#montelli!reader

He stood in the middle of the Averardo Vault's restricted lab—uninvited, unwelcome, yet entirely calm. His shadowy phantoms flickered along the vault’s marble floor, disrupting the faint hum of the Reserved Terminals. You stood across the room with your arms folded, halo dim and fixed, feathers stiff with alarm.

“I thought the Ghost Hounds were mercenaries, not burglars,” you said, your voice silk-wrapped steel.

Calcharo tilted his head, unreadable. His tacet mark glowed faintly across his brow, subtle but present. “I’m not here for the Vault’s credits. I’m here for you.”

A scoff escaped your lips. “Flattered. Try again.”

“I need someone who can detect a poison that doesn’t exist. You’re the only one who can do it.”

You were a Montelli and a Halovian—two titles that carried weight, both in Penacony and Rinascita. But more than that, you were an alchemist of poisons, a forensic mind sharper than a diamond blade. Still, his sudden appearance made your aura pulse defensively. Your halo flickered for caution.

“You think storming into my lab would convince me?”

“No,” he said coolly. “But if I wanted to fight, you’d be dead already.”

Working together was hell.

Calcharo was infuriatingly precise, sharp-eyed, and impossible to distract. He didn't fall for your charm or telepathic nudges. Most didn’t realize how hard that was for a Halovian. People bent under your gaze, under the weight of your thoughts dancing across their minds.

But Calcharo only scowled and muttered, “Stay out of my head.”

In return, you jabbed at his pride. “Ever thought your resonance is unstable because you keep stuffing your emotions in a bottle and calling it ‘control’?”

You didn’t miss the way his jaw clenched.

Still, days turned into weeks. The more you worked, the more the cracks showed. You caught him once, standing by a window in the Montelli Quarter, watching a group of children play with echo lanterns. His tacet mark was dim, his expression distant—almost soft.

He spoke without turning. “You think I’m a monster, don’t you?”

“I think you’re a man who clawed out of the Lawless Zone and built something that matters,” you answered honestly. “But you're still acting like you're in the mud.”

That was the first time he looked at you like he truly saw you. Like he realized your beauty wasn't in your halo or your voice—but in your insight, your wit, the venom you knew how to weaponize and control.

Later that night, you saved his life—your antidote barely outpacing the slow-acting neurotoxin slipped into his wine at a Montelli masquerade.

“You trusted me to spot it,” you whispered, hands trembling as you injected the last vial into his neck.

He blinked slowly, rasping, “Didn’t trust you. I knew you’d hate losing more than you’d hate helping me.”

You laughed, breathless. “Fair enough.”

It didn’t happen all at once.

It was in the way you bickered over data samples and mission strategies. The way he moved to shield you from an enemy blast without thinking. The moment your fingers brushed, accidentally-on-purpose, as you passed him a file. Or the time he found you meditating by the coiled energy streams of your halo, his silent presence a comfort rather than a threat.

“I hated you,” you admitted once, in the safe dark of a hideout post-mission. “The way you stormed in like you owned my space. Like I was just another tool.”

“I did too,” he said, voice gravel-low. “You reminded me of everything I thought I couldn't have. Peace. A future. People who don't lie.”

You reached for him then—not with telepathy, not with power. Just your hand, warm against his.

“Then stop running from it.”

He leaned in, forehead against yours, tacet mark glowing faint under your halo’s light.

In that moment, thorns met radiance. And instead of cutting each other down, they found a way to bloom.