drops from your chin. But the weight of it lingers. You feel like you’ve been marked—without bruises, without blood.

“You really think locking me in here with you is going to earn you anything?” you ask, dry. “Loyalty? Gratitude?”

“No,” he says again. “But it will make you understand.”

Then he steps closer. Close enough that your back touches the cold steel wall.

You expect a threat. Instead, he kisses you for the second time.

There’s no warning. No tension. It’s matter-of-fact. Like he’s proving a hypothesis.

And you—

God help you—

You let him.

Because the truth is, part of you had always wondered what lived under the surface of him. Whether there was anything at all beneath the precision, the control.

Now you’ve seen it.

And it’s worse than you imagined.

When he pulls away, he doesn't say something dramatic or proprietary.

He just studies you.

“You’re shaking,” he says.

You are. From adrenaline. From rage. From something else you don’t want to name.

“You scare the shit out of me,” you mutter.

He doesn’t look proud. Or apologetic.

Just amused.

“Good."

“You sound possessive,” you say quietly.

He leans in, low and smooth.

“That’s because I am.”

---

🌶🧬 The shift is subtle but immediate.

He kisses you again—but this time, there’s no cold calculation.

His gloved hand wraps gently around your throat—not tight, just present. A reminder.

“You don’t have to think right now,” he murmurs against your mouth.

“Just do what you’re told. You’ve always been good at that.”

The lab feels feverishly warm.

He lifts you onto the steel workbench like you weigh nothing.

His thumb presses lightly beneath your jaw—steady, grounding.

You try to speak, but he doesn’t give you the space. His mouth ghosts over yours again, slower now, like he's testing how long you’ll hesitate before following his lead.

There’s no demand in the way he holds you—only expectation. The kind that makes refusal feel foolish. Pointless.

He leans in, breath warm against your cheek.

“Don’t make this harder than it is.”

Your pulse jumps beneath his hand.

And when you don’t move—when you don’t pull away—he smiles.

Just barely.

But it’s enough.

“No one’s coming in. No one can see you,” he says, sliding the zipper of your lab coat down, slow and deliberate.

“There is no world outside this room. Not tonight.”

You shouldn’t want this. But god, you do.

---

🌶🧬 His control doesn’t slip — it sharpens.

He kneels in front of you like he’s conducting an experiment.

Not rushed. Not eager. Just methodical—clinical.

His gloved hands shove your underwear aside, and he looks up through those damn sunglasses like he’s documenting every flicker of hesitation in your face. As if your reactions are data to be archived. Controlled. Repeated.

Then he leans in—

And presses a kiss to your inner thigh.

Measured. Cold. Almost reverent in the worst way.

His breath is warm, but his mouth is not. And that contrast sends a flicker of heat down your spine, sharp and involuntary.

You tense, just slightly.

“Be still.”

A command.

Spoken low, not loud—but enough to still the breath in your throat. It isn’t a threat. It doesn’t need to be. It’s a statement of fact, like he already knows you’ll obey.

And the worst part is—you do.

His mouth finds you.

Tongue precise, steady, devastating. Like he’s memorizing you—charting nerve endings the way someone maps territory they already intend to claim.

Not sloppy. Not rushed.

Every movement feels rehearsed. Controlled. Like he’s pacing himself on purpose, just to see how long it takes before you break protocol.

He works you open with practiced pressure, dragging slow circles until your hips twitch forward. Instinctive. Desperate.

And when you arch with a sharp cry, his grip tightens around your thighs—holding you down like it’s nothing.

“No noise,” he murmurs against you.

“Containment protocols.”

His voice is almost amused. Almost.

But the order is real.

Then you make a sound anyway—soft, bitten-back, helpless.

And he hears it.

He pauses—not to stop, but to let the sound hang between you. A quiet act of disobedience.

Then:

That smirk. Barely there, but unmistakable.

“So undisciplined...” he hums, tongue dragging slow and deliberate.

“We’ll need more conditioning.”

His mouth returns to you like a punishment.

Like a promise.

And this time, he doesn’t go slow.

It builds fast—heat blooming sharp and immediate, like he’s pulling pleasure from you with mechanical precision. There’s no fumbling. No hesitation. Just a devastating rhythm that leaves no room for thought, only instinct.

Your breath stutters. Legs shake.

Every swipe of his tongue leaves you raw, sensitized, undone—like he's dismantling you piece by piece, learning what makes you twitch, gasp, beg.

You try to hold still. Try to obey. But it’s impossible. He knows exactly where to press, when to pull back, when to push harder.

Your body’s not yours anymore. It’s responding to him. Because of him.

You're burning alive—and all he does is hold you in place, methodical, composed, like he’s watching his favorite experiment succeed.

And god—

It feels so fucking good you almost forget to be afraid.

---

🌶🧬 You come hard, hips twitching—but he doesn’t stop.

“Overstimulation breeds obedience,” he says in that damn cunning, merciless voice.

“You’re not leaving this table until you’ve internalized that.”

And he means it.

The aftershocks haven’t even finished rolling through your body before his mouth is back on you—tongue unrelenting, dragging sensation out of raw nerve endings that haven’t had time to settle. It hurts, almost—but it’s the kind of hurt that coils low and tight and unbearable.

Your thighs tremble. The edge is sharper now, pleasure warping into something hotter, more fragile. There’s no time to breathe, no time to think. Just sensation, again and again, until your body forgets where the first orgasm ended and the next begins.

When you come again, it tears through you. The heat in your legs turns to static, your muscles locking tight before they unravel all at once.

You sob—voice breaking under the weight of it. But he doesn’t falter. He likes that sound.

He licks you through it, steady. Focused. Devoted in that cold, obsessive way of his.

Only when you're shaking—eyes glassy, breath stuttering like a broken machine—does he finally lift his head.

And even then, he’s not done.

He’s just… evaluating.

Gloved fingers stroke your cheek.

You’re breathless, soaked, legs trembling from the second orgasm he forced out of you with his tongue. Your muscles won’t stop twitching. Your skin is hot. Overheated. And your thoughts—what’s left of them—come in fragmented pulses of more, more, more.

You barely register the shift in weight when he rises to his feet—methodical, towering, composed. Not a single movement wasted. No urgency. No mess. Just quiet, controlled escalation.

He begins to remove his gloves.

The leather slips from his fingers in one fluid motion—slick, deliberate. They hit the floor with a dull slap, like the prelude to something you’re not built to handle.

“Don’t move.”

The command slices through the room like a scalpel—sharp and clean, cutting through the thick hum of fluorescent light and your own thundering pulse. You obey without thinking. You have to.

He unfastens his belt next—slowly, deliberately—and the soft scrape of leather through metal rings out like a gunshot in the sterile quiet of the lab. It’s obscene. Wrong. Perfect.

Your eyes drift down—helpless, hungry—and—

Fucking hell.

He’s thick. Veined. Long enough to make your stomach tense. Ridiculously proportional to the rest of his impossibly crafted body. Like everything else about him, it borders on inhuman.

Dark. Flushed. Leaking, because of you.

Because he planned this.

He wraps a hand around the base, stroking himself once—just once—and it sends another wave of heat tearing through your already broken body.

“No more waiting,” he mutters, voice like crushed velvet.

“You’ll take it. All of it. And you’ll thank me for the privilege.”

He doesn’t say it like a threat.

He says it like an equation. Something inevitable. Proven.

And as he lines himself up against your aching, overstimulated core, you already know—

You’re going to let him.

You’re going to take it.

And you’ll thank him for ruining you.

He presses in—slow, stretching, merciless.

Your body clenches around him involuntarily, muscles taut, breath punched from your lungs as he fills you inch by unbearable inch.

“W-Wesker—!”

“Sir.”

His hand is on your jaw instantly, grip firm but not cruel—commanding. He tilts your head up until your eyes meet his—those golden irises burning behind the lenses like warning lights.

“In here, I’m not your colleague. Not your peer.”

“You call me sir.”

You whimper. Something desperate leaves your throat. But before you can even try to respond, he thrusts forward—once, hard—bottoming out in a single, brutal stroke.

Your mouth drops open, but no sound comes out.

You’re full. Stuffed. Split.

And there’s no grace period. No pause. No adjustment.

He starts to move—hips snapping with cold, mechanical precision, like he’s recalibrating you from the inside out.

“What’s wrong?” he murmurs against your neck, voice dark silk.

“You were so cockdrunk on my tongue.”

“Now you’re quiet?”

You gasp as his pace intensifies, dragging friction against every overworked nerve—pain-pleasure rippling so deep it short-circuits thought. His hips grind just right, his angle unerring. It’s too much. It’s not enough.

His breath fans hot against your throat.

“Speak.”

“Or I’ll fuck the ability out of you entirely.”

The table creaks beneath you with every thrust, metal legs groaning in protest as he drives you into the surface like you belong there—like you were made to be taken apart by him, and him alone.

His grip on your hips is bruising—fingers digging in, anchoring you in place, keeping you where he wants you. Where you need to be.

You’re already close again—too close. Your walls flutter around him, a tell you can’t hide.

And of course, he notices. Of course, he fucking knows.

“Tight little thing,” he growls, voice shredded with restraint.

“And all mine. Say it.”

Your body’s breaking open again, pressure coiling hot and unbearable in your gut. Your vision blurs. Your breath stutters.

And still—his voice is what wrecks you most.

“Yours, sir~,” you sob. “I’m yours—I’m yours—”

He groans, low and feral, a sound punched from somewhere deep in his chest—and then his hips slam forward harder, sharper, as if your admission unshackled something in him.

“Goddamn right you are.”

He fucks you like he means to burn the memory of anyone else clean out of you.

Like he’s branding every inch from the inside out.

And you let him. You fucking let him.

---

🌶️ After

You’re wrecked.

Shaking. Glistening. Leaking his cum down your thighs like a failed sealant test.

Wesker doesn’t move to clean you. Doesn’t reach for a towel.

He just stands there—composed, calculating—watching you fall apart on the table he set the terms for.

His gaze is unreadable behind the glasses, but you feel it like heat—scanning, cataloguing, claiming.

“You’ll be sore tomorrow,” he says, as if it’s protocol.

“I’ll authorize remote work. Tell HR I’ve reassigned you to internal development.”

A button clicks shut. His belt slides back through the loops.

He tucks himself away like nothing just happened—like he didn’t just ruin you with expert precision.

And then—

He picks up your ruined panties off the floor.

Slips them into his coat pocket like evidence.

Doesn’t say a word.

Just smirks. Barely.

“You’ll report to my quarters next week. 0100 hours. Untraceable route. No badge.”

You try to speak—try to form a sound—but your throat betrays you. There’s nothing left but your pulse hammering in your ears and the way your body still clenches at the thought of more.

Wesker leans in.

Kisses you—slow, deliberate. Like the claim wasn’t complete until now.

Like he's proud by how quiet you’ve become.

“You’ve passed containment,” he whispers against your lips.

“Now let’s work on submission.”

And with that—he’s gone.

He turns without hesitation, boots echoing across the sterile floor.

One tap to his comms. A low voice, smooth and absolute:

“Disengage quarantine. Authorization: Wesker.”

A mechanical hiss ruptures the silence.

Locks disengage. Doors slide open. Lights return to full power.

Just like that—the breach is over.

But you know better now.

The real experiment… has only just begun.

---

---

🧬 You stayed late. That was your first mistake.

Lab 3C was always freezing past sundown. The kind of cold that hummed in your molars. You should’ve left two hours ago, but your project data was finally syncing and you knew if you didn’t back it up manually, the system would eat it alive.

Besides… Wesker was still on-site.

You’d seen his shadow move behind the frosted glass of his office when you passed by earlier—tall, controlled, silhouetted in gold and blue light. The late afternoon sun had cast long beams across the corridor, catching the edge of his frame and turning him half-myth, half-monument. He rarely acknowledged you outside of debriefings, but you always felt him before you saw him.

His presence was clinical.

Like a scalpel laid neatly beside an open wound.

You hear the metallic clang of security shutters dropping—one by one.

There’d been a pause.

Not one minute later, the emergency lights flicker red. A low, stuttering whir begins to echo through the hall—the telltale warning of isolation mode—and then, without ceremony, the sirens start. Not loud. Not panicked. Just a shrill, calculated chirp every few seconds. As if the building itself were breathing slower. Sharpening its teeth.

The lab doors hiss shut behind you with a finality that rattles the glass.

LOCKDOWN PROTOCOL – UMBRELLA HIGH SECURITY ZONE. ALL ACCESS RESTRICTED.

You freeze mid-step, breath caught.

The hallway, once humming with fluorescent light and the low murmur of researchers, now pulses crimson. Shadows crawl and multiply in the corners. Every movement looks suspicious under emergency lighting—every silence louder.

You break into motion.

Your shoes tap brisk against the linoleum as you move back toward your desk—heart already thudding against your ribs. Fingers slightly trembling, you swipe your ID badge at the reader.

Nothing.

Red light.

No response.

You swipe again. Harder. Slower. Faster.

Still red.

Still nothing.

“…No, no no—come on—”

Then—

“Having trouble?”

The voice—low and measured—rolls from behind you like the drop in a symphony.

You turn.

Albert Wesker stands in front of the threshold of the lab, arms folded behind his back. Sunglasses on, as always. No lab coat. No clipboard. Just him—dressed in tactical black, gloved hands pristine, boots gleaming beneath the pulsing red lights. He looks like he stepped out of some other world entirely. One with tighter rules. Sharper consequences.

You hesitate.

“…Sir. I—uh, I think the system—there’s a malfunction—”

“There isn’t.”

That makes your heart drop.

“…Sorry?”

He approaches.

“Security initiated a precautionary lockdown. Protocol requires a full overnight reset before clearance is restored.”

“…You mean we’re stuck?**”

He inclines his head.

“Temporarily.”

Silence creeps in, unwelcome and heavy. Somewhere in the ceiling, a vent groans as the ventilation adjusts to lockdown mode. Your pulse pounds in your ears—too fast, too loud for the silence that follows his answer.

Wesker steps further into the room, his boots quiet against the tile but still deliberate—measured. You track his movement out of instinct more than choice, like a rabbit unable to look away from the wolf.

“No staff may enter or exit,” he adds, tone bordering on casual, as if quoting an instruction manual. “Until 0600 hours. All systems are suspended. Communications are disabled.”

You glance toward the terminal again, trying not to show your unease. “Right. Of course. That makes sense.”

He pauses in front of one of the containment consoles. Gloved fingers drift over the edge, not touching, merely hovering—like a man familiar with every inch of this place, yet still amused by its little performances.

Then he looks at you again.

“Your shift ended forty minutes ago.”

Your throat tightens. “I—I was logging the results from the sequence trial. I didn’t know the lockdown was about to—”

“I didn’t ask why you were still here,” he says smoothly, and there’s no sharpness to the words—just a kind of quiet, clinical amusement. The kind that makes you feel like a scalpel laid out on a tray. Examined. Catalogued.

He begins to circle the room slowly, glancing over the scattered reports, the sterile equipment, the monitor still blinking an error code. You fight the urge to follow him with your eyes, to watch him too closely—but it’s impossible not to. There’s a gravity to him. Calculated. Cold.

And then:

“It’s fortunate,” Wesker remarks, “that I remained on the premises. Some staff tend to… panic. During containment scenarios.”

You blink. “Oh. No—I’m not panicking. I just—”

“You’re trembling.”

He says it plainly. A statement. Not an observation, not a judgment. Just a fact, delivered with surgical precision.

You glance down at your hands. Damn it. You hadn’t noticed.

“…It’s just adrenaline,” you mutter.

Wesker steps closer. Not close enough to touch, but enough that you can feel the shape of him—presence, more than proximity. He’s a wall. A locked door. A sealed vault of intent you cannot read.

“I’d advise you to sit down,” he says. “You won’t be leaving for quite some time.”

A faint smile ghosts across his lips—just barely there, just long enough to make you question whether you imagined it.

And then he turns, slowly, walking back toward the central terminal.

Behind you, the lab doors remain sealed. The red emergency light pulses.

Your badge is still useless.

And you are very much alone with him.

---

🧬 The night passes in a blur of static silence.

You pace. He does not.

You check your watch. The hands haven’t moved in minutes. Or maybe you’re imagining that.

The lab feels colder now—just a few degrees, but enough to slip beneath your clothes like a second skin.

You try again to badge out as if you're in denial. No response.

You try your company-issue phone. Dead. No signal. No bars. Just the dull, mocking glow of the Umbrella logo.

Wesker hasn’t moved.

He stands near the server rack, arms folded behind his back, legs squared. Perfectly still. Like he’s waiting for something—watching something—but not you. Never just you.

He might as well be carved from obsidian. A fixture of the room. Part of the design.

You break the silence first. Voice quiet.

“I wasn’t informed of any lockdown drills tonight,” you mutter.

He doesn’t look at you when he answers.

Just that faint hum, low in his chest. Amused.

“Not a drill.”

You frown, trying to keep the edge of nervousness out of your tone.

“So it’s real?”

A beat.

“…Real enough to warrant containment.”

He finally glances your way, just over the rim of his glasses. You catch your breath, unsure why.

“But there’s no incident?” you ask.

He tilts his head—just slightly, the kind of motion that feels reptilian somehow. Studied. Deliberate.

“There is no need for alarm.”

He says it with that steady, quiet finality that makes you feel ridiculous for asking.

You swallow.

“Feels a little excessive,” you offer, with a half-laugh you regret the moment it leaves your mouth.

Wesker’s head turns the rest of the way, attention fixed on you now like a pressure point.

“Excess is subjective,” he replies. “Containment, however… is effective.”

The words hang there.

You don’t speak again.

Not because you agree.

But because something in the way he said it—measured, near indulgent—tells you he’s enjoying this. Not the situation.

Your reaction to it.

A chill settles deep in your spine.

You take a seat, finally. Far corner of the room. As far as the walls will allow.

He watches you only briefly.

And then the silence returns.

Soft. Clinical.

Unbroken.

---

🧬 Hours pass.

The hum of the lights becomes a lullaby for anxiety. A perfect, droning loop.

Your hands are cold. You rub your palms for warmth, pacing in tight loops near your workstation. Not out of restlessness anymore.

Out of survival.

Motion keeps you from spiraling.

From the corner of your eye—you catch him watching.

Not idly. Not incidentally.

Wesker watches like it’s a diagnostic process.

As if your heartbeat is on a screen.

As if he’s logging how many steps you take before you start repeating yourself.

His head tilts a fraction—almost imperceptible.

His arms remain behind his back, posture straight, boots planted with a soldier’s rigidity.

No movement. No flicker.

Like a statue carved from something ancient and intentional.

Like a predator learning your pattern.

You speak before you can stop yourself.

You try not to meet his gaze. Try to pretend it’s nothing.

But the silence stretches and coils, tighter and tighter, until—

“...Do you ever blink?”

A pause.

Then—barely—his lips curl.

“I do many things you don’t notice.”

There’s no need for emphasis. No shift in tone.

Just that sentence. Icy. Controlled. Unsettling in how true it feels.

You feel your throat tighten.

Across the lab, Wesker doesn’t move. Doesn’t look away.

You do.

You turn back to your terminal, pretending you have something to check. Pretending the screen isn’t blank. Pretending you're not being studied like something contained.

And from behind you, the weight of his presence lingers—coiled, steady, waiting.

---

🧬 Around 3:00 AM

You’re exhausted. Strung out. Muscles trembling from tension you hadn’t realized you’d been holding since the doors sealed. His presence has made the air itself feel wired.

Like the oxygen has teeth.

Like the walls are watching with him.

“I’m cold,” you murmur, mostly to yourself.

The words fog a breath into the sterile air.

He doesn’t respond right away. But you hear the soft flex of leather as he moves. He doesn’t respond right away. But there’s a shift—so subtle it’s soundless.

You hear the soft flex of leather, a movement so deliberate it cuts through the quiet like a thread being drawn taut.

click.

The overhead fluorescents dim a fraction.

Then—like dusk slipping in—the corner near your workstation glows softly with ambient light. A warm, amber hue. Not Umbrella standard.

Your eyes adjust slowly, blinking at the unexpected softness.

“…How did you—?”

“I made a few modifications.”

You stare.

“So… you can override lighting, temperature, access—?”

“Correct.”

Your stomach dips.

“And you didn’t use any of that to let us out?”

He regards you evenly. Calm. Not defensive—never defensive.

He could be talking about the weather.

He looks at you.

“I didn’t say I couldn’t. I said we were required to wait.”

Your stomach turns.

“Why wait?”

He steps forward, boots whisper-quiet against tile. He doesn’t rush. He never does.

And somehow, that’s worse

“To... observe.”

You stand up sharply. The chair scrapes.

Your heartbeat stutters in your throat.

“Am I being tested?”

A pause.

“Not officially.”

Your fists clench before you can stop yourself.

“Then what the hell is this, sir?”

He doesn’t flinch at your tone.

If anything, there’s a flicker of interest. Something beneath the surface—sharp and cold and interested.

Then he steps into your space.

Closer than he’s ever been.

Close enough that you can see the faint lines at the corners of his mouth, the hint of something nearly-smiling.

Close enough to catch the pale reflection of yourself in the dark sheen of his lenses.

Close enough that the scent of sterile gloves and something colder—metallic—lingers in the space between you.

“I’ve found,” he says quietly, “that true behavior reveals itself only under pressure. In isolation.”

You inhale sharply. Your breath sounds too loud in your ears.

“You planned this.”

“I enabled it.”

The correction slices cleanly through your accusation.

You shake your head, disbelief warping into something half-wild.

“That’s—psychotic.”

“That’s efficiency.”

He brushes past you then, and you nearly flinch.

But his hand—gloved, precise—ghosts along your wrist as he passes.

A touch so fleeting it barely counts as contact.

But it lingers. Burns.

Like static. Like warning.

“You’ve performed admirably.”

You turn to face him, pulse high in your throat.

“I wasn’t performing—”

“And yet you still impressed.”

The words land somewhere low in your chest, where panic and something colder begin to mix.

Where you start to realize:

You’re not just being observed.

You’re being chosen.

---

🌶️🧬 The air shifts.

You're not sure when the tension stopped being frightening and started feeling... charged. Heavy. Electrical.

Like something waiting to strike.

He stands just in front of you now, a wall of silence and shadow. When he speaks, it’s lower than before—closer.

“You adapt well. Even when discomforted.”

His presence fills the space like gravity—anchoring, absolute.

He's so close now that the sterile scent of leather and ozone wraps around you, tightening with each breath.

“You wanted to see how I’d what—break down? Panic? Run?”

He studies your face, head angled just slightly, as if fine-tuning an analysis only he can see.

“None of those. I wanted to confirm your capacity.”

Your voice softens, barely a whisper.

“…For what?”

A pause.

His gloved hand lifts with surgical precision, fingers brushing the collar of your lab coat—just once.

It’s not a grip. It’s an assessment.

“Obedience.”

Your throat dries.

“Why—why would you want that?”

“Because chaos is inevitable. And I require constants. Assets I can rely on.”

You bristle, jaw clenching.

“I’m not an asset.”

But instead of correcting you—he agrees

“No. You’re not.” Then the curve of his mouth shifts—slow and slight. Not a smile. Something more primal. More interested. “You’re something far more rare.”

He steps forward, the motion quiet but undeniable.

You feel your back nudge the edge of the desk behind you.

Trapped—not by force, but by design.

“Sir, I—this is—”

But his voice dips beside your ear, a phantom breath across your skin.

“You don’t need to speak.”

You freeze. Not out of fear.

But because it’s working.

Because every molecule in the room feels aligned with him.

You gather breath, manage:

“Is this protocol?”

A stillness, brief—and then:

“No.”

He reaches up.

Removes his glasses.

You’ve never seen his eyes before.

They’re golden. Glinting with something not entirely human. Not soft, not kind—but focused.

Hungry. Clinical. Inevitable.

“This is instinct.”

Your heart stutters.

And before your brain can catch up, leather-clad fingers tilt your chin upward.

Deliberate. Gentle. Commanding.

The first kiss doesn’t arrive like a question.

It arrives like a conclusion.

Planned. Earned. Controlled.

Like you’ve crossed an invisible threshold—and he’s marking it with the most human gesture he knows.

You don’t resist.

You don’t want to.

Because part of you has always wondered if Albert Wesker ever blinked.

Ever broke.

Ever burned.

Now you know—

He saves it all for moments like this.

---end of part 2---

---

02:14 A.M.

Late night. Facility security room.

The screens flicker in sterile white. Most are still.

But Camera 6A, the laboratory, glows with motion.

You.

Alone.

On screen, you’re in the west lab, arching slightly over the sink. Just rinsing out a beaker. Simple. Innocent.

But the fabric of your blouse stretches tight along your spine when you lean forward.

And something in him... pulls.

---

Wesker sits, arms folded, jaw stiff.

He’s already undone the top of his collar. Already removed the gloves.

Not because of you.

Of course not.

It’s hot in the control room.

The server fans are loud.

The stress levels are unusually high.

He’s just—adjusting.

Except... your voice, soft and oblivious, carries over the audio feed.

A hum. A simple, lovely, innocent note.

Unaware of the man who’s been replaying your shift three times over.

Unaware of how he’s zoomed in. Cropped the others out. Enhanced the footage of you turning to brush hair behind your ear.

“Look at you,” he murmurs,

to no one. To the air. To himself.

To you.

---

By the third time you lean forward, the motion is burned into his brain.

He doesn't mean to—

but his hand is already dragging over the front of his slacks, slow. Testing. Pressing down.

His breath leaves sharp through his nose.

This is beneath him.

This is pathetic.

This is...

His palm stills.

But your figure remains—graceful, hypnotic, damning—on-screen.

---

02:44 A.M.

He gives in.

Fingers pop the belt loose with one flick.

Zipper—quiet, slow. As if anyone might hear.

He leans back in the chair with a long, soundless breath through gritted teeth.

This is beneath him. He repeats.

His fist moves anyway. Down. Up. Slow at first—controlled, like everything else in his life. But his jaw is tight. His brows drawn. His breath shallow. He shouldn’t need this.

He’s superior. Beyond weakness. Beyond base urges. Beyond the kind of pathetic, primal desperation that leaves lesser men gasping into their palms in the dead of night.

But here he is. Knees spread. Glove tossed aside. Muscles flexing tightly on the fabric of his shirt in the dim light. His cock’s already slick, already hard—already leaking for you.

Disgraceful.

Illogical.

Weak.

There’s nothing clinical in the way his hips lift once, slightly.

Nothing detached in the way he groans when your laugh echoes through the speakers.

He imagines—

your lips parting when he finally corners you.

the way you’ll gasp when he tells you what he’s done for you.

How you’ll cry when you realize you were never alone.

---

“You don’t even know,” he whispers.

“What you do to me.”

“How long I’ve watched.”

“How hard I’ve worked to keep others away.”

“To keep you... close.”

Your laugh. Again. On loop. It plays like pure torture.

He imagines you writhing beneath his gloved hand, spine arched, eyes glassy—like a creature begging to be dissected. Every sound you make, every breathless moan, cataloged in his mind like data points. You’re not just a body—you’re a subject. A specimen. One he intends to ruin.

He imagines pulling you apart slowly—methodically—stretching your tolerance until you're no longer sure whether you're sobbing from overstimulation or worship. His thrusts would be relentless. Calculated. Deep enough to make you cry out, shallow enough to make you beg for more.

He imagines how your body would cling to him, trembling and slick, so desperate to keep him inside. He’d slow down—not out of mercy, but to watch you fall apart more beautifully.

He imagines gripping your face, forcing your gaze up to meet his—glasses still on, smile absent. Just cool, exacting control as he thinks, "This is what you're made for. Submission, chaos, and absolute obedience."

He imagines not stopping—not when you beg, not when you shake, not even when you forget your own name. He wants you empty, filled with nothing but his voice echoing in your skull. No thoughts. Just Wesker.

He imagines marking every inch of you—bite, bruise, handprint—proof of his ownership. Scientific. Clinical. Intimate in the most violent way.

He imagines your voice going hoarse from crying out for him. And he knows—you would. Again and again.

His strokes speed up. His breath stutters. He thinks of your lips wrapped around him, warm and wet and reverent—of bending you over some cold, sterile lab table, pressing your face to the glass just to see your fogged-up breath as he ruins you from behind.

You're his already. You just don’t know it yet.

He should be above this.

But he's not. He's fucking not.

He'd KILL for the real thing. He’d burn the whole facility just to hear you moan his name like you mean it.

“Mine,” he hisses through clenched teeth.

“You’ve always been mine.”

He hates this. Hates the shaking in his thighs. The raw, desperate sound that slips past his clenched teeth. The image of you sprawled and crying on his sheets—something he’s never even seen, but imagined with such terrifying precision he could swear it's real.

The monitor crackles slightly as you tilt your head and smile on screen—

and Wesker spills over his own hand with a low, brutal sound.

---

03:39 A.M.

Silence.

He exhales.

Reaches for a wipe.

Tucks himself away again.

He stares at the mess. Then at nothing.

Never again.

...Until next time.

Rewinds the tape.

Watches you one more time.

And doesn’t delete the footage.

---

---

It starts with a pan.

Well — your pan.

The nice nonstick one you swore you’d keep pristine. The one he said, “Aye, love, not even I could mess that up.”

It hits the floor with a clang like a damn gong announcing the beginning of war.

“WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?”

“YOUR ELBOW, JOHNNY.”

“THAT PAN’S A DEATH TRAP!”

“YOU MEAN THE PAN YOU TRIED TO FLIP EGGS WITH—WITHOUT ANYTHING IN IT?”

Silence. Then:

“I meant tae do that!”

You peek into the kitchen. He’s standing there looking deeply offended. One sock on. Hair everywhere. Spatula clenched like a weapon.

“Oh, did you also mean to pour half the batter in the sink?”

“Ye startin’ with me, bonnie?”

You raise an eyebrow.

“Always.”

He drops the spatula.

“That’s it—insubordination!”

You shriek as he lunges.

Fast. Military-trained. Stupidly strong. You try to flee but it’s hopeless — he’s got you over his shoulder in three seconds flat, cackling like a maniac while you kick helplessly.

“PUT ME DOWN, YOU GREMLIN.”

“NOT TIL YE APOLOGIZE FOR INSULTIN’ MAH COOKIN’.”

“YOU BURNED OATMEAL, JOHNNY. OATMEAL.”

Then comes it:

THUD THUD THUD.

A firm knock-knock-knock from above — a broom handle to the ceiling.

You both freeze mid-rampage.

Your face pressed to his back.

His hand still bracing your legs.

And in perfect unison, without missing a beat:

“SORRY!!”

The building goes quiet again. Johnny gently puts you down. You both try to act normal.

Five full seconds of silence.

Then—

“I’M GONNA GET YE!”

He bolts after you again, and your laughter peals through the apartment as you nearly slip on a dishtowel trying to escape. You shriek, he roars, and somewhere upstairs poor Mr. and Mrs. McLaren are probably regretting ever renewing their lease.

---

Later, breathless and tangled on the couch, you share the sad, mangled pancakes he tried to save. He’s got flour on his jaw. Your shirt’s inside-out. The pan is suspiciously dented.

He looks at you like you hung the moon.

“Worth the noise complaint.”

“We’re gonna get evicted.”

“Then I’ll build us a soundproof cabin.”

“You can’t even fix a pan.”

“Details.”

You clink forks and dig in.

Because chaos aside —

there’s nowhere else in the world you’d rather be than too loud, too happy, too in love… in the kitchen with him.

---end---

🧬 1. [Observation]

It begins, as most things do with Wesker, in silence.

Your first day on the team, you barely warranted a glance in the surveillance feed.

Another lab technician. Another replaceable assistant. Another insignificant moving part.

But then you lingered.

Stayed late. Came early.

Read the case files beyond your clearance level and didn’t flinch at the corpses.

You passed the first test.

Not that you knew there was one.

You thought it was coincidence that no one sat beside you in meetings.

That your access card opened doors you never requested.

That the intern who made a joke about your smile was transferred within the hour.

It wasn’t coincidence.

It was calibration.

He was isolating the variables.

And you, you became an anomaly worth noting.

He began compiling minor reports on your behavior, tucked into encrypted files labeled with meaningless acronyms—justifications for your existence in his system. He logged your arrival times, the hesitation in your speech, the way you handled scalpel trays with a certain… reverence. Clinical on the outside, but with the sharpness of someone who wanted to understand.

You weren’t like the others—those limp, nodding bureaucrats or ambition-hollowed researchers. You read between lines. You saw things. You didn’t ask for approval.

It should’ve been threatening.

But instead, it was fascinating.

---

🧬 2. [Containment]

Wesker doesn’t trust easily.

He trusts data.

Outcomes.

Silence.

But you unsettled the metrics.

You moved differently. You saw things. You questioned protocols he didn’t authorize you to read.

And he watched.

The way your fingers hovered over a scalpel you didn’t need to touch.

The way your reflection lingered in the biohazard glass.

The way your laugh, rare as it was, made low-ranking guards look up.

So he changed the guards.

Restricted hallway access.

Reassigned co-workers.

Built your world to orbit only him.

And still—still you never noticed.

Not when your new desk faced his office.

Not when your login synced with his terminal.

Not when your lunch orders began arriving, already paid.

You thought it was protocol. Efficiency. Company structure.

It wasn’t.

It was obsession.

Even your chair was adjusted—replaced with one designed to support your back based on posture data from security footage. Your lighting changed imperceptibly across weeks, tailored to prevent eye strain and keep you awake longer, sharper.

He scheduled briefings when you were most alert.

Redirected minor crises to ensure you'd report directly to him.

He watched the way you blinked when you were confused.

Memorized the twitch of your mouth when you were about to ask something risky.

Your coworkers left one by one. Transferred. Fired. Reassigned.

Those who got too familiar? Disciplined. Quietly.

You didn’t wonder why your inbox felt so clean.

Why no one interrupted your concentration anymore.

Why the company started feeling like a corridor, narrowing around you.

---

🧬 3. [Degradation]

It got worse.

Or—closer to the truth.

He found himself pausing the security feed just to watch the curve of your spine as you bent over notes.

He rewound your voice recordings, cataloguing the inflections in your “Good morning, sir.”

He deleted the word sir from your tongue in his mind.

He didn’t want your respect.

He wanted your obedience.

Your trust.

Your presence, constant and unrelenting.

You belonged in his space, like air belonged in lungs.

He just hadn't told you yet.

Sometimes, you left behind small things—sticky notes, paperclips, coffee cups. Harmless. Forgettable. But he kept them all.

The mug with a faint mark of your lip balm.

The pen you once clicked while reading virology samples.

A typed memo, crumpled, with a single word scratched out and replaced. "Necessary."

He examined them not with sentiment but calculation.

These were not keepsakes.

These were proofs of proximity.

You were slipping under his skin molecule by molecule, and he needed evidence of your presence in his domain.

But there were moments—dangerous ones—when calculation gave way to something darker.

Moments when you reached for a dropped stylus beneath the lab table and the hem of your coat pulled taut across your thighs.

Moments when you tilted your head to read something over a microscope and exposed the soft column of your neck.

Moments when the feed from the surveillance cameras caught just enough.

He knew every angle of your body from security footage.

The way your blouse sometimes gaped slightly when you leaned forward.

The way you stretched without thinking, unaware of how it framed you.

Unaware of the man watching—memorizing.

It was a weakness.

A flaw in his design.

But sometimes he would watch the footage at half-speed, eyes burning, jaw clenched, and tell himself it was for behavioral monitoring.

That the brief tightening in his chest wasn’t arousal, but concern.

And yet—when you bent to pick up a file one night, alone, late, and the back of your skirt lifted just slightly—

—his fingers had twitched.

Not from irritation.

From restraint.

From the raw, silent thought that he could take you. Right there.

Not in fantasy. Not in dream. But in brutal, clinical, breathtaking reality.

He could fuck you against the sterile counter and no one would stop him.

No one would even know.

But he didn’t.

Of course he didn’t.

He was control. Discipline.

He filed the footage.

Encrypted it.

And watched it again the next night.

Hands behind his back.

Jaw locked.

Throat tight with the sick, hungry coil of desire he refused to name.

You didn’t know.

Didn’t see.

Didn’t feel the weight of a man who no longer saw you as a subordinate or asset—

—but as something already his, simply awaiting the correct time to be claimed.

---

🧬 4. [Denial]

You never caught it, but he looked away first.

Every time.

Every instance your gaze met his, however briefly.

You assumed it was deference. Coldness. That clinical thing he wore like a second skin.

But it wasn’t.

It was containment.

Because the sound of your voice—the precise cadence in which you said “Understood, Doctor Wesker”—lit up some dormant, vile thing in him.

Something untested.

Something monstrous.

He was not above temptation.

He was simply better at dissecting it.

The way you smiled at your coworkers, never at him?

He noticed.

The way you stood just a fraction closer when anxious, fingers tightening at your sides?

He filed it away.

He let others believe you were isolated by accident.

But he'd engineered that loneliness. Curated it.

Suffocated anything that threatened to pull your attention elsewhere.

You never got that offer for project co-lead.

Never received the anonymous gifts left at your desk by interns.

Because Albert intercepted them.

Silently. Strategically.

You didn’t know it was his hand pulling you toward him, only that every direction seemed to fold inward until he was the only constant.

The only man who saw you.

Who understood you.

He watched you trace your notes, watched your lips form silent syllables, and all the while he denied himself.

Denied the heat pooling in his abdomen.

Denied the cruel ache behind every “Goodnight, sir” you uttered.

Denied the nightly compulsion to run simulations of what you would sound like begging.

And when he couldn't sleep, he listened to your voice on the lab’s intercom archive.

Just to hear it.

To pretend.

To substitute control for contact.

And still—he told himself he had not crossed the line.

Not yet.

Because you were still untouched.

Still pure, in the way only someone unaware of their ownership could be.

---

🧬 5. [Possession]

He began to see it in everything.

The way others looked at you—a threat.

The way you spoke about your family—a liability.

The way you said “thank you” when he passed you reports—intolerable.

You didn’t thank him.

You didn’t understand him.

You couldn’t.

But that was fine.

Understanding would come later.

He started curating your tasks more delicately.

Steered you away from field ops, too dangerous.

Assigned you exclusively to him, citing “performance optimization.”

You didn’t protest.

You thought you were being promoted.

But in truth, you were being drawn in.

Woven tighter.

Placed carefully, perfectly, exactly where he wanted you.

In his office.

In his world.

In his reach.

Your name was embedded in his daily reports. Your security log-in pinged his terminal every time you swiped a door.

The other researchers stopped referencing your work without Wesker’s express permission. He had erased your reputation as independent—you were his now.

And no one questioned it.

Not when his gaze burned through the glass walls of the lab.

Not when he stood beside you in meetings like a shadow wearing a tailored suit.

Not when his hand briefly brushed yours while reviewing samples, and he didn’t pull away.

He didn’t need to pull away.

He had already claimed what he wanted.

---

Now, his fingerprints existed on more than your reports.

He’d rewritten your schedule to end near his. Aligned your meals. Synced your lab hours. Even your breaks were subtly shifted, your elevator stops timed perfectly with his descent.

You didn’t see it.

But he did.

Every day you returned to your workspace slightly adjusted—your chair moved back in, your pens restocked, your personal mug rotated exactly one degree counter-clockwise.

“We’re optimizing,” he’d say.

“For your convenience.”

He'd begun accompanying you to biometric checks. At first, a coincidence. The second time, an excuse. By the third, he was inputting your medical logs himself.

His voice was always calm. Always formal. Always patient.

But his gaze lingered.

His presence loomed.

And his hands—always gloved—brushed against the small of your back far too often for protocol.

---

And he watched.

From behind glass. From dark monitors. From still frames and slow replays. When your blouse sat a little too low. When your eyes wandered where they shouldn’t.

You were careless with your innocence.

But he would be careful for you.

He adjusted the brightness of the surveillance feed. Zoomed in. Studied the way you leaned too close to your keyboard.

Imagined your breath fogging the screen.

Imagined how easily that breath could hitch. Could falter. Could beg.

You have no idea, he thought.

But you will.

Not yet.

But soon.

Understanding would come later.

---

🧬 6. [Infection]

The final stage was the most dangerous.

You said his name once.

Not “sir.”

Not “Wesker.”

Just:

“Albert…?”

His gaze snaps up from the report.

You’re standing in the doorway of his office, the heel of one shoe slightly kicked back, as if you weren’t sure whether to enter. The folder in your hand trembles slightly—an involuntary twitch you don’t even notice. But he does.

He notices everything.

The breath that stutters in your throat after the name escapes.

The flicker of hesitation in your pupils when his expression doesn’t immediately soften.

The way you shift—defensive, unsure—before you correct yourself:

“I mean—sir. Sorry, I meant—sir.”

But it’s already too late.

The damage is done.

You spoke it aloud.

Not in passing.

Not as a slip of protocol.

Not with bitterness or irony.

But with concern.

Soft. Tentative. Almost gentle.

And that… that is what undoes him.

You don’t know he has a file buried six levels deep into a server no one else can access—labeled with your name, storing every image of you captured on internal footage.

You don’t know he’s wiped out four internal transfer requests that would have pulled you from his floor.

You don’t know he personally selects your meals for team events—ensuring your preferences are always met, even when no one else notices.

You don’t know he’s kept you here, orbiting him, perfectly placed, under the illusion of promotion.

And now you’ve said his name like it belongs to you.

Like he does.

“Sir,” you try again, a nervous laugh escaping you. “Apologies. I—I didn’t mean—”

He stands slowly, measured, the desk separating you like a fragile boundary he’s had to respect for far too long.

“No need to apologize,” he says coolly. “You simply… surprised me.”

But inside? His thoughts are nothing but static.

He replays the syllables.

Not just the sound, but the shape of your mouth when you said it.

He files it into memory. Deep. Permanent.

And he knows—sooner than even you do—that this is the beginning of the end for the illusion.

Because from this moment on, you’ve stopped being a project.

Stopped being a subject.

You’ve become a trigger.

A fixation.

An opening he hadn’t anticipated—but cannot ignore.

You said his name once.

You won’t realize until it’s far too late:

You’ll never say it the same way again.

Because you didn’t know what you’d done.

You didn’t hear it the way he did.

Like it was already yours to say.

Like he wasn’t a god.

Like he was a man.

A man who had already rewritten every security protocol to keep you near.

A man who eliminated colleagues who made you uncomfortable.

A man who—if you ever truly looked—might shatter the illusion of “normal” with one cold sentence:

“You’re not here by accident.”

“You’re here because I designed you to be.”

But you don’t know.

You smile politely.

You offer your reports.

You drink the coffee that arrives on your desk precisely how you like it.

You go home.

You live your life.

While he rewatches your day in full.

While he listens to your voicemails and deletes names from your inbox.

While he studies you like you’re the last unexplained miracle on Earth.

While he reminds himself that love is irrelevant.

Control is what matters.

And he already has it.

---

He’d timed every entry and exit.

He knew how long you took in the restroom.

Which hallway you paused in to check your phone.

What time of day your voice grew tired.

He saw it as clearly as he saw cell degradation under a microscope.

That slow unraveling.

That quiet compliance.

You were adapting.

Your posture had shifted. Subtly. You walked faster when alone. Slower when near him. You dressed differently—more reserved, perhaps without realizing. You avoided eye contact with male superiors.

Wesker approved.

He didn’t speak of it.

Didn’t need to.

The conditioning was holding.

You had stopped asking questions.

Stopped challenging schedules.

Stopped requesting to work from other wings.

You had folded into the environment he designed—one where he was a constant hum beneath your daily routine. Where his name lingered at the back of your tongue. Where his voice set your pace and his silence set your nerves.

---

“You don’t know what you’ve done,” he muttered to himself, watching the security footage replay. While he studies you like you’re the last unexplained miracle on Earth.

There you were again. That exact moment. Your eyes soft, confused, lips parted: Albert…?

He paused the video.

Leaned back.

Let the sound echo in the sterile quiet of his office.

It was not an accident.

Not some sweet slip of tongue.

No.

It was the infection taking root.

Your body catching up to what your environment had long accepted.

Dependence.

Deference.

Attachment.

He could work with that.

Love was messy. Emotional.

But dependence—he could mold.

He could reinforce it, reward it, create just enough tension to keep you needing his approval.

To keep you needing him.

---

---

It starts innocently.

A hum while making tea. A few notes while folding laundry.

Then slowly — like a musical crescendo straight from hell — it spirals.

Johnny walks into the living room. You’re wiping down the TV stand and belting like you’re auditioning for a stadium tour.

“And I—ee-III will always love—”

“Christ on a bike—” he flinches, nearly drops his drink. “Woman, it's Tuesday morning! Ye tryin’ tae summon spirits?”

You pause, hand on your hip.

“You got a problem with Whitney?"

“Nae! Just didn’t know ye were Whitney!”

But you’re already spinning dramatically toward the hallway.

“Guess you’ll never know what it’s like to love somebodyyyyy the way I—”

“Baby, please,” he begs, laughing, holding his temples. “The dog’s hidin’ under the couch. Again.”

---

He finds you standing on the bed one afternoon, doing vocal trills at full volume. Curtains open. Neighbors listening. Absolutely no shame.

“You’ll never find—”

“Privacy ever again, apparently,” Johnny mutters, clutching the doorframe like he’s seen war (which he has, but somehow this is worse).

“I need to warm up,” you argue, offended. “You wouldn’t understand.”

“I served three tours and somehow this is what broke me.”

---

He Tries to Compete Once (And Fails)

One night you’re singing Mariah in the kitchen — completely unbothered, one sock on, spatula in hand.

Johnny storms in with a mop like a mic.

“ALL BY MYSEEEEELF—”

You pause.

He hits a shaky high note.

“—DON’T WANNA BE—”

You blink.

He wheezes.

“—ALL BY MYSEEÆE—oh shite—”

“Did you just pull something trying to out-sing me?”

“I’ve made a grave tactical error, aye.”

---

But One Night…

It’s late.

You're soft-singing in the kitchen, voice low and tired, wiping the counter. Something about heartbreak. Something about missing someone you love.

Johnny leans in the doorway, arms folded.

He doesn’t interrupt this time.

Just listens.

Then when you stop, he walks over, wraps his arms around you from behind.

“Ye’ve got a voice like honey,” he murmurs, resting his chin on your shoulder.

You blink.

“Didn’t you call me a ‘screechin’ banshee’ this morning?”

“Aye, but ye’re my banshee.”

“Romantic.”

“Unbearably.”

---end---

---

You knew he was in there.

The water was on, steam pouring under the door, and so was his voice—muffled through the walls, singing the chorus of some god-awful Scottish punk band like he was performing at a pub.

You don’t knock. You just open the door, towel around your shoulders, teeth sinking into a grin.

He’s behind the curtain, but his silhouette’s crystal clear—broad, casual, swaying like he’s got the whole world in there with him. There’s a glint on the sink.

His ring.

Still not used to that, are you?

You pick it up, thumb over the inside engraving. You were both a little drunk when you decided to do those—yours says "worth the war", his says "you were always home."

“You always this loud in the shower, or is this what I signed up for legally?”

He yells through the water, delighted:

“You love it, admit it!”

“I’m filing an annulment."

“You won’t,” he says, and then pulls the curtain back just enough—wet hair plastered to his forehead, water dripping off his lashes, eyes bright like the first time he saw you in white.

“Because now you’re stuck with me, Mrs. MacTavish.”

You smirk. “Damn. Forgot.”

He leans one forearm on the edge of the tub, eyes shamelessly tracking the towel on your shoulders.

“You in here to complain or join me?”

“I came for your ring,” you lie. “You keep leaving it on the sink like you’re not crazy about me.”

“I am crazy about you,” he says, almost too fast, too raw. Then he grins, covers it up with that roguish confidence.

“But you already know that, bonnie. Otherwise I wouldn’t’ve married you before I had the decency to make a proper mess of your last name.”

You toss the ring at him. He catches it like he’s done it a hundred times, and turns it over in his fingers.

“Still fits,” he says, voice softer now.

“It should,” you reply. “I sized it while you were unconscious.”

He stares at you—wet, warm, flushed from the steam—and just beams.

“Jesus Christ, I love you.”

You grin. “I know.”

--- end ---

---

Braeriach Hall, Scottish Highlands — Winter 1883

The cold had been creeping in for weeks now. Frost dusted the hedges and glazed the yew trees lining the path like fragile lace, thin and still. Snow had fallen each day, Blanketing the grounds in a soft hush. It clung to branches like breath held too long. No carriages passed the gates. No birds sang from the roof. The Hall itself seemed to breathe slower, as though holding something in.

You had stepped out once already, drawn by the strange quiet of it. Everything about Braeriach felt stiller than usual. As if it, too, were waiting for something.

---

She came just before dusk.

A dark figure beneath a slate-grey sky, cloak pulled close, hair damp with snowmelt. She did not knock. She didn’t glance at the house. She moved through the old iron gate of the back grounds with the focus of someone who had walked this path a thousand times in her head.

She made her way toward the private graveyard behind the trees, past the wind-worn statues and the broken stone wall half-sunk in moss. Few came here. Fewer still knew how to find it. But she did.

The Hall’s graveyard was old—older than its newest inhabitants. It lay tucked beyond the walled gardens and the overgrown orchard, nearly swallowed by pines. There was no lock on the gate. Only silence. The sort of place people in the village didn’t talk about, not because they feared it, but because grief was something you let lie still.

She knelt at one headstone, fingers curled around a letter. Her boots left no sound on the snow. Her breath shook once and then stilled, as though the cold had caught her in the middle of a word.

She held the letter there for a long time.

Then she set it down—flat against the name etched into the stone. A letter never sent. The ink had smudged at the edge from where her thumb had held it too tightly.

She didn’t speak. Not to the stone. Not to the sky. But her eyes stayed locked on the name.

**Elias.**

And then she left.

---

John had seen her.

Not from far—but from the second-floor stairwell, half-shadowed behind the frost-glass window where he often stood when the wind howled too sharp and silence pressed too close. A habit formed not out of longing, but out of the need to feel something still moved beyond the walls of Braeriach.

She had come without ceremony.

A solitary figure descending through the snow-laced garden, her coat nearly swallowed by the slow drift that had been falling for weeks. Her steps left a trail behind her. Brief, shallow impressions that the wind soon began to cover. She walked with the caution of someone who had not returned in years. Or perhaps, someone who had never come at all until now.

He watched her stop at the grave beneath the twisted yew, where the stone Elias had been buried under leaned just slightly east. He could see her shoulders stiffen, see the wind pull at the hem of her skirts. She stood as though weighed down by something invisible, grief, maybe. Or guilt.

She stood there too long for it to be anything casual.

Didn’t look at the Hall once.

Didn’t notice him.

But he noticed her, not for her face, which the weather and frost-glass concealed—but for the way she moved. Like a widow without the name. Like someone who had been waiting to bury something that had no corpse. A silence had followed her in, and it filled the garden like smoke.

John didn’t move. Didn’t breathe for a while.

The wind rattled the pane. Beneath his fingertips, the glass felt thinner than before.

He thought of Elias. Of the ring still wrapped in cloth in his coat pocket. The name the boy had muttered in his final hours—half delirious, half determined. A name John had never spoken aloud, because it had not been his to carry.

And yet, he was the one left with it.

He wasn’t sure what stirred in his chest then. It wasn’t guilt, exactly. Not mourning, either. But something old. Something he had kept quiet for too long.

The woman turned then, slowly, as if she could sense the weight of memory thick in the air.

She did not see him.

But Braeriach had.

And the Hall, long haunted by the unspoken, stirred.

---

The heavy door groaned open behind John, a sudden sound in the quiet hall. He turned, startled to see a tall figure standing framed in the shadowed doorway.

Mr. Blackwood. The mysterious, long-time steward and caretaker of Braeriach Hall — a quiet, imposing man who has lived on the estate longer than almost anyone alive remembers. He is not just an employee, but someone deeply entwined with the Hall’s legacy, its ghosts, and its forgotten promises. He answers only to the absent landowners and maybe not even them anymore.

He tends to the unseen parts of the Hall.

The Hall is vast, ancient, and crumbling. But not just physically. Blackwood spends time in parts no one visits — locked wings, sealed libraries, the graveyard, the oldest servants’ quarters. He doesn’t just clean; he preserves. He's the last line between memory and rot.

His presence filled the space like the chill that lingered after a storm, steady and inevitable.

He stepped inside, eyes sharp but patient, as if he’d been waiting years to see this moment.

His gaze settled on John, not with accusation but with the quiet certainty of someone who knows too much.

“She comes late,” he said softly, voice low, threading through the stillness like smoke. “But the dead don’t mind waiting.”

There was no judgment in his tone — only the weight of years folded into a single sentence.

He moved with deliberate grace, fingers briefly brushing the edge of a nearby table, grounding himself.

“I’ve watched this place long enough,” he added. “And the secrets buried here won’t stay silent forever.”

His eyes held John's, steady and unyielding.

In that instant, he felt the gravity of Braeriach settle over him like a shroud — and the true story was only just beginning.

---

The next morning, the letter was gone.

And far beneath the trees, in the still hush of frost and snow, John MacTavish walked back alone—pocketing a folded letter against his chest, its seal long broken. He hadn't read it. Not yet.

But he would.

---

Braeriach Hall — Early Winter 1883

The first snow had only just begun to fall.

It arrived not with drama, but with a hush—as if the sky had run out of words. The hills wore a thin veil of white, dusting the hedges and roofs in silence. You had noticed it at breakfast, gathering in the corners of the windows. The frost had crept in overnight, threading itself through the windowpanes like veins. But today was the first time the flakes truly fell.

John’s footsteps had become familiar now. Not loud—never that—but measured. You heard them in the corridor outside the infirmary each morning, pausing briefly like he forgot something. Then again at supper, when he sat at the end of the long dining table with that same quiet grimness, eyes down, food barely touched.

He didn’t speak unless prompted. And when he did, it was clipped, Scottish, and sanded down with fatigue. But you noticed the way he softened slightly when he passed the window that overlooked the back gardens, the way his shoulder brushed the sill like it meant something.

You found him there one morning, leaning on the frost-glass frame, hands tucked into his pockets, brow furrowed.

“I thought you’d still be asleep,” you said gently.

“Couldn’t.” His eyes didn’t leave the horizon. “Not with the way the wind’s been crying.”

You stepped closer. He didn’t move.

“What are you looking for out there?”

He exhaled slowly, and the sound clouded the glass.

“Not sure,” he murmured. “But I keep hoping I’ll find it.”

There were days when you tended the graves behind the Hall, your brother’s among them. You brushed snow from the headstone, fingers numb. John passed once and paused. Said nothing, but crouched nearby and began clearing another grave’s edge, knuckles red with cold. You didn’t ask him to. He didn’t ask why you sat there so long.

Later, in the hallway, he offered something gruff and short:

“If you ever want help clearing them… I don’t mind.”

You nodded once. “Thank you.”

Neither of you mentioned it again.

The chapel had long since caved in on one side, ivy crawling through the broken stained glass and a draft howling through the rafters. You passed it often on your walks. Once, you found John inside.

He was fixing a beam.

Or trying to. The hammer was old and the nail bent sideways, but he was frowning with such fierce concentration you didn’t interrupt him.

“Reckon it’ll collapse by spring,” he muttered when he noticed you behind him.

“You believe in salvaging things?” you asked.

“Only the ones that want savin’.”

He glanced at you after he said it. Just for a moment.

Then he coughed—soft and sudden, like a breath gone wrong. He waved it off. “Dust.”

But you looked anyway. No blood. No petals. Just a man tired in his bones.

At meals, he sat closer now. Not beside you, but nearer. Enough that you could hear the scrape of his fork, the way he muttered to himself sometimes in Gaelic when the firewood refused to catch in the hearth.

You lent him your lighter once.

He didn’t return it for a week.

“I forgot I had it,” he said, placing it back in your hand. His fingers brushed yours. Cold.

“Or you didn’t want to give it back,” you offered.

He didn’t answer. But something flickered behind his eyes. A different kind of silence.

You started keeping a journal again. Most pages were about Elias. Some were about the Hall. A few—more than you expected—were about John.

"I found him in the garden again, staring at nothing, like the earth might answer back."

"He fixed the chapel window today. Said nothing. But I think it meant something to him."

"He’s been coughing. Not much. But it’s always at night."

And beneath those entries, some days—when the weather held you too still—you found yourself drifting back to moments with Elias:

A game of tag through the apple grove near your childhood home. Elias had always cheated. Climbing trees was his preferred tactic, and you always swore you’d never forgive him for it.

“You’re not a squirrel,” you had shouted up.

“And you’re too slow,” he’d laughed down.

A torn page from your diary you once found burned at the edges. When confronted, he claimed it was a security measure: “You write too many secrets for your own good.”

The time he stole your locket and replaced the photo inside with a charcoal sketch of a frog.

“You said you liked amphibians,” he grinned.

He had been your constant, irritating shadow. And your best friend.

But then there were the quiet moments. When your parents fought behind closed doors and you’d crawl into Elias’s room just to sit on the floor and breathe near someone who didn’t ask questions.

He never told you to leave. He just handed you one of his blankets, feet propped up on the desk, pretending to read something important.

“I’ll kill anyone who hurts you,” he said once. Out of nowhere. Calm, like he meant it.

You’d scoffed. “You’re five-foot-eight.”

“I’ll use a chair,” he’d muttered.

That was Elias.

Brave, stupid, loyal to the bone.

And now he was just a name on a stone behind the Hall. Just a memory pressed between the pages of your journal.

You didn’t write the worst parts. Like how you still expected him to walk through the door and tell you this was all a joke. That the war hadn’t taken him. That he’d just gotten lost on his way home.

---

One evening, you passed by the drawing room and saw John seated near the fireplace, an old rifle laid across his lap. The violet-sky dusk caught the hollow of his cheek, the curve of his brow. There was something delicate in that moment, but not fragile, like a man who had finally stopped bracing for war, even if just for a minute.

“Can’t sleep again?” you asked softly from the doorway.

He looked over his shoulder. “You write late.”

“So do you pace.”

He grunted, something almost like amusement. “You always this nosy?”

“Only with the difficult ones.”

He didn’t smile. Not right away. But his hand stilled on the cloth he was using to polish the stock, and after a pause, one corner of his mouth curved—just slightly. As if the idea of being called difficult amused him more than he was willing to admit. It wasn’t a full smile. Not the kind that showed teeth or lit up a room. But it was something.

The first flicker of warmth after a long, hard winter.

He smiled. For the first time in a long time and it looked like it surprised even him. Like his face had nearly forgotten how. The fire caught the edge of it, painting his expression in gold, and for a heartbeat, the war was far behind him.

“Must be why you keep hangin’ around,” he muttered, voice low, almost fond.

And then came the cough. Again. Quiet. Dry. But enough to draw your attention.

“You alright?”

He nodded quickly. “Old wound. Desert dust gets in your lungs and never quite leaves.”

You said nothing. But you thought of Elias. Of the violets.

He coughed again. And this time, you looked at his sleeve.

Still nothing. Just dust.

Outside, the snow kept falling. The Hall creaked. Shadows moved in long shapes along the halls.

In your notes that night, you wrote:

“Something’s changing. Not in him. In the air around him. Like the house knows he’s not just another soldier.”

“He’s growing warmer. I feel like I know him more.”

But that night, long after the fire died, you passed by the drawing room again—just once—and saw him staring at the violet stems on the mantelpiece. Still. Eyes unreadable. As though something inside him had begun to remember what it meant to ache.

---

Afghanistan, 1879.

He was twenty-two when they sent him to the Khyber Pass. Barely out of boyhood. Still smelled of steel polish and boot oil and ambition.

The pass was narrow, carved sharp into the snowy mountains like a scar. They were three men left.

The others? Swallowed by frost. Or lead. Or silence.

His Lieutenant bled out on a bed of shale and pine, eyes wide, mouth frozen open in a scream the snow kept. His blood turned black in the cold.

They buried him with their own bare hands. And when night came, they didn’t speak.

They only listened. To the wind. To the wolves. To the coughing—his—that started soft.

He sometimes wondered if that cough ever really stopped.

Even now, years later, the air in his lungs sometimes felt heavier than it should. Like he’d never fully left that mountain pass behind. Like something had settled there, tucked into the corners of his ribs, waiting.

---

Braeriach Hall. Scotland, 1883.

You asked him about your brother again.

“Did you serve with Corporal Elias?”

You didn’t look at him when you said it. Voice steady, hands folded. But your eyes didn’t match.

He remembers the name. Of course he does. He remembers the shape of Elias’s shadow on patrol. The way he held his rifle too tight. A quiet steadiness in him.

But even now, some of it’s faded at the edges, blurred not from lack of care, but from too much time spent trying not to think about it. What he remembers, he remembers hard.

“Aye,” he spoke without meeting your gaze. “He was one of the good ones.”

You nodded once, as if it hurt to move more than that.

“He wrote letters. He stopped signing them in ‘79.”

Your voice cracked a little then, like a candle flickering. You hid it quick. He respected that.

“I carried him once,” he said. “Off the ridge. His right leg was torn off. Would’ve left him, but…” he paused. “Didn’t feel right.”

He doesn’t mention how he couldn’t remember which ridge. Just that it was steep, and the wind cut sideways through the rocks. Some things blur. Others stay sharp as knives.

“What happened to him?”

Your question sat between the both of you like a knife.

He didn’t know how to answer it. Not without lying. Not without telling the truth he didn’t yet understand himself.

“I dunno,” he said quietly. “He was sick near the end. Coughing. Couldn’t breathe.”

“Was it… petals?” you whispered.

He looked at you then. Full on.

“What?”

“Never mind.” You rose too quickly. “Thank you.”

John had carried the man on his back until his spine nearly broke. The way he’d pressed something in his hand that night in desperation like it meant something. A button? A token? A clover?

No.

It was a ring.

Delicate. Silver. Fitted for a woman’s hand. Its band had been rubbed thin at the edges, as if it had been turned between nervous fingers too many times. There was a tiny engraving inside he could never bring himself to read. Meant for a girl whose name he’d murmured into the dirt like a prayer.

He hadn’t known what it was at first. Only that Elias pushed it into his palm with shaking fingers and whispered, “Keep it. Please.”

John never gave it away. He didn’t wear it. He didn’t throw it out. He just kept it. Wrapped in a worn scrap of cloth, tucked into the corner of his old coat. He told himself it wasn’t his to lose.

He kept seeing Elias, then. The blood. The shaking. The scent of something sweet he didn’t understand. The surgeon had said it was fever. Said it was rot. But he knew better. That sweetness was wrong. It clung to everything.

He coughed blood and purple petals onto his collarbone.

He didn’t sleep for two days.

He could still smell it sometimes when he woke up gasping.

Elias died whispering the name of a girl he never kissed. Never held. For he couldn't bring himself to.

Elias was barely a man when death took him.

He didn’t know the sickness had touched him too.

Not until he met you.

But even then, he didn’t know.

---

You started showing up more. Always quiet. Always careful.

You asked about the war. About Kandahar. About the dead. You didn’t flinch when he told you things that should’ve sent you running. You just listened.

He noticed that. Noticed your stillness. The way you left space in a room rather than filled it. You always left the door open when you left.

Once, you brought him tea. Hands trembling just a little.

“You look worse than yesterday,” you said.

“Cheers,” he muttered.

“You dream loudly.”

“I don’t dream.”

“Then it’s a loud silence.”

He didn’t respond. Just watched the steam curl from the mug, pretending not to feel the way his chest tightened.

But later, when the night came and the fire died low, He sat in the old armchair near the fire, though the flames had long since burned to embers. One leg rested over the other, arms slack at his sides—not relaxed, but resigned.

He remembered the sound of boots in the dark. Of breathing that wasn’t his. Of screams that ended too soon and others that didn’t end at all.

They hadn’t marched off like heroes. Just sons. Brothers. Lovers. Some barely shaving, some already kissed by silver at the temples. They left behind rooms still warm, half-mended shirts, mothers gripping the doorframe as if bracing for a storm. A few smiled as they waved, smiles stretched too tight, like the goodbye had caught in their throats. And those left behind waited. For letters. For footsteps on the path. For anything. But the war was greedy. It didn’t care for promises or prayers. It swallowed men whole, and returned only silence to the ones who loved them.

There were things he couldn’t name, not because he had forgotten, but because there were no words for what the war had done to them. What it had taken. What it had left behind.

The Anglo-Afghan War had been painted in the colours of empire. Glory, conquest, dominion. But to John, it had always been something colder, something lonelier. In the choking dust of Kabul’s outskirts and the narrow, blood-slick passes of the Khyber, he learned that no one truly won in war. The men they called enemies bled the same, cried out in the same tongue of agony, clutched the same tokens of home beneath their coats. Most weren’t fighting for a cause; they were fighting because they had to, because survival is louder than loyalty, and fear speaks in every language. Victory, he had come to understand, was just another word for who lived to bury the dead.

---

The road to Braeriach Hall was long and graveled with silence. Even the carriage wheels hesitated on the stones, as though the land itself wished to swallow the past and all who wandered into it.

The mist did not lift for miles.

It clung to the hills like memory, low, cold, and relentless. Heather grew thick along the roadside, the purple heads bowed with dew and decay. You had read somewhere that heather meant protection, but here it looked more like mourning.

You arrived with a letter. Folded in black wax, marked with a military crest you recognized too well.

Your brother’s name had been on it. Corporal Elias [insert surname], deceased—1879.

Second Anglo-Afghan War. His body returned, but not whole. And not all of him had made it back. Strangely enough, his lungs were filled with blooms of sweet violets that seemingly grew inside his lungs. The roots thrived in the tissues of his bronchus. From there it stemmed all the way up and housed the flowers to his oral and nasal cavity. You saw it yourself.

The military offered no explanation beyond “honorable death.” No apology. No real answers.

Only this: A place where the broken were sent. A place where something had gone wrong.

Braeriach Hall.

Braeriach Hall did not rise. It hovered, watching. Stone-dark and shrouded by moss and memory, it loomed through the trees like a secret remembered too late. The light never quite touched its corners; instead, it clung to the heavy eaves and watchful windows as if afraid to trespass.

The Hall had the shape of a fortress, but none of the warmth of safety. It was a place built to endure. Not to welcome. Ivy curled against the walls like veins beneath tired skin. The upper windows were narrow and silent, as though the building itself held its breath.

You could look upon it for hours and still not be certain if it had ever been truly alive.

They needed staff. But you weren't just here to serve tea or fluff pillows.

You came with questions buried beneath your skirts and grief sewn into every hem.

---

The Hall rose from the moor like a wound stitched into the hills, gray stone darkened by rain, slate roof veined with moss. Windows like watchful eyes. No warmth. No music. Just wind, and rot, and secrets.

They said it was a sanatorium now. A convalescent home for veterans.

But whispers lingered. Strange tales muttered behind locked doors. Of men whose lungs failed in bloom. Of fevered nights and breath laced with petals. Not wounds of flesh, they said, but something far crueler. Quiet. Hidden. And growing.

You didn’t believe it. Not at first.

---

They told you his name before you saw him: Sergeant John MacTavish. Twenty-six. Highland-born. Decorated. Damned.

He’d been in the same battalion as your brother. Fought in the same frostbitten hell.

The letter didn’t say that, but you found his name scribbled beside Elias’s in a report stamped “Confidential” and left unsupervised.

That’s how you knew. And that’s why you asked to care for him.

---

You found him in the west wing.

Alone.

His hands were wrapped in linen, knuckles bruised from old fights or new nightmares. His hair was dark and unkempt, and he sat too still for someone awake. The window cast his face in silver and shadow, cheekbones drawn sharp, eyes heavy with storms you dared not name.

He didn’t look at you.

Didn’t need to.

Pain hung around him like incense.

---

You sat across from him. Not close. Not distant. He did not speak.

Neither did you.

But in the silence, you thought of Elias. Of the way he’d whispered in his sleep before they took him. Of the petals you found on his pillow before he was sent for war. Lavender. Violet. Rose.

After his death, the doctors said it was infection. That war does strange things to a man’s lungs.

But you had watched him bleed color. And you knew better.

You were not here to save Sergeant MacTavish. You were here to watch. To gather whatever the doctors missed or refused to name. You didn’t know what ailed him, not yet. He was silent, whole, and breathing. But so was Elias once. And if something unspeakable had begun to bloom in his lungs too, you would be there when the first petal fell.

And maybe. Maybe, he wouldn't suffer the same fate as Elias.

---

He exhaled. A ragged, too-human sound. And though he didn’t look at you, you felt something shift.

Recognition. Resentment. Or ruin—you couldn’t say.

But you stayed.

Not because you were brave. Not because you were kind.