#reader x omen

You didn’t realize that the Valorant HQ was this fucking cold. The cold air wrapped around you with an Antarctic blanket, which made you question if any of the agents even had blankets. You recently joined the Protocol to help with the fight but you couldn’t protect your world with hypothermia.

 You sat on the floor of the central hub of the HQ, shivering uncontrollably and hugging yourself to gain warmth. Your hands smooth up and down against your goose-bumped arms, the cold howling and barking viciously at your body and you were left helpless towards the biting cold. You struggled to leave the metal floor and made your way to the door, you hoped to find a blanket or at least somewhere that’s a lot warmer. Suddenly, you heard the quick “woosh” of the door in front of you. You falter back, your eyes trailing up to see-

“Omen?”

“Hello, Y/n.”

You breathed a sigh of relief. You thought you were the only person in this place! And you were glad that it was the only person that was your friend in this place. Omen truly understood your loneliness, the reason why you felt isolated from the others. You never understood him fully but you appreciated his companionship very much. You wondered how it felt, to be alone with him….well, here’s your chance.

“I-I thought you were on the mission with the others! You’re still here!”

“I decided to stay here to take care of my bonsai tree.”

Omen lifted up his bonsai plant up to your face, eyeing you curiously to see your reaction. You were a bit nervous on laying even a hand on the tree but your fingers aimlessly and gently combed through the leaves. Suddenly, the cold didn’t seem to bother you anymore, the bonsai tree gave you an internal warmth.

“Awww, he’s actually pretty cute. I didn’t expect you to be so….gentle with plants such as these.”

You shivered and you knew damn well that internal warmth was temporary. Omen did not seem fazed by the drop of temperature and you envied his non-human qualities. You wondered if he felt warm to the touch, you knew that he wasn’t a fan of physical touch (at least, that’s what you thought). Your hand moved away from the leaves and tried to smile. Your face was literally frozen, your facial muscles removed to stay in its smiling position no matter how hard you tried. Omen tilted his head, he sensed that something was wrong but you were paying attention fighting off the cold.

“Good god, it’s so fucking cold-”

“Oh yes, this is a normal protocol for the heating system. Sabine insists that we do not waste power when we are on missions.”

“This is fuckin’ normal? You can’t be serious….”

“I apologize but I am being serious.”

 You sighed as your arms wrapped around your body and you shivered. There were many things you hate and you could count them on your fingers, but this has to be the worst thing you could ever put your body through.

“Y/n, I suggest that you come to my room. I could find something warm.”

Your cheeks flushed at Omen’s words, his kindness always brought some sort of comfort. You nodded and followed slowly behind him. Once you both entered the room, you went head-first into his bed. You could hear a distorted giggle from the being. Omen crawled into bed and laid down beside you. He noticed that you were still shivering, he pitied your state.

“You are still cold, darling.”

Darling? You….most definitely heard that right. You suppressed a squeal, you didn’t want to make a fool of yourself. 

“Do not worry, I have the perfect thing for your troubles.”

“Thank you, Omen. You’re a lifesaver. You’re awesome!”

“Likewise, darling. Likewise.”

He got up and rummaged through his chest of goodies, until you caught a glimpse of a wooly blanket in his clawed hands. Soon after, Omen draped you with the blanket and you couldn’t help but laugh at its loving warmth. It smelt like Omen and it felt like him as well. The blanket was so soft and tickled your skin with an euphoric heat. Once again, Omen slid into the bed. You did not need to ask if he knitted this beautiful weapon of heat, he was so talented….

 You didn’t remember when you fell asleep. Your warm dreams were filled with Omen’s humming and purring. It truly gave you peace in your slumber. In the few moments that you were conscious, you heard his deep voice purr-

He might have been in love once, but after everything that happened to him, he didn’t expect to experience it again. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to, it was just something that he felt he had to accept. He didn’t think anyone was going to love him the way he was now. He was barely human. A phantom memory of a death he couldn’t even remember. 

And then he met you. 

Out of all of the people that he saw join the Protocol, you were one of the few that really caught his attention. You were nice to everyone that you met, even the others that Omen himself found impossible to get along with. Even him. 

You treated him like he was human. You didn’t even flinch when he would emerge from the shadows, coalescing again into a physical form. In fact, your face would brighten once you realized he was near you. Or at least, that’s what he wanted to believe. He let himself think that you were happy to see him. 

At some point, he was going to have to accept that he was letting himself get too hopeful. He was going to have to stop indulging himself in this irrational daydream that he had. You of all people couldn’t love him. You were nice to him, but you were nice to everyone. 

“Omen!” Your voice rang out in the commons area as he sat on the couch, knitting needles in hand. This has become a normal routine of sorts with you two. You would sit down with him in the evening while he knit. It was mostly you that would talk. 

The first time you had sat down with him, he was surprised. Most people didn’t bother him outside of missions. But there you were, sitting down with a smile. It took a while before you said anything. The first few days the two of you just sat in comfortable silence. But soon, you started to make small conversation with him. He gave the occasional input, but he was just as happy to listen to you ramble about anything. 

“What are you making tonight?” You ask as you sit down. 

“A cat,” he answers simply. You laugh a little and it makes his chest hurt. 

You talk to him about your day. You ask about him too, never forcing him to talk more than he wants to. He’ll never understand how you can keep a conversation with him so easily. He can’t make a great person to talk with, and yet here you are, always making sure he has a moment to talk. 

You interrupt yourself with a yawn, and you laugh. 

“Guess it’s time I head to bed. Goodnight, Omen, I’ll see you tomorrow,” you say, getting up and stretching. 

“Goodnight,” is all he replies, but before you can leave, he reaches out his hand that holds the now finished yarn cat. He tells himself he doesn’t see the blush that crosses your face as you take it, thanking him and praising the work he’s done. 

It should make him feel good. He should be happy that the two of you are friends. So why does he feel so awful? He thought he had accepted the fact that he could never be with you like that. But here he was, yearning to hold you close and to always be the reason you smiled like that. But at the same time, he didn’t want you to be stuck with someone like him. He hated it. He hated feeling like this. 

He couldn’t keep doing this to himself. He had to distance himself from you. It was for the best, he decided. 

--

The next night, when you go to the couches where you always find him, he’s nowhere to be seen. You can’t help the worry that settles in your stomach. Maybe he was just busy. You knew that some days were worse than others for Omen and that sometimes he just wanted to be alone. Maybe it had been wishful thinking, but you had wanted to believe that even during those days he would find comfort in your presence. 

Disappointed and a little bit worried, you go to bed early. 

--

The next night is the same. You can’t find him anywhere, and no one seems to know where he is when you ask. You know he’s somewhere at the base. He’s never been so elusive to you before, and you worry that you’ve done something to upset him. 

Surely he didn’t find out about how you felt and get uncomfortable being around you. There was no way. You hoped not, at least. You didn’t think you were that obvious, and the entire reason that you hadn’t said anything anyway was to make sure that you didn’t mess up the friendship that you had with him. You would be fine if he didn’t feel the same, you just didn’t want to lose him completely. 

You’re overthinking this, you tell yourself. It’s only been two nights. 

But when the next two days are the same, you start getting really worried. The two of you haven’t been assigned on missions together, so there hasn’t even been a chance to talk to him out there. You don’t want to assume he’s avoiding you, but that’s really what it's feeling like. 

You sit down on the couch alone. You can’t help the tears that gather in the corner of your eyes. 

When he sees you there, doing your best to stop yourself from crying and wiping at your face with the edge of your sleeves, he feels horrible. It was selfish of him to avoid you like this and give no explanation only for the sake of his own feelings. It didn’t work either. He’s kept himself away from you, but he still feels the exact same as he did before. 

He went that long pining in silence, he can continue. 

He steps out of the shadows and walks over to the couch. 

You feel the couch dip beside you. You look up and are shocked to see Omen sitting there. He wraps an arm around your shoulders, an affectionate gesture that you don’t expect. You lean into him, attempting to stop the tears that are still falling down your face. 

“I’m sorry,” you start to apologize, which confuses him. “I understand if I made you uncomfortable, and you really don’t have to keep hanging out with me out of pity. I’ll be fine. I’ll get over it.” 

“What are you talking about?” He moves his arm so he can turn to look at you. 

You stare at him. Maybe he wasn’t avoiding you after all. But that didn’t make sense, because you had asked others to tell him that you were looking for him, so why wouldn’t he have come to find you? 

“I… thought-” you pause. If he didn’t know, then was now really the time to tell him? “Were you avoiding me?” 

The sadness in your voice fills him with guilt. He hesitates before answering. 

“I was, yes.” 

He hates the way your face falls at the admission. He’s quick to explain. 

“I was avoiding you, but it was nothing that you did. I will be honest with you from now on, y/n.” There’s silence for a moment as you wait for him to continue. “I like you far more than I want to admit. The feelings I have for you are ones that I didn’t expect to get for anyone again. I understand that you don’t feel the same, and I didn’t expect you to. I thought that if I avoided you for a while it would hurt less. It didn’t. It was selfish to do that. I’m sorry.” 

He fully expects you to be angry with him. Expects you to shove his hand from your shoulder and leave. 

This is why it surprises him so much when you start laughing. 

“We’re really both helpless, aren’t we?” You smile, but he doesn’t understand what you mean. “I feel the same way about you, Omen. I thought you were avoiding me because you found out and didn’t want to be around me because of it.” 

For the first time in a long time, the uncomfortable sadness at what he thought he couldn’t have fades, and Omen is left with a growing sense of hope. 

He laughs, something you never thought you would hear. It’s quiet and rough like his voice, but it’s a laugh, and it makes you smile. 

“I don’t know what you see in me,” he says. You can hear the thinly veiled sadness in his tone. 

You let yourself do what you’ve wanted to do for so long now, and move yourself to sit in his lap. He hesitates for a moment before you see him give in and wrap his arms around you as you lean your head against his shoulder. 

“A man with a kind heart.” You feel his arms tighten around you. 

He doesn’t have the words to tell you how much it means to hear you say that. To know that you still see him as human and not the monster that so many others saw him as. 

Most people, when first meeting Omen, would not be so immediately enamoured in the same way that you were. A lot of people felt either fear or pity when they met the man of shadow and darkness. You felt neither of those things. 

Omen, despite his outside unnerving look, was sweet and kind. He was thoughtful and protective. He also had such cute domestic hobbies for someone who was a genuine terror on the battlefield. He was able to terrorize enemies so easily, blinding and deafening those who stood in his way, hunting them down. But then he would come back to the base and knit a sweet little octopus like he just had the most normal and mundane day ever. 

He seemed to appreciate your company. 

When you first joined the VP, he was one of the first people that you had met, and he was pleasantly surprised when you treated him the exact same way that you seemed to treat everyone else. There were no reservations when you spoke to him, you were comfortable to be around. Eventually, it wasn’t uncommon to see the two of you sitting and chatting in the commons area while Omen would knit. 

It didn’t take long for you to realize that you had a giant crush on the wraith. The problem was trying to communicate this to him. You didn’t want to outright say it. You were too scared of ruining the nice moments that you already had with him. You didn’t want to lose those nights where it would be just the two of you in comfortable silence. Nights like tonight. 

You look over at him. The light from the flames in the fireplace giving off a warm glow and casting dancing shadows across his face. The only sound is the gentle popping of the wood and the soft clink of Omen’s knitting needles. 

That was it! You would knit him something. Maybe a scarf?

You had never really tried to knit anything before, but Omen made it look so simple that it surely couldn’t be that difficult. You think about whether or not you should ask him. He could probably teach you easily enough, but if you did this on your own it would really be a surprise. You look over at the ball of yellow yarn he’s working with. He had mentioned the colour being his favourite a while ago when you had asked.

“You look happy about something,” Omen says, looking over at you. He doesn’t need to watch his hands when he knits, you figure he’s been doing it so long that he could easily knit an entire sweater without looking. 

“Just thinking.” You smile at him. He hums and returns to what you think is a little cat plushie. 

Knitting is harder than you had thought. Each night that you would sit with Omen, you would try to really watch him while he worked on something. He worked a lot quicker than you could, but you did manage to get a basic understanding of it from a quick video and watching him. 

By the end of the week, you had a scarf. 

It wasn’t perfect, by any means. It was wider in some spots when you accidentally added a stitch and thinner in some others where you dropped one. There were some spots where the stitches were a little looser or tighter than the others, but it was a scarf and you made it yourself. You folded it up and put it on the dresser, ready to give it to him tomorrow night. 

Omen is waiting for you. He’s a patient man, but he finds that he can’t seem to wait to see you. He looks forward to each night that he spends with you by the fireplace. He remembers the first night that the two of you sat out here. You weren’t like the others. You were never scared of him. Never looked at him like you were sorry that he was there. 

“Good evening, Omen.” 

He looks up at you smiling so bright as you always do when you see him. 

“I made you something,” you say, hands still hiding it behind your back. “I know it’s not perfect, but still.” You sit down beside him and take the scarf from behind your back and hold it out to him. He looks stunned for a moment, before putting down the knitting that he had been working on and taking it from you, holding it so gently for something made of yarn. 

“You made this?” He asks. You look away sheepishly. 

“Yeah, like I said, it isn’t perfect, but I just really wanted to make something for you.” 

He unfolds it and holds it up for a moment before putting it on. The yellow stands out against the purple and grey of his coat. 

“I love it,” he says, running his hands over the scarf that’s now around his neck. “Thank you, y/n.” 

“You’re welcome.” Your cheeks are dusted a light pink. You wonder if now is a good time to tell him, but before you can say anything else he speaks up again. 

“It means a lot to me,” his voice is softer than you’ve heard it before. “Do you know why yellow is my favourite colour?” He’s still staring at the scarf, holding a section of it in his hand. 

“No, why?” 

“It reminds me of you, y/n. You’re so bright. You can light up a room with your presence alone. I cannot imagine why you spend so much time with someone like me, but I am grateful that you do.” 

You stare at him, blushing harder now, shocked by his admission. 

“Omen…” You breathe out. “I spend time with you because I like you. I mean, really like you. I- wow this sounds so juvenile.” You interrupt yourself and take a moment to breathe and laugh a little. “What I mean is that I think you’re literally the sweetest person here. You mean a lot to me. I made that for you because I wanted to tell you that, and I figured that was the easiest way for me to show you I mean it.” 

There’s a moment of silence, but it isn’t uncomfortable. It’s a silence that holds a mutual understanding between the two of you. Something that doesn’t need to be said. 

“Thank you,” he looks over at you finally. “I have felt the same way for a while. I didn’t want to scare you off.” You smile at him. 

“You couldn’t scare me off, not after I watched you make seven yarn cats in one sitting just because Jett said they were cute and she wanted one.” You laugh together. 

You lean into his side and rest your head on his shoulder. He pulls you close and wraps his arm around you. The two of you stay like that for the rest of the evening. He picks his knitting needles back up and continues to knit with you at his side. He keeps the scarf on. 

Bad days were not something that Omen was unfamiliar with. Some days, however, were worse than others. 

There are days when everything hurts. Phantom pains from when he died wracking his body with a hurt that shouldn’t be and isn’t there, but it blossoms and blooms with each movement regardless. Days when he couldn’t focus, even the steady knitting gave no relief from the constant buzzing in his mind. Flashes of a time he knows but also just can not remember. It’s frustrating and painful and awful and he hates it. He almost wonders if he were able to cry if it would help. He thinks that he remembers what it feels like to cry. He doesn’t remember if he misses the feeling. 

He feels empty, but he also feels like he’s feeling too much. All he knows is that it is far too early to be feeling like this. 

When he gets back to the base late in the evening he still feels just as awful as he did in the morning. There was no reprieve, even on the battlefield where he could usually find it, at least for a moment. 

You’re sitting in your room. You had decided that the day was a good day to just stay in your pyjamas and rest. Most of the time had been spent curled up on your bed with a tea, watching the rain outside through the large window, occasionally opening a book to read a chapter or two. 

You feel Omen’s presence before you see him. He doesn’t say anything, but you know him well enough to know what he’s waiting for. 

“You can come in,” you say. A second later, there's a collection of dark shadows that coalesce to reveal Omen standing there. He remains silent, standing in the centre of the room. It takes him a moment before he even looks over at you. You frown. This isn’t the first time that you’ve seen him like this. You move the blanket off of your lap and open your arms. 

It takes him a second, but you see the tension melt out of his shoulders a little bit and he makes his way over to the bed. He leans his head onto your shoulder, and you wrap your arms around him. He seems exhausted. 

“Hold on, let’s lay down,” you say, moving him slightly so the two of you can lay down on the bed beside each other. You know that he can’t really feel cold, but you still pull the covers over the both of you anyway. He tucks his head under your chin and you rest a hand on his head, the other rubbing his back calmingly. You press a kiss to the top of his head and you hear him hum appreciatively. You know he must be especially tired because he normally doesn’t keep his hood on when he comes to cuddle you. 

“You okay?” You ask quietly. His arms tighten around you. 

“Better now,” is all he answers softly. 

Your arms around him are grounding. Your warmth and steady heartbeat remind him he’s still here. It gives him something to focus on. The way your hand is rubbing soothing circles on his back. You’re always here for him. 

“Did you want to go for a walk? Would that help?” 

You feel him shake his head. “Can we just stay here for a while?” 

“Of course,” you answer. 

The two of you stay there together, peaceful and comfortable as the rain continues to splatter against the window.