Long before ambition curdles into catastrophe, Professor Victor Frankenstein is a man consumed by inquiry - brilliant, restless, and determind to unravel the very principles of life itself. When he first notices a young scholar in the university library, seated beneath a rain-streaked window and wholly absorbed in advanced anatomical study, he tells himself his interest is purely academic. Yet her rare union of beauty, discipline, and unselfconscious devotion to knowledge unsettles him more than he cares to admit.
What begins as a distant observation evolves into a quiet ritual: shared research hours, measured conversations, and the private documentation of her intellect in a notebook he keeps hidden from the world. As she seeks his guidance in her studies, their discussions deepen into something charged yet restrained - a meeting of minds complicated by years, propriety, and the careful composure he has long relied upon.
She sees not only the professor but the man on the brink of discovery. He sees in her a rare harmony of beauty, and intellect untouched by vanity of performance. As the boundaries between mentorship and mutual understanding begin to blur, Victor must confront a new and unfamiliar experiment: not the animation of lifeless matter, but the surrender of his carefully ordered heart.
[I do not own any characters listed in this story; all character rights belong to respective creators. Inspired by GDT's Frankenstein (2025). Fictional reimagining and alternate timeline of my own.]
Masterlist
part i - across the reading room
part ii - observations
part iii - under supervision
Victor Frankenstein x fem!reader
Summary: After a week of distant observation, Victor’s quiet fascination becomes unavoidable when the young scholar appears at his office requesting access to a restricted text, and their first conversation unsettles him far more than watching her ever did.
Word count: ~2.3k
Story content warnings: legal age gap (mid 20s, early 40s), professor/student, slow-burn obsession, period typical gender attitudes, slight power imbalance, mild emotional repression
The week that followed the evening in which he first committed his observations to the privacy of the leather notebook passed with an outward regularity that might have suggested little had changed, yet for Victor Frankensteinm the intervening days had only deepened the quiet disturbance he had hoped to diminish. Edinburgh remained subdued beneath its habitual veil of autumn mist, the pale morning light softening the stern outlines of the Old Town as though the city itself had settled into contemplation, and it was beneath this familiar sky that he crossed the University quadrangle once more at the same deliberate hour he had kept throughout the week. Each day had found him returning to the library with the same outward composure, occupying the same distant seat from which he could observe without intruding, and each evening the small leather notebook in his desk drawer had received another entry written in the restrained language of analysis; yet the method, intended to discipline the fascination by subjecting it to reason, had instead revealed how stubbornly the mind could return to a single subject once its attention had been engaged.
The reading room received him with its customary quiet industry, the long tables already occupied by scholars bent over their volumes while the tall windows admitted a light that rested equally upon every page without favour or interruption. He selected his usual place along the far wall and arranged before him a folio of anatomical engravings which, though familiar to him in every detail, afforded a convenient appearance of scholarly purpose, for it was not his intention to enter the room as a man in search of a particular figure but rather as a professor pursuing the ordinary obligations of his discipline.
The effort at restraint, however, could not entirely govern the impulse that had drawn him there, and though several minutes passed during which he succeeded in directing his gaze toward the delicate tracery of nerves and vessels represented upon the plates, his awareness of the room remained unavoidably attentive to the presence he had come to associate with that hour. When at last he permitted his eyes to travel across the assembled readers, he discovered her without difficulty, seated beneath the tall window overlooking the inner court, her posture inclined slightly forward in that familiar attitude of concentration he had observed so often during the preceding weeks. The scene was so precisely aligned with his recollection that for an instant he experienced the curious sensation of witnessing the continuation of a moment rather than the beginning of a new one, as though the intervening nights had not entirely interrupted the quiet narrative of her study.
It had been easier, he reflected, to examine her from that distance, where the breadth of the reading room maintained a natural boundary between observer and subject, allowing admiration to disguise itself as academic curiosity. Seen across the length of a table, her features had seemed harmonious, certainly, but contained within the neutral light of scholarship. Now, as he watched her lift her pen, pause, and inscribe some measured conclusion upon the page before her, the familiarity of the gesture did not diminish the subtle disturbance it produced within him.
A week of observation had persuaded him that his attention was governed primarily by intellectual recognition, by the unusual clarity with which she appeared to approach her work, yet the recollection of the sketches he had drawn returned with uncomfortable vividness, reminding him that the fascination had extended beyond the realm of thought and into that more treacherous territory where admiration begins to examine the curve of a cheek or the movement of a mouth with a concentration that no longer belongs entirely to scholarship.
He had scarcely returned his gaze to the anatomical folio when a small shift of movement across the room drew his attention once more. She had closed the book before her and gathered several loose sheets of notes, rising from her seat with that same unhurried composure which had first distinguished her among the other readers. For a moment he assumed she intended merely to replace a volume upon the shelf, yet instead she crossed directly toward the librarian’s desk, and the direction of her path, combined with the quiet of the room, allowed fragments of the ensuing exchange to reach him without deliberate effort. The slip of paper she presented contained a title written in a firm and careful hand, and though he could not read the words from where he sat, the librarian’s reaction provided sufficient clue to the nature of the request. The gentleman adjusted his spectacles, consulted the ledger with a mild frown of recognition, and then replied in a tone of courteous regret that carried clearly across the otherwise silent room.
“I must inform you, madam, that the volume you request forms part of the restricted scientific collection and cannot be issued for general consultation.”
Her response came without embarrassment or agitation, spoken with the same quiet seriousness he had observed in her study. “Might access be obtained through some other means, sir?”
“Certainly, though it requires faculty authorisation. The work in question falls under the oversight of Professor Frankenstein.”
The mention of his name within the quiet of the reading room did not reach him as a mere administrative detail, though it had been spoken by the librarian in precisely that spirit, but rather as something that produced in him a reaction curiously physical in its immediacy; for although students and colleagues invoked Professor Frankenstein daily in matters of lecture, supervision, and academic petition without stirring the slightest disturbance in his composure, the sudden knowledge that she now heard that name in connection with herself and her inquiry seemed to awaken an unfamiliar awareness along the surface of his skin. A faint warmth travelled from the back of his neck down the length of his arms, subtle yet unmistakable, and he found himself momentarily disoriented by the sensation, as though a word he had long regarded as nothing more than a formal title had abruptly acquired a private significance merely because it had entered her hearing.
“If that is the proper procedure,” she replied after a brief pause, her tone composed and entirely practical, “then I shall request his permission directly.”
The simplicity with which she spoke these words suggested no anticipation of difficulty, nor any awareness that the professor she intended to approach sat within hearing of the exchange. She gathered her notes, inclined her head politely to the librarian, and departed the reading room with the same composed gravity she had exhibited upon entering it. Victor remained seated for several moments after her departure, his hand resting motionless upon the folio before him while the curious sensation produced by the sound of his name continued to linger along his skin.
He returned the anatomical volume to its shelf with deliberate calm and left the library by a secondary passage that afforded him several minutes of solitude before reaching his office within the Old College. During that short walk, he applied himself with habitual discipline to the restoration of his composure, reminding himself that the encounter which appeared imminent would be entirely professional in character and that any agitation he presently experienced must be regarded as an indulgence unworthy of a man long accustomed to governing his impulses with reason.
He had scarcely resumed his seat at the desk when the knock sounded upon the door.
The sound was firm yet unhurried, possessing that quiet assurance which accompanies legitimate purpose rather than hesitation. When he invited the visitor to enter, the door opened and she stepped across the threshold with the same calm bearing she had exhibited in the reading room.
In that instant the week of distant observation collapsed into the immediacy of presence.
The confined dimensions of the office altered his perception of her appearance with disconcerting force. At a distance her beauty had seemed merely an agreeable feature among others, something he could record in the analytical language of his notebook without surrendering to its full effect. Seen within the narrow frame of the doorway, illuminated by the subdued afternoon light filtering through the high window, the harmony of her features struck him with such clarity that for a moment he experienced the peculiar sensation of being almost blinded by it. The clarity of her complexion, the luminous steadiness of her green eyes, the soft arrangement of her auburn hair drawn back from the brow with practical simplicity, all presented themselves with a vividness that left him unexpectedly disoriented, as though the careful sketches he had drawn had failed to prepare him for the living presence they attempted to capture.
He rose more quickly than intended.
The motion was subtle enough that she could not have remarked upon it, yet he felt the momentary loss of composure with humiliating precision.
“Professor Frankenstein,” she said.
The title, spoken in that clear and unembarrassed voice, produced the same curious sensation he had experienced in the reading room, only now intensified by proximity. The word seemed to linger in the air between them, and he became acutely aware of the strange warmth it awakened within him, a quiet stirring of satisfaction or pleasure so unexpected that he scarcely recognised it as his own. That a simple acknowledgment of his position could provoke such a reaction struck him as almost ridiculous, and yet the evidence of his senses was undeniable. Some obscure corner of his nature responded to the sound of the title upon her lips with an eagerness he had never previously examined, and the discovery, arriving without warning, unsettled him more deeply than he wished to admit.
“I beg your pardon for presenting myself without prior arrangement, Professor,” she continued, her tone entirely serious and innocent of any awareness that the word she repeated had already produced such disproportionate effect. “The librarian informed me that permission to consult a restricted volume must be obtained from you.”
Her innocence in this regard amused and troubled him in equal measure, for it revealed that the disturbance belonged wholly to his own imagination.
He gestured toward the chair opposite his desk and invited her to sit, conscious as she moved further into the room of the faint scent of paper and ink that seemed to cling to her garments, an aroma so closely associated with the labour of study that it appeared almost an extension of her presence. The office, which had always seemed comfortably spacious when occupied by himself alone, now felt unexpectedly intimate, as though the boundaries of the room had contracted around the quiet exchange of two minds.
“The volume you seek?” he asked.
“De Rerum Vitalium Principiis, in Professor Abernathy’s translation,” she replied.
Her voice remained composed and serious, addressing him not as a man whose approval must be courted but as the custodian of a text necessary to her inquiry. That intellectual directness affected him more strongly than admiration ever could have done, for it placed him not upon a pedestal but within the conversation itself.
He questioned her carefully regarding the purpose of her research, and she answered with the calm assurance of someone who had already considered the matter thoroughly. She spoke of the historical dispute concerning the existence of a vital principle distinct from mechanical organisation, of the necessity of examining controversial arguments in their strongest form rather than relying upon second-hand dismissal, and of her desire to evaluate those theories with the same discipline she applied to anatomical study. Throughout the exchange she displayed no trace of self-consciousness regarding the impropriety that a more worldly observer might have detected in presenting herself alone within the office of a professor more than fifteen years her senior. She addressed him as a mind rather than a man, and that simplicity rendered the encounter curiously disarming.
Yet even as he questioned her, another train of thought intruded with quiet persistence. To grant her access under supervision would require her presence here, within the narrow confines of his office, seated across from him while the contested pages were examined line by line. The justification was impeccable. A restricted volume demanded faculty oversight. The arrangement would excite no suspicion.
And yet the more he considered the conditions he intended to impose, the more he recognised the subtle paradox they contained.
Was he protecting her from the influence of the text, or placing himself deliberately in the path of an influence he had thus far only observed from afar?
When at last he informed her that she might consult the volume only under his supervision, either within his office or during designated hours, she accepted the restriction without hesitation, her expression reflecting nothing but gratitude for the opportunity. The innocence of her agreement produced a curious sensation within him, half amusement and half apprehension, for she seemed entirely unaware that the arrangement she welcomed so readily carried a significance he alone perceived.
He signed the authorisation with steady hand and extended the paper toward her.
“You may present this to the librarian,” he said. “We shall begin tomorrow afternoon.”
She thanked him once more, the word “Professor” falling naturally from her lips as she spoke, and the sound of it produced once again that faint, treacherous warmth beneath his composure.
When she departed and the door closed quietly behind her, Victor remained standing beside the desk for several moments, aware that the decision he had just made possessed a gravity that could not easily be dismissed. For weeks he had observed her from a distance, persuading himself that fascination might remain harmless so long as proximity was denied. Now he had arranged precisely the opposite, inviting her into the most private sphere of his daily labour under the respectable pretext of scholarly supervision.
Whether the decision represented prudence or folly he could not yet determine. He knew only that in granting her access to the restricted volume he had also granted himself something far more dangerous: the sustained nearness of the mind that had already begun, without his permission, to occupy his thoughts with a persistence he could neither justify nor entirely resist.
Victor Frankenstein x fem!reader
Summary: Victor finds himself unable to return to his research, and instead fills his private notebook with observations of the young scholar who has quietly unsettled his composure.
Word count: ~1.5k
Story content warnings: legal age gap (mid 20s, early 40s), professor/student, slow-burn obsession, period typical gender attitudes, slight power imbalance, mild emotional repression
The rain accompanied him all the way from the library steps to the narrow stair that led to his lodgings, clinging to the wool of his coat and settling into the seams of the city as though determind to erode its ancient stone. By the time he let himself into the upper-floor flat that overlooked the uneven descent of the Old Town, dusk has thickened and the rooftops dissolved into one another, with chimney smoke mingling indistinguishably with the mist.
He removed his gloves with deliberate care and set them upon the small table near the door, then crossed to the hearth to coax a steadier flame from embers that had not yet wholly surrendered to ash. The room brightened gradually, revealing the familiar arrangement of books stacked in ordered columns, instruments aligned upon a sideboard, and the broad desk positioned before the window from which he could observe the wavering lamps below. This space had long been a sanctuary of discipline, a chamber in which thought proceeded according to design and ambition answered only to reason, yet as he stood in its centre, he found that the clarity he prized eluded him.
He removed his coat and draped it across the back of a chair before taking his place at the desk. The leather bound folio containing his lecture notes lay open where he had left it that morning, the margins marked with refinements to arguments concerning the excitability of nervous tissue under electrical stimulus. He regarded the page with the steady gaze of habit, yet the words seemed to recede rather than invite continuation. In their place rose the memory of a rain-streaked window and the figure seated beneath it, wholly absorbed in anatomical study as though the world beyond the page had relinquished its claim upon her.
From the upper drawer of is desk, he withdrew a smaller notebook bound in dark leather, distinct from the larger volumes reserved for formal research. This one he kept for reflections not yet refined into argument, for impressions awaiting either dismissal or development. He opened it to a fresh page and dipped his pen into the inkwell, watching the bead of ink gather at the nib before lowering it to paper. For a brief moment, he hesistated, conscious of the absurdity in committing to record the mere presence of a woman he encountered across the reading room, and yet the reluctance only sharpened his awareness that something within him had shifted from its accustomed alignment.
Observed this afternoon in the university library. Female scholar of approximately five and twenty years, engaged in advanced anatomical study. Marked precision, independence of thought.
He paused only long enough to consider the accuracy of the phrasing before continuing.
Demonstrates intellectual discipline uncommon among peers; reduces complex argument to essential principle before committing it to paper; consults multiple authorities with evident discrimination rather than transcription.
The language was suitably clinical, and as he reread the lines he felt a fleeting satisfaction at their composure, as though the act of description has restored some measure of control.
Yet the recollection did not confine itself to such neutral boundaries. He leaned back in his chair, fingers lightly steepled, and allowed the memory to unfold more fully. The lamplight had settled upon her features with a warmth that the pale daylight had not afforded, revealing a clarity in her expression that might easily have been overlooked by a less attentive eye. He returned to the page.
Eyes of a distinct green, made more vivid beneath artificial light. Expression composed and untroubled by the awareness of scrutiny.
The pen moved with quiet certainty, but as the words accumulated he became increasingly aware that he was tracing not merely intellectual qualities but something more difficult to categorise.
He set the pen aside and reached for a pencil kept near the edge of the desk. Without permitting himself prolonged deliberation, he turned to the facing page and began to sketch. At first, he marked only the broad outlines of a face inclined in concentration, the sweep of curled hair drawn back from the brow, the gentle arc of cheek and jaw. Years of disciplined drawing had trained his hand to fidelity, and though portraiture had never been his principal pursuit, he found that memory supplied detail with disconcerting ease. He shaded lightly to suggest the fall of lamplight across her temple and traced the faint crease that formed between her brows.
He paused to examine the likeness emerging upon the page and found that it captured not merely her features but the quality of attention that had so arrested him. The mouth, in particular, resisted simplification. He recalled how her lips had moved faintly, the motion unselfconscious and entirely devoid of display. He adjusted the sketch accordingly, softening the line at one corner to suggest that fleeting articulation, and in a moment of unguarded absorption, found his own fingers lifting from the page to trace absently the line of his mouth, as though seeking to comprehend by touch the quiet geometry that had so unsettled him.
Dissatisfied, he began a second, smaller study beneath the first, focusing exclusively upon the measured curve of her mouth at rest and the subtle alteration that accompanied thought in motion. The intimacy of the exercise did not escape him, yet he did not immediately desist. Returning to the written page, he resumed in a tone that sought refuge in analysis.
Beauty present; features harmonious without artifice.
He lingered before adding the next line, aware that in doing so, he would concede more than detatched observation.
The union of natural loveliness and rigorous intellect renders subject singular among current acquaintances.
The word singular struck him as both precise and perilous, for it acknowledged not only the distinctiveness of her qualities but the irregularity of his own response. To assign such emphasis to a stranger, and one connected however to the loosely to the university over which he held authority, bordered upon indulgence. He was not a young man susceptible to passing fascinations, nor was he ignorant of the impropriety inherent in allowing admiration to slip beyond its rightful boundary. The disparity in years, the decorum demanded by his position, the discipline he had cultivated over decades, despite his controversies, all stood as silent rebuke. And yet, even as he enumerated these conditions with habitual severity, he found that they did not dislodge her from his thoughts.
He rose from the desk and crossed to the broad window seat that occupied the alcove overlooking the city, drawing aside the curtain to admit what remained of the dim evening light. He seated himself upon the cushioned bench, one arm resting along the cool stone ledge, and directed his gaze towards the city below. From this height, he had often derived a sense of distance, a vantage from which the world's entanglements could be surveyed without participation. Tonight the view afforded no such clarity. The image of her seated beneath the tall library window intruded upon the landscape, superimposed upon the chimneys and the wavering glow of the streetlamps, as though the mind insisted upon returning to the reading room despite the miles between.
He remained there for some time, attempting to dissect the attraction with the same rigor he applied to scientific inquiry. He understood its impropriety in abstract terms, understood that fascination unregulated could distort judgement and invite complication, and yet the knowledge offered little relief. He had encountered beauty before and admired intellect often, yet never had the two converged in such proportion, nor unsettled him so completely. It was not desire alone, though that element was undeniable; it was the recognition of a mind that moved with integrity.
At length, he rose and returned to the desk, compelled to confront what he had set down upon the page. The notes were measured, the sketches precise, yet neither fully accounted for the agitation beneath his composure. He dipped is pen once more and added a final line beneath the others, the words emerging with reluctant candor.
Presence exerts influence disproportinate to duration of acquaintance. Effect upon observer not readily accounted for by customary categories of admiration.
It confessed more than he had intended. The influence he described could not be diagrammed or reduced to principle. He closed the notebook at last and secured it within the drawer, yet even as the leather cover disappeared from sight, the impression remained vivid and immediate. He knew with reluctant certainty that the following day would find him once more in the library at the same hour.
He stood again at the window, watching the rain trace its patient descent across the glass. To return would be simple; the library was his habitual refuge, and his presence there would excite no comment. He might position himself at a distance, oberseve without intrusion, reassure himself that the fascination was fleeting. Yet beneath these rationalisations lay a quieter question that unsettled him more than the rest. Was it wrong to seek her again, even if only with his eyes? Was the mere desire to confirm her presence already a step beyond propriety?
He did not answer himself. The city murmured below, indifferent to his deliberations. At last, he extinguished the lamp and allowed the room to fade into shadow, aware that sleep would not come easily. In the darkness, he acknowledged what daylight had permitted him to obscure: the reason had not dismissed her, and that on the morrow he would return to the reading room not by accident, nor entirely by necessity, but by choice.
Victor Frankenstein x fem!reader
Summary: Reserved and controversial Professor Frankenstein becomes quietly and dangerously captivated by a young brilliant scholar.
Word count: ~1.6k
Story content warnings: legal age gap (mid 20s, early 40s), professor/student, slow-burn obsession, period typical gender attitudes, slight power imbalance, mild emotional repression
The rain had fallen since morning in a fine, unceasing mist. By late afternoon, the stone facades of the Old Town glistened beneath the gaslight, and the close air of the university library bore the mingled scents of damp wool, binding glue, and coal smoke that had drifted in each time the door had opened to admit a scholar.
Professor Victor Frankenstein preferred the library at this hour, when the undergraduates had mostly retreated to supper and the reading room held only the resolute. He had delivered his lecture upon the irritability of muscular fibre to a half-attentive audience and endured the polite applause the composure expected of a man who name carried both admiration and controversy. The applause meant little. The true work, the quiet and merciless labour of thought, began only when he was alone among books.
He surrendered his hat and gloves to the porter and crossed the threshold with the measured step of habit. Tall windows rose along the eastern wall, their panes mottled by the rain. Between them, stood narrow tables where readers bent over folios in disciplined silence. Lamps had already been lit though dusk had not yet fully claimed the autumn Edinburgh sky, their amber halos settling upon bowed heads and open pages.
Victor's gaze travelled the room in a brief, assessing sweep. He saw her at once.
She was seated near the third window from the far end, where the light, even in poor weather, fell most directly upon the table. A stack of volumes rested at her left elbow, not carelessly but arranged in a deliberate order. One lay open before her, its margins crowded with her own annotations in a small, steady hand.
It was not her appearance that first arrested him. He had long ago trained himself to look beyond ornament and novelty. What caught his attention was the subject of her reading. The title, printed in uncompromising serif upon thick paper, concerned the structure of the nervous system. It was not a fashionable treatise. It was not poetry, nor moral philosophy, nor any of the polite disciplines deemed suitable for female study.
Victor paused in the aisle between shelves, the movement so slight that none but he would have noticed it.
A woman might, on occasion, consult such a text out of passing curiosity. She might leaf through its pages, frown at the diagrams, then return it with an air of defiance satisfied. This reader did not frown; she did not glance about to gauge the reaction of others. She copied with precision, pausing only to compare one authority against another from the stack at her side.
The librarian, an elderly man whose vigilance extended chiefly to overdue returns, approached her table. Victor could not hear their exchange, yet he observed the inclination of her head as she listened and the clarity with which she responded. There was no girlish agitation in her manner, no coyness. She pointed to a passage in the open book and spoke, not in protest but in inquiry. The librarian nodded and retreated.
Victor continued to stand where he was, his hand resting upon the edge of a shelf that housed volumes of anatomical plates. He told himself that he was merely interested in an anomaly. The university, though proud of its recent progress to admit female scholars, was not immune to prejudice. Women who sought serious study were stall rare enough to occasion murmurs. He had seen those murmurs ripple through the reading room earlier in the term; he had ignored them. So had she.
He resumed his movement, selecting at random a folio whose contents he did not presently require. It afforded him an excuse to occupy the table opposite hers, separated by a modest span of polished oak. He seated himself with quiet deliberation and opened the book before him. From this vantage, he could obserse without impropriety.
Her dress was plain, well made but unadorned; dark burgundy wool suited to the weather. The sleeves were rolled back just enough to prevent interference with her writing. A strand of curly auburn hair had escaped whatever arrangement she had contrived that morning and now traced a line near her temple.
She wrote as one accustomed to forming her own conclusions rather than transcribing those of others. Occasionally, she lifted her gaze, not toward the room but upward in thought, as though following some internal diagram invisible to the rest of the world. Her lips moved faintly once, as if testing the cadence of phrase. Victor found himself unreasonably arrested by the thoughtful curve of her lips, captivated by the quiet precision as they shaped words meant only for her own understanding.
He lowered his eyes to his own page and found that he had not absorbed a single sentence.
He had lectured upon the galvanic properties of tissue mere hours earlier. He had spoken with authority of the boundary between vitality and inert matter. Yet in that momoment, his mind concerned itself not with muscle fibres or electrical currents, but with the concentration evident in the set of a stranger's brow.
He turned a page in his book to preserve the appearance of engagement.
It was the steadiness that troubled him. Not beauty alone, though he had seldom beheld a countenance so striking in its quiet purity. There was no artifice in her appearance, no studied charm, yet the harmony of her features and the clarity of her expression arrested him at once. Nor was it youth, though she could not have seen more than five and twenty years. It was the union of beauty and earnest intellect, so naturally combined and wholly unselfconscious, that unsettled him.
Many sought knowledge as a performance. They wished to be seen seeking it. She appeared indifferent to being seen at all, and it was this indifference, joined to such unstudied loveliness, that awakened in him a fascination he could not readily dismiss.
A faint murmur drifted from a distant table. Two undergraduates bent their heads together, their eyes straying briefly in her direction. The sound subsided almost immediately but she did not lift her gaze. She did not stiffen or alter her posture. The whispers passed over her like the rain upon the glass.
The light in the room shifted and the librarian moved quietly between tables, lighting additional lamps. A warmer glow settled upon her features, illuminating the calm intelligence in her expression, and in that softened radiance her eyes, a clear and arresting shade of green, were revealed to him with sudden distinctness. She pressed her thumb briefly to her temple as she considered a passage, then resumed writing. The gesture was unconscious and devoid of affectation. Victor became aware, with a sensation that he resisted naming, that he had not in some time encountered such unguarded concentration.
He adjusted his posture, seeking to resume to his own work. The diagrams upon his page concerned the branching of nerves along the forearm. The irony did not escape him that across the room, she traced those same delicate lines in ink, translating them into thought.
Victor regarded her more closely as a small sound escaped her lips, scarcely more than an exhalation. The corner of her mouth lifted almost imperceptibly. It was not a smile intended for any witness but the private satisfaction of comprehension. Victor felt a subtle tightening in his chest. He rebuked himself at once; this was folly! He was no youth to be stirred by passing impressions. He had devoted the better part of his life to pursuits far more exacting that the contemplation of a stranger at a library table. Yet he did not look away.
The rain continued its soft percussion against the windows as the lamps burned steadily. The world narrowed to the span between her table and his own.
He told himself that he studied an instance of uncommon intellectual discipline and nothing more. It was fitting that he should take note of such qualities in any scholar. And yet, as the minutes passed, he felt the quiet gravity of her presence settle upon him with a force he had not anticipated.
Victor closed his book without conscious decision but remained seated, hands folded lightly upon the polished surface, and regarded her for a final moment before lowering his gaze.
He did not yet know her name. He did not know the circumstances that had brought her to that table beneath the rain-streaked window. He knew only that, in the ordered quiet of the library, his attention had been claimed with a certainty that he had neither sought nor expected.
And when at last he forced himself to rise and return the untouched volume to its shelf, he carried with him the image of her bent over the anatomy of nerves, wholly absorbed, as if the very structure of life were a puzzle she intended to solve.
He collected his hat and gloves from the porter and paused upon the threshold of the reading room, compelled by an impulse he did not examine. His gaze travelled once more across the reading room, the long tables, past bowed heads and pools of lamplight, until it found her again beneath the eastern window. She has not altered in posture; her attention remained fixed. For a moment, he stood thus, committing the sight to memory, before turning away. The rain met him upon the steps, cool and insistent, as he made his way through the glistening streets toward his flat overlooking the Old Town, where the darkened rooftops and wavering lamps lay spread beneath his windows like a restless sea.
AN: okay here's the first part of the victor frankenstein x fem!reader i've been working on!!! story and their relationship will develop as we go on and there maaaay be some nsfw chapters later
Before the lights, before the awards, before her name was printed in tiny gold letters on a Grammy award, there was just Catrin Evans and her guitar.
She never asked for the world. She was content playing small gigs in half lit bars, stringing melodies of heartbreak and hope, singing to crowds that barely filled the room. Music was the one thing that made sense to her, even when everything else felt too big or too small. It was enough, or at least, it had been.
Until Harry Styles heard her play.
Until he asked her to join his touring band.
Two years spent on the road with him blurred into a whirlwind of stolen moments and dangerous feelings - a love that grew deep, and complicated, and sometimes too heavy to carry. Even as they prepared for the final leg of the world tour, Catrin could feel the quiet cracks forming between them, too faint to name but too loud to ignore.
But life, as always, had other plans.
Taylor Swift was a mastermind, and a damn good one at that, though she didn't know it in this context. She invited Catrin to open for her in Arlington, the third weekend of her sold out tour; a one-off dream she couldn't have imagined months before. She told herself she was focused on the music, the moment, the experience. Until she met Jacob Elordi.
It wasn't love at first sight. It was something quieter, slower; a spark that flickered in the Texas heat while Taylor sang familiar songs of forever. Jacob was just a fan of Catrin's at first, standing in the VIP tent waiting to meet her, with that easy, crooked smile. Catrin, a lifelong Swiftie, had helped him dance, laugh and lose himself in the music. It was harmless, innocent. It had to be.
What she didn't know was that somewhere between the lights and the laughter, she had planted herself in Jacob's mind - a melody he couldn't stop humming long after the night had ended. He was in deep.
By August, everything had shifted. Love on Tour came to an end, and with it, so would her relationship. Her debut album would arrive like a thunderstorm, and the world started to take notice.
Now, with her second album on the horizon and a late-night talk show appearance, Catrin is about to meet Jacob again - and neither of them is quite the same as they were that April night in Texas.
Maybe this time, under the bright wash of studio lights and a different kind of stage, it wouldn't feel like falling.
AN: hellooooo. new fic about jacob elordi and an original character (based on gracie abrams). features some time jumps, au stuff (like her songs are not always gracie songs, relationships etc). generally just very lovely and fluffy! may attempt some nsfw at some point but for now a nice, slow build. fic starts in late august 2024, and we’ll build on the relationship from there! :)
jacob never expected to fall so quickly, and catrin never expected someone to see her so clearly.
their worlds fit together effortlessly. in the midst of busy schedules and quiet moments in between, they find something rare: a love that feels easy, inevitable, and as warm as the first light of day.
•
this is entirely fiction. i do not own any characters, songs, films etc referenced. narrative/social media au. also on wattpad!
