find beauty in what bleeds

-

[SCENE SELECTION]

The night sky drinks from the sun until it’s finally dark out. You watch the moon burn in the sky, feel the feeble stretch of her fingers down to Earth and into your bedroom window.

It’s a weeknight and you should be asleep, but you find yourself awake, unwilling to sleep to prolong tomorrow from happening. You don’t wander the hall, just in case any of the creaky floorboards screech and wake up your parents.

Instead you sit on your window seat, feel the chill of the night as it seeps through glass.

There is something dreamlike about your street in the middle of the night. A scene pulled out of a story book. The perfect trees that dot the street, the slight sway of a light wind in the branches. Summer has exhaled and an autumn breeze is sweeping through and it only has the slight bite of teeth.

There aren’t many street lamps, and they’re paced out enough that shadow dips in between each halo of light.

You feel the drag of sleep, tugging at you as you watch the road. A leaf falls and skates down the path, catching on the rough concrete before picking itself back up again.

All in order, the way it always has been on this street.

After a few more minutes, you decide to try sleeping again. You shift your legs, unfold yourself like a pinned butterfly, when something catches your eye.

There is a figure in the front garden across the road. You squint at it, certain that it must have been the tree, maybe another leaf falling.

So still, you almost miss it. A blanched white shape peering back at you from the ground. So still, you don’t move as you stare back at it. Broad, almost as thick as a tree trunk, a pale white face and a dark body that blends into the street. Your mind is hurtling down a motorway at breakneck speed to catch up with what your eyes are seeing.

A cold hand on the back of your neck as you realise that you are staring at someone and they are looking back at you. You dart back and into the safety of the dark of your bedroom, curl behind your curtain and peek out from around it. It’s unsettling, like a bug has crawled up the back of your neck and you’re convinced that you can still feel each of those little legs, wriggling against your skin.

Because there is a man on the street. You had assumed that the neighbours had a wider tree than you had ever noticed. It’s not, that is a wide man and an unnaturally pale face perched on his shoulders. You squint, trying to see why his face seems to catch and reflect the moonlight. You’re convinced that he can’t see you now anyway, hidden behind your curtain, only a sliver of your eye revealed to continue looking.

The certainty lessens with each moment that he doesn’t move, doesn’t shift his head in the manner that someone who has lost sight of their focus would.

It’s a mask you realise, his face, unnaturally pale, even from across the street.

Terror, crystalised. A frost in your lungs, a catch on your inhale. Diaphragm stuttering, caught on a hook.

You tilt your head to the side, as if to judge the distance to your parent’s room. Gauge how long it would take you to go and wake up someone and have them come and take a look. Maybe tell you that it isn’t a big deal and you’re imagining things.

Your head turns back to the window but the figure is gone. You stare out, unseeing, but there is no more white face peering up at you from across the street anymore.

You give a glance around, but can’t spot any other sight of him. Hover, one foot in the direction of your bedroom door as if you expect him to appear, all encompassing in your window.

You settle for harshly drawing your curtains and shifting your chair in front of the door. Huddled under your duvet like a child, believing entirely that it will protect you from any bad men who may come in.

Moonlight curls its fingers in the gap that it can sneak through, carving a shape on your floor even through your curtain. Your curtain is so thin, it couldn’t keep anything out. Tissue paper, crumpled in hand. You pull your duvet over your head. It’s much thicker and only when you can barely breathe do you feel safe enough to fall asleep.

-

You feel anxiety like a snake in your belly, gnawing on your organs as you watch the night smear across the sky. It’s relentless, dragging its cape over everything until the light is choked out. You beg it not to, but you’re ignored.

You sit on your bed, back pinched and sore, but unable to lay down. The bed is a trap, no longer a sanctuary. You’re convinced if you lie down and fall asleep that he will appear again, a masked face peering up at you from the street.

Sleep itches your eyes until hysteria almost bubbles out of your mouth and out when you peek out the window. Unable to stop yourself, you stand by the wall and peer from the back of the curtain, to prevent him from being able to spot you if he is waiting for you. Your eye - a target in the window and he’ll jump up, bullseye.

The street is empty, devoid of anything, even a breeze to stir the leaves. Everything is dying, the flowers in your garden are withering and still. The lamp light isn’t warm and familiar, but cold - dipping into the dark between each pole too eagerly. Snuffing itself out until you’re squinting just to see, eyes pinched and sore.

You scan the street and scan it again, convinced that you’re missing something.

There’s nothing, no man peeping in your window. You are a girl in your family home and everything is as normal as it always has been. Your elderly neighbours will be asleep and there is a boy across the street that will smile at you when you step out to go to work in the morning. Cookie cutter life, the same as everyone else on this street.

You go to sleep and wake up, cotton mouthed and alone, your parents having left for the day.

Everything is as it was the day before. You walk to work, and one of the girls who works there is pleased that you’re both working the same shift.

She talks about going into town during the weekend and you agree, tired and waterlogged, staring out of the window. Looking for something even as you tell yourself that you aren’t.

You go to bed that night, jittery but calmer after nothing out of the ordinary for the whole day.

You dream of a needle piercing through the back of your neck and into a sense that you didn't know that you had. You wake up, gasping, and see the man standing at the foot of your bed.

You stare, unbelieving for a moment. It’s impossible to reconcile, the masked man standing at the foot of your bed. It's the type of thing that you imagine happening when you aren’t looking, worst case scenario. Pulse up, nightmare made real.

You inhale shakily, a moment away from screaming but stopping yourself when he doesn’t move.

It’s absurd - he’s just watching you. Your room is just dark enough that you can’t even see his face in the gaps of his mask.

The silence is a weight that pushes you down, suffocating you of any basic instinct. You’re waiting for the pendulum to swing the other way, to crash down and push you into action. For his hand to come up, with a knife, an axe, a fist and harm you. Your return scream builds in your chest, waiting to erupt.

His head tilts, watching you. You swallow, the sound loud in the space between you. He seems fascinated by this, taking a step toward you but stopping when you whimper.

He’s halted, still staring at you. Your jaw trembles with the effort to stop from crying out.

His hand rests against your footboard, curling around the frame. Those are bare, you can see the knuckles beneath his skin turn pale. The creak of metal in his palm, as if he’s going to crush it.

A tear escapes and runs down your face. If he lunges for you, you’re going to piss yourself, and the shame of that has you whimpering again.

As quick as he’s appeared at the foot of your bed, he pulls back and leaves. Your bedroom door is tossed open, rattling against your wall and he disappears into the hall.

You sit, watching the doorway as if he’ll come back, having changed his mind. The knife will come up, intent pushed into you.

He doesn’t. Morning comes and your parents ask you to be a bit quieter if you’re going to get up in the night, alright?

It’s half there to confess, as if you’ve done something wrong. As if you’ve invited a weird, masked freak into your bedroom of your own volition.

You just nod and take the reprimand, eyes darting to your windows as if he’ll be there, peering in through your window to witness your early morning family scene. He’s not but you feel the pressure of his gaze regardless.

-

Things continue like this, until you don’t know what to do with yourself. He’s like a terrible secret, squirrelled away in some recess of your mind.

The man in the mask continues to appear. You’re walking to work and you swear you see him in the distance, peering around a hedge at you. After dinner, moving around your living room, you see him in your neighbour’s garden.

The worst of the appearances are the ones in your bedroom. You find yourself sleeping light, always waking up and finding him there, standing and watching you.

He’s getting closer, but something about the footboard of your bed halts him. His hand curled around it, a battle of wills that your old, rickety bed seems to win each time.

His exits are quieter at least. Footsteps lighter now, stepping into the dark hallway and seeming to vanish.

Your parents ask about that boy across the road that you’d had a crush on for years. You’d completely forgotten about him. You smile, brittle, and murmur some excuse about not having seen him around.

There’s a news segment on a killer in the local area recently, a number to report any suspicious sightings. People found dead in their homes, the old or the young. There doesn’t seem to be any connection but a police officer at a conference bids you to contact them with any tips that may help them catch this monster.

Your parents sit and fuss over it. You stare at the number until your eyes water. Your parents make you swear to let them know where you are at all times and you promise.

He’s in your room again that night. You wake up to a hand down your pyjama bottoms. You whimper, bit down on your bottom lip hard to stifle the noise even though you don’t know why.

It’s almost clinical, the mask tilted down as he studies you between your legs. He’s been dosing you up on his attention, a minute sickness, closer and closer each day until it came to fruition. Here is the headache, the cough, sickness taking hold in some vital organ of your body, and here is the man in the mask staring at your cunt like it fascinates him.

You wait for him to touch you, but he doesn't. One hand on the waist band of your pyjamas, holding them down to your mid-thigh, the other is docile, held still by his side.

This close you can hear his breathing. It’s strange to know you share the same air as him - it’s enough to knock you into silence. The monster under your bed is human.

He exhales and you feel your abdomen twitch, every muscle tense.

This close, you can see the dart of his eyes, dark, the white flashing of his eye as he looks at your face. You stare back at him, terrified.

His head drops back down between your thighs, his other hand striking out, snake in the grass. He reaches between your legs and cups your cunt whole.

Your body ricochets back with your flinch but his hand is relentless, chasing where you try to go. You whimper and his head snaps up to you and watches you again.

You feel like an experiment - all of your responses, squirrelled away somewhere for future study.

His eyes intent on your face, he isolates a finger and traces it around your hole. Your breathing stutters, halts then starts up again. His gaze drops to your chest, as if peering straight down to your lungs.

You’re not wet, but you’re not completely dry either. Certainly not wet enough when you feel how thick the tip of his finger alone is. 

He presses it forward, eyes back on your face and you whimper again as one finger pushes through. You’re ultimately the one to give in, parting and his finger is inside of you. You stifle a sob. “Why?” you ask, looking up at the hulking beast beside your bed.

He leans forward as if he wants to catch the words you’re saying as they’re breathed out. He doesn’t answer, but his dark eyes catch some of the street light from outside. A glint of something human, before it’s gone again, borrowed and returned.

He doesn’t thrust his finger in and out of you, doesn't try and cram in another one. It sits, almost idle inside of you, your cunt flexing around it, almost as nervous and skittish as you are.

Minutes pass, until you think you can’t bear it anymore, opening your mouth with a wet sound as if you need to say something, but he steps back and his hand comes with him. He leans back and leaves, leaving you with your pussy exposed and tears in your eyes.

You stare up at your ceiling for a few moments, trying to get your heart rate back down.

There’s a cool breeze and you can feel it on your sex, horrified when you feel how wet it is now when you bring your legs down.

You refuse to touch yourself, even though there is a queer arousal that you can feel, low in your belly. A mission dedicated to self-control but you just end up sleepless, thighs rubbing together incessantly, and everything throbs until you are only a pulse. You thud again and again, hit each step on the way down and into his waiting hand.

-

You spend your days at the library, looking up anything to try and pin down his identity. You’re allowed into the archives, spend your days scanning old weathered paper, trying to find anything that sounds similar to the murders that are happening now.

You find a news article of a young boy who killed his adopted sister. Strangled her when she was a teenager and he was still a boy. Strange enough to make the front page of the newspaper, the police officers were unable to comprehend that something like this could happen.

You get a name - Simon Riley. You would have flicked to the next page, unable to see any of this little blond boy in the man who comes into your bedroom every night and violates you.

What stops you cold is when you look at his dead sister, a picture of her shown beside the house that she died in. It’s your house, the edge of the porch is the same. You wonder if the crack down the middle of one of the steps is in that image, minuscule, as tiny as a fingernail.

She looks like you - the same hair, the same mouth. Like looking at a distorted reflection, a dead version of yourself, peering out at you from the newspaper clipping with the wrong eye colour.

Seeing something that you shouldn’t have, you feel all the hair on your body raise. The eye of God turning to look directly at you, the beam of its gaze.

You slide the newspaper back into its place, and it disappears, innocent amongst all of the other newspapers from years ago.

Your hands shake all the way home, even crammed into your coat pockets. The bone of each finger digging into your stomach until you dart into an alleyway and sick up your lunch.

You wake up that night and he’s there again. Your pyjama bottoms tugged down and his hand between your legs.

He’s not watching your face this time, flat eyes intent on his finger as it moves within you. He slides it in and out of you, you can feel the slickness of it, dragging it out of you.

It’s not enough to make you come, but it’s enough to have your belly tight, the strange intimacy of it. Like he's interested in everything you’re hiding under your skin.

You think he’d hold your hole open and peer up into you if you gave him half a chance.

In his dead sister’s room, wearing her face, you hiss when he works a second finger into you. One of his fingers is like two of your own, two of his fingers pulls you taut, even with the little arousal that he pulls out with them, against your will. The same slow grind of them, back and forth until there’s a wet sound whenever he pushes back into you.

Your clit, neglected, throbs for attention. You stare at him, in his dirty boiler suit, muck and god knows what else on his collar.

Like your stomach bottoming out, you feel a pinprick of neediness. You want to touch your clit, rub it until your back bows and maybe you can pass out after it. You want the anonymity of being asleep. And beneath that you realise that you want to come as well. His fingers skirt on something close to pleasure, just on the precipice and you know you can feel it all if someone touches your clit.

There’s no one else here, there’s only the man from the news.

You swallow, throat clicking and his head snaps up to look at you. Those flat eyes, as if he’s disinterested in anything you have to say, but he doesn’t look away even as you stay silent, blinking up at him.

A moment of clarity, you cannot ask this man for help to get you off, you should be screaming for someone to help you. You should’ve screamed the first night that you saw him on your street, looking up at you.

You can’t say it, can’t drag the rotted words out of your mouth. Can’t ask the murderer with his blood-soaked hands to touch your clit to get you off, you have a limit. And you cannot do it yourself. Your throat bobs with a stifled sob. You want to be sensible again, you don’t want to feel dissatisfaction that’s like a haze over your vision, numbing you down until you’re mindless.

He drags his eyes back down to your cunt and you watch him as continues to finger you through it, but his thumb comes up, petting you through your folds.

He skids along the side of your clit, but with how swollen it is, you have to choke down a groan.

He hones in, blood scented, thumb right on top of your clit. You stutter to a still as he presses down on it, then what that doesn’t get as much of a reaction as he’d hoped, he swirls it around in a circle.

You choke, hips bucking even as you try to hold them still. Your head is flooded with blood, senses drowned out, honed in on the rough pad of his thumb against your clit. Nothing else matters, only the wet sound of his fingers as they slide inside you, your tongue pulling down from the roof of your mouth as you pant.

You’re in his dead sister’s room and he’s watching your cunt as your thighs tense up and you come, hands fisted in your sheets.

Your cunt pulses around his fingers as he continues to pump them, thumb jiggling your clit until you’re biting back a squeal, legs kicking like a pinned animal.

You lie back, his thumb still relentless on your clit. “Hang on, wait, please,” you whine, trying to reach down and catch his wrist but he bats your hand away like you’re an irritating fly.

You sob, hear the wet smack of his fingers as he brings them out and slams them back in.

It’s harder now, even with your come slicking the way. You can feel it pooling in his palm when his hand comes forward and connects with your pussy. It’s like your response has lit a fire in him, you’re a squeaky toy in his hand and he’ll keep squeezing until you break.

You come a second time, like the firing of a gun. Your back bows and you sob through it, each pulse like a crack through you, wood giving way for the cleave of an axe.

He stops for a merciful second, his fingers still inside you to feel each tense of your hole.

He takes his thumb off of your clit, and you stare up at the ceiling, trying to catch your breath and failing miserably. Your muscles loosen for the first time in weeks and you feel like you’re floating an inch up from your mattress.

You go still at the sound of a zipper.

You hold your breath, looking down and feel your cunt squeeze as he tugs his cock out.

He’s got a dirty white vest on, covering his chest, but his boiler suit is pooled around his elbows. It’s undone enough to sag around his thighs, and you can see scar tissue puckering the skin of his shoulders. You’d thought that maybe the boiler suit was doing half of the work for his size, but seeing the stretch of his vest across his broad chest, fabric straining at the seams, you realise that the boiler suit may have been concealing some of the brawn that was under it.

One hand still in you, his fingers starting that slow back and forth again as his other hand grips his cock and matches that same rhythm.

His eyes are intent between your legs, his hand speeding up when your thighs shake.

You’re grateful that he’s staying away from your clit, you can feel how puffy and sensitive she is now, but at the sight of his hand around his cock, just as big as the rest of him, she throbs a little - wrung out but not fully tapped.

His hand is massive, but it only covers half of his cock. Precum drips from his head, slicks the way but you can see it drooling onto your bed sheets.

He grunts at one point and you tremble, inhaling shakily which has his fist twisting at the ruddy head of his dick.

He pulls his fingers out of you and you watch with a dry mouth as he uses that hand to jerk off instead, your wet used to slick up his cock.

His other hand, wet with himself, holds one of your knees to the side so he can continue to look down at your cunt as he continues to jerk his length, breathing getting laboured as your hole flexes. Fluttering under his gaze.

With a final twist of his wrist at the head of his cock, he comes, his gaze snapped up to look you in the face while you blink up at him, flushed and terrified.

His come splatters on your sheets and your thighs, thick and sliding down towards your cunt.

He huffs out a breath, satisfied dog.

He tucks his cock away and stands, zipping up his boiler suit and leaving only a few moments later.

Your door is left open and you jerk your legs shut, stumbling up to close it when you realise that anyone could walk by and see you lying half naked with a strange man’s cum on your legs.

Your legs stick together as you walk and you cringe, swiping a drop before it drips onto the floor.

It’s thick and horrible and if your mouth waters before you wash it off in the bathroom sink, then you brush away the imagined taste with a brush.

-

You climb out of your skin at work, marked by something that you don’t totally understand. People seem to start avoiding you, as if there is a stink on you that they cannot identify.

Your friends skirt around you, alert but unsure what they are looking at. The boy from across the road doesn't smile as you leave in the morning and you pull the collar of your coat up to hide your face.

You curl in on yourself, like a bug. Boots slam past but the one that will crush you is always close by and you can hear it coming up the stairs to your bedroom every night.

You wonder if your parents are going to catch him, wonder what he would do to them.

He has a knife, you know what he must be doing with it. The news continues each night, innocents found stabbed to death, the reason unknown or non-existent. Would he still come in, with your parent’s blood drying in, knock your door open and touch you with the same hands?

You don’t want to think about it, force it out of your mind. Maybe this is the payment to keep your house safe from any bloodshed. Unfortunate for your neighbours, but you only have so much flesh to sell.

You wander your house in the evening, staying up even as your parents head to bed. You lock all of the doors, draw the curtains sharply over all of the windows.

You sit in your bed, back straight and strain your eyes, listening for any sound of glass smashing, the sound of a door getting kicked in.

The night is silent, the house inhales and exhales, fast asleep.

Your bedroom door swings open and you start crying at the sight of that horrible mask.

He doesn’t say anything but it’s quicker at least, his thumb on your clit and his fingers scissoring you open until you’re hiccuping, tears drying as you boil and burn under his touch.

He comes all over your pussy this time - you grimace and force yourself not to think about repercussions of allowing this. Not that you feel that you can stop it, there’s no escape under his vision.

He lingers, soft cock hanging between his legs, still big enough that you wince. His hands hold your knees, callouses scratching on your skin.

He smoothes his hand up until he reaches the edge of your shirt, pushes that up to squeeze at the skin of your belly, oddly fascinated with the flesh there.

He leans down, his hand sliding up to cup your breast. You left your bra on, which he cuts you a look about, before he yanks it up to have access to your skin.

Leaning over you like this, with a handful of your tits, you can feel his cock jump on your inner thigh.

You whimper and he breathes out, as if chasing the sound away. His hands smooth around the curve of your breast, thumbs smoothing over your nipple. An apology? Or a marker for next time?

He leans back again and his cock drags through both of your come before he tucks it away and he leaves again. Silent as he always is.

You wait a few minutes then you trail down the stairs as well. Everything is exactly how you left it. The windows are locked from the inside and so are all of the doors. Nothing broken.

The kitchen floor is cool under your feet and you shiver. From here you can see out your back garden, the grass still, the trees in a perfect line to hide a hiking trail back there. You stare, trying to convince yourself that you can see him, staring back at you as he always seems to be.

You walk back up the stairs to your bedroom, feet exactly where his boots must have been. Perfect, to avoid any creaking. 

-

He always comes back to you, boiler suit intact, mask never off. Comes all over you like a marker, like a dog marking its territory.

You find yourself lulled into complacency with it. The expectation that he won’t harm you, that this is all he wants. Other people are for harming with his blade, but you’re the one to sharpen it.

Your parents announce that they’re going away for the week to visit your grandparents and that fear comes galloping back in, heart ricocheting out of your chest. Your parents are your safety net - you always had the option to scream when he visited you. It wouldn’t have saved you if he decided to dig his hands into your flesh and rip instead of take. However, it felt like a protection, the kind that you are granted the moment you were born and placed in your parents arms.

You flutter around them, not trying to cause a scene but asking if they need to go. They must, your grandmother is ill and needs someone in the house until they can get her a carer.

You can’t get the time off of work, a fact like a panic attack - almost setting you off as you cling to the landline. Bakelite creaking under your grip as you force your voice not to break as you thank your manager anyway.

Your parents hug you goodbye and you stand, bereft and abandoned by the door.

The sun drops out of the sky like the drop of a guillotine.

You stay downstairs, television blaring. Some old new story about a girl found in the attic of a sorority house, another girl missing, all 10 years ago. A warning of what could end up happening to you. You watch until you feel a panic attack in your chest. These are warnings, you should heed these.

You stare at the face of the missing girl, imagine what picture will be used when Simon finally wrings you out and you are tossed to the side, dead and used up.

You refuse to go to bed, tightly wound, curled into yourself on the couch.

You don’t hear the creak of a door opening but you know the moment that he joins you. You stare at the TV, screen fuzzy and overused at this hour.

He places his hand on the back of your shoulder, thumb up the back of your neck. His fingers curl around your collarbone. One twist and he’d snap your neck, you can feel the strength in his palm, flat against the vulnerable skin of your neck.

His thumb ticks, a fumbling stroke before he pulls you back. You collapse back into the couch, his hand now under your jaw to hold you there, looking up at him.

He’s ridiculously enormous from this angle, unreal. Some boogeyman you dreamt up as a child, made flesh and real, swallowing up all of your vision.

“What do you want?” you ask. Fruitless, all of your other questions have gone unanswered.

He pets his thumb around your mouth, catching on your bottom lip and dragging. He’s fascinated by the faint wet of your saliva, dips his thumb to pet your tongue, dragging over your taste buds.

Your teeth knock against the curve of his bone as he pushes further into your mouth. His eyes are blank in the faint light from the TV, flat and all pupil but you like to imagine that you can see something in them, something mocking as his thumb pulls back to run along the edge of your teeth.

The meat of his thumb against your canine. A clinical feeling, no flesh. You can only feel the weight of pressure, the urge to bite down and tear. Your jaw trembles and you imagine that there is the faintest crease around his eyes before he pulls back.

He rounds the couch quicker than someone of his size should. You didn’t bother getting dressed for bed, and he yanks your jeans off, making you hiss. His hands pause at the sight of your panties. You expect him to yank them off the same, another barrier for him to get past but he tilts his head at them.

You’re ashamed that you’re already a little wet. Pavlov’s dog at the sight of him parting your legs. His thumb comes up, pets down where the seam of your cunt is under your panties. Thumb pulling back up to where your clit is, your spit cold on his skin by now.

Your thighs twitch and he smoothes his other hand up the flesh there. Catches the jump of your tendon, cradles your artery.

He tugs your panties to the side with two fingers, circles your clit with his thumb. It’s a quick thing, a lesson learned until it’s muscle memory for him. He should be getting bored of it, but he’s as entranced as always, sliding one finger then two then pushing a third while you hiccup, legs kicking out.

It’s more than you can bear, fingers digging into the upholstery of the couch. It’s dirtier out here, outside of the relative security of your bedroom. Your jeans around your ankles, your panties tugged to the side. Like fumbling teenagers, desire so hot that you can’t bear the extra seconds to get fully naked.

You come, cunt clenched around his fingers, nails almost popping the stitching of your parent’s couch.

You lean back, vision liquid as you stare up at your living room ceiling, peering up into your bedroom. There is a mirror scene, identical but parallel to your own. Your mirror lies in bed, her pyjamas askew as the man comes in, stands over her. In the living room, he yanks your jeans off your ankles and you hear the zipper of his boiler suit.

The image distorts and the mirror has his hands around her neck and it’s your face but the bedroom is all wrong and when she opens her mouth to scream, it’s not with your voice.

You jump when you feel his cock press against your cunt. He catches your thigh with his spare hand, his other holding his cock.

Even though he’s just has his fingers inside of you and you know that there barely is any difference to this and him actually fucking you - there feels like a distinction in your mind that snaps when you feel your pussy part around the head.

You’re wet enough that it’s easy for the first few seconds, a slick slide, before the stretch makes itself known. You whimper, hands clinging to his biceps. You blink up at him, tears pricking in your eyes as it stings. “Please,” you beg, voice pathetic.

As if he’s ever listened to you. As if you didn’t watch him set up the dominoes that led to this, watching with the docile gaze of a lamb on its side.

He looks down at you, from this angle you can’t even see his eyes. It’s just a white mask and two black holes, and you’re sucked in when he pulls his hips back just to grind forward.

You grunt, trying to breathe as he works himself into you, inch by inch. You weren’t meant to stretch this much, you refuse to look down to see if it’s as monstrous as it feels.

His breathing is heavy, echoing inside his mask and giving it an eerie quality. He places both of his hands on your waist, digs his thumbs into the soft flesh of your tummy.

You hiccup, miserable as he thrusts inside and all at once, he’s all the way inside of you. You feel like he’s in your chest, ghastly and too big for you to like it.

He likes it though, you can feel his hands squeezing and releasing the cage of your sides. His breath grunts out of him, heavy, in time with each flex of his fingers. He waits, though, head tilted down toward you, waiting for something.

Your hips are strained, spread around the bulk of him. Tendons pulling as your thighs bracket his waist. Whatever he’s looking for, he must get because he pulls his hips back and thuds them back into you. You whine, your backside already aching as there’s no give in his thighs, just muscle thudding into you.

You drop one of your hands to his stomach. Palm flat, pushing. There’s give here, a round belly. An inch in and you can feel the cord of muscle, tucked under a slab of fat. Everything about him is bigger than you, like trying to push back a mountain - ridiculous and futile.

He pulls back again and when he ruts into you this time, you groan. Some part of your body is working overtime, trying to catch something that isn’t just an ache. His hand drops down and circles your clit the next time he thrusts in, and you gasp - high and panicked - as pleasure zips through you.

It’s still sore, your hips spread further than you think they should be able to, the smack of his thighs into the back of your own. However, you can hear it getting slicker, there is no longer the muted clap of his boiler suit against your skin, you can hear his cock drag out of you and slide back in, wet.

He grunts when you flex around him, his thumb skidding off of your clit as you get wetter again. You’re an experiment again, spread out on a table and he’s just as intent on each one of your reactions as he was before.

He rubs two fingers against your clit, rough even with how wet you are. You sob, dig your nails into the muscle of his bicep.

He hikes your hips up, your head sliding down the couch. He ruts into you like an angry bull, breath huffing out of him, strained and coloured with a grunt. You’re almost upside down, your lower half held up for him to buck into. 

“Oh fuck,” you manage, voice shrill with alarm as you come again, looking up to see how wet his cock is when he drags it out before slamming it back into you. You squeeze your eyes shut as you ride it out, dig your nails in while you clench down on him.

It’s all too open, you’re spread too wide, in your living room where you watch the television with your parents. Some ancient part of your brain that kicks out at the exposure is panicking, trying to drive you into running or lash out.

His fingers are still on your clit even as you can barely get a breath in to cry out. You whimper, the edge of a breath, and he pulls his hand back and leans down toward you.

His torso is pressed into your own, belly to belly. Your lungs expand, stutter as they reach the limit that he has imposed. Forced into his shape, the tremors of your legs are shaken out until they still.

He’s seated all the way inside of you, you can feel his cock kick at some unknown part of yourself when you look up. Even in the dark, you can see his eyes through his mask when he’s this close. You inhale as he exhales, his hands gripping your waist hard and you realise that he’s coming inside of you, grunting and a vague warm sensation somewhere deep inside of you.

He keeps staring down at you, eyes flat until they aren’t, flickering shut before he forces them open again.

You don’t know what compels you to murmur his name, but you say it, almost a question. He stills, even though he hadn’t been moving before - this is something else. This is something hidden in the grass, making its presence known just before it strikes.

His hands are heavy on you, the hands that have killed people. You’re frightened, but you feel drunk and bottomless. It doesn’t feel like it would matter if he killed you here, he’s done much worse. You’re already knocked off the edge of a cliff, who cares if you’re taken out before you hit the ground. “That’s your name, isn’t it? Simon.”

The second time, and his hand comes up, not overly fast, but it closes around your throat. He holds the fat of your pulse there, thundering under his palm. You don’t move, watching him back, trying to force your breath steady.

He strangled his sister to death. The mirror of you is upstairs and screaming, the pose is the same. You inhale, and he holds it like he’s giving it to you.

You push your fingers underneath the cuff of his sleeve and touch skin that you’ve never touched before. He inhales sharply as if you’ve stabbed him.

The curl of his fingers on the back of your neck could almost be affectionate. Smooth the small hairs there that are damp with sweat.

“Simon,” you murmur, and he drops his head closer to yours, eyes half-lidded. It’s like you’re the one who named him, his hands heavy and on you. “Simon.”

He still doesn’t speak but he knocks his forehead against yours. It’s awkward, silicone dragging on your skin, but you can feel the heat of his skin through it. You peer into the mark and at his strange dark eyes and they pour back into you.

You wince when he pulls back and he sways as if he’s going to push back into you but he sways back again, mind made up.

Your legs close, trap rewound and springs back in place. He peers between your legs before you can fully shut them and pulls your panties back into place for you. Strangely neat.

You curl up on your side, watch with a clinical detachment as he zips his boiler suit back up and stands.

He stands for a moment, and you wonder what he’s thinking. Then he turns and walks away as nothing had even happened.

You stumble up to your bedroom hours later, catatonic and wired. You curl up on your side. The mirror version of you is lying in your bed, dead. It’s not you at all, the nose is all wrong and you don’t have those same clothes. Her eyes are red, staring at you sightlessly.

You turn over but the dead stench of her follows you when you finally fall asleep. She chases you down, shrieking in a hoarse voice until she catches you, acid in your throat when you wake up alone.

-

The next time he comes over, he bends you over the edge of your bed and fucks you with a single-minded intent.

You sob when you come, bucking your hips into him to prolong the feeling and hating yourself.

-

Your heart jumps up your throat when you see him come out of the treeline, dropping your glass in the kitchen sink. Your parents are back and as soon as you catch sight of him in your back garden, you throw yourself up and out the door.

“We can’t.” you whisper, trying to catch his hands as they reach for you. Like trying to stop a car, he bats you away as if you’ve irritated him. He tries to steer you back into the house but you dig your heels in.

Pointless - he pushes and you stumble back and you’re lifted bodily, as if it doesn’t make a difference to him either way.

“Stop it, my parents are back, they can’t see us,” you hiss, whacking his back to get him to stop.

Oddly enough, he does. His hand flexing on the back of your thigh, you feel his head turn and imagine that he must be looking up at your parent’s bedroom window.

He seems to consider this, unyielding when you try to wiggle down.

There’s a moment where you think that you may suggest going back to your room alone, but you can’t find the words to say it. Even though he’s climbed those stairs up to your bedroom, climbing up them with him would make you feel complicit in this whole affair.

Besides, it’s not the dead of night. It’s earlier, your parents may be in their bedroom but they won’t be asleep yet.

He turns around and stalks towards the forest behind your house. His hands tense when you wiggle again, pulse catching up as you realise that fucking the weird masked man in your home is one thing but letting him drag you out to the woods where people die may be another.

He grunts when you knee him in the chest. It doesn’t seem to be out of pain because his steps barely falter, but like an acknowledgement of your panicked wiggling.

He swings you down and around as if you barely weigh anything. You cling to his arms, like he’s the world’s worst climbing frame. You’re in the trees but civilisation is only a few steps away.

Private enough, but not enough for you to stop yourself from snapping at him to stop when he tugs your pyjama bottoms down as if you were in your bedroom. It’s cold enough that you feel a chill settle into any of your exposed flesh. “Stop it, it’s fucking freezing,” you hiss again, trying to wrestle your bottoms back up while still clinging to him so he doesn’t drop you ass first into some pine needles.

He huffs at your wriggling, one hand anchoring you up while he pulls you close to him. His bare hand on the skin of your thigh is warm, the heat sinking in and chasing away the chill before it can settle in.

You curl your arms around his neck and tuck yourself in, shivering, trying to escape the cold. His hand smoothes up your back, beneath your shirt. Palm broad and flat, rough enough to scrape but so warm that you’d purr like a cat if you could.

He somehow manages to unzip his boiler suit enough to work his cock out to nudge it against you.

You like to think that you’ve adjusted yourself for him enough, but taking his cock without any preparation may be beyond you.

You tense, ready to try and throw yourself off and away if he tries to shove it in you, but you don’t feel him try to press into you.

You blink up at him confused, listening to the sound of him beating himself off while he holds you up with his other arm.

It’s ridiculous, but the sound sends a bolt of heat through you, your face flushed.

It’s embarrassing, strangely intimate. His head dips down to peer over your face as he circles his fist around the head of his cock, the edge of his wrist bumping against the curve of your backside.

You wonder if he even sees you or if he’s seeing someone else.

You tilt your head and he follows, greedy for every ashamed expression that you have. He grunts when you avoid his eye, presses his masked face into your own when you squirm.

With a gusty sigh, he comes and lets semen drip down his fist and into the wet leaves of September.

His hand is wet when he brings it back up to your cunt, and you shiver, disgusted and titillated when he uses it to slide two fingers into you at once.

Easy work, now that he knows you enough.

He leaves you standing there, afterwards. Lost little lamb, the light of home is so close by, but you watch the impossible broadness of his back as he leaves you and you crave the slaughter knife.

-

Your parents announce that they are going for a weekend away in a neighbouring town. They flutter around you, nervous this time. It’s a trip that they’ve had booked for a while, but this isn’t a trip out of obligation. The murders in town are getting worse, and the man doing them still hasn’t been caught.

They offer to cancel and you reject that, shaking your head and attempting a smile. There’s an edge of fear in you but it’s close to excitement, and you’re sick with it.

It’s dangerous to think that he won’t hurt you, to turn off the news and pretend you don’t know what’s going on.

You should phone the police, but the first night that your parents are away again, you pick out your only pair of lacy panties that match your bra and sit, docile as a kitten and wait.

He fucks you hard and into the mattress, your nails digging red line in his pale skin, mewling until you come so hard that you pass out for a few minutes. You wake up and he’s still there, rutting into you, somehow still hard even though you can feel his come leaking out of you.

The next day at work, one of your friends wants to hang out while your parents aren’t home. You blink at her, confused. Brain static, two wires disconnected. You’re so dosed up on Simon that you forgot that other people can see you and be in your home.

“Right, um, I was just going to go to bed early, honestly,” you try to hedge, scratching your jaw, nervous tick.

“Oh, come on, you never want to hang out anymore,” she says, raising a pointed eyebrow at you.

It’s true; you’ve become a hermit, seeing people at work before you steal yourself out of sight, hidden in your bedroom where you wait.

Under your friend’s expectant stare you fidget. These things mattered to you once. Being accepted, not being a recluse, being fun.

“Alright, but, I don’t want to be up late, I really am tired,” you agree, and watch the smile on her face. You blink, unsettled at the sight of her expression before you smile back at her.

She agrees to come over to watch a movie that will air on the TV, but will end just before 8PM. Early enough for you to chat and walk her to the door. Simon has never shown up early enough for this to be a problem.

You force yourself to relax even though you feel like you are going to jump out of your skin at the sight of her sitting on your couch and relaxing as if this is a place to be doing that.

The film captures your attention, something that aired last week that she loved but you had missed. It takes half of the film to finally relax, to feel like your old self again. Sitting on a couch, joking around. Your friend throws popcorn at you when you don’t laugh at her joke and when you laugh, you get startled by the sound.

“Is it alright if I get a glass of water?” she asks, already half standing.

“Yes, of course,” you say, nodding enthusiastically.

You’re revived, brought back from the edge of some unknown identity. Like slicking off all of the dirt that has layered on your skin. You were underneath, baby smooth and alive, inhaling a first breath after so long under the ground.

You watch the small screen, flickering for a second when the wind howls and knocks the satellite a little too roughly. Maybe you’ll go out after this. Let the film end and ask if she wants to grab a drink, the two of you could go to the local pub that you haven’t been to in a while.

The idea is sweet, the fizz of excitement. Being alive, really alive, talking and smiling and laughing, like peach juice down your chin when you take that first bite. The crunch of fruit between the bones of your teeth, victorious.

A shriek from the kitchen breaks the illusion, and you sit, stupefied before you throw yourself into action.

You fall off of the couch in your haste, hurtling into the kitchen where you collide with your friend as she tries to escape.

“Move, you have to move!” she screams, trying to push you out of the kitchen with her.

You look over her shoulder and you see Simon, standing in the backdoor of your house, his head tilted as he regards you both.

Something like a quickfire and panicked shame rockets through you as if anyone would be able to tell why he is here in the first place. Which is ridiculous when you look down and see the knife in his hand, dripping red and feel the wet of it as your hand drops down to your friend’s waist.

“Oh fuck,” you start before you are shoved back into the hallway. You stumble back and let her go as she clearly abandons trying to rationalise with you and tries to dart towards your front door.

Quicker than you think he should, Simon eats up the distance and strides past you without a glance. You blink and he grabs your friend by her hair before she can reach the door handle, drags her back while she shrieks again.

You force yourself forward, feet ankle deep in sludge. This is a nightmare, this is a dream, you will wake up and it will be over, happening to someone else or not happening at all.

You jump on Simon’s back, both arms around the one holding his knife, trying to stop him from sinking it into your friend.

He grunts, and you sob when you hear the sharp irritation in it. “Stop it, please stop it, no don’t!” you beg, crying earnestly when you realise that you’ve been crying silently for a while, tears dripping down and soaking your shirt.

He throws you back, and you go hard back into the wall until you’re certain that there’s a shape of your body left in it. You gasp, winded. He hasn’t let go of your friend, his hand knotted in her hair.

You scream when he digs the knife back into her side, and she echoes you, her eyes wide and white, seeking you out. A horrible judgement there, placed at your feet.

“Please, don’t, stop it,” you weep, forcing yourself up and onto your knees.

He lets your friend drop onto the floor and she smacks into the floorboards, her blood spraying out.

He killed his sister in this house, he’s killing your friend, and you realise that he’s going to kill you one day. These events are bound together like pages in a book, pushed together, the ink running together, wet like blood. It’s nothing at all, nothing is different.

Simon comes over to you, his hand on your throat. You cling to his wrist and look up at him.

“Please,” you wheeze. Your fingers on his pulse, steady until it jumps.

His eyes are flat and he blinks at you, slow. The last thing you see before he slams your head against the wall is the flash of blue police lights and they light him up. 

-

The nurse monitors the split on your temple with a gentleness that almost makes you cry.

You have a concussion, they tell you. A concussion and a cracked rib. You aren’t allowed to go to sleep, even though that’s all you want to do. Sleep until you wake up and everything is reversed and you can prove that is happening to someone else and not you. You want to drip into the mirror and let her take over for a while. You’d rather be dead, lie in your bed - still - and find some peace.

The police take your story and you chew on your nails down to the quick with a paranoia that they don’t believe you.

“And what did you do when you saw him?” one officer asks, eyes hard as they peer down at you.

“I asked him to stop,” you stammer, flustered, hands whipping as if to construct the scene from scratch for him. “Then I was out in the hallway and he walked past me to get to -”

“He walked past you?” the office asks, his tone questioning but you imagine the intent on it. Loose thread pulled on until you’re a pile on the floor, unrecognisable from what you used to be.

“Yes, I jumped on his back to stop him from hurting anyone else,” you explain.

The officer goes to speak again but is interrupted by another one of the officers. “That was very brave, ma’am. You may have saved your friend’s life,” he tells you, giving you an encouraging smile.

You fidget with the bedsheet, the first officer’s gaze like a hot brand on the side of your face.

“You’re very lucky that they got there in time,” the nurse tells you after they leave. She changes out your IV, pats your other hand.

“Yes, I’m lucky to be alive,” you agree, voice stilted like you haven’t learned your lines yet.

Your friend is alive as well, if worse off. A few surgeries and some scar tissue around her stomach, but alive. Guilt rots you inside out, until you think that you can’t bear to see her.

Your parents are driving back to see you, frantic on the phone. Guilt is eating them as well, but you are the one to blame. Not that you can comfort them with that.

Your friend is finally awake and you’re allowed to visit her. You sit by her bedside, horrified at the sight of her so pallid and weak in her bed.

“I’m so sorry,” you whimper, hands shaking with grief.

“It’s not your fault,” she comforts you, staring you down until you look back at her. “It was him, he’s a monster. I hope someone fucking shoots him and we can all be free of him at last.”

You make yourself nod even though you think you’re going to be sick. “Are you alright?” you ask, then feel stupid.

“I will be,” she vows, her eyes hard and flinty. “He’s going to wish he killed me when I get out of here.”

You nod again, and when you get back to your room, you’re sick in the bathroom until you’re retching up bile. You keep going, wanting to empty everything out into the bowl before one of the nurses finds you and guides you back to bed.

You ask for them to knock you out but they just stare at you like you’re acting insane.

Bashing your head against the wall was the kindest thing that Simon has ever done for you. You stare up at the ceiling, listless, craving that crack of silence that had split across all of your senses.

The wound on your temple throbs, call and answer.

-

Your parents finally get home and they cry at the sight of you in the hospital bed.

You’re a fraud, sitting here. You’re well, you’re totally fine. The effects of the concussion are gone now, but they want to take another look at your cracked rib before they let you go home. Your nurse wants you to see a psychiatrist when you get out.

Your parents talk with doctors, with the police, with nurses, with your friend. You stare down at the blue sheet pulled over your legs and consider pulling it up and over your face.

“We’re so sorry, baby,” your parents weep, their hands on your face, gentle in your hair.

You let them swaddle you and you’re asleep. Your face tucked into the curve of your mother’s neck, your father’s arm strong around your back. Made young again in grief, forgiven without confession.

-

You wake up, night still peering in through your windows.

Everything is still around your hospital bed, the curtain not muffling the sounds of other patients sleeping in their own beds. Your parents are in the chairs next to your bed, fast asleep.

Something calls out to you and you get up, slink out from under your parent’s grip, wandering over to the window with your IV stand in hand.

Down along the line of the woods, is a man. A white face peers up at you, still, as if he knew that you would appear.

You feel marked, a blaring neon that everyone will see. He hones in on it like a beacon.

He turns around and wanders into the woods. Beckoning you. And you follow.

[ERROR]

You clenched your teeth, fighting the urge to swear. It was that kind of thinking — petty, avoidant, conflict-adverse — that had led to this, that had kept you as distant from the Waynes now as you had been when Bruce first adopted you. It was awful, really. Even in a family of black sheep, you were still somehow an out—

“(Y/n).”

The sound of your own name barked in Bruce’s low monotone dragged you from your spiraling thoughts. Right. The second part of this daily ritual. At breakfast, Bruce would go around the table, asking for updates on his wards’ lives with all the love and all the care of an army general demanding status reports from his ground troops. You must’ve missed Dick’s turn. That was probably for the best. You didn’t need his latest modeling gig or shiny new girlfriend distracting you during what came next.

“…I got accepted into the program I applied for,” you explained into your lap. “For my post-grad. It starts in fall.”

Dick laughed and patted you hard too-hard on the back. You had to catch yourself on the edge of the table. “Good job, kid. I remember— you mentioned that a couple months ago, right?”

You hadn’t, but you nodded anyway. Bruce hummed.

“Congratulations. Gotham University—”

“It’s not in Gotham,” you said, too hastily. That might’ve been the first time you’d ever interrupted Bruce. “I… I thought it might be nice to try something a little farther from home. You know how it is.”

Bruce, for what it was worth, did not know. He loathed Dick’s apartment in Bludhaven, hated the winters Damian spent with his mother. You’d hoped that staying at home during your undergrad years might endear you to him. In reality, he’d continued to treat you with the same frigid apathy and what embers of a social life you might’ve had in the city proper had been smothered by the distance. It didn’t help that Jason — the only other person who didn’t seem to intrinsically belong in Bruce’s pack, the only person who spared you a second glance at all — had bolted the minute he turned eighteen. For the past four years, you’d been a ghost haunting a house that wasn’t your home. For the past four years, you’d been huddled in the corner of the pack’s den, left to shiver while the rest of your family huddled for warmth.

This time, when Bruce spoke, you were giddy to cut him off.

“Metropolis is a long commute, but I’m sure you’ll—”

“It’s Gateway, actually. In California.” Finally, the glaze over his grey eyes fell away and you knew that you had his full attention. You had to bite your cheek to keep from smiling. “I leave next month.”

You could feel Bruce’s gaze burning into you. Dick’s, too. You’d never been happier. “Oh. Housing might be difficult to arrange on such short notice.”

“Oh, you don’t have to worry about that. There’s this grant, and—” And you were the legal ward of the man with the fattest trust funds on the east coast. This felt too obvious to warrant mentioning aloud and so you broke off into a breath of a laugh. “It’s all taken care of. Even the flight.”

First class on a luxury airline. With no return trip in sight, of course.

A wrinkle formed at the corner of Bruce’s lips. Not quite a frown, but not quite his usual icy stoicism, either. “I’m sure you can understand why this would feel rather sudden.”

You made a show of nodding, simpering. “I know, but—” You paused, shrugged. “I figured it was about time for me to spread my wings. That’s what alphas are supposed to do, right? Especially ones without a pack.”

Something flashed across his expression. Your lack of claim was a sore spot. The rest of your siblings had gotten their pack mark — a ring of Bruce’s teeth dug into the underside of their wrists — as soon as they turned eighteen. But here you were, four years into adulthood with no scars to show for it.

But if Bruce was ever going to care, the announcement of your upcoming departure would have been an odd time to start. The phantom of emotion passed — there and gone within the second. Wordlessly, he nodded to Tim, silently signaling that your conversation had come to an end.

You took no small amount of satisfaction in the fact that, even as Tim began to prattle on about his newest business venture, Bruce’s eyes remained on you.

~

In your worst moments, you believed that Bruce gave you such a terrible bedroom on purpose.

You’d been ecstatic the first time you opened the door. Young, hungry, and freshly orphaned, you hadn’t stood a chance against the manor’s silk sheets and wrought-iron terraces and huge crystal-clear windows. You’d spent weeks luxuriating in the extravagance of it all, mistaking Bruce’s wealth for paternal affection. Two months passed before you realized the flaw in the design. You had to walk down four hallways, down three flights of stairs, and past two much more interesting turn-offs to reach your bedroom. No one had a reason to wander so far, not unless they were looking for you. And, of course, no one would ever think to look for you.

You were used to the isolation. You’d come to expect it. Which might’ve been why it was so distressing to wake up smothered in Dick’s heady scent.

Mint and pine and arctic chill — like a bad flavor of gum. You recognized it automatically, but it took you another long moment to process the dead weight crushing you from above, the jagged pressure of his arm wrapped too tightly around your waist. Your eyes flashed open to find his body draped over yours, his head buried in the crook of your neck. Your dormant instincts flared to life, screaming for space, for security, for dominance. You shoved him away and retreated to the far side of the mattress, wrapping the comforter around yourself. Dick groaned, rolling onto his back and shooting you a lazy smile through his curtain of dark hair.

“Morning, little wing,” he chirped, voice deep and raspy with sleep. How long had he spent on top of you? “Gotta say, there are nicer ways to wake a guy up.”

His tone was light, playful. You weren’t so carefree.

“Why are you in my room?”

“A man can’t spend a little quality time with his favorite sister?”

You shook your head. He let out a breath of a laugh.

“Just come a little closer, alright?”

You hesitated, but Dick didn’t waver. More problematically, he’d positioned himself between you and the door so, short of jumping off your balcony, there wasn’t a way to escape without going through him. You shuffled closer, keeping the comforter wrapped around yourself, but if Dick noticed your aversion, he didn’t take the hint. As soon as you were within arm’s reach, he lashed out — catching you by the midriff and hauling you into his lap. He forced your head against his chest, pressing your ear to the muscle over his heart. You recognized the gesture. It was the same way someone might’ve soothed an agitated pup, a distressed omega.

You squirmed on reflex, but Dick was so, so strong. Yet another thing the rest of your family seemed to have in common.

“I really am proud of you,” he muttered. “You’ve always been so passionate about— uh—”

“Art history,” you filled in. There was only so long you could spend alone in Bruce’s mansion, tucked away among so many dust-covered priceless treasures, before you took an interest in other forgotten novelties.

“Right. Art history.” He moved on quickly. “But it got me thinking. It feels like we haven’t been paying enough attention to you.”

Your traitorous heart soared. You did your best to stamp it back down. “It’s a little late—

“Better late than never, right?” You tried to draw back, but his fingers rooted in your hair, keeping you in place. “We never really got a chance to bond. I know you’re leaving in a few weeks but—” He paused, chuckled. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you purr.”

Purr? He had to be joking. Alphas didn’t purr. Even betas had trouble doing it on command. You laughed, but Dick only drew you in closer.

“Whenever you’re ready, sweetheart.”

You tried not to sound as confused as you felt. “I… I can’t do that. Like, physically.”

“Give it a try. It’s not like we don’t have time.”

Whatever. This was embarrassing, but Dick’s attention span was short and he was right — you had nothing but time, here. He’d get bored eventually, slink off and forget this brief break from the status quo. He would leave you alone, and this time, you would remember to be grateful for the cold shoulder.

You let a minute slip by. Dick didn’t move.

Another. He began to hum, leading by example.

By the time you reached five — his heartbeat counting out the seconds like a metronome — you were uncomfortable, sweating, and desperate to get away. Your vision blurred. You missed Jason. Your skull felt too thick. His scent had poured into you, leaving the taste of mint nauseatingly thick on your tongue. Anything would be better than this. Even utter humiliation.

It was a terrible, creaking sound — starting at the base of your throat and leaking out through your pursed lips. You would barely call it a whine, let alone a rumble, let alone a purr. Still, Dick laughed and let go of you, dragging his hand through his disheveled hair. “I don’t know why we never noticed how cute you are,” he said, finally, finally getting up and moving towards the door. “See you at breakfast, little wing.”

Once he was gone, you stewed in your embarrassment for another minute or so before deciding to treat this like what it was: a fluke. An exception. Some form of hazing administered too late to have its desired effect — whatever that effect was supposed to be. Face still warm to the touch, you dragged yourself out of bed, got dressed, and slinked out of your bedroom, determined never to think about Dick’s sudden outpouring of brotherly affection again.

Your self-inflicted amnesia might’ve lasted, too, had the first thing you’d seen upon stepping into the dining room not been Dick’s smile as he whispered into Bruce’s ear.

~

It quickly became very, very difficult to remember why you’d ever hated being ignored.

Dick was the worst by far. Suddenly, he had nothing better to do than trail after you through the mansion, asking constantly what you wanted to do with your big brother that day— like you were ten rather than twenty-two. Tim was just as much of a menace, albeit not half as clingy. He always seemed to be just outside of your peripheral, only as close as he needed to be to steal away your half-finished drinks. Stephanie suddenly wanted to take you shopping, insisting that she pay despite your reminders that both of your credit cards were linked to the same account. More than once, Cassandra sat too close to you at dinner, nearly in your lap.

Even Damian — young, stoic, frigid Damian — once made the trek to your bedroom to ask for one of your blankets in the middle of the night. You were too confused to think to refuse, but as you handed off a spare quilt, you managed to ask him why he’d want yours. Another alpha’s. He only pursed his lips, shaking his head.

“I don’t know,” he said, glaring at the floor. “You’ve smelled different, recently. Sweeter.”

Through it all, Bruce never said a word to you.

To make it worse, all the attention made you sick. Literally, physically sick. Your head felt light, your body hot. You had no appetite but ate like a starving animal. You slept more, left the house less. More than ever, you dreaded the thought of being left alone.

Worst of all, being around your family became excruciating. Their voices were too loud. Their mixed scents were too overpowering. You’d never had a very strong constitution, but you were still an alpha, still meant to be able to withstand the juxtapositional pheromones and verbal disputes that would terrify a beta and reduce an omega to a sobbing mess. Suddenly, though, you were as sensitive as a pup — barely able to tolerate your siblings’ usual bickering. Even the smallest argument left you fleeing the room to hide away in some long forgotten part of the manor.

That might’ve been why it’d been so easy for Jason to catch you alone.

You’d just locked yourself inside of one of Bruce’s seven (count them, seven) auxiliary libraries when the tell-tale tapping on the window, a muffled voice calling your name through the bullet-proof glass. You were at the window in a second, unlocking it in another. You barely had time to step back before Jason hauled himself through and pulled you into a blissfully suffocating bear-hug.

He looked rough. Rougher than usual, though you hadn’t seen him in the better part of a year. You felt the worn leather of his jacket against your skin as he pulled you against him, spotted a few splotches of red hair where his cheap black dye hadn’t stuck. He stunk of metal and gasoline and chemical fire, and you’d never been so happy to see him. You melted into him for as long as you could, only letting go when his hands found your shoulders, gently easing you just far back enough for you to see his grinning face.

“There’s my pretty girl,” he drawled. You swatted him in the arm and he went on, feigning offense. “Hey, that barely hurt. The rest of Bruce’s acolytes must finally be softening you up.”

“Please don’t talk about them,” you whined. “They’ve been— God, it’s terrible. Ever since I told them I was leaving—”

His smile widened, showing teeth. “Finally. You have a place lined up yet? I’ve got a spare bedroom downtown, if you don’t mind—”

You cut him off with a bubbling laugh. “Don’t be ridiculous. I’m going back to school. Gateway City.” And then, softer, “Like we always talked about.”

His hands twitched. His scent took on a smokier note, not unlike a freshly snuffed cigarette. Still, that lip-splitting grin held strong. “I mean, that’s what you told Bruce, but—” He broke off, clicking his tongue. “California’s pretty far. I won’t be able to look out for you all the way out there.”

“You don’t look out for me here.” You couldn’t help it. Your voice broke on the last word, your joy draining away as his grew colder. Panic flashed across his expression. He started to draw you closer again, but you waved him off — pressing a hand into his chest. “I’m sorry, I just— I thought you’d be happier for me. Considering how quickly you got out.”

“It’s not the same, though, is it?” The question had a cruel lilt to it. “I’m an alpha, kid.”

And just like that, you’d forgotten why you were so happy to see him.

“I know. I am, too.”

“Really? ‘cause you don’t smell like one to me.”

Your shoulders dropped. You started to turn away, but he caught your wrist, jerking you back against him. His arm locked around your neck, cutting off your airflow. You gagged, clawing at his sleeve, but Jason only held his ground.

“It’s not that complicated.” His grip tightened. Black spots dotted your vision. You would’ve coughed if your throat hadn’t been clenched so tightly shut. “If you want to be an alpha, you’re gonna have to act like one.”

But you couldn’t. You were Bruce’s least favorite for a reason. The muscle hadn’t taken. The strength training hadn’t stuck. You hadn’t inherited his discipline. And, worst of all, there was that little, traitorous voice in the back of your head urging you to submit, submit, submit. It was yours, but you didn’t recognize the inflection, the cloying lilt. Wherever this instinct had come from, it wasn’t from you.

You tried to kick, to thrash, but your body was sluggish, resistant. The idea of hitting Jason left you light-headed in a way that had absolutely nothing to do with the oxygen deprivation. Behind you, he sighed. If you hadn’t known better, you might’ve thought he sounded disappointed. “C’mon, kid,” he said, barely loud enough to be heard over the blood rushing past your ears. “Don’t make me do this to you.”

But you couldn’t stop him. You couldn’t do anything. You couldn’t even make the only person who cared about you, the only person who might’ve even come close to loving you, stop hurting you.

Your body gave out a moment before your mind did. You were vaguely aware of your legs giving out, of your form going limp against Jason’s chest. His arm fell away from your throat, catching you by your waist instead. The last thing you felt was his shoulder biting into your stomach before your brain caught up with your lungs and the world went dark.

~

The first thing you felt upon waking up was warmth.

Awful, needling, searing warmth. The kind of uncomfortable heat that came from falling asleep in the sun and waking up hours later, dying of thirst and too disoriented to remember how to open your eyes. It took you long, aching seconds to grasp any other sensation, only to wish that you hadn’t bothered trying when you finally did. Something hard and cold bit into your back — laminated wood, the surface of a desk. There was something lodged between your legs. You could feel hands cupping the outside of your thighs, a tongue moving over your—

Reality came flooding back in too quickly, too roughly. New instincts be damned, you were going to be sick.

You wanted to bolt, but your body still felt heavier than it should’ve been. It was all you could do to force your eyes open, to take in the moulded ceiling and dim yellow lights of Bruce’s office. You tried to sit up, but a pair of hands caught your shoulder, easing you back down onto the desk. Bruce’s desk. You were on Bruce’s desk.

And you weren’t wearing any clothes.

The sight of your own skin was more startling than it should’ve been. You watched in horror as your exposed chest heaved weakly, as your bare knees shook and twitched where they were propped on someone’s shoulders. Dark hair formed a black hole in the center of your vision, and for a terrible moment, you thought it might’ve belonged to Dick. But then the rough edge of a scar pressed into the inside of your thigh and even an even worse possibility dawned on you.

Jason.

The horror was immediate and all-consuming. You couldn’t move. You couldn’t think. You felt his lips seal around your clit and suck, and it was all you could do to let a miserable whine slip through your gritted teeth. There was a groan — deep and satisfied and brought on solely by your sounds of distress. His attention dipped lower, touch slipping into your cunt, and involuntarily, you strained against the hands pinning you down. There was an airy chuckle, a hushing-like noise, then Dick’s face dipped into view, peering at you from above. “There she is,” he cooed, in the same cloying, saccharine lilt he’d used the morning he’d trapped you in your own bed. The morning he’d tried to make you purr. “We were wondering when you’d wake up. Jason always gets a little rough, doesn’t he?” And then, his eyes skirting to the side, “Too rough to handle something so delicate. In my opinion, at least.”

Jason pulled back just far enough to speak. “Shove it, Richard.”

“And such a temper.” Dick sighed, leaning towards you. “I just thought, if we had to find our little sister a mate, it should be someone more like—”

“That’s enough, Dick.”

A new voice. Cold, steady, commanding. All the warmth left your body at once.

Knowing Jason was willing to do this to you hurt. Knowing that Bruce was in on it, too…

You didn’t even know what to call that type of pain.

Maybe it would’ve been better, had he at least been an active participant. But he wasn’t even trying to touch you. He sat on the lounge against the far wall, elbows resting on his knees and hands clasped professionally between his legs. His expression was set in the same unfaltering neutrality he always wore, the neutrality you’d once mistaken for disinterest. His eyes — half-lidded and impassive — were fixed on you. He didn’t look away as you stared past Dick to meet his gaze.

There was a thin sigh, a readjustment to his posture. Jason’s tongue curled inside of you. “Jason has a more dominating presence. There’ll be less resistance if he initiates the bond.”

“But that doesn’t mean he’ll be a good mate.” Immediately, Dick was on the defensive. You’d always wondered how someone so quick to argue had managed to stay Bruce’s favorite for so long. “And he’s so far. We might as well have just let her move to the other side of the country.”

“The necessary arrangements have been made. Jason’s agreed to stay with us — for a time, at least. Until the worst of the bond sickness passes.” Bruce paused, pinched the bridge of his nose. You would’ve sworn his eyes were closed, and yet when Jason smirked into the inside of your thigh and began to speak, Bruce cut in before he could get a word out. “I’m already giving you my daughter, boy. Don’t make me change my mind.”

Dick frowned. “I mean, by that logic, aren’t you technically giving her your—”

“That’s enough, Dick.”

He frowned, but didn’t spend long licking his wounds. His attention fell back to you, his eyes widening as he bent down to your height. “I tried to volunteer,” he whispered, close enough for his lips to ghost over the shell of your ear. “But Jason beat me to it. I think he’s had this on his mind for a while.”

It was an awful thing to say. It was a vile thing to say. It was a cruel thing to say. You wanted to tell him to shut up, to leave you alone, but when you opened your mouth, all you managed to do was cry out. The knife-sharp bridge of Jason’s nose ground into your clit. He’d fallen into a steady pattern of lapping, twisting, shoving the most invasive part of his body that much deeper into the most vulnerable part of yours. It shouldn’t have felt so terrible. It shouldn’t have felt like anything at all. Alphas were insensitive, lumbering things. Alphas were strong enough to withstand something like this.

So why weren’t you?

His tongue slipped out of you, two thick fingers immediately taking its place. He spread you open as his tongue lapped the slick off your thighs, your skin. A few strokes later, his tongue found your clit and circled it, and your body cracked apart underneath him. The pleasure — if you could even call it that — was too hot, too smothering, too much. You waited for the backlash, the pressure of an internal knot clamping down around nothing, but it never came. There was only the burning heat, and beneath it, a voice that didn’t belong to you begging for more.

Jason nursed you through the aftershocks before pulling away. He dragged the back of his hand over his mouth and pushed to his feet, placing his body between your dysfunctional legs. Again, you sought out Bruce. “You did something to me.”

Immediately, Dick was there. “We just gave you a nudge in the right direction, that’s all. You said it yourself. We were running out of room for another alpha.”

You’d never said that, but it wasn’t worth the breath it would’ve taken to correct him. You met Bruce’s eyes. “Please, Dad.”

To his credit, he didn’t so much as hesitate. “You’re not a good fit for our pack. I must have known that, but—” He broke off, shook his head. “It’s better, this way. You deserve a mark. I’m sorry we denied you one for so long.”

But he wasn’t getting up. He wasn’t bearing his fangs, wasn’t asking for your wrist. He was just watching — staring on as Jason traced the head of his cock over your entrance, as he began to ease into you. You acted on reflex— hands flying to his shoulders in a vain attempt to push him away. That was a mistake, too. Before you could so much as make contact, you were on your stomach, both wrists pinned to the base of his spine while he thrust into you unopposed. You braced yourself for blinding pain, for a bone-deep sense of wrongness, but it never came. Instead, a pleasant buzzing filled the empty corners of your mind. Your body relaxed, welcoming him in. Liquid heat pooled in your veins, weighing you down and turning you into something heavy. Something wrong. Something else.

It felt right.

Understanding dawned on you in a single, horrifying flash. The gifts. The forced proximity. The shows of superiority. The way they’d observed you so unfalteringly over the past few weeks. An old term glanced over in textbooks and on the category listings of sketchier porn sites resurfaced from the forgotten depths of your mind — bitching. But that wasn’t supposed to be real. That wasn’t supposed to be something your family could do to you, no matter how little they loved you.

It was impossible and it was happening. You could feel Jason’s chest against your back, his tongue on your neck as he rocked against your ass. In front of you, Dick cooed and shrugged his jeans low on his hips, freeing his own painfully stiff cock. He tapped the leaking head against your lips and you locked your jaw in place, determined to safeguard what little dignity you had left. Dick only clicked his tongue, forcing his thumb past your lips and wrenching your teeth apart. He shoved himself into your mouth before you had a chance to bite down, his tip ramming into the back of your throat and making you gag.

There was an airy moan, a pleased sigh. Dick let his eyes fall shut, resting a hand on the crown of your head and petting. “Good girl,” he murmured, blunt nails raking over your scalp. “Let’s not talk about leaving anymore, alright? Just lay back and let your pack take care of you, from now on.”

His tone was light, soothing. It might’ve been more comforting if he hadn’t followed it up by tangling his fingers in your hair and jerking you forward, forcing your nose against his pelvic bone and fucking his cock into your throat.

The fullness was the worst part. Tearing you open, weighing you down. Your jaw throbbed where it was stretched around Dick’s cock, your cunt aching under the bruising force of Jason’s abuse. His hands were too tight around his hips, his pace too brutal to make you feel anything but scared. There was a rumbling growl, then you felt his mouth on the curve of your throat, nuzzling into you. A terrible, alien pressure beat against your entrance once, twice before he managed to force that much more of himself inside of you. Immediately, every nerve in your body flared to life. It took you a moment to understand the source of your agony, but not much longer. Honestly, the only surprise was that you hadn’t thought to dread this part sooner.

He’d knotted you.

But that couldn’t be right. Alphas only knotted their—

His mouth, moving over the tender flesh above your jugular. You tried to scream, to thrash, but Jason was so heavy on top of you and Dick only groaned as his cock smothered your voice. You couldn’t move. You couldn’t tell him to stop. You couldn’t do anything as Jason’s teeth sunk into your throat, breaking skin and drawing blood. Marking you — albeit, not in the way you’d spent so, so long waiting for.

In a daze, you looked toward Bruce. He hadn’t moved, of course, only leaned forward — propping his cheek on his fist. His dark eyes were cold as steel, but that wasn’t the worst part.

You shake your head, before correcting yourself with words. “Nope.” 

Your cheek is pushed into the mattress as your arms are pulled beneath you and bound together, your arse wiggles high in the air, the only part of your body with any real freedom. 

Nikolai taps you, encourages you to struggle against your binds and smirks a wicked grin when you struggle just to do that. “Perfect.” 

There's a moment of silence then, stillness as the anticipation builds like a quiet storm.

The burn of his stare is heavy, inspecting you, and the weight of it makes your body react without even a single touch.

Finally, a curled knuckle nudges up your folds, teases your pretty little nub, and a delighted chuckle leaves the Russian as you jolt under his gentle caress.

And then the softness fades, replaced by hungry hands that curl next to the sensitive folds of your cunt, they pull until your lips are parted and your apex is completely exposed. “Such pretty holes, milaya.” He coos, wasting no time as he moves for further exploration. 

His hands paw upwards, grabbing at your cheeks and pulling much the same, revealing to his greedy eyes the hole you'd already denied him.

Knowing he's there, hovering above you with his eyes glued to the one thing he can't have, you shiver like a leaf, tremble like prey. 

“Fuck.” You mewl, the sensation of his hands already so good, melting you down into a puddle.

“So sensitive.” The grin on his lips is audible in his pleased words, a grin that only grows as he dares to move upwards, rubbing his slicked finger across your puckered hole. “Here too? Feels good?” 

“It feels…” You buck as his touch intensifies, the pad of his finger toying with your entrance. 

Despite everything, your hesitancy, your refusal—it feels fucking good. 

“Mmm, Nik!” You squeal, as just moments after you feel it: the wet hot press of his tongue, laving your precious entrance with reckless abandon. “I—”

“Shhh.” He mumbles between your cheeks, stubble catching sensitive flesh as he tries to quiet your pointless commentary. 

His tongue returns with vicious fervour, tasting all you have to offer and more as slick noise fills the air, mingling with the man's moans to form a taunting melody.

“Just a taste, maybe a finger.” His voice is soft, a trick to try and soothe you, his pleasant grumble an attempt at distraction.

“N—” You try to reaffirm your boundary, to keep him away from what you refused to give him, but such an action is pointless. 

A hand eclipses your head, shoves your face further into the too-expensive mattress until the sound is muffled. 

It works just as well to muffle the scream that follows, as Nikolai plunges a finger in, deep and probing, curling against you in ways you never wished to feel, and yet your body reacts like it's been waiting for it all along. 

You shiver and shake and moan and shout—the pleasure, the pain, the intrusion, and the intimacy all overwhelming your fragile little brain.

It's not long before the lust takes him, the hunger and the fire and the impatience. He laid his trap, and waited so long for all the pieces to fall into place, placated you with numbing sweetness all for the jagged teeth to sink into you before you have time to realise. 

The jaw has closed, there's no escape.

He shuffles behind you, and you freeze in fear, knowing what comes next. 

First his belt, then the rustle of his jeans, and before long you feel it, that thick, heavy, gorgeous cock rubbing against your slickened hole. 

With his hands focused on shifting you into place, you can crane up your head, cry out one more time. “Nikolai, red, please!” 

He grows tired of your pleading, your denial of what is best for both of you, and shoves the boxers he just stripped himself of straight into your protesting mouth—then he taps you on the cheek, twice for good measure.

“Dumb little thing, nyet?” He scoffs as he returns to his rightful place at your rear. A quick rummage around his beside table produces the lube he's prepared just for a night like this. 

He flicks the cap, squeezes a plentiful amount on you, on him. 

After all, he's a gentleman; he doesn't want it to hurt… too much.

“Just like the other girls. Won't do anal, will do bondage. Can't say no, now, hmm?” 

He ruts against your hole with the head of his cock, gentle pushes that tease and taunt.

And then he breaches. You hiss, he groans, slowly sinking in until each fat inch is swallowed by your greedy, untouched hole. 

He can hear the choked-back sobs, feel the way your body trembles and your entrance chokes him.

“I know, first time. But this is your fuck hole.” He coos his explanation to you with sickening condescension, like you just needed a big, smart man to finally show you the way. 

Mercifully, a hand sinks lower, curls round to toy at the spot where his balls meet your other opening. “This? This is baby box. Only fucked when breeding. An honour, not fit for just any girl.” 

You shouldn't shiver; you certainly shouldn't gush the way your cunt does at that moment. 

He takes a moment to push in that final inch, sheathing himself fully in your virgin arse, his new home.

“But you're taking me so well. Asshole made for me.” 

Despite the attempt at preparation, it burns, and yet one of Nik's hands pets your head like it's all an act of love.

oh, shit. just when you’d nearly forgotten about the sloshing of your stomach, he proves that he knows you too well, is too skilled in the art of reading you. his free hand works its way under your tank top, hem twisting and bunching up to your waist until he can properly grip your tummy and press the heel of his palm into your bladder. your reaction is immediate, some mixture of discomfort and anticipation forcing out a moan that had been caught in your throat for far too long.

"caleb, please—" you gasp, head falling back to his shoulder as you attempt to squeeze your thighs together.

he has the audacity to laugh, chest rumbling against your skull as your knees are held in place by an invisible force, more powerful than you could ever comprehend. the thought alone makes you clench around him, earning yourself a moment of respite from his hand teasing your bladder as he buries his face in your neck again and groans out a few expletives. but it truly only lasts a moment, his hips jerking upwards to thrusting himself up into your wet cunt.

"please what, hm? if you want something you have to ask for it, baby."

"need to get up, need to pee."

"awww," his voice drips with condescension, the hand not toying with your belly tugging the neckline of your top down until he can free your tits from the thin material. "little girl needs to piss? go on, then."

his calloused fingertips find a hardened nipple, pinching and twisting until you arch your back with a harsh gasp. his laughter is downright mean this time, and though the warmth of your cheeks is due (in part) to embarrassment, you can’t deny the building heat that travels all the way down to where your bodies meet. all the way down to your fingers (one clawing at his forearm as the other tightens around his wrist, holding him in place where he continues to tease your nipples), and all the way down to your toes (curling against his shin as your body seizes); burning your insides until you consider letting go.

“just a couple hours ago it was ‘please, caleb! let me ride you! i promise i’ll be good! let me keep you warm, caleb!’”

all you can do is whine in defeat, head falling back to his shoulder. you meet his gaze, eyes hooded and hazy. the image of him before you is soft around the edges, his dewy skin nearly glowing in the cool, dark of the room.

“is it too much, sweetheart?” he coos, tone nearly bordering on sweet as he brushes his lips over yours. but it’s cloying and you know better, even with the slow pace your brain is currently working at. “you know what will make it all better…”

his fingers slide through your folds with ease, spreading your lips with the width of his palm before he slaps his fingers lightly against your swollen clit. it makes your body jolt against him, squeezing his cock and jostling your stomach. and it’s all a bit too much, a bit too intense. he’s rubbing you now, tight little spirals, so quick they make you cry out— and there’s something warm, something wet relaxing your reluctant mind and dripping down the veins of his cock.

you were always so confused about your body. growing up without an older sister, aunt, or mother figure left you with no one to guide you through the depths of your own body. you had no one to ask what did things mean, you were mostly clueless to women’s health. you pieced what you could together through basic info on the internet. googling symptoms, even spiraling in wikipedia hell, yet you still felt deeply embarrassed and ignorant.

after months of vague pelvic discomfort and irregular periods you decided to bite the bullet and book an appointment with your local gynecologist, especially after your best friend vaguely mentioned that “you should get checked out.” you chose dr. nanami because of his reviews, while there were only a few, they were all positive. they said he was “thorough” and “patient with anxious first-timers and younger patients.” everything you needed, yet as you sat in the waiting room with sterile white lights shining over you, you fidgeted. blushed while filling out the initial intake form. when the reception finally called you back, you knew that there was no turning back now. you sat on the hard plastic chair, already shy, clutching your purse, thighs pressed together so tight under your sundress it was like your unconsciously body is already refusing the exam before it even started. but when dr. nanami walked through the door, a small weight seemed to lift off your shoulders for a reason you couldn’t understand.

He greeted you with a warm, paternal smile that seemed to make you give a shy smile back. in that gentle, professional, doctor way that made patients relax “miss l/n.” mid-to-late-40’s, tall, deep voice, polished, impeccably dressed in a white overcoat over slacks and a white button down, and framed glasses. you didn’t notice the slight shift in his demeanor when he first saw you.

he knew the moment he laid eyes on you that he wanted to ruin you.

then the standard questions started. menstrual history, medical background, sexual activity (to which you admitted you had no past partners, only touched yourself occasionally, and even then it was only clumsy external rubbing). “it doesn’t really feel… good? Or maybe it does? I’m not sure what it’s supposed to feel like.” you admitted to him, because that was the truth, you could never bring yourself to finish or even get closer to that edge, everything just felt unsatisfactory but you just convinced yourself you were one of those people who maybe just didn’t find masturbation enjoyable? nanami listened with a perfect bedside demeanor, nodding empathetically that made you feel utterly seen “It’s quite common for young women without proper guidance to be uncertain about their own bodies. That’s why we’re here.”

but what he really thought? clumsy little thing doesn’t even know what an orgasm is. perfect.

he recommended a “full pelvic exam” for baseline health, emphasizing how important it is for someone your age with “limited experience.” you had to undress, pulling your dress off with shaky hands in the corner of the room, then your bra, then your panties, but nanami stayed in the room while you changed. his eyes locked onto the floor (or so you thought) from across the room, he claimed him staying in the room “saved time and reduced anxiety,” and poor old you believed every bit of it. the thin paper gown he gave felt harsh on your skin and made you feel utterly exposed, yet the warm aura that came from nanami made you believe that everything was going to be alright.

everything felt normal. he checked your vitals, the breast exam was swift, etc. he was thorough in ways you should’ve noticed if you weren’t so ignorant, lingering touches, the subtle bulge that slowly started to form in his slacks the longer his fingers were on you, him rolling your nipple between his thumb and index finger. just once. barely noticeable, and over as soon as it started but causing a small whimper past your lips that make his cock twitch in his slacks while explaining everything in textbook language you barely understood.

sensitive, bet she’d cry so pretty with my mouth on them while begging for more. you, so stupid, so naive, thought that maybe all doctors were this thorough.

stupid.

then the pelvic exam came.

so stupid.

he had you lay back on the stiff table, thighs pressed together as he changed his gloves. the latex snapping against his wrist sounded like a round being put in a chamber. you watched his back as he moved across the room grabbing the necessary equipment, you were actively avoiding the stirrups where your feet were supposed to go. but the moment he turned around and saw you there, shaking slightly, something shifted in him. most doctors would comfort you, take their time with you. but nanami? it fueled his disgusting brain even more. the look of you, so nervous and at his expense, he almost turned you over and fucked you raw on this very table. the sight of your thighs pressed together made his cock throb heavily against the front of his slacks. but externally? he just gave you the a small warm smile, the kind that made your shoulders relax despite your legs still being pressed tight.

“don’t worry, miss l/n, it’s alright. we’ll take it nice and slow. many young women find the stirrups intimidating at first. let’s get you comfortable, yeah?”

his voice was steady, professional in the way you believed everything he said. he rolled his stool right between your thighs. he then helped you position your feet in the stirrups himself, one hand lingering on your calf while the other stayed on your inner thigh for a moment too long “for support.”

bullshit.

the paper gown crinkled loudly as he lifted the hem up to your waist, exposing you completely under the harsh and sterile white light. the cool air hit your bare skin making you shiver, or maybe it was the way nanami gazed at your cunt, like he had been undressing you with his eyes long before you were actually naked, you couldn’t tell from which. you stared at the tiles on the ceiling like they were the most interesting thing in the world, afraid if you looked down that all of this would become real.

“perfect. just scoot your hips a little closer to the edge… there you go. excellent.” he adjusted the overhead lamp, staring openly at your pussy while pretending to calibrate it. he used his gloved fingers to slowly inspect the external vulvar area with clinical precision. parting your folds gently with his index finger, noting positively on the color, the lack of lesions, and the “healthy appearance.” but his sick thoughts inside his mind were a complete devoid of what he said outwardly.

fuck, look at the pretty pink slit. barely touched, clenching around nothing. dripping already just from being looked at. this little thing walked right into my office like a gift. he thought. no fucking way i’m wearing latex for this, i want to feel how soaked this clueless cunt gets.

his cock was already half-hard in his slacks. he palmed himself once, slowly, while “reaching for the light.” but what really got you was the sound of latex, not being put in place, no, being taken off. he peeled off his gloves right in front of you, tucking them in his coat pocket. your eyes snapped from the ceiling to him, searching, yet instead he told you “for the internal portion i’m going to proceed without gloves. latex can dull the temperature and texture perception, and for a baseline exam on a younger with limited experience, direct contact can give us much more accurate information about elasticity, lubrication, any subtle tenderness, and overall vaginal health. it’s standard in thorough practices. is that all right with you?”

you nodded quickly, too quick, embarrassed to even have an opinion. afraid of being a bad patient. afraid of being a problem. “if that’s what’s best…”

so so stupid.

he kept one hand on your inner thighs “to steady you.” you didn’t even remember trying to close your legs again, he used his other hand to part you open. his fingers were warm compared to the latex you braced for. slightly rough. bare. no latex barrier. just the friction of skin on skin.

the sterile room smelled sharply of antiseptics, but something underneath it was muskier. the paper crinkled loudly as you shifted, the cold metal from the stirrups bitting into your heels.

one thick digit traced your slit just like earlier, but this time he collected your wetness, circling your clit in small slow motions. “how does this feel?” he asked, voice low and even, bordering clinical like he was checking your blood pressure. like this was normal.

“it-it feels kind of… strange. tingly i guess?” you whispered unsure, staring hard at the ceiling tiles while your face burned. “perfectly normal,” he murmured. so fucking clueless that she doesn’t know that she’s doesn’t know that she’s getting wet for her doctor. pathetic, greedy cunt. i could knock her up right here on this table—fill her up until she’s leaking my cum for weeks.

“you’ll feel some pressure now. try to relax your muscles… good. how does this feel?” he pushed one thick digit in slowly, then a second, curling, stroking your walls with precision while his thumb “accidentally” kept brushing your clit. the wet squelching noise filled the filled the room obscenely as he scissored you open. the stretch burned slightly but sent a confusing spark to your gut as he pumped slowly. his other hand stayed resting on your inner thigh, parting, rubbing small circles into them all while gently but firmly keep them apart.

“it… it feels weird. full? but i don’t know if it’s supposed to—“ he deepened the motion instantaneously, hitting the spot you didn’t have a name for that made your hips jerk. the spongy spot inside of you he rubbed with deliberate yet professional strokes caused a involuntary moan to slip past your lips. “excellent response. that’s normal. some discomfort mixed with sensation is expected.” he said calmly. “your pelvic floor is quite reactive. that’s a good sign.”

like he’d had done this before.

his hand that was resting on your thigh moved abruptly. under the exam table, away from your vision, though not entirely, his other hand palmed his thick obvious bulge that was straining against his slacks. he squeezed himself once through the fabric, stroking once, twice, while his finger continued to work you open.

monthly appointments from now on— i’ll have her bent over this table like my own personal cumdump every four weeks, pretending it’s “pelvic floor therapy.”

the sounds that were coming from your cunt were obscene. wet squelching, those very noises would keep nanami up for days straight feeding his sick fantasy while he jerked off under his desk between patients, in the shower, in bed.

you caught the motion from your peripheral — the rhythmic movement of his arm, the way his hips shifted slightly. your eyes flicked down for half a second. was that…? no? no. you’re just nervous. hallucinating. doctors don’t… you’re imaging it because you’re gross and anxious. don’t be stupid. you snapped your gaze back to the ceiling, heart hammering. the nerves of your first gyno visit is clearly making you hallucinate.

no one ever taught you about this kind of thing, so this must’ve been normal.

he felt you clench and smiled that paternal smile.

“excellent muscle tone. you’re doing very well.” he said. she saw my cock. looked away like a scared little rabbit. but she saw it. next time i’ll make her watch me stroke it while i finger-fuck her. he kept the rhythm steady—slow, deep, agonizingly so. curling his fingers every few thrust—while his thumb brushed your clit “to assess sensation.”

“how does this feel now?”

you whimpered. “it’s… a lot. i feel really weird. like something’s building.”

he added a third finger, stretching you wider unpredictably. “breathe through it. tell me if the pressure changes.” i could cum in my pants right now just from how she’s sucking my fingers in. bet she’s never had anything this thick inside of her. i own this pussy now. she’ll be booking monthly appointments thinking that this is what healthcare feels like. stupid slut.

your mind questioned what was happening while your body betrayed you — slick coating his bare hand and practically leaked down to his wrist. you didn’t understand what was happening, only that it felt complete overwhelming, the pressure became intense. your thighs shook in the stirrups, you bit your lip to supress those pathetic whimpers and moans. you didn’t understand the heat coiling low in your belly or why your hips kept wanting to move.

“dr. nanami… it feels… really intense. like my body is doing something on its own. can we… can we take a break. please? or maybe i can finish this another time? maybe i could reschedule an appointment for another day…”

he didn’t pull his fingers out. he just slowed them. kept them buried deep inside you and he looked at you with that warm, parental, understanding expression that made your feel like you were the one being ridiculous.

“i hear you. and it’s completely valid to feel overwhelmed—many-first-time patients do. but stopping now would leave the exam incomplete. your symptoms, the pelvic discomfort, irregular periods, the uncertainty about pleasure—point to possible pelvic floor issues or possible vaginismus. this could indicate something that we’d need to catch early on. if you reschedule, we’d likely have to repeat a lot of this, which might be even harder next time. we wouldn’t want that, right? many patients regret not finishing. you’re already being so brave. just a little longer and we’ll have everything we need. you don’t want to be one do this girls who avoid care because of nerves, do you?”

you hesitated, tears forming in your eyes. “breathe. you’re safe. this is what a proper exam feels like. your body is reacting this way because it had never properly been examined before. trust the process.” he added, his voice dropping slightly.

you felt guilty. stupid. like you were wasting his time and being difficult to a man who was only trying to do his job.

you cracked, self-deprecating “i-i’m so sorry. you’re so right… i don’t want to be a problem, i’m just being silly. i can do it. really. please just keep going. i trust you. i’m sorry for interrupting…” you even spread your thighs a little wider in apology, mortified at yourself.

his smile softened. “no need to apologize. you’re communicating perfectly. let’s finish strong.” you didn’t even notice while you were apologizing he took the opportunity to palm himself again—full, slow squeeze of his cock through his slacks, thumb brushing at the angry head where a wet spot was starting to form. you didn’t look this time. you kept your eyes glued to the ceiling like it could save you. he rewarded you by speeding up, his mask slipping just a fraction. “Good girl. such a cooperative patient. how does this feel now?”

but you didn’t respond this time, you couldn’t, not properly at least. your breath hitched. your head was all fuzzy, tears blurring your vision. your walls fluttering, then clamping down hard around his bare fingers like your pussy was trying to both push him out and pull him back in at the same damn time. a sudden, intense, and overwhelming wave crashed through you—your whole body jerked, face twisted, back arching off the table. slick gushed around his hand and the table beneath you. you came with a broken little sound you’ve never heard yourself make before.

he kept fucking you through it, repeatedly hitting your g-spot, drawing it out and milking it, pupils dilated far beyond reasoning. your first real orgasm—you whimpered, ashamed. he prolonged it while palming himself to the edge but not finishing, saving it for a later fantasy.

when it finally subsided you were panting, confused, mortified. “i think… i had an accident? or… what was that?” he slowly removed his fingers, letting them linger on your swollen clit for just a moment too long. showing you, holding them up to the sterile light, then wiping it on your inner thigh with clinical detachment.

“no accident at all. that was an involuntary release—completely normal during internal stimulation, especially for you first time experiencing it. it tells us that your nerves are responding appropriately. nothing to feel ashamed about miss l/n.” he deepened his fingers one more time, claiming to “check your cervix” all while your body was still twitching, wanting to push you over the edge. he helped you sit up, praised how well you did, let you pull down your gown. the rest of the appointment passed in a haze.

“everything looks healthy. no abnormalities. however, given your full history and the fact that this did your first full exam, i’d like to see you back in four to six weeks for a follow up. we can recheck your cycle patterns and go over any self-monitoring techniques if you’d like.” he handed you his business card with his direct line scribbled on the back. “call the office to schedule. or you can reach me directly if anything comes up before then. please, don’t hesitate.”

you got dressed once again, slipped off your gown to put your sundress back on. you didn’t notice that your panties were gone, must’ve been the way way that your thigh were shaking or how your mind was still cloudy. you didn’t see just earlier when he slipped them inside his coat pocket. but as you thanked him and left the room he took the damp fabric and brought them to his nose, inhaling deep with a small smirk. i’ll wrap them around my cock tonight and jerk off to the memory of her gushing on my fingers. next visit i’m tasting her directly. he put them back in his pocket along with the facade he slipped back on.

you left on shaky legs, still wet, still throbbing, still telling yourself that this was normal.

later that night you tried to sleep. you couldn’t. every time you closed your eyes you felt his fingers, heard his deep voice.

how does this feel?

your hand slipped between your legs almost on autopilot without you even realizing. you started like you always did—clumsy circles on your clit—but it wasn’t enough. not after today. you slid two fingers inside yourself the way he had. tried to copy the curl, the upward press.

how does this feel?

you moved faster, chasing that same “tingly” feeling as you did earlier, the same pressure. shame flooded over you instantly.

no one ever taught me… this must be what he meant by reactive. i’m just following his instructions. he was helping me.

tears pricked your eyes even as you rolled your hips against your hand. you added a third finger, gasping at the stretch. though it didn’t feel as good as when he did it, but it was close enough to make you moan broken into your pillow. you whispered his words back to yourself.

how does this feel?

the guilt made the pleasure sharper, more intense. when it hit you again you had to bite your pillow to stay quiet. your body shook harder then it did on that exam table. you came again thinking of his calm face between your legs.

what the fuck is wrong with me? you thought. he was just doing his job. being through. and i’m here fingering myself to the memory like some gross pervert. he even said it was normal. i’m the one making it sexual. i’m the problem.

completely unaware that the real pervert had been that man in the white coat.

you curled up small, eyes burning. you felt dirty. ignorant. broken.

but you also knew that were already going to call in the morning and book that follow up. better yet? you would use his direct line.

his monthly toy.