LOVESLEON

THE CANNIBAL

Bubba tries really hard not to pay too much attention to the survivors, because he starts to feel a little bad about killing them when he does. It's silly, and it's not a kindness they deserve, but it's hard to be apathetic, especially when it comes to the new ones. The survivors hardly ever feel the same way, though.

You treated him as a person, even after the countless times he's killed you. It was jarring, the first time you left him a small trinket at the exit gate. It was something you made, that much was obvious. It reminded him of his own creations, and it filled him with this giddy excitement that he's not sure he's ever felt before.

He knows that he's not supposed to play favorites, but Bubba just can't bring himself to kill you.

You bring him gifts! It would be rude if he were to hurt you after you've shown him kindness. So yes, Bubba shows you clear favoritism. It's something the other survivors probably find annoying, but it is what it is.

The Entity doesn't seem to care much, either. You're the only survivor he ever spares, and it's not like you're always in a trial with him.

The guilt of the harm he's already caused you eats him alive a bit, and no amount of reassurance from you will ever really make it go away. He's really sorry.

You're the first friend he's had in... ever, really, if you don't count his family. He's always nervous that he'll end up doing something to scare you off. He can't speak, so he's worried his grunts and squeals might startled you. His movements can be a bit erratic too. Sharp, jerky movements because he never knows what he's allowed to do.

But you never shy away from him. You always chat with him, talking about anything and everything. Random things that happen around the campfire, little stories from your life before the fog, interactions you've had with other killers.

Bubba doesn't know when his platonic feelings started to turn into something more, but he knows when he became aware of it. He had made you something. A little keychain, something you could easily clip to your belt. It wasn't his best work, but you had smiled so brightly when he gave it to you.

And you wore it constantly. Every trial he has with you, you're wearing it. It's become a part of your look, apparently. You wore it so proudly that he swears his heart nearly gave out on him.

He... hopes that he'll have the courage to convey his rapidly growing feelings to you soon.

THE EXECUTIONER

Pyramid Head knew about you before he even had his first trial with you.

He's always been attuned to people's guilt and sins, and you… you had none of that. To put it simply, you were perfect. It's something that realistically shouldn't be possible, but there's not a single thing he can sense that you deserved judgment for.

When in a trial with you, he never really... targeted you. If anything, he was trying to keep the other survivors away from you, to keep your soul pure. He'd hate if anyone were to taint it.

It was a surprise to everyone when he started showing an immediate interest in you. The other killers were confused, and very much wary of you. If you can make a being such as Pyramid Head be gentle, then surely there's something deeply wrong with you.

And the survivors weren't any better. They were nice to you, they always were, but they kept you at arms length. You can't really blame them, either. They've been... tortured, really, by the creature just for being near you.

The Entity doesn't seem as confused as the others. She is... rather silent. She only wants sacrifices, and nothing else. She doesn't care what the survivors and killers get up to in their spare time between trials. Even if she did, it's not like she could do anything to stop Pyramid Head's growing obsession with you.

She does not control him. He is here of his own free will, and they've come to a mutual agreement of sorts because of it. He still takes his role as killer very seriously, and seemingly even more so when he's in a trial with you. He likes getting you alone.

You're terrified of him, but that's okay. He's your... protector. He doesn't need you to like him (even though something deep inside his being yearns for it), he just needs you to understand that you're safe when he's around.

There's no telling whether this weird obsession he has for you is strictly platonic. His touch lingers far too long for it to be, but you're not even sure if he can feel romantic feelings. Perhaps he just... sees you as something to keep?

That thought leaves you feeling nauseous, but... it's nice, in an odd way? This realm was terrifying. Having someone as imposing as him to protect you—as much as he's allowed to by The Entity—is comforting.

THE WRAITH

Philip stopped caring for survivors a long time ago. He barely even noticed when new faces would appear; everyone was starting to blur together into faceless beings that he had to kill. It would take a miracle for him to acknowledge your existence, and miracles aren't something meant to exist in the fog. But there's always a chance for him to be proven wrong, it seems.

And that chance was when you showed up in Autohaven outside of a trial. He's never encountered a survivor outside of a trial before, so he was incredibly caught off guard when he saw you absently digging through a pile of junk and scrap. How did you even get here to begin with? He thought survivors were condemned to their campfire; he didn't know they could just… wander around.

He also learned that killing was strictly prohibited outside of trials because of this. An annoying realization, but one that makes sense in the grand scheme of things. That strange creature who can mimic voices doesn't seem to get along with the new killer... Jason, is it?

You refused to leave, too. The idea of being able to interact with a killer outside of a trial was far too enticing to pass up, and for a long time, Philip refused to humor you. Hell, when he ended up in a trial with you after that encounter, he tunneled you out just to spite you.

You complained about it after the trial, back at the junkyard. He didn't care much to listen to you, blocking your voice out for the most part. You talked a lot, and he hated it.

But at some point, he started to listen. You talked a lot about your life, and never about the fog. You had so many stories to tell that it was impossible for him not to listen to some of them. That was quick to turn into him quietly responding, asking questions for clarification on certain things during your stories.

It didn't take long for you and Philip to start having full-blown conversations, mostly about your life. He didn't like talking about himself, and you never pried for anything he didn't want to give answers to.

You know his name, random details about his life, and that's about it. That was enough for you, for some reason. He didn't understand. He didn't want to understand.

There's no denying the soft spot he was developing for you, though. It was obvious to everyone, including you. He would hesitate to hurt you in trials, despite that being his 'job'. He'd more often than not end up giving you hatch, too.

Philip doesn't want to admit that he's developed certain feelings for you. To him, it's simply impossible for the two of you to end up together. It's a miracle that you've become his friend in the first place, anything more is just never going to happen.

“Nurse Bethany has been giving me a nasty side-eye all morning.”

Whether or not you’re actually paying any attention to what she’s saying, Selena Corey either doesn’t seem to particularly notice or care. She just prefers to speak when there’s someone around her, and today - like most days - it happens to be you.

And you don’t have the energy to deject her.

In her defense, between her and the rather lackluster breakfast presented in front of you on the table, she’s the more noticeable addition to your morning. Exactly what she wants, no doubt.

“Nurse Bethany?” You prod with as much interest as you can be bothered to garner while scooping your scrambled eggs to the left side of the plate. “Doesn’t she always look like someone pissed in her cereal?"

Maybe you could give this mush to either Timothy or Thomas. They’d slurp it like it was a delicacy, no chewing required.

Selena leans closer to your ear, as if to whisper, but her voice doesn’t dim in the slightest. “I bet she’s envious of me.”

A not-so-subtle giggle - like a child - pushes past her lips, and a few strands of her bright-blonde hair tickle your cheek at the exhalation.

“I had Dr. Beckett sneak me that nice bottle of shampoo the other night. You know, that really expensive kind from that fancy store in Wrenwood. She can probably see that. That's why she's looking at me like that. She wants it too.”

You briefly glance at her hair from the corner of your eye, and truth be told, you really can’t spot much of a difference. Like always, her hair looks good. Annoyingly good.

She smells fresh, too - floral and sweet. Too sweet, and too strong. Soap and lotion of a fancy kind. A stark contrast to your sterile surroundings.

Smelling salts would've been more merciful to your nostrils.

Selena has always been beautiful - anyone with or without a prescription can see it, but mentioning it aloud might just cause more problems than you're comfortable with. She thrives on attention, and even if you give it to her by the crumbs, she'll inhale it like cocaine.

And if you’re at this center, it’s a given that you already have problems in dire need of specialized, professional aid; you don’t need to tip the scales that determine whether or not you can get out of here at some point. Even if you have no urgency to leave.

You stab your fork through the toast, and force it into your mouth while you reflect on which kind of answer to provide her with that won’t blow out of massive proportion. “Must be that, then.”

Her eyes brighten with validation you’re not sure you intended on giving, and she leans even closer to your personal space than you’re comfortable with. The warmth from her body clashes against your own cold temperature, and the sickeningly sweet scent only further irritates your sinuses.

“You see it too, right? I knew you could! It’s so obvious that's it!”

Her shoulder bumps hard into yours, and given what the last doctor said about your iron levels, you’re confident you’ll develop a bruise in a few hours.

“She just can’t stand the fact that she’s past her prime, and I’m flowering into mine!” Selena voices haughtily, almost without a care if anyone could hear and interject with their own opinions on the matter.

You peek over to look at the aforementioned nurse, hoping that your observations will shed some light on the situation you've unwillingly been pulled into.

Nurse Bethany observes the patients from the entrance like she does every day, scribbling on her notepad, seemingly or willfully oblivious to Selena’s typical outbursts. Maybe she’s just used to them? Most of the inpatients and staff here seem to be.

You know you are.

Bored as the charge nurse looks, however, she doesn’t seem to be in a scrutinizing mood based on jealousy. The likelihood is simply that she has a resting bitch face.

But you don't mention it to your table-companion.

“You know,” Selena says - yet again -, her tone now more wistful and airy than moments before. “You can probably borrow some of it, if you want? I think you’d look really dashing if you started caring a bit more about your appearance. I know how to look pretty, and I can help you.”

As she says this, she raises her hand to draw her fingers through your hair. Her nails lightly graze the surface of your scalp, and for a moment, you envision her severing the skin underneath. There's no knowing when her mood might take a turn for the worse, but at this point, you really couldn't care less.

After all, it's the first time anyone's touched you outside of medical necessity.

She probably means well, you think to yourself. In her own special way.

In all the time you’ve known Selena since you first got to Rhodes Hill, she has struck you as someone who knows how to keep her appearance pristine regardless of the resources available, with alarming precision.

That, and her penchant for … charming the male staff members doesn't go entirely unnoticed either.

You can't help but compare her to those girls in fashion magazines with shiny, flawless skin and voluminous hair who write tips and tricks on how to take care of yourself.

And given how you’ve let yourself fall victim to sleepless nights in the time you’ve been here, and even long before, you require neither mirror nor Selena’s comments to know you look like shit.

You're not like her.

“Thanks,” you try your best to give her a simple, albeit tired, smile. Even lifting your lips feels heavy. “But I think it suits you better, Selena. Don't waste it on me.”

“It’s no problem at all.” She pulls her hand away and smiles in that way only she can manage at a place like this without looking too eerie. Like she’s completely somewhere else, and nowhere at the same time. “Dr. Beckett is quite easy to convince. I could … talk to him, for you. Get him to get you a bottle of your own. If you took a little bit better care of yourself, maybe you wouldn’t be so down all the time.”

Down?

That’s what she calls it.

Down.

A superficial but surprisingly accurate word to describe your persistent mood, at least by comparison to your own subjective descriptions of it.

Down in hell.

Down in the cellar.

Just generally down.

The doctors, nurses, and those other specialists have other names for it:

"Persistent Depressive Disorder" and "Complex PTSD"

That's what they call it.

That's why you're here. To flourish and return to your "normal" self, even if no one here has any idea of what you're like. If you’re honest, you’re not sure you wholly fit the bill for that diagnosis, but you don’t bother to outright fight the allegations.

You have no cash, no family, no other place to be.

You were orphaned following Raccoon City. Your dad was a researcher at Umbrella, and your mom wasn't around.

You vividly remember seeing one of the infected take a chunk of his jugular, and after that, you were alone, and with no other family left, you were quickly thrown into the system to be bounced around at the whims of others. Apathy struck you first, then the anhedonia (phrased perfectly by another shrink), and then the inability to care much about what happened to you.

You just … didn't care anymore. Whether that qualified for a depressive diagnosis or not, you've long since let it be what it is.

You've been hit, kicked, punched, talked down to, and yet none of it has stuck more than a mosquito bite would. You remember being bitten by one of the infected. One of those … monsters - the same one who offed your dad - bit you on the skin surrounding your shoulder, and yet you just … kept living.

Kept going, just as you are now.

Not even the pain registered properly until you somehow got out of there, and it's a miracle no infection took root.

After that, things just ceased to matter.

And now, you are just … here.

By the social worker’s phrasing, you are fortunate that the Rhode Hill Center is a charity care that favors less than financially stable folks.

In fact, the director himself, Dr. Victor Gideon, seemed to personally have wished you here. He was apparently contacted by your PCP at the time, and he didn't waste time accepting you to Rhodes Hill. You hadn't even formally met the man at that point.

If even half the practicing doctors in the world were as enthusiastic about having a new charge as he was, the world would probably be a merrier place.

A philanthropist who, according to the publications, was personally struck during the tragedy of Raccoon City and opened this center as a way to heal the wounded population. It's not every day that an esteemed doctor of his decree takes an interest in you, so what options were you left with?

Between here and nowhere at all, you couldn't afford to be picky.

And among all the other psychiatric facilities you've been admitted to over the years, Rhodes Hill stands out as the best one yet. Good food, decent staff, and individual rooms for its inhabitants. Hell, they even have a casino.

Patients are encouraged to engage with each other socially, and the ones who can't interact with others aren't wholly excluded either, just adjusted to.

All in all, it's a nice enough place.

If Selena’s miracle shampoo from Wrenwood could fix your problems and make you maybe start caring a little more, you might have taken her up on that.

But you don’t, nor do you have the good conscience to let her blow a member of staff to get it for you.

Even though it shouldn’t be physically possible, Selena manages to lean even closer into you, sling her arm around your shoulder, and inch her lips closer to your ear.

“Maybe even Dr. Gideon would look a little longer if you fixed yourself up some more.”

If anything she’s said in the last ten minutes has made you visibly react, it’s that.

Confusion paints your face in a narrowed hue. “What are you talking about?”

She smiles until her teeth - perfectly white, and pearly - are on show, and pulls a little back from you. "He looks at you the most. I don't know why, but I can tell that he does whenever he stops by to greet us. It's like he's … put in a trance."

Her smile threatens to depress at the mention of someone's attention being on someone else other than herself, but she quickly replenishes her strength to keep going with ... whatever it is she intends to keep talking about. "Imagine if you could score the director himself. I bet he could give you a lot of pretty things."

"Score" the director?

For as long as you've known Dr. Gideon (if you can even call it that), he's always struck you as … something else. Not cold, or cruel, or focused solely on the clinical, or whether you're responding to the medication more than he needs to. You're experienced with shrinks of that caliber, but you can't say that he quite fits the bill on that front.

He asks you specifically how you are, most of the time. Asks questions none of the other doctors have, and seems to have an insatiable curiosity regarding you and your history.

He stands out from the other staff with his overwhelming stature and the sole fact that he basically runs this place. His voice is smooth, his skin pale, and he never seems to get caught off-guard by the many … events that sometimes occur. Unperturbed, even when Thomas Jackson once threatened to eat him whole.

He never raises his voice to anyone - a testament to his experience in this field.

And the times he's directly touched you, usually in relation to blood work and tests, his skin feels inexplicably cold against your own.

Too cold, like he had nothing but ice resting underneath.

Maybe you should have noticed more, like Selena claims?

If you were to put a word to Dr. Gideon, it would be … odd.

Not bad, or condescending, or creepy in an inherent way apparent to you.

Just … odd.

"I'm just one of his patients," you tell her, as neutral as you can while shoving your plate a few inches away. The food is supposed to be exemplary - a luxury compared to what they provide other psychiatric patients in the rest of the county. But the taste is … bland, and unappealing to your palate. Might be the medication they've put you on that's fucked with your tongue. "He cares as much for me as he does the rest."

You can already tell that she doesn't find your answer satisfactory. She wants you to affirm her observations. With words. Always words, and if you do it with a complimentary smile, she might offer to kiss you.

You're afraid that if you agree with what she's said without any scrutiny, she'll consider you her one true love in this world.

"He stares a lot. I notice."

"You notice a lot of things, Selena."

"I notice the way people look at me." Her frown deepens. "Dr. Gideon doesn't look at me like he looks at you."

If it's true what she says - which you somewhat doubt - you haven't noticed it.

Before anything else can be said by either of you, you feel an overwhelming figure cast a shadow over the table where you're seated.

"Are you going to eat that?" Timothy asks, salivating at the sight of your barely touched breakfast. The crumbs on the edges of his lips suggest he's already finished his own, but between the options of him and the trash, the choice is easy.

You push the plate towards him. "Have at it, Tim."

The overweight man doesn't even have the time to properly say "thanks" before he's already forcing the scrambled eggs and toast into his mouth with his fingers. In fact, you doubt he's even chewing it properly.

Selena scrunches her nose at the rather unflattering display.

"Mr. Jackson!" Nurse Bethany yells as she approaches your table. "You have already exceeded your 500-calorie limit for today's breakfast!"

You take this cue to get up from your seat, not wanting to be here in case Timothy gets aggressive about his food. Again. "Thank you for the meal."

As you're leaving, you can hear Selena intruding upon the already fragile situation, as per usual.

"Oh, let him eat. He's a big boy; he needs the energy."

"Please return to your seat, Miss Corey."

"Why? You've been jealous of me all morning, and now you think you can just order me around? Is that it?! Who do you think you are?!"

"Sit. Down. Miss Corey!"

"Don't you — LET GO OF ME, YOU BITCH!"

By the time you shut the cafeteria doors behind you, you hear shouting and screaming, and you have to quickly move to the side as several additional nurses rush past you to de-escalate the situation. Something shatters, Selena's screams resonate through the walls, and you can safely assume that sedatives are a must.

You look back over to the entrance to the kitchens, and while you can't tell what's going on, your best guess, given Selena's declining whines, is that she's already gotten her shot. Again.

"I see Miss Corey needs to have her dosage adjusted."

You should have been able to sense him before he even spoke; that coldness that seeps through the fabric of his coat into the air around you. Yet, you don't properly register his presence before he steps next to you, dwarfing your size by comparison.

"Dr. Gideon." You think that passes for an appropriate greeting, flat as it may be.

"Good morning, my dear." He looks down at you with a polite yet relaxed smile, his arms folded neatly behind his back. The unnatural amber hue of his eyes pierces through your own with a sharp precision that only comes naturally to doctors. "I do hope Miss Corey didn't interrupt your meal. I've read reports that she tends to float in your vicinity, early in the mornings as of late."

"I'm good," you answer and shift your attention back to the cafeteria entrance.

On cue, the doors open, and both you and Dr. Gideon watch as several members of staff escort a rather dazed-looking Selena out. She's smiling and singing and airily caressing any male staff she can get her hands on, letting her fingers graze their ironed shirts while humming softly as they transport her back to her room.

There is blood coated under her nails, and Nurse Bethany sports a fresh set of three superficial scars running down her left cheek.

Ouch.

"Dr. Gideon," Nurse Bethany calls, out of breath, but impressively composed. "How would you like us to proceed with Miss Corey?"

"Yes," Dr. Gideon says, staring at her. More specifically, the scratch across her face. Transfixed, you would call it, but you're probably mistaken. "I'll look over her Lithium dosage, just make sure she's ... comfortable."

Nurse Bethany nods, then shifts her attention to you. "I saw you speaking with Miss Corey. Did you talk about anything in particular that might shed some light on this …?"

"Not really," you answer. "She basically said I could afford to look better, and that you were jealous because she's pretty."

The charge nurse frowns, mumbles something incoherent under her breath that vaguely resembles cursing, then leaves to rejoin the other staff members in escorting the aforementioned patient.

Your eyes follow them until they disappear around the corner.

"It's a shame," Dr. Gideon says, vaguely disappointed in a way that doesn't properly show on his countenance. "I initially believed she had finally begun responding to the treatment."

"If it's any consolation, our conversation did revolve around shampoo for a minute," you feel the need to point out.

"Oh?"

"It was calm, for the most part. She had recommendations."

He takes a whiff of the air above him, and his mouth curls a little, like he doesn't like what he's smelling. "I thought I scented something different than the center's standard array."

"That's most likely it."

He raises his eyebrows in a "you know something I don't?" kind of way. "And you wouldn't happen to know how she acquired said product, would you?"

"I have an idea, and I think you do, too."

If a scowl spreads across his lips, it's a subtle one that evades your notice. He heaves a sigh under his breath and looks over his shoulder to where the staff was previously. "Men are fickle things. Too easily distracted from their assignments once matters of the flesh are presented to them. It seems I will need to do a thorough investigation if Miss Corey is to yield results with her treatment."

Matters of the flesh? Slightly outdated way to speak of giving head if you're being honest, but you don't point it out.

He looks at you again, and his expression softens slightly. "Otherwise, how are you, my dear? Have you been resting adequately?"

You spend a second thinking of an answer that will satisfy him. "I'm … adequate?"

Kind of true, but also not. You're either sleeping too much or not at all.

If you go to bed too early, you're susceptible to waking up early in the night with an aggravating inability to fall back asleep.

If you sleep for too long, you still don't feel rested at all by the time you wake up.

At this point, you've settled on a routine where you just let your head hit the pillow and let your body do what it wants.

If he sees through your lie, he doesn't mention it. Maybe he already knows you're not being entirely truthful, and just elects to leave it be. Not typical for the standard kind of doctor you've visited in the past, but then again, Dr. Gideon is hardly of the standard stock.

He says your name, soft yet firm, like an exasperated parent who's caught their child up past their bedtime. Ironic as that comparison is, it's hard not to feel small when he's towering over you the way he is. "For us to have success with your treatment plan, I need you to be forthcoming with me."

Well, when he puts it like that …

"I do get some sleep," you admit after some careful thinking. Why bother lying when it's clear that he sees through it? If you didn't know any better, you'd think he wore some kind of visor to see past bullshit barriers. "Sometimes a few hours, sometimes the entire night. I just don't feel … rested. Thought the mirtazapine would help, but it just makes me fall asleep quicker, not longer."

He takes a step closer to you, which only further establishes the height difference between you. You're convinced that if he were to try, he could encompass the entirety of you. The unmistakable smell of antiseptics and other chemicals for which you have no name overwhelms your sinuses to a stinging degree. More so than Selena's shampoo ever did.

You remember your father smelling of the same stuff whenever he came home from work, when you were awake to catch him.

Dr. Gideon slowly raises his finger to your face and just barely touches your cheek. Even with a distance, you can still feel the cold spread across your face. It would only take a marginal shift for him to physically touch you, but he doesn't.

"Periorbital edema is always a good indicator."

He tilts his head slightly to the side, like he's observing you.

He is observing you.

Selena's words resurface in your mind: "Dr. Gideon doesn't look at me like he looks at you."

You try to pinpoint the exact way he's looking at you, but nothing comes to mind.

He doesn't look at you like Dr. Beckett looks at Selena when he thinks he's being discreet.

He doesn't look at you the same way Timothy or Thomas looks at their food. Insatiable. Desperate.

But he is looking at you in some kind of way; you just lack the vocabulary necessary to describe specifically what kind of way that is.

"If you wish, I can prescribe you a low dose of zopiclone." He promptly lowers his hand again, but his eyes don't leave you. They never do.

"Thanks, but they already tried that at the facility back in Wrenwood. Didn't really do much for me but give me migraines."

"Nevertheless, it is prudent that you get enough REM sleep. I've also been informed by the nurses that you rarely finish your meals."

You offer a shrug that just barely passes for one. More of a lift of the left shoulder than a gesture of indifference. "I've never had much of an appetite."

He looks at you, and you look at him. A minute goes by without any of you saying anything, but you can tell that he's doing his best to suppress a sigh akin to the one he produces when Selena's having another one of her episodes.

"I wish to take some tests, if the timing is convenient for you."

Before you can answer, he puts his hand on your back and starts guiding you towards the laboratory. While his touch is light, you doubt you could physically resist him even if you put all your muscles into it (which you don't have a lot of).

"… Sure."

The edge of his scarred lip tilts upward by a fraction.

───

Maybe Selena had a point to her rant, rare as they are? Maybe you should start paying more attention to the way he's acting around you?

You don't even feel the needle as it pierces through your skin, nor does the sight of your blood filling several tubes do anything to rattle you. At this point in your life, you've probably become anemic with all the blood that's been taken out of you over the years alone.

You don't even question why he seems to take more than the standard kind of blood tests you've grown accustomed to.

"It's just to see whether your thyroid is functioning properly," he assures you. "As well as a CBC."

Looking at him looking at the vials as they fill up, it's almost like he's … expectant of something.

With your head resting in your other hand while he does his job, you ignore the way his fingers linger on the exposed skin of your arm. Goosebumps have already erupted across the entirety of your arm like wildfire. "Thought my blood work looked good enough last week?"

"It did. Slightly elevated CRP levels, and mild anemia, but nothing too alarming."

"I'll live, then?"

"Hmm …"

Once the third vial is filled to the brim, he gives it a few gentle shakes before replacing it with another.

As the new vial gradually fills, you notice that he gives the filled one a closer look. Pointed. Analytical. Curious. It's like he has questions, and only the crimson liquid in your veins can provide answers.

"You should never underestimate the lengths your body will go to keep you alive." He doesn't look at you as he says this, just maintains focus on the tube like it's the patient, and not you. "You were vaccinated as a child, correct? Your medical journal doesn't tell."

You nod. "My dad did it himself. Perks of being a researcher with an MD. Saved us trips to the hospital."

"How … fortunate." He puts the vial back on the tray to join the previous ones. Four vials now out of (five, six …) seven, enough to make you wonder what other kinds of tests he's taking, if you were the kind to wonder.

"What did his research entail, might I ask?" he continues.

"Not sure. All I knew was that he wasn't around too often, so it must have been interesting."

Truth be told, the memory of your father isn't sour, but it's not inherently sweet either. He was up before the sun, and back around the same time. He didn't hug you, or say much to you, really.

He was there, and then he wasn't.

Injecting you with those vaccines was probably the closest thing you ever got to a father-daughter activity. It was the only thing he seemed to want to spend time doing himself with you, rather than hiring someone to do it for him, as he did with everything else.

One of the previous shrinks you visited suggested that your apathy towards life is directly linked to his absence, both before and after Raccoon City. A bold assumption, but like with everything else going on, you don't bother to debunk it.

Dr. Gideon finishes with the rest of the vials in complete silence. Had it not been for his chest heaving with each breath he takes, you might have guessed that he didn't require air to function.

When he's done, he puts a cotton ball over the injection side. "I should have the results by tonight, and if there are any significant deficiencies, I'll let you know before I clock off." He puts the vials aside. "However, considering that your previous tests revealed some vitamin deficiency, I'm going to give you a shot of B12 before I let you resume with your day."

"Another one? That bad, huh?" It's the third one this month.

"Less than ideal, I'm afraid."

As he reaches for something in the cabinet by the door, you watch his back and find yourself - for once - wondering.

How come this doctor - this one specifically - seems to be the only one in the last decade or so who genuinely seems to have a regard for your well-being? Your previous ones never put this much time and effort into you, even when you were younger and significantly more impaired.

Hell, not even your old man cared that much, and maybe you'd have been a little more well-adjusted if he did.

The pulse heaters you continue to wear to this day - even years after that little misstep you made when you were a teen - prove it.

You didn't get it. You still don't.

He's not like Dr. Beckett, who gives privileges to Selena if she gives him a good mouth-to-mouth demonstration.

He's never struck you as the salacious kind of person - though, to be fair, you probably wouldn't have cared if he were.

So, why all of this extra effort?

"If it's that bad, I'll try to get my Five A Day," you try, and for once, there's a genuine attempt at humor lodged somewhere between the letters. Weak, but present nonetheless. More than Selena's ever managed to get out of you. "Best to save your shot for someone who actually has one, Dr. Gideon."

He pauses for a moment, then slowly looks over his shoulder at you. There's something … unsettling in his eyes this time, as though you've insulted him in some way, without meaning to.

He doesn't blink, doesn't seem to breathe, and he doesn't speak. It uncannily reminds you of the way a snake looks just before it strikes its prey.

Once again, Selena's cryptic words make a reentrance in your mind.

"Dr. Gideon doesn't look at me like he looks at you."

Softly, he asks: "My dear, whatever do you mean?"

Tempted as you are to look away and focus on something other than those unnerving eyes of his, you don't.

"Treatment is for appreciative people," you explain, placid despite the weight behind your words that would've made an ordinary psychiatrist grow pale with occupational concern. "People who can actually contribute to their surroundings. I'm … Well, no one. I have nothing and no one. Me dying wouldn't affect anyone. So, why put so many Band-Aids over a gaping wound that refuses to close?"

You remember saying something similar to your psychologist in the past. For that, you were put on an involuntary psychiatric hold for three days, deemed a danger to yourself, and only allowed to eat under supervision and with those horrible wooden utensils that rendered the taste of your food just as wooden.

It's not like the fact that you're alone makes you sad. Not anymore. There's something slightly liberating to know that even if you were to pass on, from an accident or an illness or by simple happenstance, the world will keep spinning after you're gone.

No one is chained to you in a way that matters.

You look at Dr. Gideon, and he just keeps staring at you. Whether he's surprised, cautious, concerned, or even angry, you can't tell. He's never been easy to read, and now, you find yourself curious as to what he thinks.

Maybe he'll finally deem you a lost cause, like so many others have?

Maybe he'll confine you to your room in restraints and pump you full of drugs until you physically cannot do anything to yourself, even if you wanted to?

Maybe he'll discharge you to another care facility?

The sound he makes next almost makes you raise your eyebrow in confusion.

"Oh,"

Like always, his tone is mild, but now, it feels deeper somehow. Like he's pitying you without really pitying you. As if he's seeing something so obvious that it's a tragedy that you can't.

"You have no idea how special you truly are."

You can only watch as he procures a pre-filled syringe from the cabinet and closes in on you. His steps are measured, slow, as though he's approaching an animal in a trap that's grown weary of fighting against the sharp edges. It's a good thing you've long since outgrown your fear of needles, because that image would've otherwise made even the bravest soldier quiver.

"There's no one in this world like you." He whispers your name like it's a secret only he truly knows of. "I can assure you that if you were to pass, I would be devastated."

Then he does something that makes you damn-near short-circuit.

With his unoccupied hand, he reaches forward and places his fingers gently on your cheek. Not a caress, not truly, but intimate nonetheless in ways you are unaccustomed to. It's not like Selena, whose touches and caresses feel consuming and overwhelming despite being considerably smaller compared to Dr. Gideon.

It feels light … and genuine, in a way you can't describe or properly understand.

The chilly temperature of his digits spreads from your face down to your toes, yet you don't move away.

You can only continue to look at him.

"Even if you do have your reservations, I have no intention of letting you die. This, I swear."

And the strangest thing yet: You believe him. You believe that he will not allow you to die, even if you were to attempt it yourself. An animal in a gilded cage cannot harm itself without the handler noticing.

He removes his hand from your face, slowly, then gestures for you to fall into a position you've already grown used to.

You're not sure if it's your brain messing with you or not, but you swear that this injection feels … sharper.

───

That night, you lie shivering in bed with a fever spike of 104. The Tylenol the nurse administered just a few hours ago didn't work for shit when you first began to notice that you were coming down with something.

You never come down with anything, not this intensely. Every fever you've ever had has been mild at worst, or subfebrile. It passes quickly and never settles long enough for you to notice.

But now you do.

Reluctantly, you called the nurse, and before you knew it, you were surrounded by all kinds of staff who took different tests, blood work, vitals, and hung up a liter or two of saline. You've never been susceptible to infections, but judging by the nervous look that the new intern got on his face when they took your vitals, you got an inkling that something was seriously wrong with you.

Well, outside of the usual, that is.

Everything hurt.

Everything is a blur.

Your body is soaking through all of your covers.

You taste blood in your mouth.

Needles poke your arms at a rapid interval, but they are a kindness compared to the ones already piercing through your organs and your head.

If you were truly dying, you might have had some more reservations about it if you knew it was going to hurt like such a bitch.

More blood is drawn, more staff appear whose faces you can't even register beyond the haze of your mind, and then, everything turns dark.

At first, it's overwhelming. You feel hands touching you, large ones, grasping at you with bruising intensity like you're dangling above a cliff and they're unwilling to let you descend into the abyss.

But it's too much … too intrusive. You don't like it.

Let go.

Let go.

LET GO!

You claw, and you grasp, and you scratch. Like an animal. Like a rabid beast in need of euthanasia.

Warm wetness coats your nails. You hear your own shriek reverberating around you, and yet the invisible hands don't relent at all.

They keep clutching you, undeterred by the physical mutilation of their flesh.

Then you hear it, quiet yet loud at the same time.

"Shhhh …"

"Rest now,"

"We have much to do."

And you disappear.

───

When you wake, there is nothing.

You don't feel cold or soaked anymore.

You feel … fine.

That's what surprises you.

Exhausted. Depleted of any kind of energy, but … fine.

The more you stir, the more you gradually begin to notice.

Something is carefully stroking through your hair. Gently. Like they're braiding through something fragile of significant worth. No one has ever stroked their fingers through your hair before, and it feels … strangely soothing.

You want to fall back asleep and hope that you can get a full night's sleep for once.

"Are you finally awake, my dear?"

You blink once, then twice, and the room - and figure seated by your bed - finally aligns in your vision.

Dr. Gideon looks down at you, a gentle smile spread across his lips as his fingers continue to weave through your knotted strands. "I was almost worried that you wouldn't wake, but I'm glad to see that you continue to pull through as you always have."

You try to say something. Anything. But your throat is dry, and despite evidence of an IV in your arm, the bag of saline that's connected to you has partially failed to do its job. The words you attempt to pronounce instead come out as incoherent gargles that promptly force you to cough for several harsh rounds.

"Here."

You don't fight him when he leans over to tilt your head back, his hand firm against the back of your skull, nor do you object to the feeling of cold water intruding upon your mouth. You cough and gag at the first drop, but it doesn't take long before you're all but inhaling the liquid.

"There, now," Dr. Gideon coos as he pulls the empty glass away, waiting for you to catch your breath again with a pleased look in his eyes. "Doesn't that feel better?"

"What—" You struggle to gather and recognize your own voice, your thoughts still hazy and disorganized. "What … happened?"

Dr. Gideon spends another minute just … staring at you, tilting his head to change angle now and then, like he's looking for something. Anything. You don't know what it is he's searching for, but after a short while, he finally decides to answer your inquiry.

"Something truly … miraculous. You are miraculous."

You don't feel miraculous. If anything, you feel a flicker of annoyance at his intentional inability to elaborate.

Though your body feels like lead, you still force yourself to sit up. The position is crooked and likely doomed to fail, but it provides a window for you to properly look at him now.

"What happened?" you ask again, more forceful this time.

Dr. Gideon releases a soft hmm through his nose, looking completely in awe at what's presented in front of you. You don't know why he would. Even if you don't have a mirror, you can only assume you look like shit.

You think he will deflect again. Say something cryptic that only he knows the context of.

"Did you know that your father was a prominent researcher for Umbrella?"

You didn't expect that.

"What?"

"Oh, yes. He wasn't much liked, but you couldn't deny his efficiency."

"… What does that have to do with anything?"

He leans closer, as if to whisper a secret only you can know.

"Everything."

He gets to his feet and starts slowly circling your bed. A vulture, you imagine him as. Soaring over prey that has yet to expire.

"I only ever met the man once. We worked at separate divisions, but his reputation was … recognized. A scientist of unrivaled decree. No one knew much about him, nor did he seem like the sort who willingly engaged with people outside his designated area."

He stops and looks to you again, as if alternating between different inclinations might give him more information. "To discover that he had a daughter he left behind was … unexpected."

You want to say something, but you imagine that he'll take your silence as permission to continue, so you don't bother with interrupting him this time.

He rests his hand on the bedpost, dragging his fingers slowly from one corner to the other. "Have you never wondered why you've never been sick? Physically, I mean. No long-lasting records of bacterial or viral infections in your history? No acute case of appendicitis? Or meningitis? Or even a simple staph infection from using a bottle shard to sever your skin. Now, isn't that odd?"

You briefly glance down at your wrists. The heaters are gone - probably taken off to check for viable veins to insert the IV. The doctor assigned to you following that incident said it was fortunate that you survived, and you never gave thought to how or why. Only that you failed.

It was just … miraculous, by his phrasing.

You're really starting to dislike that word.

"When Umbrella declared bankruptcy years ago, numerous documents were confiscated and eradicated. A contingency in case someone of my Master's caliber decided it was worth picking up. Many have, and so far, none have succeeded." He frowns as he says this, and this time, he looks truly displeased. "Idiots, thinking they could simply replicate Spencer's work."

It only lasts for a second before he resumes.

"However, I managed to get my hands on several of them before the government seized the remaining assets." He opens the inside of his coat to pull out what looks to be a document of sorts, text invisible to you as he lets his eyes drift across the content. "Your father managed to do what few had done before. He managed to develop a serum to completely counter the effects of the T-Virus."

The T-Virus?

"What is that?"

"My Master's greatest work, and the cause of his downfall. Partially, the reason why Raccoon City was sterilized in the manner it was."

Spencer?

T-Virus?

You swear you've heard these names and words before, but you can't recall. Maybe your old man mentioned them sometime in passing?

You should have questions, a hell of a lot of them. They are circling your head, a whirlwind of who and what and when and whys, yet none manage to gain coherence.

What did your father do?

What did he do to you?

What is all this?

But you don't ask them. Not yet. You just keep looking at him through a narrowed lens, hoping he will come to some kind of point.

Dr. Gideon puts the document down on the bed by your feet, expecting you to take it. Though you eye it warily, torn between caution and curiosity, you don't pick it up.

"Your father's serum, however, was flawed. It could not erase virus in hosts already infected, nor could the immune systems in adults tolerate exposure in the way he desired. Every attempt, every procedure, was doomed to fail. The bodies broke, time and time again. He went through thirty-six before he elected to turn to a different approach altogether."

When he looks at you next, you can somehow already tell he's implying.

"He had you. The moment you exited your mother's womb, he had his work cut out for him." He bends a little to tap pointedly at the document. "Introduction to the antigen before you were even a day old. Controlled exposure to a modified strain, repeated again and again. Letting your body adapt to it as you grew.

Every injection, every exposure, every test, every drop of blood drawn, he had it documented. No cognitive impairment, no physical deformity, no mutation."

His smile widens further and further with every word he says. "Isn't that miraculous? You were reportedly found with a prominent bite mark by the paramedics who rescued you, and yet, you had nothing more than a mild fever at worst, and a full recovery without intensive care."

He sits down by the edge of the bed, and the hinges creak loudly at this added weight. Without having to lean too close, he carefully pulls the collar of your shirt to the side, exposing the residual scar that's served as a constant reminder of your survival for almost twenty years.

The smile on his lips suggests he finds the view pleasing, and he can't keep himself from letting his fingers drift over it.

"Near-complete immunization."

You don't look at him, even as his cold fingers slide across your skin with what you can only assume is manic glee.

The revelation that you were not born, but bred, should send you into some kind of existential shock.

Anger. Resentment.

You should curse the man who gave you life only so that he could determine the outcome.

But you don't.

Your father is dead. Has been for years. His skeletons remain his own, however deep they're buried, even if you are the ones having to carry them in you.

You look at Dr. Gideon from the corner of your eye. "Did you do something to me?" you finally ask, vaguely surprised by your ability to stay subdued, even now. "What did you do to me?"

He tuts gently. “Nothing that hasn’t already been done to you before.”

His hands lingers just above your clavicle. "Modified strains of the T-Virus. Different from the kind your father used, but necessary for me to confirm my hypothesis. I've used mild doses up until yesterday, but I had to be certain, and I was right."

You fully turn your face to look him directly in the eyes, and now, you understand.

"You've been infecting me all along."

Your presence here was not because of an altruistic doctor who saw an impoverished patient and decided to step in to provide aid and stability.

Everything was designed for this outcome.

You are not a patient. You were never a patient.

You are a subject.

You were always a subject, from the moment you took your first breath.

His fingers lift from your skin, but he doesn't move away. Not entirely. Seated as he is now, you're not sure you could evade him, even if you tried. "You were difficult to track down. Patient confidentiality, you see, can be a nuisance to bypass. I tried for years to locate you, yet you were like a moth. Never at the same light twice. So, when Dr. Henry from Wrenwood Facility himself wrote to me about a possible transfer with your name, I knew it was meant to be."

Meant to be? Weird way to phrase it, like divinity had some part to play in this whole situation.

You're not devout in the slightest, and you're not about to start now.

"I can see you have questions, but first," Like before, he takes a deep breath through his nose. Of your air. "you need a bath."

A bath?

Just as he stands up, the door opens, and Nurse Bethany enters. Upon seeing you awake and alert, she looks visibly relieved.

"Nurse Bethany, would you be so kind as to prepare her a bath downstairs?" Dr. Gideon asks, courteous as ever, with no evidence of what's just transpired on his face.

"Of course, Dr. Gideon." She gestures for you to come with her.

───

The water scalds your bare skin as you descend into the tub, yet it's a comfortable kind of scalding. Not warm enough to hurt, just enough to make you come back to the reality of your situation. Soap has already been added, coloring the water to a white hue, and effectively blocking the view of the rest of you.

Thoughts come and go, more questions, no answers.

Umbrella.

Your father.

T-Virus.

Raccoon City.

Immunity.

Apparently, you're not entirely normal. You've never been entirely normal, and you don't know how to feel about it.

The cells in your body were altered, adapted, and used to fit the whims of a man who is no longer around to claim credit for his product. Everything was planned, and you had no part in it. No autonomy. No choice.

Your body is not your own. It never has been.

What should you feel about it? Is there anything to feel about it? Your body recovers, and your mind has to pick up the weight as compensation instead.

Maybe your head is so heavy because your body isn't?

So, your old man decided to play god and fuck around with your immune system to survive some kind of fictitious-sounding virus that turns out to be the cause for your home city being blown to shit.

So, the director of your hospital turns out to be an odd scientist with a penchant for subjecting his patients to experiments?

It doesn't change anything in a way that matters to you.

You're still here.

You dip your head under the water, and you don't resurface for what you hope is a while. You stay under until your lungs threaten to give in, until you feel the pressure in your head threaten to break open your cranium. It doesn't sound anatomically correct, but what does it matter?

What matters anymore?

Just as you start to feel light-headed, a loud slam ruptures in the bathroom, and you quickly resurface with a gasp.

Dr. Gideon stands in the entrance, his coat folded neatly in his arms, looking like he's exactly where he's supposed to be.

"Personally, I find death by drowning in a bathtub to be terribly wasteful."

You drag your hand over your face to wipe off some of the water. "Wasn't planning on it."

"Good."

You stare into the water, even as you hear his measured steps echo around until he's right behind the bathtub. Right behind you.

You continue to stare even as you feel his cold, long hands clamp down on your shoulders. Not hard enough to hurt, but firm enough to ground.

And you continue to stare ahead, even as you feel him lean forward and place his head right next to your own.

"I made sure to purchase a specific brand of shampoo from a store in Wrenwood," he whispers, smooth and inviting. The picture of domesticity. "Miss Corey recommended it."

You don't answer.

"While her behavior might be rather incendiary on occasion, she is right about one thing." He raises his head to look further down at you. "We need to take care of ourselves and the bodies we are born with, regardless of the circumstances life might throw at us. We are born with one, and we die with it."

His left hand lifts off your shoulder, only for those freezing fingers to travel down the slope of your back.

"I know you have had difficulties with it, and you feel lost, but you need not worry anymore. I will take care of you. You might not be the key to Elpis, but that does not diminish your worth. Not to me."

You finally turn around to look at him from over your shoulder, and you finally understand it.

The way he looks at you.

The obsession painted behind his irises.

You notice his arms. They are covered in scratches, some patched and sutured, others uncovered and unhealed.

On display like battle wounds he wears with pride.

"What happened to your arms?"

"Oh? These?" He raises his right arm, looking over them with inexplicable fondness. "Just a scared cat, is all. A frightened, lonesome little critter, digging through the garbage." A glint of his teeth peek past his lips. "But not to concern yourself, my dear. I found it a good home."

He gazes just as fondly back down at you.

"It is exactly where it belongs."

For the first time in a long one, for just a moment, you feel ...

It was a dark and stormy night. No, seriously. Settled deep in the Midwest as it was, Wrenwood was prone to regular lashings from storms so bad that they made you reconsider your choice of university with frequent and fervent sincerity. There were a plethora of reasons you’d ended up attending — price, location, job opportunities, price, price, price — but all of them seemed to pale in the face of every oncoming downpour. And even though you were frugal, everything about living there was just so damn expensive. Groceries in your fridge whittled, your electricity bill seemed to climb and climb and climb, and the hefty tuition bills charged to your account didn’t help either. Naturally, you sought out a part-time job. Such was the way of the student.

Of course, your schedule was restricted by your classes, which knocked out most of the well-paying options immediately. Pared down to part-time jobs with night shifts, you suffered through the hiring process for a half a dozen different positions and got rejected from all but one — a convenience store attendant, located a reasonable walking distance from your apartment. Not ideal, but beggars really could not be choosers. The guy who owned it seemed nice enough, if a bit harried, and you had shown up for your “interview” far overdressed and out of your element. Regardless, you got the job.

At first it had been an irritating intrusion on your schedule — another block stacked atop the perpetually teetering tower of responsibilities that you barely managed to keep balanced — but, like all things, you grew used to it. Nights previously spent studying, going out with friends, or even just sleeplessly scrolling your phone were now sacrificed to the upkeep of the store. Long stretches both flew and crawled in the liminal space of the linoleum aisles and half-stocked shelves. You never could quite dispel the hum of the fluorescents, no matter how loud the music in your earbuds was.

There were definitely worse jobs. Even though you were in a shadier part of Wrenwood, nobody seemed to bother you. Some regulars you grew to recognize. The rest were transient faces, stopping in for cigarettes or candy or some other frivolous vice paired with brief cash register conversation and a well wish. Most of your shifts were spent perched on a wobbly stool with your laptop balanced on the counter and some assignment or another open on the screen. Sure, day shift always left you a list of tasks — clean the bathroom, restock the shelves, prep the hot food bar — but nothing was ever that hard. Nor particularly time-consuming. In fact, without your studies dogging your every step and filling the hours of your shift, your job probably would have been way more boring. And, to top it off, the paychecks were sorely needed; you nearly felt your wallet weep in gratitude every time the direct deposit landed in your account.

Not so bad overall. Sure, you had occasional odd customers, but they didn’t bother you too much. Skeevy old men, persistent frat-esque guys your age, a few women who eyed the cigarettes behind the counter too hard for you to not squint at them. Standard fare. Not nearly enough to make you consider quitting. Not even the crop-up of murders around the city made you reconsider your schedule. Someone would have to pry the job from your cold dead hands before you ever put in a two-week notice. The thought made you huff with barely-there amusement, even as your face twisted into a resigned frown at the sight of the weather outside.

Hubris really would be your downfall one of these days. Even on your way to work, when you had watched the bronze dregs of the sunset succumb to the inexorable march of gathering thunderclouds, you hadn’t expected the rain to be that bad. Not enough to warrant an umbrella. You’d lived in Wrenwood for a few years now. To say you could handle rain was an understatement. Hell, you were even wearing a sweatshirt with a hood on it.

…Right. Watching sheaves of water spill down the windows past pasted-up advertisements just made your mood sink more and more. Neon signs across the street warped through the deluge; wobbly lines of blazing red and blue fought the diffuse glow spilling from your storefront through streaks of harsh rain. It drummed hard enough on the roof to be audible. Pelted the pavement with enough strength to bounce off already-gathered puddles. Every few minutes, thunder snarled outside, followed in short order by bone-white flashes that lit the damp street in stark detail for half-second increments.

In short, getting home was going to be miserable. Morning shift came to relieve you at just past four; you lingered by the counter for several minutes, making idle chatter in a hopeless attempt to prolong being dry. It didn’t make much difference. More time spent past your shift’s end just meant less time to sleep, and you had a class with mandatory attendance tomorrow (today?) that you did not plan on missing. If you were quick, you could make it home and get a reasonable night’s sleep in. Weighing your options between encroaching on much-needed rest and soaking yourself down to the bone for fifteen-ish minutes, you eventually (and begrudgingly) settled on the latter.

With a final goodbye to your coworker, you tugged your bag as close to your body as possible, then stepped into the back office to clock out. Another hundred-ish dollars to your next paycheck. It would be eaten sooner or later by some irritating extraneous expense, but having your hard-earned wages confirmed was some small comfort.

…Comfort that was, predictably, instantly eclipsed by the wash of icy water that hit your face on your first step outside the door. Flinching away from the downpour, you yanked your hood up and tightened the drawstrings, zipping the jacket all the way up to your chin. Your bag would just have to deal with the water stain; if your earbuds got fried, you were so fucked. Eyes squinted tight against the offensive rain, you pushed forward, leaving the warm, safe haven of the corner store with measurable regret leadening your footsteps.

Wrenwood in the day was only sort of dismal; the industrial core of the city (where you lived, of course) had long since been left behind for shinier, newer real-estate investments. Gutted for all its profitable assets and left to die, what had once been a bustling packing and shipping hub of the Midwest was now a rotting corpse of brick buildings and dingy alleyways. Water, incessant and intrusive, seeped into your shoes as you walked, chin tucked tight. Soon. You’d be home soon, and you could shower and collapse into bed, as was par for the course these days.

Every few seconds, you glanced up into the sheets of rain to make sure you weren’t on a collision course with anything. Or anyone. The latter didn’t really apply at this hour; for a city of its size, the streets were unnervingly empty late at night like this. One hand snaked under your hood to tug an earbud free, testing some unformed hypothesis. Nothing. Just rain, that sound of wet static crackling against pavement and puddles and brick siding. Visual and audial noise washed away anything further than five feet from you. A single car rolled by and you jumped despite yourself.

Whatever. Despite the lingering feeling of unease — only natural to feel disquieted in a normally-busy street now totally deserted, you assured yourself — you pushed onward. You’d made this walk a hundred times now, half of them at this hour. Nothing had ever bothered you. It was fine. You were fine.

Regardless, you tucked a hand behind your back and brushed over it in an attempt to dispel the crawling sensation running over your spine. Maybe it was just because of where you were. An actor on cue, the carcass of the Wrenwood Hotel loomed suddenly out of the dark, and you almost flinched.

It used to be nice. It used to be beautiful. Stately and grand, a leftover of when the city was younger and wealthier and roomier. At least, that was what your regulars told you. The hotel burned down years before you moved to Wrenwood, following the murder of its owner and an FBI agent. Huge thing. National news. You remembered hearing about it in high school, though it was never more than a blip on your feed. It was different, though, to read about it as a news excerpt on your phone and to walk past the place in real life. The smoked-out husk of the first floor sat, squalid and eye-level, as you walked by. Exposed support beams were still hung with scraps of peeled wallpaper — jagged teeth still decorated with flayed meat — and you averted your eyes from the darker remains of the lobby.

The place had always given you the creeps, to say the least. Some city official had promised to finally have it bulldozed this year — that you highly doubted — but it had been condemned since it had burned. Squatters didn’t even linger; it was strange to even get close to it, so seemingly devoid of life and yet so heavy you almost struggled to breathe in its presence. Jesus. Your own dramatics shocked you; it was, after all, just a rundown building, and one you walked by every day no less. For all intents and purposes, it should have been no different than every other shoddy health code violation you passed on your commute, and yet…

You shook it off. You were psyching yourself out for no reason. The late hour and your long shifts and generally exhausting life must have all been getting to you at once, and you felt it like a dead weight on your back. Soon. You’d be home soon. Blinking bleary eyes, you swung your head from its gravitational pull towards the derelict remains of the hotel and pushed onward. As you went to resettle yourself back into your hunched, generally-miserable posture, you caught sight of something in the crammed alleyway running down the side of your field of vision.

A person. No, two people. One was weird enough for the late hour. Two in an alleyway set all kinds of alarms off in your head. Tugging both earbuds loose, you, despite yourself, stopped in your tracks. You rescinded your earlier thought. Hubris wasn’t going to kill you. Nosiness was.

One of them laid flat on the ground, face-up to the rain that leaked past debris overhang and crossing telephone wires. The other was crouched down, leaning over the supine form with what looked like concern. You weren’t dumb. Maybe someone sprawled in an alley at four-whatever in the morning wasn’t there because of the most ideal circumstances… but you weren’t an asshole either. You were supposed to help, right? Or call someone, maybe?

Or maybe just ask… but something stayed your tongue. Maybe it was the same thing that stayed your feet. The distinction didn’t really matter. All you did was stand in the rain, water soaked deep into your shoes and jacket, peering through falling sheets as best you could. A long shaft of light fell from a separate streetlight, its glow just barely enough to highlight the people in the alley. Your knuckles tightened hard around the strap of your bag; the tip of your shoe dragged through a puddle as you leaned forward an inch. Some twenty feet away, mostly obscured by rain, all you could make out was their blurry forms. Some pale skin. The bleached-looking wet sheen of the mobile stranger’s coat… and the strangely limp way the other one moved. And then, in a rush of horrifying, immediate realization, it dawned on you why, exactly, that the other one was not moving at all. And sure, maybe “drunk” or “unconscious” could have explained away the lack of response, but the laxness of the motions, the strange weight, the unnervingly delicate way the other one handled it — they picked an arm up gently, then let it drop to the ground. Like poking roadkill to see if it was dead.

Because they were dead.

Because you were looking at a dead body.

Lead solidified in the pit of your stomach and dropped, and you stood there, stupid as a deer in headlights, staring at what was presumably a fresh crime scene. There was no rulebook for this. Nothing stated what you were supposed to do after Occam’s razoring yourself into witnessing a murder. Should you have expected this? You kept up with the news. There was a rash of dead bodies being discovered around the city, all with the same odd bruising covering their corpses. But nobody ever thinks it’s going to happen to them. You never think you’re going to come across a serial killer until the body’s staring you in the face. Some sense of virtue kicked in, suggesting meekly that you call the cops, and self-preservation stomped it out immediately. Like hell you were going to do that. A much better idea — keep walking — presented itself, and you took that one instead.

One step back. Water splashed up around your shoe. And then the kneeling person stood. Air whooshed out of your lungs in one harsh exhale; the chill you’d picked up was no longer just from the rain. Big. Bigger than any person you’d ever seen, even from a distance. They just kept standing, the motion continuing forever, legs too long to be human. When they turned around, motion slow and deliberate, every hair on your body snapped to attention.

You pivoted sharply on your heel and started to walk, pace just shy of running, hoping that if you pretended like you saw nothing — like you had just been passing by originally — then you’d be left alone. Something tightened in your chest, sharp and hard and paranoid, and you made the horrible mistake of looking behind you.

Holy hell. The stranger had cleared twenty feet of distance in seconds and was now standing where you had been moments prior. Standing. Looming. Enormous. Taller than you had even previously thought, so tall that it-they-he firmly straddled the line of inhuman. Long pale snakeskin billowed around thick legs, and half of a sallow face — barely visible through the rain — peeked from beneath a drawn hood. Panic shot down all your limbs at once, a violent full-body electric shock that spasmed your lungs in a hard gasp.

One arm raised. Something whizzed past your ear. The projectile disappeared into the downpour, too fast for your eyes to track, and holy Christ, you were running. Shot at? Had you just been shot at?

There was a certain exhilarated delirium that came with being pursued. Sprays of rainwater accompanied each strike of your feet against the pavement. Your heart had climbed straight into your throat and begun a violent, rabbit-quick slam in your ears; the hole left behind in your chest had tightened inexplicably. The taut ball behind your sternum fought to escape, threatening to rip free via your mouth in the form of uncontrollable laughter, or screaming, or something. The last time you’d been seriously chased was on the playground in elementary school. This was something else entirely. This, in fact, was running for your life from a monster that looked as though it had crawled straight from the recess of a childhood nightmare. You wanted to scream. You wanted to cry. Your lungs burned with exertion, though, and you couldn’t afford to divert oxygen toward making noise. It was there, it was still chasing you, and it had to have been gaining.

The rain, relentless as it was, blinded you and tripped you up in your already terrified state. Helpless to your hostile environment, you slipped on errant soaked detritus and nearly fell. For a brief, horrifying moment you pitched forward, legs barely wheeling under your weight fast enough to keep you upright. As you righted from your stumble, something pierced your back, right above your shoulder blade; at the sharp pinch of pain, you let out a yelp, eyes bugging out of your skull.

Blindly, dumbly, you slapped a hand against your back until rain-wet fingers slid over a smooth object. You grasped at it, skidding to a graceless halt and gasping for air in order to study the thing. The weight of it was unfamiliar in your palm. Light. Unobtrusive.

Smooth glass rolled against your damp skin for a moment, following the cup of your hand. In your panic-dumb state, you didn’t realize what it was for a moment. The long needle on the end, tipped in ruby from your blood, and the milliliter markings on the side clued you in.

A dart. He’d shot you with a dart gun. And judging from the droplets of leftover liquid left inside the tube, it had immediately emptied into you upon contact.

“Oh, God, no,” you stammered out loud, voice weak and lost to the endless wash of the rain. The empty dart slipped from your palm in your mounting horror, and you stared at your twitching fingers for a second before whipping around on your heel. Your pursuer had halted some ways away — farther than you thought — with their arm outstretched in a familiar pose. Holding the gun, you extrapolated.

A thousand nightmarish possibilities washed over you, each worse than the last. Maybe it was some neurotoxin and you’d be dead in under a minute. Or maybe it was a paralytic designed to immobilize you — or an anesthetic — in order to haul you away into the darkness of Wrenwood’s back alleys, never to be seen again. This had to be some nightmare that you’d wake up from — but the rain was too cold, too wet, too real, and the monster standing down the sidewalk, just outside the glow of the nearest streetlight, did not vanish even when you blinked.

For what it was worth, you didn’t collapse. Nor did you pass out. But you definitely felt something. As foreign as it was, it took a moment to recognize the feeling. Warmth. Liquid heat surged through your veins, centered at the pinpoint on your shoulder. It fought the chill of the rain with such sudden intensity that you were sent reeling while standing, twitching from sensation. From your back all the way down to the tips of your fingers, and even further down to your pelvis, to your legs, so far down in your feet that it felt like you were leaching heat into the pavement.

What was happening to you? What did you get injected with? It wasn’t a high — or if it was, it was like none you’d ever experienced before. You were just so hot. Every vein and capillary felt dilated, blood all warm and loose and pressed right up against your skin from the inside. Errant raindrops on your cheek felt as though they were going to sizzle straight off you like a hot pan.

The stranger’s arm lowered. Panting through your mouth in an attempt to calm your heart rate, you stared at the monstrous form and it stared right back at you. Distinctly Nietzschean. From here, you could see more detail. Did you want to see more detail? Fat droplets slid heavy down the long, long, long snakeskin coat. Shiny black boots stood, unmarred and unbothered by the weather like the wearer, in a puddle that would have been ankle-deep for you. And that face. Still half-obscured by the hood, you could see now that it was not just pale but gray, completely devoid of color or life, marred by whorls and lines all the way down. A dark scar jutted down the center of the chin, trailed all the way down the throat and disappeared beneath the clasps of the shirt. So human and so not.

A slow tilt of the head inspired a fresh wave of terror. Even though you were superheated, your mind was clear enough to still feel fear, and it mounted at the flagrant act of being studied. Considered. Every motion of yours was tracked by a predator you knew you had no chance against. You stumbled back a few steps, cold and hot sweat both racing down the back of your already-soaked shirt, and threw yourself down the nearest alley. Movements sloppy with panic, you banged your hip painfully off a trash can and swore loudly. Tearfully. The harsh exclamation echoed off the wet brick siding that boxed you in on all sides.

Alleyway odor rose to meet you, untouched even by the downpour, and you felt nauseous on top of too hot and too cold and soaking wet. Sharp clicks — the report of boot heels against damp pavement — dogged your own rapid footsteps. Were you crying? You couldn’t tell. That tight ball in your chest had returned. You struggled to breathe around it as you were pursued down alley after alley, organs feeling as though they were slowly liquefying from molten heat.

A turn, a turn, another turn, and you—

Choked. Fingers snared in the hood of your jacket and yanked you backwards. Finally, the scream trapped behind your sternum broke loose — the sound was raw and hurt your throat as it ripped free. Soaked shoes sliding haplessly over the ground, you cried out as you were physically pulled back several feet; within seconds, hands like lead weights settled on your shoulders and physically spun you to really come face to face with your pursuer.

Or, rather, face to chest.

Violent, uncontrollable shivers kicked up over the entirety of your body as you craned your neck back, back, back to make real, true eye contact for the first time. And even that you weren’t afforded. The hood had shucked back a few inches at some point during the chase, revealing an intricate headpiece settled squarely over the eyes. Impassive lenses — one on the left, a triangle of three on the right — stared down at you; one of them glowed a menacing red, a scarlet pinpoint that burned to look at for too long.

Glowing red. Hot. Free word association surfaced in the panic-fear-exhaustion soup of your mind. You felt much like the end of a cigarette, what with all of the previous adjectives applying to you, and for all intents and purposes you were damn near close to burning out.

A smile split the sallow, cracked lips, and your eyes widened even against the rain. Teeth, crowded and crooked and golden, grinned down at you, wet with spit. Dim light reflected off them with flair. Not human. So not human. As if the stature and skin color hadn’t clued you in already.

Your mouth fell open to scream.

“Shh.” The stranger’s voice was remarkably measured, considering the circumstances. He (it?) didn’t even seem winded. “There’s no need for that.”

His hands were so large and so heavy that they effectively pinned your arms to your sides, despite resting on your shoulders. Although they were big enough that his thumbs brushed your collarbones, they remained still, letting the implication of strength do the work. Rings glinted along the edge of your vision, large and gaudy.

Living in a low-rent place as you did, rats were not an uncommon sight. A few times, you’d even had the unfortunate luck of stumbling across them stuck in a trap, metal bar snapped shut across the crushed neck and the small body limp in its unforgiving hold. Unpleasant, sure, but never anything memorable. Sympathizing, though, was a far cry from empathizing. Standing there in that alley, pinned down by something you had no understanding of, you knew suddenly exactly how those rats felt. So small, so alone, and so very subject to forces far beyond your resistance or control. “You gave quite the chase,” he continued. “But all things meet their end.” There was some unplaceable lilt in his words, a self-assuredness that crawled into your ears and curled against your tympanic membrane.

“You— what— who are you?” you choked, struggling to process his enormity through the heat cooking your brain.

He tilted his head a few degrees, as if considering the question for a moment. “Forgive me. I have been quite rude, haven’t I? Dr. Victor Gideon. And you are?”

“What did you do to me?” Panic sharpened your tone into an accusatory knife as you bulldozed right through the thin, ridiculous veneer of courtesy. “You— you killed someone, I saw it, I saw in the alley, I—”

He tutted gently, lips pursing. “So much for formalities,” he mused to himself. The fingers on your arms tightened just barely, and a fresh surge of heat crashed over you from your biceps downward. “Yes, what did I do to you?”

The contemplating question brought itself to the forefront of your mind. Heart rate still jacked up from warmth and terror, you couldn’t quite bring yourself down into lucidity, no matter how hard you tried. All the damp rainy air you sucked in through your open mouth seemingly did nothing against the waves of heat that washed over you every few seconds. How ironic — the worst fever you’d ever felt, and you were soaked to the bone in icy water.

Even worse, you started to itch. It was easy enough to ignore at first, especially when you had been sprinting away, but now… everywhere felt constricted. Like you were too big for your own skin, like something was pressing along all your seams from the inside. And it seemed especially bothersome on your upper half, radiating outward from where the weight of his hands pinned down your arms. Were you dying?

“I feel sick,” you started tremulously, unable to stop the outpour of words. “I’m so hot, I can’t even… What— what was in there? What did you put in me?” Rawness shredded the edge of your words, shaky with tears. Fear had rendered you to something simpler, so embarrassingly stupid and hysteric compared to the stranger’s— Dr. Gideon’s calm collectedness.

He gave you a long up and down look. Not lecherous. Scanning. Gentle whirring started up from somewhere far above your head — the small red lens of his goggles flared in activation.

“I have to admit, I simply intended to dispose of you. But this reaction… Unbelievable. A miracle.” It wasn’t really an answer to your question. His thumbs stroked over your collarbones through your shirt, and your entire body shuddered in response. Sodden fabric rubbed against your feverish skin, and a jolt of warmth shot all the way down to your pelvis.

Your pelvis? Your knees buckled, body buoyed by his gentle, solid grip, and your jaw hung slack in shock. Some of the initial warmth still lingered, a pervasive buzz nestled right beneath your epidermis. Otherwise, it had consolidated itself into a sluggish drip of molten honey, saccharine and searing, that trickled down your spine and settled itself right in between your thighs.

You were aroused. Horrifically, unbelievably so. Fresh dread washed over the still-lucid parts of your struggling brain. Whatever was inside of you was changing you, and it was making you helpless to every touch of his ridiculously gentle, ridiculously large hands. 

A dark tongue flickered out into the rain for a moment. You barely caught it before you were being effortlessly lifted; a shaky yelp fell free of your mouth as your shoes were pulled off the pavement. His grip tightened some, hands shifting downwards to pin your elbows to your sides so he didn’t drop you. No visible or audible effort. Like you weighed nothing. The obvious strength displayed so casually elicited a shameless, weak groan from your chest.

Now eye-level, you stared into Dr. Gideon’s goggles from beneath heavy lids, feeling every square inch of contact on your skin and breathing through an open mouth.

His tongue flicked out again (forked, you noticed), head leaning forward to get within the general vicinity of your neck. Sweet rot filled your nose — he smelled like something long dead, misted with strong antiseptic — but you didn’t even flinch, too focused on his proximity. He must have heard your pulse stagger, because a light chuckle huffed out of him. With a dizzying wave of engineered want, you realized he was smelling you, tasting the air radiating off your superheated skin.

“Unbelievable indeed.” His mouth remained open for a moment, cracked lips parted, and you caught a brief glimpse of slits flexing along his hard palate as he registered the scent of commingling fear and arousal. The unpleasant cocktail had mostly manifested itself through sweat, and a fucking lot of it.

“Please let me go,” you panted, although your conviction was vanishing by the second. Every beat of your overworked heart sent more of whatever he’d injected you with pulsing through your veins; all it did was worsen everything you felt.

He pulled his head back an inch, clicking his tongue, a note of amused pity in the soft murmur of his voice. “No, no. Not now. You’re much more… special than you realize, you know.” Obscured by his goggles, his eyes flicked over your burning face, dedicating your tortured expression to memory. “Besides… you don’t truly want that. You feel it. My master’s work.”

Every soft ‘S’ hissed on its way out of his mouth, so irresistibly persuasive that you found it difficult to disagree. Truth be told, you really didn’t, even if what he was saying made no sense. The longer he held you up there, broad palms affixing your arms to your sides, the more that pervading heat throbbed beneath the fly of your jeans. Humiliating. In the back of your mind — lucidity felt like a distant dream — you still felt scared. It was hard not to, considering what (who?) was cooing over you at the current moment. But if he had wanted to harm you, really harm you, wouldn’t he have done so already?

And he was so big, handling you so gently…

Your head lolled forward, vision swimming from both the rain and… whatever he had injected you with. Eyes sliding downward, you tracked the dark, ugly wound that slashed down his chin and trailed all the way down his chest. An autopsy scar for a sort-of corpse. Very fitting. The longer you stared at the bulk of his body, the more your delirious mind wandered; how would that tissue feel under your fingertips? Was he hot to the touch? Cool, as his pallor suggested? Smooth? Or was there hair dusting the barrel of his chest, and did it go further down, and Jesus, you’d like to see further down, wouldn’t you?

Something in you was disgusted, that reasonable part of your brain that had long since been shoved to the back by panic and whatever else was coursing through your veins at the moment. He smelled like death, and his skin was cracked and veined along the edges like peeling makeup, and Christ, you had witnessed him toying with a corpse (of his own making, no doubt), and yet… every second he held you aloft, every word that slipped free of his lips — so deliberate, so methodical — it all seemed to compound into a single shiv of desperation currently digging into your lower abdomen.

He must have taken pity on the way you were slowly melting through his fingers, because his elbows bent and he pulled you close enough that your heaving chest brushed his. Tucking his mouth near your ear, you shuddered when he spoke; that calm drawl sent arousal lancing down your spine like heat lightning.

“Let me alleviate your… symptoms,” he offered. “And then we will see what a miracle you really are.” Something wove into his voice at the end, an exhalation that softened the word, all breathy and shaky.

Whatever the hell he was talking about, you didn’t care. You were running a fever that should have killed a normal person. Rain competed with sweat, droplets racing each other down the curve of your face. Your cunt was aching for something, anything, in it at this point, and here was the good doctor offering treatment. Who were you to refuse?

“Please,” you breathed into negative space, and he huffed against your ear, pleased. As if he didn’t already know your answer.

“Wonderful.” That massive head tilted, and a damp, featherlight touch against your searing hot neck drew a true moan from you. It flickered a few times more, and you realized that it was his tongue, escalating from smelling to tasting.

Even his restraint struggled. Mere seconds passed before he abandoned the delicacy and really slid his tongue over the side of your neck, drawing up the sweat and rainwater and dregs of perfume with greed. A groan rolled from his own chest, vibrating against your skin, and you clenched your hands into fists so tightly, you damn near punctured your palms with your nails. Forked. Right. The twin tips of his tongue were foreign sensations, but God, not at all unwelcome.

His mouth paused, open, wet muscle held frozen against your skin, and you almost cried from lack of stimulation. Long inhalations pulled over your skin; the feeling of him sucking in your scent, feeding those flaring slits, made you slump in his grip. You wanted to reciprocate. Or escalate. One of the two. Either way, it required not being several feet off the ground with your arms locked to your sides, and you were so febrile with want that you were ready to start squirming in his hands.

A soft, wet noise signaled him pulling his tongue back into his mouth; sharp teeth brushed against your slick throat as he retracted in full.

“Perfect,” he hissed, gilded teeth glinting in a jagged grin as he gave your flushed face a once-over. “All of my research, and I had never once considered this. We have so much to do.”

The world spun around you for a moment, wet pavement and chipped brick smearing across your vision as you were physically shifted from upright to decidedly not. He deposited your warm, twitchy body over his shoulder with no effort; the action drew a groan from you. With the repositioning jostling your shoulders, your bag slipped down your arm, taking your earbuds and phone with it. Gravity snatched up your possessions with a vengeance; you watched through bleary eyes as everything fell to the ground with a wet thump.

You couldn’t find it in you to care. Your bag being tossed to the pavement seemed a distant concern compared to the way the bulk of his shoulder felt pressing into your stomach. Thick fingers curled around the back of your thigh, just above your knee, and pressed inward to secure you, maddeningly close to your cunt. God, please, yes, your brain whined. With nowhere else to express your frustrations, you clawed and pulled at the back of his coat in random intervals, kneading the rain-slick snakeskin like a cat.

The trip took several years and no time at all. In the course of your panic, you hadn’t realized where exactly you’d been chased to. A turn, a turn, another turn. And then he’d caught you. You’d gone in a circle, all the way back around to an alley adjacent to the ruins of the hotel.

Everything went mute. Rain no longer soaked your back. Old char and decaying wood filled your sinuses, accompanied by the flowery scent of rot. In the hotel. You were in the hotel. He was carrying you in there. Something in the back of your head shrieked in alarm — if you go in, you’re never going out — and you ignored it immediately when his fingers lightly squeezed your thigh to ensure your stability. He stepped through a few doorways — you heard him musing to himself intermittently, mentioning names you didn’t recognize or even care to parse — and moved through the smoked-out husk of the once-grand lobby with practiced ease.

Stairs. You were going up. You went up. He hooked a sharp turn. Opened a door. Ancient hinges squealed, metal fighting metal as he entered.

“Ah. This should do nicely.”

You didn’t care. He could have fucked you in that alley and you wouldn’t have minded.

“Allow me to apologize for the choice of venue,” he said, strange methodical lilt still hanging in his words. “I would have much preferred to do this at my center, but… well. I doubt you would have lasted the trip.”

As he spoke, he pulled your pliant body off its perch and settled you onto the remains of what used to be a bed. Dust wheezed up around you, disturbed by the motion, and some of the box springs creaked ominously under your weight, but nothing snapped or poked you. Good enough. It didn’t really matter, because as soon as your arms were free, you were clawing for the zipper of your coat.

Your surroundings were dismal. Faint light glowed through the half-blown-out window from the street below; errant raindrops streaked into the room, wetting nearby floorboards. Wallpaper peeled down in long curls, exposing timeworn wood carved up by visiting squatters or nosy explorers. Furniture dotted the room. All of it was a blur. The man (still questioning that label) looming over you sucked in your attention like a black hole.

If Dr. Gideon had been tall while standing, he seemed doubly so from your vantage point lying down. Your eyes flicked wide, some kind of sense finally pushing through the heady delirium that was strangling your normally sound reasoning. The thing standing over you was not a person, and if he ever had been, those days were long since gone. You were trapped in a barely-standing building with something more than capable of killing you, and some mystery substance still pumping through your veins, threatening cardiac arrest. Something turned violently in your stomach at the realization that you no longer had a choice in whether or not you were leaving this hotel. Somewhere along the line, you had relinquished that responsibility to him.

Golden teeth glinted down at you. That smile had returned, stretching around off-color gums and cutting harsh lines into weathered cheeks. His head tilted, goggles catching the faint light; he scanned your body again with piqued interest, lingering on your torso as if peering right through your ribcage. Your fingers stuttered on your zipper.

“Come now,” he chided, leaning over you and sending his long shadow creeping up your sprawled body. A hole sawed itself through the bottom of your stomach and dropped. One massive hand, rings shining, came down. Fingers crooked, he brushed the backs of his knuckles delicately over the curve of your cheek. 

The skin-on-skin contact felt so ridiculously good that all sense of reasonable fear shattered immediately. He was overwhelmingly cool to the touch, a blessing against your searing-hot flesh. Pallid skin ghosted over your hairline, then down the side of your jaw; your teeth clenched in response.

Your reaction did not go unnoticed. It was less like you were a lover and more a particularly attractive experiment. He studied you with immense interest as he tried different stimuli out on you, pleased for some secret reason with all of your feedback. A few times, you caught his tongue darting out, forked flesh catching the air as it humidified from your damp skin. Smelling you, no doubt. He seemed particularly enthused by that.

“Sweet girl.” Fingers trailed down to your throat, nudging your jaw upward in order to press down on your jagged pulse. “So willing. Such a perfect vessel.”

You could be. You were. If he said so, you were. Desperation renewed, you tightened your hold on your zipper and ripped it downwards, shucking off the soaked fabric of your jacket and shoving it away from you on the bed. A short gasp fell from your mouth — the cool air was a phenomenal relief, but even that wasn’t enough.

“Yes,” he hissed, voice low and airy, surveying the way the damp fabric of your shirt clung to you like a second skin. Soft whirring filled the air above your head as his lenses refocused. His fingers dragged lower, touch incredibly gentle for a man of his size, and hooked carefully in the neckline of your top. “Such immediacy. We… may not even need Miss Ashcroft for our endeavors.”

His musings flew over your head. Redundant, unnecessary, inapplicable. Whoever Miss Ashcroft was didn’t matter; if you weren’t touched in the next ten seconds, you felt liable to explode. Broad fingertips pressed into the blood-hot skin of your exposed sternum, and you moaned at the light prodding.

“Please— lower, God, lower,” you gritted out, a fresh wave of embarrassment crashing over your already-hot face from how easily the pleading fell from your lips.

Soft shifting — the material of his jacket, his swept-back hair rustling over the collar — as he tipped his head to the side, pursing his lips while he considered you. “Can you feel it? Taking hold of you?” His fingers abandoned your neckline and trailed lower at your request, smoothing over your stomach. “I can see it. It’s in your blood, you know.”

The bottom hem of your shirt was pushed up. Every muscle in your abdomen twitched at the feeling of fingertips ghosting over the overlying fat. Your hips twitched upwards, inching off the tattered bed to chase more of the touch. Yes, you could feel it, couldn’t you? A molten fist had locked around your guts, its white-hot knuckles splayed around your intestines from the inside. Like a newly-generated hindbrain, it nudged your thoughts to places they never should’ve gone and kickstarted biological processes that should have stayed safely dormant.

Not the only hand I want buried in me, you thought deliriously, peeling your arms off the bed to fumble with the button of your jeans. With a frustrated grunt, you pried it open and all but tore the denim down over your hips. Dr. Gideon— Victor tutted gently and pushed your hands aside; you were more than willing to let him do the work, although you still writhed and huffed with manufactured impatience. More and more of him eclipsed your field of view, shrouded in his snake leather jacket and still grinning down at you with row upon row of crooked, wet gold.

He was horrifying to look at, really, but your desire-addled brain smoothed it over some. Maybe it was just the fact of how deep in the uncanny valley he was buried. He talked like a human. Walked like one, too, if you disregarded how long his strides were. But his corpse-gray skin — riddled with veins and peeling like paint and scaly, even, in some places — and his forked tongue locked behind gilded teeth, and the dark scar slashing down his chin and chest — all of it threw you off badly, raised warning flag after warning flag in your mind. Really, it triggered something deeply primitive; staring a predator in the face like this, in such a vulnerable state, was not something to aspire to.

And yet, there you were. There you were with thighs kicked open and face burning hotter than the surface of the Sun, desperate in your invitations for him to touch you.

Huge knuckles brushed the skin of your thighs as he tugged your jeans downward and collected your underwear along the way; you helped by toeing off your boots, which landed with obtrusive thumps somewhere on the battered wooden flooring. All of the fabric soon followed. Threadbare sheets, years-old and long since moth-eaten, rasped against the flushed skin of your ass.

Your thighs didn’t even attempt to close when the cool, stagnant air of the derelict room rushed to meet your damp cunt. You just wanted relief. 

His tongue darted out again, head jerking slightly at the obvious scent of your arousal. Jaw hanging slightly slack, he pulled in a long breath, staring down at your neglected sex for a long moment of consideration.

“Perfect,” he repeated, but you had a distant sense that it wasn’t exactly praise for your appearance. Or even you. “The culmination of progress, yes…” Words rasped out of him gently as that brick of a hand trailed downward, pallid touch grazing over the nest of coarse curls between your thighs. You keened helplessly. “...and the key to liberation. Though,” he slid a fingertip down the length of your soaked cunt, “there are many forms of… release.”

At the gentle push downward, a strangled noise tore itself free of your throat. His preoccupation with next and after and the future should have been worrying, but all your feverish brain could focus on was now, now, now. And even his clinical detachment was a veneer; his breathing had picked up into something shakier, words slurring into hisses more frequently and more bass creeping into the pitch of his voice. You had just as much of an effect on him as he was having on you.

“Victor,” you groaned, his name appearing at the forefront of your mind as a more effective means to beg. The reaction was immediate; a sharp hiss of a breath sucked in over his teeth, and his knuckles twitched against your swollen folds. “Please, it hurts, I need it—”

“Shh,” he soothed, though a curious quality had seeped into his vocal timbre. Strangled, somewhat. One broad fingertip pressed itself against your twitching entrance, and your hips immediately bucked to work it in. As big as two of your fingers combined (and maybe bigger), hot tears pricked at your eyes to accompany the wave of immeasurable relief that crashed over you at having something pushed inside. “Relax. Treatment is only as effective as you allow it to be.”

Cold. Uncomfortably so. And even despite the arousal drooling from your cunt, he was still so big. Chilled metal — his rings — pushed awkwardly against your hot flesh. Your walls spasmed around him, adjusting as best they could. Without warning, another digit joined the first, and the first spark of discomfort flared between your legs.

“Ah—!”

“Incredible,” he mused distantly, delighting in the wet sounds he drew from your cunt on each inward push. Your thighs twitched, entrance stretched around the width of his fingers. His rings butted up against the slick hole, threatening intrusion but never following through. “You’ve already prepared for me. For what’s to come.” A disbelieving chuckle wheezed out of him. “My master’s genius never ceases to amaze.”

Your fingers clawed fresh tears into the sheets, though you couldn’t care less. Lips parted to gasp and wheeze your way through the pleasure, your lids flickered shut; hot stabs of sensation shot up your spine with every methodical thrust of his hand. His ramblings — presented so calmly that they almost seemed sane — were just white noise, threads of bass buoyed on shaking, elated breaths that faded into the background beneath the sounds of your verbal and physical need.

Resistant metal shoved against your cunt again, then pressed. Your eyes flicked open in surprise, a shocked exclamation attempting to jut out of your mouth — and then the ring popped in, muscles flexing to allow the extra stretch. Knuckles curled against your walls, fingertips dragging against the roof of your cunt and hitting something delicious there, and you groaned, dumb with need. The pain, the insistence, something should have tipped you off or frightened you into sobriety — but you laid there, back arching and hips writhing, letting Dr. Gideon feed his fingers into you up to the knuckle.

Rivulets of your own arousal dripped down his hand, seeping out around the plug of his digits. He held his hand flush to you for several moments, no longer pumping but curling, massaging the twitching muscle with methodical intent. The rings pushed and shoved inside of you, their texture and temperature both odd and the stretch sending twinges of pain flaring down your thighs.

“Such wonderful acquiescence,” he purred, speech as soft as it was sibilant. “A perfect host. All you need is your command.” He flattened the meat of his palm against your swollen clit and you sobbed, back arching in your delirium. It was too much and not enough all at once — too full and too empty, too sensitive and too numb. Your thought from earlier aligned with his present words. Whatever was inside of you was changing you.

Sudden emptiness wracked you. With an obscene noise, he withdrew from your cunt, knuckles and rings and every other ridge on his fingers popping free. Your thighs jolted on reflex.

“No, no, no, please,” you started, spit-wet lips struggling to form the words. That maelstrom of vicious, aching need in your gut had been only temporarily quelled by the stretch of his fingers. Without them, it returned tenfold, angry and desperate like a tantrum buried among your own offal. Brain dissolving from internal heat, you lifted weak arms off the bed and reached out for him.

He had withdrawn, and you felt his absence massively. With gargantuan effort, you rolled your head off the bed to stare up at him properly, aching cunt still drooling and feeling as though it was puppeteering you. He had straightened up, and was studying where your arousal had trickled down his hand. Even through bleary eyes, you saw the way the glossy liquid caught the light; it had seeped into the valleys of the scaly plating running down the back of his hand, filling the cracks of his leathery skin.

Curiosity got the better of him, evidently. He brought his hand to his mouth, and that bastard tongue flicked out to drag twin tips down the rifts of his skin, collecting how you tasted. A hiss of interest left him, and even though his eyes were obscured by his headpiece, you felt them dart to your face with instant intrigue. Or maybe something hungrier.

Wading knee-deep through syrupy hysteria, you wanted to say something. Wanted to tell him to just make you finish, wanted to tell him to fix you, because your body was toeing the line of how much stimulus it could take, and you wanted, more than anything, to not be there. The realization should have been an icy deluge of shock — that you didn’t want this, you just wanted to be home — but it seemed a distant, unrelated train of thought compared to how badly the mess between your legs throbbed. Even if he let you go now (and that was a big if, considering the sizable print below his belt buckle), what would you do? Limp home and use your vibrator until its battery died? There was no telling when this feeling would go away. Or if it would go away.

He was the doctor, wasn’t he? He would make you feel better.

Enormous hands settled on your hips and squeezed the flesh there before lifting you up from that new anchor point. The bedsprings creaked as your weight was pulled off them, and you wheeled your arms back to clutch at the sheets again for support. Gravity bowed your spine, left the crown of your head brushing the mattress. Your legs hung limp in his grip, splayed open like a sprawled doll, and he pulled them apart in order to inspect your cunt from this new vantage point.

Breath — colder than it should have been — huffed over your folds; the featherlight brush of his tongue accompanied a brief suck of air as he took in your scent all over again. You groaned dizzily, fighting the blood trickling to your head.

“You’ll have to forgive me for the rush,” Victor murmured, voice constricted. “My work keeps me quite busy. So little time for, ah, pleasures of the flesh…”

With that, he lifted your hips to his mouth, and your jaw fell slack. Those cracked lips parted, and you caught a brief glimpse of his tongue slithering out in full before your head rolled back. His mouth was no warmer than the rest of him, but Christ, if it didn’t do the job. In a single wet slide, he dragged his tongue from your drooling hole to your clit and sent fireworks exploding behind your screwed-shut eyelids. The expanse of muscle was so big that it covered your cunt in its entirety when he held it flat, and when your swollen clit twitched against his tastebuds, he moaned against you.

Combined spit and arousal slid down your ass and hit the bed far beneath you; your thighs twitched helplessly in the surety of his grip and you threatened to tear more holes in the frayed sheets with how hard you white-knuckled them. With the blood fighting between rushing to your head and feeding your swollen cunt, you felt decidedly dazed, and every slide of his tongue through your folds was absolutely not helping. Did it really matter now whether the arousal you felt was manufactured or not? Pleasure was wringing you out for all you were worth, and your frayed nerves didn’t seem to care about whether or not you had actually wanted all of this pleasant touch to begin with. Warring with the tug of gravity, you pushed your hips against his mouth in weak rolls, greedy for more.

And more he gave. Aided by his size, he closed his lips around the entirety of your cunt (you wondered vaguely if this was what being on the receiving end of a blowjob felt like) in the messiest approximation of a kiss you’d ever experience; his tongue rolled along your folds as he sucked you into his mouth in totality. You wailed, the sounds of a dying animal tearing from your chest as you writhed in your uncomfortable arch. Unable to get away from the stimulation, you sieved through his fingers like sand, feverish mind struggling to keep up.

Seething gasps of barely distinguishable praise were pressed into your cunt, more vibrations than audible sound. Seeking a better hold on you, his hands pulled your thighs apart fractionally and he pushed his mouth against you; as he spoke, you felt the pricks of his uneven teeth against your most sensitive parts, as though he were preparing to tear a chunk out of you. Gilded fangs jabbed at you firmly enough to leave dental impressions — you were certain there would be bruised divots surrounding your cunt when he pulled away. If he pulled away. He certainly seemed happy enough buried between your legs.

The seal of his lips around you broke with a damp pop, but he remained where he was. Slick, ridged muscle ran up your cunt again, swallowing down your arousal before pushing upward; the swollen flesh of your clit rested heavily in the chevron-tip of his tongue, throbbing in that little valley in time with your heartbeat. The good doctor’s anguine qualities had not gone unnoticed, but you were quickly coming around to appreciate them rather than be put off — a learning curve that reached its peak when he inclined his head, goggles brushing your lower stomach, and pushed the twin tips of his tongue into you, keeping the heel of the muscle pressed against your clit.

Too much. Too much. The simmering fist of arousal that had been clenched in your gut since he’d caught you in the alleyway finally released its grip. Gasping and writhing, you shuddered through your orgasm — everything sounded so far away compared to the rushing of blood in your ears. Tightness abounded in your skull from your upside-down positioning, and there were dots dancing along the edge of your vision that surely didn’t mean anything good. All of it paled in comparison, though, to the hot fan of pleasure that emanated outwards from your cunt, and you rocked your hips in agonal motions against his tongue.

Victor remained still, letting you ride it out for what felt like years before lowering your hips to a much more agreeable position. Thick strings of spit connected your cunt to his mouth for several seconds, only giving way to eclipsing tension when he brought your body far enough down. Some of the blood pooling in your head finally evened back out, and you gasped as awareness came back to you.

“Magnificent.” The word was a single rapturous hiss. Wetness was smeared across the entirety of the lower half of his face. No embarrassment coursed through you. No shame warmed your cheeks. Just exhaustion.

Just exhaustion, and…

Your stomach sank.

Neediness throbbed in the pit of your stomach again. Again. Like an incoming tsunami, it had only receded temporarily before returning with force. Frustration welled up in your eyes, threatening to spill over your lash line in a humiliating display of defeat. You were so spent. All of the running, the touching, the stretching, all of his mouth — your body couldn’t handle much past it, and yet there it was, clamoring for more in its stupid animal desperation.

“Oh,” Victor hummed, false pity in his tone and something darker and much more excited thrumming beneath it. “It’s still within you. You can sense it, can’t you?”

Dread settled low in your stomach, curling its dead weight around your incessant arousal. His hands tightened on your hips and moved them again — your back slid over torn-up sheets, and you marveled distantly at his seemingly limitless strength — but not up. Towards. Your knees bumped the solid bulwark of his stomach before falling apart again, and he pushed his massive body between your legs with only a little repositioning. The feeling of being stretched flared along your inner thighs.

“What are you— gh, fuck!” Your question was cut off by the manual press of your sticky cunt against the intricate welding of his belt buckle. Body betraying you, your clit throbbed at the insistent pressure, wetness smearing flagrantly over the Ouroboros. Minute motions of his hips rocked the metal against your swollen sex with slick little sounds, and your breaths frayed into wheezes. It felt good. You didn’t want it to feel good. You wanted to be done.

“Yes,” he groaned, holding your body in contact with his. The ridged buckle dragged and slid over your clit and you spasmed at the touch, especially so soon after an orgasm. Oversensitivity spiked along your frame and you gasped, trying to keep your head above water. “You will— ah, you will be so much more. You are so much more. If I had only known sooner, yes...”

The sentence fragments made no sense, and sounded even worse forced through the wall of jagged wet gold that comprised his teeth. You crushed your cheek into the sheet — a bedspring poked obtrusively at you through the mattress — and sucked in air to keep from crying out. At this point your clit burned from the direct contact, but the differentiation between it being pleasurable and it being painful was falling away swiftly.

Your view tilted. He offloaded your body easily to one hand, palm splaying across your lower back to keep your hips lifted, and used the other to pry open his belt, fingers sliding over the slick metal. The jingling made you blink swiftly, moisture wicking from your mouth. You forced yourself up on shaking elbows just as he worked his fly down, and you kind of wished you hadn’t.

Proportionate everywhere, you realized immediately, staring down the length of his cock with rapidly mounting trepidation that almost instantly subsequently sharpened into honest terror. Close to the length of your forearm and just as thick, the jut of his cock didn’t look like a sexual organ as much as it did a weapon, and reality closed around your throat like a clamp vice. No, not reality. His hand. One broad palm wrapped gently around your neck and brought you up off your position on the bed; the other shifted to grip your hip tightly enough to support your weight without bearing it on your throat. Fully aloft, you twitched in his grip, unable to look away from his cock.

Not going to fit, you thought, the first clear sentence to cut through your fevered haze in what felt like hours. So not going to fit.

He didn’t even grab the base of it, just moved your body to line up your cunt with the head. Your hands grasped at anything in reach and came up with fistfuls of damp snakeskin.

“Wait, wait, I— I can’t,” you started, panic threading its way through your choppy words.

“You will.” Not a reassurance as much as it was a statement of fact. “Just another facet of treatment,” he hissed, shifting his hips slightly. “We won’t delay in administering it.”

There wasn’t much you could do. At the very least, your mystery condition combined with the previous orgasm had both slickened and loosened you up obscenely — even then, the press of his dripping head against your entrance made you blanch with apprehension. Too big. He was simply just too big. His fingers tightened around your throat just slightly, a reactionary flex to the feeling of your cunt sliding against his cock, and your pulse spiked. His self control had been nominal so far. And really, if he wanted to kill you, wouldn’t he have done it earlier? But despite your rationality, your slurried brain still felt that pulse of base terror at being in the grip of something so very capable of killing you. Should you writhe too hard or rebuke too harshly, he could very well just crush your neck and leave your half-naked body in the hotel for some poor soul to discover weeks later. A rat in a trap.

You swallowed hard enough that he felt you do it against his palm.

His thighs shifted apart an inch and he slid the head of his cock up and down your cunt a few times — pushing it over your clit in the process — before it eventually caught on your entrance. Bracing, you hooked an ankle loosely around his bulk and screwed your face up, unwilling to watch as you were split in two.

“Sweet thing.” Unimaginable pressure against your cunt and a hot flare of pain, and then— a slick pop as the head sank in. Your eyelids tightened shut so hard that you saw colors in all photonegatives for a brief moment. Sound fought to come out of your mouth and failed. A tremor ran through his massive frame at the feeling of your walls fluttering around his tip. “You were made for this. You were made for me.”

His voice balanced on cusp of harsh and soft, velvet gone throaty with want as he stretched you open. Conviction wove so well into his words that you wanted to believe them. Wouldn’t it be easier to believe them?

Fat veins throbbed against the rim of your entrance, constricting and twitching as he worked more of his cock into you. At some point, your breathing had hastened into shallow, quick gasps, your body lax in his grip to keep yourself from tearing open. So human and so not. The length of him was decorated liberally with strange ridges and scales like his hands, and the odd, leathery texture did not go unnoticed the more he fed into your struggling cunt.

Both hands tightened on your body, the one on your hip decidedly more so. With a short jerk, his hips jolted upward, shoving the last few inches in. At the same time, he pulled down, tugging your body down on his length like you were little more than a toy. The simultaneous motion bumped the broad head right into the obstinate block of your cervix, and you winced with an obvious grimace.

“So tight,” he marveled harshly. “The wonders truly never cease.”

He spoke through gritted teeth, gold flashing in your bleary vision for a moment before he tucked his chin to his chest and sucked in a supremely controlled breath. Even then, there was an audible tremor to it. You fought to breathe at all; his cock felt like it was nestled right in between your lungs, and you dared not move for fear of ripping yourself open.

And then his hips rocked, and you almost blacked out.

There had been some deep fear in you that Victor’s restraint would finally fail during this particular zenith — blurry half-formed images of him yanking you up and down his cock like a toy, uncaring of any blood or tears spurred by his actions — but it was far different. Like the rest of the encounter, he remained deliberate. Methodical. Steady pumps of his hips paired with careful up-and-downs of your body to match the movement. Your jaw hung slack with overstimulation and sheer exhaustion, unfocused eyes staring into the abyss of the room beyond his head.

“You’re, ah, doing so well,” he purred as he rocked up into you at a pace too fast and too slow for your muddled brain to handle. “So receptive, so willing…”

Maybe you should have been scared of the after. Warm pleasure unfurled in your stomach with each drag of his ridged cock against your overstimulated walls, culminating in a slow leak of wetness around the ridiculous stretch of your cunt. As much as it was fogging your mind, it felt good. But what about the after? When you were done? Was he just going to let you go? The way he spoke certainly implied not, and the insinuation that you weren’t going back to your apartment afterwards made something within you ice over with dread.

Another roll of his hips nudged against your cervix, and you found much purchase in the realization that, yes, laughter was the best medicine, but fear was proving to be one hell of an aphrodisiac. Your fingers twitched in their now-loose grasp of his coat. Every clench of your cunt around him felt unfinished with how stuffed he had you, like you couldn’t quite complete the motion around the intrusion.

Your world tilted again, only marginally. Shifted a few degrees back — now he pushed more forward rather than upward — your head lolled back, muscles lax with hazy euphoria and overexertion. The motion changed, though, and the feeling of him hooking his hips up on the in-thrust made stars explode across your vision. Stretched as much as you were, every part of your walls felt as though they were being stimulated by his cock, and the pressure on the ceiling of your cunt — dragging down that one delicious spot — was hauling you towards another orgasm shockingly fast.

Arm shaking, you forced yourself to release one fistful of snake-leather and instead dropped your hand to your cunt. The circles you drew over your clit were barely even shapes — mostly trembling back-and-forth lines — but they were good enough, and you cried out at the sorely-needed stimulation. He hissed at the feeling of your walls spasming around his length and responded in kind with a forward push.

The second orgasm felt like it was dragged out of you by force. A ragged whine tore from your throat and you twitched in his hands, mangled ecstasy flickering over your drained body. Your fingers slipped off your clit, hand draped limply between your thighs; your other hand tightened down hard in his coat, seeking any kind of anchor point as your climax rocked you.

His motions harshened some afterwards, hips graduating from rolling to really thrusting as he sought his own finish. Praises — slurred around the edges — fell from his sallow lips in between rough panting, and if you weren’t mistaken, a thin sheen of sweat had collected atop his pallid skin.

“Yes, yes, yes,” the words were choppy, slithering out one after the other in not-quite-separated succession, “wonderful, perfect.”

You barely hung onto consciousness when he pushed his hips flush to yours and came, cock kicking and pumping inside of you with jerks so violent they felt like they shook you from the inside out. It wasn’t warm — nothing about him was — but it was viscous and there was an egregious amount of it. A few more rolls of his pelvis pushed it as far it would go, the sticky head of his cock kissing your cervix painfully every time, before you felt him beginning to soften. No longer feeling fit to burst from every slight reposition, you figured it safe enough to roll your head up and twitch your hips in response.

His lips were parted, face downturned as he watched the way his cock slid out of you inch by inch. There was some resistance at the flare of the head, but a gentle tug pulled it free with a slick pop, and you flushed again at the noise. Thick cum immediately began a humiliating drip out of your cunt, the fluid sticky and catching on every dip and valley of your skin. Empty. You’d never felt so empty, despite the full load of cum fucked into you.

It remained heavily resting on your mound, ridiculous in size even when soft, and you stared at it with heavily-lidded eyes for a moment. Some of the ringing in your ears subsided. You remembered, slowly, where you were; that sweet scent of rot filled your nose all over again.

 Except that time it wasn’t from the dilapidated hotel room and its decaying furniture, it was from Victor’s mouth. He brought you up to face-level with him again, scanning your fucked-out expression from behind his lenses with a slowly growing smile on his face. His thumb stroked along your sweaty throat in what might have been fondness.

“You see it now.” His tone of restrained madness, absolute certainty in the insane, never left him. “How… special you are.”

You didn’t have words to voice agreement with. You just gaped at him like a dying fish, shallow breaths sucked over spit-wet lips. Maybe you did agree. Did it really matter if you didn’t?

A few beats passed. The only thing that signified the elapsing of any time at all was the steady, sluggish progression of cum down your inner thigh as he held you up and mused to himself.

…Something warm gathered between your legs, and dismay twisted in your chest. For a brief moment, you thought it was something else — prayed, actually it was something else, anything else, but you knew. After all, it was hard to mistake arousal for anything else, especially after this.

Either he felt your pulse spike or he just knew, because he smiled at you. The fingers around your throat tightened beyond a simple flex, and as fucked-out as you were, you didn’t even panic when you felt your consciousness fade.

The last thing you heard before slipping into blissful torpor was his voice.

When you started seeing Satoru, you didn't expect much from him. Tall stature, ivory hair, dazzling sapphire eyes were only a few signifiers of his popularity with the female population, and unfortunately, with you as well. 

You aren't quite sure how he roped you in. You'd known him long enough, been friends long enough to give it a little push, to entertain his flirtations just a little bit despite your gut screaming at you to turn the other way, to let him bother some other hopeless case.

But that look in his pretty eyes, the one soft and precious enough to make you give him a chance, the one that led you to subconsciously lower your guard as you gazed into authenticity rather than suave and arrogance for the very first time, is what made you give it a shot. After all, you decided, a few months of knowing someone is enough to have an idea of how they'd treat you on dates, how they'd handle you in a relationship.

And what you do primarily know about Gojo is not his occupation, which he brushes over rather frequently, and not his home life, but his wealth. The man is loaded. You can tell simply by glancing at the time piece wrapped around his taut wrist and the ridiculously overpriced sunglasses that he pulls down the bridge of his nose to wink at you. You know that, even if trying to get to know him romantically ends in disaster, that you'd at the very least get a good fucking date out of it.

But the problem is that it didn't end at just one good date. What you had assumed to be a little fling, a one time outing, a test of his confidence actually turned out to be one of the best dates you’d ever been on. Satoru's a gentleman, in an annoying kind of way. He'll sport that cheeky grin as he holds the door for you and leads you to the finest seat of the establishment, and he'll lounge back in his seat as he gazes at you fondly, lips curving into that devilish smile as the softest of compliments tumbles from them.

He calls you beautiful like it's the first time he's ever said it, and however skeptical you may be, you detect it. You hear it. You see the truth in his eyes, hear it in the stutter of his words that he attempts to hide with jokes and false suave. However pompous Satoru Gojo may be outside of this territory, he's humbled into a rather pathetic sap at your hand, and you... well you like it. You really do.

So you let it sweep you up just a little bit, easing the air as you laugh freely about work stories that he only listens to and does not share himself. And that is another thing that surprises you. He only wants to hear about you, to learn about you, to understand you and your functions and divert from any topic of himself.

You notice it. You've taken note of it ever since you've known him. You thought that going on a date with him would have reduced some of his mystery, but alas, he remains an enigma in your eyes. An overly sweet, rather playfully irritating, gorgeous enigma. Something in your gut tells you not to trust it, but the way your hand slips into his as the two of you stroll the city after dinner says otherwise - or at least says that you don't mind the mystique. That you can play pretend just for a little while.

He tells you he wants to see you again. That he's practically chomping at the bit to take you out once more. That he's got all these date ideas swimming around in his head that have been plaguing him since the very day that he met you. That befriending you has brightened his life, and you allowing him to court you has opened his eyes to the world's beauty even more.

Satoru is all dimpled grins and sweet nothings, and you hate that you love it. You slap him on the chest with a scoff of a laugh and shake your head, but he means every word he says. You know he does. You allow yourself to think he does. Because he doesn't want you to feel as though he's playing pretend. He wants you to feel alive the way you make him feel. He wants you to sink into the notion, and trust that someone like him could actually take care of you.

So you go home after your date and wait for him to text you, to respond to your message saying that you had a great time, that you want to do this again when he's free, but it remains unanswered for a day and a half. And the first seed of doubt implants itself into your gut. 

He comes back the following night like nothing, responding as though he's answered you in minutes, expressing how much he enjoyed the night and shares your sentiments, and you text him back with a wrinkle in your brow that you try to brush off.

you | damn, late response lol

satoru | sorry sweetest most beautiful princess😩 work's been crazy, please don't be mad

And you try not to be. You try to be the understanding individual that you are, though he still doesn't clarify just what he does for work other than the fact that he works with kids and helps with their training. Training for what, you aren't sure, but you don't push it any further since he does not willingly offer up the information. Perhaps he's just guarded in that realm. Perhaps he signed some NDA. Hell, perhaps work really is digging into his free time. Even when you and Satoru became friends, he never texted all that often. You only are now noticing it because you've stepped into a different territory regarding your relationship, and your heart and mind have inflicted unwarranted expectations onto the man who so desperately wants to see you again.

You're annoyed, but you let it slide. The first time.

you | it's okay i understand, just lmk when you're busy or i'll think you died or something

satoru | that should be the least of your concerns, but noted!!! i'll do better.

And you schedule the next date, and unsurprisingly, your heart tugs into his direction even more. He takes you to an amusement park, something you vaguely mentioned in passing that you'd want to revisit because you rarely got to go as a kid. Hours of cotton candy, kettle corn, ferris wheel rides, and teddy bears later, he looks you in the eye and tells you how much he likes you - even with lingering sugar stuck to your shiny lips and your eyes reflecting the fireworks that burst overhead. He peers down at you with that soft gaze and gentle smile, cheeks warm and hair tossed by summer breeze, and you lean up on your tip toes to kiss him on the cheek before he walks you to the car.

Surely, you expect some more conversation when you send him a picture of you and the bear he won from that carnie cuddled up in bed together that night, but once more, a day and a half passes, and he pops in out of the blue, responding like no time has passed again.

You feel yourself growing aggravated, but it's early, you tell yourself. He said he was busy with work, and it was nearing the end of the week, so you grant him that grace. You try your damndest to shovel down the doubts that begin to rise and focus on your own job, attempting to burrow the thoughts of him that begin to swarm your mind at the worst of times.

Then he calls you another day later, and you answer rather flatly.

"Hello."

"Hiii beautiful," Satoru sings into the phone. "What are you up to this weekend? Care to grace me with your presence?"

And his voice, so silky and playful, almost makes you forget your frustrations now that you're actually speaking to him. Almost. "Maybeee," you sigh.

"Uh oh. What's wrong? You hate me now?"

"No, I don't hate you. Stop saying that."

"Then what's wrong? You sound kinda... tired."

You rub your temple as you try to find the words. "Is everything okay with work? You've been really distant."

There's a slight pause. "Have I?" he questions as though he is genuinely confused by the sentiment. "I'm sorry, I honestly didn't realize. I'm not a good texter. You could ask my coworkers. I suck."

"It's fine. I know you're busy - it's just... I mean, could I ask what your intentions are with me?"

"Sure you can."

"...Well, what are they? Is this just a fling... or-"

"God, I hope not!" he chuckles, a hint of nervousness in his tone. "Why... is that what you want?"

"No. I just... if it's what you want then..."

"It's not," Satoru says earnestly. "I like you. I want to keep seeing you and only you. Seriously."

"So not like a fling?"

"Not at all like a fling."

"Okay..."

"Do you want that too? To keep dating me seriously?"

"...Yeah. Maybe," your cheeks flush.

Satoru takes the opportunity to lighten the mood and runs with it. "Maybe?? You tryin' to give me a heart attack?"

You snort. "You're dramatic."

"Only about you, pretty girl."

You close your eyes and exhale slowly. "Then... if we're being serious about this... I really don't care if you're busy. I promise I don't. But I get really weird about communication... and I'd prefer it if you told me beforehand when you'd be busy so I'm not expecting a text from you. Because... you really do respond late as hell. I know that's nothing new, but now that we're seeing each other... I just want more clarification. Is that... something you could do?"

He's silent for a moment, pensive, you think. "Of course it is, (Y/n)," he finally says, the humor leaving his voice. "I know you already mentioned that. I'm really sorry. My job is just - I don't have a lot of free time and things tend to slip my mind."

You store those words in a vault. You slip his mind? Does that mean he isn't thinking about you enough to care to reach out?

You try not to let the thought swallow you, and remain present in his words.

"Those kids must have you running ragged, huh?" you try to joke yourself, hoping for an opening to learn more.

"Like you wouldn't believe," he murmurs. "I'll tell you more about it some other time. Don't wanna bore you with the details."

"You could never bore me..." you trail off.

You hear a smile return. "You like me, huh?"

"Shut the fuck up."

Satoru laughs loudly, and you hate the way your lips twitch to smile as you duck your head and try to force it away. "So mean," he whines. "You could never bore me either, for the record. And I really am sorry about my texting. I get distracted easily."

You roll your eyes, heart pounding in your ears. "Yeah, yeah."

"...Soooo, this weekend?"

"I'm free, you idiot."

And this weekend, he takes you to the fucking opera. Why? God only knows, but he tells you to dress pretty and that he'll pick you up adorned in a dark tux, and the only thing you can think about as you sit on the balcony with those binoculars you've only seen in Pretty Woman is that this man knows exactly how to make you feel like royalty, as long as he's physically with you.

His hand grazes the small of your back and when you turn to look at him with the glitter of your dangly earrings shining against your (s/c) skin, and an awed smile stretched from ear to ear during intermission, he melts. And you do too. 

And you decide, in that very moment, that the opera is your new favorite place to visit.

"I've never done that before."

Your head snaps into Satoru's direction as he waits for the valet to bring his car around after the show, hand around your waist, his cologne clinging to your fabrics. "Done what?" you ask softly, your head still light from the amazement you witnessed in the form of grand voices that tugged at the strings of your heart.

He looks down at you, lids low. "Gone to the opera."

You furrow your brows, though smiling. "What?" you laugh. "Then why'd you take me?"

He shrugs. "Thought we could experience something new together," he says. "You also said once that your mom used to play a lot of Puccini, so. I don't know. Thought it'd be cool."

Your eyes slim though your heart soars. "Do you even know who Puccini is?"

"He's an opera singer."

You cackle. "He's an opera composer."

"Oh. Well, same thing."

"You're insane," you giggle, holding your abdomen as Satoru's hand glides up the silk of your back.

"Didn't seem so insane when you were crying during the last thirty minutes."

"Hey, I didn't say it wasn't good!" you finally calm down, looking back up at him. You sigh out. "It was really beautiful. I can't believe you took us here off a whim though."

"But you liked it, right?" he smiles with the tilt of his head.

You purse your lips as your cheeks glow with warmth. "I loved it."

His smile warms. "Then my job is done." The atmosphere thickens as he pulls back slightly to lift a hand to the side of your face, slender fingertips gently brushing at something under your eye. You blink, holding his gaze as his hand hesitantly settles upon your cheek, thumb caressing your flushed skin. "Eyelash," he mumbles, voice dipping.

You hardly hear him, the lights of the theatre aglow around you as your faces inches further toward one another. Satoru's bright eyes have grown heavy and serious, pupils swollen with the image of you as the distance between your lips shrinks.

"Was it really an eyelash?" you whisper as he looks over your face contently, completely swept up in you.

"No," he says.

And the distance closes. Your lips meet. His arms encircle you, and you can not go back.

You forget that he doesn't tell you about work like he said he would. You forget that his communication when the two of you aren't physically together is not ideal. You forget it all, and let him kiss you like you mean something to him, and let come inside with you when he drives you home as though he's promised himself to you.

You wake up the next morning to an empty bed and a text saying that he had to run much to his chagrin. But it's Sunday. No ordinary person works on a Sunday, so, rather abruptly, his sound excuse crumbles, and you are left with the empty imprint of his body in your sheets where he held you close.

You text him back expressing how much you enjoyed the night, and like always, nothing comes in return.

You elect to wash the sheets.

The assumptions come flooding into your mind as you busy yourself with cleaning the space after the two of you had left it in such a wreck. He couldn't even bother to straighten up on his way out.

Is he married? Does he have any kids? A secret family? Is he fucking other women behind your back and trying to hide it? Is he even employed?

The possibilities wreck your brain as time passes, and every second he does not respond weighs down on your shoulders, as you begin to think that this was all just a trap - that he successfully baited you into sleeping with him. Using false promises, pretty dates, and his charm to weasel his way into your body, pretending to be enamoured with you as he held eye contact through every second, as he talked you through every second, as he swore to do right by you every second he was inside of you.

And now he's gone. A memory that has tinged itself in resentment with the setting of the sun and his sheer lack of reply. You think of calling him, but you decide that would look desperate. You think of telling him off, but decide that would look too hasty.

You try to understand. Desperately you do, but how can you when you are left high and dry every single time he leaves your presence? How can you when he doesn't bother to think of you when you aren't around? How can you when he doesn't even have the decency to let you know that he's okay? To tell you the truth if he's hiding something? To be up front if he's kept secrets?

You don't do well with lack of communication. Even if he's a bad texter, your mind does not jump to that simple solution. In the absence of words, your mind jumps into overdrive. You conjure up the worst possible solutions, the most outrageous notions, and you stew in them until you get answers.

So that night before bed, you double text.

you | hey... you good? what did you have to go do?

And you wait with your phone clutched in trembling hands for a text that does not come. So you put his messages on mute, turn over, and try to sleep.

But your heart wails for its capture, as you realize you're falling for someone who can't even text you back. Your dreams are haunted by your anxieties, by the thought of him running off to his family, by the thought of him texting other women, by the thought of him hiding something monumental from you.

Because that is something that you know for certain, that he is protecting something with his life. Whether it is good or bad, you do not know, but you doubt that you will access it any time soon.

The next morning you get up early to go grab a cup of coffee. Your texts remain unanswered, despite having muted his messages, so to drown your irritation, you take a walk to the nearest coffee shop.

On your way out however, you see him. Clad in a dark blindfold that spikes his fluffy hair upward, the same hair that your fingers were entwined in two nights prior, and a strange black uniform adorning his entire body.

But next to him... next to him is a brunette woman with a cigarette hanging out of her mouth and heavy, yet entrancing circles tracing under her eyes. They walk closely beside one another. She says something. Satoru laughs. And your heart shatters.

She’s beautiful.

Not only did Satoru refuse to answer your text, but he refused to because he was busy with another woman.

And when you look down, that stupid phone of his is clutched in his hand.

You consider yourself to be a reasonable woman. You always try to exercise patience, to see all sides of a situation even if it makes you uncomfortable, to not act with your emotions first but with empathy, for you never know what other people may have going on in their lives.

Satoru told you he'd try, but weeks have passed, and his communication remains the same. And it's not because he's busy, but because he merely does not want to speak to you. Because his time is occupied by another bitch, who he probably ran off to the second he was done fucking you.

Anger bubbles in your gut. You knew it. You knew something was wrong. You knew that someone like him couldn't possibly be loyal to you. You knew that it was all too good to be true, that his silence answered for something he refused to name.

Now you see it. And against your better judgment, against your carefully exercised patience, against your logic, you steep in red. You're hurt, you're embarrassed, you're betrayed.

So instead of trying to understand, you let all of your insecurities and doubts pile up and explode, using them as a justification for what you see. You toss your overpriced coffee to the ground, it splatters at your feet, and you march across the street with steam rising from your head to save you from tears.

Satoru seems to sense you when you are halfway to him, and his laughter dies down. His face drops, and he turns to you in shock, or what you assume to be shock, as you aren't entirely sure due to the blindfold hiding his eyes.

The brunette's eyes float to you after Satoru's attention diverts, and she blinks cluelessly as you stomp toward him.

"(Y/n)!" he starts in surprise, but the very sound of his voice only infuriates you.

"Don't you fucking (Y/n) me. What the fuck is your problem?" you jab your index finger toward him. The brunette's eyes widen slightly, and she slowly looks up to Satoru as if she's caught a child getting in trouble.

Satoru stammers, hands raising at your foreign, accusatory tone. "What are y-"

"You just fuck me after a date and then disappear again? Like you fucking always do?" you shout. The brunette's hand goes to her mouth, but you doubt she's uncomfortable. In fact, it almost looks like she's enjoying this.

It pisses you off.

Satoru's cheeks flush red as he glances over at the woman frantically, then back down at you. "(Y/n), can we talk about this somewhere else?"

"No! No, we can't talk about it somewhere else! Have I not told you a hundred times that I need better communication if this is gonna work? Every time you tell me you'll get better, that you're sorry, but nothing fucking changes! I don't know why the hell I thought it would change after you had sex with me!" you pause to chuckle cynically. "That's fucking hilarious! What the hell was I thinking? That you'd suddenly be loyal to me because you called me pretty and took me out three times? Christ, I'm a fucking idiot!"

Satoru tries to take a step closer. "You're not an idiot," he reaches for you, but you swat his hand away. He reels, stepping back as though you've burned him with clamped, wobbly lips.

"Don't fucking touch me. You can't use me anymore. I won't let you. I'm done. I told you how I feel about this shit, and you've ignored me every single time. I don't wanna talk to someone who doesn't take me seriously and who lies about it."

"But I do take you seriously," he pleads. "I told you, I do-"

"If you did, you would have responded. You would have called. You wouldn't let me initiate damn near every single conversation. You'd hear me when I express something to you," you fume, tears building in your eyes. "How am I supposed to trust you if you can't even do that? If you won't even tell me what you do for work? If you're clearly able to pick up the phone, but not for me? If you're actively with another woman while I wait for you to fucking reply days later?"

The brunette raises her hand slowly, lazily, hesitant to interrupt. "Sorry, but," she starts, and your eyes snap to her heatedly. "I'm his-"

"I don't give a fuck what you are, okay?" you interrupt. Her hand falls and she nods, rather unintimidated. "I'm done. Hear me? Done. Lose my fucking number."

With that, you turn over your shoulder and march back off across the street, leaving Satoru and the brunette to reel in the aftermath of your outburst.

Satoru blinks, watching you retreat with his heart weighing down in his chest. A lump of shame builds in his throat, and he remains rigid as if he is still being yelled at.

"So," Shoko starts awkwardly. "That was her?"

"Yep, that was... that was her," he finally says, dejectedly.

There's a beat.

"You fucked her then left her on delivered?"

"Shoko," Satoru whines, turning to her with a slump in his dejected posture. "Please don't start, you just watched the woman I'm crazy about stomp on my heart and leave it on the pavement to get shit on."

"Okay well, if you're so crazy about her, why haven't you texted her back?"

The ivory haired sorcerer sighs. "Because I'm in too deep."

"Clearly you already were."

"That's not what I-" he glares with a pout at her innuendo, but Shoko looks up at him boredly, expectantly. Satoru groans. "Because I'm a sorcerer and she's not, and the kind of life I live isn't meant for her."

"Then why pursue her in the first place?"

"I couldn't help it," he ducks his head, scratching the nape of his neck. "She's sweet, she's smart, she's... she's strong, and so pretty. I’m obsessed with her," he shakes his head. "And you know Gakuganji's been sending me on all these stupid ass missions back to back too. He knows I'm gettin' distracted. Between that, and Yuji, and... I just don't wanna hurt her."

"Eh. Too late for that."

"You're not helping," he groans. "I'm serious. What if she becomes a target because I'm around her too much? What if she finds out what I do and thinks I'm crazy?"

"If you like her as much as you say you do, then... I don't know. Just be honest. Just go for it."

"And put her in danger?"

"There's always danger with you around, Satoru. Why should it matter if it means you can be happy?"

Satoru purses his lips. "It matters 'cause I'm not just some sorcerer. It matters because she could get killed."

"Is she worth it?"

He looks off into the direction you stormed off in and his heart aches at the thought of losing you this way. "Yeah," he frowns.

"Then protect her. She’s not gonna get hurt with you around."

Satoru turns back to look at his close friend, hooking a finger under his blindfold to peer at her with his icy gaze. "Why are you telling me that?"

Shoko sighs. "'Cause I haven't seen you this happy since Suguru died," she says rather casually, as if the very statement did not send memories flashing rapidly through Satoru's brain. "That and I like her."

"You like her?" Satoru squints his eyes. "You just met her, and she yelled at the both of us."

"Yeah, it was nice to see a woman give you her ass to kiss," she says flatly.

Satoru deflates, lowering his blindfold back over his eyes with a sorrowful exhale. "...It was kinda hot, right?"

"For the love of god. Go fucking text her, moron."

He will, for what you don't know is that every time he leaves you, he sticks around in secret to make sure you get to your destination safely as he watches from afar, six eyes detailing your every move. What you don't know is that during every mission, he stares at the contact picture he's saved of you mid-laugh, your eyes scrunched tight and all pretty teeth of yours on display, just to get him through the day. What you don't know is how he babbles about you, the amazing, gorgeous woman he's seeing that everyone at work thinks is fake, every single chance that he gets, hearts fluttering in his eyes at the mere thought of you, his constant babble in front of his students making them all want to gag.

What you don't know is how silently he yearns for you when he forces himself not to respond, when the fears of what could happen to you as a result of others trying to get to him stop his fingers from clicking the keys. When the higher ups barely allow him a moment to breathe as he teleports between countries long enough for days to slip into nights, and he's only back in time to realize that another day has gone by without him reaching out to you, texting you, hearing your pretty voice, seeing your pretty face.

What you don't know is the toll that his occupation takes on him. What you don't know is who he really is to the world, and how hard it is to balance having feelings for you with taking care of the entire planet.

But you are worth it. He pictures your sleeping form curled into his chest, your makeup smeared and your hair messy, and your heart peacefully pattering against his skin. His heart clenches.

You're so worth it.

"Shoko, tell Yaga I'm taking the day off."

"Ummm, sure, but he's not gonna - " Before she can finish, he's vanished into thin air, and she rolls her eyes. " - like it," she eventually trails off, pulling out her phone and continuing her walk.

You're at the door of your house, trembling with anger, when you feel a strange breeze pick up behind you, and when you turn around, you find Satoru standing there behind you in all of his six something glory.

You jump with a yelp. "How the fuck did you just - what the hell?!"

"Sorry. I'm sorry, pretty. Hey," he reaches for his blindfold and yanks it off. You watch as snowy hair falls back down to frame his face as he tucks the fabric into his pocket to look at you clearly, see you can see him. The pain in his eyes, the regret, the desperation, and you watch with knitted brows, red eyes, and a deep frown. He hates the sight on your face. "I'm sorry. For everything. I'm so sorry."

"Satoru, how did you - " you look around, still confused as to how he just appeared behind you like that, but then you remember your rage. "Whatever. Go away, I don't want to talk to you."

You go to reach for your door handle, but he grabs your hand. You yank it away, turning hotly on your heel to glare up at him. He holds his hands up in defense.

"(Y/n), please. I'm sorry. Just let me explain. You had every right to say what you said back there, but - "

"Damn right I did. You're a liar, Satoru."

"Okay, I'm not a liar. I've never been a liar."

"Then what do you call what I just saw? You were out with another woman! You told me that you were only seeing me!"

"I am only seeing you! That was Shoko, Shoko is my coworker!"

"Your-" you stop yourself, staring hard into his eyes as if trying to read if he's telling the truth. "Your coworker? She's your coworker who you were walking around with on a Monday morning while actively ignoring my texts? And you still won't even tell me where you work! How am I supposed to believe you?"

"Because, (Y/n), I swear to you that she has never been anything but a friend and peer to me. We went to high school together. We work at the same place."

"Which is?"

"I - " he hesitates. "I can't... tell you like this. It's not - it's hard to explain."

"Sure it is," you scoff. "Goodbye, Satoru."

"(Y/n), please," the sapphire eyed sorcerer begs, and he panics the moment your keys jam into the lock and your hand grips that handle tight. He panics, images of Suguru turning his back to him flickering through his head, years of loneliness flashing by, then you. You and your smile, you and your laughter, you and your sunshine that he's somehow turned to rain.

He can't lose you. Not to this. Not to any other threat.

"(Y/n)," he calls you, and when you still don't answer as you push open your front door, the words blurt out. "I'm a sorcerer."

You freeze. Satoru's heart drops to his stomach, his eyes wide, and you slowly turn over your shoulder. "You're what?"

The ivory haired man gulps. "I'm..." he gets lost in your harsh eyes, and all logic fails him. "I'm... that's what I do. I'm a... sorcerer."

You watch him, befuddled. "What the hell is a sorcerer? Like - like DND?"

"Kind of...?"

Your shoulders slump, and you stare at Satoru with a quirked brow. "Are you shitting me? Now you're gonna tell me you have a made-up job?"

"It's not made up," Satoru's voice dips into something more serious.

"Oh really? Then what the hell does a 'sorcerer' do?"

Satoru looks into your innocent eyes and sighs as he prepares to warp your perception of what is real and what is not. He hates to do this to you. He really does, but a woman like you deserves his truth. The good, the bad, the ugly. As long as you'll take him. It's a risk he's willing to take.

Suguru would have had his fucking head for doing something like this.

Your eyes go wide, as the man that was once in front of you completely disappears from sight. Your head jerks back, your eyes darting about the vacant space, and you breathe out a gasp of confusion. Are you hallucinating? Are you going crazy?

You step away from your door, which is now ajar, looking all around you like you've lost your mind, and for a moment you think you have.

"I'm here, pretty."

You rip your body around with lightning speed, shoulders bunched to your ears as you stare wildly at the vision of Satoru now halfway through your doorway. You're frozen with something between stun and fear, and you stumble back, dazed. You look behind you, then turn to face him again as he steps forward. "You - you - how did - you just - "

"I know," Satoru exhales, dimple poking his cheek as his mouth twists to the side. "I know. I'm sorry. That was probably really weird."

"Satoru," you murmur lowly. "How the hell did you just do that?"

"I'm a sorcerer," he says again, like it means something, like it could make any of this make sense. "Certain things I'm able to just do."

"You teleported?"

"Mhm," he finally is able to approach you in your state of shock, monitoring your rapid heartbeat and your doe-like eyes. "I do... a lot of other things, but I - I don't want to overwhelm you."

 Your hands fly to your head. "What the fuck," you breathe out, looking up and down his frame. "I must be - dreaming or something - "

"You're not. I'm real. This is real."

You shake your head. "It can't be."

Satoru presses his lips together, watching you carefully as he holds his hand out to you. "Try to touch me."

You scrunch your nose. "What?"

"Just try it."

Against your better judgment, you do. You inch a finger toward him slowly only to meet an invisible wall that blocks you from coming in contact with his open palm. Your brows knit, and you attempt to touch him again, but to no avail. You poke and poke, then slap a hand against the shield, before ripping away. "Ohhh, what the fuck," you murmur under your breath. “What the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck.”

"(Y/n), listen. C'mere. Please."

Satoru rushes around you as you turn to mull over what you've just witnessed, dropping his infinity the moment he's holding your gaze again. His hands fly to hold your shoulders, keeping you steady in your stupor. You look down at the hands holding you, wondering how he can touch you now. "Listen, okay? Please, please don't be scared."

"I'm not - scared, I'm fucking confused!"

"I know, baby. I know. And I'll try my best to explain everything, but listen, it's really dangerous that I'm telling you and showing you this, alright? You gotta promise me you won't tell anyone."

You squint your eyes. "Who would I-?"

"Just promise me," he says sternly. For the first time, you see Satoru as he is, firm, a force, a being to be reckoned with. Someone to take seriously. You stare up at him, dumbfounded. "Promise, okay? I don't want you getting hurt."

"...But how - "

"Please, (Y/n). Promise me."

You see the same truth in his eyes that first brought you to him, and you slowly relax as best as you can. "I promise."

Satoru exhales a breath he did not realize he was holding. "Good. Thank you." You nod mutely, still completely awed. Satoru notices and takes the opportunity to continue now that he's got you like this. Now that you'll hear him. "(Y/n), I really like you. I really, really do."

"...What does that have to do with - "

"I like everything about you. I like every moment we spend together. I like holding your hand, and kissing you, and feeling you, and the hardest thing I ever had to do was leave you alone yesterday morning to go to work. My job is... it's hard to explain, but I do work with kids. And I do train them... to become sorcerers. To become strong like me. That may not mean anything to you right now, but it's my life. My whole entire life, and because I am who I am, everyone expects a lot from me, you understand? Every day I have to drop what I'm doing to take care of really fucked up things, and I'm really sorry that I've left you hanging in the process. I'm really, so sorry, princess. I know I said I'd get better with communicating, but it's not really easy to tell the girl you're seeing that I had to go to Italy to exorcise thirty curses - "

"What?"

"Nothing. It doesn't matter. What matters is you. What matters is that I made you feel unheard and tossed aside because I was too scared of putting you in harm's way, or because I literally have no time to myself. The time I do have, I spend with you. And then it's all over so soon and I leave you hating me because I can't be there for you like a normal man. I so badly want to be that for you, but I'm just not. And I'm sorry. I should've found more time, I should've communicated, I should've done anything to make you feel safe but I just did the opposite. And I'll hate myself forever for doing that to you because you… because I just care about you so much. And I don't ever want to make you feel the way I have ever again."

Silence swallows you whole after Satoru has ceased his rant. You can feel his fingers lightly digging into your shoulders, eager for you to say anything in return, but you just stare at him in awe, overwhelmed, so so confused... but somehow relieved.

Satoru's brows curl upward. "Please say something. Anything. Say you hate me. Or you think I'm crazy - do you think I'm crazy?"

Your lips part, your eyes glassy. "A little," you say honestly. Satoru bows his head in humiliation. "...But... I think... I believe you."

He perks up immediately, big blue eyes blown wide with hope. "You do?"

"For some reason, yeah. Yeah I do," you swallow hard, still processing. "So that woman-"

"Shoko."

"Shoko. She's also a...?"

"A sorcerer. Yeah. We were going to pick up our kids from a mission."

"Your... kids?"

"Students! Our students!" he clarifies.

"...And you have powers...? That you teach the students? At a sorcery school?"

"...Kind of…?"

"And you teleport. And have an invisible forcefield."

Satoru tries not to laugh as you wrap your mind around the concept. "I mean... that's kind of what it is. Yeah."

“O-Okay… so, what else can sorcerers do?"

"We're not all the same. Everyone has their own technique."

"Technique?"

"Like a power."

"Oh. Then what's yours?"

Satoru smiles warmly. "Let's not worry about all the details right now," he chuckles. "I just wanna worry about you. Okay? Are you okay?"

You nod stiffly. "Yes. Yeah. I'm just... sorry. I'm sorry."

The reality of everything comes crashing down on you, but surprisingly, not what Satoru has just unveiled, but rather what you said to him on the street earlier. The scene you caused. The accusations you threw. The assumptions you made. How out of character you got.

"Oh Jesus," you groaned, bringing a hand to your head. "You really don't know what people have going on in their lives."

"(Y/n)? You sure you're okay?"

The kindest, most concerned blue eyes follow your every move as secure palms hold you, and you deflate. "I'm fine. I'm sorry. I just realized I cussed you out for no reason. I'm so sorry."

Satoru blinks. "You're not... mad about the sorcerer thing?"

"I mean, I'm still fucking confused, but no... I feel awful that I ripped you apart like that in front of your coworker. Oh god, and I snapped at her. Satoru, I'm really sorry. I had no idea."

"(Y/n)

," he calls your name gently. "How could you have known?" You go to answer, but you can think of no response. "I'm the one who kept you in the dark. I'm the one who hid this from you. I'm the one with a secret identity. You have no reason to apologize to me. I deserved it. From where you stand, you couldn't have possibly known."

"But now I do, and I... I mean, I knew you were hiding something, but... I should've paid more attention?"

"To what?" he chuckles. "I hid this from you every day. There's nothing you could have noticed."

"I notice how tired you are sometimes," you say softly. "I notice how quick you are to take care of everything. To pay, to splurge. Like it's your responsibility."

"That is my responsibility."

"But you do it like you're... trying to be seen... or I don't know.... appreciated," you say, and Satoru's smile slowly fades. "But I appreciate you without all that flashy stuff. And now I understand... you must be a really big deal where you come from. You must have a lot of pressure on you."

You have absolutely no idea.

But he doesn't even bother to confirm or deny. For once, he's happy to hear how a human being perceives him. "I don't know, I should've realized how much you have on your plate instead of constantly thinking about how you could make me feel better. I mean yeah, it sucked not hearing from you, but now that I - I know some shit like sorcery exists, the texting thing doesn't really seem like all that big of an issue. And I really am sorry I yelled at you like that. I swear, I'm not always like that. I just really like you, and when I feel like I haven't been heard or seen, I freak out and jump to the worst-"

You feel hands cup your face and draw you upward, and your eyes go wide as those soft lips press to yours passionately. You hum in shock before sinking into the warmth that you desperately longed to feel again. Your hands go to hold his wrists as you reach up on your tip toes, and his lips slowly mold against yours in three, prolonged smacks.

He pulls away, and you bat the cloudiness away from your eyes as you look up into his own. Satoru beams down at you with a love struck grin, cheeks rosy and pupils blown, snowy lashes low over his irises. He ducks back down to kiss your forehead, and your heart thrums.

"I just told you that I'm a sorcerer, and all you can think about is how you made me feel?" he murmurs sweetly. "What did I do to deserve you?"

"I didn't - do anything?" you say slowly.

"You did," he smiles, skin creasing at the corners of his eyes. "I understand why you yelled, (Y/n). I deserved it. And honestly... I kinda liked it."

You can't help the snort you let out. "You what?"

"I liked that you stood up for yourself. That you don't take any crap. You know your worth. And you should. You're perfect."

"You freak," you push at his chest so that he releases you. His hands fall to his sides, yet his love dazed expression remains as he looks at you. "You're insane."

"I know," he agrees happily. "I really like you."

You gnaw on the inside of your cheek, fighting your smile. "I really like you too," you admit. "But you're a fucking weirdo. Teleporting and shit. What the fuck is that?"

"I know," he says again. "You don't even know the half of it, sweetheart. It gets a lot weirder."

You scrunch your face. "Do I wanna know?"

He shrugs. "Do you? I got all the time in the world."

"I thought you were busy. Don't you have to go to work?"

"Mmmmm, I took off."

"You can do that?"

"Not really. But I'm the big shot around there, so they can't really do shit about it." You look at him skeptically and he grins. "Enoughhh, today's about you, and repairing the damage I've done. So ask me all the questions you want. I'm here. I promise."

You pucker your lips in thought. "No more shitty texting?"

"No more shitty texting. For real real this time."

You turn and gaze at your ajar front door. "Alright. Come inside. I've got two hours before my shift."

You can hardly get your sentence out before he's scooping you up bridal style into his arms and marching you through the threshold of your front door. You squeal, gripping onto his shoulders tight. He kicks the door closed behind you and looks down at you with a devious, heavy haze in his eyes.

"Your shoulders."

You immediately straighten. Leon nods once. "Better."

You hate how satisfying that approval feels.

You hate it even more when he clicks his tongue. It's never loud. Just a small little sound whenever you do something stupid.

Miss a target?

Click.

Forget to check a corner?

Click.

Nearly trip over your own feet during a drill?

He made the noise twice that time. Click click.

It's not even intentional. Half the time he doesn't seem aware he's doing it. But after months of training together, the sound becomes synonymous with one thing;  you've done something wrong.

Unfortunately, your brain decides to take that information and run with it.

.

.

.

It becomes apparent during a mission six months later. Leon is crouched beside you, behind an overturned vehicle, while gunfire erupts across the street. 

His hand comes up, holding up three fingers. You understand immediately.

Three hostiles. You nod.

He gestures again, this time waving his hand a little to the left.

Left side is mine. Another nod. With that, you start standing up, readying your weapon-

Click.

You sit back down so fast you nearly give yourself whiplash. Both of you freeze.

Leon blinks.

You blink.

"...Why did you do that?" The words are whispered, barely audible under the noise of the gunfire. 

Your mouth opens. Then closes. You sit there a moment, mouthing out unintelligible words. Then,  "...I don't know."

Neither of you thinks much about it.

… At first. Then it happens again. And again. And again.

A month later, while sloughing through the underground ruins of a cathedral, his newest tag along finds out.

She’s a nice young woman. A bit younger than him, with chestnut brown hair and kind eyes. Her name is Helena, if you’re recalling correctly.

You’re reaching for something when Leon clicks his tongue. Immediately, without hesitation, you pull back

Her eyebrow raises. "Wait.”

Both you and Leon give her a confused glance.

“Leon…” she takes a breath, “Make that noise again.”

He does. As if on cue, you step a little closer to him, your eyes snapping to his form, as if waiting for a command.

Helena’s eyes widen. "Oh."

You give her a confused look, before starting to walk again. Helena clicks her tongue.

You freeze. The room goes silent.

Then, Helena lets out a laugh. It’s the most genuine reaction you’ve ever heard from her. You can almost see tears forming in her eyes as she doubles over, chuckles falling from her lips.

"You clicker trained your partner!"

Leon’s arms come up in defence. "I did not."

"You absolutely did." The woman gestures towards you both.

"I did not."

"You made her into a golden retriever!"

More laughter. You can feel yourself melting into an embarrassed puddle as Leon just shouts. 

"I DID NOT."

.

.

.

The worst part is that once everyone notices, nobody lets it go.

Chris finds out, while you both try to pursue Ada Wong. Then Piers. Then, Sherry and Jake. Suddenly everyone is testing it.

It's humiliating. It's horrible. It's nonstop.

Click.

You stop peeking out from cover.

Click.

You stop running and start listening.

Click.

You skid to a halt mid run.

The last one makes Leon groan loudly enough to be heard from feet behind you. "This is my fault."

"This is absolutely your fault."

He just rolls his eyes. "I didn't mean to do it."

Helena is quick to snort. "You Pavlov'd her."

"That's really not what Pavlov did."

"You know what I mean."

Meanwhile, you're standing still, watching helplessly while this argument happens around you. Honestly, you're still not entirely convinced it's real.

Until after the mission is over.

The two of you are alone in the safehouse. It's late. Everyone's exhausted. You're sitting on the floor cleaning your pistol when Leon walks into the room carrying two coffees.

Without thinking, you reach for yours. You don’t go for the handle. Instead, you reach for the mug itself.

The cup is hot. Very hot. Hot enough to burn. Leon’s brows raise.

Click.

Your hand jerks away before you even register the sound. The movement is instant. Automatic. Reflexive. The room goes quiet. Slowly, you both look down at the coffee. Then at each other. Then, back at the coffee.

"...Oh."

"...Yeah."

For some reason, that's the moment it finally hits him. Not necessarily because it’s funny, or because everyone keeps teasing him, no. It’s because he realizes how much you've trusted him.

For months.

Every correction. Every lesson. Every warning. Every tiny click of his tongue. Somewhere along the way, your brain decided that sound meant safety.

To listen to him. That he's trying to help.

The realization hits Leon right in the chest.

He looks away first, which is unusual. He's never been particularly good at hiding things from you.

"What?" you ask.

His jaw flexes slightly. "Nothing." 

"You're being weird."

A pause. "...You listen to me."

Your brow furrows. "Usually? Duh?"

"No, I mean..." He exhales softly. "You really trust me."

The words make you freeze for a moment. He hands you the coffee carefully this time, turning it so that you can grab the handle. His shoulder bumps yours when he sits beside you. For a moment, neither of you speaks. He feels warm beside you.

Then, Click.

Your head immediately turns toward him.

Leon bursts out laughing. It’s the happiest he’s sounded in days.

You drop your head into your hands.

Are you embarrassed? Definitely.

Would you change it for the world?

Never.

Frank Morrison

At first remembering what a complete asshole he is, he'll make fun of you. He'll take your white cane, perform stupid acrobatic tricks with it, and tell you to look at him. "Ah right, my dumbass. You're blind." at this point he can even make fun of himself and his jokes genuinely aren't funny.

You can be sure he'll turn your matches into hell. At some point the disrespect Frank shows you will start spreading to the others too. And when he finds out about it, sorry but he won't be pleased. "You fucking legged idiots aren't ashamed of messing with a blind person!?" he says while running up and driving his knife into someone's back without even looking at who they are. "Pick on someone your own size!"

Frank definitely doesn't consider himself to be in the same category as them. He's an egotistical meathead. Now he'll act as if nothing bad ever happened between the two of you.

"How many?" he held up two fingers right in front of your face and waited for an answer. "But Frank, I can't see—" He cut you off without a second thought. He was stubborn as a mule. "Yeah, but that doesn't stop you using your brain."

Frowning, you threw out a number without thinking much about it. "One?" There was silence between the two of you. Frank lowered the middle finger he had been showing you and grunted. "No, it was five."

What more is there to say? He's a complete asshole, but a lovable asshole.

Hillbilly

Oh, poor baby. His mind is going to be so thoroughly scrambled. Because of the life he's lived, he's never met a blind person before. At first he'll simply assume you’re clumsy and, without giving it much thought, try to kill you just like he does everyone else. But later during a sudden collision between the two of you, instead of screaming in fear, you reach out and touch whatever you ran into—Max's chest. Then with a small breath and hesitant uncertainty, you murmur "David?" and he just freezes.

His entire life, he'd been forced to endure disgusted stares crawling across his skin, he'd spent years fighting against screams that chased him as though they had a physical form of their own, but none of the pain he had ever experienced could have prepared him for this moment.

Not knowing what to do, he'll hurriedly leave. It won't take long for guilt to settle in after abandoning you there. He'll come back. Assuming you can't really get around on your own, he'll at least hope to guide you somewhere safe and keep you away from the carnage.

Of course, the moment he sees Leon—someone he already can't stand—holding your hand and leading you toward the generators, his mood will sour very quickly.

Deciding to leave you and Leon alone for a while, he'll turn his attention toward another survivor. Hoping to put an end to the battle between his heart and his mind, he'll keep dragging his chainsaw through bone.

Albert Wesker

Wesker wasn't stupid. During a chase, he knew exactly what the stick you were holding in the distance was when he caught sight of it from the corner of his eye. To be honest, he couldn’t help but feel a little curious in that moment. Was the Entity really cruel enough to bring a blind person here?

Still, this was Albert Wesker we were talking about. He never distinguished between the obstacles standing in the way of his victory. And you were no exception. Well, you were for a time...

You were far too kind. Not because you possessed a pure heart, but because you believed fighting with another person would gain you nothing. Perhaps that was why, despite the people who looked down on you and saw you as useless, you never used your blindness as a tool to turn your back on them. No, you caught even the smallest pained whimper like a hunter and continued helping others despite suffering yourself. And that fascinated him. He told himself it was nothing unusual. He had seen plenty of self sacrificing fools like that before, yet he could never stop himself from being drawn to you.

As he came to believe that you were remarkably intelligent and had interesting ideas, his interest in you became increasingly obvious. Which meant he would stop killing you. "Seven minutes...I'll give you only seven minutes." He said it while watching you study his face with eyes that couldn't see, unaware of the excitement shining within them after the familiarity built over such a long time.

If only you could have seen the savage hunger with which those bright eyes looked at you.

Caleb Quinn

One of Caleb's favorite things was targeting survivors from distances where he could truly show off his marksmanship. Naturally, that would make him notice you very quickly. When he aimed at you, instead of checking behind yourself, running and weaving back and forth like the others, he saw you trailing your hands along walls and finding your way through sound.

But the biggest thing that stopped Caleb was something else. The thing he knew best was the smell of helplessness.

He had faced strong opponents and exceptionally skilled ones, even the most dishonorable kinds, but never someone weak and without the chance to see. That went against his cowboy way too much. For a while he would simply watch you from afar, unsure of what to do with you.

Eventually, there would be times when he let you escape. There were moments when he not even allowed you to live during matches he was destined to lose. He tried not to cause unnecessary pain, and that applied not only to killing but to chases as well. While he hunted others directly with his rifle, he would usually take advantage of your condition and catch you with his hands instead.

He would never make you experience the pain of his harpoon even once, because shooting prey that couldn't properly run went against his cowboy pride.

Caleb never forgot what life had taken from him. Because of that, he wouldn't see your blindness as a 'flaw' but as 'one of life's dirty tricks played on you.' and with time, he would even start trying to have conversations with you.

Trickster

You're an insult to his existence. If someone were to come up and ask what he thought of you, he'd give a brief and straightforward answer. The Entity dragged this boring thing here to punish me.

To him, you're a loser. And as if not being able to see him wasn't enough, you're completely indifferent to his insults because you don't even know korean. "찌질이." When he throws one of his knives at you from a record breaking distance while you're running around with the help of your cane, he'll call out after you like that.

His voice is so low and wild that it sounds less like an insult and more like a term of endearment. Ji-woon shouldn't lie to himself, but he absolutely enjoys messing with you. And much like the affection he once accepted from his fans, he'll gradually begin admitting to himself that he likes your presence too.

"너 완전 루저야" (You're a complete loser) As he says it, he'll sign one of his favorite cassette tapes and tuck it into the side of your pants. Ah and if despite not understanding his strange behavior, you approach him politely instead of rudely...Ji-woon will melt. As this sick obsession of his grows over time, he'll begin writing music for you. During matches, he'll always leave you for last and constantly make sure the generators don't get finished so he can spend plenty of time with you.

Eventually, Ji-woon will remember that not being able to see his perfection doesn't stop you from feeling it, and after gently taking hold of your wrists and placing kisses against your palms that tickle your skin, he'll bow his head slightly before you and guide your hands up to his face.

The Knight

He definitely won't pity you. The moment he finds you he'll take care of you without hesitation, sooner he's rid of you, the better. But somehow, he'll occasionally find himself absentmindedly watching you.

Knight had seen far too many things before. The wounded, maimed, countless people clinging to life in agony despite missing limbs or having their faces completely shattered..He shouldn't have been affected by it and yet, here he was.

Drawn toward the scent of blood, you had reached out to him by following the sounds he made. One hand clung to his arm while you held a medkit in the other, looking at him with quiet concern. You were pathetic enough to mistake him for an injured teammate because of the smell of blood. "Let me help you."

With a grunt from beneath his helmet, he grabbed you by the arm, then shifted his hold to your waist. Ignoring your startled cry and the frightened struggling that came with your sudden realization, he carried you to the hatch.

If we ignore the part where he tossed you into the darkness like a sack of shit, it was actually gentlemanly.

Chucky

"Oh my God, is this shit a gift for me? It isn't even my birthday!" After killing everyone else, Chucky shouted that toward the sky as if someone up there was listening while enjoying the pleasure of finally meeting the new survivor. Damn it, he's going to make fun of you so much that at some point you might genuinely start praying for him to kill you.

"Don't stare at me like that! Although…you don't actually know where you're looking, do you?" Chucky laughed mockingly at you as you stood with your back to the generator, struggling to figure out what was happening around you. He would constantly compare your helplessness to that of a newborn baby, yet he generally wouldn't touch the cane you needed so badly. No, alright maybe he'd take it sometimes but he'd genuinely try not to interfere with it too much. "Well, you can't do anything without that shited thing either, can you? I'm the same way," he said while stroking the knife in his hand as though it were something seductive. "It's as inseparable from me as my dick."

Don't really question Chucky and his philosophy on life. As much of a little shit as he is, he'd definitely look after you too. I mean, come on he's tiny and you're blind! What a great match, right? Sometimes he'd try to play games with you, games that wouldn't hurt you, of course. Things like hide and seek. "My god, you were made for this game, trust me!" he said while punching your leg in an attempt to reassure you. Though what happened a few minutes later didn't really support his words. Taking full advantage of your blindness, he'd practically run circles around your fingertips. "I'm over here…no I'm over here! Look, follow my voice…oops, you walked into a wall! Now that's a classic!"

But the strangest thing is that he'd let you carry him. "RUN AT THAT ASSHOLE! RUNNNN!" To Chucky, you were the body he needed and he was the only eyes you could ever have. How romantic…right?

Jason Voorhees

He learned that you were blind in the worst possible way, at the worst possible time. Jason still carried the fragility and anger born from the bullying he had endured throughout his life deep within his bones. And when he saw the bullying directed at you, he didn't stop to think not even for a moment. He shouldn't have cared, yet despite the command of his mother still echoing in his ears, he immediately strode toward you and without giving the person who had shoved you to the ground a chance to react, grabbed them by the throat and lifted them into the air. Bringing his machete down upon their chest with ruthless force, he would shatter their ribcage.

Behind him, he had already forgotten about you, crawling away from the screams on the ground while crying in fear and searching for your cane. In that moment the only thing he was focused on was the sack of flesh in his hands. With every blow he struck, he remembered the faces of those who had gotten away after what they had done to him. One day he would leave this place, find every last one of them and punish them.

But for now...he let the body in his grasp fall to the ground with a disgusting thud, as though it were nothing. Taking muffled breaths behind his mask, he would finally turn toward you. Without thinking much about it he'd walk over, pick up your cane lying far away from where you were on the ground, then grab you by the arm and haul you to your feet as if you were a rag doll. Ignoring your screams and pleas, he'd place the cane back into your hand and walk away.

He was a victim too, but he would never allow that number to grow.

Pyramid Head

In a single word, he couldn't find anything about you that deserved punishment. The moment he met your eyes—eyes that didn't even know where to look or move in their fear—he lowered the massive sword in his hand.

And your hesitant "Hello?" in response to the deep, rasping breaths coming from him didn't help at all. You were completely unaware of the giant standing before you. He had come here to punish, yet all he could see in you was innocence.

Of course you would be terrified of him. He wasn't a caring or considerate giant. Him constantly grabbing you by the collar, holding your body to drag you somewhere, or forcing you into a seat after depositing you in a corner certainly didn't make things any easier. And that's not even mentioning the touches that left anything for privacy. Still you could see traces of kindness in him. Not only during your own matches with him—even in matches with two killers, he wouldn't allow his partner to lay a finger on you.

He was incredibly possessive. The sound of metal grinding, which once made your heart pound so hard it felt ready to burst from your chest, had become a source of comfort. It was a sign that he was there and while he was there, no one could hurt you. Even friends whose company you missed couldn't get close to you. You had learned a long time ago in the worst way possible, that he would never tolerate anyone making contact with you.

He was very possessive, and all that really meant was getting used to the scent of metal stained with blood and rust.

Ghostface

"Baby, you're holding the flashlight wrong." you quickly turned toward the voice and pointed the flashlight in that direction, but it was no use. Looking at the flashlight aimed directly at his chest, Danny let out a deep sigh. God, you were exhausting. But just as unique. "Hey sweetheart, if you want to blind the killer, you have to point the light at the right place! My face—" the moment you lifted the flashlight toward the sky, he couldn't help but laugh.

"Damn, please don't do that Mr. Blindborn! I can't take on Batman!"

Danny was someone who always found a way to entertain himself, but you were something else entirely. A different kind of flavor—one that melted away on the tongue and left you thirsty, yet somehow made you want more. Danny preferred having control no matter the situation. And what he liked about your blindness was how, sooner or later it could leave you dependent on someone. A lovely little sheep dependent on his guidance.

Of course, he killed you in the beginning. He savored every scream he managed to draw from you. He enjoyed making you hate him, making you fear him, making you become wary of the feeling of being watched that you had grown so used to. And in the end, somehow he made you come back to his arms. He paid no mind to your trembling or your struggles within the tight, warm embrace that surrounded you. He simply locked your bodies together as though the two of you had been lovers since the dawn of the world itself.

To him, this wasn't an unhealthy obsession. No, this was love itself—thing he had never thought he would get to experience. And Danny was starving for it.

Huntress

Ah, you poor baby...that was what flowed from the depths of Anna's mind the thoughts no one ever cared to wonder about—when she first saw you. It's difficult to say what Anna truly thought of you but one thing was certain, it wasn't healthy. Your first match was filled with the terror brought by her dreadful hatchet. Poor you, having only just recognized the sound of it voice, you looked like a dying fawn when the hatchet buried itself into your body.

And this triggered something in her, something powerful enough to overshadow even her desire to kill. You weren't something that needed to be removed—no, you needed to be protected. That was why life had brought you to this cruel, miserable pit. One truth of this place was that pain was inevitable, but whenever you were by Anna's side, she never allowed pain to come near you.

She took your face between her calloused hands, stroked your skin and brushed her fingers over the eyelids of those beautiful eyes that knew nothing of the world around them. She hummed the only lullabies her mother had left behind for her. It didn't matter if you couldn't understand them, her love recognized no language barrier.

Michael Myers

While chasing Laurie, he almost had a heart attack when you suddenly stepped out from around a corner—if that had even been possible. Without thinking, he would have turned you by the shoulder and driven his knife into you. But then he noticed. Michael was a very observant person; it was simply one of the advantages of being a hunter. He saw the dullness in your eyes, that lack of recognition, almost immediately.

It was a sight he had never seen before. Even people who knew nothing about him would look at him strangely or with concern. But not you. Not with the same indifference you carried.

He swiftly raised the knife until its tip hovered before your eye and waited. Yet the scream and expression of terror he wanted so badly never came. It sent a note of discomfort through his body. Michael wasn't used to not being feared. And he would never, the person hesitantly touched by someone trying to understand the owner of the hand gripping them tightly, letting out a startled breath. He shoved you away harshly.

Without caring that you had fallen, he left. But that would not be your last encounter. And the more often a blow lands, the more it wears away whatever stands before it.

Wesker was not one for relationships. All his life he’s built walls around himself to keep anyone out. Kept everyone at arm’s length so they couldn’t get any information on him. In contrast, he’d find as much he could on people he worked with. Looked into their affiliations, their previous jobs, their families. Anything that could be used against them. Perhaps it was projection that propelled him to distance himself with others. The fear that he could be on the receiving end of deception and betrayal.

As a result, he’s never really been in any committed relationships. It doesn’t bother him much, though. The idea of love and romance seemed unappealing and far too trivial to take note of. He had more important things on his mind. Besides, Wesker found the notion of being soft and vulnerable around anyone repulsive. Why anyone would partake in such things was beyond him. To him, it was the same as a prey animal displaying its belly to a predator. He was much better than that, far above indulging in such human desires.

If he were to have a partner, it would have to be someone who could keep up with him. Someone who shared his ideals and drive for a better world. Who understood the importance of his work and viewed humanity the same way he did. 

Perhaps someone like you.

You, who has stood by his side all this time. An old friend and colleague during his days working under Umbrella. It did him good to recruit you after he returned from Antarctica. You’re good at what you do, more efficient than most would be. He wouldn’t have gotten along with you so well if he hadn’t considered you an intellectual peer. Though notably, you weren’t as prideful as Wesker was. You take his orders and do the work assigned to you without much complaint. Not because you were a pushover, but because you genuinely enjoyed it.

That’s why he kept you around. Yes, that’s all it is.

Or maybe not.

Admittedly, Wesker has grown a soft spot for you. After all he’s been through, you’ve stood by his side. When he told you that Umbrella was a sinking ship, you’d trusted him without hesitation. When he reached out to you after half a year of radio silence to work for him, you didn’t question it at all. You had an undying loyalty to him that made his chest swell with pride. It should annoy Wesker how trusting you are of him, baring your neck to him like this. The only reason why it doesn’t is because he knows you wouldn’t do this for anyone other than him.

Over time, the fondness he felt for you grew stronger. The more Wesker interacts with you, the more that affection is amplified. Every brush of your hand against his, every smile thrown his way after a dry joke, those late nights spent in the lab together. Just the two of you. He finds himself looking forward to seeing you, often replaying memories of the times he’s made you laugh. 

By the time he realises this “affection” was something more, he had fallen too deep. It surprises Wesker, he never expected himself to grow so attached to a person. No, it wasn’t just any person. It was you.

You, who understood him like no other. You, with your witty remarks and quick jabs that actually amused him. You, who kept up with him in intellectual conversation. You with your undying loyalty and complete trust in someone like him. And you, who believes him to be the greatest man to walk this Earth.

Of course it was you. You’re perfect.

The longer time went on the worse this “affection” became. He finds himself wanting to spend more time with you, to simply be in the same room as you. To crowd your space and wrap himself around you. The feeling slowly turns into a craving. A craving that got worse and worse, like an itch that couldn’t be scratched. Every glance at you, every whiff of your scent, only made him want more and more.

The feeling gnaws at him until one day he couldn’t bear it anymore. 

If he was a normal, well-adjusted person he could have simply asked you out. Take you out on a few dates where he gets to hold your hand, and drape his coat over you when you’re cold. Eventually he’d be able to hold you close and while you shower him in your affection. However, his patience had been worn thin and he’d rather die than admit he could feel love like any other person. Additionally, Wesker isn’t a normal person, but you knew that already. He’s sure you wouldn’t be too upset at him for what he’s about to do.

There’s a knock on the door before a voice rings out, calling out his name. It’s you.

“Come in,” he says, tucking the syringe underneath the sleeve of his coat. Your head pops in through the doorway, and you have a pleasant smile on your face. “Hey, Al.”

He gestures for you to enter and take a seat in front of his desk. As you saunter over to the chair, he stands to close the door. All the while, you’re rambling about your day and some minor mishaps in your lab. You don’t notice as the lock of the door clicks shut, but you notice a change in Wesker’s demeanor. For the first time, it seems he’s not fully engaged in your conversation, only humming noncommittally to show that he’s listening.

It’s barely noticeable to most, but you know him better than that.

“Is something wrong?” you ask, tilting your head.

“Not at all, just a few things on my mind,” he mutters, moving to lean against the desk right beside your chair.

“Oh, is this about Tricell? They seemed particularly interested in the Plaga samples, if I recall correctly.”

Wesker simply nods and hums as you continue to rattle on, slowly pushing himself off the desk as he paces the room. Eventually, he places himself behind you. By now you can tell something is off, craning your neck to look up at him. Now you were getting nervous. Sure, Wesker was a quiet and reserved man, but he was always responsive in your conversations. Had you done something to upset him? The thought makes you anxious.

Your prattle had trailed off into silence, and the two of you were simply staring at each other. “Hey… you’re not angry at me, right? Did I do something wrong?”

The question amuses him. You? Anger him? The thought had never crossed his mind. His hand reaches out and grabs you by the chin, tilting your head forward. Wesker leans down until his face is beside yours, turning to whisper in your ear. “No, of course not.”

There’s a prick in your neck before you can even breathe a sigh of relief. Shocked, you push his hands off you and stand to your feet. The chair topples and lands at Wesker’s feet as you step backwards to create distance. 

Why did he do this? Is he done with you? Oh god, he’s getting rid of you isn’t he? The room starts to spin as your vision swims, your limbs starting to grow heavy. It’s so difficult to think rationally, not when you’re panicking and lightheaded. Wesker moves as you start to stumble, embracing you as you fall forward. In your haze, you try to speak.

“Please…”

He slowly turns you around so that your back is to his chest, arms wrapped around your waist. “What is it, dear? Please, what?”

You frown, realising it is getting increasingly difficult to form sentences as your cognitive function degrades. Still, you push the words out.

“Please don’t leave me.”

That sentence alone makes Wesker’s heart skip a beat. Even when he’s done something awful to you, you still want him. It inflates his ego like nothing else. He slowly drags you both to the floor, his back against the wall and you laid across his lap.

“I’d never think of it,” he reassures you. It seems it was what you needed to let go, eyes rolling back into your head as your lids fell shut. His arms wrapped tightly around your waist as he rests his chin on top of your head. You’ll be fine, he tells himself. The drug is fast-acting, so it’ll wear off quickly.

Why was he acting like this? It was uncharacteristic of him, to act so lowly and human. To degrade himself like this, to admit that he has basal desires, it almost enrages him. He tells himself it’s because of you. If Wesker himself chose you, it must be because you’re different. You’re special.

He moves his head lower to bury his nose into the crook of your neck, breathing deeply to take in lungfuls of your scent. What is wrong with him? One of his hands moves to cradle the back of your head so he could bare your neck to him. The grip around your waist tightens as he takes another breath, mouth falling open as he lets out a small whimper. You had a dizzying effect on him, and his heightened senses didn’t help with that. He wanted to bite into you, the thought making him groan.

Repositioning your head, he lays kisses across your face. All over your forehead, over your closed eyelids, your cheeks. He runs his thumb over your cheek and down to your lips. The thought eats at him, but he knows he has restraint. He’s a respectable man, he tells himself. He’d give you a proper kiss when you ask for one.

He moves down to your neck as he kisses your throat and stops over one of your carotid arteries. With his lips he feels the steady beat of your pulse, trying to match his breathing with yours. Once he’s satisfied, he grabs one of your hands to kiss the inside of your wrist as well. This heart beats for him. He doesn’t need you to tell him that.

You’ve always been so good for him. Truly, you are what he deserves.

For the first time in his life, he’s unsure of what to do next. What would you do once you finally awake? Would you still trust him? Wesker can’t remember a time where he acted so rash, he usually had more foresight than this. However, all these problems could be dealt with later.

Would it feel softer? Warmer? Wetter? He wanted to know more than anything but the last thing he would ever do was push you. 

He still loved having sex with you, feeling you under him, holding onto him, letting out small moans with every thrust of his— fuck. Now he was hard while working again. 

Thomas huffed and dropped the cleaver that was slowly dripping blood from the blade to the table, wiped his hands off on his apron and went to leave the basement to look for you. 

He had an inkling for where to find you and felt his heart racing with every step he took up the stairs. When he walked into the living room he saw you.

You were bent over the coffee table that was covered in stockings, carefully dropping sweet treats and little bone contraptions into them. It was something you had started doing earlier in the year, gathering animal bones, cleaning them and using metal wire to bind them together into different shapes. The small decorations had started appearing all over the house and he cherished seeing them, seeing you spreading yourself all over. 

Another thing he immediately noticed that wasn’t helping the throbbing hardness in the pants was how the dress you were wearing was riding high and revealing your thighs to his hungry eyes. The winter didn’t get as cold as it did in other parts of the country but even then, the house was kept warm enough for you to not have to wear those skin thigh pants underneath your dress inside. Though he didn’t mind them even when you did since they left about as little to the imagination as when you weren’t wearing them. 

He walked up behind you and dropped his hands to your hips, slowly grabbing and squeezing the soft flesh under the fabric. 

“Hello Tommy,” you chuckled and finished filling the last stocking. “You all done downstairs?"

You straightened and turned around in his arms, wrapping yours around his neck affectionately. Tommy nodded and pulled you into him by your hips, pressing the bulge in his pants against your stomach. 

When you smiled wide at him he could feel a part of him melting, wanting nothing more than to pick you up and carry you away to privacy. He was still stuck in his day dreams of you bent over and moaning his name when you spoke again, “Let me hang these back up and then I have a little surprise for you.” 

Tommy tilted his head and reluctantly dropped his hands from your hips, letting you pull away to hang the now overflowing stockings back where they belonged. 

Next thing he knew you had wrapped your hand around his and were pulling him up the stairs to your shared room, locking the door behind you. 

“C’mere,” you mumbled and opened your arms for him to walk into. You wrapped your arms around his wide shoulders when he stepped closer and pressed a soft kiss against the front of his mask. He couldn’t deny how it made his heart sing whenever you did that, a slow burning heat spreading over his chest and face. He couldn’t have dreamt up someone more accepting than you, never pushing him to reveal his face, only cherishing whenever he took the mask off himself.

You walked him backwards until his knees hit the bed, pushing him until he sat down and was staring up at you with wide eyes. As quickly as you sat down on his lap, Tommy’s hands flew back to your hips, making a soft giggle escape your lips. 

Slowly and with deliberate movements you took hold of the skirt of your dress and pulled it up over your head, exposing your tits to Tommy who was at perfect eye level with them now. He couldn’t help his instinct and immediately buried his face between them, his hands shifting to your clothed ass and pulling you forward to grind against his aching cock. 

“Fuck, Tommy—,” he groaned when you whimpered his name, pulling you down onto him harder. 

Your hands found his on your ass and pulled them away, up your body and to your chest. Before Tommy could complain you made sure to keep grinding your hips over him in the same rhythm he had set. 

Tommy kept his eyes glued to your tits as he palmed them with his hands, slowly grabbing and rubbing against your nipples. You gasped at the action and arched your chest into him, your head falling back as you felt yourself slowly leaking through your panties. 

The two of you stayed like that for a few minutes, the man under you pinching your nipples between his calloused fingertips and minutely pulling on them to hear you whimper and sigh. He could never get enough of your noises, wanting to be the cause for them all the time. He’s had dreams that were just filled with you, laying on the bed spread out before him, beckoning him between your legs as you moaned his name so sweetly he woke up with an ache in his jaw. 

It was never lost on him how lucky he was to have you in his bed, and he always felt unbelievably honored to feel you like this. 

The bulge in Tommy’s pants was twitching with every slow drag of your hips and you decided to take mercy on him. You slowly stopped your rhythm and lifted off of his lap, smiling at the resulting whine from the man. 

“Need to take your pants off for this next part, love.”

As soon as you finished the sentence Tommy was up with you, tearing his pants off of his hips faster than ever, then taking hold of your panties and kneeling to pull them off too.  

He didn't immediately get back up though, he stayed on his knees in front of you, his cock hanging aching, red and leaking between his thighs, but he paid it no mind. 

Tommy pressed his masked jaw into your thigh as he lifted the other over his shoulder and ran his fingers through your folds. You sighed heavily and tried to keep your hips still as Tommy’s fingers explored the wetness of your cunt, eyes never pulling away. 

He slowly drew circles over your clit before sliding down to collect the leaking evidence of your arousal on his fingers, then he slowly pushed one into you. 

The feeling of him starting to thrust in and out of you already had your head spinning. 

Tommy was a big man, one of his fingers alone had your heart racing and your leg over his shoulder twitching. 

“Tommy,” you moaned and he rumbled in satisfaction at how broken you sounded when he only had one finger in you. “Fuck, just like that, love.”

You knew from experience how well Tommy responded to praise so you made sure to always tell him good he was doing, how good he was making you feel. And it was never a lie either, the man knew exactly how to make you putty in his hands. 

It didn’t take long for Tommy to slip a second finger into you while relishing in the gasping moan you let out, and how your cunt tightened and dripped around his fingers as he sped up. 

It was very rare that Tommy and you had sex without him fingering you open first. Partly because he simply enjoyed it so much, and you did too, and partly because it was absolutely necessary. 

When you looked down between Tommy’s legs you couldn’t help but stare at his cock, the way it was leaking precome onto the floor, how it was twitching a little whenever you moaned his name, and how it looked like he was absolutely throbbing with need. 

“So good for me, Tommy,” you sighed and watched as his dick twitched and spilled more precome, his hips tilting forward with it. 

You didn’t want to stop what was happening even if it meant finally having Tommy inside you again, his fingers just felt too fucking good the way he was curling them on every thrust. Not to mention how intently he was staring at your cunt and the way you were practically pulling him back in whenever he pulled his fingers out. 

But when you looked at his cock again you knew you needed him inside you soon or you would lose your mind completely. 

So you reached down and buried your hand in Tommy’s hair before slowly pulling him away from your thigh. The man groaned and looked up at you questioningly without stopping the movements of his fingers. 

“Want you, ah fuck, want you inside me.”

With that, Tommy finally slowed his fingers before pulling them out of your pussy, making you immediately miss the feeling. 

He got up off his knees and went to sit back on the bed, his back resting against the wall, legs slightly spread and cock standing proud and needy to feel you around him. 

Tommy watched as you walked over, expecting you to open the drawer of your nightstand for a condom, so he was very surprised when you climbed onto the bed with him. 

As you were crawling up his thighs he reached over to the nightstand himself, thinking maybe you had just forgotten. Once you were sitting on Tommy’s hips he turned back towards you holding a condom between his fingers. 

You smiled at him and took it out of his hands before unceremoniously throwing it behind you onto the floor. 

You wrapped your hand around Tommy’s cock and lifted your hips, lined yourself up and then slowly began sinking down until he was inside you completely. With a moan you let your head fall back and were slightly grinding your hips to get used to the feeling of Tommy filling you up which was always a stretch.  

The man under you couldn’t believe what he was seeing, hell, he couldn’t believe what he was feeling. Your cunt was so warm and hugging his cock like he had been gone for months. Tommy didn’t know what to do with his hands until they naturally settled on your hips. 

He let out a choked off moan before a string of questioning noise followed. 

You were still getting used to how his cock stretched your pussy when you looked back at Tommy through lidded eyes, “Surprise.” 

Understanding washed over his face before his hold on your hips tightened. When you moved your hips back and forth with more purpose Tommy groaned and his eyes slid shut, his thighs twitching under your. 

“Feel good, baby?” you chuckled slightly and kept moving your hips slowly back and forth. 

No matter how often you had Tommy inside you, the sheer size of him never failed to make you whine and revel in the stretch. He filled you so perfectly you swore you could spend a whole day just having him stuffed inside you. 

The need to move was slowly becoming unbearable and you lifted your hips smoothly before dropping back down fast and hard, moaning at the pang of pleasure shooting through your whole body and mixing with the slight feeling of too much. You started a slow but hard rhythm of lifting and dropping your hips, Tommy’s hands loosely holding onto your hips through it all .

The man was struggling to process what was happening, your cunt gliding over his cock felt so good he could cry but it was taking all of his brain power away from him. 

When his eyes wandered over your naked form, admiring how gorgeous you looked with your head thrown back, nipples hard and tits bouncing in front of his face, they finally settled on your pussy. He watched entranced at how your folds spread obscenely to accommodate the thickness of his cock, how your cunt was covering him in your wetness and making him glisten in the light. 

Your cunt. Your bare cunt. 

You could tell the exact moment it all finally clicked for Tommy, because he rumbled a deep groan, grabbed your hips hard and started driving his cock up into you way faster than you had been going. With your controlled pace gone, your moans turned into loud broken versions of themselves, echoing in the room and spurring Tommy on to move harder, to slam his hips up into yours with enough force to bounce you upwards. 

“Fuck, Tommy—,” the man in question groaned, interrupting you and making you whine with a particularly harsh thrust. You could barely keep your eyes open with how good you felt, having to support yourself with your hands on Tommy’s shoulders. 

“So good Tommy,” you whimpered and dropped your head on his shoulder next to your hands. 

The reaction from Tommy was instantaneous, a loud groan that turned into a broken whine as his hips stuttered. He thrust deep up into you a few more times before you felt him spilling inside you. Part of you was surprised he had even made it this long. 

You talked him through his orgasm, grinding your hips into his last few strokes and telling him how good he was doing. 

When his hips stilled completely and Tommy was breathing heavily you started lifting yourself off of him. He stopped you though, pulling you back down and making you moan as he bottomed out, a bit of his come dripping out of you and forming a puddle above his cock. 

“Good surprise?” you sighed and looked up to see Tommy nodding his head frantically, squeezing your hips and making sure you stayed firmly seated on his cock. You didn’t even care you hadn’t come yet, the warm feeling inside you was making your eyes unfocus and flutter. Plus, you knew Tommy would make sure you got to come afterwards, he had never let you go unsatisfied before. 

The two of you stayed like that for a little while longer, Tommy’s cock softening inside you and still filling you up perfectly to make sure your cunt stayed sensitive and needy to finish. 

You expected him to lift you off of him eventually,use his fingers to  make you come or his mouth, but he didn’t move, just kept his hands on your hips and let out small grunts whenever your pussy clenched needily around him. 

Tommy still couldn’t believe it actually happened and he didn’t want it to end yet, he didn’t want to lose the feeling of your bare cunt around him, the warmth and pleasure. He started slightly moving your hips back and forth, making you whine and dig your nails into his shoulders. 

“Tommy?” he heard you whimper in question, but only groaned in response, losing himself further in the feeling of your cunt. After already coming inside you he was sensitive, yes, but he knew he would be able to handle it for longer this time, and he would make sure he felt you fish with his dick buried deep inside you. 

You were completely unaware of this plan Tommy was already forming in his head, continuously whimpering at the small movements of your hips and how his soft cock was grinding along your walls. Oh. 

All of a sudden you felt him hardening inside you, the soft grinds making the slow pleasure shooting through you more intense again, your whining getting louder. 

Then Tommy was moving, he lifted off the bed with you still speared on his cock and his hands supporting your weight under your ass. He quickly dropped you onto the bed and lifted your thighs before pressing them down to your chest as far as they would go. 

Your arms were still wrapped around Tommy’s bulky shoulders and before you could say anything, the man groaned and pulled his hips back. 

When he thrust back into you the angle almost made you scream, and then Tommy kept going, setting a fast and brutal pace, the sounds of his hips slamming into yours echoing through the room and mixing with the wet squelching of your cunt. 

You were trying desperately to hold on but to no avail, your arms dropped from around his shoulders and you buried your hands in the sheets beside your head. 

Tommy was grunting with every harsh snap of his hips, relishing in every noise that escaped from your mouth. He was looking down at you which you didn’t notice since your eyes had rolled back in pleasure, and he was admiring how fucked out you looked. He couldn’t tear his eyes off of you because God help him– You were gorgeous.

When he leaned back just enough to be able to look at your cunt he groaned louder and sat back a little more, entranced by the way you were stretched open to accommodate the size of his cock. A ring of glistening wetness mixed with his come had formed around his cock and was making him drool behind the mask, your pussy was leaking onto the sheets and if Tommy had the ability to stop fucking you he would have leaned down and gotten a taste. 

He would lick up your essence from the sheets if he had to. 

Below him, you were moaning so loud your throat felt raw, your pleasured noises sounding more and more broken by the second. You swore you could feel Tommy in your throat with how deep he was stuffing his cock into you, how he was splitting your cunt open for him to bury himself inside like it was the only place on earth he cared about being. 

Your orgasm wasn’t a surprise, you could feel it building and tensing in your stomach, what was a surprise was how violently it hit you. It started suddenly and intense, making you sob out Tommy’s name like a prayer as he fucked you through it. Your thighs were shaking in Tommy’s grip, unable to close around his bulk, and your hands were digging into and pulling at the sheets like they were the only thing keeping you afloat. 

When your cunt started rhythmically squeezing around his cock, Tommy grunted and redoubled his effort, hitting the perfect spots deep inside you with every thrust and prolonging your orgasm until you couldn’t think straight anymore. 

You were sure you felt Tommy come inside you again, felt the unmistakable warmth of him shooting ropes of come into your used pussy, heard the slew of groans and grunts that always escaped him, but he was still hard, still frantically pounding his cock into you. 

Shortly after the first, a second orgasm crashed over you, the feeling of it making tears sting in your eyes before rolling down your cheeks as burning hot evidence of how wonderfully overwhelmed you were with the pleasure coursing through your body and making you feel better than you could handle.

Tommy didn’t falter once, he pushed your thighs down against your chest harder and bullied his cock into you through all the clenching your cunt was doing. He felt gushes of liquid spray out of you with every deep stroke and rumbled happily, looking down to see you soak the sheets and his hips as well as your own thighs. 

When you had come down from your second peak you were sure you couldn’t handle any more, but Tommy kept going. He kept up his pace, kept you pinned down and kept grunting whenever you weakly tightened around his throbbing length. 

“Tommy, I—-,” your words were interrupted by your own moans and whines but you kept going anyways, “I can’t, aah fuck, please. Tommy, please.”

What you had intended to be a plea for Tommy to come inside you again, the man currently using your cunt perceived as a request for him to make you come one more time. 

So Tommy let go of one of your thighs and slid his hand to your clit before furiously rubbing over it with just enough pressure to make more tears spill from the corners of your eyes. 

You truly didn’t think you could come again, convinced your cunt had done its job and done it well, but it was finished. Instead you felt a deep pressure where Tommy was pounding his cock into you and then you were crashing over the edge again. 

Unbeknownst to you, your pussy was gushing again, spilling over Tommy’s fingers which were still rubbing over your clit and spraying the liquid even more. 

You were helplessly twitching and shaking under the man, sobbing and moaning his name as you became more and more incoherent. 

The intense feeling of your cunt squeezing around Tommy’s cock so tight he was sure he’d not be able to move anymore soon, made the man drop over the edge right behind you. He thrust into you hard, pumping his come as deep inside as he could get, stuffing you so full that some of it was being pushed back out and dripped down your ass onto the sheets. 

Tommy was groaning and whining above you, lost in pleasure, but his fingers were still rubbing over your clit with abandon. 

You came twice more, making more and more of a mess out of both your hips and the sheets before Tommy softened enough to have to stop moving, burying his cock as deep into you as possible, and finally stilling his fingers too. 

When he looked back up at you properly and saw your face covered in wet streaks of tears at varying stages of drying, your eyes red, mouth open and drooling, he let out a series of concerned grunts and whines, wiping away the still wet tears on your face. 

“I’m okay, love,” you barely managed to whisper out and looked up at Tommy with a delirious smile. 

Tommy slowly let your thighs rest on the bed before carefully pulling out of you. He watched as an obscene amount of come spilled out after him, your exhausted whine mixing with his satisfied rumble. 

He couldn’t help himself and lifted his hand to run his fingers over your swollen and red cunt, making you gasp and your hips twitch away from touch due to oversensitivity. 

“Fuck, that was a lot,” you sighed and looked down at Thomas who tilted his head at you while stroking over your thigh slowly. 

“And absolutely perfect,” you said at his silent question and smiled softly. 

He kept stroking over your thighs while waiting for you to come down completely before picking you up and carrying you to the bathroom for a hot bath. 

He made sure to clean you thoroughly, not letting you do a single thing as he took care of you, cooing softly when you whined as his hand dipped between your legs to wipe up the mess there. The hot water was doing wonders for your tired muscles and used cunt.  

Once you helped Tommy clean himself up as well, blushing furiously when you realized just how much of the mess you were actually responsible for, you dried off and changed the sheets on the bed. Then you finally laid down with him with your head on his chest. 

“So,” you said while trying not to grin too openly, “I can assume you want to do that again at some point?” 

Tommy grunted softly and you looked up to find him nodding slowly. 

“Without those?” you weakly pointed at the nightstand where the condoms were hidden and Tommy followed your indication before snapping his head back to you, nodding frantically. He pulled you fully onto his lap and pushed his hips up into yours, letting you feel his quickly hardening cock against your still fucked out and sensitive cunt. 

“Not immediately now, Tommy,” you giggled incredulously, but let him turn you over to lay on the bed with your legs spread apart for him to slot between anyways.  

Oh well.  

John and Linda died at the house, where the man dragged the three of you after forcing you into his truck. He took Linda away, and she screamed a lot, and you knew what was happening to her even before it all ended with a distant gunshot and terrible silence. 

You and John had been tied up to the ceiling of the garage and you wondered, almost numb but not quite, if the man was going to drag you away like he did Linda. If you were going to end up violated and murdered in some rotten bed in some rotten house in some rotten town.

All of the nerves in your body sparked at once when the man shouted something in the house–

“Tommy! Go take care of that garbage out there! Make sure you clean up after!”

And what came through the squeaking garage door was not a person, surely, but a big hulking monster of a man. Like the kind you saw in horror movies you weren’t supposed to watch, that greasy-faced guys with unshaven faces told you were like, actually snuff films disguised as movies, man. His hair was greasy but that’s not what stood out, no. It was his size and bulk and a mask strapped over his face, revealing only his eyes, wild but determined.

It must be Tommy, you thought, dimly, your feet scrambling for purchase. As if you could get away. 

This is where John died. It was not a nice death. Tommy had grabbed an axe from the wall and–you began to heave, throwing up a diner breakfast onto the floor–chopping at John’s body like he was a tree to take down. Whacking at his stomach, his legs. His flesh flapped down like so much meat. 

Chop.

Chop.

Chop.

The screaming came from John. And you, too. And maybe the whole wide world had been screaming this whole time and it took watching your friends die in front of you to finally hear it.

John was dead. You knew it, because his torso was hanging from the ceiling now, and his legs had fallen to the ground in a tangled heap. If you had more time, maybe you would have been able to process the full horror of this. But as it was, all you could do was think about what was about to happen to you.

It was your turn.

Your friends were dead, and now, you were going to die. Horribly, probably. Getting axed to death or worse. 

The thing, the creature, the murderer approached you, bloody axe in hand, and you squeezed your eyes shut and began to murmur some prayer you’d learned as a kid and hadn’t said in years. A pitiful thing that you couldn’t even fully remember. But what did it matter, when your life was going to be nothing but a heap of blood and viscera in mere moments? 

“Please make it quick,” you whispered, to the killer, to God, to yourself. Then you went back to your mumbled prayers, hoping it would all be over soon. 

You waited for death.

And waited.

And waited.

And death never came. 

Someone was breathing, hard. It couldn’t have been John–he had no breath left to give. It could’ve been you, but it was lower, harsher, and when you let your eyes slowly open he was standing right in front of you.

Tommy. The killer. With an axe in his hand. Breathing. Staring. 

Maybe he wanted you to watch while you died? 

Maybe he–

He swung the axe suddenly and your heart soared and some half-assed last word pushed itself out through your mouth, but the axe didn’t hit. At least, not you. Instead, it hit the ropes above your head, and you crumbled to the ground like John’s lifeless legs.

Later, you will turn it over in your head. Why didn’t he kill you? Why did he cut you down? 

At the moment, though, nothing went through your head but renewed terror as he grabbed your jelly-like leg and began to drag you away from the garage. Away from John’s mangled body and the blood still dripping from his torso, over rough ground, kicking and yelping like the scared little animal that you were.

A house of death and grime, a house where Linda’s body still lay, somewhere, probably just as faceless as dear Mary Ann’s.

The house would, later, be called home.

–

You’re still on the floor, leg held tightly by the man who killed John without a hint of remorse, when an older woman with glasses looms over you and tuts.

“She’s filthy, Tommy.” A look of horror in her eyes, not because you’ve got blood and brain matter on you, not because this man–Tommy–is covered in blood and she had surely heard all the screaming from your dead friends. But because you’re messing up her kitchen floor with your filth.

Is she going to help him kill you? Thoughts try to land inside but nothing sticks in your brain. The shock is too much. 

But then something seems to click with this strange woman, and she sighs, murmuring, wringing her hands. She looks up at Tommy and he jerks your leg towards her, making one of your muscles cramp. She sighs again, nodding along. “Well. Alright. No need to beg now. If she’s going to stay, she’ll need a bath.”

He drops your leg to the ground. It hits the kitchen floor with a thud but you don’t have the presence of mind to really feel the pain; there’s too much terror coursing through you, unable to properly think about what’s happening at all. 

“Well,” the woman says, hands on her hips. She’s talking to the man, to Tommy, not you. “Help me get her up now. She’s got to get a bath before anything else.” 

Something that might be a protest bubbles out of your dry lips as the man reaches down and scoops you up by the armpits. A thought claws its way up–he’s going to take you into the bathroom and strip you and hurt you and then you’ll be with your friends, dead, some bloodied silent corpse that no one will ever discover. 

So when he begins to haul you away from the kitchen, you struggle, kicking your useless legs and struggling against the rough rope that still keeps your wrists bound. 

“Don’t–”

You don’t get the rest of the words out before your head smacks against the kitchen doorframe, and there’s a dull grey buzzing in your head as you’re slowly dragged up a flight of stairs. 

Thump, thump, your body thumping all the way. You’re aware enough to see the woman following behind, mumbling one thing at Tommy, tutting something else at you. 

The pain in your head fades away as you’re dragged down a wooden hallway, which is, at least, some small relief. It was shock from the sudden pain, then and not a serious injury. 

The bathroom he drags you into wasn’t as dirty as it ought to have been. That’s the strange thought that comes to mind as you’re leaned up against a cold porcelain tub, as his rough hands finally move away from under your armpits.

Yes, you think. The bathroom is all wrong. A bathroom in a house of death should be filthy, grimy. There should be blood caked into the grout that wouldn’t come out even if you scrubbed for years.

Instead, it’s a modest bathroom that reminds you a bit of your grandma’s house. Blinking, you can see a decorative soap sitting on the sink, next to the well-worn pump soap filled with the stuff people actually use. There’s a doily on top of the toilet tank. A bowl of potpourri. 

The only sign that anything is amiss is the bloody killer with a mask covering his face standing over you, breathing. 

Is this where he takes you? Where he forces himself on you, and kills you after? 

“Tommy, you git now–” The woman is in the bathroom, too, hands back on her hips. “Ain’t right for you to be in here with us ladies.” She waves him on and it’s the strangest thing to see him nod, to hear some sort of grunting mumble in response. He leaves the bathroom like a puppy being told to stay out of the kitchen.

You’re left alone with a woman wearing a floral print dress, hair pulled back into a bun, wisps of hair framing her face in an achingly familiar way. She looks like anyone’s grandma, the type of woman you’d see rocking on her porch in the evening, drinking lemonade and watching fireflies.

Instead she’s living in a house of horror and has no apparent problem with it. 

“Well,” is what she says eventually, looking you over like some wayward child come in covered in mud before Sunday dinner. “Best to get you cleaned up before supper.” 

Cleaned up? Supper? Maybe you did hit your head harder than you thought. Because what the hell is she talking about? What the hell is going on? Why aren’t you dead like the rest of them?

Your frantic thoughts and potential concussion don’t matter, though, because all she does is ignore the unanswered questions written all over your face and lean over the tub. A moment later, the sound of rushing water bombards your frazzled nerves and makes you flinch.

A bath. She’s going to run you a bath.

Her arm hooks under your armpits and she hoists you up with surprisingly little effort. Some noise escapes you, but if it was a protest, her suddenly stern expression shuts it up. She sits you down on top of the toilet seat and begins to pull off your dirty jeans.

“Don’t fuss,” she says, not that you have much energy to continue fighting her movements. “I’m not gonna have you in my house in these filthy clothes.” She holds up your loose jeans like they’re something truly awful and chucks them in the trash. 

It’s impossible to take your shirt off with your arms tied, and she hums about it for a while. Finally, she says, low and slow. “I’m gonna take these ropes off you, honey. But if you do anything but sit there nice and pretty, I’ll have Tommy come and break your neck. Okay?”

You can’t do anything but nod.

So your shirt comes next, the swirling floral print looking almost obscene now, with blood on it. Mary Ann’s blood. John’s blood. Your own, probably, from the scrapes you got being dragged around like some ragdoll.

And then it’s your socks and underclothes and really, you ought to fight. But something dull and heavy and numb takes over as she helps you out of your clothes, gentle as anything. Like the way your mom used to give you a bath.

The way she leads you to the tub is familiar too, as is the way she bids you to hold onto her as you step inside it. The water is warm and achingly inviting and you sink down into it. Your body does, anyway. You’re not entirely sure if your mind is actually inside it now, because none of this can be real.

Only it is. Because the woman turns off the tap and hands you a washcloth with a faded embroidered flower and a well-used bar of soap. 

“I’m going to grab you some clothes,” she says, standing in the open doorway. “You just wash up real good. Get all that muck off you.” The muck is your friend’s brain matter, but you don’t say that. “There’s shampoo on the shelf there.” 

She leaves you alone and it’s the pure, unadulterated desire to rid yourself of the blood sticking to your skin that propels you to begin scrubbing.

By the time she returns with a pile of clothes in her hand, the water is a startling mixture of brown and red, all bubbling with soap. Little flecks of brain, the last remnants of Mary Ann’s thoughts and everything she ever was, float with the bubbles. 

You don’t say anything when she helps you out of the tub. You don’t say anything when she sits you back down on the toilet seat and begins to dry you off. It’s only when she starts rubbing at your head that something escapes you–

A hiccup. A whimper. The beginnings of pitiful, whining, childlike tears. 

You expect her to yell at you. Tell you to shut your fucking mouth, like that man probably would have.

Instead, she coos in the back of her throat.

“Oh, sweet girl. Hush now, hush, hush.” She murmurs that plea over and over as she dries you off, and you lean into her touch, gentle, almost familiar, if you can ignore everything else. 

By the time she’s pulling a loose dress with a floral print–from her own wardrobe, you think–over your body, you’ve managed to bring yourself down to the occasional sniffle. She dabs at the last of your tears with the rough towel and hoists you up again.

“I think you ought to take a nap before supper. Or just lie down for a spell, if you can’t fall asleep. Doesn’t that sound nice?”

It does, in fact, not sound nice. It sounds like she means for you to stay here. Or maybe supper is the place where you’re going to die, maybe in some more fucked up way than your friends. Wash you, dry your tears, then tie you to the dinner table and sacrifice you to Satan.

Satan worshippers were real; you knew that much from TV.

But that numbness overtakes you as she leads you, your newly socked feet warm and toasty, out of the bathroom and down a darkened hallway. 

The room you’re shuffled into looks like a guest room. Impersonal, with ironed sheets and doilies on the side table and a generic alarm clock ticking away on top of them. 

The bed is hard and not terribly comfortable, but you let her push you down onto it, let her lift your legs so that you’re curled up on your side.

She leans down and presses a kiss to your forehead.

Would she kiss you, if they were going to kill you later? You didn’t know how these things worked. Or how anything in life worked, apparently, because you never thought a road trip would end with your friends brutally murdered and you laying in some woman’s guest bedroom wearing a dress that smelled faintly of mothballs. 

“When I call for supper,” and her voice is all matter of fact, “you just come right on down.” She takes a step out the door, then stops, looks straight at you. “And honey?”

When she doesn’t continue, you force yourself to make some sort of questioning noise in the back of your dry, horrified throat.

“Don’t do anythin’ stupid.”

–

“Supper’s ready!”

You’re not asleep–how could you be–but the shrill words that come from downstairs startle you anyway. There’s lead in your body as you force yourself to slowly sit upwards. One foot in front of the other–then you think about John’s legs laying in a heap on the floor and the lead turns into helium, tingling and numbing.

Are you going to be laying in a heap on the floor soon? 

A noise in the doorway turns you into a startled animal, even more so when you see what the noise was:

Him. The killer–well, one of them. The one who killed John. Tommy, the older man had said. 

Maybe they sent him up because you were taking too long. Or maybe he was your escort down into hell, where you’d be sacrificed to Lucifer or whatever terrible god these people worshipped. 

“I–I was sleeping.” A lie. “S-Sorry,” and the words stumble out. “It just took me a minute to get up.” Not a lie, at least. 

If this bulky man with an obscured face hears you or cares about your excuse, he doesn’t say anything. He just stands there, breathing, staring. His eyes seem to linger over the dress the woman gave you as you awkwardly walk towards the door, and there’s a few brief awful moments where you’re face to face before he sidesteps and lets you out–

Only for you to stumble over the threshold, nearly flying into the floor. A strong grip lands around your upper arm and you’re suspended, balancing on one shaky leg, taking a moment before you realize that he’s kept you from smashing your face into the wood below.

“Um,” you manage. “Thank you.” Because it is probably a good idea to be polite to a serial killer. And you’re not even sure if your mind is being sarcastic with that particular piece of advice.

Tommy says nothing. Maybe he stares at you for too long, and he might say something. Instead, though, he gestures for you to go down the stairs before letting go of your arm. He stares at his hand for a moment and you don’t think much of it, now. That will come later. 

For now, you take the staircase one step at a time, out of fear, out of necessity–your body aches all over and your hands grip the rickety railing as hard as you can to keep from slipping or tripping or flying and smashing your nose against the ground below.

The dining room is homey, set just off the kitchen. It seems that everyone but you and the axe-wielding murderer behind you are already seated at the table. There’s the older woman, of course. A man you’ve never seen before. And–him. The one who killed Mary Ann. Who hurt Linda. Who ordered you and John to be killed. 

Something hot twists inside your stomach as you hover in the doorway. When you’re finally spotted, the woman smiles, and gestures for you to come inside–but the man who killed and hurt your friends scowls. 

“What in the hell is that dumb bitch still doing here? Tommy, I told you to–”

The woman steps in, hand on her hip. “Charlie Hewitt, you will watch your mouth at the dinner table.” 

To your surprise, he ducks his head–murmers, “Sorry Mama.”

She begins to dole out spoonfuls of steaming food from a pot onto his plate, and so on down the table. “Tommy thought she ought to stay, so she ought to stay.”

The man–Charlie–only shakes his head at this. “Since when does Tommy make decisions?” He wipes the back of his hand against his nose, and the woman bats his arm with the spoon. “She ought to be tied up, at least.”

The woman sighs. Your wrists ache. 

A compromise is made, and your ankle is tied to the chair. Not that it makes your situation any less horrifying–any less difficult to comprehend, as you find yourself seated between the woman (Luda May, she says, finally) and the man who killed Mary Ann and Linda (Charlie, Luda May addressed him as Charlie) and another man who didn’t object to any of it (Monty, Luda May calls him). 

You expect the hulking, breathing Tommy to sit down at the table. There’s almost a curiosity that prickles in you–will he take off the mask to eat? What would he look like, sitting down at this deceptively cozy dinner table?--but to your surprise, he leaves, footfalls heavy as he skulks outside the dining room door and simply stands there and watches. 

The food that night is not well seasoned, not that it matters. You’re eating it only to stay alive. The hastily chewed globs of it sits heavy in your stomach along with the sight of your dead friends, along with the knowledge of Tommy standing outside, watching all of you eat.

“Now, sweetheart,” Luda May begins, interrupting the buzzing of your thoughts. “Why don’t you tell us your name, seeing as you’re fixin’ to stay?”

–

Charlie and Luda May argue that night about letting you stay. About letting you live. They do it right at the dinner table, with you, captive, ankle bound in rope to the table. It’s hard to do anything else but feel the way your scalp tingles, wondering if this will be your last night on Earth. If Charlie will grab a knife from the kitchen and simply stab it through your chest. Or your head. He seemed to like the violence of it all.

“Well,” Luda May offers, pointing at the open doorway where Tommy still stood vigil. “Tommy thinks she’s sweet. Don’t you, Tommy?”

All heads–yours included–swing doors the doorway. 

You almost, stupidly, because what do you have to lose at this point in your short life, ask how  Luda May even knew what he thought. He didn’t talk. But fear bites your tongue for you, and you simply stare with the others at the strange, unkempt man who, hours ago, lopped your friend’s top half from his bottom half with an axe.

Tommy grunts–

Luda May smiles and claps her hands together and Charlie rubs the back of his head with his hand.

“Well,” he says, a drawl. “If Tommy wants to keep her, then he’s responsible for her.” He gives you half a glance and shrugs. “Like taking in a stray dog, is what I say. A stray dog…”

Stray dogs, you think, sometimes get put down.

–

They let you live. A compromise is made, though, after Charlie insists that they can’t trust you not to attack them for a good while. “Wouldn’t let some roaming mutt sleep with your baby, would ya? Same damn thing.”

So you get tied up at first. By the ankle, usually, and you’re at least a bit grateful for that. Even if the skin around your ankle starts to rub raw, and Luda May (“Call me Mama,” she says, and you do not) rubs cream on it after your weekly bath.  Luda May is the one who takes you to the bathroom, to pee or bathe or whatever else you need to do–and you’re at least a bit grateful for that, too. 

The soap always gets in your eyes when she washes your hair, dunking water over your head from a filled up gas station cup; you don’t mind, because when it burns and stings and you start to cry, it’s easy to pretend that you’re crying from the pain, and not your new normal.

What is normal, anyway? Normal is what you become used to; and you do become used to–this. This life. Or whatever it might be called. 

Because after a while, it gets easier. 

You don’t get tied up to the table for breakfast (or lunch or dinner) and Luda May hovers outside the bathroom door and finally lets you pee and bathe all by yourself. Though she still likes to help you wash your hair, humming and drying your hair for you afterwards, and you don’t fuss about it.

Because she’d only get mad–and because, well. Because it feels nice to be cared for, sometimes. Because it’s easier to pretend this isn’t a horror house when she’s humming and talking about how you’ve been so good lately, so helpful, as she pours a dollop of cheap strawberry shampoo into her hand. 

The chores come with your newfound freedom, freedom that doesn’t extend past the threshold of the front or back door. Do the dishes, pick up after yourself, help fold the laundry when Luda May brings it in from the clothesline outside.

They keep you busy. They keep you from pretending that you don’t hear the screams, now and then, of people that they kill. Usually Charlie. Sometimes Tommy. They die, all the same, and what happens to them after that–you don’t want to know. 

Sometimes you think about running. But where would you go? You wouldn’t make it past the front yard, anyway. Charlie would get you. Kill you, surely, after telling Luda May that he was right all along.

Or–maybe Tommy would grab you first. 

Tommy’s always there, it seems. At the edge of your vision. Watching from the doorway at meals, only dipping in to grab his own plate and wolf it down once you leave. The thought came to you once, when he’d shook his head at Charlie encouraging him to come on in and grab his plate–

Maybe he’s shy.

The thought hit you like a shotgun to the face. Shy–shy? The hulking man who killed your friends? Who could break you like a branch, if he wanted. Who might still kill you, if you step out of line. Who–

Who is the only reason Charlie Hewitt didn’t murder you right then and there in the kitchen.

And who is the only one in the house who hasn’t threatened you at least once. 

(Even Luda May has her moments, when you aren’t being a good girl. She threatened to box your ears once, when she caught you swearing. At least she didn’t threaten to cut out your tongue like Charlie, or say you ought to be taken over someone’s knee like Monty. Though at least a spanking wouldn’t have resulted in the loss of a body part.)

But not Tommy. (He cut Johnny in half–but not you. Not you.)

So.

So this morning, when you’re sitting alone at the table eating a late breakfast because Luda May let you sleep in, and you see Tommy standing in that doorway again, his own plate cold and untouched on the table, you clear your throat. 

He doesn’t stir.

You clear it again.

“Thomas?” You ask, then, feeling stupidly formal, correct yourself. “Tommy?”

There’s a loud shifting sound. The thud and tread of his shoes on the floor. And there he is, standing in the doorway, awkwardly staring to the side like there’s something particularly fascinating there that only he can see.

What are you doing? The question repeats itself in your buzzing brain, but, fuck if you know. Being in this house has made you… something. Crazy. Stir-crazy. Itching to do something, anything, to get yourself out of this tension-filled rut you’re in. Maybe being nice to the sort-of-shy quiet (killer, a small voice pipes in, he’s a killer) will change things. 

Everyone needs kindness, after all. 

“Do you um,” you start, digging up the courage like it’s stuck in the mud. “Do you want to eat breakfast with me?”

There’s a noise from behind his mask. A sort of breathy thing–like surprise. 

He hesitates. Then he stalks forward and leans down, ready to wolf his food in a minute like you’ve caught him doing before, being a sneak in the doorway yourself. But you swallow–

“I mean, do you want to sit down with me?” 

He pauses. Another sound, this time, like wariness.

“If–if you want–I mean, you don’t have to,” you correct, suddenly feeling stupid and anxious rolled into one. What were you even thinking? That you owed it to him, maybe, because he did save you. You’re alive, because he wanted you to be–but why?

And then he moves. Stalks forward, like he’s unused to the idea of simply taking a seat, yanks the chair so hard that you flinch a little. Then he’s sitting, legs parted too wide, with a plate in front of him. 

He stares at it. Then looks at you–and it’s maybe the first time you’ve looked eye to eye in a while. He blinks and looks away first, and again, that word comes to you. Almost stupidly, but still: Shy. 

So you look away, now, and it’s only then that he parts his mask and scarfs down the pancakes. You don’t look–he doesn’t want you to look, and neither do you–but you can hear the sound of it. 

It’s a bit startling, really, the sound of his eating; the weight of him so close, and not hovering in the corner of your life. 

When he’s done, he takes his plate to the sink, and there’s something so normal about it that you almost laugh. 

He goes back to the doorway and you get another idea. A silly, weird, stupid idea. But it’s something different. Something to shake up the tight, tension-filled world you live in.

“Tommy?”

He stops.

“You can help me do the dishes, if you want.”

He turns. Questioning. When you get the nerve to look into his eyes it makes you feel a bit dizzy, how human they are. Because he is a person, after all. Even in this house. 

You lick your lips, and your voice is too dry, but you ask anyways:

“I’ll wash… you dry?”

There is a long awkward moment in which you think you’ve finally lost your damn mind. And then, slowly, Tommy moves to stand to the side of the kitchen sink, still filled with breakfast dishes.

And after you wash them up, with the same hands that once chopped your friend in two gory pieces, Tommy Hewitt carefully dries off Luda May’s breakfast china. 

–

The next morning, you wake up to find flowers at the threshold of your bedroom door. Not particularly pretty ones. Wild ones, the kind you find on the side of the road, the kind that will tickle your palm while you walk on hot summer days with friends, eager to find trouble or fun or something in between.

They’ve been pulled up right from the root, dirt clumps, beetles and all. And there they sit, adding a splash of white and purple to the dull wooden floor. All wild and dirty, with a touch of rot underneath. 

Just like this house.

Still. Still–something in you flutters at the sight.

There’s only one person who could have left them. As if on cue, you hear his footfalls, edging down the hall. Was he watching while you opened the door? Maybe. And maybe that’s partly why you smile, just a little, and reach down to scoop them up. 

In the kitchen, Luda May is frying up bacon–though it has a funny smell, this week, and your brain takes a moment to connect the smell to the screams you heard a few days ago before shutting off that train of thought–and only turns away from the hot stove when you clear your throat.

You hold out the clump of flowers, like a kid presenting dandelions at lunchtime. “Um. I found these–on the floor.”

She smiles a crooked smile, but it’s not a mean one. “I think someone’s got a shine on you.” Something seems to cross her mind, a thought that wants to stick, and she shakes her head. You don’t dare ask what she was thinking.

Instead, you sheepishly ask if you can borrow a cup to keep the flowers in. To make your room brighter. (To make your life brighter, too, but you don’t say that part out loud. Though maybe with the expression on her face, you don’t need to.)

“So they can live a while longer,” you add, as if you need to explain. 

“Of course, honey.”

It makes her smile, and she stands on her tiptoes to retrieve a dusty cup from the back of the cupboard. The kind she won’t miss when it inevitably stays upstairs. She rubs off some of the grime with the back of her shirt and hands it to you.

She really is kind to you. All things considered. Washes you up and gives you extra helpings of vegetables if you don’t eat much meat and tells you that you look nice in her dresses, though you probably don’t. 

“Thanks, Mama,” you say, quick, easy as she hands you the cup; the words come without thinking, as you turn away to head back upstairs with your flowers and dusty cup.

“Oh,” is the sound she makes, and you can’t see the hand that goes to her chest with your back turned, but you imagine it all the same.

As you walk up the stairs, you realize–and don’t, at the same time–you can’t ever go back now. Not all the way. Even if someone finds you and a sheriff-at-arms kicks down the door to rescue you, you can’t ever go back. Not with Tommy’s flowers in your hand and Mama on your lips and the way you’re actually looking forward to supper tonight. 

After filling the cup with water from the bathroom, you drop the flowers in–not before shaking them over the sill so the bugs fall out, landing on your windowsill and immediately crawling away to find a safe spot.

You wouldn’t want to drown them, after all. 

–

Thomas Hewitt watches you while you sleep. You know this. You don’t know if he knows you know this, but you’ve woken up more than once to sense him standing in your bedroom. There’s a certain presence about him, one you can never miss. 

That presence used to be something you’d feel in the corner of this new bizarro world, while you did dishes or tidied or read one of the battered romance books Mama let you borrow and shut your ears to whatever you heard outside. 

Something you could almost-but-not-quite ignore. 

But not anymore. Not when he’s taken to finishing up the dishes with you, or sitting in the same room with you and Mama while you work on embroidery or drink tea and watch her stories. 

And now–

When you sleep–well, when you wake in the middle of the night–that flicker of a shadow in the corner is something far more looming. More heavy. 

Once, you carefully peeked, letting just the slits of your eyes flutter open, and saw him. Or the outline of him, his shadows, what was visible from the bit of moonlight that made its way through your bedroom curtains. 

Tonight, you brave it again. Letting your eyes flutter just enough to look. And there he is, standing over you, watching. You can just make out his fists clenching and unclenching, wavering, like he wants to reach out–for what?--but doesn’t. 

You squeeze your eyes shut again and by the time you fall back asleep, you’re alone again.

–

The first time Tommy touches you again–after that first day, when he dragged you into the house–you flinch. Not because he’s being rough or hurting you, exactly. But because your body remembers the feel of his hands. Remembers the way you were dragged, remembers the way you thought, body and soul, that he was going to kill you.

But now?

“Sorry,” you mumble, drawing yourself inward in apology. Someone you used to be screams inside you, a whiny, tiny noise like a tea kettle: You’re apologizing to a fucking murderer?! And you tell her to shut her mouth, because the person you are now has to survive, and surviving means that this has to be normal.

It has to be normal, it has to be right. 

So when Tommy’s rough, large hands reach back up, you will your body to stand still. Will your face to remain neutral. Will yourself to think of this as okay.

All he does is brush at your cheek, at your hair. It’s a strange sensation. Rough and soft–rough in the texture of his callused fingers, used to killing animals and much more besides, and soft in the way he seems like he’s afraid you’ll break you.

He could break you. But he didn’t. And he doesn’t. And that’s something you can hold onto. 

His other hand reaches up, and soon enough he’s cupping both your cheeks, staring straight down at you, his mask obscuring the bottom half of his face. It’s rough-hewn, like him. Maybe he made it himself. (He has other masks, worse masks–you know this. He doesn’t wear them around you, but you’ve seen them all the same.)

That tea-kettle of a voice says: Maybe he’ll carve your face off and make it into a mask, you dumb bitch. You push her down, down, down where she belongs, just as Tommy pulls you against his body.

He’s warm. There’s musk about him. Sweat and butchering and oil. He holds you firm; not to where it hurts, not like when he dragged you into the house over all the bumps and grooves and you hit your head and went fuzzy for a while. 

But firm. He won’t be letting you go, and maybe–maybe that’s okay. 

It must be normal. It must be right. 

If it wasn’t, you might lose your fucking mind.

–

Thomas Hewitt doesn’t watch you sleep anymore. Now, he gets into bed with you. And you let him. Not every night. But enough that it becomes enveloped into your slowly broadening new-normal. Enough that you go from trembling all night from a sick feeling in your stomach to almost looking forward to the warmth, the tightness, the way it shocks your system into forgetting the world before. 

Because when Tommy’s in your bed, you can pretend. Pretend that you’re really part of this family and weren’t brought here by an awful, blood set of circumstances. And that makes it nicer, makes the world blur around the edges.

Is it so bad to want to feel good?

He holds you like a teddy bear, all cradled and close against him. If you needed to get up in the middle of the night, you couldn’t; so far, at least, you haven’t had to figure out the logistics. All you know is that by the time you wake up in the morning, he’s gone.

His chores start earlier than yours, after all

–

Mama notices that the two of you are getting closer. Of course she does. She sees just about everything that goes on under this roof; at least, that’s what she says, hands on her hips, confronting you in the kitchen when the two of you actually walk in together for breakfast.

She tsks at you. She hums at Tommy. A word or two starts to come out, get stuck, and she sucks them back down her throat. 

“You two mind yourselves,” she says, finally. 

Charlie notices, too. Of course he does. But he doesn’t swallow down whatever his mind thought about saying. Instead, he chuckles, folds over the newspaper you are sure he doesn’t actually read every morning.

“Took a real shine to her, didn’t ya Tommy?”

Tommy doesn’t answer. So Charlie prods on. 

“Not saying I blame ya. She’s a pretty little thing, ain’t she? You got to second base yet, Tommy?” He shakes the newspaper. “Better watch out. Pretty sluts like that from the city…” He clucks his tongue, a sticky sound. “Don’t know where she’s been.”

It’s enough to make your cheeks burn hot as humiliation coils in your stomach–and in an instant Tommy grabs your arm and yanks you right out of the kitchen, pulling you down the hall into the living room and its dull, dusty draperies.

“Aw c’mon, I was just fucking around!” Charlie says from behind you, voice softened as you’re being dragged further from the kitchen.

And then, Mama. “Charlie Hewitt, you watch your mouth.”

Tommy stops with enough sudden force that you almost topple over, but he steadies you. When you look up, his eyes look wider, wilder. His breath comes out more jagged. Not because he’s exerted himself, you realize, but because he’s upset.

About what Charlie said?

Yes. About what Charlie said. Because he doesn’t like it anymore than you do. Because he… likes you? Wants you? It’s hard to know, when there aren’t words between you.

Sometimes you don’t need words.

“I don’t like it when he says things like that,” you finally say to him. Soft, quiet. The first time you’ve ever had the courage to say anything about your treatment here. “Or-or when he calls me a bitch or slut,” you add, feeling stupid and brave. 

Tommy nods. Then his rough hands, clean at least because he hasn’t left the house yet, cup your cheeks and stroke downward. He hums–or tries to, it comes across more guttural, less of a sweet sound and something earthier–and it’s you, this time, who pulls closer to him.

You may be fucked in the head. But at least you’re not alone in the house, anymore. 

–

“I’ve still gotta finish the mending,” you say lightly as Tommy lifts you up as easily as a sack of potatoes and sets you down on a dusty work bench in the barn. “But Mama said it’s okay if I stay out here for a little bit.”

It’s nice to be with Tommy. Especially in the mornings, when the air is cooler and Charlie tends to leave the house. Not that he says anything too awful lately–he’s not nicer, exactly, but you haven’t been called a bitch, slut, or anything close to that in ages. Not since Tommy made it clear that he doesn’t like it.

Plus, when you’re alone, it feels nicer. Without the weight of other people on him, Tommy feels different. Lighter, you’ve decided. Like he’s capable of being more than this house and this family. 

Sometimes you watch while he works. Butchering dead hogs on the table, rending the skin from the flesh, processing the meat into slabs or tossing it into containers to be ground up later. It’s messy work. It’s why Tommy always smells, vaguely, of blood, of butchering, of death.

Sometimes what he butchers are human beings. Sometimes they are still alive. Sometimes they are not dead corpses in the barn but are living, wriggling people hung up in the garage like you and John all those months ago. But none of them are dragged into the house and made part of the family. They all die.

You don’t watch–you’re not allowed, and you wouldn’t want to, even if you were–but you hear it. Even with cotton stuck in your ears, upstairs in your bedroom, a pillow over your head. You hear it. 

The nights when Tommy kills people, he holds you tighter. You wish you had the guts to ask why–

Why does he kill them? Why didn’t he kill you? How can he hack someone else into pieces and come upstairs in the evening and act the same around you–caress your cheek and hold you at night and let you, slowly, tentatively, touch his face above the mask.

And how do you bear it? Why don’t you act differently towards him, knowing he’s just killed and butchered and Charlie doesn’t care and Mama cares, maybe, but won’t say much about it. Why do you still want to hold him, despite the blood underneath his fingernails?

But you push all of that down into your stomach with the person you used to be. 

Because “hows” and “whys” are luxuries that you can’t afford anymore. It’s best not to think on them for longer than a moment in the night. 

–

Mama could use some fresh flowers for the vase on the dining room table, and she left some sheets on the clothesline in the back that will be too heavy for her. It’d really help her out if you brought them in without asking. Heaven knows the men in this house won’t do it.

It’s taken time–there’s a new calendar tacked up on the wall–but you’re finally allowed to go outside. Not into town or even to the neighbors or even to the end of the street, heavens no. But in the backyard and to the barn. The backyard is mostly you helping Mama with the clothes, and the barn is mostly you going to visit Tommy, but still–you take what freedom you’re given.

Today, you’re taking your sweet time getting to the backyard. Taking the long way, a way that probably skirts the edge of where you’re allowed to be–but unless someone tells you otherwise, you’ll stick to sneaking out the side door of the garage and walking around the front of the house. There’s sometimes little patches of pink wildflowers near the front, and they look the nicest on the table.

Only this time when you step out the side door and walk down the three rickety stairs into the garage, you are not alone.

A young man is hanging from the ceiling, his arms bound in rope–you’ve known that same rope, the tightness of it, the burn–that keeps him on his tip-toes. Based on the groans coming from his mouth, he’s been hanging up there a while. His muscles are probably screaming at him.

Your eyes lock together and his go from squeezed and pained to wide and–afraid?

“Don’t hurt me,” he says. “P-Please. I just want to go home. Please!”

“Don’t… hurt you?” The first words you’ve spoken to someone outside the family in more than a  year. You blink at this stranger, tied up, and now that you step closer you can see he’s got bruising. And he’s bleeding. A gash on his cheek, some sort of wound on his stomach that’s clotting blood on his polo shirt.

“Um,” you say, feeling small, voice small to match. “I won’t hurt you. I don’t–I haven’t hurt…anyone.” It sounds stupid. But he seems to believe you, because his eyes go from widened in fear to something else.

Something you recognize that you once must have had, before. Hope.

“You’re not one of them? Then untie me–quick, before they see!”

Untie him?

The thought has never crossed your mind before and honestly, honest to God, it didn’t cross your mind even when you stepped down those stairs and saw him. Because it would only cause trouble, and no one in that house would be happy about it if you did. You were a good girl, a good daughter, who did her chores and ignored the screams and listened to what you were told.

So. So you fiddle with the sleeve of your dress, all nicely hemmed in now that you were allowed to use the sewing machine, and refuse to look at his man’s face anymore. 

“I”m not even supposed to be in the garage,” you murmur, though it’s probably a half-truth. “So I can’t…” Can’t untie you. Can’t help you. Can’t spare you from a butchering. 

Your name is suddenly called from inside the house–by Charlie. Loud. Then louder.

“Sorry,” you finish, and you put a spring in your step when your name is yelled out a third time. You barely hear what he says, though you can tell it ends in “fuck you.” Not that you blame him for the expression.

When you reach the kitchen, only Tommy and Charlie are waiting for you. They're both staring with something different in your eyes that makes your stomach feel all tight and gummy.

 "You didn't let the fucker go, didja?” Charlie asks.

You shake your head at once. “No, sir.”  It's not often you call him sir, and he doesn't really bother you about it anymore outside of teasing, but the situation feels serious enough to warrant it. You lower your gaze and try to look as respectful and meek and small as possible. It's not even really pretending anymore.

He tsks, spits something into a cup. “Well, good. Gonna have Tommy here take care of him. Ain’t ya, Tommy?”

Tommy breaths out something hard, and you do look up at him this time. You bite back whatever it was that some part of you, some long forgotten smashed down girl, wanted to say: Why do you have to kill him at all?

But that part of you doesn't surface. She's not strong enough. You're the strong one, the one who survived. The one who's adapted and come to make a life here. And if that life comes with the caveat that sometimes the man you snuggle with at night cuts people in half, well. That's life, isn’t it?

“Bet that guy thought you were a looker,” Charlie muses, cutting through your thoughts. “Did he flirt with you?”

Your brain itches to leave but you know better. So you shake your head. “No, sir.” The truth is as sweet as honey. Or so you hope. “He just asked me to untie him. So I said I couldn’t, and came back in.”

Charlie hums, and it’s not as sweet as honey. “Bet he thought about it, even if he didn’t say nothin. Don’t you think so, Tommy? He probably wants to make a move on your girl.” There’s a sadistic chuckle in his voice, all sticky tar; something you’ll never understand.

It’s Tommy that worries you more, now, though. His breath gets harder, and he suddenly moves too quickly. Stomping right past you and outside and down those three steps so hard that you think they might break.

Even from a distance,  the sound of something metallic and sharp being grabbed from the garage wall catches your ear. You know what’s coming. Charlie does too–he laughs. But not you. It’s not funny, will never be funny, to hear people dying. 

At the first scream, the first sound of metal hitting flesh, you dart further into the house, upstairs and away from it all. You find yourself in the bathroom where Mama is busy putting the clean towels away and you offer to help, to keep yourself distracted.

“Ain’t you a sweetheart,” she says, and gives you a kiss on the cheek.

Downstairs, a man is taking forever to die. 

-

Tommy comes to you that night, smelling of blood and something you can’t place. Something sharper and heavier than usual. He crawls into bed but this time he does not slot himself against your back and hold you close.

No.

Instead, he grips your shoulders, and abruptly rolls you from your side to your back.

Oh. Oh, now, you think–is it now that this happens? After he's killed someone and some sort of jealous fit? Is that what it took to push this (whatever ‘this’ could be called) from cuddles and touching to something more? It’s a detached curiosity that you force youself into; to keep yourself from agonizing over it. 

He smells of sweat and hard labor. Of butchering. Of the dead man.

You smell of cheap shampoo and musty nightgowns and Mama’s cigarette smoke from rocking together on the back porch before bed. 

Tommy leans down and presses his face against yours, through the mask. Gentle and not gentle all at once. A bit of flesh and mostly fabric meet your chapped liips.

A kiss. A kiss that makes your guts feel all hot and strange, like they want more and also want to unzip your stomach and roll on the floor to get away from it all.

But you won’t let them feel that way for long. You can’t feel that way for long, if you want to live–if you want to stay intact. 

So you lean forward and move your lips against the mask, pushing out something that might be a pleasant sound, vibrating against the fabric. It forces pleasantness inside you. If you think it, it becomes real. Doesn’t it? 

“Tommy,” you murmur, in the night, in the dark, as he begins pulling at your nightgown with his butchering hands.

Tommy, who saved you all that time ago. Who decided you were worth keeping alive and worth protecting and worth–worth whatever this has become. 

Tommy, who heaves you up on the work bench in the barn as you laugh and ask him to show you how some of the tools work, when they’re being used on pigs and not people. Tommy, who brushes your cheeks when you can’t take it anymore and go to bed crying. 

Tommy, who is kissing you and whose hardness is pressing against your thighs. Tommy, who is making you feel good, making some spark light in you.

It’s normal to feel this way. For warmth to spread from your mouth to your gut, burning out the words of that someone-you-once-were. For you to move your hands against him, wondering what you might find underneath his clothes in the end. Wondering if he’ll take off the mask or keep it on and you’ll never kiss more than cloth.

Michael Myers

He's rough as fuck no question about it. You don't expect any different, considering how he handles or touches you casually (throwing you around rooms or forcefully shouldering you or shoving you aside when you're in his way). You can take it though. At least that's what you tell yourself when he wrestles you onto the bed. You wondered if putting up a bit of a fight would turn him on or make him want to put a knife in your chest. 

Thankfully it was the former. 

The way you writhed beneath him, trying to push back against his hands or nails clawing down his neck and chest, seemed to get him all worked up, huffing and panting behind the mask and not because he was overly exerting himself. He wanted you. 

You hate noticing that it's almost like you're playing out how it usually goes for him when he hunts people down and kills them. The running. The fighting back. He likes it and he wants it because he knows he can dominate you anyways. It's familiar to him and maybe that makes him even more comfortable when it comes to manhandling you and taking your clothes off for you. It was fucked up. Plain and simple. But so was he and so were you. 

At first he only wants silence from you, going out of his way to cover your mouth with a rough hand, his other hand caging you in as he fucks you into the mattress like tomorrow's never coming. But despite his impressive stamina and his usual stone coldness, it all starts to slip the longer he's in you. His hand slips from your mouth to claw his hand into the sheets by your cheek instead, then into your hair, yanking at it. He wants to hear you then, he wants to hear you scream for him. 

And when you start crying because of the way he slowly brings you towards euphoria, only to slow down and steer you smugly away from your climax? That really drives him fucking wild. No amount of begging could convince him to let you cum. Not even the way your nails dig into his bare back or the way you moan into his heaving, sweating chest. It was up to him and him alone to decide that and nothing you said or did was going to get into his head. 

He had complete control. 

Ultimately, he doesn't care much for your pleasure the first time. He just cares about him. Once he's heaving against you, finally releasing, not bothering to pull out, he's pretty much done from there. He practically doesn't even hit the mattress as he rolls off you, pulling up his boxers and zipping up his coveralls. 

Later on when he initiates anything with you it seems like he pays a lot more attention to you. You don't know why but what you do know is that all the sudden he's making you finish a lot more which you are definitely not complaining about. 

Jason Voorhees

Surprisingly enough, despite his stature and his nature Jason is deceptively shy and has trouble making any sort of move. He wants to. He desperately wants to--its like a carnal need in him at this point, every time he looks at you or catches a glimpse of your upper thigh or waist when you stretch. God to only hold your waist in his hands. 

Sex has always been somewhat taboo to him, but the more he thinks of you, the weaker he becomes and the more he starts thinking of loopholes. He especially realizes something needs to be done when the thoughts of you running wild in his head begin distracting him from his work. All the sudden he can't focus and it makes catching and killing trespassers that much harder. 

But eventually, one day, he feels your hand on his thigh while he's sitting next to you, watching old, grainy movies on the staticky television. He's ready to go from there. 

He can have sex. That's his reward for getting rid of trespassers for years and years and fulfilling his revenge. It was his reward for keeping Camp Crystal Lake his and safe. There's exceptions for everything right? His hesitations seemed to dissolve when you leaned into his lap, your fingers at the zipper of his pants. 

He's always had to take care of himself when his need became too much. But what you were doing to him was beyond any sort of bliss he could give himself--the way your hands stretched around him and then oh God the way you took him into your mouth only a few moments after. It took everything he had not to put his hands on you, to wait until you told him to, until you wanted him to. Your mouth on him was wonderful but all he could think of were the things he wanted to do to you. 

"Jason?" you'd asked after you'd swallowed (which nearly made him fucking faint on the spot), looking up at him, the back of your hand at your lips. "I-"

He couldn't stop himself. The sight of you looking up at him with him all over your lips had him hard all over again. He yanked you into his lap, his hands wrapping around your waist exactly the way he'd imagine it for weeks now. Your arms wrapped around his neck as you leaned up into his chest, lifting yourself slightly, either of your legs spread over his as he tore down your shorts. 

It's his first time so you don't mind that your little ride isn't all that long. It'd been so long since you'd been touched, like him, it didn't take much to push you over the edge. For him...it was just all those little noises you were making...just for him? Just for him. It got him so worked up he barely could last for a few more minutes. But the fact that he clearly has wanted to do this for you for a long time flatters you immensely, even after you're collapsed on his chest, insides still churning from his size. You figured anyways that if you made this good enough for him, he'd keep fucking you and he'd keep learning the exact way to make you scream for him. 

Obviously, Jason holds you tight, his cold body soothing your heated face as you nuzzled into his broad chest. Your fingers reach up to wrap around the heavy chain situated around his neck, playing with the cool metal as your eyes fall half shut. One of his hand still stayed at your waist, but the other moved up to stroke over your back--somewhat heavy handedly and rough but you understood the gesture well enough and knew he didn't mean to be rough.  

Thomas Hewitt 

Now Thomas' momma raised him right and he's not going to be one to harass or force himself on you like his less proper male relatives encouraged him to. You were scared of him and he knew it and it didn't make him feel any better about himself. But it didn't stop him from thinking of you when he stared up at the ceiling on hot summer nights, retreating to the basement to get a little relief.

That's why he was somewhat startled when he felt the bed beside him shift under new weight. His hand was quick to find the body of the intruder, his fingers wrapping around a throat. 

"T-Tommy, it's me," your voice had come, partway choked under his hand. 

His grip had lessened but he didn't let go entirely. 

"I-It's hot up there and...and I dunno. I don't know. I just..." You'd hesitated. His hand slowly slipped away from your throat. You took that as a sign that he was okay with you crashing in his bed in the basement for the night. "I just feel safer...with you." Truth be told you'd spent about three hours upstairs, unexplainably hot and bothered, thinking of him.

It'd been strange to hear you say that after all the while he'd spent thinking you were terrified of him. Had he read you wrong? Apparently so, as you climbed over top of him, straddling him. A low grunt left him, but not one of disapproval. He couldn't help but rest his giant hand over your hip, practically engulfing your skin. He felt you shiver beneath his touch, which once again confused him. He thought it was from fear, not pleasure. 

"I know that...you like me. And I kinda like you too, Tommy." 

He felt your hand take his other wrist and even though it was dark, he could dimly make out the way you pulled up your oversized night shirt, pressing his hand to your chest so he could feel. You felt his arousal against your leg as he squeezed slowly, experimentally, like he wasn't sure what to do. You'd kept your hand pressed to his, hoping that he'd get the message, hoping that he'd realize it was okay to want--to want you. 

Thomas had zero experience but you figured he'd have some sort of instinct that would take over. Relief fell over you when your idea was proven correct as Thomas started to take control, sitting up so that way he could slowly press you to the bed instead, underneath him. It felt so right being completely underneath him, pinned to the mattress by his weight, unable to push him off or squirm away like you were so tempted to do. Something told you that playing around with him at the moment wasn't a smart move for his first time. Just keep it simple. 

Surprisingly enough, the way your fingers arched into his back and the way your teeth dug into his shoulder to keep yourself quiet and from waking the rest of his family got Thomas going and soon any of his insecurities were long lost as he proceeded to spend the next twenty minutes absolutely destroying you. It caught you off guard, the way he was suddenly rough without regard, huffing and growling into your ear, making you shiver with delight beneath him. 

You cum first and he follows you soon after. You had no idea how he was holding back his loud groans without having his own teeth buried in your skin or into the pillow because you certainly had a hard time attempting the same thing. But you could tell he liked it when you moaned for him, which made it even harder to hold back. 

Despite the heat, Thomas didn't let you go, only shifting so that way he could curl around you protectively, your ass snug in the curve of his stomach. His fingers picked through your hair slowly and you knew you didn't need to say anything and he didn't need to say anything for the two of you to understand each other perfectly. 

Brahms Heelshire 

Brahms is always looking for opportunities to try and get into your pants. It's obvious that despite the child-like voice he puts on (which freaks you out still) his interest in you is anything but child-like. You become increasingly aware of this whenever his hands find their way down your waist and hips, to your ass or whenever he wraps his arms around you and comes from behind, clearly feeling you up and pretending like he isn't.

You don't know why you're not receptive to his advances. It's not like you hate him or dislike him, he just...scary. You're afraid he'd hurt you for the sake of being nasty to you--you know he gets off on things like that, getting a reaction out of you. So all you really do when he feels you up is bite your tongue and ignore him.

That drives him even more wild because to him there's nothing that spells out more of a challenge than being ignored. 

He switches up tactics soon enough when force isn't working and starts being surprisingly nice to you. He brings you things. Family heirlooms, jewelry--and he wants you to wear them too, he's constantly checking your fingers for the rings he's so generously gifted you. At first you're uncomfortable with his sudden change, knowing he's only being nice to get you under some sheets with him. But at the same time, his new fake kindness is strangely comforting and you like it and you start maybe considering him. 

When you finally give in to his advances and his courting, he wastes no time tearing away at your blouse, even thought it's broad daylight and you're both standing in the fucking kitchen. But you weren't one to complain. With Brahms being the only option for months now and being too uncomfortable to take care of yourself, knowing Brahms was somewhere in the walls watching you, his touch was extremely welcome. 

All the sudden he's got you bent over the counter, shirtless with your pants gone as he tears away at your panties, huffing into your ear, before biting into your soft neck. You give him what he wants. A reaction--a sharp gasp, that soon falls away into strained moans as he begins to suck on different parts of your neck and shoulder. You have no idea where he picked this up from or if he'd done this before but with the confidence he carried himself with, you couldn't believe otherwise. 

He's a little rough at first just to really assert who's in charge, but when you're submissive to him and do what he demands, he softens up, his motions slower his hands gentler on your body. Soon any bruise he's left on your skin he's kissing, and he's telling you how good you are for him and how much he loves you. Apparently you have as much as a praise kink as he does because your body responds in all the right ways to the things he's telling you. 

When he's finished on you, he practically drags you to the couch and makes you lay with him, his fingers intertwining with yours in a way you would have found romantic if it wasn't for the fact that he was a crazy man wearing a mask that ran around the inside of the walls of his own house watching you. But still, the way he snuggled into you was endearing and you couldn't help but smile softly and feel safe enough to even doze off into the crook of his neck, your soft breath stirring at his tangled, dark hair. 

Pyramid Head 

He doesn't talk and you don't care. 

He also doesn't do much to prepare you for when he finally takes you, a gloved hand around your throat as he pinned you against a grimy wall. The ridge of his helmet pressed into your chest, between your breasts, a low, gut wrenching growling coming from him. The terror you usually felt towards him was drowned out with a sort of animalistic want that rivaled the beast's own. The ridge of his helm pressed slightly into your crotch and your nails dig into his heavily scarred wrist, already dried with the blood of monsters unfortunate enough to get in his fucking way. 

One of your hands had slid down the side of his helm, slowly, before reaching underneath it, feeling the fleshy mass beneath. You felt his tongue push against your palm and a soft, strangled moan escaped you. You'd known he had a tongue but you'd never felt it on your skin before. Too bad he wouldn't be using it. 

Instead, dropping his weapon with a loud clang, he moved his hand to open up a part of his thick, stitched apron. You couldn't see it but you could feel the heat of his arousal against your bare leg. God he was fucking huge and the thought of him already sent shivers down your spine and the burning in your stomach only blazed angrier. Pyramid Head had made quick work of your clothes earlier on before he'd even dragged you down the hall and pinned you to the wall. 

He's rough. Too rough. But he's better than anything else in this hell. And it hurts at first when he fucks into you, another growl echoing from his helm and down the hall. But when you finally begin to adjust you can't think about anything but him. His grip tightens on your throat slightly as he thrusts hard, practically smashing you into the wall as you scream. No one that matters can hear anyways so you don't care about being loud. 

Halfway through he has to stop, pulling out as you shriek and letting you fall to the ground. Your legs were unable to support you as you collapsed down, your legs splayed out almost doll like as your head presses back into the wall while you cry out for him again. He's busied himself with the decapitation of some mutilated creature that was bold enough to come walking down this hallway of all other hallways, probably attracted by your moans. A heated blush crept onto your face. Something about the way that cleaver dragged behind him, covered in the blood of things that wanted to kill you and hurt you...

Although distracted at first, his helmet turned back towards you and even though he had no eyes, no face, you could still feel his non existent gaze fucking burning into you. All over again you were hot and you wished you could even understand why something like him made you feel the way that you did. Desperation maybe? You didn't know, you didn't care and all you knew was you wanted him buried inside you all over again for the rest of time or however long you could go without being killed in Silent Hill. 

Already adjusted to him before, it hurt less when he shoved you back up against the wall, either one of his hands gripped on either one of your thighs, spreading you wider for him. The ridge of his head pressed to the wall at your side, adjusting his position so he could get even closer to you as your hips ground against his and you screamed for him. He was good for a seven foot tall monster with a huge ass pyramid for a head. You didn't really want to think about where or who'd he done this to before because all that mattered to you now was that he was doing it with you. 

Chris Walker

Like many things in the asylum, Chris is not gentle. You can't tell if it's because he doesn't realize how rough he's being or if he just doesn't care. You want to think it's the former to make yourself feel better, but either way, he's going to make you hurt a little before he's even got his dick out. 

You try not to make noise at first as he grunts into your ear, calling you "little pig" and "whore" and all of his usual vocabulary. But my God is Chris fucking massive and you thought you were going to burst a vessel if you held back your moans and screams anymore than you already had. Any variant drawn by the noise is quick to get the fuck out when all they can see is the expanse of Chris' back, rippling with powerful muscle while he fucked you into the wall. 

It feels good to at least know that if you're fucking Chris you're technically protected and no variant is going to try to kill you. This normally means you can focus on worrying about whether or not you're pleasing Chris enough to even have him consider keeping you around more. You think you're doing good so far judging by all the noises you were able to get him to make just from a twist or buck of your hips against his. 

He's touch starved and climaxes first, all over you. But he doesn't stop. You don't think the first thing on his mind is to push you into orgasming as well--you just think he's trying to go for round two. It works though, either way, and your cum makes it even easier for you to adjust to his size and overall enjoy him more. 

A couple of times you debated the morality of fucking a literal monster, but then decided that doting on it for too long really would make you go insane. You chose not to care about it. Indifference would help you survive, you were sure. It was pretty hard to think anyways with your eyes almost in the back of your head when Chris picked up the pace, apparently reaching yet another climax. His roar is deafening in your ear and you wrap you legs around his waist tight when he manages to hit a sweet spot, practically plunging your body into euphoric ice as your back arched and you shrieked his name.

You were limp in his arms afterwards, the energy completely sucked out of you from only about fifteen minutes with Chris. 

Sometimes you forget how horrifying and scary he is when he presses his lipless mouth to your own lips in what you imagined was supposed to be his idea of a kiss. Then you remember on account of him pressing his teeth to your face and feeling his extensive scarring and permanent snarl on your lips. 

Still, he's better than the other variants here and you'd rather have had his favor than any other and he actually does seem to like you despite his constant growling and eagerness to have a hand around your throat while he dragged you around. 

Daniel Robitaille 

It hits different when you feel the metal of his hook brushing up your skirt, lifting it as it drags over your legs, threatening to pierce skin, but never following all the way through. While his hooked hand might be rough and dangerous and intimidating, his free hand isn't--stroking over your cheek, caressing your body as he pulls you closer to him. His touch is juxtaposition, so sweet, but deadly if chosen to be. 

For a man (ghost?) who spent months tirelessly pursuing you in your dreams, in your head, everywhere you looked, violently killing those who even looked at you wrong, who even came near you he was surprisingly sweet and gentle to you. That was his love, you supposed. Only for you. No one else. 

When he pinned you beneath him, his lips meeting yours slowly, softly, his hand at the curve of where your neck met your jaw and cheek, you were surprised to feel no sudden pain at bee stings. That had been one of your biggest fears, that the bees in his chest would stir and mark you with painful red sores. If you were quiet--if you held back your moans and soft, blissful sighs--you could hear a faint buzzing noise in his chest. It disturbed you, but there was little you intended on doing to stop Daniel's advances. 

You...kind of liked him. Even if he had spent months essentially ruining your life. To his credit, he did remove a number of irksome people from it. 

What were the moral consequences of getting pipe from an undead ghost man who'd been terrorizing people for the better half of a century? 

Soon enough, it didn't really matter to you because you couldn't even think straight. 

He's very, very attentive to you and your needs and body. He works his way down from head to toe before he's even in you, making you squirm beneath him, arousing you like no one had before. It's like he knows every sweet spot and sensitive area, the places that could really make you scream, even though he's never fucked you until now. The side of his hook pressed deep into the flesh of your inner thigh as he ducks his head once more, breath hot on your sex. 

Even before he begins to fuck you for real, you've already cum for him not once but twice. And he intends on making that number climb. He'll always hold on to the memory of you breaking out of your shy, reserved exterior when the pleasure overwhelmed you. The way you were wild, unable to hold back shrieks of euphoria as you clawed in to his back, the back of his neck too, face pressed into his shoulder. And when he heard his name on your lips? His real name? It easily makes him lose the control he valued so heavily before. 

By the end of it all, you're a panting weak mess, partway slung over his shoulder as you shut your eyes.

He whispers to you. Words you can't catch, words you can't process because your head's still spinning. But he meant them. The passion in his voice was unmistakable, the love, the fire. All there. And he held you close, a part of his coat wrapped around you. Oddly comforting.

Pinhead

The promises of pleasure overwhelm any real thought warning you of the pain that would come with it. The whispers of the box, the Lament Configuration, it gets to you. He, towering and clothed in all black, terrifying and powerful as all hell, gets to you. 

The Hell Priest did not lie to you. He didn't omit that--the pain that's involved in being with him. But part of you, some guilty part of you thinks you deserve what he's promising you. Some horrible part of you, so similar to him, almost can't even define the difference between the pleasure and pain he's offering. 

It's hard to say no anyways when there's hooks, pierced through you. 

There doesn't need to be hooks dug into your thighs for them to be wide open for him, for those long, neat fingers of his. There doesn't need to be winding, strong chains around your wrists for you to hold them up and above your head, allowing him access to your body, allowing him to do whatever he wanted to you. 

You would have done that all on your own without a second thought. Just to chase the bliss. 

The pain of it all...it's like it enhances the absolute euphoria, something unearthly that no actual man or woman alike could come close to making you feel. It's a crude way to make you appreciate the pleasure more in comparison to the pain, but at the same time, it's almost impossible to distinguish which is which in the burn of your nervous system.

You think you might understand, you might grasp the mentality this demon, this angel, whatever he is holds dear and above all else. You get it. You wonder if anyone else he's had the chance to pierce hooks through has reached enlightenment like this. Can he tell? By the glint in your eyes and the moan rolling off your tongue, can he tell? You want him to know. You want to be worthy of him. You want to worship him. 

Enamored is an understatement.

Chains ravel around your body, tight, between your legs, cold and biting, against your abdomen, around your neck, slowly squeezing, choking you just right. You shut your eyes, head tilting back. Ready to receive. 

You could never let anyone have their way with you again. The Hell Priest--he was the only for you now, you were sure. 

Smitten was a word that came to your foggy mind as he forced a slender finger into your mouth, covered with your own wetness, making you taste your own arousal. As if he even needs to remind you what effect he has on you. You throbbed. For him. Your thighs, numb from the suspension, dull to the pain of the hooks pierced through your skin, tremble. 

He can't kiss you. He can't bite you or suck on your skin. The pins, the silver needles lining his regal face, they prevent him. But he doesn't need to. He can find dozens of other ways to make you writhe and moan. Decades of this has made him creative, experienced in his craft. 

There is no romance to this. No gentleness. No love. This is Hell. His Hell. And you fucking love it. 

A leather thumb swipes over your lip, slow, catching your saliva from the corner of your mouth and wiping it away. 

"More," you're barely able to whisper, a stray chain tight around your neck. The indents from the shape of the links will remain long after. If you could, you'd have tattooed them over, just to make them stay, just to show your devotion. 

And he obliges. 

"I will show you pleasure and pain like no other." 

He's not close to your ear, but his voice carries, low and deep, like his lips are practically to your skin. You shiver. It feels more like a promise than a threat. 

The chains jangle against each other, your suspended body tight with anticipation. You hear leather shift. It's all so much better with your eyes shut. You feel a hand creep up your calf. Streams of blood cross over your skin, like threads, like art. 

He's fucking you. It take a moment to realize, between the overwhelming sensations of pain and pleasure that he so loves to bring crashing upon your mortal head. Your fingers curls, bent to the extreme at the knuckles, grasping at whatever tight length of chain might have been near that stretch of skin. Curled into fists around cold links, your arms jerk against the bindings with every little shock of pleasure in your nerves.

"Will you give yourself up to me? In the name of the pain you seek?" The Priest asks. A hand, pale and soft, grips at your neck. 

You gasp out a "yes", desperate and unwound. 

He finds this desperation, your desperation specifically, so amusing. So human. So beyond him. 

"Pet," he tells you, voice thundering deep in your ear, in your chest, home to your rapidly beating heart. "You. Are. Mine." 

Harry Warden 

Harry's been wandering the mines with only his imagination and his hand for a long time now. So when you came along, even from the very beginning, there was no denying his automatic attraction to you. Once he got past the idea of brutally murdering you anyways--that was always the hardest part to fight through. But ultimately it paid off. 

When the opportunity finally arose and he found you willing and wanting him, Harry wasted no time stripping the clothes from your body. He pulled you through the mines until he reached the communal showers, turning on a stream and pulling you in with him. His own gloved hand reached down to undo his belt.

He liked shoving you up against a tile wall, almost so that you couldn't breath unless your neck was at an odd angle and your cheek was pressed to the wall. Harry's hands crept up your sides, before spreading over your abdomen, rising up to your chest and gripping you, hard. A soft moan escaped you, echoing in your ears. And in his. You couldn't see it or feel it, but goosebumps rose on his arms as a lustful chill swept through him. He didn't seem much for any foreplay, too riled up to waste any time. 

He's rough and scary and makes you fear for your life at first, the way his hand wraps around your throat as he takes you from behind, only muffle grunts and growls coming from inside the mask. You didn't know what was wrong with you, the way those noises seemed to arouse him as much as your moans and pants did to him. As minutes passed and your legs began to shake, Harry almost seemed to become...more loving? 

His affections were more obvious, when his touches grew softer and his hand finally left your throat as you murmured his name, your eyes shut in pleasure, your brows drawn together as you tried to hold yourself together. Harry's strokes grew slower and longer and deeper as well, like he was finally stopping to savor and enjoy you, rather than just fucking you quick to get his sexual frustration out of the way. His hands shifted right around your waist, giving you extra support the less you were able to feel your legs.

The trembling spread throughout your body as he guided you closer to an orgasm. You couldn't bite back full on screams of pleasure anymore, begging him to finish you off. You almost wanted to sob you were so close. You begged him again and again, howling his name as tears gathered in the corners of your eyes. God he felt so good. 

Rough fingers shoved into your mouth, past your soft, parted lips--he'd taken his gloves off. You cringed when you could taste the dirt and grime on them, but couldn't help but want to please him, sliding your tongue over them, sucking and grazing your teeth over them softly. He was making you feel good and you wanted to return the favor. 

You came first, in turn triggering his own climax as his other fist suddenly gripped into your hair, pulling your head back. You could feel the gas mask pressed up against the side of your head, his heavy breathing even louder in your ear. A pleasured shriek escaped you as your hand reached up to press against his mask, as your back and hips arched into him. 

Obviously, Harry wasn't much of a cuddler, even after you'd given him one of the best fucks in his life. But he did have the decency to hold you close, somewhat awkwardly, pulling you back under one of the shower streams with him to get all of the dust and fluids off of you. You sighed as you leaned into his chest, a hand pressed up to him as a wave of fatigue overcame you.

He didn't stay for long after, but you knew he'd be back for more. You'd given him a taste, you'd given him your body willingly, and now in his head he believed you were his. 

Bo Sinclair 

The sexual tension between you and Bo had been bad and was only getting even worse for awhile now. You didn't know why you were so...into him, but you just were. And it seemed like he liked you a lot too. The way you caught him looking you over, up and down over your body. The way he talked to you, the way he seemed to put on extra emphasis on that southern drawl of his (that he definitely knew drove you wild) and sent goosebumps all up your arms and shivers down your spine. And when he touched you, even if it was friendly, you knew of the lurking intent behind it. His hand on your waist or on your arm or around your shoulder. It didn't matter where. 

Sometimes he kissed you. Nothing much. Soft pecks on the cheek or the nose, maybe your lips if you weren't really paying attention and he could catch you off guard. But it never went any farther than that. Still, you figured that if he was kissing you and touching you the way he did that meant you were like...with him. He never really said anything to confirm it to you directly and you didn't want to ask out of nervousness.

You're scared of Bo almost as much as you're strangely drawn to him, having seen him in action and in his fits of rage that came as easy as they went. You couldn't help but wonder if he'd ever turn on you. You didn't think he would and you were sure you'd have to push him pretty far to have him mad enough to actually try to hurt you. 

So that was why it surprised even you when you ended up taking initiative. He'd kissed you, something that'd become a habit of his when he first saw you in the morning. You didn't know what the hell had gotten into you, but all the sudden your hand traced down from his chest to his thigh, thumb at the buckle of his belt. Bo took over from there with zero hesitation. He took it as a green light to do to you the things he'd been planning since you'd first run into him at the gas station some months ago. 

He dragged you up to his room, a place you'd only seen a few times but never been in. You'd never wanted to invade his privacy or piss him off by being nosy. His face buried in your neck, kissing you roughly, he pushed you down onto the bed. You could barely even take in a breath before he was ripping away at your panties with his hunting knife, sending chills down your spine as the cool blade brushed over the delicate skin of your thigh. 

"You know how long I've been wanting to do this to you?" he asked you, his voice little more than a hiss in your ear, before capturing your lips in another kiss, his rough, calloused fingers already sliding into you. You let out a cry, your back arching involuntarily as you sighed out his name, your eyes squeezed shut in the sudden sensation. 

Even when he comes close to getting you to climax, he pulls his fingers out right at your peak, on purpose. You let out a whine, a wave of frustration falling over you. "Bo!" you gasped out, going to sit up. He wrapped his hands around both of your wrists, pinning them above your head and forcing you back down to the mattress.

He leaned in close. "Sh, sh," he shushed you. "Not finished with you yet, darlin'." 

Reaching over to the bedside stand, he rummaged through the drawer until pulling out a roll of grey duct tape. He stretched out a good length with his teeth, the hair on the back of your neck raising with the sound of tape ripping. Tearing the length off, he threw the roll off to the side, focused only on you as he descended upon you once again, shaking the mattress beneath you. You gasped as he grabbed your wrists again, wrapping the tape around them tightly. Part of the bed frame was caught within the tape, pinning your wrists above your head easily. He looked back down at you, his hair a mess his eyes hungry and wanting, like he was drinking in your slightly fearful expression. Bo grinned as he lowered back down onto you, kissing down your neck, to your collarbone. 

Impatiently, you rubbed your thighs together, fire still burning in your core as you whine softly under his touch. Holy fuck you needed him so bad. All of your nervousness and anxiety and shyness was forgotten for the moment as you moaned his name, begging him to continue. 

"How bad?" he asked. "How bad do you need me inside you, angel?" his breath was hot in your ear. 

If you thought he could talk you into a fluster on a regular day, holy hell could he do it even better now. It was like a never ending stream of sultry words, just for you, only for you, directly into your ears. And, his voice. Lower and even more commanding than it'd ever been before. The way he could arouse you without even touching you was a specialty of his.

Bo worked at your neck again with a hot tongue and teeth, grazing over your skin, sucking and pulling wherever he could get you to make the loudest noises, wherever he could get you to writhe slowly underneath him, trying to get some kind of relief, some kind of release as you gasped for air. He left purposeful marks all over your skin, moving down towards your chest, to your breasts where he could bite harder. You cried under his teeth.

"I want you to see these tomorrow n' remember who left 'em for you. I want everyone to see 'em tomorrow. I want everyone to know you're mine." His voice twisted into a growl as he continued on lower once again towards your throbbing sex. 

"Bo, please," you had begged him again, blinking back tears in your eyes. "I-ahh~"

Your voice had faded off into moan as his head dipped between your thighs and his nose pressed to your clit. Your hands jerked above your head and your fingers curled into fists as you threw your head back, clenching your teeth. Between his hot breath and his tongue, slowly lapping up against you like he had all the time in the world--you were a complete mess, trembling beneath him, every other breath caught in your throat. 

You lose count of the amount of times you cum for him, the amount of times he licked up your everything like he was starving for you as you screamed and your hips jerked beneath him. At some point, his hands were gripping your thighs tightly, forcing your hips down so only he could be your relief from the pressure in your body. By the time he was satisfied, you were gasping for air, eyes half shut, tears rolling down your face. 

Bo's thumb brushed them away. "Aw, didn't mean to make you cry now, honey..." he told you as you leaned your cheek into his touch. 

Stammering, you tried to get out a response. "N-no, you're...you're really good. You-you were really good." You laid your head back down on the pillow, letting out a heavy sigh. A sort of nervousness filled you at still being in your vulnerable position beneath him, wondering if it was your turn now. God you were going to disappoint him bad...you were totally spent from everything he'd just done to you. 

Bo reached up over your head, unsheathing his hunting knife. A bit carelessly, he cut between your hands, through the duct tape. You peeled it off your wrists, wincing when you realized the blade had caught on the side of your palm. Blood began to gather. 

"Sorry 'bout that, darlin'."

You turned on your side to cup your hand as Bo collapsed behind you, wrapping an arm around you and pulling you close, so that the curve of your ass was snug against him. He rested his chin in the crook of your neck, one of his hands grabbing at your wrist, and pulling your injured hand to his lips. Your eyes were half shut with fatigue as you felt his tongue over the skin over your hand. 

Even if he doesn't make you return the favor right now, you know it doesn't mean you're completely off the hook. It means he's coming back for more later. 

And that thrills you. 

Bubba Sawyer 

You certainly hadn't been dating him the first time. Hell, you hadn't even known his name until a few days after. The fact that you had let him get some in the first place was the entire reason he let you live. Knowing that had driven guilt and shame deep into you for the longest time. 

He'd cornered you in some old barn. It was dark and it was raining and thundering like all hell was about to break loose. In a way, it already had. Your friends were long gone. They'd seen him get a pretty good hit on you--a slash from the running blade of his saw into your arm. It was deep and it'd been painful as hell, enough to make you drop on the spot and black out temporarily when you'd received it. You didn't exactly blame them for thinking you were dead judging by the way you'd dropped like a sack of potatoes. You'd never really been the type to have high pain tolerance. 

You figured your friends were either all dead or had bailed on you. They had escaped. Without you. That concept, coupled with the crushing loneliness and bitterness of betrayal hurt almost as bad as the open wound in your arm. But in a way, you couldn't complain. It was smart of them to just run when they had the chance. There was a reason you were the only one left around, trapped in a barn with a chainsaw wielding man. With nothing between you and him. 

No where to run, no where to hide and, nothing to do. If you tried to run past him, he'd catch you with the saw or his hand--he was big enough to block almost the entirety of the door as he glowered down at you, looking beyond pissed.

The odds just weren't in your favor. And you weren't a fighting type. You arm was hurting worse and worse and your vision was becoming more and more blurred and all you could think about was how tired of running you were. 

It caught him off guard when no scream of terror escaped you as he began to approach you. A soft sigh sounded hollowly instead, one of utter defeat as you stood before him, shoulders hunched and head dropped. Not frozen in fear or shock like victims usually were. You just were...standing there. And then you fell to your knees, eyes half shut with fatigue as a single tear dripped from your eyelashes and into the dirt on the barn floor. 

On your knees, at your feet, head bowed like a prisoner waiting for their beheading, you waited. You couldn't help but flinch softly when the blade of the chainsaw pressed slowly, experimentally into your shoulder. It wasn't running, thank God...but you figured it'd only be a matter of time before he did start it. You just hoped he'd make it quick. But the sound of the engine starting never came. Eyebrows furrowing with confusion, you looked up at him. You hadn't seen him up this close before, staring down at you through dark, surprisingly soft eyes, the toes of his shoes barely touching your knees. His other hand, dried with dirt and blood reached up to hold your jaw, lifting your head higher yet. A rough, scarred thumb brushed down your bottom lip, pulling at it slightly as he tilted his human skin masked head to the side. You didn't break your teary eye contact with him. How could gentle eyes like that belong to such a...monster? How could he touch this softly when he'd previously tried to drive a chainsaw through your arm?

You were starstruck, up until he suddenly grabbed you by your throat, lifting you with a low grunt and ramming you up against the back wall of the barn. You felt the bottom of an old crate settle just beneath your legs, providing little support as your hands grabbed at the corners of it. Your nails dug into the rotting wood and your muscles stiffened as the end of the saw dragged up your wet leg. Breath caught in your throat as you squeezed your eyes shut, tight, the blade pushing up further to between your legs. He applied pressure slowly, watching you squirm, shuddering when you finally let out a whimper. He seemed...excited to get a reaction out of you. He did it again, with the same results.

The chainsaw dropped to the ground and his huge, hot hand made itself known on your skin in its place. A low groan came from him as he stroked your soft skin under rough, dirty fingers. It's not an entirely unwelcome sensation on either end. 

Better than the chainsaw, you eventually decided, through the thick haze settling on your brain. 

It may have been a poor choice wearing a skirt this short, but it had been so hot before it started raining...

It took the man in the mask a good few seconds to properly align himself after he easily rips your panties away from your legs. He missed, rubbing up against you, eliciting a low moan from you that brought an instant flush to your cheeks. You felt embarrassed about your somewhat...welcoming demeanor towards his advances. But you couldn't help it--you'd been fucking around with one of the boys (who was either dead or long gone) earlier on and chainsaw guy had interrupted before you'd been able to finish. 

 He didn't seem experienced, like he didn't know what to do. Were you his first? 

"Hold on, hold on, please," you told him, your voice soft. "I can help..."

You don't know what possesses you, but you figured out then that maybe if you went through with this, you might live. And even if he did plan on killing you right after this, maybe it'd be one last bit of pleasure. You'd rather one last shot of bliss through your veins before going to the chainsaw. 

Your voice seemed to pacify him as he snorted into your neck. You reached down to grab ahold of him, properly lining it up with your entrance and shifting your hips down so he could push inside you. He's bigger than you thought. A lot bigger, what the fuck were you thinking? You bit back tears, hands leaving his skin to steady yourself via the crate beneath you. 

He took over from there with surprising ease. While he fucked you, the crate cracked and began to splinter beneath your weight and his smothering, combined one. He grabbed beneath your thighs and lifted you up, crushing through what remained of the crate just to throw you harder against the wall with a loud growl that seemed to drown out the thunder itself. You moaned at the feeling of his fingers digging so roughly into your flesh. 

He came pretty fast, which you thought would be a relief. That same sense of frustration from when he interrupted you and your "friend" from earlier bubbled in your chest once again. Fuck, you'd been so close this time. Were you just going to get edged over and over again until he took the fucking chainsaw to you? But he didn't immediately pull out and instead continued thrusting into you, like he actually...wanted to bring you pleasure too. And you do. Just for him. 

When it was all over, you thought he was more tired than you were. His hot breath pushed against the sensitive, bitten skin of your neck as he gasped and whined softly. Awkwardly, shakily, you reached up to pet your hands through his dark, thick, matted hair. It was taking everything you had not to pass out on the spot again, and your vision was still spinning from your climax. 

A bit too roughly, the man threw you over his shoulder and you could hear the faint zip of his pants. You fought to keep your eyes from shutting. Through your eyelashes, you caught a glimpse of him lifting his once abandoned chainsaw up from the barn floor in his free hand. 

Even as you were limp over your back, your hands absentmindedly traced over his back, as you waited for a death that wasn't going to come. 

Kazan Yamaoka 

Honestly, there's not much of a grace period between first encountering Kazan--or "The Oni" as he was called by other survivors--and finding yourself pinned beneath him. You learn quickly not to call him "The Oni" when you're around him and he's not trying to kill you, otherwise he will try to kill you. His name is fine. Kazan Yamaoka. It's his legacy and his pride and it's been eons since anyone has referred to him with his proper title. 

Maybe that's why he had other interest in you that didn't involve meathooks and sacrifice and katanas through the throat. 

You wanted to think that maybe it made him feel more human again. Maybe what made him feel very human "love". Completely wrong. It wasn't about a sense of humanity--he'd shed that centuries ago. He was a monster, a demon, a...you know what. And it certainly wasn't about "love". Make no mistake, Kazan has not felt any stirring of love in that cold, dead heart of his for a very long time. It's about control. It's about animalistic want and possession and just straight lust in its darkest form.

But still, to your mild concern, there's some piece of you that wants to take part in it. 

And so you do. 

There are no words needed. You don't know the extent of his powers, but he seems to be able to tell that there's a knot in your stomach when your eyes meet the empty holes of his mask during the next trial you see him in. 

You notice when he finally hunts you down and hauls you over his shoulder that his clawed, massive hand moves down your back slowly and to your ass. His fingers knead hard into you and you grit your teeth to stop from crying out. You swore that his nails were going to break through your pants and puncture flesh. He'd like that though, wouldn't he? 

The possibility that you had somehow pissed him off crossed your mind. You knew he'd seen Dwight previously touching your arm as you knelt so he could help you heal from a slice that Kazan had graciously given you at the beginning of the match. He definitely had a much larger, more noticable mean streak whenever he saw any other survivors near you or (god forbid) touching you. 

You figure that in his head, you're essentially his. Like completely. Under any other circumstance, with any other guy who wasn't an eight foot tall scary ass demon, you would have objected to these old-fashioned, overly possessive ideals that made you feel more like property than...well...you couldn't really even say 'parter' and be completely sure of yourself. You knew the bare minimum of how his semblance of a relationship worked with you and that was that he was very clearly attracted to you and very, very sure no one else could touch you because you were his and only he could do that. 

Kazan ended up tossing you near some ruins off the far end of the arena, away from the other survivors. You know better than to move and to be honest, he's kinda got you all hot and bothered and the memory of his hand on your ass is pretty clear, so you don't want to move either. Still, you take the opportunity to press up into a corner and tend to the deep cut in your side, just for the sake of not bleeding out before Kazan could return. 

He must be impatient because pretty soon, the sound of screaming and generators popping is replaced with silence. There's always a chance your fellow survivors evaded him. But the familiar pit in your stomach, the eerie feeling, tells you otherwise. And when Kazan comes back drenched in blood, the last of a snarl dying on his tongue your initial theory about the reason behind the silence is confirmed. 

His impatience still reigns supreme when he grabs your thigh, a low growl coming from behind the mask. You take it as a warning. You swallow nervously, but can't ignore the growing excitement in your chest as his thick, scarred fingers wrap around your legs and pull you closer to him. He's down on top of you, either one of his hands positioned by your head. 

There's really not much to prepare you for him. He's obviously been thinking about you as much as you've been thinking about him. You're not sure if the teeth of his mask crashing into your head was some version of a kiss or just an accident, but you'd take it. You could pretend some part of him loved you or cared about you, just to entertain your human fantasy of him. 

Kazan cuts you--deep--just to feed off your blood, even while he fucking you on the rough ground. He reopens the wound you'd previously treated, forcing a shriek from your throat. It only seemed to spur him on more as he groaned and gasped, head in the space between your shoulder and ear. 

His low, deep growls turn into deafening roars. Thankfully, he moves his head from your ear long before the demon-like howling begins. Even if its directed upwards as he throws his head back in pure pleasure, it's still earth-shaking.

You really thought you would go deaf after this was over, but holy fuck he wasn't roaring for nothing. God he felt good. He's aggressive and too rough and treats you like you're some fucking ragdoll (quite literally) but it brings a certain thrill and adrenaline rush you've never felt before. You'd only had sex a couple of times before getting lost in the fog that landed you here, but you could confirm then and there as you writhed beneath him, hands clawing at his scarred skin, that demon dick was wayyy better than the regular shit. 

Still, it's obviously been awhile since either of you have experienced pleasure like this, so maybe it had just been so long you were glorifying and worshipping what little you could get. The pain, at least, had lessened and you'd come to enjoy the way he filled you completely and made you just...feel like you weren't here anymore. Like all this murky, dirty, scary shit all falls away and it's just you and Kazan and the bliss pumping through your veins. 

Maybe you love him for that. You don't know. 

After its all (unfortunately) over and the fog comes rolling back in and you realize you're still here, in the Entity's hell, you can't help but feel a sense of loss. 

Kazan's not much for aftercare. Instead, he simply straightens himself up, readjusting his pants and his armor, his chest still heaving from his climax that was very much deep in you. You went to wipe at your inner thigh, feeling some of his cum leaking out onto your skin. He suddenly grabs your wrist tight and snarls. Your fingers tremble as one of his hands reaches down between your open legs and pushes any leaking seed back inside. You gasp and tighten around his fingers, and you think for a moment you might have tempted him into another round. Maybe you're just light headed from literally bleeding out this entire time for Kazan's own pleasure. 

This little ritual after he's finished with you becomes a continued habit in the future. It eventually clicks that he's definitely trying to breed you, and he'd continue doing so until he was successful. Heirs to his legacy. That's what he wanted. Lucky for you, the IUD implant in your arm still seems to be working great and is generally unaffected by being in possibly another dimension. Whatever this place was. You wisely choose not to tell Kazan about it. In the strangest way...you don't want to lose whatever value you might have to him. A part of you wants to think he'd continue being possessive over you, even if you never gave him a child, but you're not going to take that chance. 

Eventually, he hauls you up over his shoulder. You simply let out a soft sigh. It's nice to be on his shoulder without also having a stab wound or a broken leg from being clubbed. 

The only time Kazan has ever shown mercy and given you the hatch was after your first time with him. As far as you can tell afterwards, it's never going to happen again, no matter what you do. 

Philip Ojomo

A soft gasp escaped you at the feeling of an invisible hand stretching over your abdomen, reaching over your stomach and downwards further, down to palm slowly, gently over your pants. David, who was working on the generator with you glanced over. You quickly shake your head, trying to ignore the feeling of phantom fingers pressing into your jeans, kneading into you softly, knowingly. 

"Nothing, j-just thought I...I heard something," you mutter out, just to take the other survivor's focus of you and back on the generator. Your hands shake on the wires and you decide the best move is to drop them before you pop the generator and ruin its progress.

It wasn't just Philip--the Wraith--'s hand that startled you, it was the meaning behind it. You always thought you'd have to make the first move with Philip. You'd always had to before. Whether it came to kissing him first all those trials ago or even taking your hand in his when you met up to walk with him between realms, awaiting your next trial.

It's new. And it's bold. Bold for Philip at least. But it only gets you going the more you think about it. You'd be lying if you tried to deny your fantasies about him, how it would feel for him to take you spontaneously. It'd been so long since you'd gotten any, you couldn't really help leaning your hips more into his palm.

He's touched you before during trials, slender fingertips ghosting over yours or a slight dip of his head into the crook of your neck--all while he's cloaked of course and all in front of other survivors, but never like this. Never with so much obvious want.

No one can see. No one can see the way the two of you look at each other. 

You know you're not going to be able to bite back moans or soft gasps much longer and Philip's not showing any signs of stopping. It's not an attempt to tease you--he clearly has no intent of going anywhere without you going somewhere else first. You quickly excused yourself, figuring that since the generator was half done, it would be believable for you to lie and say you were going to double back on a different generator you'd started at the beginning of the trial. David doesn't question the excuse. He just nods, wires pinched between his calloused fingers and his scarred brow furrowed with concentration as you leave. The other survivors don't know. They'll never know because if they do they'll never trust you again.

It's not like you don't like them--you do, you just think...there's something about Philip where they can't compare. And you can't choose Philip over them either. There's no possible decision to be made in the first place. If you even tried, it would not guarantee your safety nor your happiness--happiness here in the Entity's void wasn't attainable. Maybe there were brief moments when you laid with Philip between rounds, in between the realms the killers roamed, that you felt content. Felt...happy to be in his presence, your hand in his. But it would all go away when it was time for yet another trial and once again misery ensued. 

He was your break from all of that--the endless trials and the blood and gore and hooks and screaming. Even when he was assigned killer in a match with you, he seemed to go easier on you, which was enough of a gesture to suggest deep affection for you. What could you say? It was bleak and dreary and scary here and even the bare minimum was wonderful. 

But if your teammates ever found out? You'd be fucked in every other round without Philip in it. You'd seen what happens whenever they got mad and turned on someone for a round or two to exact petty revenge over some royal fuck up. Loving a killer? That wasn't even comparable to leaving someone behind or accidentally leading a killer to the rest of the group or something like that. It was an unspoken rule--the highest treason--not to fuck around with killers. "Don't even talk to them", was a pretty prevalent suggestion in the group. If they found out, you knew it would mean that whenever you got hooked or downed in future trials, you were going to stay on that hook and there would be no goodwill or help healing.

Even with the risks of getting caught running through your head, you still make a beeline for the furthest generator from the rest of the group, all the way on the edge of the map. You felt Philip's fingertips ghost over your waist, and then your hand, pressing into your palm. You can hear his raspy breathing in your ear. It only gives you a sense of intense comfort. 

As soon as you're hidden behind ruinous, mossy walls, Philip uncloaks, the clanging of the bell near silent. He'd brought a coxcombed clapper. You felt somewhat flattered by that. He doesn't speak, but you figure from the few times you've ever seen him bring this particular type of clapper, it's a rare find. You almost feel guilty that he's wasting it on you. But the feeling is long forgotten when his palm reaches up to curve over your jawline and your fingers wrap lovingly around his bandaged wrist while you lean your cheek into his hand. 

Philip's facial expressions don't ever change. You don't think he can smile. You don't think he can laugh. But there's still something about the way he looks at you, head cocked to the side, eyes bright and soft and all on you. All for you. A generator pops somewhere in the distance. And you realize you don't have all trial. 

You're not much to rush something like this, but the situation and your own excitement makes it an exception. One of your hands drop to stroke slowly down him, near identical to the way his hand moved over you earlier. He shivers under your touch. He seemed so touch starved that he was already aroused just from the trace of your slightly trembling finger tips over his abdomen and down to his thigh. Your fingers shifted underneath the bandages, picking at an edge you found and moving the bandages down from between his legs. A soft groan leaves him as his eyes half-shut when you wrap your hand around him. Philip suddenly pulled you close, pushing you back up against the crumbling brick wall, his breathing turning heavier than usual. 

Your other hand moved to lift up your skirt for him as either one of his hands enveloped your thighs and suddenly lifted you up with little effort. Your lips found his neck. He was somewhat passive--like he's not quite sure what to do, but when his cock twitches in your hands, a chill sweeps down your spine you know that he's into it and keep going, your teeth grazing along his scarred skin. 

Philip let you take the lead, your hips shifting against his slowly. Realizing that he was giving you most of the control, you felt a bit of the pressure on your chest lift. The most he did was reciprocate your movements, rubbing up you to your liking. When he presses at your clit at just the right angle you moan and he catches on quick and repeats the movement again and again until you're shaking against him and as much of a panting mess as he is. 

Eventually, he seems to grow uncharacteristically impatient with the way you tease him and toy with him and he takes back control. Still in your hand, he lines up anyways with your entrance and slowly pushes in, a soft growl rolling on his tongue, muffled behind closed lips. Your hands leave him to press up to your face, palm over your mouth, teeth digging into your skin in order to cut off a moan. You squeezed your eyes shut, ducking your head, trying to focus on not making any noise. The last thing you wanted to do was attract attention and ruin this whole thing.

The killer was also a little larger than you had thought he would be, so it took a second to start actually feeling pleasure from the sensation of his slow, evenly paced thrusting. It's soon hard to focus between the warm bliss soaking into you and keeping your hands tight around your mouth. 

To your relief, it seems like he's had sex before the Entity claimed him as a pawn and understands the basic idea of pulling out. You're a bit embarrassed to realize that Philip has definitely gotten around more than you had previously and has more stamina and experience than you do. Of all the things you didn't see coming...other than your own sudden climax, of course. He had been working at you so slowly and so well that it had been hard to discern your actual orgasm from the general pleasure of just...him inside you. 

You felt kinda bad that he immediately pulled out once you'd finally cum for him. A soft groan left him when you once again wrapped your hands around him, still shaking with the aftermath of euphoria and finished him. He'd let one of your legs down to slam his hand besides your head into the brick wall, ducking his head as a semblance of a moan left him. 

The two of you stayed like that for what felt like a long time, until the sound of a generator being completed jolted you both from the falling ecstasy. For a moment, he looked down at you. You couldn't identify the look in his eyes, but it made you feel somewhat soft. You reached up to take his cheek into your palm and kiss him on his rough lips. He seemed stunned for a moment before his muscles eased and he relaxed into the feeling of your own lips. 

Obviously, Philip let you go afterwards. He wasn't nasty enough of a killer to hook you after what you'd done for him--for his body. Four of the generators were completed anyways, so it really wasn't worth trying to suddenly make up for all of the time he'd wasted--no, spent--on you.

"What happened? You never finished that generator you went after," David had commented to you as the exit gate opened wide. 

You were still sweating and shaking from your...encounter with Philip so you figured you could use it to lie. "Ran into him. The, um, Wraith. I just kinda looped him around for awhile. Figured I could distract him a little." 

You were relieved when no one asked anymore questions.

Safe again. 

Danny Johnson 

You find some entertainment, some pleasure in teasing the Ghost Face, in going back and forth with him. It's a never ending game that spares you the usual grind of a trial. Having him to play with? The game of cat and mouse featuring his curved knife to your skin? The most fun you've had in years. And he thinks likewise. 

The mutual teasing, flirting, fucked up courtship, whatever you wanna call it--it's not exactly kept private. 

Constantly, you catch shit for it from the other survivors. They're less likely to rescue you now, because of him. They think you're collaborating with him, cheating with him, and that's simply not how it works here in the Fog. You do none of the sort. He's not interested in knowing where the other survivors are, which generators are being worked on. The only thing he gives a fuck about in a trial with you, is where you are. No point in explaining that sort of infatuation to the others--it would only make things worse. 

You don't care that they don't come for you anymore. You adapt to it, naturally, becoming more independent, picking up on a skillset that really only came to benefit you. No one needs to save you from the hook or the shoulder of a killer if you're never caught in the first place, right? 

But eventually, all that teasing, all that time messing with the Ghost Face does culminate. 

He's having a particularly good round--he's killed all of your teammates. It's only you left. Just how he likes it. 

You're lucky enough to find the hatch. But you don't leave. Patiently, you wait for him, arms crossed. The buzzing lights flicker dully above you as your head drops slightly and you shut your eyes. They're not closed for long before strong arms creep around you. You feel the chin of his mask shift up slightly against your neck to reveal his mouth.

"Hey baby," he murmurs, knife dragging up your side, grazing over your skin, under your shirt. 

Your eyes stay closed but a smile crosses your face. "Hi, dick, how've you been?" 

Dramatically, the Ghost Face--Danny, sighs before he responds. "Lonely. Bored. Thinking of you. Baby names. The usual." 

You shake your head lightly. You think he's funny, a sentiment not shared by any of the other survivors. They don't find his as charming as you do for very obvious reasons--reason number one being the blade up against you skin. 

Danny nudges you, the hum of the open hatch nearby apparently giving him an idea to work with. "Hey...how about something new? I fuck you. You get the hatch in return? You're such a little tease but you never let me get up all in your pretty little guts..."

A bit of a smirk slips onto your face. "Hmmm..." Your eyes half open--you can feel his dick stiff pressed against you, against the back of your leg. "I've never been good at making hard decisions..." 

His voice, once low and smooth, turns to a growl. "Maybe I won't make it a decision for you." There's real threat in his words--when is there not? But you don't let him take the control from you. You don't let him shock you into a reaction. His only response is a disinterested scoff.

"That takes the fun out of it, don't you think?" Finally, you turn to face him, regarding him--more his mask actually--still with half shut eyes. "Don't you want me to want you?" 

"But you already do." With his mouth revealed, you can see the smirk tugging at the corner of his thin lips. You've never seen them this close before. One of his hands presses up to the back of your thigh, rising up slowly, leather dragging on your skin. Slowly, you lean up onto the tips of your toes to kiss him. 

His teeth grind into your bottom lip as he pushes up against you suddenly, a passionate puff of hot air escaping the nose of his mask. Almost without wasting a second, Danny's fingers grab onto your leg, lifting it up around his side so he can pull you closer, other hand roaming up your side. 

You don't have long to enjoy it, the feeling of his tongue in your mouth, as he suddenly pushes you back into one of the rusted nearby chairs skewed around what might have once been a waiting room. Danny grabs at the waist of your shorts, yanking them down, hard. The denim slips past your legs and you kick them off of your ankles. He finds your enthusiasm, as usual, arousing. Either of his gloved hands go to push your legs far apart. His head ducks between your spread legs, one hand palming at the tent between his own legs and the other reaching to raise his mask further up to reveal his nose. 

His hand leaves his face to pull aside your underwear. You don't even have the chance to catch your breath before his face is buried up against you. His tongue, hot, long, and narrow traces over you, your inner thigh, your clit. He bites you, lightly, making you gasp and flinch, blush burning across your entire face. Your fingers arch up against the cold metal of the chair. 

Danny's hand creeps between his own legs, palming at the tent forming in his pants between his legs. 

"You're holding out on me, aren't you?" he growls as you gasp, thighs squeezing around his face. He always gets frustrated when he can't make you cum in his mouth quickly, at least the first time anyways. He's desperate for the taste of you.

Before you can respond, both of his hands go to your hips, sliding under your ass, lifting you up out of the chair slightly. He rises to his feet, sliding into the chair himself, lowering you back down. Your hands move down with his, pushing his pants lower, past his hips. Danny shifts your underwear to the side. 

He likes to have you facing him--he likes to see your face, the way he can make it contort, the way he can make you squirm with pleasure on top of him. He can't complain. It feels just as good for him as it does for you. Danny's leather gloved hand reach to grab at your scalp, above your ear, the other taking hold at your jaw. 

With his mask still balanced above his mouth, slightly above the tip of his nose, he could lean in to kiss you. His lips are rough--they always are. But you need it. You need that sensation to take you from this world. Just for a few seconds. Maybe more if he allowed it. You feel his tongue move slow over yours. 

You gasp again into his mouth, trembling, as he makes you finally cum. He doesn't stop, apparently intent on making you borderline unconscious--the closest you could truly get to sleep in this realm. You take pleasure in falling almost dead into his body, into his arms, now around you tight, allowing him to use you to meet his own wants. His doll. Thats what you are. 

Danny's hand strokes over the form of your back.

He whispers, voice muffled by his mask once more. "As much as I'd like to slice you right open, tailbone to nape and dig around in your insides a little...I'll keep my promise. You were a good girl for me." 

To his credit, he does keep his promise. You're over his shoulder in mere moments. The chill of the hatch sweeps over you. Plummeting through the darkness, your eyes open halfway, and you catch a glimpse of him waving, all too smugly, fingers still sticky with you. Had the sudden blackness that came with dropping through the hatch not claimed you then, you might have been embarrassed.

Luckily, there still time for your face to flush, especially when you regained consciousness. On a whim, you lift the waistband of your jeans to look down. An irritated "hmph" escaped you. 

Fucker took your underwear. 

Quentin Shermer 

The Blissfield Butcher isn't exactly gentle to you. He's like...an animal for a lack of better words. He's unknown, he's scary, he's unpredictable to you. But maybe that's why you just can't stop coming back to him. The thrill. The adrenaline rush. Knowing that he's wrapped his giant, cruel, calloused hands around innocent throats and crushed windpipes--but not yours. At least not yet. 

You were always the one that came to him. 

You hadn't been looking for him with the intent to get your back blown out to be honest. That'd always been a dark fantasy, of course, pushed away deep in the back of your mind. You try not to think of it when he's near. You try not to let him get to you--invade your thoughts more than he already has.

It's hard trying to live normally when you're practically obsessed with a murderous urban legend. 

You'd just been looking for him because it had been so long since you'd last seen him and you were getting worried. For the first few weeks, you had wondered if your luck had finally ran out--if he finally tired of toying with you and was planning your demise next. Then why weren't you dead yet? He's a fast worker--if he wanted you dead you would have been six feet under days ago...So then where was he? 

You know he's a serial killer. You know he's bad all the way through. He shouldn't be worth your time. He shouldn't.

But his disappearance from your new norm was making your life all too regular again and you couldn't take it. 

No recent murders. At least nothing reported yet...maybe he's finally picked a fight with someone he can't handle...

The thought alone is absolutely fucking terrifying. Who in the fuck could take someone like him down? Not possible. It couldn't happen. Not to the Butcher. Not to your Butcher. He's so ridiculously strong...You can still recall the way he easily bruises your arm just by grabbing it too tight sometimes. 

There's obviously only one place to check for him--the abandoned building he sulks around in. It's stupid but you feel almost privileged that you know where he sleeps. Obviously, he literally knows your address and he's known it far longer than you probably realize. But knowing something that private about him feels intimate to you. Especially since it's one of the only things you do know about him. 

"Hey...?" you call out softly as you peek around a corner in the run down building. You're relieved that so far none of the other squatters have tried to bother you or intervene with your search. It still blows your mind a little that someone like the Butcher would want to be in the proximity of any other living people while he slept. You'd never figure this fucking guy out...

You end up in a room that seemed to have far more fucked up decorations than any other area in the expanse. Judging by the skulls and home taxidermy and generally serial killer-esque type shit hanging from the walls and skewed across the floor, you figure you've finally come across his lair. You knew that he lived in the abandoned building--you just had never seen the place he slept up close before. It's...breathtaking for a lack of better words. 

Within moments of entering the room, you suddenly get pinned up against the wall. You gasp in surprise and as a hand wraps around your throat, you begin to wish you hadn't wasted the breath. Through half shut eyes you recognize him. Your shaking hands reach up to his wrist. You don't try to pry his hand away from your throat as you knew from experience it would only make him squeeze tighter out of sheer spite. 

With the breath you had left, you tried to plead with him. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I just...I just wanted to see if you were...okay." You don't want to speak your truth.

I missed you.

You don't want to admit your truth because it's the worst possible string of thoughts you've had in years. God how far you've fallen...Remember when you used to get involved with normal people and not abnormally large serial killers that were supposed to be town folklore? Good times. Boring times. Stupid fucking times. 

To your relief, his grip lessened just slightly around your throat and you managed to get in a shallow breath. His head tilts slightly to the side and he leans in close to speak. It's a rare thing to hear him speak.

"...'okay?'" he repeats in a low voice, raspy from disuse. You want to kick yourself for shivering. 

Instead you nod the best you can and press your thighs tighter together. He noticed, of course he fucking noticed. He leaned in closer, inhaling softly. You hold dead still when you feel the heat of his breath on your skin and his lips press up against your jaw. Once again you want to kick yourself for leaning into his touch--for groaning with pleasure and enjoying this because you're so starved what the fuck else do you have going for you? And he knows that and that's probably the worst part of this guilty fucking pleasure of yours. 

The hand that had been pinning your abdomen to the wall shifts down to your thigh. His fingers dig roughly into your flesh and his thumb angles up just right. It's nothing short of euphoria when you finally feel his rough lips on yours. It's so brief but you're so completely lost in it that it catches you off guard when his hand leaves your throat and reaches over your back instead. Effortlessly, he throws you over his shoulder. Your fingers dug into his back as a frightened squeak escaped you. You prayed to fucking God no one else but him heard that and if anyone else in this place did they'd mind their business. 

When your back hits the shoddy, dirty mattress on the floor you know there's no going back. Not that you want to anyways. You let him tear your shirt off your body.

Between all the oddities surrounding the mattress you feel like you're taking part in some fucked ritual. It only gets your blood pumping quicker. The windows are all broken. A sheer, bitter breeze blows through tattered curtains, biting at your skin making you tremble once again beneath him. But he doesn't care. This is his realm. And you were quick to forget about the cold when his heated body presses tight up against you with no inch of space between to spare.

Your legs part for him. Just for him. 

He fucks you hard into that mattress like tomorrow isn't coming (and for you, maybe it isn't). There's really no love in it. Not that you expected there to be. Whatever you two have isn't love in any good sense. Maybe a mix of desperate obsession on your part and a sort of horrible possessiveness on his. It's about power and you're all too willing to let him practically maul you. You can't help that his tongue and teeth just feel so fucking good on your skin. 

Your nails dig into his back as you wrap your legs around him to bring him closer than he already is. You can hear him growling in your ear and it's enough to set your insides on fire. You shut your eyes so you can focus on him. Just him. 

They can hear you. You know the other people barely scraping buy in this dusty old place can you hear you both. But they're smart enough not to come in. Thank God they didn't. Somehow you felt as though the Butcher wouldn't take kindly to being interrupted. It makes you feel almost...protected for a lack of better words. Like nothing can reach you as long as you're there, throat in his rough hand and body beneath his. You can't even feel the bitter cold from outside anymore. Just heat.

There's this sense of genuine pride in you when you manage to outlast him. You probably had some sort of advantage considering how pent up he seemed to be. Either way as he finishes, he suddenly grabs you by your hair, close to your scalp and pins your head back. A low moan of pleasure comes from you as he leans down to bite down onto your throat. Maybe to muffle his own noises, maybe to cause you that wonderful blend of pain and pleasure. It's enough to push you over your own edge and your back arches up into him. 

He doesn't let you fall back onto the mattress. He doesn't allow you an inch of space. He only turns on his side, fingers digging into you like he thinks you're going to vanish right then and there. You gasp for air as you come down from your high and struggle to steady your breathing. With the way he's practically smothering you, you can barely get an arm up to wipe the perspiration from your brow. 

When the wave of exhaustion suddenly comes over you, you can only feel grateful that you hadn't made plans for the rest of the evening or the morning after. Chances were you weren't going back home tonight. 

Waking up in an abandoned house next to a vicious murderer didn't really feel that different from waking up next to any other stranger before. He's already awake, still with his arms wrapped around you, chin on top of your head. A calloused thumb strokes slowly over your cheek and his palm is still warm against your throat. 

"I only wish I'd known a name to scream last night," you murmured softly to him, blinking the sleep from your eyes. You regretted those words almost as quickly as they had slipped from your mouth. 

In all of your fucked up little affair, this little game you played with him, you'd never asked his name. You'd never asked anything, fearing that he'd quickly lose patience and interest in you and kill you right then and there. You held your breath in his silence. But then he spoke, his voice low, barely a whisper. 

You sat stiff and awkward in the passenger seat, arms crossed over your chest as if you were wrongfully reprimanded (some would say that you were). Neither of you had said a word since getting in the car, just sat in silence for ten painful minutes. You were too busy stubbornly staring out the window and he was busy giving you well deserved silent treatment. It’s been like this for two whole weeks. Constant bickering, constant arguing, constantly having to put up with your bullshit.

Leon exhaled through his nose, eyes set on the blur in front of him, ears ringing from how fucking quiet it was. And it’s weird because Leon has dealt with much, much worse, but something about you just worked him on his last nerves. He’s literally fought the worse of the worse, but you just got under his skin in a way he couldn’t shake.

You were assigned to him on a cold Monday morning, loud confident and painfully honest. The first three hours he had with you were bliss, you listened, you nodded all eagerly and got along with the others. The second you were fully alone with him, you completely switched, lips pouted, arms crossed, eyes rolling at every thing he said.

Leon had tried, really tried, to be patient. He’d even given you the whole, ‘I’m not as scary as I seem’ speech.

Didn’t matter.

You talked back, you argued, you sassed him.

-day one, 8 am-

Leon stood in the hallway outside the training room, arms crossed, trying to look approachable. It wasn’t really working.

You were escorted by someone whose name you kept forgetting, walking up to him as you eagerly scanned the place. You didn’t even notice that the person left, not even bothering to introduce you to Leon, but it wasn’t really like you needed an introduction. You heard a lot about him.

“Rookie,” he greeted gruffly with a nod, your attention turning away from the framed photo on the wall beside him. You blinked up at him, giving him a small smile as you tried your very best not to ogle. “Welcome.”

“Thanks.” It was quick, a little too friendly and curt, but the words stuck in your throat like your body was forcing you to not word vomit to Leon of all people. All 5’11, tired, stubble blessed calmness wrapped up in the hottest dilf you’ve ever seen.

You blinked, clearing your throat awkwardly. “What did you say?”

He eyed you once, exhaling slightly before nodding to follow him. “First day jitters is normal. Try not to let it get to your head.”

You followed him like a lost puppy, staring at the back of his head letting your eyes just naturally trail along down his shoulders and arms. You weren’t able to stop in time at his abrupt stop, colliding into his back in a quick smack that had you letting out a loud oof in surprise. He immediately turned around, barely budging as he looked down at you.

Silence.

Heavy, suffocating silence.

“Maybe try to walk beside me and not behind me.”

“Right, sorry.”

Leon lead you to the training room, giving you side glances every now and then to make sure you weren’t stumbling over yourself again.

“Are we immediately going to train?” You asked loudly, stepping in front of him and turning around as you walked backwards just so you could look at him.

“Did you think we were?”

“Aren’t we?” He stared at you silently, glancing behind you at the rapidly approaching wall, stopping a few feet from a nearby door so you couldn’t go smacking into it. “Can we?”

“I think it’s a little more custom to show you around and introduce you—”

“I just want to get to the good stuff.” You interrupted impatiently, looking down a nearby hallway before rocking back and forth on the balls of your feet.

“I’m sure we’ll get to that soon.”

“What’s down there?” You pointed with one finger, Leon looked down the hallway with you, turning to look at you again.

“Offices.”

“Oh, okay.” You trailed off, looking up at the ceilings for some type of directional cues. “Whose office?”

“Important people.”

“Do you have an office?”

“No.”

“I thought important people have offices.”

Leon breathed in slowly at that, eyes boring into you. “What was that?”

You looked at him again, eyebrows raised slightly. “Huh? Oh, I meant, just— y’know…”

He let you stumble over your words, eyes meeting your avoidant ones until you quickly turned to go down the hall. “You’re going the wrong way.” He said simply, watching as you did a full 180 and walked the opposite direction.

This is going to be a very long day.

-day two, 4 pm-

He could still hear your voice echoing in the back of his head, unnecessary comments, rapid-fire questions, annoyed sighs. Everything went down hill after showing you around, he blamed it on nerves. That was the only thing that stopped him from questioning his own sanity.

Leon stared at the ceiling.

He’d been through hell.

Literal hell.

And yet somehow you were the one testing his mental health.

Leon was focused on the briefing folder in his hands, blocking out your nonstop seven minute rant. He honestly wasn’t even sure what the fuck you were even talking about, or how you had so much to talk about. He hoped you would’ve just tired yourself out and stopped talking completely, but you never did.

“…and I’m just saying, why would he expect perfection out of me for our first drill? It was so unfair. I didn’t have breakfast either, I slept through my first alarm, so I had to drink some gross smoothie my roommate made. Do you like smoothies, or are you more of a milksh—”

Leon closed the folder slowly.

“You done?”

You blinked at him. “Well, no? I was just about to ask if you liked milkshakes more than smoothies. I can understand if you do, sometimes I prefer milkshakes more.”

He just let you ramble on, opening the folder again to quietly read the contents. Inhaled through his nose and reminding him that you were new, he was a professional, he’s been in your shoes before. It’s just nerves. It’s just nerves.

“Also, you walk a little too fast. Could you slow down a bit?” At your question, he immediately stopped walking, turning to the side to face you as he closed the folder.

“You have to keep up.” He spoke softly, extending the folder for half a second like he was debating on letting you read it but decided not to give it to you.

“But I can’t really keep up with you if you’re taller than me.”

He opened his mouth, closed it, and looked down at the folder for some divine intervention to help him out of this interaction. “Okay, I’ll walk a lil’ slower.” He looked back at you with a tight smile, walking in an awkward languid stride.

He was starting to miss zombies again.

-day five, 12 pm-

Leon crouched beside the evidence marker, gloved fingers tracing the edge of a blistered wound on the open neck of the victim. You watched as he examined the scorch pattern on the concrete, head tilting as he examined the body. You stood behind him, arms crossed, rocking on your heels.

“What am I supposed to be doing?” You stepped onto the tips of your toes, peeking over his shoulder to watch his gloved hand as he

“Observing.”

“I already am.”

“Then you’re doing what you need to.”

You fell quiet, staring at the back of his head before quickly crouching beside him, stepping so unnecessarily close that your shoulders bump together. “Is that a bite or a burn?”

Leon doesn’t look up, and you’re not sure if he’s aware of the close proximity or just doesn’t care. “Burn. High-temp, chemical.”

“Can I examine it too?”

“No.”

“Am I supposed to just watch you?” You asked curiously, turning at the sound of his knees popping as he stood upright again. Your gaze lingered on his legs, inching up slowly, slowly before craning your neck to look up at you. He was looking off into the distance, scanning something you weren’t able to see. “I could help you if you told me.”

“It’d help me if you were quiet,” you could tell he didn’t mean to say it, just a slip of his mouth that he wasn’t able to stop in time. Your eyebrows furrowed in defensiveness, lips curled into an offended pout as you stood up. His head quickly turned to you, eyebrows lifting slightly in recognition. “I’m sorry. It’s easier for people to focus on the evidence when it’s a bit… quieter.”

You looked away, mumbling to yourself before digging the tip of your shoe into the dirt. For the tiniest of seconds, he actually felt bad, watching your shoe scrape in the dirt and the way your shoulders curled in slightly. He approached you quietly, head ducking slightly to try to catch your eye, one hand hovering over your shoulder. “Hey..”

You finally lifted your head, eyes narrowed just a little in that bratty, dramatic way that had him immediately pulling back. “Is your lack of patience a compensation for your inability to be in full control of others?”

He sighed sharply, giving you a slow nod as his eyebrows raised quickly in that ‘figures she’d start something’ kind of way. He hummed lowly, blinking down at you before tugging on the edges of his sleeve. “I’m used to working alone. That’s all.”

You blinked, pursing your lips together to try to offer some advice, but he cut you off before you opened your mouth again. “Maybe you should wait in the car, hm? I think we could both use a break.”

For a moment, the air between you softened. Just a little. You stared at him for a long moment, eyes flicking along his face before shrugging slightly. “Fine by me.”

You walked past him, glancing over your shoulder to sneak another peek at him as he turned around, the broad expanse of his back moving slowly against the tight fabric of his shirt. You lingered by just long enough to watch the muscles move, eyes trailing up along his shoulders before hurriedly dipping into the safety of the car with a shaky exhale.

-day seven, 3 pm-

The warehouse was dark, cold and stuffy, reeking of mold and whatever organisms were too busy growing in between the walls. Leon figured it would be a good idea to bring you out to the field with him. Exposure therapy. It was more in hopes that whatever happened was scare you into not being an insufferable brat for two minutes. It was a terrible thought to think, especially about a new recruit, especially by someone he was training.

It seemed like you were purposefully stepping too close to him, he could feel the warmth of your body seeping into his personal space. You lingered exactly three inches away from him, chest nearly pressing into his back in an incredibly distracting way. He had cast you two stern looks to try to give you a silent reminder on this new thing called personal space, but nothing seemed to click.

He held up a fist, a clear signal to stop. You kept walking too distracted on the creepy, dark hallway to the right of you to notice his signal. You bumped into his back, hard enough that you were sent right back into a déjà vu moment of your first day. You quickly looked up at him, hoping he wouldn’t send another firm, cold look towards your way. Leon slowly turned around, eyeing you up and down once before walking forward after a long period of silence.

You winced to yourself, focusing on the back of his shoulder and the extend of his arm as he held his gun out. He took a sharp turn left towards a crate covered in yellow stickers, but you were a fraction too slow to turn. He quickly grabbed the back of your crate, tugging you towards him with such simple ease you were certain your stomach butterflies multiplied into frantic moths.

“Stop,” he said simply, keeping your vest firm in his grip, looking sternly at you in a way that had your cheeks warming. “Pay. Attention.”

“I am.” You rebutted to yourself, watching as he shook his head, but motioned for you to follow him before moving towards the safety of the crate. You listened this time, mainly staying behind him just to proudly stare at the way he moved.

-day thirteen, 5 am-

The sky was still dark when Leon stepped out of his car, eyes heavy, shoulders stiff. You were already waiting at the entrance of the building for him, quickly rushing forward at the sight of him stepping out.

“Good morning,” you smiled sweetly, handing him a small paper cup of black coffee. He looked down at it in silence, rubbing the side of his stubbled jaw before cautiously taking the cup. “Nice car.”

You peeked inside the car through its windows, squinting as you tried to scan the interior. Leon just wrapped an arm around your hip, politely turning you away. “Thank you.”

“I guess the higher ups had to repay for not giving you an office, huh?” You joked lightly, nudging your elbow against his, but he just blankly stared at you. Taking a long sip of his coffee, and maintaining that eye contact, he nodded once.

“Not much of a morning person?” You asked, quickly following after him as he took three steps off the street. He inhaled through his nose, taking another aggressively large gulp. “It’s a beautiful day out.”

At your words, he looked up at the sky, subtly looking around for the beautiful day you were talking about. “Where?”

You pressed your lips together, motioning around at the semi quiet area. “Everywhere.” Leon gave you a look, glancing down at the half drunken coffee in his hand before humming lowly.

“Drink a lot of these?” He motioned with the cup.

“How’d you know?” You tilted your head at him, skipping in line as he stepped up the stairs of the building.

“Just a hunch.”

You nodded to yourself, feet subconsciously pattering in line with his strides. He stopped at the top of the stairs, turning to you before he opened the door. “You seem tired, Leon.”

“Do I?” He said sarcastically, opening the large front door for you. He stepped behind you after you entered the building, quickly tossing the coffee into a nearby trash can.

“So, I’m taking it you’re not a morning person? Are you more of a night owl? Or maybe like an evening…stallion?”

“I’m always tired.”

“Why?”

“Because of you, kiddo.”

You paused, puffing your cheeks out at the very appealing fact of Leon being awake all night because of you. You cleared your throat, trying not to dwindle too much on thoughts of what he’d be doing all alone late at night. “You saying I keep you up?”

He nodded simply, but his head snapped around at the sound of your poorly muffled snickers. He tilted his head at you, a short, genuine chuckle slipping from his lips as he realized the hidden innuendo of his words. “Yeah, that’s real cute.”

Your brain literally short circuited at the sound of his laugh, eyes blinking once at him as if he had sprouted angel wings and a glowing halo.

-day eighteen, 1 pm-

You and Leon are sat side-by-side in the briefing room, legs pressed together in a professional, bordering on inappropriate way. The director drone on about mission parameters and potential targets. You weren’t too sure, you stopped listening six minutes ago. Your leg was jittering up and down, foot bouncing sporadically against cold tile. Every now and then, your foot would nudge against his boot, and even though he’d occasionally nudge his foot against yours to get you to stop, you physically couldn’t. It was like your body just needed the physical reminder that he was just within reach.

You sat up straight as the director glanced your way, eyes scanning the room to ensure everyone was still paying attention. You peeked a fast side glance his way, then another, trying to savor the look of his side profile.

You nudged his foot once.

Nothing.

Nudged again.

Nothing.

Nudged a third time.

Nothing.

He just sat there, actively listening to everything the director said, not even sparing you the smallest of glances. You nudged his foot again, and he was quick to reach down under the table to grab your knee. You stared down to where his hand engulfed your knee, forcing your leg still. His jaw flexed, muscles visibly clenched to keep from speaking while the director was.

You looked up at him again as he pressed enough force against your thigh that you could feel the heat of his palm through the fabric of your pants. You kept still, slowly blinking up at his stoic expression. After a moment of keeping you in place, he unfortunately pulled away from you, the warmth of his hand disappearing almost immediately.

You waited about two seconds before nudging his foot again.

-day twenty four-

The two of you sat silent in a filing room, sitting on a metal table, you watched Leon as he stared down at the newly filed report in his hands. You could see the way his eyes shifted back and forth as he reviewed the mission report, checking over for anything he might have missed. You leaned forward towards the edge of the table, legs swinging back and forth before you cleared your throat.

“How’d I do?” He set down a pen nearby beside you, running one hand through his hair before looking at you.

“If you hadn’t ignored two of my commands, you would have done better.”

You sighed softly, looking down at your thighs as you brushed off a small speck of lint from your pants. Leon’s eyes followed the movement, turning to look back at the report.

“So, like on a scale from one to ten?”

“Six.”

“A six?” You repeated in shock, eyes wide as your head snapped up to him fast enough there would’ve been a cartoonish whoosh of air.

He shrugged, patting you by the hip to motion for you to get down. You quickly hopped off, snatching the pen from the table and clicking it aggressively a few times. “Well, you did…better. Than last time.”

“Really?”

“Mhm.”

“By how much?”

“On a scale from one to ten?” You nodded at him, to which he looked away deep in thought. “One.”

-day thirty three, 10 am-

You handed Leon the file he asked for, but not before giving him a once‑over. He gave you a double take, eyebrows furrowed at the sudden look but turned to study the file. His eyes flicked up from the paperwork, catching the way your gaze lingered a little too long on his hands. He quickly looked down at the papers, trying to ignore the burning feeling of your eyes on him.

“You look like you slept well last night,” you said suddenly, and he had to force himself to not look up at you. “Did you?”

“I guess so, yeah.”

“Does that mean you’re not thinking of me anymore?”

At that, his eyes looked up to meet yours, eyebrows tilted up ever so slightly. “Excuse me?”

“Oh, I mean, like— a few weeks ago you said that y—”

“I know what I said.”

“Is that a no?”

He looked down at the file, not answering your question, but his silence was enough of an answer for you. You pressed your lips together in annoyance, shoulders squaring slightly like you were getting ready to pounce on him. You stared at him, chewing on the inside of his cheek as you debated on how to get his attention again.

“Maybe it’s a good thing then. People your age need all the sleep they can get.” He blinked at you, tucking the file under his large bicep.

Bingo.

“My age?”

“Yeah. Y’know, like… an older guy.”

For a moment, you could see the puzzle clicking together in his head, the loud debate on whether he was going to entertain your stupidity or not. He blinked slowly, turning around to start walking down the hallway. You huffed under your breath, rushing a little to catch up to him. “I didn’t mean it in a bad way. Sleep is important for everyone, but more important for older people.”

He nodded silently, stepping out the building and walking to his car, not bothering to check to make sure you were following because he knew you well enough to know that you were following him like a baby duck. “I slept really good last night too.”

“Yeah, that’s good, kid.” You hummed happily to yourself, hands behind your back as you rounded the car to reach the passenger side.

You swung the door open, stumbling inside before slamming the door behind you. You waited until he got in the car, door closing with a soft thud before grinning at him. “Do you normally stay up late thinking of me? Isn’t that a bit unprofessional?”

“I think this conversation is unprofessional.”

“You didn’t say no.”

He shifted in his seat as he clicked his seat belt on, leaning against the leather cushioning as he stared at you. He turned the car on with a quick motion of his wrist, resting his hand against the bottom of the steering wheel. “Put your seatbelt on.” He said curtly, looking out the window until he heard the soft click of the belt.

“…Leon?”

“Yes?”

“Are you embarrassed because of my question?” You leaned forward, hands on the center console as you pushed through his personal space bubble like always. He looked over at you, peeking towards the windows as he started the car.

“No.”

“But you didn’t answer my question.”

“Your question doesn’t need to be answered.”

“But not giving me an answer makes it seem like you do think of me.”

“Yeah, I see you in my nightmares.”

-day thirty nine-

The building was quiet for once, the kind of late‑evening lull where most agents had already gone home and city around had gone quiet out of respect for long days. You were exhausted, body heavy, eyes droopy, mind all foggy from a day of investigations and identifying viral mutations. The sights were burned into your head, staring at vials under a UV and spending hours trying to identify which one is which, what they look like when they take a host, which one is more deadly. And don’t even get started on the amount of filing you’d done.

Who knew the DSO required so much work?

The clock on a nearby wall ticked towards midnight, dim lights peered out from closed doors of other agents who were trying to wrap up their last bit for the day. You hadn’t seen Leon since that abandoned building earlier today, and honestly, you were starting to miss his brooding self, even if it had barely been only thirteen hours since you last saw him.

You’re holding a cup of lukewarm coffee that you’ve neglected to drink because you were too busy running around reviewing case files you didn’t fully understand. You’re sitting on the floor of an empty hallway, back against the wall and a small handful of paperwork spread out awkwardly against your lap. You reread the same sentence you’ve been stuck on for five minutes, trying to get your mind out of its temporary brain freeze.

Footsteps echoed from down the hall, you quickly pull your legs into a lopsided pretzel, blinking up at the pair of legs with a tight polite smile. You’re fully expecting to see some random person giving you a concerned look at the disheveled sight of you. Leon appears from the corner, jacket off, sleeves rolled up to his forearms, hair slightly mussed from running his hands through it too many times.

He stops when he notices that it’s you on the floor and not another stressed out newbie. “You’re still here?” He asked, voice low and hushed. For the first time since he’s met you, and probably for the first time today, you don’t speak.

Or complain.

Or correct him, or make fun of him for stating the obvious.

You were just quiet, brain running on 20%, body slumped over in fatigue and face completely calm in similar ways it would be when you’d just woken up from a peaceful sleep. He lingers in front of you, watching as you gave him a slow nod before crouching down in front of you. “What are you working on?”

“This...” You trailed off as you tried to find the right words, but eventually gave up and opted on giving him the report so he could read through it instead. Your eyes shift from his own, watching them flick left and right as he read, before dipping down to where his arms hovered over your knees.

“How long have you been at it?”

“Uhm…what time is it now?”

Leon watched you for a moment, arms crossed loosely. It was strange seeing you like this— not poking at him, not trying to get a rise out of him. Just… relaxed.

He gently grabbed the rest of the papers from your lap, standing up slowly. “C’mon, you’re done for the night.” He extended his hand out to you, to which you quickly obliged, reaching out to allow your hand to be blanketed in his.

He pulled you up with ease, his hand steady around yours as he tugged you towards him. You stumbled forward slightly, legs half asleep from the position you were in, standing closer to him than you meant to be. You quickly straightened up, smoothing the wrinkles on your pants as you took a small step back.

“Grab your stuff,” he looked down the hall as you quickly bent down to grab the coffee cup from the floor, his eyes flicking momentarily at the curve of your ass. “I’ll take you home.“

You turned to him with eyebrows raised. “No, that’s okay, you don’t have to—”

“I know,” he cut in gently. “I’m still doing it.”

There was no room to argue, not with the way he quickly turned to walk down the empty hall. You rushed after him, the building humming quietly around you as he glanced over to the side to ensure you were nearby.

“You shouldn’t be here this late.”

“You were here this late.”

“That’s different.”

“How?”

He didn’t answer, just pressed the elevator button and waited, arms crossed against his chest. The elevator doors slid open, and he gestured you inside with a small tilt of his head before following after you. The doors closed with an eery shut, sealing the two of you in a quiet metal box lit by soft fluorescent light.

You leaned against the wall, watching the levels tick down. “What were you doing?”

“Work.”

You looked over at him, glancing in his hands for the paper or files he would’ve been working on but you only found the ones he took from you. “Where’s your files?”

“Submitted.”

“Oh.”

He looked over at you, giving you a slow hum. “I’ll keep these in my car until tomorrow.” He just stood there beside you, keeping the files tucked under his armpit.

“Thanks.”

By the time you reached the garage, the air was cold enough to make you shiver, night air biting aggressively at your face. Leon unlocked the car with a soft beep, stepping around the vehicle to open the passenger door for you. You slid into the passenger seat, sinking into the warmth of the interior. Leon got in a moment later, shutting the door with a soft thud that echoed in the quiet garage.

He started the engine, the dashboard lighting up in soft blues. The radio stayed off. You provided him your address, but for a while, neither of you spoke.

You watched the way his hands rested on the wheel, the way his eyes darted around the roads as he drove. The ride was surprisingly relaxing, the perfect amount of comfortable silence needed for such a late night.

When he finally pulled up in front of your building, he shifted the car into park but didn’t say anything. Didn’t even look at you, just sat there, hands resting against the wheel, eyes forward. You unbuckled slowly, glimpsing up at him before swinging the door open. “Thank you, Leon.” At the sound of his name, he glanced your way, giving you a slight nod.

The cold air hit you the moment you opened the door, but the warmth from the car clung to your skin. You stepped out, closing the door gently behind you. You walked toward your building, your footsteps soft on the pavement. Halfway up the stairs, you turned back towards the unmoving car.

Leon was still there, still watching. Sitting in the quiet glow of the dashboard lights, eyes following you until you reached the door. He didn’t even look away when you turned back. You turned towards the front door with a shaky sigh, swallowing the lump in your throat as you unlocked it.

Stepping inside, you quickly peeked out the nearest window at the sound of the low rumble of his car pulling away. You smiled to yourself, biting your bottom lip before rushing up to your bedroom.

The peace was nice while it lasted.

-day forty, 1 am-

Leon could feel the weight of your body on top of him, the tight suction of your cunt around his cock had his head tipping back, guiding your hips against his own. Each breathy little gasps and moans filled his ears, cock twitching inside you.

Heavy eyes were stuck to your every move, watching as you bounced up on his length, trailing down to the jiggle of your tits. The slick sounds of your pussy rang in his ears, breathing heavy as he stared up at your face, soaking in every inhale you took. Leon gripped your hips tighter, one hand sliding down to grope at your ass lifting up and connecting down against the flesh in a firm smack.

Lost in the feeling of you, he was only dimly aware of a distant ringing sound until the shrill trill of his cell phone shrilled loudly, slicing through the haze of lust. Leon's eyes flew open, his body rigid as he jolted awake. The first thing he saw was the empty expanse of his bedroom, the rumpled sheets tangled loosely around his bare legs. The second was the unmistakable heat and dampness between his own thighs, sticky and cool in the wake of his precum his cock throbbed against his sweats.

With a low, frustrated groan, he slowly sat up against his headboard, staring off into space as his phone continued to ring. He didn’t even want to give his dream a second thought, but the painful heat in his gut made it incredibly hard to.

Leon cursed under his breath. “No fucking way.” He hesitated, glancing over at his phone as he reached out for it. He let the phone ring until the call naturally ended, watching the notification of a missed phone call from Claire. His cock throbbed angrily at its neglect, one hand fisting tightly around the blanket.

Leon laid back on his bed, the faint moonlight filtering in through the half-open blinds. His mind drifted to the thought of you, just for long enough that he could physically feel the leak of precum coating his underwear. He dragged a hand along his face, trying to wipe the thoughts away.

It didn’t really make sense. You were annoying. A sassy fucking brat who spoke back on every little thing he said, constantly pushed his buttons. But the longer he thought about it, the more he pictured you, like a flashing red light of warning that only made the straining erection in his pants worse.

As if summoned by his thoughts, Leon's hand drifted down to palm his growing erection straining against his sweatpants. He groaned breathlessly, eyebrows furrowed slightly. Shielding his eyes with one muscular forearm, Leon slipped his hand into his sweatpants and wrapped it around his cock. A shudder of warmth rippled through his body at the contact, his breath catching in his throat as he began to stroke himself with slow deliberate pumps.

He tried to block out the memory of you from his mind, but almost like it was on cue, a flash of you bending over popped up. His thumb pressed against the weeping head, dragging along the slit before sliding down to squeeze at the base. “Oh ffuckk.” He breathed shakily, and for a moment he could feel the warmth of you around him, could nearly hear the soft, breathless whines that left your mouth.

With a low exhale, he removed his arm from his face, dragging his pants down until the weight of him slapped up against his stomach. He moved his other hand, wrapping his fingers back around the girth base, the pinkish head flushed and leaking. His calloused palm glided up the thick length, circling around the swollen crown before sinking back down.

His climax approached swiftly, muscles tensing and stomach clenching as his hand worked over his cock. He breathed out laboredly, head pressing against the pillow under him as he mumbled out your name. At the last possible second, his hips jerked up into the tight fist of his hand, cock twitching and pulsing as thick ropes of semen erupted from the tip. Jet after jet of his cum splattered against his hand and stomach, painting himself with his own release.

For a long moment, Leon could only lie there gasping for breath, his heart pounding against his ribs as the lingering echoes of his climax slowly faded. The night was dark, the only sound the distant wail of a siren echoing through the quiet city streets outside. He sighed heavily, eyes fluttering closed as his cock slowly softened.

“I’m so screwed.”

-present time-

The rain had softened to a steady hiss against the car, the two of you both actively avoiding each other despite being within three feet of one another. Leon kept his hands on the wheel, jaw set as he was trying very, very hard not to think about how irritated he was.

You hadn’t spoken since the argument.

He hadn’t either.

Then you shifted in your seat, clearing your throat as you looked at him. “Are you mad?”

Leon’s eyelid twitched. Just barely. “I’m not mad.”

“You look mad.”

“I’m not.”

“You sound mad.”

“I’m not.”

You stared at his side profile, leaning forward to try to force him to look at you but his gaze remained steady on the road. “Did I embarrass you back there?”

“Rookie.”

“What?”

“Just say what you need to say.”

You perked up slightly, leaning back against the seats. “So, earlier, when you said I was being reckless—”

“You were.”

“—I wasn’t.”

Leon’s head turned so slowly it was almost mechanical. “You ran into a room without checking your corners.”

“But you were beside me, couldn’t you do it too?”

He stared at you. Actually stared. Like he was trying to decide if you were joking. He pressed his tongue along the inside of his cheek, turning back to stare at the road.

“Leon.”

He ignored you.

“Leon?”

Still silent.

“Are you seriously giving me the silent treatment? Aren’t you a little ol—”

“Rookie.”

“Yeah?”

“Stop. Talking.”

You raised an eyebrow at him, scoffing to yourself before looking out the window. The car fell silent again. Leon’s grip on the steering wheel had gone from tense to white‑knuckled, his jaw locked so tight it looked painful. You could practically feel the irritation radiating off him. You shifted again, just enough to make the leather seat creak.

“So,” you said, keeping your eyes on the scenery around you, “you’re definitely still mad.”

That was it.

Leon’s hand shot out, turning the car sharply towards the side of the road. Tires hissed against the wet pavement, his hand quickly turning the engine off which idled and hissed to sleep. He didn’t speak for a moment. He just sat there, deep breathing like he was trying to keep himself calm.

Then he turned to you.

Slowly.

“Sweetheart,” he said, voice low and tight, “I am trying, really trying, to keep my composure. But you are making it extremely difficult.”

You blinked once, pointing to yourself. “Me?”

“Yes. You.” He ran a hand through his hair, unbuckling his seatbelt to physically turn and face you. “You don’t listen,” he started listing things out on one hand, fingers extending at every annoying thing you’ve done for the past two months. “You argue with everything I say. You run into danger like you’re invincible. And then you sit here and poke at me like it’s a game.”

You opened your mouth, but he held up a hand.

“No. No. This is where you stay quiet and listen.”

Your mouth zipped shut. You swallowed, suddenly very aware of how seriously angry he was.

“You do realize, I’m responsible for you,” he asked, waiting for you to silently nod your head to make sure you were actually listening. “I cannot do my job if you won’t let me.”

The car went silent again, but it wasn’t the same silence as before. It was this heavy, tense kind of tension. You stared at him, blinking slowly as you shifted in your seat trying to relearn how to breathe.

Despite the harshness of his words, you couldn't ignore the way your body reacted to his stern lecture. A thrill raced through you, settling low in your belly as you met his heated gaze. The furious set of his jaw, the intensity burning in his eyes—it sent a secret, shameful pulse of arousal through you. You knew it was wrong, but the way he was looking at you, speaking to you with such authority... it was incredibly exciting.

“I’m sorry.” You mumbled softly to which he let out a curt chuckle.

“Oh, you’re ’sorry’?” He tilted his head at you, watching the way you immediately just nodded your head at his echo. He looked at you for a moment longer, taking in the way your face darkened in embarrassment and the slight downturn of your lips into the pout he knew all too well. Realizing he might’ve overreacted, he quickly looked away, arm resting against the center console as he scratched the side of his jaw.

He couldn't shake the lingering ghost of his dream, the feel of you against him still etched into his skin. “Leon?” You spoke hesitantly, gently tapping him by his elbow to check on him. His head turned to look at you again, but the more he looked at you, the more he thought of that fucking dream.

And then he an insistent, throbbing ache deep in his groin. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat, shaking his head slightly to try to ignore the pulsing heat building between his legs, but you took it as a silent shut down. You anxiously sat there, oblivious to his internal struggles.

He couldn't focus, couldn't think straight. All he could do was let the silence trudge onward, as he battling the temptation clawing at his insides. He finally looked at you, eyes darkened as he drank in the sight of your chest heaving up and down. With a low, muttered “fuck it.” he surged forward, one calloused hand cupping your jaw as he captured your mouth in an intense kiss.

You gasped, eyes flying wide open as you jerked back in shock. The two of you looked at one another in tense silence, and almost like he realized the severity of his actions he slowly pulled back. Before he could open his mouth to explain himself, you quickly reached out for his upper arm to pull him into another kiss. Your lips parted instinctively to welcome the warmth of his tongue.

Your hands fisted in his hair, arching into his chest as your lips moved eagerly against his. The kiss deepened, growing more urgent, until Leon's hands slid to your waist, ensuring you were unbuckled before yanking you out of your seat. In a single, swift motion, he pulled you onto his lap, one arm wrapping around your waist to hold you tight against him.

His other hand searched around for the lever to push his seat back a few inches, before sliding up to rest against your ass. His lips left yours, leaving you huffing for air as his mouth trailed down to your neck, nipping at your pulse point. Your head lolled to the side, warmth running through your body like a furnace.

His fingers dug into the soft flesh of your ass, kneading and squeezing as he pushed your hips forward. You could feel the hard outline of his erection against your thigh, sending a sharp throb straight to your cunt. He pulled away from your neck, hands traveling around your hips before sliding down to wrap around your thighs to force you to sit up. “Do you want me to—to take off—”

“Yeah.” He breathed out heavily, watching you with heavy lidded eyes as you nervously fumbled with the buttons of your pants. His hands lingered over yours to make sure you didn’t need help before sitting back as you wriggled out of them. He could’ve gotten a heart attack at the sight of your lacy, see-through underwear, damp path spreading in the middle.

You quickly undid his zipper, shifting back as he lifted his hips up and tugged his pants down until they pooled awkwardly around his knees. Three fingers dipped under his boxers to free his cock, the crown leaking a tear of precum. His hand disappeared somewhere by the seat, forcing the chair back to give him extra leg room.

You stared down at the sight of his length, not even attempting to blink in case this was the best fucking wet dream ever. “Can I take these off?” You glanced down at his hands as they hovered by your panties, immediately nodding. He carefully slipped the fabric down, down until they were free from your legs, jaw going slack at the sight of your dripping slit. “Holy shit.”

His large hands gripped your ass, fingers sinking into the pliant flesh as he guided your movements, pulling you down to meet his cock. The two of you gasped in unison, back arching at the contact as he slowly rolled your hips against his, watching the way his cock nestled in between your lips. “L-leon.” You whined lightly, his cock immediately throbbing at the sound of your voice, another glob of pre leaking out to rub against you.

Leon’s eyes stuck on your face, eyes dilated and breath labored as he struggled to speak. “I know, I know, just gimme a sec.” He strained out in between a rumbling groan as the head of his cock caught at your entrance. He continued to guide you against him, grinding up against you little by little until the tip of his cock started inching against your hole.

You clenched around the intrusion, sucking a strained gasp from his mouth. His hands tightened around your hips, one heavy palm rubbing against your ass before giving it a quick plap. “Relax a little for me, baby.” He squeezed a handful of ass, one hand moving to wrap around his cock the same way he did the other day, except this time he was nudging his length inch by inch inside you.

You tried to ease up a bit, but it was like your pussy was trying to suck him in one go, walls clenching tight around the head of his cock. “Fuck. Keep gripping like that and I’ll cum before I even get all the way in.” Leon grunted, pulling out just to bring his hand down against your cunt in a warning smack. You flinched at the temporary pain, a surprised moan slipping from your lips as he took the opportunity to slide his cock into your slick heat.

His large hands gripping your hips as he guided you to straddle him, thighs pressing against thighs. Your pussy fluttered around his length, taking a second to get used to the sheer thickness of him. Your slick arousal dripping down onto his thighs, pussy stretched obscenely around him.

“Oh god.” You muttered to yourself, attempting to roll your hips forward only to be met with the nudge of his cock against your g-spot.

“It’s okay, I got you.” He reassured softly, fingers rubbing against your skin as he experimentally jerked his hips up, studying the way your face twisted up into a whiny moan.

You started to move, lifting yourself up until just the swollen head remained nestled inside your entrance. Then, with a roll of your hips, you sank back down, taking every throbbing inch of his hard length deep inside your soaked, clinging heat. His eyes followed your movements, one hand sliding up to wrap around your arm to tug you against his check. You gasped against his shoulder, the sound sending straight to his cock as his hips bucked up subtly.

Your movements started to grow desperate, hips moving up and down to feel the drag of his cock against the spongy, sensitive spot. “Mm fuck fuck,” you grunted breathlessly, head leaning against his shoulder, tilting down to watch as your pussy sucked him.

“Doing s’good, keep going.” He praised, his hand firm around your arm to keep you arched against him. His other hand rested around your hip, lightly ghosting over your movements.

His words spurred you on, and you began to bounce on him in quick hops, your hips rolling down against his. His hand smoothed up along your back, running back down to give your ass another firm slap just to feel the way your pussy clenched around him. The slick sounds of your coupling filled the car, windows fogging and lewd slaps of flesh against flesh forcing the car to creak in time with the movements.

Leon thrust upwards to meet your downward pressure, hips smacking against yours with each bounce. His heavy-lidded gaze remained locked between your face and the fast bounces of your hips, eyebrows furrowed in concentration, watching every flicker of pleasure.

His hand slid up to your bouncing breast in front of his face, cupping the soft swell before squeezing the tender mound, rolling the stiff peak between his fingers. He pinched and tugged on your nipple, forcing out another strained moan as his fingers curled around your throat. His grip tightened slowly, enough pressure to make your pulse pound against his palm, thumb pressed against your jaw as he guided your face towards him.

He pressed a slow kiss on your lips, cupping your jaw in one hand as he breathed heavily at the eager clench of your pussy. “You getting tired?” He asked against your lips, to which you quietly nodded, moaning as he snapped his hips up again. “Gotta get that stamina up, hm?”

“Keep going.” He said shortly, glancing down at the ring of cream leaking down his length. His hips continued their relentless rhythm, the thick head of his cock kissing your cervix with each buck.

He could feel your body trembling, could see the way your eyes fluttered shut as the pleasure became too intense. But he didn't let you slow down, hips snapping up to meet yours every time you’d slow down. You gasped heavily, back arching as a wave of warmth rippled through your spine. You shivered against him, falling limp against his chest with a broken moan as your climax crashed through you.

Your cunt clenched down around his length, soaking his cock with your release as your toes curled and you spasmed over him. Leon watched in rapture, mouth slightly open as he felt the liquid squirting against his legs. But he wasn’t done with you. He forced you to ride out the waves of your orgasm on his cock, your body jerking and shuddering above him as he thrusted his hips up.

Only when your climax subsided did he slow down his thrusts, breathing still ragged as he watched you come to. You rolled your hips slowly, one hand resting on his shoulder as he tilted his head up to stare at you more. You looked in between your legs, pulling your hips up until his cock slipped free, coated in your arousal. “You didn’t— did you come?”

His hands rested on your ass cheeks, giving you a slow grin as he shook his head. “No, but it’s o—”

“Let’s go to the back.” He looked at you in a split second of surprise, watching as you stumbled off his lap and crawled to the cushions of the seats behind him. He turned to watch you, cock jerking in his grip as he rushed up to follow you. He watched as you laid back against the seating, legs spread apart.