⋅ ♰ ⋅

and remember, he was seriously crazy, his cock remorselessly whacking your insides, rubbing without surcease over your sore walls like he knows you needed him to.

messes of spit ooze down each corner of your mouth as you're being practically thrown back and forth the bed, your jaw slacked open as you attempt to moan out something, anything would do, but the continuous blows and pressures on your pussy had suddenly taken over your bodily functions.

"you're close, i can feel it," aventurine slurs messily into your mouth before lapping through your lips with his tongue. he did it so eagerly he almost missed and hit your chin a little, the notable, coarse sounds of your pussy being filled and pleasured adding to the sensation.

"i just need you to hang on, yeah?" the wanton knots in your lower stomach untwisted a whole lot quicker than he'd originally expect them to, but undoubtedly, he doesn't mind watching the fruits of his labor glow into a flowering fancy.

who would've thought that aventurine would make you cum that fast? naturally, he did. he expected it.

that's all that can happen when you take into account just how thick his girth would push through each crevice of your walls, at once and immediate— his temperate shaft crossing your creamy walls like he was trying to corrupt you.

pop, and the knots in your stomach begin to explode, and all you can do was cry out through a strained jaw when he fucks you through it, your addicting juices gushing over his shaft and pelvis, filthily dribbling down his balls as you claim him with your arousal, the white substance clinging on his skin like the sweetest, stickiest honey.

"oh my," he sighs dreamily, "you're way too generous, dear," a satisfied grin glittering over the small dimples on his cheeks.

such excess of your fluids have certainly hugged his ego tight, aventurine will make sure to never forget savoring this moment even in his memories and dreams.

the sheer feeling of his hands meeting your body brought forth additional sparks of emotions that pressed to the surface of your skin, changing the temperature of your complete frame.

your pussy squelches and throbs around him obscenely loud, the only reason for it being just how helplessly wet he made you in this short period, granted that you knew that he'd fuck you the entire night if you so desired it.

and oh, how well he fucked you, how desperately he massages your juices over your walls like he saw it as a sick challenge to unravel you faster each time.

hot to his movements, you tiredly wrap your arms around him while laying all but spent against the bed— but aventurine doesn't stop here, while naturally, his thrusts had switched into deep grinds instead, a level slower, but still being able to feel up your staggeringly hot splotches.

for one searing, hot second, he listens to your tremulous heaves. his hand slides from your hips to your face as to drag his thumb over the tears coated cheeks, holding you delicately in clear contrast to his rough demeanor in bed.

"you're so pretty, fuck, so damn pretty," aventurine spills his deep feelings for you into this, into the jellylike utterance of his words— and do not misunderstand, because he was still crazy, touch starved of you.

but now, his touch was tender, cushiony as how you'd imagine clouds to be.

"ugh, you make it feel real good," veritas shoots you a grin, grinding his hips into you, "real good indeed,"

your walls were tightening and twitching around him, squeezing around his throbbing shaft like you're supposed to make him cum now, like your pussy was trying to milk him for all he's worth— you're responding to his utters with your cunt instead of words as it pulls him into you through harsh sucks, the slight ache of being split apart making you gulp down the assembled saliva in your mouth as you moan in little sobs and cries.

"what's that? you look so pathetic, dear," for one hot and sizzling second, veritas halts his hips before tenderly sweeping a thumb against your bottom lip while locking his gaze deep into your eyes.

"so pretty, yet so pathetic," he grunts again when you pout your lips at him, cursing through a rasping voice when you tighten around him once more.

his lips find yours like a blazing fire, burning brightly and fiercely, fighting for entrance with his tongue as unspoken words of love manifest in every kiss.

a filthy look plaits his face, lust burning in his gaze— and veritas hips draw back each time before pistoling his length into you harder, so hard your tits were beginning to motion the pace he had on you, with his thick shaft being concealed down your sore walls as he forces you to feel and taste each throb and thickness of his veins pumping around the underside of his cock.

"yes, take it like that," veritas mumbles into your mouth, "can't take it like this m-much longer," before pushing and pulling into you until at last, you finally clicked into place.

you lift yourself onto your elbows to get a better view of the mess on your lower area, watching him closely as the sensation of his mouth made you lose your mind.

your fingers move swift as to reach down and twist into his soft hair, holding him tightly into your cunt when he flips his tongue left and right, his breath hitting your pussy with every exhale— your folds were just so hot, so wet, and squishy that he needs to suckle on them before filling you with his cum later.

— ꒰ ARGENTI ꒱ + attentive & fast

oh, you sure as hell are starting to see stars when argenti suckles on your folds, with his nose dragging into your cunt the more he forces his head in between your thighs— but you're unable to meet his gaze and it saddens him, despite the fact that it felt so deliciously good, doesn't it?

"argenti.." you moan his name just above a whisper of your labored breathing, your lower lip trembling at how dirty it felt to have him lap around your cunt like a mad man, his hands continuously feeling you up when you arch your back into his mouth.

"yes, angel?" his eyes flicker up with lust, "enjoying yourself for me?"

argenti receives no response, at least not a verbal one, instead you hum dazedly as your eyes flutter shut when his nose rolls between the flesh that protected the little pearl on your cunt, your swollen pussy aching to feel more of the friction it so desperately desires.

"such a good girl," he groans into your pussy, lowering one hand from your thigh to your hole as he gently pushes into it before curling deep to scissor your cunt. fuck, argenti simply cannot tear his eyes off you.

you're just so impossibly perfect to him, and he treats you like an ancient treasure whenever he received the gift of going down on you.

you repeatedly whisper his name imbedded in praises as you left it to your crumbling voice to find his ears— and argenti wasn't sure on who, out of the two of you, would break under the pressure first.

because listen closely now, your pussy was like none he has ever tasted before and he hopes you know it by the way he circles the tip of his pink muscle so precisely into you.

you turned him achingly hard, his tongue pressing upwards and back only to lap slightly faster, ugh, he swears that every time you chant his name or tremble your legs around his head he can feel his cock throb in his pants, pushing harder and harder against his boxers.

would you be a little nicer to him as well? obviously after he forcibly turns you around and flips your dress up to expose your ass before smacking the flesh, feeling it jiggle underneath his palm, next to searching for your hole with his reddened tip so you could shut up for just a little while, yeah?

you're practically waiting for it, and the sudden stinging from his tip breaching through the soft patch of your hole shuts you up, only until he moves his hips forward with one single, deep snap— and you're arching your back and moaning his name unbearably filthy, focusing on the stretch of your tiny cunt.

you do not want to show him that you're enjoying it real good right now, also adore it when he's rendering you speechless with the size of his dick alone— because as natural as it was, you let your stubbornness kick in, "ahh— i don't feel anything.." you mumble under your breath, intentionally smug within your choice of tone.

you remind yourself that next time— you need to piss him off even more, because it's always a borderline delicious feeling when your bodyguard blade makes it his duty to remind you that, yes, he was employed by you and was supposed to be your protector— it still did not mean you were simply allowed to play violin with his nerves, nor turn him desperately hard when you're accidentally nudging your plush ass against his bulge or bite your bottom lip whenever he talks to you.

maybe even wear a skirt that was way too short for you, the fabric always exposing a slight outline of your behind.

he huffs out when you sob into his lips, a gravelly noise torn from the bottom of his chest as he continues grinding into you with a brutal force that left you gasping, half-sobbing against his strong chest, "i'll ruin every inch," and you can't tell if he's actually shaking from restraint or insane hunger for you.

every greedy shove of hips against your cunt carved a deeper wound inside you, raw, passionate and the friction unbearable, your thighs slick and weak from the hefty fullness he's forced upon your hole, your hands sliding uselessly against his arms— clinging one moment and slipping the next, your body too wrung out to do anything but take him.

slick and semen spill out around where he bullies himself deeper, a vulgar, sticky testament to how little control he has left— how little you have left, all you can do is tremble and arch into him, as well as clutch at him with your numb fingers grazing at his biceps while he groans into your throat like he'll die if he doesn't break you open a little more.

his hands were splayed at your hips like he's holding together something broken, but it's not you— it's him, something's fracturing, something sharp and cavernous and when blade finally presses in once more, pistoling his cock through everything you've given him, the filthy mixture of your arousal and his cum covering the insides of your thighs as blade groans— a raw, strangled thing that sounded like a force of life had crushed through him.

well, there you see it, he was showing it, already wanting to be ready for another round, correct?

because blade's not done, oh no don't be silly now— he'll never be done, his cock was already glazed in the evidence of your last few rounds and still he shoves it back in like he's punishing you for how wet and how soft and how tight you were for him.

"you'll keep squeezing me like that, i'll fill you again, i swear—" his voice catches, one uncoordinated thrust of through your hole and he moans, hips twitching with mild overstimulation, "fuck, i'll keep doing it until you can't walk" as the tremble in his hands betrayed how close he truly was, how the tight, wet clench of your walls sucking him in was unraveling him thread by desperate thread. 

⚝ — WELT

"this is all i was asking for," welt purrs at you, his voice resembling poisoned silk as he dragged two fingers through your soaked mess, his lips curled up in a smirk, "you're leaking already for me, how shameful."

the man doesn't hide how hard he got seeing the way your body reacted to his faint touches— how he readjusted his boxers when your slick gathered so easily on his fingers, the way it glistened when he held it to the light like a chemist examining his prized specimen.

welt tastes it instantly, although slow, his tongue curling around the evidence as he groans at your taste infiltrating his taste buds, "i'll fuck you until you cry for mercy and beg me not to stop, i want to see it all— your spit, your cum, me, dripping from every hole, every inch of you marked," there, listen close, welt was laughing again.

not mockery, but devotion— fanged and fevered, unwell and you're beneath him and he's already soaked you again, cock smacking against your folds with disgustingly wet slaps of slick and spit glazing your thighs as welt just hums like a man given purpose.

"you think i'm stopping?" he whispers against your temple, tongue dragging hot over the shell of your ear, "after I just made you cum on my cock like that?" as you're still twitching from the aftermath, overstimmed to the brim, your cunt a mess and full, fuck, and he just shifts back slightly to admire the sight, what a man gone mad.

welt couldn't stop looking at how your hole pulses and spasms like it's begging for more, reaching for him, greedy and flushed and leaking cum, "look at that, so empty, so needy," he smears his fingers through the mess he's left inside you, presses the slick digits to your lips, "taste that, that's mine," and when he fucks back in, he abruptly spits on your tongue.

"don't swallow it yet, let it stay there. let me see it— dripping down your chin like the perfect little thing you are."

⚝ — ANAXA

anaxa doesn't wait, in fact, ugh, come on now, lets remain honest here— did he ever strike you as somebody who'd kindly wait for you to settle onto the bed when you don't even need to blink before he's shoving you onto the bed like gravity has betrayed you all by himself?

like he owns the air in your lungs and intends to squeeze every last moan out with his hands, his hips, his cock.

"witness yourself," anaxa breathes out, a low, menacing murmur, gloved fingers prying you apart with slow, clinical cruelty, like he's cataloging something rare and precious in his mind, only to later defile it with his slender hands, "already soaked for me? already out of breath too? and i've barely even laid claim on you, ah, how do you expect to survive me, little one?"

he leans in to be face level with your glistening pussy, his breath fanning against your folds as he spits, repeatedly— once slow, twice again— right over your swollen folds. it trickles down in a glistening line and he watches with a hollow, consuming hunger, like a scholar before a ritual.

"even better now," his voice cuts low, scraping through the thick air as you whine out his name, your nipples hard and erected from how anaxa has been handling you, "so prettily aching for me, huh? you want to be ruined, don't you? stretched wide, stuffed full, yeah, so full it spills out of you, again and again and you'll still beg for more."

"I just know you will," as he pushes himself in with a groan, the large and shuddering stretch on your pussy stinging instantly before you felt a familiar heat greet your walls— the split alone folds you in half, has your toes curling and your nails scrambling for anything to hold onto as anaxa carefully pinned down your wrists, dragging your hands up above your head, beginning to fuck you.

"you're mine now," he breathes, lips brushing your ear, "every drop you spill— mine, every tear you cry from getting fucked so hard you forget your name— it belongs to me."

he thrusts harder, chasing the sound of your body squelching beneath him as you clench tight and cry out, making him lose his fucking mind. one hand leaves your wrists to force your jaw open, his spit falling directly onto your tongue before he leans in to kiss it deeper into your throat.

"i'll ruin you so many times, you won't know which mess came first, mine or yours," and when he does, inch by inch, a high pitched moan shatters over your cries as you wince out his name when his cock massaged over your walls repeatedly well, his skilled fingers rubbing your tits ever so tenderly.

if only he wasn't so damn messy— your thighs slick with everything he's spilled inside you, rubbing the head of his cock through the cum-slick mess between your legs just to spread it over yourself more, fuck, anaxa really cannot stop.

⚝ — PHAINON

an impassioned and heavy stillness seemed to press down the air on itself, and in that darkened room you've found yourself splayed out right underneath phainon's towering frame, trembling under the cool, hefty weight of him.

"sweetheart, you're clenching," he says, quite fascinated, as he pushes into you with a low, shaky moan, "gripping me so tight— do you want to milk every drop out of me?"

he's obsessed with it, the mess, the physical evidence of what you're doing to him as he leans down, biting your shoulder, thrusting deeper just to hear the wet, obscene squelches of his warm cum inside you, "again," he whispers, voice cracking, "i need to see more, more of it leaking out, down your thighs, on my cock, fuck, fuck, on your stomach too, fuck— i need to paint you with it."

you're both drenched, tangled in sweat and spit and endless release, his hands greedily spreading your folds to admire the way you glisten with all he's spilled inside you, "you'll remember me by the way you drip," he breathes, "every time you move, it'll remind you who ruined you."

phainon has already fucked you twice and still looks like he's starving.

his hair was stuck to his forehead as sweat dripped down his chest, yet his hands haven't stopped shaking since the moment you moaned out his name and pulled him in the first time.

you're dazed, truly, raw and full of warm cum and yet he's still staring between your legs like you're an unanswered prayer, "can't help it," he murmurs, almost apologetic— almost, "when i see it like that."

his voice trails off as he drags his fingers through your wrecked cunt with cum dripping out of you instantly, coating his fingers in strings that glisten under the low light, "fuck— fuck," phainon moans before immediately shoving his fingers into your mouth, "taste it, baby come on, tell me it's not perfect."

you filthily whimper around his fingers, suckling on them and rolling your tongue over his knuckles as his cock twitches, "no, no— don't close your legs now," as he pulls them open again, wider this time and groans at the sight of his cum leaking out in slow, wet rivulets, "keep them open, yeah? i want to see it, all of it, i need to see how many times i can fill you before your body can't hold it anymore."

phainon leans in, whispers hot against your throat as he presses his cum-stricken fingers against your tongue, "you'll let me try, won't you?"

Childe

This man does NOT care in the slightest. If anything, he’s excited by it.

Childe finds the whole situation entertaining in a way that's almost endearing if it weren't so utterly disrespectful. He doesn't see your wedding ring as a stop sign. For him, it makes things more interesting because now there's an added layer of complexity, an actual obstacle. And Childe has never backed down from a challenge in his life.

He’ll send you lots and lots and lots of gifts. Intricate bouquets of flowers, expensive jewellery, and little notes with cheeky messages that make your face burn. It's infuriating because he's not even subtle about it. He knows you know. You know he knows. And somehow that makes it worse, or better, depending on how you look at it. Childe is utterly shameless, so good luck reeling him back. 

When your spouse is around, Childe shifts into a different gear entirely. He becomes aggressively polite in a way that's more insulting than rudeness. He'll compliment your spouse's choice in you with a smile that doesn't reach his eyes. And Childe is petty, so he’ll be extra condescending to your partner: “Wow, they must have been feeling pretty generous when they chose you, huh?” Your spouse is sitting there fuming, but what are they gonna do? Challenge a Fatui Harbinger? Lol, good luck.

Childe will touch your shoulder when passing by. He'll remember small details about you that your spouse has forgotten. He'll show up at your favorite places and act surprised to see you, like the universe just keeps throwing you together. And through it all, that infuriating smile never wavers, because Childe knows exactly what he's doing and he's having far too much fun to care about the consequences.

"Hey gorgeous, married life treating you right? Because I could do better."

Lohen

Married? That's hilarious. Lohen finds out you're married and his first reaction is genuine, unrestrained laughter. Like you've just told him the best joke he's heard in weeks. A challenge. An actual obstacle. This is the most fun he's had in ages. He doesn't see your wedding ring as a boundary; he sees it as the opening move in a game he's about to play.

He shows up everywhere after that. And there is absolutely no subtlety in it. He does not even pretend to try that he is not courting you. He'll find you during your day with that sharp grin, pull you into dangerous situations for the sheer thrill of it, and act genuinely hurt when you try to push him away. "Come on, where's your sense of adventure?" He reads people too easily to miss how conflicted you are, and that just makes it more entertaining to him. Aw, did you just blush when he pulled you close? That’s just more ammunition for him to continue.

When your spouse is around, Lohen doesn't bother with politeness. He's openly dismissive in that sharp way of his, looking at them like they're a minor obstacle. He'll call out the weaknesses in their stance, mock their choices, make it abundantly clear he thinks they're beneath him. "You picked them?" he'll say to you, gesturing at your spouse with barely concealed disdain. "That's disappointing."

He challenges your spouse to duels constantly, Actual calls to prove themselves. "Come on, show me what you've got. Or are you too scared?" There's no pretense of friendliness, just that chaotic grin and the very real threat underneath it. He wants to test them, wants to prove he's stronger, faster, better in every way. And when your spouse declines or hesitates, Lohen laughs like they've just confirmed what he already knew. That they're not worthy of you.

And if they accept? Yeah, that fight is anything but clean. Surely, you don’t mind if he hurts them only a little bit, right? They’ll recover… in a couple weeks. You can spend that time with him!

"Married to someone that dull? Lucky for you I'm around to make things interesting."

Pantalone

Your marriage is a curiosity to him, nothing more. 

Pantalone hears you're married and it barely registers as information worth filing away. He's made it abundantly clear through his entire existence that social conventions are for people who can't afford to ignore them. He has money, taste, and a level of charm that makes your marital status seem almost quaint by comparison. Why would he care about a contract that costs nothing and binds you to someone ordinary when he can offer you everything?

He pursues you methodically, the way he pursues everything worth having. Invitations arrive on expensive paper—to galas, private auctions, exclusive dinners at restaurants. He sends you jewelry that's clearly meant to be worn, flowers that bloom in impossible colors, bottles of wine older than most towns. Each gift is calculated to make you feel like you belong in his world, because in Pantalone's mind, you already do.

When you decline his invitations, he smiles like you've said something amusing. "Oh, a pity. I was so looking forward to it." He pauses, studying you with that sharp gaze. "Though I suspect you'll change your mind eventually. People usually do when they realize what they're missing."

When he meets your spouse, there's no acknowledgment of the relationship at all. He treats them like furniture. Polite enough, but utterly unremarkable. He'll talk past them, direct his attention entirely to you, and make it abundantly clear through sheer indifference that your spouse's existence is beneath consideration. He isn’t cruel, per se, but the stone cold apathy is shocking. But I mean, what else did you expect from the Regrator?

He'll invite you to exclusive events, knowing full well you're married. He'll compliment you in ways that are technically innocent but absolutely not. He'll make you feel like the most interesting person in every room while your spouse fades into background noise. And he does it all with such practiced elegance that it's hard to even be angry about it. And Pantalone doesn't acknowledge obstacles he doesn't consider obstacles.

"Darling, there's an exhibition opening tomorrow. Quite exclusive. Pity you felt obligated to refuse."

Varka

The moment he finds out you're married, Varka accepts it with genuine respect that comes from someone with actual principles. It’s to be expected of course, from the Grandmaster of the Knights. He backs off immediately—no flirting, no lingering touches, nothing that crosses a line. He means it too. His sense of responsibility is too strong to entertain anything else. You're off-limits. He respects that.

Except he's absolutely terrible at actually following through on it.

He'll catch himself mid-conversation laughing at something you said, and the laugh is too warm, too genuine, like you've just said the funniest thing he's heard in weeks. He volunteers for patrols he doesn't need to go on if he knows you'll be there. He flexes his muscles without thinking about it—lifting heavy things with one hand, rolling up his sleeves when you walk by, that casual display of strength that he tells himself has nothing to do with you being present. He's just proud of his physique. It has nothing to do with wanting you to notice. Definitely not. And yeah, so what if Varka tries to be the funniest person in the room whenever you walk in? He’s just naturally charming, that’s all.

When your spouse is around, Varka shifts into his easygoing charm. He's genuinely friendly, treats them like any other person he gets along with, makes jokes and offers drinks like there's no tension at all. But then you'll say something, and for just a moment his eyes linger on you a little too long. He'll compliment you in a way that sounds casual but carries weight underneath it. He catches himself doing it and looks away quickly, uncomfortable with his own slip-up.

You notice it every time. The way his shoulders straighten when you walk into a room. How he unconsciously positions himself so he can see you better. The split second where his mask drops and you catch something genuine underneath before he remembers himself and shifts back into friendly, easygoing Varka. He's trying so hard to be respectful, and that effort itself is what makes it obvious that he's fighting something. You see the conflict, the way he's wrestling with his own nature, and somehow that makes it worse.

It's not intentional. That's the thing about Varka—his pride in himself, his easy confidence, his strength—it all comes out around you whether he wants it to or not. He's trying to be respectful. He really is. But his nature keeps betraying him in small, unguarded moments.

"That's great, really. You picked someone solid. Still, if you ever need anything, I'm around."

Zhongli

Being the God of contracts, he accepts your marriage to be a fact set in stone. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that stone can’t be moved, is it?

Zhongli will curb his overt courting rituals, like asking you out to dinner or kissing your hand upon greeting. But his more gentleman-ly side is always evident when it comes to you. He walks you home in the evenings. And sure, he’ll keep a respectful distance but all it takes is one particularly strong gust of wind or a merchant’s cart veering too close to you for his hand to come up to your side and pull you near him. He’s so kind about it too that you aren’t sure if this is meant to be anything at all.

He invites you over for tea (alone, just with him). Zhongli knows exactly how you make your tea, the amount of sugar you like, and the type of brew he should prepare. And so what if the tea takes four hours to make? You and him are just having polite conversation. It’s not as though your spouse knows the way you take your tea either, so this is really just a way for you to relax!!

When your partner is around, Zhongli simply smiles. He’s seen many relationships in his time, and to be frank with you, he does not exactly see what is so special about your partner lol. Nevertheless, he would not cross any lines, but he is just an extra bit nicer, a tad bit more courteous, his words just a little sweeter with you when they are around. He really wants to show your partner what true devotion looks like. 

“Married? I see. Well, contracts can be renegotiated, given the right circumstances. Until then, consider me a reminder of what else might have been possible.”

The hallway leading to The Doctor’s laboratory was eerily quiet, his subordinates—like yourself—were currently on break at the cafeteria indulging in much needed fuel to power through yet another hectic day. The soles of your shoes echoed throughout the metallic floors, it served as a reminder at how deserted the corridor was; even though you’ve walked down this same path for years, the atmosphere never once failed to lick an icy shiver down your spine. It didn’t help how lifeless and dull these hallways were. As for the purpose of your early return in The Doctor’s laboratory, one of your colleagues had told you that the Harbinger required your presence urgently, and given your colleagues' words, it seemed to be a matter of importance.

Though, you wondered why The Doctor had specifically asked for you; as far as you were aware, your ranking as his subordinate wasn’t anything special—merely conducting experiments and quality control were your tasks, just like all the other subordinates under his authority. Ah, you didn’t mess up anything, did you? You always always followed protocols and it wasn’t like The Doctor had previously given you an earful for messing up an experiment. 

In fact, he had been nothing but full of praise towards you; there was one instance where the Harbinger gleefully praised your intellect. Although to others, he never held back on his dissatisfaction whenever a colleague of yours messed up certain experimental procedures. The Doctor always spoke to them of the importance of materials as they were not easily obtainable, and to always carefully read the protocols. Unfortunately, his rather strange bias towards you made you the butt of the jokes amongst your colleagues in cafeteria conversations, and you were more than certain they were currently laughing at you behind your back.

“Hah! She’s like a teacher’s pet but instead of a teacher it's Lord Dottore! Hahahahahaha!” One of your colleagues started right after you were told The Doctor needed you back at the laboratory.

Of course, it was all light hearted but you wished they were a bit more mature about the situation because sometimes you couldn’t help but feel . . . weird around Lord Dottore at times—especially at times where he’d lean over your shoulder to inspect your task for the day. Maybe he simply needed a closer look but the way his chest ghosted against your back had you biting the inside of your cheeks.

Stepping inside the laboratory, you were greeted with an empty space, devoid of the man you were looking for. The room was how everyone left it before heading to the cafeteria—powered equipment turned off, hazardous chemicals stored away, and several documents sprawled across counters. For a supposedly urgent matter, you expected him to be at least present in his own laboratory.

Confused, you called out, “. . Lord Dottore?”

Silence stretched for a few moments before you received a response, “I am in my office. It would be preferable if you joined me.”

At the sound of his familiar voice, you followed its origin where it led you to the slightly ajar door to his office. Your heart pounded against your chest, you’ve only been inside there once to drop off research notes because the person who usually did it was absent that day, The Doctor also wasn’t inside when you had entered previously so this was your first time in his office with him.

Something about that unnerved you. Sure, he was somewhat ‘nicer’ to you but there wasn’t denying the fact that he was an interesting individual but you were under the same organisation, so it wasn’t your place to question the Harbinger nor his motives.

As you walked inside, you quietly closed the door behind out of politeness before turning around to get on one knee and bow your head. During the brief movement, you caught a familiar tall figure standing just off to the side of The Doctor’s desk.

“Lord Dottore, Lord Regrator.” But what was he doing here?

There wasn’t much you knew about Lord Regrator other than he was the Ninth Harbinger who was in charge of economic policies in the nation.

“There’s no need for formalities. Sit. I called you here to discuss a special experiment.” Dottore gestured a gloved hand at the empty seat before his desk, the corners of his lips slightly curled.

A special experiment? At the mention of an experiment, your heart calmed a little—it was your expertise after all, so there was no point fretting over it but the strange tension in the room seemed to scream otherwise. It also didn’t explain why Regrator was present, it wasn’t like they were about to start discussing finance with you.

You nodded, standing up to quietly make your way to the empty seat, “Of course. May I ask what this experiment is about?”

As you sat down, Dottore spoke up once more, both elbows atop the wooden desk, leaning a little closer, “Recently, I have been expanding my research on the human brain and its connection to the body regarding its response to bodily sensations such as touch. I have appropriate non-invasive equipment in my personal laboratory, however, the procedure is rather . . invasive.”

Invasive? What could Dottore possibly mean by that?

“Naturally, such an experiment necessitates a suitable candidate and their willing consent.”

A participant—you assumed that was your supposed role, the reason why Dottore required your presence. Once more, your heart thrummed out of nervousness, you weren’t going to conduct an experiment, you were going to be experimented on. The mention of an invasive procedure already had your mind spinning in a million different scenarios; he wasn’t going to cut you open, was he . . ?

“Your intelligence precedes your colleagues which is why I have found you to be the suitable candidate. Of course, it all comes down to your decision but it would be a delight to have your involvement.”

You sucked in a small breath, “May I . . read over the research proposal, Lord Dottore?” He wordlessly nodded, opening a drawer on his desk before sliding a neat stack of papers over. 

Written in bold letters was the title: ‘Sensory cortex activation by stimulation’

The human mind remains an imperfectly understood mechanism. This study aims to document and analyze cerebral activity in response to external stimuli such as touch and pressure in order to better identify the relations between the human brain and body. The implications of this experimental research extend beyond mere academic curiosity, a more complex understanding of neurological behaviour under euphoric conditions may provide valuable insight into artificial human enhancement procedures. Experimentation of this nature requires a fully informed and consenting participant.

Methodology: The participant will be situated within a controlled laboratory environment under my supervision to maintain consistency of neurological readings throughout the duration of the experiment. Neurological activity will be monitored and recorded through the use of neural-imaging apparatus for high resolution cerebral observation. The participant will be gradually exposed to sexual stimuli in certain body areas as follows: nipple, clitoral and vaginal (penile penetration) leading up to orgasm which is the expected peak readings.

To ensure authenticity of collected data, the participant must remain aware and capable of providing continuous informed consent during all stages of experimentation and contraception will be used. Furthermore, a second participant (assigned to Pantalone) is set to carry out sexual stimuli mentioned above and is considered a controlled variable along with the primary participant. Collected findings will subsequently be analyzed for potential applications in the fields of cognitive enhancement and artificial synchronisation of human neural patterns.

In simpler terms, Dottore wanted to observe human neural activity during a euphoric state to better understand the connection between the brain and body? In all honesty, you were speechless. Not only was the former supervising the entire experiment but Lord Regrator was also a participant, at this point you were convinced this was some kind of humiliation ritual. There was no denying that The Doctor was extremely professional when it came to research, and you were more than certain it wasn’t going to be his first time seeing a naked human body—he had even written a formal proposal which further confirms that this experiment wasn’t some kind of perverted shenanigan.

“Do I, uh—Does the experiment require the primary participant to be . . fully naked?” You feigned a cough, flipping a page as you tried your best to avoid eye contact with Dottore. Though he wore a pointed mask, you were certain his eyes remained solely on you.

“It is not a necessity. Only stated areas in the proposal are required to be exposed for efficiency. I’d also like to mention that a generous compensation will be given once the experiment concludes.”

At the mention of compensation, your ears perked up. Even though the Fatui was an influential organization in Teyvat, the pay you received was fairly enough to get by but if you were being honest, you could use a bit more mora especially with this month’s bills rolling around. Without another word, you nodded, finally looking up at the Second Harbinger.

“Alright. I will participate in the experiment, Lord Dottore.”

Beneath the pointed mask, his rosy lips stretched into a wider smile, “Excellent. I require you to sign this contract then I shall conduct a pre-experiment interview to obtain better understanding of the participant.” Reaching over the desk, he flipped over to the last page of the proposal and slid a fountain pen over, silently tapping his gloved fingers against the wooden surface as he watched you sign. 

With your participation officially sealed with a signature, The Doctor carefully placed the document inside the drawer and fixed his attention on you, gloved hands loosely clasped around one another, “Are you sexually active?” His question settled into the thick silence awkwardly, it stuck out like a sore thumb—all too sudden and personal yet your commander had simply asked it as if he were asking about today’s weather.

You were aware this was part of the protocol but having Regrator present in the office seemed a bit much for you; what was he even here for? Surely, he wasn’t about to start asking you medical related questions, he didn’t even work in the field. Discomfort enveloped your warmed skin, a thousand kisses akin to small prickles—hot and itchy.

Shifting ever so slightly in your seat, you spoke, “N-No . . but I have had intercourse before.” Archons, if you were given the option between Her Majesty unleashing her unforgiving ice on you or to explain your sex life to The Doctor, without hesitation you’d pick the former. Dottore was still your boss, after all but thankfully, he was as professional as you expected, keenly listening to your reply while nodding—nothing more, nothing less. If he had any reaction to your answers, he didn’t let on.

“And when was the last time?”

God, when was the last time you had sex? You simply couldn’t remember. Being a Fatui wasn’t a walk down the park, days in The Doctor’s laboratory were long and tedious, by the time you return home late in the afternoon, you’d only have the strength to eat and wash up before welcoming the night. The routine was monotonous, yes but there wasn’t room to mope around  and complain.

“I cannot accurately say but most likely a month ago.” With your boyfriend then but The Doctor didn’t need to know about your past relationship.

The Second Harbinger’s questions continued for a couple more minutes, he asked about every single medical related question you could think of—medical history, current medications, prior injuries, and existing neurological conditions. Naturally, you tried your best to answer as accurately as advised by The Doctor and each response was recorded with meticulous precision.

“Good.” The word sounded less like praise and more like a conclusion. “If at any point you wish to withdraw from the study, you will retain your right to do so.”

Silence stretched inside the cold room.

You stared at Dottore. Through his pointed mask, he stared back. Neither of you spoke as his words lingered in the icy atmosphere like wisps of smoke, light and airy yet it held a bitter taste. A beat passed, then, very slowly, one corner of his mouth curved upward.

“I assume you’re wondering whether I genuinely mean that.”

So The Doctor was aware of your growing suspicion regarding his previous statement; you knew well enough how he worked, his experimental endeavours weren’t obtained through ethical and considerate experiments, and for him to state something like that was clearly out of character. Or maybe he actually housed an ounce of decency in him.

“Pardon my brazenness but yes, a little.”

The smile on his lips widened, “Reasonable.”

“Coerced participation produces unreliable results, especially neurological results.”

It wasn’t concern nor ethics but merely data quality, you didn’t know whether to applaud him for being such a dedicated scholar. Surprisingly, his reasoning was sound, emotions can and will affect neurological scans; factors such as stress can create physiological ‘noise’ which would increase variability in data.

At the lack of your reply, The Doctor merely dismissed your silence as acknowledgement and spoke up once more, “As you’re already aware, this study requires two participants. The reliability of the data is dependent upon minimising external variables and, unfamiliarity constitutes as such.”

“In other words, you’re making us socialize.” Lord Regrator finally spoke up, his dulcet voice curling around your body like a serpentine predator.

Well, it wasn’t entirely odd to familiarise oneself with a fellow study participant, especially if intimacy was on the table but the whole situation felt rather awkward. Under more casual circumstances, you’d feel at ease but being confined in your commander’s office with another Harbinger felt nothing but forced; you felt nothing less than a puppet being forced to interact with another toy at the hands of a naïve child.

“Call it whatever you prefer. Participants exhibit measurably different neurological responses when interacting with unfamiliar individuals.” A gloved finger tapped the wooden desk, “Trust levels, social comfort, perceived predictability—they all introduce inconsistencies. Unless, of course, you want me to find another willing participant. After all, you do have the right to withdraw from the study, Pantalone.”

Hidden beneath Dottore’s words was provocation but to Pantalone, the taunt was clear as day. From where he stood, he could see the way the former’s lips curled into a smug smile—a silent challenge between both of them. But Regrator didn’t bite, no, instead, he shifted his attention toward you.

“Well.” He smiled pleasantly, “It seems we’ve been assigned homework. If Dottore wishes us to become familiar with one another, I suppose introductions are in order.”

Satisfied that events were proceeding according to plan, the Second Harbinger immediately returned to his notes. Lord Regrator watched his companion for a brief moment, “He’s actually taking notes. How amusing.” A gentle laugh escaped his lips, he moved a tad closer to get a better view and the scent of tobacco faintly invaded your senses.

For the next hour, conversation between you and Regrator drifted from formal introductions to declassified Fatui affairs to Snezhnayan politics, and for the entirety of it, Dottore wordlessly sat in his seat, taking notes of everything. The conversation started off stiff as expected—Pantalone may be a participant but he was still a Harbinger, and with it came formality but as words flowed, you eased slightly. You learned about his role as a high ranking Fatuus and despite your lack of interest in his field, you simply nodded along.

Lord Regrator differed from Lord Dottore, and whether that observation was positive or not, you were uncertain. Different in a way that the former was clearly built for conversations, he gave flattery when needed, smiled at your words, and gave colourful responses; you assumed he obtained his mannerisms through his role but even with his authority, he was easier to converse with.

“Alright, that is all for today. I shall require both your presence next week once I have the appropriate equipment set up.”

With that, you excused yourself first and headed back to the cafeteria with a racing heart. On the way over, you questioned whether what you were getting yourself into was something you’d regret in the future but all your mind could think about was the coming week. The mere idea of Lord Regrator intimately touching you shouldn’t have invited heat between your legs but with every step taken closer to the cafeteria, the more it grew. It didn’t help how obscene visuals of you and him flashed in your mind every second or so.

The new week rolled around with slight anticipation; it was embarrassing, really, the slight excitement buried in the depths of your core pulsing with expectation. It was weird to anticipate such an erotic experiment but pure lust fogged your mind primarily due to the fact that you simply haven’t had sex in a month. Weeks of pent up stress and emotions? You were definitely overdue for release. Though, you did have to constantly remind yourself that it was a formal study within a controlled environment, and not some kind of one night stand with your commander’s colleague.

“I trust you’re both well rested?”

The three of you were back inside The Doctor’s office, it was late afternoon, the warm glow of the sun spilled through the frostbitten windows, painting the rather dull room in a mellow hue. The rest of your colleagues had already left the laboratory which meant you, along with the two Harbingers were the only ones present. It made you a little nervous—being alone in a room with two of Snezhnaya’s influential individuals.

Pantalone hummed and you replied with a small nod, already feeling your skin starting to prick.

Dottore led you both into another room connected to his office, it wasn’t as vast and you assumed this was strictly out of bounds to everyone but him. The room felt unnervingly sterile, its walls were constructed from smooth metal panels with narrow seams, and bright white lighting illuminated the space.

At the centre of the room stood the experiment’s primary apparatus—a reclining examination chair surrounded by an intricate arrangement of cables, a machine, and polished metallic arms suspended from the ceiling. The most striking feature of the room was the wall opposite the entrance—a single pane of reinforced observation glass stretched nearly from floor to ceiling; beyond the glass you assumed was the control room, housing machinery responsible for operating the experiment.

“For the entire duration of the experiment, I shall remain inside the control room to oversee the study and note down all results. Remove any unnecessary layers of clothing such as overcoats and gloves, and meet me by the apparatus.”

Left in your blouse and pants, you headed to the center of the room where Dottore stood with Pantalone just a step behind. The former tinkered around the apparatus, pressing a few buttons and flipping switches with a gloved finger, causing the machine to whirr to life; it hummed a low, almost quiet tune that somewhat settled your nerves.

“Lie down.”

The Doctor looked over his feathered shoulder, pointed mask gleaming beneath the harsh lighting before turning his attention to the suspended metallic arms for inspection. You did as you were told, positioning the entirety of your body along the examination chair, the leather was cool against the fabric of your clothes which left tiny goosebumps from the difference in temperature. Wordlessly, you watched as he positioned the metallic arms near your head, several inches away from contact; its tips were equipped with a semi-circle that encased your head. So, this was what The Doctor meant about non-invasive equipment.

“Once I operate the machine, you may feel a slight sensation but do not fret, it is simply the apparatus emitting pulses of energy to record neural activity. And as for you, I require complete obedience—every single word.”

“Hah, you act as if I’m some kind of disobedient mutt. I’m wounded.” Regrator pressed a hand over his chest, a mocking smile directed at his colleague.

The latter didn’t bother replying and instead walked off to the control room, the soles of his boots clicking with every calculated step. Pantalone softly shook his head, muttering a faint “Lovely as ever.” beneath his breath, full of sarcasm.

“Any command given will be spoken through this intercom.” 

Your attention quickly moved from Regrator to the mounted speakers on the corners of the room as Dottore’s amplified voice filled the space. Gaze darting over to the foot of the examination chair, just past the Ninth Harbinger’s torso, you watched your commander on the other side of the observation glass. Heat warmed your cheeks at the realisation that you directly faced the latter which meant he’d be able to see everything you exposed.

“Base readings first. In the meantime, Pantalone, I trust you have already taken the concoction I made prior?” 

With the metallic arms whirring to life, you could barely hear The Doctor’s words over the pulsing of the machine. Just as he mentioned, there was a slight foreign sensation in your head, it felt like pressure but also not at the same time, though, it wasn’t painful. You could only watch as the two conversed over the observation glass.

“Indeed.” Regrator nodded.

Two days ago, Dottore had given him a curated substance meant to increase one’s libido, thus concentrating blood flow to the genitalia. He had no qualms consuming it but it was foreign, indeed, he had never taken such a drug before and it took all his willpower not to take you right then and there. It didn’t help how his semi-hardened cock twitched inside his pants, involuntarily rubbing against the fabric of his underwear.

Dottore jotted down a few notes as the monitors displayed your real-time cerebral activity; so far, everything looked good, “Commencing the first phase of the experiment: nipple stimulation. Duration: 30 seconds. For the entire duration—without stopping—the nipples are to be stimulated via gently pinching or twisting.”

Thirty seconds didn’t seem too long, right? With that, you slightly lifted yourself off the examination chair, bringing your blouse over your chest before attempting to unclip your brassiere. Seeing your struggle, Pantalone brought himself closer, a faint whiff of tobacco following, “May I?”

Despite his chivalrous offer, his amethyst gaze kept darting at your clothed breasts and the smoothness of your skin—he knew it was impolite to do so but being under the influence of Dottore’s concoction had him acting a tad out of character. He cleared his throat as his cock twitched at the sight before him, swallowing down the low moan he almost let out. Could you really blame him? The garment was a black lace adorned with intricate patterns, not to mention the fabric being slightly see-through—a feature he found rather brazen. Pantalone could almost assume you wore this specific garment today for him to see. And maybe for your commander, as well.

“Thank you . .” You nodded and allowed Regrator to help.

“Pardon the intrusion.” He laced an arm through the narrow space between your back and the chair, lithe fingers expertly unclasping your brassiere with one hand.

Your heart may or may not have skipped a beat.

In one swift movement, the garment loosened around your torso, threatening to slip off. With slight hesitation and a burning face, you removed the fabric and shyly placed it on the chair right by your thigh. Almost immediately, icy air kissed your warmed skin which caused your nipples to harden, a small hiss almost slipping past your lips. While you were occupied with embarrassment, Pantalone’s gaze traced the curves of your chest, each mound sinfully beckoning his large hands—maybe even his mouth too. Obviously, it wasn’t his first seeing a naked woman but how his mind reeled with selfish fantasies was beyond childish.

In the control room, Dottore was unfazed—he had seen many nude bodies before and yours weren’t any different. It was nothing special, really but your cerebral activity on the other hand . . . That was more interesting.

“Whenever you’re ready.” He spoke into the intercom.

“I’ll be starting now, Miss.” Regrator sat on the narrow space of the chair, his clothed thigh brushing against your own; you tried not to think of the warmth which radiated from his body or how your name effortlessly rolled off his tongue like it was meant to be.

A silent nod was all you could muster—not even a split second eye contact to acknowledge his presence out of politeness but from the looks of it, Regrator didn’t mind at all as he proceeded to bring both hands up to your chest. If only you’d look his way you’d see a shy hue of crimson dusting his pale cheeks and ears but alas, your gaze fixated on the ceiling above.

A small yelp forced its way past your lips; Regrator used both index fingers to gently trace your areolas a couple of times, mere centimetres shy from your pebbled nipples, the tips of his fingers were cold—not icy but enough to send a strong shiver down your spine. You missed the way the corners of his lips subtly curled upwards in utter amusement—who would’ve thought Dottore’s lovely subordinate hid quite melodious tunes? There was no doubt his Harbinger colleague thought of the same thing.

As a matter of fact, despite being behind an observation glass, Dottore heard the sound you made all too clearly. The door to the control room was slightly ajar which caused any noise—minute or not—to spill through. It wasn’t foreign for his experimental subjects to create any noise but today differed, what was usually tunes of pain turned into hums of pleasure, and he couldn’t decide between the two which he preferred.

Maybe, just maybe by a tad bit—from how his core twisted with delight—it was probably the latter.

But Dottore had no room to ponder over that, not when your neurological activity displayed exquisite images on his monitor. As expected, a small cluster of highlights illuminated the somatosensory cortex which indicated its activation; he quickly jotted down notes, eyes trained on the screen before him, trying not to let your saccharine noises get to his head.

Another twitch of his now fully hardened cock had him letting out a low groan beneath his shaky breaths. The sight before him was simply exquisite; Pantalone may not have the best eyesight but he didn’t need a perfect vision to deduce the divine beauty—breasts splayed flat, torso arching ever so slightly, your head turned to the side, bottom lip tucked between your teeth, and brows furrowed in embarrassment.

Oh, what a shy little thing you were.

“Lord R-Regrator—!” He gently pinched your nipples which spread a sharp, quick shock across your chest. Another arch of your back pressed your skin closer to Regrator’s digits, he experimented with a slight twist, turning them between his index fingers and thumbs.

Archons, how embarrassing! You tried. You truly tried to hold back any unwanted sounds but the Lord Harbinger seemed to know what he was doing—how to please a woman—you couldn’t help but moan out his name from how amazing his hands felt against your feverish skin. Save for the low hum of machinery, the room was filled with complete silence and any noise made stuck out like crimson ink on a blank ivory canvas.

“Do let me know if my actions hurt you at some point.” Pantalone mindlessly murmured, mind completely fogged with lust, and senses drowned in your muffled moans.

You finally looked up at him through glassy eyes and wet lashes, it didn’t help how the bright lights above drew sparkles in your irises. He almost missed the wordless nod you responded with, too focused on the growing haze painted on your face. As Regrator continued his stimulation, shallow pants filled the space above your face and by this point, your face was as warm as it could get. Occasionally, your body shuddered beneath his expert touch, slowly and steadily driving you over the edge as each second passed.

Before another embarrassing moan could spill from your lips, The Doctor’s voice flooded the room via intercom, “First phase has concluded. Moving on to the second phase: clitoral stimulation. Duration: 30 seconds. As previously mentioned, stimulation has to be continuous for the entire duration.”

Even though embarrassment had slightly subsided, you hesitantly reached for the button of your pants, undoing them with trembling hands. Once more, the Ninth Harbinger offered assistance to which you thankfully accepted—there was no reason getting shy now, he had already played with your nipples earlier. Driving the soles of your shoes onto the cushioned examination chair, you lifted your hips and pulled your pants down along with your underwear with the Harbinger’s help—just enough to expose your cunt.

His eyes zeroed in on your glistening entrance. All for him? Oh, he was being spoiled, indeed. The sight of your cunt fanned the blazing flames of Pantalone’s ego—all this just from mere nipple play? How adorable. You must’ve been really touch starved.

“Before we commence the second phase, Pantalone, I trust you can find the clitoris, right? Perhaps you need my assistance?”

“I am not ignorant, Dottore.”

“I am simply making sure. No reason to get snappy.”

You wanted to laugh. Two Harbingers bickering should not have amused you but the pettiness behind your commander’s voice and the slight annoyance laced with Lord Regrator’s words was all too amusing. If you were to tell a fellow colleague about them two bickering whether one could find the clitoris or not, they would not believe a single word that’d come out of your mouth. Who knew they could talk about trivial matters, too, how interesting.

Lord Regrator returned his rightful attention to you, his dull expression immediately shifted into the soft smile he always wore, “Ready, Miss?” Meek, you nodded. The Harbinger repositioned himself, right knee slotted between your parted legs to get a better view of your wet cunt.

He gathered the slick coating your cunt, spreading it on the pads of his fingers before pushing back your clitoral hood to reveal the swollen nub of flesh all in its needy glory. Embarrassingly enough, a simple ghostly touch on your clitoris had your entire body jerking against the leather of the chair, followed by a wanton moan of the Harbinger’s title. You quickly turned your head to the side and pressed the skin of your forearm against your lips—a futile attempt as the moment you obstructed your face, Lord Regrator’s digit began rubbing your clitoris in tight circles, as though a wordless protest against muffling the sounds you made.

His fingers were good—amazing, even, to the point where you wished thirty seconds went as quickly as a single second. In your head, clitoral stimulation of that duration was doable but you wholly underestimated yourself and the Lord Harbinger’s skills, on top of that, you were still trying to recover from earlier. You weren’t supposed to orgasm on this phase of the experiment otherwise it would ruin it entirely but it seemed like he had a goal: to drive you over the edge before the thirty seconds were up.

“L-Lord Regrator, I think—Mhm!”

“Hm? Were you saying something?”

The arm slung over your face immediately flew downwards to grasp his wrist, attempting to slow down his actions. Your free hand gripped on the side of the examination chair, nails digging crescents into the leather to ground and steer yourself from the impending orgasm. You arched your back and moaned aloud once more, earning a satisfied smile from the Lord Harbinger.

Dottore’s gaze ripped away from the monitors and landed at the centre of the room where you and Pantalone where, he carefully watched as your body pathetically writhed under the latter’s eager touch. He could barely see your lust-bitten face but judging from the moans you let out, his friend was doing exceptionally well at pleasing you—even the activity displayed on the monitors could back that fact; more regions of the brain were now highlighted indicating an increase in activity,

It was indeed fascinating to observe how one’s brain lit up from mere stimulation.

The tune of shallow, soft pants filled Regrator’s ears, it was amusing to watch you scramble and gather the threads of sanity in your palms, refusing to let pleasure take control of your body. Did he feel bad? A little but he was no saint. He switched from tight circles to figure eights, pressing onto your sensitive nub with a little more pressure. Your legs shook with bliss, fingers wrapped around his wrist tightening as you teetered to the brink of an orgasm.

“Ngh—ah! Lord Re—Haah!” 

“I suggest you use your words otherwise I cannot understand you.” Mockery laced his dulcet voice but with the hum of machinery mixed with your shameless moans, you didn’t pick up on it.

When did Pantalone last have fun like this? Sure, he was powerful enough to control the nation’s economic state with a mere snap of his fingers but being able to control the pleasure you felt? Beyond satisfying. Not only was he rewarded with your lust-fogged expressions but also how your body squirmed beneath his touch—desperate and pathetic.

Your core tightened, it stretched and stretched further waiting for the recoil called climax but before you could reach it, your commander’s cold voice filled the room once more, “Second phase has concluded. We’ll be moving on to the final phase after a short interval.”

With that, Regrator pulled away his hand which elicited an embarrassing whine of protest from you. In a daze, you stared up at the ceiling and silently thanked Lord Dottore for the short interval because you knew well enough you’d be a complete mess once the third phase began. Though, the Second Harbinger’s reasoning was most certainly experiment-related rather than pure concern for the subject.

The tight knot deep in your core disappointingly dissipated as each second passed without stimulation—it was beyond frustrating to say the least, especially after weeks without sex. Despite the cool air inside, a sheen of sweat lightly coated your entire body and you felt stuffy; suddenly, the fabric pulled halfway down your legs felt too restricting, the blouse pooled around your neck didn’t help either. At this point, you just wanted one thing, and judging by the crimson blush on Lord Regrator’s cheeks, he wanted it too—release.

Dottore simply wasn’t being nice with the interval, the main reason for it was to let your cerebral activity return to baseline, otherwise readings from the second phase would carry on to the third phase and mess with the experiment. But he did have a more selfish reason that didn’t need disclosing—the growing tent between his legs.

He only needed a few moments to recollect himself. His bodily response to the scene before him was normal—he was still a man, after all— but in a professional setting, it was undesirable. Dottore knew what he was getting into when he first wrote the proposal for this serendipitous experiment but he didn’t expect to be aroused by it. He leaned back in his seat, a subtle glance at the prominent bulge before letting out a soft sigh.

How truly inconvenient.

After a couple moments of recollecting himself—or simply trying to—Dottore spoke into the intercom to commence the final phase, “The third will be slightly different, there will be no set duration as the end goal of this phase is an orgasm but restrictions will be in order. That means strictly no touching aside from vaginal penetration, this would count as kissing, groping or holding one another. Doing so would interfere with results.”

Since Dottore observed the sensory cortex, other forms of stimulation besides penetration would also be recorded, lowering authenticity of the results.

“Contraception is located above the machinery.” He added.

Pantalone reached for the smooth surface of the machinery next to the examination chair where he grabbed a sealed packet. Lithe fingers curled around the waistband of his pants, you watched as he unbuttoned and pulled it down just enough to reveal his hardened, leaking cock. It slapped against his clothed abdomen, donning a crimson blush that mirrored the hues on his pale cheeks. The pearlescent glob of pre-cum coating his slit had you salivating a little, tongue subtly swiping over your bottom lip.

Wide eyed and lips slightly parted, you could only wordlessly stare at the foreign sight before you, he was decently thick and merely looking at it had you clenching around nothing—eager to have all of the Lord Harbinger inside you.

Pantalone let out a low hiss, expertly rolling the latex down his shaft, “Ready?” Amethyst eyes clouded with lust found your gaze. Lord Regrator’s expression was different from what he usually wore, the cunning, unreadable smile was gone, leaving room for a flustered one.

With a wordless nod from you, the Harbinger fully situated himself between your legs, both hands each circling around the back of your knees to push them to your bare chest, “Hold your legs open for me, will you, dear?” You did as you were told, hooking an arm on each knee, keeping your legs in place and eagerly waiting for his next move.

Knees digging on leather, Pantalone placed a hand on the wide headrest of the chair while the other curled around his base, slowly guiding his cock inside your sopping entrance. A mix of your moans lingered in the air as he bottomed out, the entirety of his shaft sat inside you—heavy and hard. The stretch was delicious, it almost felt purely sinful, you’ve never taken a cock that stretched you this good before and it was dangerous because you might just get addicted to it.

Pantalone leaned over you, free hand now joining the other on holding the headrest. The silvery chain of his glasses dangled mere centimetres from your face, teasing and ghosting over your feverish skin. He sat still for a moment to relish inside your tight, velvety walls, he felt like a boyish virgin all over again with how stimulated he was, and he hasn’t even started thrusting yet.

But Pantalone had a job to do: to bring you to an orgasm because that’s what he agreed to upon signing the contract of this study—to put your pleasure before his own.

A beat or two passed ‘til he slowly drew his hips back—with only the bulbous tip remaining inside—and languidly thrusted, your nails dug into your soft skin, leaving small crescent-shaped indents. You could really only hold on to your legs and take the steady yet forceful pace Lord Regrator had set which caused your body to jolt repeatedly with every smack of his hips against your own.

It was pure torture for Pantalone, you looked absolutely divine yet he wasn’t allowed to hold you—to grope and squeeze at your bouncing breasts, to rub at your clit, to suck on every part of your exposed skin and finally taste you for himself. Alas, he could only rake his gaze up and down your semi-naked form and fantasize how you’d react beneath his palms.

The examination chair groaned underneath the weight of Pantalone’s thrusts, high pitched squeaks interlaced with the string of moans and whimpers filling the entire space. Pantalone carefully shifted his weight to his upper body, anchoring his hands on the headrest to piston his hips into your own.

“O-Oh, god! Lord Regrator!”

“God? H-Haah! Ngh—‘M no god, my dear.”

Bitterness laced his trembling words, it's almost as though he took offense and now he expressed his disdain by merely picking up the pace, rendering you a babbling mess to shut you up. Skin slapping and the smell of sex dangerously danced in the air, one Dottore couldn’t simply ignore—especially the former.

The Second Harbinger messily jotted down notes, fingers tightening around the pen every now and then whenever you let out a loud moan. He didn’t stop his gaze from wandering to where you and Pantalone were, crimson gaze locked onto your jolting form while his friend eagerly pounded you like a starved man. How your legs vigorously bounced in the air was enough to let him know how roughly Pantalone went on you.

The problem between his legs worsened and Dottore may or may not have rubbed his hard on a few times beneath the desk. Just to get a small taste of friction his hardened cock desperately wanted. Childish? Perhaps but fuck he would be lying if he said he hadn’t thought of trading places with Pantalone—even for a mere second or two. He was more than curious what you’d feel like around him.

“Lord Regrator! I’m—aah! I’m close—ngh!” Legs burning from holding the position, you let go and opted to wrap them around the Harbinger’s waist, locking him in a rather intimate distance. Pantalone let out a breathless chuckle and changed his pace into deep, short thrusts, he grinded into you every few strokes or so, allowing you to see the stars.

A few more sharp thrusts and the knot inside your stomach snapped violently as pure bliss engulfed the entirety of your body. Pantalone, unable to move due to your legs tightening around him, sheathed his cock deep inside and grinded on you, his fat tip rubbing against your sweet, sweet spot. He watched your limp body convulsed beneath him as shocks of pleasure came crashing into you.

He followed suit, spilling his warm seed into the latex while relishing in the tightness of your walls, a loud grunt forced from his rosy lips.

The two of you stayed still for a moment, individuals merely reduced to a heaving mess as the fog of orgasm slowly dissipated from your bodies. As if on cue, Dottore spoke through the intercom,

“The final phase of the study has concluded. Your cooperation is appreciated.”

A breathless laugh from the Harbinger above you, “I sure hope you managed to collect ample findings, Dottore.”

The latter could only scoff, of course he was able to do so. As opposed to his hypothesis—where he had only hypothesized two regions would be active—a handful of regions were active during an orgasm. It gave him a better understanding of how to map the human brain.

At the latter’s silence, Pantalone spoke once more, “Though, I am rather curious,” He let out a small hiss while pulling out. “Why did you need a second participant? Surely you’re more than capable of executing this task yourself, no? Unless . .”

“Unless what?”

“Unless you simply can’t do it.” To please a woman, he wanted to add.

There was only one way to interpret the Ninth’s words and despite it being ‘friendly’ banter, annoyance bubbled in Dottore’s chest, “Obviously, I would need to record findings hence my lack of participation in the study. But if you ask me, I would have done a better job.”

“Really?”

Silence followed.

Solely due to their brief exchange—or was argument a better word?—you found yourself sandwiched between Lord Dottore and Lord Regrator; every article of your clothing long discarded on the cold tiles, and machinery turned off, long forgotten. With the former laying on the examination chair, you straddled him, trembling legs on either side of his waist while the other Harbinger pressed his clothed chest against your back.

“Lord Dottore . .” You bit your lip. 

In a haste, he had unzipped his pants and pulled out his leaking cock, rubbing the bare tip up and down your sensitive slit. Behind you, Pantalone’s hands mindlessly wandered all over your naked form—from the plush of your breasts to the fat of your ass, he left no skin untouched. But it wasn’t his hands alone, his lips trailed open-mouthed kisses down the side of your neck, leaving a few small bites in between.

Pantalone gently ushered you forward, one hand splayed across your back to bring you closer to Dottore ‘til your breasts squished against the latter’s chest. Both Harbingers lined their cocks to your entrances and slowly pushed inside. Slumped against the Second, you trembled violently as they stretched your holes out—one wrong move and you were sure to come undone.

With both cocks fully sheathed inside, all you could do at that point was pant like a mere mutt in heat, you haven’t had proper time to come down from your previous orgasm so any form of stimulation quite literally melted your brain and brought tears to your eyes.

Dottore cupped your jaw with a large, gloved hand and angled your face, he examined your fucked out expression momentarily before closing the distance. Messy and desperate, the Lord Harbinger’s kiss simply knocked oxygen from your lungs, he eagerly plunged his tongue past your lips and explored the inside of your mouth. 

The kiss and the sting of his pointed mask digging into your cheek was enough to briefly distract you from their experimental thrusts. Shameless, you wailed into your commander’s mouth, knuckles turning into a lovely shade of ivory as you gripped the collar of his coat.

The examination chair groaned beneath the weight of the Harbingers’ merciless thrusts and one could only hope it was sturdy enough to last an entire round. Creaks of the chair mixed with the sinful harmony of your moans filled all four corners of the room, thankfully this space was a bit more secluded in comparison to your commander’s laboratory which meant anyone else walking down the corridors wouldn’t be able to hear the lewd sounds as much.

Despite the eagerness behind their thrusts, it was certainly surprising to have their movements coordinate with one another—an unspoken rhythm with the sole purpose of bringing you and themselves to release.

Dottore pulled away to catch his breath, leaving a thin translucent string of saliva connecting his kiss-bitten lips to your own, hot breaths mingling together through rough pants. The corner of the Harbinger’s lips curled upwards upon seeing your drunken expression—who knew you looked utterly divine stuffed with two cocks? It made him twitch.

Pantalone’s gaze fixated on your lower half—how your ass bounced and jolted with every powerful thrust he gave. The mere sight of his wet cock appearing and disappearing between the globes of your ass had him heaving a little harder. Maybe it was also due to the tightness of your rear, or the fact that having another cock inside you intensified the pleasurable friction he felt.

A few more harsh thrusts, the coil inside you finally snapped once more, bringing you to a rather earth shattering orgasm. Your body violently trembled in pure bliss as you tried to moan their names to no avail. With the sensation being too much, you fisted Dottore’s clothed chest as if doing so would somewhat ease the pleasurable pain your entire body felt.

The Second soon followed suit, a couple of desperate thrusts into your sopping cunt—ones that had you wailing in overstimulation—before sheathing himself deep inside and releasing thick, warm ribbons of cum. A string of colourful curses in his mother tongue slipped past his kiss-bitten lips as he came inside. Dottore filled you all the way to the brim ‘til his seed slowly seeped out of your greedy hole and onto the leather cushion beneath.

Ah, he’d have to get it cleaned now. 

This left Pantalone who greedily hauled your limp body against his chest; one hand expertly rubbed your swollen clit while the other held your jaw to angle your face upwards so he could plunge his tongue inside your mouth. You choked on the messy kiss as the new angle invited him deeper inside. Dottore’s cock slipped out from the change in position but he didn’t mind, instead, he sat up and took it upon himself to plunge two long digits in your cunt.

His fingers were already long enough to reach far but the added thickness of his gloves had you arching your back. If it wasn’t for Lord Regrator’s firm hold, you would’ve already been slumped against the chair long ago. The former’s fingers moved in a ‘come hither’ motion which allowed him to brush against your sweet spot. Surely you could handle another one, right?

“Oh—hng! Close! Ah—haah!” Hands flew down to circle around Dottore’s wrist, you attempted to pathetically remove his fingers from your cunt which shortly proved futile as he remained unmoved.

You came once more, another blinding orgasm ripping through your orgasm but this time, you could barely even muster a whimper—only a soundless cry and fresh tears streaming down your face. Pantalone grunted and bit your shoulder as orgasm hit him, hot cum painting the walls of your rear; he grinded his hips against your ass to ride out his orgasm before releasing your skin from his bite.

Nothing but the sound of harsh breathing filled the walls and for a long moment, the three of you remained still to catch your breaths with reality slowly seeping in to replace what was once lust. You wanted to sleep right then and there, exhaustion weighed heavy on your body from how hard they both worked you—too tired to even think of the consequences.

Your position had long since grown too complex for the role you originally had.  Once a lady-in-waiting to the Tsaritsa, you were asked merely to be a liaison in the Archon’s stead.  But you asked questions, interested in understanding the Gnostic web that tied everything together; it was less about faith and every bit simply being tired of not knowing what Her Majesty was referring to.

And then you simply…never left his side.  Morning lessons began to include tea, and then by the time that was over, it was lunch time and you were still present.  Time already sped by as it was at his age but in your presence, it may as well have not existed at all.

Zandik felt himself relax against the soft chaise, long legs outstretched on either side of you, your back curled forward.  You were hiding your latest floral creation from him as best you could.  All the while, he had brushed out your hair from the unnecessary pins and begun to braid, fingers working off of muscle memory from his time with the Eremites, humming all the while.  

Every once in a while, he plucked off a nearby purple flower, a rose in name alone, and wove it into the pattern.  Padisarahs were difficult to grow here but he used those, too.  The occasional Mourning Flower for a pop of vibrancy.  

If there was ever a goddess of the flowers, she walked along the ground, warming every room she was in.  He always felt a kinship to Deshret and couldn’t help but wonder if the Desert King felt as such.  

His only lament was meeting you now, at eighty four, compared to your thirty-something.  Perhaps that was for the best.  He would have completely devoured you at thirty-five, likely ruined you at least in some capacity.  Certainly would have made his current passing musings happen much earlier under the guise of curiosity.

For he couldn’t help but wonder if he had gone about his legacy the wrong way.

The thought hadn’t crossed his mind until the Knave, vicious woman that she was, asked for a meeting regarding a colicky new addition to the House.  You were present for most events and meetings nowadays, purely out of a selfish need for your comfort.

You scooped the child right up out of the pram, adjusted them into a hanging tiger pose, and walked his office perimeter for what must have been an hour.  Not a single cry, not even settling them back down.

It wasn’t the first instance of seeing you with children.  Those who could not be put into spy work because of Crucabena’s tests landed in his care.  More often than not, they became the subject of minor experiments that were to their benefit: new limbs; new methods of bodily repair.  They became errand runners, lab assistants, and Forty-Five did his best to find placement for the children who had skills needed elsewhere.  You were there to greet them when you could be and more than once, he’d heard reports of story time and penmanship help and repairs to comfort toys.

Goddess, indeed.  You had to be, to walk alongside the monster he was known to be.

But he’d taken the wrong approach to his legacy, he had to have.  Zandik was all but certain now that he couldn’t shake images of you from his mind as he worked in a smaller braid into the larger design.

“Zandik?”

He pulled his gaze away from your hair, realizing his fingers were still pinching a few strands, not yet having started another section.  He’d been staring off, lost in thought, all the while you’d turned your head ever so slightly to see him out of the corner of your eyes.  His good eye found your visage instantly, a pool of eternal patience.  

“Your thoughts must be heavy if you stopped humming,” you said.

This close, he could smell your soap and lotion, and the heady scent of your pheromones undercutting both.  He’d been humming to put it out of his mind but the knowledge you were likely ovulating may have been one of the subtle nudges that started this whole storm of thoughts to begin with.

Zandik finished off your braid, fingers tracing a path of Padisarahs before you shifted and turned around.  In your hands was a crown of Kalpalata Lotuses, Frostlamp Flowers, and an occasional Mourning Flower.  You had yet to yet the Sneznhayan lilies you had pruned earlier for the task.

You moved effortlessly, a pang of envy moving through him as you placed a knee on either side of his hips and sat, never putting your full weight on him.  He could take it, he’d always insisted, but you only ever gave in when he was inside you.

His hands rested on your hips as you asked that he look down for you  to place your work upon his head.  Your fingers brushed his ears softly.  His member throbbed as he took the chance to indulge in the remainder of his fantasy.  Zandik fixed his sights on your abdomen as he let a hand drift to press against your flat stomach.  Your body would handle the process well, even if something unforeseen happened.  Something about you was simply…stubborn that way.  He pulled you closer, pressing you against him and burying his face in the crook of your neck, forcing you to pause.

He could imagine the fullness of your breasts, the glow in your face, the way you’d smell.  Knowing full well it was his seed growing inside of you, making you his in the only other way he could…

Hadn’t he buried these impulses?  He was too old; he would die and leave the child without a father, surrounded by contraptions that claimed to be him…

Your hands found his hair and he felt his member twitch greedily.

“Talk to me, my love,” you coaxed.

He took a slow inhale and then looked up at you, hand still on your belly.

“There are many things I’ll never get to do,” he said.  “I thought the Segments were a worthy way to leave a trace of myself behind but I’ve come to realize that was a mistake.”

Your face softened further and you combed your fingers through the hair at his temple, just as always liked.  You weren’t helping the matter, being so doting and gentle.  “How so?”

“They’re inorganic, mostly.  They’ll survive but only insofar as being able to pass knowledge to others, maintain records.  Once I’m gone, the memories of me will only exist in the minds of others.  I leave no physical trace behind.  No lineage.”

No, no, don’t cup his cheek like that, he wouldn’t survive this conversation if you—

“You would be a beautiful mother,” he confessed.

How he wished his vision was better to drink in your face.  Why hasn’t he met you fifty years ago?  Why hadn’t the Elixir worked?

He could succeed only to never…

You tilted your head and kissed him, tender and filled with everything that words failed to convey about complex human connection.  The closest comparisons were waves to a shoreline, the sun to the horizon, water shimmering in an oasis.

He gasped when your hand traveled, finding his pants pocket.  Your fingers skimmed his length as you found what you were looking for.  He always kept an extra one on him, not that it was necessary every time, but he was never not prepared.

You pulled away from the kiss long enough to hold up the tiny pill to him, confirming his thoughts.  You slipped it between his lips and he almost choked as you grazed your lips against his ear and said, “Then make me one, Zandik.”

His sense of control shattered.  He grabbed your skirts, hiking them up and hastily twisting them into a knot to keep them out of the way.  Hard though he was and as much as he loved watching you bounce, he still needed time enough for the medicine to work, and he was not about to waste the opportunities in this position.

“Perhaps we should use gravity to our advantage,” Zandik said, grazing his teeth on your lower lip.

He felt your smirk as you reached and clung to his shirt while you leveraged your weight, mindful of moving too quickly.  The wet patch of your panties burned against him, your core already soaked.  How long were you going to stay silent about your own needs?

Zandik moved down the length of your body carefully, pulling your dress down to free your breasts, placing open-mouthed kisses along the soft flesh until he found your nipple.  He sucked until your nipple hardened and then rolled the nub with his tongue, one hand idly managing the same on the other side, causing you to wriggle against him.  You once described the sensation of him sucking as having tugged a string right down your abdomen and he grinned against you as you arched, clearly feeling the same now.  He gave the same attention to your other breast, and by the time he was pleased with his handiwork, you were already panting.

He grazed his teeth along the fabric of your dress until he arrived at the apex of your thighs, heady arousal filling the air.

“Hungry little thing,” he chastised, pulling your panties aside to inspect your glistening pussy.

You were plush and soaked, more than ready, but something about this moment demanded patience from both of you.  He had it in abundance, even if his cock ached at the sight of you.  Nothing might come of this, for there were way too many variables involved, but when you looked down at him like that, how could he not taste you?

He lapped at you, paying special attention to your clit, using his nose while his tongue pressed into your folds.  His fingers dug into your thighs, squeezing, pulling you closer to him.  You tasted sweet and when you began to tremble, he pulled away, face sticky as though he’d bitten into a ripe peach, your juices coating his lips and chin.

Oh, you were a sight.  Lips swollen and parted, eyes hooded in denied ecstasy, skin flush with need.  You were unabashed in your desire.  A sight only for him, a goddess undone at his touch who never made him feel unloved in the process.

He would have ruined your fifty years ago.  He didn’t understand, not then, what it meant to have companionship such as this.  

“Zandik,” you whispered, voice hoarse, hands reaching  to cup his wet face.  “You’re lost again.”

He shook his head.  “I’ve never been more at home,” he replied.  “You truly want this?”

“To bear your child?”

“And all that goes with it.”

“I know the risks and the agonies.  If I do one thing with our time together, let it be this.”

He didn’t deserve you.

Zandik moved to kiss the inside of your thigh, slowly working his way back up, your skin hot under his lips.  He sighed into your mouth when he finally kissed you properly, tongue meeting yours with steady certainty, meeting his movements beat for beat.  You pulled at his belt and unfastened it with ease, positioning his tip at your entrance.  He pushed into you in a single stroke, your walls scalding as you engulfed him down to the hilt.

He rocked gently, holding himself back as he took long, slow strokes.  Every inch.  He needed to feel every inch of you, feel the way your pussy molded itself to him, hear the way you parted for his cock.  You, who held more divinity in your bones than the Archon he served, certainly more than the Archon who failed him, and he needed to know it with every fiber of his being.  He broke the kiss to press his face into your neck, suddenly overcome with a strange wave he couldn’t identify that burned his eyes and caught his breath.  The flowers atop his head rustled and he let out a shaky gasp as you stroked his hair.

No, no, too early, not yet—

“Come for me, Zandik.  Let go and come for me.”

Fire stung his eyes, tears welling up as you rolled your hips, pussy clenching for every last drop that he could no longer hold back.  He shot deep inside, driving himself as far as you would take him to plug you up.  His cock throbbed, still swollen; he was sensitive but nowhere near ready to stop.

Zandik caught his breath, blinking away the tears, and then moved to capture your lips again.  It didn’t take much for your walls to flutter again, and again, and again, tributes owed for allowing his heretical self to bask in you.  He was shaving off years of life, certainly, but it was worth it, he reasoned as he pulled you down and pressed your legs to your chest, driving every drop of his seed into you.

He kept himself inside you until his cock finally softened, both of you entirely spent.  The glass around you was foggy, obscuring the wintery landscape into little more than a white blur.

It mattered little.  Zandik pushed the sweaty strands of hair from your face and pressed his lips to your forehead, nose, and cheeks.

“We may not succeed immediately,” he whispered.

“I know.  That doesn’t change what I said.”

__________________________________________________________________________

The door slid shut with a quiet, unhurried click, leaving you alone in the silence of the laboratory. 

He was gone by the time your head cleared enough to notice.

Not far, probably, you could hear him somewhere beyond the door, the familiar clatter of instruments being set down with more force than necessary, but gone all the same, and the space beside you felt colder for it in a way the room's actual temperature didn't explain. You lay there for a long moment, piecing the night back together through a haze that hadn't fully lifted, and the longer you lay there, the more the shape of what had happened started to sour.

He hadn't stayed. He hadn't said anything before he left, no reassurance, no explanation, not even the clinical detachment you'd almost have preferred to silence. Just gone, the way a man leaves a room once he's finished with whatever brought him into it.

You told yourself, at first, that you were imagining the worst of it. That exhaustion and the last traces of whatever fog still clung to your thoughts were doing the doubting for you. But the thought, once it took root, wouldn't leave: had this been another experiment? Another variable catalogued and closed out, no different in kind from the nuts, the notebook, the months of quiet observation, except this time the data had been you, laid bare, and he'd gotten what he needed and walked away the moment the study concluded.

It was, you realized with a kind of hollow, humiliated clarity, exactly the kind of thing you should have expected from him from the very beginning. You'd simply let yourself forget, somewhere between the shiny trinkets and the dish of nuts and the way he'd said something considerably less efficient like it cost him something, that efficiency had always, eventually, won out with him before.

You didn't cry. You'd promised yourself a long time ago, somewhere around the twentieth escape attempt, that you wouldn't give him that particular satisfaction. But you lay there a long while, staring at a ceiling that had seen every version of you the lab had ever produced, and let yourself feel, fully, how much it hurt to have been so wrong about how far this had actually gone.

You saw him again the next morning, and somehow that was worse than not seeing him at all.

He was at his desk when you came in, exactly as he always was, sleeves rolled, a stack of reports already sorted and waiting for you the way they had been every morning for months. He glanced up when the door opened, and for one unbearable second you thought, hoped, some small traitorous part of you admitted  that something in his face might acknowledge what had happened.

"You're late," he said, and returned to his notes.

That was all. No mention of the night before. No hesitation, no awkwardness, nothing to suggest anything between you had shifted at all, just the same clipped efficiency he'd greeted you with a hundred mornings before this one, as though your body under his hands, the sound he'd made when you'd finally stopped resisting, the fog he'd left you in afterward, had simply been filed away with everything else and closed.

He gestured, without looking up, toward the edge of the desk. "Reports need sorting by priority. And—" a small, careless nod toward the familiar dish, set out in its familiar place, "I had more of the ones you prefer brought up."

The mixed nuts. Sitting there exactly as they always did, exactly as they had for months, an offering that had once felt like the closest thing to tenderness he was capable of giving you.

You stared at the dish like it had personally wronged you.

It took everything you had not to sweep it off the desk. Because you understood, all at once and with a clarity that made your stomach turn, precisely what that little dish had always been to him, not affection, not the quiet language you'd let yourself believe it was, but a controlled variable. A comfort measure, dispensed on schedule, the same as antiseptic or a change of bandages. Something you administer to keep a specimen docile. You'd let yourself read devotion into a feeding schedule, and the realization made you feel sick in a way the fog from the night before never had.

"I'm not hungry," you said. Your voice came out flatter than you meant it to.

He looked up then properly, for the first time since you'd walked in  and something in your tone seemed to catch him off guard, though he covered it quickly, the way he covered everything.

"You usually are, by this hour."

"Not today."

He studied you for a moment too long, the way he studied anomalies, and you hated, hated, that some part of you still recognized that look as attention, even now, even furious, even disgusted at yourself for ever having wanted it.

You let out a deep sigh as you were gathering your thoughts and words.

"You left," you said.

"I had reports to finish." He still didn't look up.

"That's not what I asked."

"No," he agreed, "it wasn't. But it's the answer you're going to get, unless you'd like to phrase the question more precisely." He set his pen down at last, folding his hands with the unhurried patience of a man who'd already decided how this conversation would go before you'd walked in. "What is it you actually want me to say?"

"I want to know why you left me like that."

"You seem to have already decided why," he said, mildly, almost bored.

 "You've been looking at me as though I've committed some unforgivable offense. I'd hate to disappoint you by contradicting a narrative you've clearly put so much thought into."

"Don't do that."

"Do what."

"Twist it back on me. You know exactly what you did."

"I know what I did," he said, evenly. "I'm considerably less certain you do." 

He rose from the desk, unhurried, closing the distance between you with the same deliberate calm he brought to everything, and you had to fight the instinct to step back. 

"You've spent months, by your own account, believing I felt something for you. Now, at the first inconvenient silence, you've decided the opposite must be true instead, that it was all conditioning, that you were simply managed into compliance like everyone else who's passed through this lab."

 His voice dropped, softer, almost gentle, which was somehow worse than if he'd raised it. 

"Which version do you actually believe, I wonder, or is it easier to believe whichever one lets you feel the most wronged?"

"That's not—" you started, and hated that he'd already made you doubt the sentence before you'd finished it.

"Isn't it?" He tilted his head, watching the effect of his own words settle over your face with the same clinical patience he gave every experiment. 

"You came in here certain of your anger. You're considerably less certain now. That should tell you something about how much of it was ever really about me, and how much was about how easily you can talk yourself into believing the worst."

You felt something in you waver,  the particular, sickening sensation of your own convictions being dismantled by someone who'd clearly done this before, to someone, and knew exactly which supports to remove first. For one long moment, you almost let him win the room entirely.

Then you caught yourself.

"No," you said, slower, steadier, forcing the anger back into focus even as your voice shook. 

"Don't do that. Don't stand there and make my own hurt sound like a flaw in my thinking. I know what happened. You left. And now you're trying to make me apologize for noticing."

Something shifted behind his eyes, not quite surprise, but close to it, the flicker of a man watching a variable refuse to behave the way he'd calculated. He didn't answer immediately.

"You're good at this," you added, quieter now, though no less firm. 

"Turning things around so I end up defending myself instead of you answering anything. I'm not doing that tonight."

The silence that followed had a different quality than the ones before it, his, for once, rather than yours. When he finally spoke again, some of the practiced control had gone out of his voice.

"...No," he admitted, slower now, the calm finally slipping a fraction. "I suppose you're not."

Nothing was resolved that night,  not fully. He hadn't apologized, not in so many words, and you hadn't forgiven him, not in so many words either. But something had shifted, some balance in the room quietly recalibrated, and you left with the distinct, unfamiliar sense that for once, you'd been the one who'd won a battle of wits against him.

It didn't feel like enough. Not yet.

So you stopped waiting to be assigned anywhere.

Pantalone had a task in Fontaine that wanted for an extra set of eyes he trusted more than his own staff; you volunteered before Dottore had so much as heard the request existed. You didn't ask permission. You'd told yourself, walking out, that you no longer required it,  a small, deliberate cruelty aimed less at proving anything to Pantalone than at seeing what, if anything, it would cost you with Dottore.

You'd taken your crow form for most of the trip, easier for slipping through the places Pantalone's negotiations required a quieter kind of observer, and he'd taken an immediate, faintly amused interest in you that had nothing to do with the mission at all. He found it delightful, in his own detached way, that Dottore's "prized specimen," as he insisted on calling you, could be coaxed onto his shoulder with considerably less effort than you ever let on to anyone else. He took to running a careful finger along the feathers at your nape whenever a negotiation ran long, an absent, idle habit that you allowed more out of boredom than fondness, though you were fairly certain, watching the pleased little curl of his mouth each time he did it, that he knew exactly how it would look reported back to Dottore, and enjoyed the idea of that report more than the gesture itself.

"He really does keep you well," Pantalone mused once, stroking a thumb down your wing with an idle sort of proprietary ease that would have made you bristle from anyone else. "I confess I hadn't expected the Doctor to be sentimental about anything with feathers."

You said nothing. You didn't need to. You suspected the silence would be reported just as faithfully as anything you might have said.

Before you left Fontaine, he produced something from an inner pocket.  A small, deliberate motion, the kind that told you he'd planned it well before the negotiations had even concluded. A thin bracelet, Northland Bank made by the look of it, gold-threaded and set with a single dark stone that caught the light in a way you found yourself staring at longer than you meant to.

"A parting gift," he said, watching your reaction with open amusement, 

"for services rendered. I understand your kind has a certain... appreciation for objects like this."

You should have refused it. You knew that even as you let him fasten it loosely around your ankle in your smaller form, some small, treacherous part of you was already cataloguing the way it caught the light every time you moved. It was, you told yourself, simply a gift, nothing more calculated than any of the shiny trinkets you'd have gathered for yourself, if you'd found them somewhere unguarded.

You suspected, watching Pantalone's satisfied little smile as he watched you admire it, that he knew perfectly well it was more than that.

Dottore said nothing when you returned three days later. You noted that carefully.

It was two days after that before he said anything about the bracelet at all, and even then, it came sideways, disguised as something else entirely. You were sorting reports at his desk when his gaze caught on your wrist, you'd taken to wearing it in your human form too, unable to quite bring yourself to leave something so deliberately pretty tucked away in a drawer, and his pen stilled mid-sentence.

"That's new," he said, in the same flat tone he might have used to note an anomaly in a blood sample.

"A gift," you said, not looking up.

"From Pantalone."

It wasn't a question, which meant he'd already known, which meant he'd noticed it the moment you'd walked back through the door and simply chosen not to say anything until now.

 "Yes," you said anyway, if only to watch what he'd do with the confirmation.

"Northland Bank made," he said, studying it with the same clinical focus he gave everything, though his jaw had gone tighter than the observation required. "Expensive, for a parting gift."

"Jealous?"

"Merely noting that he's rarely so generous without expecting something in return." He returned to his notes, too deliberately, the picture of a man uninterested in a subject he'd clearly been unable to stop looking at for the better part of a minute. "I'd be careful what you assume that generosity costs."

"Careful," you repeated, amused despite yourself. "From the man who's said nothing about it for two days."

He didn't answer that. But his eyes flicked once more to the bracelet before returning, with obvious effort, to his reports, and you decided, watching him, that you'd let the silence say what he wouldn't.

It wasn't only Pantalone and Childe, either. Word of you had apparently spread further than you'd realized among the Harbingers themselves, and it wasn't long before others started finding their own excuses to seek you out whenever you were in your smaller form. Columbina found you first, delighted in a way that unsettled you slightly with how genuine it seemed, she'd coo softly whenever you hopped near her, tracing a gloved finger along your wing with unsettling gentleness, murmuring something about how precious you were in a tone that made you suspect she meant it in more ways than one. Sandrone, characteristically, treated the whole thing as an extension of her usual clinical curiosity, examining your feathers with the same detached precision Dottore might have used, though she at least had the decency to ask before handling you, which was more courtesy than you often got from him these days. Even Arlecchino, who acknowledged almost nothing beneath her notice, paused once to let you land briefly on her forearm, studying you with a long, considering look before remarking, to no one in particular, that she understood the appeal now.

It was Rosalyne who made the biggest fuss of all,  delighted, unbothered by rank or decorum, scooping you up without so much as asking and cradling you against her chest with the easy affection of someone who'd apparently decided you were the most interesting thing to happen to her week. She counted your feathers aloud, laughed when you nipped at her fingers in mild protest, and declared, cheerfully, that Dottore didn't deserve you if he was going to keep you locked away in that lab all the time.

You found, somewhat to your own surprise, that you didn't mind any of it. It was easy, uncomplicated attention, offered without agenda or leverage, and you let yourself enjoy it more than you probably should have, if only because so little else in your life had ever come without a catch attached.

Dottore noticed, of course. He always noticed.

He said nothing the first few times he found you passed between them, feathers ruffled with contentment, indulging Rosalyne's insistence on comparing the sheen of your wings to polished obsidian or Columbina's quiet, careful preening. But you caught him watching from the doorway more than once, arms folded, a faint and entirely unfamiliar discomfort etched into a face built for concealing exactly that kind of thing.

"You seem to be building quite the following," he said once, dry, arms still crossed, as you finally slipped free of Rosalyne's overeager hands.

"They're friendly," you said, once you'd shifted back enough to speak properly. "Unlike some people."

"I'm not unfriendly. I'm precise."

"You looked uncomfortable just now."

"I looked," he said, with the particular stiffness of a man defending a position he no longer fully believed, "concerned that they were mishandling a specimen unfamiliar with proper containment protocol."

"They were petting me, Dottore. Not running tests."

He didn't have an answer for that one either. He simply turned and walked back toward his study, a shade too briskly for a man who claimed to feel nothing about any of it, and you let yourself smile, just slightly, once his back was fully turned.

The following week, it was Childe who asked, half in earnest and half simply to see if you'd say yes again, and you did. You spent two more days away, trading easy conversation and easier company with a man who never once made you feel like a specimen mid-observation, and told yourself that was the whole of the appeal.

Dottore, for his part, did something you hadn't quite expected. He tolerated it.

Not gracefully,  you caught the tightness in his jaw each time your absence was announced at a meeting, the particular stillness that settled over him whenever your name came up attached to someone else's mission roster. But he didn't forbid it. He didn't so much as comment on it directly, which unsettled you more than any objection would have. You'd expected control. What you got instead was a man visibly, deliberately restraining himself from exercising any.

It was only the small things that gave him away. He came looking for you twice that week for tasks that could easily have waited, or been handed to anyone else in the lab, and found instead an empty desk and a dish of nuts going stale, untouched, because you weren't there to eat them. He didn't ask where you'd gone. He didn't need to; everyone in the building seemed to know before he did, which you suspected bothered him almost as much as the absence itself.

By the seventh day, something in him had visibly worn thin.

So a few days later, when Childe found an excuse to linger near your desk longer than any correspondence required, laughing too easily at something you'd said, you didn't discourage it the way you usually would have. You let it go on a beat longer than necessary. You even laughed back.

You told yourself it wasn't deliberate. You knew, even as you told yourself that, that it was a lie you weren't trying very hard to sell.

Dottore didn't look up from his work at first. You caught the exact moment he did, a flicker of attention he didn't quite manage to disguise as disinterest, gone as quickly as it appeared, filed away behind the same composed mask he always wore. You almost let it go at that. Almost.

"He's rather charming, isn't he," you said instead, to no one in particular, loud enough to carry.

"If you enjoy predictability," Dottore said, not looking up, though his pen had stopped moving entirely.

Childe, delighted at having an audience for baiting him, leaned in further.

 "Careful, Doctor, you're starting to sound jealous."

"I don't experience jealousy," Dottore said, flat, final, the words coming out a fraction too fast to be as unbothered as he clearly wanted them to sound.

You caught his eye, deliberately, and smiled, not for Childe. For him.

Something in Dottore's expression went very still.

He set his pen down. Rose from the desk with none of his usual unhurried patience, and crossed the room with enough purpose that Childe actually took a half-step back, hands raised, grin faltering into something more careful.

"Enough," Dottore said.

It wasn't loud. It didn't need to be. The single word landed with a weight that ended whatever Childe had been about to say next, and he excused himself with a low whistle and a glance your way that suggested he'd gotten exactly the reaction he'd been fishing for all along, whether or not it had been at your expense too.

Once the door shut behind him, Dottore turned to you, and for a moment he said nothing at all  just looked at you with an expression caught somewhere between fury and something considerably less easy for him to name.

"Is this your strategy," he said, low, clipped, "to make me sit here and think about you? Unfortunately, that will never take effect on me."

"Won't it," you said, unable to keep the satisfaction fully out of your voice.

"No." The word came too fast, too defensive to be as certain as he wanted it to sound. "I am not so easily—" he stopped himself, visibly irritated at the sentence he'd nearly finished, and started again with more control than the first attempt had managed. "You're wasting your effort. I don't respond to manipulation."

"Funny," you said. "That's usually your line."

For a moment he looked like a man arguing with himself and losing, and when he finally spoke again, his voice had lost its usual clinical distance entirely.

"I don't," he said, low, almost angry, at you, or at himself, you genuinely couldn't tell. "This isn't— I don't care for you in the way you seem determined to believe I do."

"Then why does it matter who I laugh with?"

"Because you're mine," he said, before he seemed to have fully decided to say it, and something in his own voice seemed to catch him off guard the moment it was out. He stopped, visibly annoyed at himself, at the word, at how little it had needed his permission to escape.

"I pulled you out of a storm that should have killed you," he went on, quieter now but no less pointed, as though the memory itself had given him something to stand on. "I gave you a place, a purpose, work that made use of every part of you no one else would have bothered to notice. You were nothing but a dying anomaly in the snow before I decided you were worth keeping." His eyes didn't leave yours. "That is a statement of fact, not sentiment. You belong to this research, to this lab, to work I have invested considerable time in. It has nothing to do with—"

"Don't," you said, sharper than you meant to, something cold settling under the anger. "Don't you dare use that against me. You didn't save me out of kindness, you told me so yourself, I was a specimen too rare to leave behind. Now you want to wear it like a debt I owe you, like I should be grateful enough to let you decide who gets to look at me." Your hands had curled at your sides without your noticing. "That's not gratitude, Dottore. That's you making me feel small enough to keep."

Something flickered across his face,  not quite guilt, he wasn't capable of that, not fully, but close enough to its shadow that you almost believed you'd imagined it.

"I won't feel guilty for existing before you decided I was interesting," you continued, quieter now but no less firm. "And I won't let you rewrite it into some debt I have to keep paying just so you can call it possession instead of asking for anything honestly."

He didn't answer right away. For a long moment he simply stood there, jaw tight, and you watched him do what he always did when cornered, search for the angle that would put him back in control of the conversation.

"You make it sound simpler than it is," he said finally, voice clipped. "As though there's some clean, honest version of this I've been deliberately withholding out of cruelty. There isn't. I don't have one to give you."

"That's convenient."

"It's true." A flicker of the old sharpness returned to his eyes. "You'd like me to say something you can hold against me later, some declaration you can point to and say he admitted it. I'm not going to make that easy for you."

"I'm not asking you to make it easy. I'm asking you to stop pretending this is about ownership when we both know it isn't anymore."

His jaw worked once, twice, and for the first time all night he had nothing ready to say. Not agreeing, he wasn't capable of that yet, not cleanly,  but the silence itself was new, an absence where a deflection should have been.

"I don't know what to name it," he said eventually, and the admission clearly cost him something, dragged out rather than offered. "That's the truth, such as it is. I'm not going to dress it up as more than that just because you'd prefer a cleaner answer."

It wasn't an apology. It wasn't even close to one. But it was the first time he'd said I don't know about anything in the entire time you'd known him, and something about the rawness of not-knowing, coming from a man who always knew, landed harder than any confession could have.

"That's not nothing," you said, quiet.

"No," he agreed, guarded still, watching you with something that wasn't quite trust yet. "I suppose it isn't."

The silence after his admission hung heavier than the blizzard he pulled you from. You could still taste the words, I don't know what to name it like metal on the tongue, rusted and reluctant. He stood there, motionless, waiting. Always waiting. As if you might fly out the window and leave him with nothing but the empty space where a specimen should be.

You didn't fly.

You stepped forward.

His eyes, those dissecting, cataloging eyes tracked the movement with the precision of a man who knew exactly how many centimeters separated you now. Two. One. Your hand found his collar, not gentle, not asking. The fabric of his coat was rough under your palm, expensive, and cold. He was warm underneath.

"y/n." Your name in his mouth sounded like a classification he hadn't finished revising.

"Don't," you said, and you didn't know what you were warning him against, speaking, stopping, disappearing into that clinical void where he stored everything he couldn't label.

You kissed him.

It wasn't soft. It tasted like the resentment you'd been carrying since he left the room that night, since he let you think you'd been conditioned like one of his experiments. He stiffened, half a second of genuine surprise, the most honest reaction you'd ever wrung from him and then his hand was at the back of your neck, fingers pressing into the junction where the spine met skull with the certainty of a man who knew anatomy well enough to break it.

He didn't break you. He held.

When you broke apart, his breath was controlled, measured, but his pupils had blown wide, black consuming the gold. "The Fatui," he said, voice low, clinical even now, "would call this a miscalculation."

"And you?"

"I didn't calculate anymore when you were in the room."

The admission cost him. You saw it in the tightness of his jaw, the way his thumb traced the line of your throat not with tenderness but with the obsessive attention of a cartographer mapping territory. His territory. The thought should have infuriated you. It did. It also sent heat pooling low in your stomach, corvid-bright and treacherous.

You pulled at his coat. He let you. The garment fell open, and you pushed your hands beneath his shirt, finding the scarred skin there, the places where he'd been stitched back together by his own hand. He hissed not from pain, from restraint. He was holding himself rigid, letting you explore, letting you take.

"Your bracelet," he said suddenly, and his fingers caught your wrist, thumb brushing the metal Pantalone had given you. 

"I could remove it. Replace it." His grip tightened, not enough to hurt, enough to claim. 

"Something that didn't come from a banker who looked at you like you were collateral."

You laughed, breathless. "Jealousy doesn't suit you, Doctor."

"It suited me perfectly," he corrected, and then he was moving, reversing your positions, your back against the wall beside his workbench. Papers scattered, his notes, where your name had replaced Subject C-17 in handwriting that had grown gradually less precise, more hurried. "I'd simply never had cause to wear it before."

His mouth found your neck, teeth grazing the tendon there with the care of a man who knew exactly how much pressure separated a bruise from a break. You arched into it, corvid-instincts singing at the possession of it, the claiming. He noticed, he always noticed, and made a sound against your skin, low and resentful.

"Childe touched your shoulder yesterday," he murmured, breath hot. "I saw. You laughed for him."

"You didn't stop him." you said 

"I wanted to." The confession was dragged out, bitter. "I wanted to remove his hand at the wrist. Experimental purposes."

Your fingers tangled in his blue hair, pulling until he looked at you. His expression was fractured, that controlled mask cracked along fault lines you had put there. "Then do something about it now."

He didn't ask for permission. He never had. What he did was lift you onto the edge of his desk, clearing beakers and instruments with a sweep of his arm, the crash of glass irrelevant and stepped between your knees. His hands were methodical even in this, pushing up your thighs, mapping the shape of your hips, the curve of your waist, as if he were still taking notes. As if he were memorizing you for future reference.

"Rosalyne complimented your plumage," he said, low, while his fingers worked at the fastenings of your clothing. "Said you were exquisite. Sandrone offered you a perch in her workshop. Columbina sang to you." 

Each word was a wound he was tending with his tongue, possessive and furious. "They didn't know what you were. What you cost."

"And what did I cost?"

His eyes met yours, and for a moment the mask was gone entirely. "Everything," he said. "You cost me everything, and you didn't even know it."

He pushed your underwear aside, not off, just enough to expose you and you felt the air of the laboratory against your wetness, obscene and clinical. He looked down at you spread open on his desk, and the sound he made was barely human, a caught breath that became a growl.

"Say it," you demanded, because you needed to hear it, needed to know this wasn't another experiment.

"Mine." The word was bitten out, resentful, true. "My specimen. My mistake. My—" He stopped, and then his fingers were on you, two of them pushing inside without warning, stretching you open with the precision of a man who knew exactly what he was doing. You cried out, back arching off the wood, and he leaned over you, free hand pinning your hip to the desk. "My only variable I couldn't solve."

He fucked you with his fingers, curling them to find the spot that made your vision blur, watching your face with the intensity of a man recording data. You were panting, squirming against his hand, and he didn't speed up, he kept the rhythm torturous, clinical, until you were begging without words, nails digging crescents into his shoulders.

"Please," you finally gasped, and you hated how desperate you sounded, how much you needed this from him.

He withdrew his fingers leaving you empty, aching and worked at his own trousers with efficient, angry movements. His cock was hard, flushed dark, and he didn't touch himself, just gripped your thighs and pulled you to the edge of the desk.

He pushed into you in one slow, relentless thrust, and you screamed, head falling back, thighs trembling in your agitation. He didn't flinch. He watched them with something like hunger, the same way he had watched you eat from his palm months ago, and then he started to move.

It wasn't gentle. He set a punishing pace, each thrust driving you against the edge of the desk, his grip on your thighs bruising. He was studying you even as he lost himself, watching where you connected, where his cock disappeared inside you again and again, watching your face with the intensity of a man recording data, except his breath was coming in harsh pants against your ear, and his hips were stuttering when you clenched around him.

"The nuts- hah..," he said suddenly, nonsensically, voice wrecked, and you understood. It was the test, the one he had never stopped running. "You still ate them. Even then..."

"Mhm..Even then," you agreed, breathless, and you pulled him down to kiss him again, tasting the salt of his sweat, the copper of his honesty.

He broke the kiss to mouth at your neck, your collarbone, teeth grazing the swell of your breast where your shirt had fallen open. 

"I thought about you like this," he admitted against your skin, voice barely audible, "when you were perched on my shoulder in crow form. I thought about how warm you were inside. How you'd look taking my cock while wearing nothing but that bracelet." 

His thrusts became erratic, losing their precision. "How you'd look wearing my marks instead."

You came with a cry that sounded like a caw, trembling as your orgasm ripped through you. You clenched down on him, and he groaned, a broken sound that might have been your name, and then he was fucking you through it, chasing his own release with single-minded focus.

He came with a sound like a man being dismantled, buried himself to the hilt and spilled inside you, hot and claiming. His forehead pressed to your shoulder, fingers bruising in their grip on your hips, and you felt him twitch, felt the pulse of him filling you, marking you from the inside out.

After, he didn't withdraw immediately. He stayed inside you, holding, cataloging, until your breathing slowed. His hand found yours on the desk, and you felt him trace the bracelet Pantalone had given you, not to remove it, but to map its circumference, to memorize the shape of what he had to compete with.

You reached into your pocket with trembling fingers and pulled out the object you'd been carrying for three days, a gear from Sandrone's workshop, small and silver and perfect. You placed it in his palm.

He stared at it, then at you. The corner of his mouth twitched, not quite a smile, but close.

"I had something for you too," he said, and retrieved his notebook from the floor where it had fallen. He opened it to the most recent page, showed you the entry: your name, written and crossed out and written again, margins filled with sketches of wings, of eyes, of a crow eating from a dish that sat permanently on his desk now.

No subject number. Just you.

You took the notebook from him and wrote, beneath his last entry: *Still not a specimen.*

He read it, and this time the smile was real, small and sharp and only for you. "No," he agreed. "Something worse. Something I couldn't put back in the snow."

__________________________________________________________________________

The door slid shut with a quiet, unhurried click, leaving you alone in the silence of the laboratory. 

He was gone by the time your head cleared enough to notice.

Not far, probably, you could hear him somewhere beyond the door, the familiar clatter of instruments being set down with more force than necessary, but gone all the same, and the space beside you felt colder for it in a way the room's actual temperature didn't explain. You lay there for a long moment, piecing the night back together through a haze that hadn't fully lifted, and the longer you lay there, the more the shape of what had happened started to sour.

He hadn't stayed. He hadn't said anything before he left, no reassurance, no explanation, not even the clinical detachment you'd almost have preferred to silence. Just gone, the way a man leaves a room once he's finished with whatever brought him into it.

You told yourself, at first, that you were imagining the worst of it. That exhaustion and the last traces of whatever fog still clung to your thoughts were doing the doubting for you. But the thought, once it took root, wouldn't leave: had this been another experiment? Another variable catalogued and closed out, no different in kind from the nuts, the notebook, the months of quiet observation, except this time the data had been you, laid bare, and he'd gotten what he needed and walked away the moment the study concluded.

It was, you realized with a kind of hollow, humiliated clarity, exactly the kind of thing you should have expected from him from the very beginning. You'd simply let yourself forget, somewhere between the shiny trinkets and the dish of nuts and the way he'd said something considerably less efficient like it cost him something, that efficiency had always, eventually, won out with him before.

You didn't cry. You'd promised yourself a long time ago, somewhere around the twentieth escape attempt, that you wouldn't give him that particular satisfaction. But you lay there a long while, staring at a ceiling that had seen every version of you the lab had ever produced, and let yourself feel, fully, how much it hurt to have been so wrong about how far this had actually gone.

You saw him again the next morning, and somehow that was worse than not seeing him at all.

He was at his desk when you came in, exactly as he always was, sleeves rolled, a stack of reports already sorted and waiting for you the way they had been every morning for months. He glanced up when the door opened, and for one unbearable second you thought, hoped, some small traitorous part of you admitted  that something in his face might acknowledge what had happened.

"You're late," he said, and returned to his notes.

That was all. No mention of the night before. No hesitation, no awkwardness, nothing to suggest anything between you had shifted at all, just the same clipped efficiency he'd greeted you with a hundred mornings before this one, as though your body under his hands, the sound he'd made when you'd finally stopped resisting, the fog he'd left you in afterward, had simply been filed away with everything else and closed.

He gestured, without looking up, toward the edge of the desk. "Reports need sorting by priority. And—" a small, careless nod toward the familiar dish, set out in its familiar place, "I had more of the ones you prefer brought up."

The mixed nuts. Sitting there exactly as they always did, exactly as they had for months, an offering that had once felt like the closest thing to tenderness he was capable of giving you.

You stared at the dish like it had personally wronged you.

It took everything you had not to sweep it off the desk. Because you understood, all at once and with a clarity that made your stomach turn, precisely what that little dish had always been to him, not affection, not the quiet language you'd let yourself believe it was, but a controlled variable. A comfort measure, dispensed on schedule, the same as antiseptic or a change of bandages. Something you administer to keep a specimen docile. You'd let yourself read devotion into a feeding schedule, and the realization made you feel sick in a way the fog from the night before never had.

"I'm not hungry," you said. Your voice came out flatter than you meant it to.

He looked up then properly, for the first time since you'd walked in  and something in your tone seemed to catch him off guard, though he covered it quickly, the way he covered everything.

"You usually are, by this hour."

"Not today."

He studied you for a moment too long, the way he studied anomalies, and you hated, hated, that some part of you still recognized that look as attention, even now, even furious, even disgusted at yourself for ever having wanted it.

You let out a deep sigh as you were gathering your thoughts and words.

"You left," you said.

"I had reports to finish." He still didn't look up.

"That's not what I asked."

"No," he agreed, "it wasn't. But it's the answer you're going to get, unless you'd like to phrase the question more precisely." He set his pen down at last, folding his hands with the unhurried patience of a man who'd already decided how this conversation would go before you'd walked in. "What is it you actually want me to say?"

"I want to know why you left me like that."

"You seem to have already decided why," he said, mildly, almost bored.

 "You've been looking at me as though I've committed some unforgivable offense. I'd hate to disappoint you by contradicting a narrative you've clearly put so much thought into."

"Don't do that."

"Do what."

"Twist it back on me. You know exactly what you did."

"I know what I did," he said, evenly. "I'm considerably less certain you do." 

He rose from the desk, unhurried, closing the distance between you with the same deliberate calm he brought to everything, and you had to fight the instinct to step back. 

"You've spent months, by your own account, believing I felt something for you. Now, at the first inconvenient silence, you've decided the opposite must be true instead, that it was all conditioning, that you were simply managed into compliance like everyone else who's passed through this lab."

 His voice dropped, softer, almost gentle, which was somehow worse than if he'd raised it. 

"Which version do you actually believe, I wonder, or is it easier to believe whichever one lets you feel the most wronged?"

"That's not—" you started, and hated that he'd already made you doubt the sentence before you'd finished it.

"Isn't it?" He tilted his head, watching the effect of his own words settle over your face with the same clinical patience he gave every experiment. 

"You came in here certain of your anger. You're considerably less certain now. That should tell you something about how much of it was ever really about me, and how much was about how easily you can talk yourself into believing the worst."

You felt something in you waver,  the particular, sickening sensation of your own convictions being dismantled by someone who'd clearly done this before, to someone, and knew exactly which supports to remove first. For one long moment, you almost let him win the room entirely.

Then you caught yourself.

"No," you said, slower, steadier, forcing the anger back into focus even as your voice shook. 

"Don't do that. Don't stand there and make my own hurt sound like a flaw in my thinking. I know what happened. You left. And now you're trying to make me apologize for noticing."

Something shifted behind his eyes, not quite surprise, but close to it, the flicker of a man watching a variable refuse to behave the way he'd calculated. He didn't answer immediately.

"You're good at this," you added, quieter now, though no less firm. 

"Turning things around so I end up defending myself instead of you answering anything. I'm not doing that tonight."

The silence that followed had a different quality than the ones before it, his, for once, rather than yours. When he finally spoke again, some of the practiced control had gone out of his voice.

"...No," he admitted, slower now, the calm finally slipping a fraction. "I suppose you're not."

Nothing was resolved that night,  not fully. He hadn't apologized, not in so many words, and you hadn't forgiven him, not in so many words either. But something had shifted, some balance in the room quietly recalibrated, and you left with the distinct, unfamiliar sense that for once, you'd been the one who'd won a battle of wits against him.

It didn't feel like enough. Not yet.

So you stopped waiting to be assigned anywhere.

Pantalone had a task in Fontaine that wanted for an extra set of eyes he trusted more than his own staff; you volunteered before Dottore had so much as heard the request existed. You didn't ask permission. You'd told yourself, walking out, that you no longer required it,  a small, deliberate cruelty aimed less at proving anything to Pantalone than at seeing what, if anything, it would cost you with Dottore.

You'd taken your crow form for most of the trip, easier for slipping through the places Pantalone's negotiations required a quieter kind of observer, and he'd taken an immediate, faintly amused interest in you that had nothing to do with the mission at all. He found it delightful, in his own detached way, that Dottore's "prized specimen," as he insisted on calling you, could be coaxed onto his shoulder with considerably less effort than you ever let on to anyone else. He took to running a careful finger along the feathers at your nape whenever a negotiation ran long, an absent, idle habit that you allowed more out of boredom than fondness, though you were fairly certain, watching the pleased little curl of his mouth each time he did it, that he knew exactly how it would look reported back to Dottore, and enjoyed the idea of that report more than the gesture itself.

"He really does keep you well," Pantalone mused once, stroking a thumb down your wing with an idle sort of proprietary ease that would have made you bristle from anyone else. "I confess I hadn't expected the Doctor to be sentimental about anything with feathers."

You said nothing. You didn't need to. You suspected the silence would be reported just as faithfully as anything you might have said.

Before you left Fontaine, he produced something from an inner pocket.  A small, deliberate motion, the kind that told you he'd planned it well before the negotiations had even concluded. A thin bracelet, Northland Bank made by the look of it, gold-threaded and set with a single dark stone that caught the light in a way you found yourself staring at longer than you meant to.

"A parting gift," he said, watching your reaction with open amusement, 

"for services rendered. I understand your kind has a certain... appreciation for objects like this."

You should have refused it. You knew that even as you let him fasten it loosely around your ankle in your smaller form, some small, treacherous part of you was already cataloguing the way it caught the light every time you moved. It was, you told yourself, simply a gift, nothing more calculated than any of the shiny trinkets you'd have gathered for yourself, if you'd found them somewhere unguarded.

You suspected, watching Pantalone's satisfied little smile as he watched you admire it, that he knew perfectly well it was more than that.

Dottore said nothing when you returned three days later. You noted that carefully.

It was two days after that before he said anything about the bracelet at all, and even then, it came sideways, disguised as something else entirely. You were sorting reports at his desk when his gaze caught on your wrist, you'd taken to wearing it in your human form too, unable to quite bring yourself to leave something so deliberately pretty tucked away in a drawer, and his pen stilled mid-sentence.

"That's new," he said, in the same flat tone he might have used to note an anomaly in a blood sample.

"A gift," you said, not looking up.

"From Pantalone."

It wasn't a question, which meant he'd already known, which meant he'd noticed it the moment you'd walked back through the door and simply chosen not to say anything until now.

 "Yes," you said anyway, if only to watch what he'd do with the confirmation.

"Northland Bank made," he said, studying it with the same clinical focus he gave everything, though his jaw had gone tighter than the observation required. "Expensive, for a parting gift."

"Jealous?"

"Merely noting that he's rarely so generous without expecting something in return." He returned to his notes, too deliberately, the picture of a man uninterested in a subject he'd clearly been unable to stop looking at for the better part of a minute. "I'd be careful what you assume that generosity costs."

"Careful," you repeated, amused despite yourself. "From the man who's said nothing about it for two days."

He didn't answer that. But his eyes flicked once more to the bracelet before returning, with obvious effort, to his reports, and you decided, watching him, that you'd let the silence say what he wouldn't.

It wasn't only Pantalone and Childe, either. Word of you had apparently spread further than you'd realized among the Harbingers themselves, and it wasn't long before others started finding their own excuses to seek you out whenever you were in your smaller form. Columbina found you first, delighted in a way that unsettled you slightly with how genuine it seemed, she'd coo softly whenever you hopped near her, tracing a gloved finger along your wing with unsettling gentleness, murmuring something about how precious you were in a tone that made you suspect she meant it in more ways than one. Sandrone, characteristically, treated the whole thing as an extension of her usual clinical curiosity, examining your feathers with the same detached precision Dottore might have used, though she at least had the decency to ask before handling you, which was more courtesy than you often got from him these days. Even Arlecchino, who acknowledged almost nothing beneath her notice, paused once to let you land briefly on her forearm, studying you with a long, considering look before remarking, to no one in particular, that she understood the appeal now.

It was Rosalyne who made the biggest fuss of all,  delighted, unbothered by rank or decorum, scooping you up without so much as asking and cradling you against her chest with the easy affection of someone who'd apparently decided you were the most interesting thing to happen to her week. She counted your feathers aloud, laughed when you nipped at her fingers in mild protest, and declared, cheerfully, that Dottore didn't deserve you if he was going to keep you locked away in that lab all the time.

You found, somewhat to your own surprise, that you didn't mind any of it. It was easy, uncomplicated attention, offered without agenda or leverage, and you let yourself enjoy it more than you probably should have, if only because so little else in your life had ever come without a catch attached.

Dottore noticed, of course. He always noticed.

He said nothing the first few times he found you passed between them, feathers ruffled with contentment, indulging Rosalyne's insistence on comparing the sheen of your wings to polished obsidian or Columbina's quiet, careful preening. But you caught him watching from the doorway more than once, arms folded, a faint and entirely unfamiliar discomfort etched into a face built for concealing exactly that kind of thing.

"You seem to be building quite the following," he said once, dry, arms still crossed, as you finally slipped free of Rosalyne's overeager hands.

"They're friendly," you said, once you'd shifted back enough to speak properly. "Unlike some people."

"I'm not unfriendly. I'm precise."

"You looked uncomfortable just now."

"I looked," he said, with the particular stiffness of a man defending a position he no longer fully believed, "concerned that they were mishandling a specimen unfamiliar with proper containment protocol."

"They were petting me, Dottore. Not running tests."

He didn't have an answer for that one either. He simply turned and walked back toward his study, a shade too briskly for a man who claimed to feel nothing about any of it, and you let yourself smile, just slightly, once his back was fully turned.

The following week, it was Childe who asked, half in earnest and half simply to see if you'd say yes again, and you did. You spent two more days away, trading easy conversation and easier company with a man who never once made you feel like a specimen mid-observation, and told yourself that was the whole of the appeal.

Dottore, for his part, did something you hadn't quite expected. He tolerated it.

Not gracefully,  you caught the tightness in his jaw each time your absence was announced at a meeting, the particular stillness that settled over him whenever your name came up attached to someone else's mission roster. But he didn't forbid it. He didn't so much as comment on it directly, which unsettled you more than any objection would have. You'd expected control. What you got instead was a man visibly, deliberately restraining himself from exercising any.

It was only the small things that gave him away. He came looking for you twice that week for tasks that could easily have waited, or been handed to anyone else in the lab, and found instead an empty desk and a dish of nuts going stale, untouched, because you weren't there to eat them. He didn't ask where you'd gone. He didn't need to; everyone in the building seemed to know before he did, which you suspected bothered him almost as much as the absence itself.

By the seventh day, something in him had visibly worn thin.

So a few days later, when Childe found an excuse to linger near your desk longer than any correspondence required, laughing too easily at something you'd said, you didn't discourage it the way you usually would have. You let it go on a beat longer than necessary. You even laughed back.

You told yourself it wasn't deliberate. You knew, even as you told yourself that, that it was a lie you weren't trying very hard to sell.

Dottore didn't look up from his work at first. You caught the exact moment he did, a flicker of attention he didn't quite manage to disguise as disinterest, gone as quickly as it appeared, filed away behind the same composed mask he always wore. You almost let it go at that. Almost.

"He's rather charming, isn't he," you said instead, to no one in particular, loud enough to carry.

"If you enjoy predictability," Dottore said, not looking up, though his pen had stopped moving entirely.

Childe, delighted at having an audience for baiting him, leaned in further.

 "Careful, Doctor, you're starting to sound jealous."

"I don't experience jealousy," Dottore said, flat, final, the words coming out a fraction too fast to be as unbothered as he clearly wanted them to sound.

You caught his eye, deliberately, and smiled, not for Childe. For him.

Something in Dottore's expression went very still.

He set his pen down. Rose from the desk with none of his usual unhurried patience, and crossed the room with enough purpose that Childe actually took a half-step back, hands raised, grin faltering into something more careful.

"Enough," Dottore said.

It wasn't loud. It didn't need to be. The single word landed with a weight that ended whatever Childe had been about to say next, and he excused himself with a low whistle and a glance your way that suggested he'd gotten exactly the reaction he'd been fishing for all along, whether or not it had been at your expense too.

Once the door shut behind him, Dottore turned to you, and for a moment he said nothing at all  just looked at you with an expression caught somewhere between fury and something considerably less easy for him to name.

"Is this your strategy," he said, low, clipped, "to make me sit here and think about you? Unfortunately, that will never take effect on me."

"Won't it," you said, unable to keep the satisfaction fully out of your voice.

"No." The word came too fast, too defensive to be as certain as he wanted it to sound. "I am not so easily—" he stopped himself, visibly irritated at the sentence he'd nearly finished, and started again with more control than the first attempt had managed. "You're wasting your effort. I don't respond to manipulation."

"Funny," you said. "That's usually your line."

For a moment he looked like a man arguing with himself and losing, and when he finally spoke again, his voice had lost its usual clinical distance entirely.

"I don't," he said, low, almost angry, at you, or at himself, you genuinely couldn't tell. "This isn't— I don't care for you in the way you seem determined to believe I do."

"Then why does it matter who I laugh with?"

"Because you're mine," he said, before he seemed to have fully decided to say it, and something in his own voice seemed to catch him off guard the moment it was out. He stopped, visibly annoyed at himself, at the word, at how little it had needed his permission to escape.

"I pulled you out of a storm that should have killed you," he went on, quieter now but no less pointed, as though the memory itself had given him something to stand on. "I gave you a place, a purpose, work that made use of every part of you no one else would have bothered to notice. You were nothing but a dying anomaly in the snow before I decided you were worth keeping." His eyes didn't leave yours. "That is a statement of fact, not sentiment. You belong to this research, to this lab, to work I have invested considerable time in. It has nothing to do with—"

"Don't," you said, sharper than you meant to, something cold settling under the anger. "Don't you dare use that against me. You didn't save me out of kindness, you told me so yourself, I was a specimen too rare to leave behind. Now you want to wear it like a debt I owe you, like I should be grateful enough to let you decide who gets to look at me." Your hands had curled at your sides without your noticing. "That's not gratitude, Dottore. That's you making me feel small enough to keep."

Something flickered across his face,  not quite guilt, he wasn't capable of that, not fully, but close enough to its shadow that you almost believed you'd imagined it.

"I won't feel guilty for existing before you decided I was interesting," you continued, quieter now but no less firm. "And I won't let you rewrite it into some debt I have to keep paying just so you can call it possession instead of asking for anything honestly."

He didn't answer right away. For a long moment he simply stood there, jaw tight, and you watched him do what he always did when cornered, search for the angle that would put him back in control of the conversation.

"You make it sound simpler than it is," he said finally, voice clipped. "As though there's some clean, honest version of this I've been deliberately withholding out of cruelty. There isn't. I don't have one to give you."

"That's convenient."

"It's true." A flicker of the old sharpness returned to his eyes. "You'd like me to say something you can hold against me later, some declaration you can point to and say he admitted it. I'm not going to make that easy for you."

"I'm not asking you to make it easy. I'm asking you to stop pretending this is about ownership when we both know it isn't anymore."

His jaw worked once, twice, and for the first time all night he had nothing ready to say. Not agreeing, he wasn't capable of that yet, not cleanly,  but the silence itself was new, an absence where a deflection should have been.

"I don't know what to name it," he said eventually, and the admission clearly cost him something, dragged out rather than offered. "That's the truth, such as it is. I'm not going to dress it up as more than that just because you'd prefer a cleaner answer."

It wasn't an apology. It wasn't even close to one. But it was the first time he'd said I don't know about anything in the entire time you'd known him, and something about the rawness of not-knowing, coming from a man who always knew, landed harder than any confession could have.

"That's not nothing," you said, quiet.

"No," he agreed, guarded still, watching you with something that wasn't quite trust yet. "I suppose it isn't."

The silence after his admission hung heavier than the blizzard he pulled you from. You could still taste the words, I don't know what to name it like metal on the tongue, rusted and reluctant. He stood there, motionless, waiting. Always waiting. As if you might fly out the window and leave him with nothing but the empty space where a specimen should be.

You didn't fly.

You stepped forward.

His eyes, those dissecting, cataloging eyes tracked the movement with the precision of a man who knew exactly how many centimeters separated you now. Two. One. Your hand found his collar, not gentle, not asking. The fabric of his coat was rough under your palm, expensive, and cold. He was warm underneath.

"y/n." Your name in his mouth sounded like a classification he hadn't finished revising.

"Don't," you said, and you didn't know what you were warning him against, speaking, stopping, disappearing into that clinical void where he stored everything he couldn't label.

You kissed him.

It wasn't soft. It tasted like the resentment you'd been carrying since he left the room that night, since he let you think you'd been conditioned like one of his experiments. He stiffened, half a second of genuine surprise, the most honest reaction you'd ever wrung from him and then his hand was at the back of your neck, fingers pressing into the junction where the spine met skull with the certainty of a man who knew anatomy well enough to break it.

He didn't break you. He held.

When you broke apart, his breath was controlled, measured, but his pupils had blown wide, black consuming the gold. "The Fatui," he said, voice low, clinical even now, "would call this a miscalculation."

"And you?"

"I didn't calculate anymore when you were in the room."

The admission cost him. You saw it in the tightness of his jaw, the way his thumb traced the line of your throat not with tenderness but with the obsessive attention of a cartographer mapping territory. His territory. The thought should have infuriated you. It did. It also sent heat pooling low in your stomach, corvid-bright and treacherous.

You pulled at his coat. He let you. The garment fell open, and you pushed your hands beneath his shirt, finding the scarred skin there, the places where he'd been stitched back together by his own hand. He hissed not from pain, from restraint. He was holding himself rigid, letting you explore, letting you take.

"Your bracelet," he said suddenly, and his fingers caught your wrist, thumb brushing the metal Pantalone had given you. 

"I could remove it. Replace it." His grip tightened, not enough to hurt, enough to claim. 

"Something that didn't come from a banker who looked at you like you were collateral."

You laughed, breathless. "Jealousy doesn't suit you, Doctor."

"It suited me perfectly," he corrected, and then he was moving, reversing your positions, your back against the wall beside his workbench. Papers scattered, his notes, where your name had replaced Subject C-17 in handwriting that had grown gradually less precise, more hurried. "I'd simply never had cause to wear it before."

His mouth found your neck, teeth grazing the tendon there with the care of a man who knew exactly how much pressure separated a bruise from a break. You arched into it, corvid-instincts singing at the possession of it, the claiming. He noticed, he always noticed, and made a sound against your skin, low and resentful.

"Childe touched your shoulder yesterday," he murmured, breath hot. "I saw. You laughed for him."

"You didn't stop him." you said 

"I wanted to." The confession was dragged out, bitter. "I wanted to remove his hand at the wrist. Experimental purposes."

Your fingers tangled in his blue hair, pulling until he looked at you. His expression was fractured, that controlled mask cracked along fault lines you had put there. "Then do something about it now."

He didn't ask for permission. He never had. What he did was lift you onto the edge of his desk, clearing beakers and instruments with a sweep of his arm, the crash of glass irrelevant and stepped between your knees. His hands were methodical even in this, pushing up your thighs, mapping the shape of your hips, the curve of your waist, as if he were still taking notes. As if he were memorizing you for future reference.

"Rosalyne complimented your plumage," he said, low, while his fingers worked at the fastenings of your clothing. "Said you were exquisite. Sandrone offered you a perch in her workshop. Columbina sang to you." 

Each word was a wound he was tending with his tongue, possessive and furious. "They didn't know what you were. What you cost."

"And what did I cost?"

His eyes met yours, and for a moment the mask was gone entirely. "Everything," he said. "You cost me everything, and you didn't even know it."

He pushed your underwear aside, not off, just enough to expose you and you felt the air of the laboratory against your wetness, obscene and clinical. He looked down at you spread open on his desk, and the sound he made was barely human, a caught breath that became a growl.

"Say it," you demanded, because you needed to hear it, needed to know this wasn't another experiment.

"Mine." The word was bitten out, resentful, true. "My specimen. My mistake. My—" He stopped, and then his fingers were on you, two of them pushing inside without warning, stretching you open with the precision of a man who knew exactly what he was doing. You cried out, back arching off the wood, and he leaned over you, free hand pinning your hip to the desk. "My only variable I couldn't solve."

He fucked you with his fingers, curling them to find the spot that made your vision blur, watching your face with the intensity of a man recording data. You were panting, squirming against his hand, and he didn't speed up, he kept the rhythm torturous, clinical, until you were begging without words, nails digging crescents into his shoulders.

"Please," you finally gasped, and you hated how desperate you sounded, how much you needed this from him.

He withdrew his fingers leaving you empty, aching and worked at his own trousers with efficient, angry movements. His cock was hard, flushed dark, and he didn't touch himself, just gripped your thighs and pulled you to the edge of the desk.

He pushed into you in one slow, relentless thrust, and you screamed, head falling back, thighs trembling in your agitation. He didn't flinch. He watched them with something like hunger, the same way he had watched you eat from his palm months ago, and then he started to move.

It wasn't gentle. He set a punishing pace, each thrust driving you against the edge of the desk, his grip on your thighs bruising. He was studying you even as he lost himself, watching where you connected, where his cock disappeared inside you again and again, watching your face with the intensity of a man recording data, except his breath was coming in harsh pants against your ear, and his hips were stuttering when you clenched around him.

"The nuts- hah..," he said suddenly, nonsensically, voice wrecked, and you understood. It was the test, the one he had never stopped running. "You still ate them. Even then..."

"Mhm..Even then," you agreed, breathless, and you pulled him down to kiss him again, tasting the salt of his sweat, the copper of his honesty.

He broke the kiss to mouth at your neck, your collarbone, teeth grazing the swell of your breast where your shirt had fallen open. 

"I thought about you like this," he admitted against your skin, voice barely audible, "when you were perched on my shoulder in crow form. I thought about how warm you were inside. How you'd look taking my cock while wearing nothing but that bracelet." 

His thrusts became erratic, losing their precision. "How you'd look wearing my marks instead."

You came with a cry that sounded like a caw, trembling as your orgasm ripped through you. You clenched down on him, and he groaned, a broken sound that might have been your name, and then he was fucking you through it, chasing his own release with single-minded focus.

He came with a sound like a man being dismantled, buried himself to the hilt and spilled inside you, hot and claiming. His forehead pressed to your shoulder, fingers bruising in their grip on your hips, and you felt him twitch, felt the pulse of him filling you, marking you from the inside out.

After, he didn't withdraw immediately. He stayed inside you, holding, cataloging, until your breathing slowed. His hand found yours on the desk, and you felt him trace the bracelet Pantalone had given you, not to remove it, but to map its circumference, to memorize the shape of what he had to compete with.

You reached into your pocket with trembling fingers and pulled out the object you'd been carrying for three days, a gear from Sandrone's workshop, small and silver and perfect. You placed it in his palm.

He stared at it, then at you. The corner of his mouth twitched, not quite a smile, but close.

"I had something for you too," he said, and retrieved his notebook from the floor where it had fallen. He opened it to the most recent page, showed you the entry: your name, written and crossed out and written again, margins filled with sketches of wings, of eyes, of a crow eating from a dish that sat permanently on his desk now.

No subject number. Just you.

You took the notebook from him and wrote, beneath his last entry: *Still not a specimen.*

He read it, and this time the smile was real, small and sharp and only for you. "No," he agreed. "Something worse. Something I couldn't put back in the snow."