yandere lover 3000

You exhale and drop your arms by your sides, shooting a pointed look at him.

The petition hung in the air, and you went back to swabbing the flesh with gauze before he had the audacity to repeat it. The antiseptic solution flared a sharp burn across the lacerated tissue upon contact, and where other people would’ve complained about the pain, an odd-sounding gasp came from Lohen.

“You know, I just want to make sure that I’m receiving what I’m requesting.”

By the time he insisted, the wound had been cleaned and ready to stitch up. The sole reason why you accepted his requests to nurse his injuries was because you had a great relationship with the medical team and you weren’t clueless about how to stitch up a wound like this one. In fact, even the knights ought to pass through the basics in case they could help a fellow companion amidst the battlefield. On top of that, you’d be lying to yourself if you said you weren’t at least a little intrigued by him…

As you pulled a needle out to stitch his wound, you avoided meeting his expectant eyes.

“…I ran out of ingredients for the amplifier, though.” you hovered the needle over the candle’s flame to sterilize it.

“I still have some leftover from the one you gave me,” At your hesitation, Lohen continued. “Well, you don’t need to if you don’t want to. I can test it on myself on my own.”

Goosebumps tingled on your skin at the mere implication. No stranger to Lohen’s lack of self-preservation, you could envision him underestimating the level of damage he could inflict upon himself. On top of that, no amount of dissuading would rid that idea off him, much to your chagrin.

“You’re unbelievable.”

“There’s a hidden pocket inside the waistcoat. Right side.”

You feel across the fabric, and when your fingers bump into the undeniable shape of the vial you gave him a few days ago, you pull it out. The deep violet liquid sloshed within its glass confinement, reflecting the candle’s flame into your sight.

Lohen reached out for it, but before you stretched your arm to offer it, you retracted.

“Why don’t I concoct one less potent?” you held it close to your chest. “This one could be very well out of your pain thresholds.”

“I doubt it’s worse than any wound I’ve suffered from an ambush.” Before you could hesitate again, he snatched it from you. “Also, a less potent one? Where’s the fun in that?”

With a thumb, he sent the cork flying to a forgotten destination.

Devoid of a second thought, Lohen tipped his head backwards, emptying its content onto his tongue until the last drop rolled down the vial’s flange.

“What’s with that look? It’s almost as if the one about to get stitched were you instead,” his lips pulled into a grin and tilted his head to a side. “Could it be that you’re worried about me?”

“Stop moving, will you?”

You held onto the sterilized needle, the pointy end inches away from the throbbing skin. Even though this was not your first time treating someone’s injury, the fact that he was under the amplifier’s influence made you reconsider, but you didn’t have much choice. The effects wouldn’t end until the next day, and by that moment, it’d be too late to stitch him up.

With the most precise control you could, you punctured through Lohen’s reddened skin, and he took a sharp intake of air. He squeezed his eyes shut, nose crinkling at the outburst of sensations, and you faltered.

“It could be stronger,” Lohen groaned.

“I’m so done with you. Don’t you ever ask me to do this again or I’ll kick you out of my tent.”

“I’m just messing with you. I didn’t actually drink the potion; it was grape juice.”

“Oh—I swear to the sevens, you—”

“Not going to lie, it was nice to see that you do care about me. Hah, what’s with that frown?” Your irritation was inconsequential to him, because that infuriating grin of his didn’t waver, not even for a split second. After a brief silence of you working the stitches (slightly less careful as you fumed), Lohen didn’t backtrack from his previous statement. “But the amplifier could be stronger. Fatui spies have become more stubborn, and it hasn’t been as easy to get information out of them.”

“Why don’t you try something else?”

“And what do you suggest? Keep them hostage until they feel like piping up? I’m hardly enthusiastic about going through the motions of interrogation to begin with,” he played with the vial. “This little solution I’ve got here gets rid of unnecessary stalling. I trust I can keep counting on you?” albeit the tilt at the end of his voice, you knew better.   

“I can provide you with the solution for as long as you need it, but regarding intensifying its effects?”

“If you’re so confident about there being a better way to get them to sing faster, then I may ask your chief alchemist to lend me you on my next interrogation.”

A front-row seat to watch how Lohen terrorizes a lackey? “I was just going to say that I’ll need to gather the plants needed, geez. As I said, I ran out of ingredients.”

With that, your handiwork was done. Even though an actual healthcare practitioner would’ve had better results, yours was decent enough. Lohen spared a glance at the sutures holding the once-torn flesh together, a pulsating soreness remaining in their wake.

“How long will it take you? Varka appointed me an offensive operation, and the target must be brought back alive,” Lohen slipped his left arm through the dress shirt hole, and before you could stop yourself, you helped him get his wounded arm through the corresponding one. An action that didn’t escape Lohen’s attention and an opportunity to tease you that he seized. “Committed to a fault, aren’t you?”

You wouldn’t give him the reaction he waited for, though. You’ve amused him enough already. “I’ll have it ready tomorrow.”

“Perfect.” Lohen slid off the table, throwing his coat onto his shoulder. “Good to see there are still competent people around me. See ya.”

The following morning, you embarked on your little journey to restock your ingredients in wooden crates. Even though you would need to drift from the standard procedure to concoct Lohen’s request, the general set of steps were identical; the sole difference would be the main ingredient and the quantity. The specimen skittered along the plain where the Favonius Keep was stationed, and even though it was about an hour-long walk, it was doable.

All you could think of was the mountain of papers that were waiting for you back in Mondstadt. A bunch of research notes longing to transition from scribbles to an actual research paper with its mandated format. It soured your mood.

As you were about to detach the pine amber’s core from the main blossom, a rustling of leaves interrupted your forage.

Since you were, well, in the middle of nature and sauntering around wildlife’s habitat, you didn’t think twice about the sudden sounds. However, it had been increasing, and this time, a chill traversed through you. Rather than going back to what you were doing, you surveyed the nearby bushes and trees and the rock outcrops too. Your watchful gaze lingered atop the shadows by the rock formations, looking out for any unnatural movement.

Not without first sending stuttered side glances, you went back to plucking the core with a hand, while the other reached into your pocket.

A meager beat later, someone barreled against you, driving you into the dewy grass. Pain blossomed in the back of your head upon impact, flashes of white clouding your eyesight.

The culprit in question pinned you into the moist ground, jittery hands enclosing your neck. While dark spots still obfuscated your vision, the man’s bellows were nothing more than nonsensical sounds amidst your stupor. The hand gripping around the handle of your dagger weakened, as did the one grasping his wrist. The world around you threatened to fade into nothingness, a distant thrumming taking ahold of your head as you fought to stay awake.

At the last moment, both sound and sight rushed back in place.

“You need to help me! Hurry before he finds me!”

Although your arm trembled, your resolve spurred you to grip the dagger again and deliver a decisive slash across his cheek, causing rivulets of blood to trickle down his jaw. With renewed displeasure, his scowl deepened, and he strangled you with renewed ire—only for something to catch his attention in the middle of it, and his face paled.

With a curse, he got off you and fled the opposite way.

With painful, hacking coughs, you sat up, oxygen hurrying into your lungs.

He didn’t make it far before an arrow shot from somewhere and embedded itself into the back of his knee, tearing away at the muscle and sending blood splattering onto the ground. With a hindered leg, the man stumbled to the ground with a thud.

“I didn’t picture you having it in you to lash a blade against someone,” Without stopping his meander, Lohen appeared from behind you, sending you an intrigued glance. “I guess I need to be more wary of you, hm?”

The Fatui agent glimpsed behind his shoulder, crawling away in a futile attempt to escape. The pathetic display earned a scoff from Lohen, who clutched the man’s arm and yanked him into standing up.

“Can you walk?” Lohen paused to look back at you.

“My head hurts, but I can walk on my own, yes.” you gather your bearings and stand up on your feet, brushing the dirt off your backside.

“Great. If you feel like we need to stop, tell me. Don’t go passing out on me. Who knows if a wild beast finds you before I do when I come to retrieve you.”

“Hilarious.”

Even though you didn’t lie about being able to hold yourself, there was still some stagger in your walk. Brushing your fingers at the source of the pain sufficed for a wince to emerge, and you assessed your hand, confirming that the warm liquid clinging to your fingers was indeed blood. Your head must’ve smashed against a rock when that bastard plummeted you to the ground.

“I never imagined there’d be a day where a prey would escape from the vice-captain’s clutches.” You hurried your step to keep up with his, casting him a sidelong look.

“Escape? Oh, no—you’ve got it wrong. I told him to run as far as he could. Right, buddy?” In a mocking imitation of a friendly gesture, Lohen patted the agent on the back hard enough to make him hack a cough. “As I expected, he didn’t get very far, though.”

You wondered why you even bothered asking. In some way, the image of a snow leopard toying with its prey to exhaust it before killing it appeared.

At last, the terrain shifted into a more familiar one: barrels, carts, and red banners with the Knights of Favonius’s emblem, leaving the endless plains of swaying grass behind you.

“You can drop by for a visit tonight. Your vial will be ready.”

“Mhm. One more thing,” Lohen barely gave you enough time to turn around, as a flask was already thrown your way, and you caught it on time by chance. “You can use that.”

It was the healing potion you gave him over a month ago. The cap had not been moved until now that you opened the flask to check its state. Some people would assume that it was because he hadn’t faced any injuries in the past month, but given your little rendezvous the night prior, that wasn’t the case.

You muttered a complaint under your breath, narrowing your eyes to his distancing figure. Every knight received one of these as a precaution, but Lohen shared little interest in using it.

You went back to your tent and started working.

Did you bite more than you could chew? A little bit. By the time you were done with the potion, you were exhausted. Varka had passed by a few hours ago to ask if you would go to the Flagship amongst the rest of the unit, but you turned the invitation down. That was how drained you were.

The stars were already accompanying the moon in the nightfall; in some way, they too kept you company during your studying. Gazing at the night, you jotted down notes and waited for Lohen’s visit.

“You spend an awful amount of time looking at the sky rather than your surroundings.”

You were short of leaping out of your chair when his hands suddenly appeared on your shoulders.

This was a rather unwelcomed way to greet, so you made it clear by scrutinizing him from head to toe.

“I’m an alchemist, not a knight,” you cleared your throat and placed both your notepad and pencil on the table. He was right that you should be more observant, but it was hard not to engross yourself in your studying, and you didn’t want to give him the reaction he wanted. “Studying the stars is part of my duties, after all.”

“No good. What if someone wanted to whisk you away? You’d make it so easy for them,” even though his tone remained lighthearted (as lighthearted as Lohen could be), there was this disquieting sharpness in those reddish pupils.

“What? Is the someone in question you?” you followed along with his joke.

“Do I seem that untrustworthy to you? You wound me.”

“I can imagine." You brushed him off and reached for the wooden rack lined with vials, pulling his out to place it on his awaiting gloved palm. “The amount inflicted should be two times stronger. Any more than that, and I’d have to come clean with Albedo to ask for permission to distribute it to you. Unlikely he’ll approve.”

“Neat. I’ll let you know how the trial run goes.” He slipped it into his back pocket.

You questioned yourself if it was a good idea, but it was too late.

“Lohen…” you furrowed your eyebrows; that encounter back when you were gathering ingredients—you hadn’t stopped thinking about it. “Did you really allow that agent to escape deliberately?”

“Yes. What about it?”

“Next time you do something reckless like that, make sure I’m not within the perimeter, you know? If you hadn’t arrived on time…”

Lohen snorted a laugh. “Pfft, the agent could’ve taken a boat to another nation, and I would’ve still tracked him down. In any possibility imagined, I would’ve arrived on time,” before you could argue, his hand found the back of your head, right where the aftermath of the agent’s attack was. “You took the potion, right?”

“Of course I did. Your vial wouldn’t have been done if I hadn’t,” your frown deepened.

“Is alchemy that hard? It looks like you’re throwing whatever into the beaker to me.” his hand abandoned its position on your head.

“It is hard.”

“I can think of other things that are harder than that,” he snickered. “Is making a pain amplifier hard?”

“It’s not, but since most of the ingredients used are not local to Nod Krai, I had to improvise. On top of that, you can’t use it as soon as it’s done. It needs a while to settle.”

“I see, I see. What about an aphrodisiac?”

“Well—”

“Have you tested one out?” his lips quirk up with a knowing smile. “Or is it another case of you blindly trusting something is going to work out?”

“Mmh…” your cheeks heated up, taking into consideration the turn of the conversation and what he was implying. “It’s more akin to a case of following instructions.”

“Yeah, that much is obvious to me. You do stick to protocols and whatnot,” he tilted your chin up with his finger. “Why are you looking to the side? Are the notes on your desk more interesting?”

“Lohen…” at your call, his grin widened. Could he feel your accelerating pulse through his finger? Why else would he be looking at you this way, with that amused look, hoping you’d take the bait. “Are you…saying that you want to…?”

“I don’t know, miss alchemist, you tell me. If offering myself to test an aphrodisiac wasn’t obvious enough, I don’t know what else will do,” despite the playful edge in his voice, he had taken a step closer and caught a lock of your hair to twirl it absentmindedly.

“You’re not going to play me again, will you?”

“Do I look like the type to constantly deceive people? Matter of fact, I’ll let you pour it yourself.” he pressed a kiss to the lock of hair.

To some extent, you weren’t shocked about how things ended up like this. You had a hunch he, likewise, was as intrigued by you as much as you were by him. The frequent visits to your office before coming here, waltzing into your tent, the little excuses to drop by…there was a particular look in his eyes too whenever you chatted. The funniest part of all was that it didn’t bother you.

You extended your arm to grab the aphrodisiac vial awaiting by the rack, but Lohen beat you to it.

“Should I question why you’ve got an aphrodisiac on stand-by?” Lohen didn’t bother hiding his amusement with that sly curve of his lips. “Do you use it on yourself?”

“Lohen—”

“Hey, nothing wrong with some self-loving,” he uncapped the vial; however, he didn’t place it on his lips, but on yours—grazing the its rim into your bottom lip without tilting it. “What if you took it instead? Would you show me how you play with yourself?”

“…Maybe on another occasion,” you pushed his hand. “You offered yourself as the test subject, after all.”

“Fine by me. Next time, however, you should let me use it on you…” his tone descended; an underlying promise of holding you up to your words. Lying the aphrodisiac into your palm, Lohen curled his hand around yours to guide it towards the enticing pink of his lips. “You know, just to make it even!”

Lohen tipped his head back, welcoming the liquid into his throat. It was warm and syrupy, leaving traces of a spicy sweetness that clung to his tongue. Entranced by the movement of his Adam’s apple bobbing as he gulped down, you ignored that he hadn’t let go of your hand yet.

“Mmm, it’s sweet,” Lohen licked his lips.

Without missing a beat, he tugged you forward and clashed his lips against yours, drinking up your gasp. With the way he hadn’t hesitated to find your tongue with his and lick into your mouth, you had to balance yourself by placing your hands on his shoulders. Through his adamant display of affection, you tasted traces of the aphrodisiac leftover on his tongue, and even though it was a miniscule amount, it wasn’t long before your body reacted to it.

You were running out of breath, but each time you tried to pull away, Lohen’s grip around your waist and wrist tightened. Instead of granting you a second to collect yourself, Lohen chuckled and deepened the kiss, ensuring his mouth swallowed each gasp and moan of yours.

By the time he let go of your bitten and crimsoned lips, you were lightheaded.

Albeit the uncommon tenderness with which he cradled your face, his gaze pierced through your visage with great excitement. Lohen guided you onto your bedroll, claiming his place between your legs. When he leaned down to devour your mouth, his aching arousal pressed snug into your core, sending a jolt of pleasure through your nerves. Lohen was as aware as you that you could feel each other through the fabric and shoved his hips into yours.

“You like that, huh,” with a breathless laugh, Lohen seized your hips to force your body into meeting his harder. It was strong enough for you to feel his shape. “You act all demure, but in truth you’ve been wanting this as much as me, haven’t you?”

“Stop teasing me,” you realize he was right when, despite covering your face, you canted your hips upwards too.

“Then don’t make it easy.”

Lohen hooked his thumbs under your pants and underwear to slide them off. You weren’t as flabbergasted when he exposed you to the air when, suddenly, he lifted your hips until your upper back was touching the bed. In this position, with your calves dangling over his shoulders, not only were you exposed in the most intimate of ways, but Lohen had an intimate view of your need. Bared. Nowhere to hide.

“Mmh, as I thought. All nice and wet already,” Lohen drank up the view with his eyes, and at your embarrassment, he pounced on the opportunity to further tease you by blowing on your slick heat. Your body twitched under his attention, and his mirthful laugh sat your cheeks ablaze.

“Is this position necessary?” however strong Lohen was, you couldn’t help worrying. On top of that, this position was way too humiliating.

“Why? Is it mortifying? But if you weren’t enjoying yourself, your pussy wouldn’t be twitching and drooling like this,” with that, Lohen’s tongue dragged flat up your slit, and you keened at the sensation. Lohen hummed at your natural taste, sending tremors across your already delicate flesh. “See?”

Lohen dived back into your cunt, tongue darting into your insides and licking into your slickened walls, not even faltering for a second when it got messy, your juices smeared around the corners of his lips. With him clutching your legs open and keeping your knees away from each other, you couldn’t do anything more than receive his onslaught. You were confined to his hunger, subjected to a position you couldn’t shy away from despite the continuous jumps of your body each time he rolled your clit with his tongue, lapping and wrapping his hot mouth around it to suck.

Not knowing what came over you, you found purchase by reaching towards Lohen’s grayish-teal hair and tugged—maybe you wanted to tell him to wait a moment, that you were about to stumble upon the edge—to which Lohen shuddered into your touch with a riled-up groan. You hadn’t believed it would be possible for someone to eat out with such ferocity, but your small incentive (even if unintentional) reignited the zeal for it.

When that last bit of impulse was missing, however, Lohen disengaged from your core. Lohen gazed at you, and you aren’t sure if how he licked his lips was to rid the string clinging from your cunt to his mouth or if it was at the tears prickling your eyes.

“Why are you like this?” you pushed your pelvis upwards to try and get him to give you your deserved reward. You have been entertaining each of his whims, yet he couldn’t give you this one to you?

“It feels so much better when you hold it off, trust me,” he sent a leer across your shivering frame, the mere memory of your taste increasing the tent concealed under his pants. “But if you really want it…you know, sometimes, you need to force things to go your way. Lock your legs around my shoulders and press me riiiiight into that sweet pussy of yours.”

“I…”

“Or you could just wait until I feel like giving it to you.”

If not for the throbbing coursing fresh through you, you would’ve taken a more level-headed approach. However, with the way Lohen had left your senses thrumming with pain, through your bashfulness, you ended up enclosing your legs tight around his shoulders to encourage him to get back to work.

Rather than easing you back into pleasure, Lohen picked up with the same intensity before he had abandoned. The harder you yanked at his hair, the harder he would draw your nub into his mouth. In turn, though, he would dig his fingernails into your skin. It wasn’t deep enough to cut you, but if he gripped you any firmer, it would. Notwithstanding that, the sinful combination of the tenderness from a denied orgasm, pleasure, and pain sent you spiraling towards your orgasm faster than expected.

Thus, with one last devilish flick of his tongue into your clit, you came undone.

Seconds ticked by, and your tremors diminished with each one that passed. Lohen, on the other hand, wasn’t as merciful and instead of letting go, remained snug in your hole. Gathering the slick with the tip of his tongue, sliding it along the sensitive lips that dripped with your lustful overflow.

“See? That wasn’t difficult,” Lohen sat your lower body onto the bed again, and you heaved a sigh of relief. Your heart tripped over its own beats; the world he had opened to you had left you speechless in a way that was both good and disastrous. “Hahaha! You’re still out of it?” at your silence, Lohen tapped your cheek to force you back to reality.

 “Lohen, what about you? The aphrodisiac’s still in your system and—”

“Relax, we’ll get to that in a minute. My, I hadn’t pictured you to be this needy in bed,” That earned him a swat on his arm from you. A swat that earned you nothing, because he enjoyed it. “Come here. It’s your turn to make me feel good. You’ve got no complaints, right? If you do, I’ll have to put you through it a second time for good measure.”

“That’s not necessary,” you sat up. Had Lohen given you the best orgasm of your life? Lying would be a disservice to the effort he went through, so yes. Did you want to be manhandled into the most mortifying position he could’ve given you oral in, though?

Lohen leaned back and parted his legs, giving you a thorough view of the bulge tenting his white pants. It had grown twice in size since the last time you peeked at it before he got you in that daunting position.

Since he had come here without his cape and waistcoat, it wasn’t long before he discarded his dress shirt. You had been sitting there, watching him undo button per button, baring his lean torso to your attentive stare. Thanks to the training regime knights underwent, there was a considerable amount of muscle on his overall lean frame.

 “Hah, why are you so far? Are you afraid I’m going to bite you?”

“You already did. When we kissed,” you deadpanned, but found yourself inching closer to him. With caution, you placed your hands next to him and leaned in for a kiss. Lohen lunged into your lips, followed by a grunt when you caught his bottom lip between your canines. “Like that.”

He didn’t allow you to retreat, instead capturing your waist while his other hand unfastened his trousers. This was about to become another kiss in which you’d have to bargain for at least one mouthful of air if the way his lips locked on yours was anything to go by. In the meantime, once the fly was unzipped, he pulled his length out of its confinements. He guided your hand to it, making you squeeze and stroke him. He was running hot, scorching thanks to the aphrodisiac. Sturdy. Unyielding. Each time your thumb brushed on the drooling tip, he’d furrow his eyebrows and groan into the kiss. Due to pent-up pleasure, the aphrodisiac had had him leaking into the fabric.

A small gasp forced its way out of you when Lohen found your cunt, thrusting a finger as deep as he could go. From your previous release, your walls and inner thighs were drenched alike, and with the rough handling he delivered to your aching core, more arousal leaked, trickling down his knuckles.

As he found a comfortable position between your legs, you couldn’t help sneaking a peek at his cock. Slender, long, and straight. Lacking a curve, it would be ramming into the innermost reaches of your body without mercy.

Of course, your not-so-sneaky peek wasn’t fast enough to go unnoticed by Lohen. “You seem a little distracted.”

Lohen gripped his cock and nudged it into your folds, smearing the head with your juices. Every time it glided up, it would prod your clit and reignite your need. In a situation in which he’d keep dangling your satisfaction in front of you like a carrot tied to a stick, his patience ran thin and jutted his body forward, his length opening space into your insides.

He pushed and pulled, with measured thrusts. At first. Seeing as he had prepared you and met little resistance when he slid into your cunt, every sense of self-control turned into nothing but an afterthought. Lohen kept his arms taut next to your head, looking down at you with a half-lidded observation, taking in every twist and turn of your expressions. His pelvis impelled into yours with the intent to ravage, sweat clinging to the sides of his face from the speed.

“You look spent, sweetheart. Tsk-tsk-tsk, not good,” his chest heaved with a breathless laugh. “Should I train your endurance?”

You didn’t have the mind to process the actual implications of his words, succumbing to the most basic of instincts. Yet, that didn’t deter him from lifting one of your legs to pass it over his shoulder, positioning it next to the other one. This slight change of position made you tighten around him, increasing the intensity of his unforgiving plunges into your cunt. Moreover, the change in angle made it so he would brush against an overly sensitive spot in your walls, making you arch your back and moan his name.

Thanks the sevens everyone else was away from the camp; there was no way you would’ve been able to hold your voice in with the way Lohen rammed into you, sending your torso to slide into the bedding each time he pushed and pulled.

You were convinced that it couldn’t get more maddening, but the moment his fingers brushed your clit, all you could do was grip the sheets to ground yourself, and the obscene slapping of skin mingling with the sounds of enjoyment made the entirety of your being heat up further. Nevertheless, the outburst consumed each thought you could’ve had as your second orgasm raced to that finish line, and the snug enclosing of your pussy sped Lohen’s too.

Seeking a sense of closeness beyond the lust, your last resort was to reach towards Lohen’s hand. For a moment, you thought he’d ignore it, since this kind of tenderness wasn’t something characteristic of him—but at the very last second before you reached completion, he grasped it in his scarred hand.

You squeezed it so hard you thought you’d break his bones when your orgasm struck. Even through his own, Lohen didn’t stop moving, riding the dwindling release until all but the faint thrumming was left. It wasn’t until he let go of your legs and you finally rested that the angle allowed for his hot cum to ooze from your battered cunt. You didn’t meander too much about that, as you had worked on your fair share of contraceptives before.

After a while of Lohen pressing open-mouthed kisses to your neck, he pulled away.

Limp on the bedroll, your breathing evened out. Suddenly, your bed was the comfiest it had ever been, and the seconds between your blinks stretched more than normal. You followed Lohen’s movements with your eyes, which became droopier with exhaustion with each passing second, until you saw him climb on top of you again, making your once stabilized pulse to rattle again.

“Didn’t you promise I’d get to play with you next?”

“…Right now? Aren’t you tired?”

Rather than receiving a verbal answer, Lohen grabbed your face and pushed his thumb into the side of it, forcing your mouth ajar. It wasn’t until the distinct bitterness of a pain amplifier coated your tongue that it punched you out of your dreamlike haze to sit up and cough.

“Oops, wrong one.” Lohen fiddled with the empty vial in his fingers.

“Seriously? Please get out of my tent.”

“Kicking out a partner after such passionate sex? How unromantic,” Lohen finished buttoning his pants. He reached for his dress shirt next. “I’ve got some unresolved business with you, however.”

You scramble to get dressed too while Lohen stepped closer, his slow footsteps sending every panicking signal to sear through you. With practiced ease, Lohen cornered you with his trusted dagger. The blade glinted beneath the moonlight as the end pointed in your direction. Waiting a centimeter away from you.

“I need you to do one thing. I’m not asking for much, am I?” without letting go of you, he made you walk toward your desk and sit on the chair. Standing behind you, he slid a sheet of paper and your quill before you. “Write a letter about how an emergency back home has made you retreat sooner than predicted. Addressed to Varka.”

You glanced at the paper, then at the quill, and then you craned your neck to peer back at him. His eyes had never looked this dull before to you, but despite how devoid of light they were, you still had in you the will to refuse. Seconds ticked by, and the silence within the tent suffocated you with each accelerated beat of your heart.

Notebooks, stacks of papers, and a potion rack stumbled upon the floor along with the desk in your scuffle to put space between Lohen and you. You gain the upper hand for the same duration that a blink of an eye lasted, much to your dismay. Lohen slapped his hand around your arm to grab you, the slight echo reverberating, mirrored the small—yet painful—pulses at the impact. A simple action that forced a yelp that wouldn’t have occurred otherwise without the aid of the amplifier.

“Oho, I see you’re not going to make it easy. I like that!” he twisted your arms behind your back to secure you in place, his hot breath tickling the side of your neck. You grit your jaw when you feel his mouth lock by your pulse, sucking at the sweaty skin to leave a mark. Furthermore, the way he kept pressing into your backside, and you felt a rather prominent feature poking into it… “You know what? Since this has been all too easy, why don’t we turn it up a notch? Yeah, let’s heighten the stakes here. Run as far as you can. Didn’t I say I wanted to train your endurance too? Let me see how long you can make it before I catch you.”

With an insignificant shove, he let go of you.

Tears rushed to your eyes and with clenched fists, you snapped an aggrieved glare at him. You didn't dare linger there lest he changed his ming, and fled from there.

You made it to the road by the Favonius Keep and onto the other side. You called at the door of the Lightkeeper’s outpost, to no avail. You head to the second closest outpost available, and in the lack of an answer, you realize that you’ve wasted precious minutes. This lack of Ratniks meant that they must be somewhere fighting the Wild Hunt, but trying to trace them would be counterproductive and would also place you in harm’s way. Heading towards Piramida was a bet against time too, and seeking a hiding place amongst the sharp edges and rocky formations near Kipumaki Cliff was a surefire way to get wiped off the face of Teyvat by the Wild Hunt. This isle didn’t bless you with a bunch of options, meaning that you’d have to place your sights yonder.

There were no sources of light if you strayed from the road; murky shadows lingered to enwrap anything that dared to wander into the vast, forlorn plains of swaying grass by the fleeting imprints of civilization. To traverse the solitude that stretched across the wilderness to make it to the shore where, hopefully, a humane fisherman could take you to the where the ocean met the sky and beyond was necessary if you wanted a chance at escaping the clutches of the vice-captain.

Yet, what chance would you have, when not even a trained spy could outrun him?

“My Archons, Lohen!” You cried at the sight of Lohen bent over in pain clutching his left side with his gloves fingers. His dark, crimson blood stained his clothes and left a trail behind him.

You rushed over to the injured Knight and basically shoved him onto the examination table.

“Wha- What happened to you!?” You gently removed his hands from the wound to get a better look at it. His clothes were in the way, yet you could still tell the wound was far too deep to be ignored.

How the hell did he walk all the way here without dying of blood loss? He didn’t even spare the time to make a tourniquet.

Oh, Lohen… you don’t understand why he insist to see you rather than go to a hospital. It could be because he “likes” you or whatever, but it could be a serious matter of life or death!

You aren’t the only nurse or healer in Mondstadt.

While you were scrambling to strip him of his shirt and coat, not once did he take his eyes off of you. Yet you failed to notice.

Your cheeks tinted a soft shade of red at the sight of his shirtless body, yet you reminded yourself to stay composed. You’ve seen countless of wounded Knights as a nurse, Lohen shouldn’t be anything new.

As much as you wanted to focus on the wound you were inspecting, your eyes betrayed you and trailed down his body. You eyed his countless scars from multiple different battles over the years. You even recognized a few newer ones that you tended to not too long ago.

You directed your attention back to his recent wound, come on, Y/n! Do your fucking job!

The stab wound in his lower abdomen refused to stop bleeding, he’s lucky it didn’t hit any of his vital organs. You dabbed at the skin surrounding it with a wet cloth to clean the blood.

“Why didn’t anyone bring you here?” You asked, thinking small talk might be rid of the awkward silence. “Didn’t anyone see you in the hall?”

“No one brought me because I was all alone when it happened.” He turns his head to look at you, “Besides, I get to have some alone time with my favorite nurse.”

The arrogance in his tone almost makes you scoff, but that would be very unprofessional. So you don’t react.

He barely winced when you sprayed alcohol on the wound, his narrowed red-blue eyes stared straight into your soul. Barbatos, he’s never stared at you this hard when you’re patching him up. He’s making you nervous.

You ask another question, “How exactly did this happen? …I- If you don’t mind me asking?”

He chuckles, instantly regretting it as he stifles a painful groan. “I- I was clearing out a Hilichurl camp and suddenly noticed a dagger sticking out of my side.”

He smiles at you, “Haha… it’s pretty pathetic that a bunch of Hilichurls did this to me, huh?”

You shake your head, “I don’t think you’re pathetic, Lohen. I do think that you should be more careful, though.” You bandaged his side.

“Oh really?”

He hooked his finger under your collar and jerked your body closer to his. You let out a yelp of surprise. With how close you were, you could make out every detail of his pretty, pale face.

He leaned in towards your ear, his warm breath fanned against your skin.

You shivered.

You tensed as he spoke, “You’re just like a little bunny, Ms. Nurse. So easy to frighten.” One of his hands snakes down your body and rests on your hip.

“You know, I would love to buy you a drink sometime. Or a meal. I know you aren’t the most fond of alcohol. Neither am I.” His eyes traveled up and down your body like he was a starved animal that wanted to devour you.

You shifted uncomfortably under his eyes. You just wanted this to be over with and- and why is he moving so much with such a serious injury!? He must hurt like hell right now!

“Lo… Lohen, your side-“

His hand at your hip distracts you, he traces faint stars into your sides.

You loose your train of thought rather quickly.

“—How about Saturday? That sound good to you?” You whimpered when he tugged your collar closer. The fabric from your collar dug into your skin.

“I- I already told you, Lohen…” you swallow and turn away from him, “I have a partner.”

Lohen sighs, shakes his head, and clicks his tongue.

“We can still go as friends, yeah?” He frowned. “C’monnn!! Don’t let your “dear partner” get in our way!”

“We’ll have lots of fun~!”

You pressed your lips together.

“I will once you’ve healed.”

Now here you are, on a Saturday night sitting in the bar. All alone.

You vividly remember Lohen’s instructions: “Meet me at The Angel’s Share at 7:30 PM. And please don’t bring them.”

It’s almost 9PM and his ass hasn’t shown his face yet!

Don’t tell me he stood me up! You buried your face in your hands after taking another sip of your apple juice. You really did dislike drinking, you hated how he knew you so well.

I should just go home… 

“Apple juice, huh? You strike me more as a sunsettia girl.”

Your head lifted and you hit your elbows on the table. “Shit! Lohen! Where did you come from and-?”

You gasped.

Blood rolled down his face from his scalp and his face was scratched up. It was like he had hit it against a really rough rock or fell from a building.

You basically jumped on him at the sight, bombarding him with various questions as the drunk patrons around you watched with amusement.

It was usual for Lohen to cause a scene, but it still embarrassed you.

Lohen, on the other hand, seemed to be enjoying this attention. Especially yours.

His sweet, faithful little nurse caring for him like he’s an injured baby deer. You held his chin up between your fingertips. With a nearby napkin that was being used as a makeshift coaster you dabbed away the blood.

He relished in the feeling. Your fingers against his face were so delicate, so gentle. A pit of jealousy forms in his gut at the thought of you touching your other patients with this amount of care.

Do you touch your partner like this too?

When you accidentally press down too hard on his bruised flesh he almost moans. You took notice of his strained sound and frown, “Sorry, did I hurt you?”

He blinks out of his trance and shakes his head. Shit, that hurt. Archon’s, he’s gotta stop doing that.

You hum in thought and remove your hands from his face. He feels cold without your touch.

“I think it’s a bit to late to go to my office in the Favonious HQ… I have a first aid kit at my house. I’ll go get it for you. I’ll be right ba-“

In a panic, the he cuts you off, “No! No. Let me come with you. I… I don’t know if I can wait much longer.” He places his hands on his head, a bit dramatic, but it convinced you.

On the walk over to your home, you notice Lohen stealing glances at you every now and then. He seemed more worried about you than his bleeding scalp. Speaking of that…

“What did you do now?” You gesture to his wound. He smiles.

Lohen bites his lip in thought, “I… ran into a wall?” Even he didn’t sound sure of his story.

“You ran into a wall?” You repeated, skeptical.

“Yep.”

Before you could call him out on his obvious lie, he changes the subject.

“So! How long have you and this “partner” of yours been dating,” He put in air quotes.

“Lohen!” You roll your eyes, laughing. “And that’s none of your business. Tell me, why do you love talking about them so much? You mist want them or something.”

“Ew- I mean- It’s nothing… just… i don’t understand how someone like them got someone like that.”

You crossed your arms over your chest, “And what is that supposed to mean?”

“I think you’re too good for them,” The says a bit too bluntly. “You need someone that’s more in your league, y’know? No hate though.”

You furrowed your brows at him, “Wha- you’re jealous aren’t you!?”

“Nah, Nah, I’m not jealous…” He shrugged his shoulders, “I just think you should be dating someone, you know, more like me?”

You laugh, “Someone who’s prone to life-threatening accidents?”

They’re going to be in that category in a minute.

“Yeah, something along those lines.”

Before you knew it you were standing right in front of your home. You look over at Lohen and unlock the door. “Wait outside while I get it, ‘kay?”

He eyed the outside of your house, your words went in one ear and right out of the other. “Yeah, yeah, alright…”

You walked back to your bathroom and grab the first aid kit from the cabinet. When you come back into the main room you see Lohen staring at your pictures on the drawer. Why isn’t he outside!?

“You’ve got a really nice house, Y/n,” he sets the picture frame down. Great. Great! He just invited hinself in!

“Lohen! I told you to wait outside!” You tried pushing him out the front door but he takes a side step over to your couch. “Well I was out there, but your home was just so warm and inviting… It’s rude to leave your guests at the doorstep, you know.”

You roll your eyes, “Fine. Since you’re already in here I might as well tend to your wounds now. Come on, sit on the couch.”

He sits down almost instantly and you laugh, “So you can follow instructions.”

“I have selective listening skills.”

You mutter a quiet “Uh huh” and start getting to work. You open the first aid kit and cleaned the dried blood from his forehead. He’s lost so much blood, he must have hit his head pretty hard.

“It’s very possible that you have a concussion, but the symptoms do take a little while to appear. Just tell me if you feel dizzy, nauseous…”

Your voice trailed off when you notice Lohen was silent. Was he not listening?

“Lohen!? Are you even listening to me?”

“Yeah, yeah, something about custard…” he waves his hand dismissively. “I was just distracted by how close you are. You are so beautiful.”

You were left speechless. It wasn’t uncommon for Lohen to flirt with you, but he’s never directly called beautiful. Your finger nails dig into the palms of your hands.

You kept telling yourself “keep it professional, keep it professional” but look how unprofessional it’s gotten. He’s in your house, on your couch with your faces inches away from each other.

When you saw him leaning in you didn’t move away, you leaned in too, resting your palms on his shoulders. You could smell his scent, feel his heat, hear his soft breathing.

Then the door opened.

You basically jumped off of him and turned to face the door. It was your partner coming home from work.

The Vice Captain’s gloved fingers dug into his thighs, frustrated that his perfect moment was interrupted by them.

Your cheeks and the tips of your ears were so visibly red, you’re lucky that it was too dark in the room for them to notice. “H- Hey [name]!“

Your partner was about to walk past to couch but took a double take when they noticed a third person. “Who is that…?” They asked.

“Oh, that’s Lohen, the Vice Captain of the Fifth Company. He got hurt so I’m just helping him out.”

Without giving it a second thought the sigh, “Okay… I’m going to bed now.”

“Goodnight!” You call after them.

You turn to the Knight, “You need to leave. Now.”

He frowns, “Damnit… and just as we were at the good part… Can we try again?”

“Lohen.”

“Alright, alright, I’m going…!” Lohen gets up from the couch and walks towards the door. He lingered at the door frame a second longer, “Goodnight, my nurse.”

The door shuts behind him.

You knew letting Lohen come over your house last night was a bad idea, but you did it anyway. Why! Why can’t you just listen to your gut!!

The second you entered the Knight’s HQ you saw him staring you down from across the hall. He was standing right at the staircase, knowing you couldn’t go up to the infirmary without acknowledging his presence.

He must know you don’t want to see him because he’s never done this before. You were planning on ignoring him and going straight up the stairs but he steps in your way, “Y/n! No ‘good morning’ or anything? Where are your manners?”

You rolled your eyes, “Lohen, I have to go upstairs. I don’t have time for this.” You shove past the knight and make your way up the staircase. A wave of relief washed over you when you thought he had given up, but you of all people should know that he doesn’t give up that easily.

As you were unlocking the door to the infirmary, he was wrapping his arms around your waist and leaning into your neck, “You always smell so good… I might have to steal your body wash.”

“Lohen!” You cried, almost falling to the ground when the door opened. Yet his grip remained strong.”

You squirmed uncomfortably as his hands travel up and down your body, caressing every inch, “L- Lohen stop, I hav-“

“-You have a partner? I know. You won’t stop reminding me,” Lohen’s voice dropped an octave while he leaned in closer to your ear. “You’re so faithful to them, aren’t you? I bet you cook and clean for them too? You clean their wounds and bandage them up when they get hurt too?”

“S- stop it-“

“-They cant please you like I could, can they? I know they can’t because I know everything about you…” He leans back to take in the disturbed look on your face.

He reached into his pocket for a second to pull out his knife. Why did he need his knife?

He waved it in front of your face like it was a piece of candy he was taunting you with. When he felt you attempting to take a step back his arm around your waist presses you flush against his body.

“What are you…!?”

The Vice Captain traces the flat side of the blade along your jawline as he hums, “Are you scared of me, Y/n?” He tilts his head and moves closer to your face, his lips hovering right over yours. “If you are, that really turns me on.”

His at your waist moves up to your head and pushes your soft lips against his. He kisses you violently, his teeth dig into your bottom lip until you bleed. He doesn’t hesitate to thrust his tongue into your mouth, relishing in the metallic taste.

You moan and cry, silently begging for him to stop and let you go. But knowing Lohen, it won’t be easy.

His other hand holding the blade lightly presses into your side, threatening to push in deeper if you dare to fight against him.

Lohen pushes you up against the closest wall, the force makes your ears ring. Although you forget about it fairly quickly when he’s pulling away and leaving hot, wet kisses along your jawline and down your neck.

He sucks and bites at the skin until dark bruises are left behind. With each noise you made it only encouraged him to bite harder.

“I’ll make you forget all about them.” He grinned, “I’ll make sure they know who you really belong to.”

“Y- you’re crazy…” you panted. “Let me go…!”

Lohen’s lips leave your neck for a second and his eyes narrow.

“What did you say, Ms. Nurse?”

He waves his knife in your face, “Don’t freeze up on me now, Y/n. You were doing so well.”

Lohen brings the knife up to your neck, hovering right over your skin. It was yet another gentle reminder to not disobey him.

“What did you say?”

You swallow, “L- let me go…” you stuttered, you’re visibly shaking.

You are adorable.

“What’d you say before that? I didn’t quite catch it…” he presses the blade against your  skin. Your blood beaded at the tip of the cold metal, you whimpered softly.

“You’re crazy!” You snap. It was kind of a bad idea to yell at the man holding a knife to your throat. You didn’t care though. He didn’t seem to either. He was actually enjoying this more than anything.

“Feisty aren’t we?” He pulls his knife away, running his the blade along his tongue. You shivered in disgust.

“I miss when you would look up at me like a frightened, innocent-looking animal. Could we go back to that?”

You looked at him with utter disgust. What the hell is wrong with him?

“Now, now don’t look at me like that…” he pouts and grabs your face, squishing your cheeks between the tips of his fingers. “You look like you hate me.”

Lohen’s teasing is brought to a sudden halt when someone knocked on your door.

“Y/n! Are you in there?” The voice was panicked. They were probably with an injured knight. You shot Lohen a glare. He ignored you and only groaned.

“Oh my Archons. Are there no other nurses or doctors in this building,” He lets you go.

“I could tell you the same thing,” you rub your face, soothing the pain of where his hands once were.

“See you later, Nurse Y/n,” he pauses when his hand touched the door knob. He smiles.

“And I’ll take care of that partner of yours.”

Your eyes linger a second too long on his back as he exits the room.

A loud, violent scream echoed through the woods, but it was silenced instantly.

He kept a hand over their mouth and drags them deeper and deeper into the dark forest. Him and his victim are surrounded by trees on all sides. He laughs, a sinister, sadistic noise makes his victim tremble.

He doesn’t spare another second and pins them against the ground by their scalp. He presses his blade against their temple. They cry out desperately, “Please, please let me go, Lohen!! I- I won’t tell anyone about this, just let me live!!”

He scoffed.

“You think I will just take your word for it?” He drags the blade down the side of their face. The cut was deep enough to turn white then it quickly filled with deep, red blood.

Lohen smiles at the sound of their screams of agony.

“Archons, I can do this all night.”

With the flick of his wrist, he swipes the blade across their face. He left a long cut from ear to ear.

“But I do have to get back home to your girlfriend,” he stabs their stomach. “You know her, the pretty nurse. The sounds she makes are so adorable, even her cries.” He yanks the blade out and stabs his chest, “I bet you didn’t know that. I bet you don’t know how to make your girl feel good, do you? I do. I know exactly where you touch her to make her scream my name.”

The way their eyes widened at his words amused Lohen.

They coughed up blood, “D- don’t lay a finger on Y/n you… you psycho!”

Lohen gasped in mock offense, “‘Psycho!?’ A bit overused, but still hurtful!” He chuckled, “And shouldn’t you be a bit more worried about yourself? Y/n will be safe under my watch. Though I can’t say the same for you.”

The turquoise-haired man pressed his knife against their throat and swiped. Their blood splattered against his pale skin. The warm, disgusting, feeling made him smile.

The dark crimson pooled around their limp body and formed a small puddle. “Finally got your ass to shut up…” His eyes admired his blade stained with their blood before stabbing it into his own shoulder.

After getting over the excruciating pain, the Vice Captain found himself smiling. He thought of how you’d react to finding him all beat up. You would scold him, telling him to be more careful next time while cleaning the blood off his face with sterile gauze.

He pulled the blade out and almost immediately stabbed his left thigh, then his side. He even cut and scratched up his face for extra measure. 

He may have gone a bit overboard, but he’ll do whatever it takes to end up in your infirmary again. He wants you to be so focused on him that your stupid partner won’t cross your mind ever again. They’ll become nothing but a fleeting thought.

He stands up, swaying on his feet. It was way too dark, he could barely see his feet in front of him.

Lohen couldn’t make it out of Windrise before collapsing.

“Lohen! Lohen, are you awake?” Your blurry silhouette slowly came into the knight’s vision. You were towering over him as he laid on his back on the bed.

“Did I pass out? What happened?”

“‘What happened!?’” You exclaimed rather loudly, “You hit a major artery and almost bled to death! If it weren’t for a drunk bard who found you lying outside would have died! What the hell is wrong with you!? What were you even doing out that late??”

You continued to ramble on and on about how unsafe it was to battle enemies that early in the morning… or something like that… but he wasn’t listening. He’s just glad he got the exact outcome he desired.

“Wait… where’s my knife?”

“I confiscated it.”

Everyone please thank this nice commenter for the inspiration for this fanfic

The first letter showed up tucked under your door on a Tuesday.

You almost missed it entirely, your boot nearly crushing the folded parchment on your way out for morning drills. The handwriting on the outside was unmistakably clean, almost aggressively so, each letter formed like whoever wrote it had been taught penmanship at knifepoint. You didn't need to look inside of it to know who it was from. You opened it anyway, standing in your doorway with your cape half-fastened. You stood there reading it twice because you genuinely couldn't believe what you were reading.

I've been watching the way you fight for a while now. I'd like to see it up close. Spar with me sometime — Love always, Lohen.

You folded it back up and went directly to your drills. You didn't say anything to anyone.

You told yourself it was probably nothing. Lohen was the sort of person who said strange things in strange ways and meant nothing particularly alarming by them. You'd seen him joke with other members of the Knights of Favonius in a manner that made bystanders shift uncomfortably while everyone in the immediate vicinity pretended it was funny. That was just simply just how he was. It didn't mean anything. The letter went on the corner of your desk and you didn't look at it again.

The second letter came three days later.

You didn't answer. I'll ask again when you're less busy. — Love always, Lohen.

You set it on top of the first one.

By the fifth letter you had a small, neat stack going, which you refused to examine the implications of. They were crowding up on your desk, so you just shoved them in a drawer. You weren't keeping them for any meaningful reason. You just hadn't thrown them out yet.

The content of them varied. Some were short. Barely a sentence, just checking in, complimenting aspects you’ve improved in. Others ran longer, seeming almost involuntary, almost as if  he'd sat down intending to write two lines and hadn't been able to stop. He wrote about finding your dedication irritating in a way he couldn't explain. Mundane things like the way you held your weapon like you were angry at it, or how he'd started timing your drills from across the yard without really meaning to. None of it was poetic in the slightest. All of it was extremely specific, and you just knew by then that he was following you.

When he finally asked you in person, you were coming out of a briefing and barely had time to register that he'd fallen into step beside you before he was already talking.

"So." He kept pace with you easily, hands loose at his sides. "You got the letters."

"I got the letters," you confirmed.

"And?"

"And nothing. I've been busy."

He looked at you sideways, that little grin appearing at the corner of his mouth. "You've been avoiding me."

"I've been busy," you repeated, and turned down the corridor toward the armory.

He followed. Of course he followed. "Those are different things."

"Lohen."

"I'm just saying."

You stopped walking and turned to face him, which in retrospect gave him exactly what he wanted because now he was looking at you with his full attention. Head slightly tilted, and it was very difficult to have a normal train of thought when Lohen was looking at you like that. "What is it that you actually want?" you asked. "Specifically."

The grin softened into something more genuine. "To spar. I said that in the first letter."

"That's all?"

He considered that for a beat too long. "For now."

You told him you'd think about it. He said okay, still smiling, and wandered off swinging his dagger handle over his shoulder completely unbothered.

The sparring happened eventually. That was your first mistake, agreeing to it and then actually enjoying yourself. Lohen was a genuinely incredible fighter in the unnerving way that people who love violence tend to be, fighting him was the most engaged you'd felt in a drill in months. He pulled a move in the third round that sent your weapon skidding across the floor and when you looked up from the ground he was crouched over you with the blunted sparring blade at your throat, grinning like he'd just been handed something he'd wanted for a very long time.

"Yield," he said.

"I yield," you said, slightly winded.

He pulled you to your feet without being asked, grip firm on your forearm, and didn't let go quite as quickly as necessary. "You're good," he said, which coming from Lohen you understood to be a serious compliment. "Your right side's open when you commit to an overhead strike though. Someone's going to take advantage of that eventually."

"I'm aware," you said, taking your arm back.

"Good." He handed you your weapon. "Same time next week?"

You said maybe. He took maybe and ran with it.

The package showed up alongside the seventh letter. A piece of dried Mondstadt berry fruit wrapped in brown paper that you’ve mentioned to enjoy eating. No explanation this time, just the usual sign-off. You unwrapped it standing at your desk at six in the morning and stood there for a moment looking at it. It was an incredibly small and stupid gesture. You ate the fruit, threw out the wrapper and went to work.

But he kept showing up. Lohen was many things but he had a particular talent for positioning himself at the exact boundary of too much without crossing it, appearing after briefings, falling into step beside you on patrol routes, even occasionally materializing in the training yard when you were already there. He'd talk, or he wouldn't. Sometimes he just existed nearby in a way that should have been annoying and wasn't.

"Can I ask you something," you said one afternoon. You were both cooling down after another sparring session, sitting on the bench outside the training yard with your respective water flasks. The evening light was doing something irritating to his hair.

"Mhm."

"Why me." It came out more direct than you'd intended but you were tired and your shoulder hurt. You'd decided you wanted an actual answer. "There are plenty of people in the fifth company. In the whole knights, actually. Why—" you gestured vaguely.

Lohen took a long drink from his flask and looked out across the yard. He was quiet for a moment, which on him meant he was actually considering the question.

 "Honest answer?"

"Please."

"You don't laugh at things that aren't funny," he said. "Most people, when I'm around, they laugh. At things that aren't funny. Because they're uncomfortable and they don't know what else to do." He glanced at you. "You don't do that. You just look at me like you're trying to figure out what I actually am. I find that… interesting."

You didn't know what to do with that. You looked down at your flask. "That's a very specific thing to notice."

"I notice specific things."

"Clearly," you said. A beat. "I still haven't decided anything, you know. About whatever this is."

"I know." He didn't sound bothered. "I'm not in a hurry."

That was, you would realize much later, either completely true or the most patient kind of lie. At the time you took it at face value and felt something in your chest loosen slightly, which was its own kind of problem.

Two months in, you had a small stack of letters, a standing weekly sparring appointment, and absolutely no idea what you were doing. Every time you got close to forming an actual thought about it, about him, something in your chest pulled in two directions at once and you ended up where you always ended up, which was telling yourself you needed more time.

Kaeya, who had no business being this perceptive about anyone's life but his own, cornered you in the library on a Thursday and told you that you looked miserable.

"I'm not miserable," you told him.

"You've mentioned Lohen four times in the last two weeks without me bringing him up first," he said.

You didn't have a good response to that.

What you had instead was a nagging anxiety that showed up every time he left another letter, every time he showed up in the training yard and made a dry comment that somehow always landed as a compliment. You kept thinking about what he'd said. “You look at me like you're trying to figure out what I actually am.” The problem was you were still trying to figure that out and the closer you got to an answer the less straightforward it felt.

He asked you to dinner somewhere in the eighth week at the end of a sparring session. It was moreover casual than romantic, thrown out while he was wrapping his wrist, like the answer didn't particularly matter to him either way.

"Dinner," you repeated.

"There's a place on the east side of the market that's decent. Nothing fancy." He glanced up. "Unless you need it to be fancy."

"I don't need it to be fancy." You hesitated. "I need a little more time, Lohen."

His hands stilled briefly on the wrap. "How much time?"

"I don't know."

"No worries, I’ll always be here waiting."

"I know," you said. "I'm sorry."

He held your gaze for a moment, something shifting behind his eyes that you couldn't fully read, and then he finished wrapping his wrist and said fine, and that was that. He didn't push. He went back to showing up anyway, letters and sparring and the occasional comment in passing, and you went back to not throwing the letters out and telling yourself you were still thinking.

When he finally cornered you for real, it wasn't after a briefing. It was outside the stables in the early evening, arms crossed and a look on his face that you'd never quite seen on him before. That look stripped of the usual amusement, just bare and a little tired.

"Okay," he said. "What's going on?"

You said you didn't know what he meant, and he gave you the flattest look you'd ever received from another human being. He said he'd been doing this for months. Asking once and letting it go each time you gave him a non-answer. He wasn't an idiot, so he wanted to know what was actually happening.

You looked at the fence post behind his shoulder for a long moment. When the truth finally came out it felt absurdly small. You'd never been in a relationship before. You genuinely didn't know how any of it worked and the thought of getting it wrong sat in your chest like a stone. And more than that — you were a knight. That position meant something. You had duties that didn't pause for personal complications and adding something like this on top of it felt like setting yourself up to fail at both.

Lohen was quiet through all of it, leaning against the fence post with his arms still crossed, watching you.

"So it's a no," he said when you finished.

A pause. "Yes."

Another pause. "You're sure."

The way he said it wasn't hopeful. It was the tone of someone documenting information. Like he was making sure he had the right data before he did something with it. You said yes, you were sure, and you were sorry, you genuinely didn't want to hurt his feelings, it was just the way things were.

Something moved across his face, fast and then gone. He nodded once. Said he appreciated you being straight with him. Pushed off the fence post and walked away down the path without looking back, and you stood there in the cooling evening with that specific feeling of having done the right thing while something in your chest insisted on making the occasion miserable anyway.

You went home. You told yourself by morning you'd feel settled about it.

Oh, how wrong you were.

Three days passed. A week. Lohen wasn't in the training yard on the usual day, and he didn't bother you after the next briefing either. No letters came. The absence of them was somehow more profound than the letters themselves had been, which was an infuriating thing to notice and you noticed it anyway. The stack in your drawer sat exactly where it was.

On the eighth day you walked past him in the corridor outside the armory and he glanced at you. He said good morning the same way he'd say it to anyone, pleasant and completely impersonal, and you said good morning back and kept walking. Something in your chest did something you were going to have to deal with eventually.

You just didn't know it would be quite this soon.

The eighth day turned into a ninth, then a tenth, and at some point you stopped counting.

You were sitting at your desk on a Thursday evening, drinking your favorite tea as usual. You were trying very hard to read a patrol report that kept not getting read, when you noticed the candle had burned down further than it should have. The room felt heavier than usual, a little too still. 

You were unusually… more tired than you were after your regular training sessions. You kept trying to fight the feeling of sleep. You reached to take another sip of your tea in desperation to find something to keep you awake. As you were lowering the cup, you lost your grip on it and it shattered on the floor. And then, after trying to reach for it between one breath and the next, the world gradually went dark as you passed out on your desk. 

You came back to yourself in stages. The first thing you registered was cloth against your eyes, tight enough that no light got through. The second was that your wrists were bound behind you, and the chair you were sitting in was not your chair. The rope was real and the knot was a good one; you tested it with steady pressure and got nothing, which told you whoever tied it was skilled. Your pulse kicked up, and you started cataloguing what you could. Stone floor. A room that smelled like cold air and old wood. Somewhere quiet enough that you could hear your own breathing clearly… and someone else’s?

"Lohen." You said it flat.

A pause. Then the low sound of him exhaling, close enough that you flinched. "Took you a second. How was your sleep, bunny?"

"Where am I."

"Somewhere private." His voice moved as he circled around you, unhurried. "Relax. You're not going to get anywhere pulling at those."

You stopped pulling, not because he told you to but because he was right, and you needed to think. "D– did you poison my tea!? This is insane and you know that."

"Mhm." He didn't sound particularly concerned about it. You heard the scrape of something against the floor, a chair maybe, and then his weight settling into it. He was close. Just in front of you, maybe two feet of distance. "I've been very patient with you."

"Patient," you repeated. "Lohen, this is kidnapping."

"I know what it is." There was no amusement in his voice now, just something flat and deliberate. "You told me no. I accepted that. Then I spent a week watching you walk past me in corridors like I was just anyone else, like I was nobody. I thought about it and I decided I wasn't done."

You kept very still. The thing about Lohen was that you'd always been able to gauge him in person, the way his attention worked, the specific quality of his focus. Right now that focus was aimed entirely at you and it felt different from how it ever had before. Stripped of the grin, of the easy posture. The patience he usually wore like a second skin was gone and what was underneath it was something with considerably more edge. "Untie me," you said.

"Not yet." He shifted. Something cool and flat pressed against the underside of your chin and you recognized the flat of a dagger blade before you'd finished processing that he'd moved. He tilted your face up slightly, then pulled the blindfold down with the same hand in one motion, and suddenly you could see him.

The room was dim, a single lantern somewhere to your left, and Lohen was crouched in front of your chair with his forearms on his knees and his eyes on you. He looked completely yet unsettlingly calm. "There you are," he said quietly.

You held his gaze. There was a version of this situation where you talked him down and negotiated your way out without escalating anything. You needed more information before you could figure out which version this was. "How long have you been planning this."

"Not long." He turned the dagger handle over once in his fingers, idle. "I wasn't planning it at all until I saw your face in the corridor. Said good morning, you said it back and kept walking like the last two months were nothing. Like they didn't happen." Something moved through his expression, fast. "They happened."

"I know they happened." You kept your voice even. "Lohen. Look at what you're doing right now. This isn't— you can find someone else. Someone who actually wants this, with you. I'm not the only person in the entirety of Mondstadt."

"I don't want just anyone in Mondstadt." He said it simply. "I want you specifically. I've been very clear about that."

"For two months," you said. "You've barely known me for a year."

"I know." And he said it in a tone that suggested he'd already had this argument with himself. He stood up from his crouch and you had to tip your head back slightly to keep looking at him. "Can I tell you something?"

You didn't answer. He was going to tell you regardless.

"The way you fight," he started, and then paused, and this was the thing about Lohen that had always been unsettling. The moments where his lackluster confidence gave way to something that was trying to find the right words. "When I watched you fight for the first time, I thought, that's someone who actually cares about the fight itself instead of the outcome. About what it means to be good at something." He looked at you steadily. "I haven't met a lot of people like that. In fact you might be the first. And then you turned me down and asked me to move on. I tried to [Name], I really did. But I couldn't, and after a while of trying I stopped wanting to." A pause. "So here we are."

The room was very quiet. You could hear the lantern flame.

Something shifted at the corner of his mouth. Not quite a smile. "Y’know, I think about what I'm going to say to you more than I think about most things." He crouched again, level with you, and looked at you very directly. "Tell me something honest. If you’ve genuinely felt nothing this entire time, say it and I'll let you go right now. I'll cut the ropes, walk you out and you'll never have to deal with me again."

You opened your mouth. The silence that came out of it lasted longer than it should have.

His expression changed in increments, something satisfied and terribly knowing spreading across his face. "I knew it," he said softly. "I knew you felt something."

"Don't," you said sharply.

"You had every chance to say it. You just didn't." He stood up again, and the look on his face made the back of your neck prickle. "You've been lying to yourself this whole time. I've been watching you do it."

You pulled hard at the rope, more out of frustration than any belief it would work, and it didn't. "So what, this is your solution? Tie me to a chair until I admit it?"

"Seemed more effective than another letter." He reached around behind the chair and the ropes fell away from your wrists in one motion, dagger having passed through them cleanly. He stepped back, hands loose at his sides, watching you. The door was directly behind him. You clocked the distance immediately, the angle, whether you could get past him.

You moved.

You shoved up from the chair and went left to create a half-second of unpredictability, then cut right for the door. Your hand was almost on the handle when his arm came around you. He dragged you backward and down, the floor coming up fast. Then he had you pinned with his weight above you and a forearm across your collarbone and he was breathing harder now, the calm starting to crack at the edges. You tried to get your knee up and he shifted his weight to block it.

"Stop," he said.

"Get off me." You shoved at his shoulder and made exactly no progress.

"Stop," he said again, and there was something under the word that wasn't quite a warning and wasn't quite a request, and then his other hand came up and the dagger was there, edge resting against the side of your throat. You went very still.

He looked down at you and he was closer than he'd ever been. You could see his jaw working. "I love watching you squirm," he said, and his voice had gone low and a little uneven. "I do. But if you make me chase you every five seconds someone's going to get hurt, and I would really prefer that not to be you." He let a breath out. "So I need you to stop moving."

You stayed still. The dagger didn't move.

"You're going to lose your position," he said, quieter now, and there was something meticulous about the way he laid it out, like he'd planned exactly how he was going to say it. "The Grandmaster’s goodwill doesn't survive a Vice Captain's formal recommendation. I can make very specific complaints about your conduct in the field. Detailed ones. It would take me a week, maybe less." He held your gaze. "I don't want to do that. But I will, if you keep trying to run."

The cold precision of it landed worse than the dagger had. Your knighthood wasn't just a job. It was the reason you'd said no to him in the first place. It was years of drills, briefings, and choosing the work over everything else. He'd found the exact right pressure point and pressed it without any particular display of cruelty. You hated him for it. You also believed him entirely.

He was still watching you. Waiting.

“I hate you…”

“Wrong answer~” You closed your eyes. For a split second, you felt relief as the cold of the dagger left your neck for a short moment, before he replaced its position with his hand, effectively choking you.

You opened your eyes in desperation, you looked at him and made yourself hold it, his expression and the angle of the dagger. After struggling to breathe for what felt like an eternity, he finally replaced his hand with a dagger once more.

“You’re making this so much harder than it should be for the both of us… Y’know I hate seeing you in pain, bunny.”

"Okay, okay, okay! Fine…" you said. Your voice came out steadier than you'd expected.

He tilted his head.

"I'm sorry. I’m so sorry." The words tasted like nothing. You kept going anyway, because this was what survival was and you'd always been good at that. "I was scared. I didn't know how to handle it and I kept making excuses. You didn't deserve that." You made yourself look right at him, trying desperately to appeal to his delusions. "I do feel something. I have since the day we met. I just didn't know what to do with it."

The silence stretched. He was searching your face with the attention he'd always given you, the particular unnerving focus, looking for the seams in it. You kept your expression open. You'd always been good at drills. This was just a different kind.

“...I love you, Lohen.” You said insincerely, distaste frothing from your mouth.

Whatever he was looking for, he either found it or decided he would. The dagger disappeared. He leaned down and kissed you, one hand coming to rest against your jaw, and he kissed you like he'd been wanting to for archons know how long. When he pulled back there was something in his face that you'd never seen there before, a relief so raw it almost made you feel sorry for him. Almost.

"There," he said, and his thumb traced your cheek. "Was that so difficult, bunny?"

He almost laughed. He pulled you up from the floor and stood there with his hands on your face looking at you like he was checking that you were real. You let him, mainly because you were already deciding how much of this you could survive if you were patient.

"You're mine and we’re dating now. Understood? I want you to remember that every time you think about opening your mouth to the wrong person." He pulls back just enough to look at you. "I've already thought about what I'd do if you ran. I've had a week to think about it. Trust me when I say you don't want to find out if my imagination is accurate. Run, tell someone, do something stupid — and the next conversation we have won't be in a room with a door.”

You didn't answer him. You didn't need to. He pulled you close and you let him, and over his shoulder you looked at the door.

His cold lips planted themselves against yours once more.

 “I love you, [Name].”

₊⊹ WRITTEN BY @/riesvalentine ⸝⸝ do not steal/copy, translate (w/o permission or credit), or feed into ai