synapse: In 1978, henry creel glimpses hawkins lab’s oldest and most dangerous secret, y/n, the blood-soaked girl from prom night he never forgot
pairing: henry creel x carrie white inspired!reader
contains: dark romance, religious trauma, blood, death, physical violence
a/n: this is just an idea that’s also based on the succubus idea. i just want to see how it’ll do or if people want it. no, im not gonna stop writing for after class so dont jump to that conclusion. lmk if I should write more. also ik henry was a freshman in 1959 but for story sake, he was a sophomore instead
. . .
1958
The spider moved carefully across Henry Creel’s palm, its legs thin as black thread against the pale cup of his hand.
He sat in the grass near the edge of the yard, knees bent, head lowered, watching it with the sort of attention he rarely gave to people. People were too loud. Too obvious. Too eager to prove they were ordinary, like dogs pressing their noses against a fence and barking at anything that dared to pass.
Spiders were different.
They did not pretend.
This one stepped over the curve of his lifeline, delicate and sure, as if it knew exactly where it meant to go. Henry held still for it. He liked the feeling of its tiny feet against his skin, liked the patience required to keep from frightening it. There was something honest in such a small creature carrying so much fear inside other people.
Behind him, through the living room window, the television flickered.
His parents were watching the news.
Henry could not hear much of it from outside. Only the muted rhythm of a man’s voice coming through the glass, flat and grave, swallowed by the hum of evening insects and the distant pulse of sirens somewhere far off in Hawkins. The words came in broken pieces, too muffled to fully understand.
Tragic incident.
Hawkins High School.
Senior prom.
Electrical malfunction.
Multiple students.
Dead.
Henry did not turn around at first.
He kept his eyes on the spider.
Inside the house, the blue-white glow of the television flashed across the window. His father’s shape stood stiff near the sofa. His mother sat closer to the screen, one hand pressed over her mouth.
Henry could see her face reflected in the glass.
That was what made him look up.
Virginia Creel was not crying. Not exactly. His mother was very good at keeping herself arranged, very good at folding horror into something presentable. But her expression had changed. Her eyes were wide and wet-looking, her lips parted around some prayer or gasp she had not let out.
She looked frightened.
Not sad.
Frightened.
Henry stared at her reflection, curious despite himself.
Then something moved beyond it.
At first, he thought it was only another trick of the glass, a smear of shadow, a pale shape crossing behind his mother’s reflected face. But then the shape stepped into the glow of a streetlamp, and Henry’s fingers went still.
A girl was walking down the road.
Barefoot.
Her shoes were gone.
She moved slowly, as if every step had to be remembered before she could take it. Her feet were dark against the pavement, one of them leaving faint marks behind her. Her dress, once pretty, hung from her like a ruined flower. Pale fabric clung to her knees and waist, soaked through in places with something too dark to be rain.
Blood.
It was everywhere.
On her skirt. On her arms. Streaked at her throat. Dried along one side of her face where it had tangled with her hair. The curls or waves someone must have tried to arrange for her had fallen loose, wild around her shoulders, pins hanging uselessly like broken little stars.
Henry knew her.
Not well.
No one knew her well.
She was the sophomore girl from Hawkins High, the one who always walked with her books pressed tight to her chest, as if holding them there could keep the world from touching her. The one with the long skirts, the plain blouses, the sleeves buttoned at her wrists even when the weather turned warm. The one other students whispered about with cruel little smiles.
He had seen her before.
In town. Outside the school. Once in the grocery store with her mother gripping her arm hard enough to leave finger marks.
She was always looking down.
But not now.
Now her head was lifted slightly, her face empty in a way that made Henry’s chest feel strangely hollow. Not peaceful. Not calm. Empty, the way a house looked after a fire had eaten through the rooms and left only the shape of where a life had been.
And still, even covered in blood, Henry noticed what no one else would have.
She was beautiful.
Not in the shiny, laughing way the girls at school tried to be. Not like the girls who curled their hair and painted their mouths and learned how to smile so people would look. Her beauty was quieter than that. Stranger. Like a saint in a cracked church window. Like a doll left too long in the rain. Like something delicate that had been mistaken for weak until it shattered in someone’s hand.
The spider reached the edge of his palm.
Henry did not feel it at first.
He was watching her.
The girl slowed.
For one moment, she seemed to sense him there in the yard. Her head turned, and her eyes found his through the dark.
Henry stopped breathing.
The streetlamp threw a thin, golden line across her face. Her eyes were wide, glassy, and terribly alive. They did not look like the eyes of a girl who had walked away from an accident. They looked like the eyes of someone who had seen the inside of the world and found it rotten.
She stared at him.
He stared back.
Neither of them spoke.
Inside the house, the television continued flickering. His mother’s reflected face hovered in the window like a ghost, pale with fear. His father shifted behind her. Somewhere far away, another siren rose and fell.
Henry thought, suddenly and with a sharpness that startled him, that he should do something.
Step forward.
Say her name.
Ask what happened.
Ask if she was hurt.
But the thought came and died in the same breath.
He imagined his mother seeing. His father opening the door. The neighbors peering through curtains. The police asking why Henry Creel had been outside speaking to the blood-covered girl from Hawkins High.
He imagined the whispers turning.
Not just about her.
About him.
So he stayed still.
The spider slipped from his palm into the grass.
The tiny loss broke whatever spell had held him. Henry looked down quickly, searching between the blades for the black shape, but it had already vanished into the dark.
When he looked back up, the road was empty.
The girl was gone.
Only the streetlamp remained, buzzing faintly above the pavement, shining on nothing at all.
. . .
Y/N did not remember the walk home ending.
One moment, there had been pavement beneath her bare feet and streetlights above her head, humming like tired insects. The next, she was standing on the porch of her childhood home with blood drying stiff on her dress and her hand wrapped around the doorknob.
For a few seconds, she only stared at it.
The brass was cold against her palm.
Inside, the house was quiet.
Not peaceful quiet. Never that. The house had never known peace. It was the kind of quiet that waited with its teeth hidden, the kind that made her shoulders pull inward before anything had even happened.
Y/N pushed the door open.
The smell of lemon polish and old wood met her first. Then candle wax. Then the faint, sour scent of her mother’s perfume.
“Momma?” she called.
Her voice barely sounded like her own. It was small and scraped thin, like someone had dragged it over broken glass.
There was no answer.
Y/N stepped inside, leaving faint red marks on the floorboards behind her. Her eyes moved over the familiar room in pieces: the worn rug, the stiff-backed sofa, the Bible open on the side table, the little wooden crosses nailed above every doorway as if God needed directions.
She wanted her mother.
That was the worst part.
After everything, after the laughter and the blood and the screams folding into each other until the whole gymnasium became one terrible sound, Y/N wanted her mother. She wanted arms around her. She wanted someone to say it was over. She wanted, foolishly, desperately, to be somebody’s child.
Her mother appeared in the hall.
For one fragile second, neither of them moved.
Her mother wore her robe over her nightdress, hair pinned back so tightly it pulled at her temples. Her eyes traveled over Y/N slowly, from the ruined hem of her dress to the blood on her throat, to the mess of her hair, to her bare feet.
Y/N’s lips trembled.
“Momma,” she whispered.
Her mother’s face changed.
Not with relief.
With horror.
Then disgust.
“I knew it,” her mother breathed.
Y/N took a step toward her anyway. “Please—”
“I knew it was in you.”
The words struck harder than a hand. Y/N stopped in the middle of the room, chest rising and falling too fast beneath the sticky weight of her dress.
“They laughed at me,” she said, and the words came out broken, childlike. “They all laughed at me like you said.”
Her mother’s mouth twisted.
“Because they saw you.”
Y/N blinked.
A tear slipped down her cheek, cutting through the blood like rain through dirt.
Her mother moved fast.
The slap snapped Y/N’s face to the side.
For a moment, all she could hear was the ringing in her ear.
Then another hit came. A hand to her shoulder. Fingers biting into her arm. Her mother shook her once, hard enough that Y/N’s teeth clicked together.
“You wicked girl,” her mother hissed. “You filthy, wicked girl.”
“I didn’t mean to,” Y/N cried. “I didn’t mean to, I didn’t—”
“Liar.”
The lamps flickered.
Neither of them noticed at first.
Her mother shoved her backward, and Y/N stumbled against the edge of the sofa. Her knees nearly gave out. She grabbed at the fabric to steady herself, leaving red smears across the faded flowers.
“I was right,” her mother said, voice rising. “All these years, I was right. I tried to beat it out of you. I tried to pray it out of you. I tried to save you from what you are.”
Y/N shook her head, sobbing now. “Please, Momma, please don’t—”
“They laughed because they knew.” Her mother pointed toward the door as if the whole town stood outside listening. “They saw the devil wearing my daughter’s face.”
The lights flickered again.
The Bible pages on the side table fluttered though no window was open.
Y/N pressed a trembling hand to her mouth.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
Her mother’s eyes sharpened at that.
“Then pray.”
Y/N froze.
Her mother grabbed her by the wrist and dragged her toward the little corner of the parlor where a wooden crucifix hung above a narrow kneeling bench. Y/N had spent half her childhood there, knees aching, hands clasped until her fingers went numb.
“No,” Y/N whispered.
Her mother yanked harder.
“On your knees.”
“Momma, please—”
“On. Your. Knees.”
She forced her down.
Y/N hit the floor hard, pain bursting through her knees. She folded instinctively, shoulders hunched, head bowed, hands coming together because her body remembered obedience even when her mind was falling apart.
The house groaned around them.
Her mother stood behind her, breathing heavily.
“Beg,” she snapped. “You beg Him to forgive you.”
Y/N stared at the crucifix through blurred eyes.
The figure nailed there looked back at her with carved wooden sorrow.
She did not know what to say.
All her life, she had prayed to be good. To be normal. To be quiet enough, clean enough, small enough. She had prayed until the words became stones in her mouth. She had prayed while her mother stood behind her and told her every strange thing inside her was sin.
And still, the blood had come.
Still, the gym had screamed.
Still, everyone had looked at her like she was a monster.
“Pray,” her mother snarled.
Y/N squeezed her eyes shut.
“Our Father,” she whispered, voice shaking, “who art in Heaven…”
The walls gave a low creak.
“Hallowed be Thy name.”
A picture frame rattled on the wall.
“Thy kingdom come…”
Her mother’s breathing changed behind her.
“Thy will be done…”
Something cold touched Y/N’s back.
At first, she did not understand it.
Then the pain came.
Sharp.
Deep.
White-hot.
Y/N’s prayer broke into a strangled gasp.
She looked down, stunned, as if her body belonged to someone else. Her hands opened against her lap. The room tilted. Behind her, her mother made a sound that was almost a sob and almost a laugh as she held a bloodied kitchen knife in her hand.
“I won’t let Him have to look at you anymore,” her mother whispered.
For a second, Y/N was only a girl.
A hurt girl.
A frightened girl.
A girl who had come home wanting comfort and found the final proof that there had never been any waiting for her.
Then something inside her opened.
Not like a door.
Like a wound.
The lamps exploded.
Glass burst outward in glittering sprays. The crucifix ripped itself from the wall and flew across the room. Her mother stumbled back with a cry, but Y/N did not turn around. She stayed on her knees, eyes wide and wet, breath coming in little broken pulls.
The house began to shake.
Not all at once. First the floorboards trembled beneath her. Then the walls. Then the ceiling groaned overhead, dust raining down like pale ash.
Her mother screamed her name.
Y/N heard it as if from underwater.
Every candle in the room flared high, flames stretching thin and bright. The Bible pages whipped back and forth violently, tearing loose one by one. The little crosses above the doorways cracked down the middle.
“No,” her mother gasped. “No, no, no—”
Y/N turned.
Her eyes were no longer soft.
The fear was still there, but it had changed shape. It had teeth now. It had hands. It had spent sixteen years being swallowed and had finally clawed its way back up.
Her mother stared at her.
For the first time in Y/N’s life, the woman looked afraid of what she had made.
Y/N did not speak.
She only cried.
The force of it tore through the room.
Furniture slammed against the walls. Windows shattered inward. The ceiling split with a sound like thunder cracking open above them. Her mother was thrown back, disappearing into the chaos of splintered wood and falling plaster.
The house screamed.
Or maybe Y/N did.
It was impossible to tell.
The walls bent inward as if some giant hand had wrapped around the home and squeezed. The staircase buckled. The roof groaned. Smoke curled from the curtains where candleflame kissed fabric and spread. Fire crawled up the walls, orange and hungry, lighting the room in flashes like the last moments of the prom all over again.
Y/N staggered to her feet.
Pain ripped through her back, and she nearly fell, catching herself on the edge of the broken kneeling bench. Her blood dripped onto the floorboards, mixing with the trail she had already left behind.
“Momma?” she whispered.
There was no answer.
Only the crackle of fire.
Only the groan of the house coming apart.
Y/N looked around at the place that had kept her small. The prayers. The locked doors. The hands. The rules. The shame pressed into every corner like dust.
And then the house gave way.
By the time the neighbors came running, there was little left but flame and ruin.
By the time the police arrived, the fire had chewed through most of the roof.
By the time the men from the laboratory stepped out of their black cars, Y/N was sitting in the ashes of her childhood home, still wearing the ruined prom dress, her knees drawn to her chest and her eyes fixed on nothing.
She did not look up when they called her name.
She did not cry when they covered her shoulders with a blanket.
She did not ask where her mother was.
The girl who had walked home from prom was gone.
And Hawkins, hungry for a cleaner story, would bury her before morning.
. . .
1978
Hawkins Laboratory looked cleaner than it really was.
The floors shone beneath the fluorescent lights, polished to a dull reflection. The walls were white. The doors were white. The coats were white. Everything had been scrubbed and bleached until the building looked less like a place where children cried in their sleep and more like something holy.
Henry Creel knew better.
He walked near the back of the group with his hands folded neatly in front of him, his expression mild, almost empty. Around him, several other orderlies moved with the same careful silence, trained to become part of the hallway rather than people within it.
Dr. Brenner walked ahead of them.
He always did.
The new doctors followed him like parishioners behind a priest, nodding at every word he said, eyes bright with curiosity they mistook for intelligence. They looked at the laboratory as if it were a miracle.
Henry watched them look.
He found it almost funny.
“This wing is restricted for a reason,” Brenner said, his voice calm and practiced. “Much of the work conducted here predates our current program.”
One of the doctors, a young man with nervous hands and glasses too large for his face, glanced toward a sealed door as they passed.
“Predates the children?”
Brenner smiled faintly.
“In a manner of speaking.”
Henry’s eyes shifted toward him.
A manner of speaking.
That was one of Brenner’s favorite ways to lie. It sounded gentler than no. It sounded more educated than yes.
They continued down the corridor. The lights hummed above them. Somewhere behind one of the doors, something metal clattered, followed by the sharp scrape of a chair being dragged across tile.
No one in the group reacted.
They had already been told not to.
Brenner stopped outside a room at the very end of the hall.
Unlike the others, this door had no number printed at eye level. No cheerful color marker. No observation schedule clipped neatly beside it. It was heavier than the rest, reinforced along the frame, with a small rectangular pane of glass set high enough that a child could not have looked through it without standing on their toes.
Henry’s attention sharpened.
He had been in this hall before. He had cleaned it. Carried trays through it. Walked past this door a hundred times with his gaze obediently forward.
The room was never spoken of.
Not by the children.
Not by the orderlies.
Not by anyone who wanted to continue breathing comfortably beneath Brenner’s roof.
“This subject,” Brenner said, “is one of our earliest acquisitions.”
One of the doctors leaned forward slightly. “Acquisitions?”
Brenner did not look at him.
“Yes.”
The word settled into the hallway like dust.
Henry felt something move at the base of his skull.
Not pain. Not exactly.
Recognition before memory.
A faint pressure, like fingertips pressing against the inside of his mind.
Brenner placed one hand near the door, not touching it. Even he seemed to understand there was something different about this room. Something that did not belong to the orderly system he had built out of numbers and punishments and carefully measured rewards.
“She was brought to us in 1958 after an incident in Hawkins,” Brenner continued. “At the time, the event was attributed publicly to electrical failure and structural damage. Privately, it became clear that the situation was… unusual.”
Henry went still.
The year unfolded somewhere deep inside him, old and dark, like a photograph pulled from water.
A road beneath streetlamps.
A blood-soaked dress.
Bare feet against pavement.
Brenner’s voice continued, clean and distant.
“We considered integrating her into the later program, but she proved unsuitable.”
“Unsuitable how?” one of the doctors asked.
Brenner’s expression did not change.
“Her responses were difficult to predict.”
Another doctor glanced toward the sealed door. “Violent?”
“At times.”
The answer was too simple.
Too clean.
Henry’s eyes remained on the little glass window.
“Her condition does not behave as neatly as the others,” Brenner said. “The children can be instructed. Encouraged. Corrected. Their gifts, while varied, are measurable. Hers has always resisted that kind of structure.”
“What can she do?” asked the nervous doctor.
Brenner paused.
Only for a second.
But Henry noticed.
“That is not the question we ask anymore.”
The doctor frowned. “Then what is?”
Brenner looked at the door.
“What happens when she is allowed to?”
The hallway went quiet.
No one asked another question right away.
Brenner clasped his hands behind his back and continued, voice smooth again.
“She is not to have unsupervised contact with the children. Nor with most staff. Prolonged exposure has produced complications in the past.”
“What sort of complications?”
“Unreliable reports,” Brenner said. “Emotional disturbances. Memory irregularities. Physical symptoms without consistent medical cause.”
“That sounds broad.”
“It is.”
“And dangerous?”
Brenner finally turned his head toward the man.
“Everything here is dangerous, Doctor. The difference is that most things here can be taught to sit when asked.”
His gaze returned to the door.
“She does not sit.”
Henry’s fingers curled slightly at his sides.
Inside the room came no sound.
That bothered him more than screaming would have.
“Does she have a designation?” the nervous doctor asked.
“Before our current numbering system, designations were less standardized,” Brenner replied. “In early records, she was referred to as Project Liminal.”
“Liminal?”
“Existing at a threshold.”
“Between what?”
Brenner smiled faintly.
“That has been the matter of debate for nearly twenty years.”
Another doctor looked uncomfortable. “And what do you call her now?”
Brenner’s gaze hardened just slightly.
“Contained.”
No one laughed.
From inside the room, still nothing.
Brenner stepped away from the door, signaling the end of the discussion.
“You will not be assigned to this subject without direct clearance from me. You will not attempt conversation. You will not observe her alone. You will not open that door unless instructed to do so by me personally.”
A woman doctor shifted uneasily. “Is that level of restriction necessary?”
Brenner looked at her.
“Yes.”
That was all.
Not an explanation.
Not a warning.
A fact.
The kind men like Brenner used when they wanted fear to do the rest of the talking.
The group began moving again, white coats shifting like pale wings beneath the fluorescent lights. The orderlies followed. Henry took one step with them.
Then stopped.
No one noticed immediately.
Brenner’s voice continued farther down the hall, already discussing another room, another subject, another living thing reduced to a category. The doctors turned the corner one by one.
Henry remained at the door.
For several seconds, he only listened.
Nothing.
No footsteps inside. No breathing he could hear. No movement.
Only that pressure at the back of his mind, soft and terrible. Familiar in the way childhood nightmares were familiar. In the way old bruises remembered fingers.
Slowly, Henry stepped closer.
The glass panel was narrow and smudged from the outside. He leaned in just enough to see through.
The room beyond was dimmer than the hallway.
Not dark. Brenner would never allow true darkness unless it served a purpose. But the light inside was low, grayish, softened by distance and neglect.
At first, Henry saw only the bed.
Then the wall.
Then a thin figure sitting near the far corner with her knees drawn close, head turned slightly away from the door.
She was older now.
Of course she was.
The girl he remembered had been sixteen and drenched in blood beneath a streetlamp. This woman was no longer that girl, not exactly. Time had sharpened some things and hollowed others. Her hair fell loose around her face. Her skin looked almost colorless beneath the laboratory light. She wore the same plain clothing they gave the others, but on her it seemed less like a uniform and more like another burial shroud.
Still, Henry knew.
Not from her face.
Not first.
From the stillness.
That same terrible emptiness he had seen from the yard all those years ago. The look of a person who had walked out of one life and never been allowed to enter another.
His fingers curled slightly at his sides.
Memory came fully now.
The spider in his palm.
His mother’s frightened reflection in the window.
Sirens.
The road.
The blood.
Her eyes finding his.
And then nothing.
He had done nothing.
Henry stared through the glass, and for the first time in years, something like guilt moved through him.
Not soft guilt. Not human guilt.
Something colder.
Sharper.
A resentment aimed at himself, at Brenner, at the whole rotten little town that had seen two children becoming monsters and had only watched from behind glass.
His lips parted before he decided to speak.
“Y/N.”
The name left him quietly.
Barely more than breath against the door.
But inside the room, her head turned.
Henry’s body went still.
She moved slowly, as if returning from somewhere far away. Her face angled toward the glass. For a moment, the dim light hid her eyes beneath the shadow of her lashes.
Then she looked directly at him.
The hallway seemed to disappear.
No doctors.
No orderlies.
No Brenner’s voice echoing from around the corner.
Only her eyes through the narrow pane of glass, older and emptier than before, but awake. Terribly awake.
Henry felt the pressure in his skull deepen.
Not an attack.
A recognition.
Her gaze searched his face.
He wondered if she remembered him. The boy in the yard. The one who had watched her pass barefoot and bloody and had chosen silence because he was afraid of becoming part of her story.
Her lips parted.
No sound reached him through the door.
But he saw the shape of the word.
Not his name.
She did not know his name.
Not yet.
Her mouth formed something smaller.
A question.
Henry leaned closer to the glass.
For the first time, the faintest expression crossed her face.
Not fear.
Not quite.
Curiosity.
Then, behind him, footsteps approached.
“Peter.”
Henry’s expression emptied at once.
Brenner stood several yards down the hall, watching him with the calm of a man who missed very little and forgave even less.
The doctors were gone. The other orderlies waited behind him, carefully pretending not to stare.
“You were instructed to remain with the group,” Brenner said.
Henry stepped back from the door.
“Yes, sir.”
Brenner’s eyes moved briefly to the glass panel, then back to Henry.
There was a pause.
Small.
Measured.
Dangerous.
“I would advise against developing an interest in this one.”
Henry lowered his gaze with practiced obedience.
“Of course.”
Brenner held him there a moment longer.
Then he turned.
Henry followed.
He did not look back.
Not until they reached the corner.
Only once.
A final glance over his shoulder toward the door at the end of the hall.
Through the little glass panel, Y/N was still watching him.
And this time, unlike 1958, Henry did not forget the color of her eyes.
a/n: I had to cut and fix this since it was still too long. But this song got shown to me on x (thanks love, id tag you but idk if you want to be) and its so fitting for this story—it gives me that 2010s romance movie ending vibe
. . .
They found Daniel between first and second period. Or rather, he found them first.
Y/N and Nancy were standing near the stairwell landing, pretending to look casual and failing miserably, when Daniel rounded the corner with his bag slung over one shoulder. He saw them together, saw the way neither of them moved, and his whole face changed. Recognition. Then panic.
“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me,” Nancy muttered.
Daniel turned on his heel immediately and ran.
Y/N didn’t even think. “Hey!” she shouted, already taking off after him. Nancy swore and followed.
Daniel barreled down the hall like a coward with decent reflexes and terrible judgment, shoving past two confused freshmen and nearly clipping a girl carrying books. Y/N caught up faster than he expected, faster than she expected, and when he made the mistake of glancing back, she yanked hard on the back of his jacket. “Stop running!”
He twisted, but Y/N yanked harder, momentum dragging all three of them toward the nearest classroom door. Nancy got there first, shoved it open, and between the two of them they hauled Daniel inside. The room was empty, thank God, just rows of desks, chalk dust, and weak fluorescent light.
Nancy shut the door behind them.
Daniel stumbled free of Y/N’s grip and spun around, breathing hard and wild-eyed. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
Y/N straightened and pointed at him. “You.”
Daniel blinked. “What?”
Nancy crossed her arms. “You left a note.”
His face went blank in a way that might have been genuine, but after the last twenty-four hours, Y/N trusted absolutely nothing. “What note?” he said.
Y/N stepped closer. “Don’t do that. Don’t act stupid.”
“I’m not acting stupid,” Daniel snapped. “I literally have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Nancy pulled the folded draft article from her notebook and held it up. “Then let me help. If you don’t admit what you did, this gets published in the paper in less than an hour.”
Daniel stared at her. “Are you insane?”
Nancy smiled without warmth. “Possibly.”
Y/N folded her arms, heart still pounding from the chase. “You’ve been spying on people.”
Daniel barked out a laugh. “On people?”
“On us,” Nancy said. “You left a note. A threat.”
That landed. His eyes flicked between them, and for one second Y/N saw something like calculation in his face. Not guilt exactly. More like he was trying to figure out how much they knew.
“You really think I wrote some creepy note?” he said.
Nancy lifted the article slightly. “We know you’ve done worse.”
Daniel gave her a look full of contempt and disbelief. “You sound psychotic.”
“You should be more worried about how I sound in print,” Nancy said.
Y/N took one step forward. “Just tell the truth.”
Daniel looked at her then, really looked at her, and whatever he saw there seemed to irritate him more than intimidate him. “I didn’t write your stupid note.”
“Why should I believe you?”
He let out a short, sharp breath. “Because I have a girlfriend now.”
Nancy blinked once. Y/N just stared.
Daniel threw one hand out in exasperation. “Seriously, I’m over it.”
Nancy’s brows lifted. “Over spying on people or over being a creep?”
Daniel ignored her and looked at Y/N with the kind of ugly honesty only boys like him ever seemed to have. “You’re not even hot to me anymore.”
Y/N’s face changed instantly. “Excuse me?”
Nancy looked personally offended on her behalf. “Oh, that was the wrong thing to say.”
Daniel seemed to realize it a second too late but kept going anyway out of sheer stupidity. “I’m just saying, whatever weird thing you and what’s-his-name have going on, it’s not my problem. I’m not obsessed with you anymore.”
Y/N’s mouth fell open slightly, somewhere between outrage and insult. “That is a disgusting sentence.”
Nancy folded the article back up with deliberate care. “Also, for the record, she’s objectively hot. So now I think you’re lying on multiple fronts.”
Under different circumstances, Y/N might have laughed. Instead, she crossed her arms tighter and looked at Daniel hard. And that was when she knew. Not from the insult. Not even from the girlfriend excuse. From the tone. From the way he was reacting.
Daniel Taylor was a creep. A spy. A weird little parasite who had made himself a problem more than once. But this—the note, the wording, the warning, the strange moral edge of it—didn’t fit in his mouth. He was too mean for it. Too obvious. Too emotionally stupid.
“Oh my God,” she muttered.
Nancy heard the shift immediately. “What?”
Y/N looked at her, still annoyed, still vaguely insulted, but sure now in a way she hadn’t been before. “He didn’t do it.”
Daniel blinked. “No kidding.”
Nancy’s expression stayed hard. “I’m not ready to let him off that easily.”
“I know,” Y/N said. “But listen to him.”
Nancy did. Daniel, panting slightly, irritated, defensive, arrogant enough to think the girlfriend line had somehow improved his position, sounded exactly like himself. And unfortunately, that was the point.
Nancy’s mouth tightened. “Damn it.”
Daniel pointed at both of them. “You two are insane.”
Nancy took a step toward him. “You’re still a creep.”
“That’s not illegal.”
“That’s not an airtight defense.”
Before Daniel could answer, the classroom door rattled, then opened just enough for a girl’s voice to slice through the room. “Daniel? What is taking so long?”
A girl stepped inside without waiting for permission, pretty in a brittle, high-maintenance way, with too much perfume and the kind of expression that suggested the world existed primarily to delay her. She stopped the second she saw Y/N and Nancy and immediately looked annoyed. “Oh my God. Seriously?”
Daniel visibly deflated. “I’m coming.”
She looked him up and down. “You said two minutes ago that you were literally right behind me.”
Nancy stared at her. Y/N stared at her.
The girl looked at Y/N with instant territorial disdain and then at Daniel again. “Who are these people?”
Daniel dragged a hand over his face. “No one.”
Y/N’s brows went up. “Wow.”
The girl crossed her arms. “Can we go? I’m not standing around while you have whatever this is.”
Demanding. Rude. Needier than she was probably aware of.
Y/N looked at Daniel, then at the girl, and instantly, with the clarity of divine intervention, thought: oh, they deserve each other. Nancy seemed to arrive at the same conclusion at the same time. Her shoulders lowered half an inch.
Y/N let out a slow breath and took one step back. “Never mind.”
Daniel frowned. “What?”
Y/N looked at him flatly. “Congratulations on your girlfriend.”
The girl immediately bristled. “What does that mean?”
Nancy, already opening the door, muttered, “It means good luck.”
Y/N brushed past them first, no longer interested in this room or either of the people in it. Nancy followed, article still folded in her hand, face set in that annoyed, thwarted way she got when a lead turned out to be dead. As soon as they were out in the hallway, the classroom door shut behind them.
They walked three steps in silence.
Then Nancy said, “I still hate him.”
Y/N nodded. “Me too.”
Nancy looked sideways at her. “Are you okay?”
Y/N made a face. “No. He said I’m not hot anymore.”
Nancy stopped walking just to stare at her. “That is what you took from that?”
Y/N looked at her in disbelief. “Nancy.”
Nancy threw up a hand. “You’re beautiful. He’s a loser. Focus.”
Y/N sighed, deeply offended on principle. “I am focused.”
“No, you’re not,” Nancy said, starting to walk again. “But it’s fine. Because now we know.”
Y/N’s expression sobered immediately. Yeah. Now they knew. It wasn’t Daniel. Which somehow made everything worse.
. . .
By the time Y/N got to Henry’s classroom after her last class, she felt wrung out in every possible way. Her calculus final had taken whatever was left of her patience and ground it into dust. Her head hurt. Her pencil hand still ached. She had the dull, hollow feeling that came after spending two straight hours being terrorized by numbers and pretending she understood more than she actually did.
Daniel’s folder was tucked under her arm. Stolen. Returned. Useless.
She knocked once and pushed the door open before Henry could answer. He was standing near the desk, jacket off, sleeves rolled, a paper in his hand. He looked up immediately, and the second he saw her face, whatever he’d been about to say died.
“You look exhausted,” he said.
“I am exhausted,” Y/N replied.
She crossed the room and dropped Daniel’s folder onto his desk with a flat slap. “It wasn’t him.”
Henry’s eyes dropped to the file, then lifted back to her. He didn’t look surprised. That made something in her chest tighten.
“You knew,” she said.
“I know now.”
Y/N’s brows pulled together. “What does that mean?”
Henry looked at her for a second too long, then reached for the folded note on his desk and handed it to her. Y/N’s stomach dropped before she even unfolded it.
Typed again. Another line.
This is your last warning. Do not confuse wanting her with protecting her.
For one second she just stared at it. Then she looked up at him. “When?”
“This morning.”
The room went very still.
Y/N’s hand tightened on the note. “And you didn’t tell me?”
Henry’s jaw flexed. “Not before your final.”
“That is not your decision to make.”
“No,” he said quietly. “It was my attempt to keep you from walking into calculus already half-panicked.”
Y/N laughed once, sharp and disbelieving. “Oh, great. That worked so well.”
Henry didn’t answer. Because it hadn’t.
Y/N looked back down at the note, reading the words again even though she already hated them. Do not confuse wanting her with protecting her. The line felt too personal. Too pointed. Too knowing. And worse, too close to things Henry might actually say to himself when he got in his own head.
“They’re watching us,” Y/N said quietly.
“I think it’s someone who believes they’re being righteous.”
That landed harder than she wanted it to. Y/N tossed the note back onto the desk. “So what now?”
Henry’s face closed down a little at that, too controlled, too careful. Y/N saw it immediately.
“No,” she said.
His eyes flicked to hers. “What?”
“That face.”
“What face?”
“The one where you decide things without me.”
Henry went still.
Y/N stepped closer to the desk, exhaustion and anger flooding back over the top of everything else. “Don’t do that.”
“I’m not doing anything.”
“You are,” she snapped. “You’re already pulling away.”
His jaw tightened. “I am trying to think.”
“You’re trying to protect me by acting like I’m the one thing in the room you shouldn’t touch.”
The words came out harsher than she meant them to, but once they were out she couldn’t pull them back. Henry’s expression changed—not softer, not colder, just more visibly strained.
“That isn’t fair.”
Y/N stared at him. “No? Because it feels pretty familiar.”
That one hit. She saw it hit. It sat there between them immediately, ugly and true and too close to old wounds.
Henry looked away for half a second, then back. “This is not the same.”
“It feels the same.”
“I’m not ending this.”
“Not yet,” she said.
Silence. That was the worst part. Not denial. Not anger. The silence. Because it told her he had thought it. Maybe not in those exact words, but in some version of them.
Y/N folded her arms tighter around herself. “You were planning junior year with me yesterday.”
“I still am.”
“Are you?”
“Yes.”
“But only if no one notices,” she said. “Only if it’s safe enough. Only if you can keep deciding the distance for both of us.”
Henry’s voice dropped. “That is not what this is.”
“Then tell me what it is.”
He looked at her for a long moment, and when he answered, his voice was quieter than before. “It’s me understanding, very clearly, that if this goes wrong, they will ruin you first.”
The room felt smaller.
Y/N swallowed hard. “I know that.”
“Do you?”
“Obviously.”
“No,” Henry said, stepping away from the desk now, the control in him fraying just enough to show. “I know you know it in theory. I don’t think you know what it would actually look like.”
Her anger faltered just enough for hurt to come through. “So what, I’m supposed to let you decide everything because you’re older and more afraid?”
“Yes,” he said.
The answer came too fast. It shocked both of them.
Y/N stared at him. Henry’s eyes closed briefly, like he already regretted the shape of it but not the truth underneath it. When he opened them again, he sounded more tired than angry. “Yes. Right now. On this, yes.”
That cut. Not because he was cruel. Because he was earnest.
Y/N laughed once, small and miserable. “Wow.”
Henry took one step toward her. “Y/N—”
She stepped back. Immediately. And the hurt in his face when she did it only made her angrier, because now she had to hold that too.
“No,” she said. “You don’t get to tell me you want me next year, you want me in your seminar, you want me under you for independent study—” her voice caught on that and she shoved through it anyway, “you don’t get to plan a future with me and then turn around the second it gets difficult and act like I’m a liability you have to manage.”
His face went still. “I am not managing you.”
“It feels like it.”
He shook his head once. “I am trying to keep you safe.”
“I did not ask you to do that by disappearing on me.”
The silence after that was thick enough to choke on. Y/N’s breathing had gone too fast. Her calculus headache was back in full force. The final. The note. Daniel not being the answer. Henry standing there looking like he loved her and was afraid of her in equal measure.
She hated it. She hated all of it.
Henry’s voice, when it came, was lower now. Less defensive. More dangerous for how honest it sounded. “Do you think this is easy for me?”
Y/N looked at him.
“I got that first note,” he said, “and the only thing I could think was that they were right about one thing.”
Her stomach dipped.
He held her gaze and finished it anyway. “That you would be the one to pay for this.”
For a second neither of them moved. The air in the room felt stripped bare.
Y/N’s eyes burned suddenly, not from crying yet, just from the force of everything she was trying not to feel at once. “You don’t get to make me regret loving you before anything has even happened,” she said quietly.
That landed harder than anything else had. Henry’s face changed. Y/N saw it immediately: the guilt, the pain, the quiet devastation of hearing what he’d actually done laid out in those words.
“I’m not trying to make you regret it.”
“Well, you’re doing a great job.”
He took another step toward her. This time she didn’t move, but only because she was too tired to.
“Y/N,” he said softly.
“No.” Her voice shook now, and she hated that. “No, because I know how your brain works. I know this. Something goes wrong, something scares you, and suddenly you decide distance is noble.”
His jaw flexed. “I’m not noble.”
“No,” she said. “You’re scared.”
That one hit clean. He looked away first. Not far. Just enough.
Because she knew him now, knew him well enough to hear the answer in that tiny movement, her anger shifted into something more tired and more heartbreaking. “I’m scared too.”
He looked back at her.
“I’m the one they’re talking about,” she said. “I’m the one in the note. I’m the one who has to go sit through finals and pretend I’m not wondering who’s watching me.” Her face crumpled around the edges, just slightly. “But I still came here.”
That did it. Not a dramatic break. Just something in him finally giving way.
Henry crossed the last bit of distance between them and stopped close, close enough to touch, not touching yet, like he was waiting to see if she’d let him. Y/N looked at him for one long second.
Then she said, quieter now, “Don’t do this to me again.”
Henry’s face tightened. “I’m here.”
“You’re halfway gone.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
He shook his head once. “No.”
The answer came harder this time, more certain. He reached for her then, hands settling carefully at her arms, not forcing, just holding. “I’m here,” he repeated. “I’m angry. I’m afraid. I am trying to think five steps ahead because someone is watching you and I cannot stand that. But I am not gone.”
Y/N looked at him, searching for the lie. There wasn’t one. Only fear. Only love distorted by fear into something ugly and overprotective.
Her voice came out small. “Then stop acting like loving me is the danger.”
Henry’s mouth parted, then closed. Because that was the deepest cut of all. He hadn’t meant to. But he had.
The room went quiet again.
Then Henry, very softly, said, “Losing you is the danger.”
That stole the rest of the fight right out of her. Y/N’s eyes closed for half a second. When she opened them again, she looked exhausted. Not finished being angry. Just too worn down to keep throwing it at him with the same force.
Henry’s hands moved once on her arms, careful and grounding. “We’ll figure it out.”
Y/N gave a tired, watery laugh. “That sounds like something people say when they have no idea what they’re doing.”
His mouth twitched faintly. “That is exactly what it is.”
And despite herself, despite the note, the stress, the ache of the argument, something in her softened. Not all the way. Not yet. But enough to keep standing there. Enough to let him still hold her. Enough to know the fight had changed something, but not broken it.
Outside the classroom, students moved through the hall like the day was still normal. Inside, between the second note and the wreckage of the words they’d finally said out loud, nothing felt normal at all.
There was a knock on the classroom door. Not loud. Just enough to split the air cleanly down the middle.
Henry’s hands dropped from her arms. Y/N stepped back. By the time the second knock came, they looked almost normal. Almost.
“Come in,” Henry said, his voice smoothing into that practiced tone that made it sound like the last five minutes had been entirely about literary criticism and not fear and love and second notes.
The door opened. Patty stepped inside with a folder tucked against her side, expression polite and slightly apologetic.
“Sorry,” she said, glancing between them. “I just heard voices from the hall.”
Y/N felt her whole body go alert under the surface. Not panic. Recognition. Something colder.
Henry was already halfway behind the desk again, one hand braced lightly against the edge of it. “We were talking.”
Patty gave a small smile. “I gathered that.”
Y/N forced one back.
Henry’s tone stayed easy. “Miss Y/L/N was asking for help reviewing for finals.”
Y/N caught it immediately, the quick, careful way he’d made it sound harmless. Academic. Contained. So she picked it up and ran with it.
“He was helping me study,” she said, voice light enough to be believable. “Or trying to.”
Henry glanced at her and added, with just enough dry irritation to sell it, “She’s being stubborn.”
Patty’s eyes moved between them again.
Patty stepped a little farther in, still looking like a guidance counselor checking on a stressed student and not like anything else. “Well,” she said, “that’s understandable this week. You don’t want your grade to be the one that suffers if you don’t study.”
The words landed. Not loudly. Not obviously. Just enough.
A line from the note, reshaped and hidden in plain sight, slipped into a perfectly normal sentence: She is the one who will suffer for this.
Y/N’s stomach dropped. Across from her, Henry went utterly still. Only for a fraction of a second. But she saw it, and she knew he saw the same thing happen in her face, because his eyes flicked to hers at once.
There it was. Recognition.
Patty, apparently oblivious to the knife she’d just placed on the desk between them, kept her tone gentle. “But don’t stress yourself out too much either. Last week has a way of making everything feel bigger than it is.”
Y/N stared at her. Not long enough to be rude. Just long enough that she had to force herself to remember how to answer normally.
“Right,” she said. “Thanks.”
Patty gave her one last warm, searching look, the kind that would have felt maternal if Y/N didn’t now want to tear the sentence back out of the air and hold it up like evidence. Then she looked to Henry. “Sorry to interrupt.”
“You didn’t,” Henry said.
It was a lie.
Patty nodded once, turned, and walked back to the door. For one unbearable second, Y/N thought Henry might stop her right then. He didn’t. Patty opened the door, paused only long enough to say, “Good luck with finals,” and then stepped back out into the hall.
The door clicked shut behind her.
Silence. Not the quiet kind. The kind that feels like something just detonated and hasn’t finished echoing yet.
Henry moved first. Not toward Y/N. Toward the desk. His hand landed flat against it with a sharp, controlled force that made the pens in the tray jump slightly. He turned away from her for half a second, shoulders tight, jaw locked so hard it looked painful.
Y/N stood where she was, heart hammering again for a completely different reason now. “It’s her,” she said.
Henry laughed once under his breath, but there was nothing amused in it. “Yes.”
The word came out clipped.
He dragged a hand over his face and then back through his hair, already too agitated to stand still. He started pacing the short strip between the desk and the chalkboard like the room had suddenly become too small for him. “She was warning me.”
“By warning you,” Y/N corrected, though there was no defense in her voice. Just the bitter shape of understanding.
Henry’s mouth tightened. “That does not make it better.”
“No,” Y/N said. “It doesn’t.”
He looked wrecked in a way she hadn’t seen yet—not afraid this time, not the overcontrolled martyr version of fear from before. Betrayed. Agitated. Angry in a cleaner, harsher way. Because Patty wasn’t some anonymous force anymore. She was real. Familiar. Someone who had looked him in the face and done this anyway.
“She had no right,” he said.
Y/N’s throat tightened slightly. “No.”
“She had no right,” he repeated, lower this time. Then he looked back at Y/N, his face set now with something harder than panic. “I’ll talk to Patty.”
Y/N blinked. “Henry—”
“No.”
He wasn’t angry at her, but the force of him still filled the room. “She does not get to do this quietly and call it concern. She does not get to stand in my classroom and think I won’t understand exactly what she’s doing.”
Y/N looked at him for a second, taking in the betrayal on his face, the agitation still running under his skin. “Henry.”
He looked at her.
Some of the anger eased the second their eyes met, but not all of it.
“Don’t go in there furious,” she said.
His jaw flexed. “I am furious.”
“I know. But if you go at her like that, she’ll get defensive.”
Henry said nothing.
“She thinks she’s right,” Y/N continued. “Which is worse.”
That landed. He looked back at her, expression grim. “I know.”
“And if she thinks she’s protecting me, then you yelling at her won’t fix that.”
He stared at her for a long beat. Then, quieter and more dangerous for the quietness of it, “I’m still going to speak to her.”
Y/N nodded once. She knew better than to try to stop him completely. The anger in him now wasn’t the kind that could be talked out of existence. It was the kind that needed a direction.
“Then be smart,” she said.
Henry’s eyes held hers. The muscles in his jaw eased by the smallest degree. “I will be.”
Y/N believed that only halfway. But before she could say so, he crossed the last bit of space between them and touched her, just his hand at the side of her face, brief and grounding and so careful it made her chest ache.
“She should never have brought you into it like that,” he said quietly.
Y/N looked up at him. “She already did.”
A shadow crossed his face. Then he lowered his hand and looked once more toward the closed door.
Patty. The notes. The warnings. The concern that had turned into surveillance.
And now that they knew, the whole room felt different again. Smaller. Sharper. No longer anonymous danger. Now it had a face.
. . .
Henry didn’t knock.
He got all the way to Patty’s office, hand already on the edge of the half-open door, and then stopped himself just long enough to force one breath through his lungs before he pushed it open.
Patty looked up from behind her desk. She was writing something in a student file, glasses low on her nose, counselor face already in place until she saw who it was.
“Henry.”
He stepped inside and shut the door behind him. Not slammed. Just closed. The sound was enough.
Patty set her pen down slowly. “You look upset.”
Henry stood in front of her desk and didn’t bother pretending otherwise. “You left the notes.”
Patty held his gaze for one beat. Then another. When she answered, her voice was calm in a way that made his anger sharpen instead of soften.
“I did.”
No denial. No confusion. No attempt at evasion.
Henry let out one short breath through his nose that had no humor in it. “You had no right.”
Patty’s expression changed, less counselor now, more something older and personal, though not softer. “I had every right.”
“To threaten her?”
“To warn you.”
“You threatened her.”
Patty rose from her chair, slow and deliberate, palms resting lightly against the desk as she stood. “Henry, don’t turn this into something simpler than it is.”
His jaw tightened, his voice dropping an octave lower. “You do not get to talk to me about simplicity after leaving typed warnings on my car like some self-righteous coward.”
That landed. Patty’s face didn’t flinch much, but something in it hardened. “I wasn’t being a coward. I was trying to stop this quietly.”
Henry laughed once, low and disbelieving. “Quietly?”
“Yes,” Patty said, more firmly now. “Before it became something public. Before someone with less concern for her got involved.”
The word her hit him harder than the rest. He took one step closer to the desk. “You do not know what concern looks like if this is what you call it.”
Patty’s eyes flashed then, not with cruelty but with frustration that had clearly been building long before today. “No. I know exactly what concern looks like. That’s why I did it.”
Henry went still.
Patty straightened fully and folded her arms. “Do you think I wanted to be the one doing this? Do you think I enjoyed it?”
“I don’t care what you enjoyed.”
“That’s your problem,” she snapped, and for the first time the professional calm cracked enough for the history between them to show. “You never care what something costs anyone else when you’ve decided your intentions are pure.”
Henry’s face changed. Not because she’d insulted him. Because she’d reached somewhere older.
He kept his voice low. “This is not about us.”
Patty’s mouth tightened. “No. It isn’t.” Her eyes held his. “It’s about the fact that you are a teacher and she is your student.”
The silence after that was immediate and sharp.
Henry looked at her with controlled fury. “Do not speak about her like she’s a child.”
“She’s not a child,” Patty said. “She’s a college student. Which still makes her your student.”
Henry’s jaw flexed.
“I checked her transcripts,” Patty said.
That made him go cold.
Henry’s eyes narrowed slowly. “You what?”
Patty met his stare without backing down. “I checked her transcripts. She’s bright. Very bright. But around the time she started failing, or slipping, or needing help, whatever term makes you feel less defensive, she also started spending more time with you.”
Henry’s mouth parted, then shut again. Not because he had no response. Because he had too many at once.
“I’m a guidance counselor,” Patty continued. “I notice patterns. I notice grades. I notice when students who are more capable than they’re performing suddenly start orbiting one professor more than anyone else.”
Henry’s voice came out low and dangerous. “You had no right to go through her records looking for evidence against me.”
“I wasn’t looking for evidence against you,” Patty shot back. “I was trying to understand whether she was in trouble.”
“With me?”
“With herself. With school. With this.” She took a breath. “With a relationship she cannot possibly navigate on equal footing no matter how badly you both want to pretend otherwise.”
Henry’s hand flattened on the desk.
Patty didn’t flinch. “The year she was born, you and I were sixteen.”
That hit differently. Not like accusation. Like a fact heavy enough to bend the room around it.
Henry’s face tightened at once.
“The year she was born,” Patty repeated, “we were kids. Dating. Making bad decisions and thinking we knew everything. And now you’re standing here, a grown man, furious at me for noticing that the girl in your class was born when we were still that young.”
Henry looked away first. Only for a second. But she saw it.
His voice when it came back was rougher than before. “This is not about your history with me.”
“No,” Patty said. “It’s about the fact that I may have history with you, and I still have a duty to protect the kids here.”
Kids. He hated the word instantly.
Patty saw that too. “Students,” she corrected, though not apologetically. “Young people. Whatever phrasing offends you least.”
Henry’s eyes cut back to hers. “She is not a case file to you.”
“No,” Patty said. “She’s a girl I am trying very hard not to watch get ruined.”
That was the sentence that finally made the anger in him fracture. Not disappear. Shift. Because beneath all the fury, all the betrayal, all the violation of privacy and interference, there was the truth he couldn’t deny: Patty believed she was protecting Y/N. That didn’t make her right. It made her impossible to dismiss.
Henry’s voice dropped. “You think I’m a perpetrator.”
Patty looked at him for a long moment before answering. “I think you are capable of loving her and still being dangerous to her.”
That landed clean. Not shouted. Not dramatic. Just precise.
Patty’s face softened then, not warm exactly, but no longer hard for hardness’ sake. “I don’t think you’re a monster. If I did, I would’ve reported you instead of warning you.”
The room went very still. Henry’s hand tightened against the desk edge.
“I think you are a man who wants something badly enough that you are already rationalizing what it costs her,” Patty said.
Henry laughed once under his breath, but it sounded wrecked. “You know nothing about what this costs me.”
Patty’s eyes didn’t leave his. “That is exactly my point, Henry. You still think the tragedy would be what it costs you.”
That was the cruelest thing she’d said. Maybe because it was close enough to something true to hurt.
Henry straightened slowly from the desk. His face had gone unreadable now in a way that meant he was either about to say something unforgivable or nothing useful at all. When he spoke, his voice was low and terribly controlled.
“You do not get to surveil us, frighten her, and then stand here telling yourself you’ve done something noble.”
Patty’s eyes dropped for just a second. The closest thing to guilt he’d seen in her all day.
“I know it wasn’t noble,” she said. “I know it was ugly. But I would still rather have you hate me than watch her be collateral damage while everyone tells themselves you took advantage of her.”
Henry said nothing. Because whatever answer he had, it wasn’t enough to cut through the awful shape of that sentence.
Patty picked up the folder from her desk and held it against her chest again, a barrier now more than paperwork. “I’m not reporting you.”
Not yet hung in the room without being said.
“But if you want me to believe you’re not hurting her,” she continued, “then prove it by acting like her future matters more than your access to her.”
Henry’s face changed at that: anger flashing, then pain under it, then the colder, quieter thing he wore when he’d been hit somewhere real.
“You think that’s what this is,” he said.
“I think that’s the risk.”
The silence stretched between them long enough to feel like another kind of note being laid down. And when Henry finally turned to leave, it was not with victory. Just fury. Betrayal. And the sick understanding that Patty was wrong in all the ways that mattered most and close enough in a few others to make everything worse.
. . .
By the time Y/N got back to the dorm, the day had started to feel unreal.
Nancy blinked once after Y/N told her everything. “What?”
Y/N looked at her. “The note. The warnings. It was Patty.”
For one full beat, Nancy said nothing. Then she set the pen down very carefully. “No way.”
“Yes way.”
“Miss Patty Newby?”
Y/N nodded once.
“The guidance counselor?”
“Yes.”
Nancy stared at her like the answer might change if she waited long enough. “Not Daniel?”
“Not Daniel.”
Nancy leaned back in the chair, face tightening with a whole new kind of alarm. “That’s worse.”
Y/N let out a humorless laugh. “Yeah.”
“No, I mean actually worse.” Nancy got to her feet and started pacing in the narrow strip of floor by the desk. “Daniel is an idiot. Daniel is a creep. Daniel is the kind of person you can scare because he knows he’s disgusting. Patty is worse because Patty is an adult who thinks she’s right.”
That landed. Y/N looked down at her hands.
Nancy saw that immediately and her expression shifted, not softer exactly, but less sharp at the edges. “That’s what makes it more dangerous.”
Y/N swallowed. “Henry went to talk to her.”
Nancy’s eyes narrowed. “Alone?”
“Yes.”
“Bad idea.”
“I know.”
Nancy came to sit beside her on the bed and crossed one leg beneath her. “What did Patty say to you exactly this morning?”
Y/N let out a breath through her nose. “The usual counselor thing. That if anything’s going on, we can talk. That I’m young. That choices feel manageable until consequences show up. She was doing the whole concern act.”
Nancy’s gaze sharpened. “Because she thinks she’s saving you.”
“That’s what Henry said too.”
Nancy looked away for a second, jaw tight, then back again. “She probably does.”
Y/N’s face changed slightly.
“I’m not saying she gets to interfere,” Nancy said. “She absolutely does not. But from where she’s standing? She probably thinks she’s stopping something before you’re the one who gets burned by it.”
That hurt more than Y/N wanted it to. She looked down again, voice smaller. “So she’s not fully wrong?”
Nancy didn’t answer right away. That was answer enough.
When she finally did speak, it was careful. “I think she’s wrong to decide for you.”
Y/N stared at the floorboards. “That’s not what I asked.”
Nancy’s shoulders eased just a little. “No,” she admitted. “She’s not fully wrong.”
The words hit cleanly. Not because Y/N had never thought them herself, but because hearing Nancy say them out loud made them real in a way her own private spiraling never quite managed.
“Great,” Y/N muttered.
Nancy bumped her shoulder lightly. “Hey. Two things can be true at once. She can be right that the world would destroy you for this, and still be completely out of line for acting like you don’t get to choose your own life.”
Y/N sat with that. It helped a little. Not enough. But some.
“I hate how everybody keeps talking about my future like it belongs to them,” she said.
Nancy nodded once. “I know.”
The rotary phone rang. Both of them looked at it. The sound cut through the room sharp and sudden, making Y/N’s stomach drop before she even knew why.
Nancy lifted a brow. “That’ll be him.”
Y/N stood too quickly and crossed the room before the second ring. She picked up the receiver and tucked it to her ear without looking at Nancy. “Hello.”
On the other end, Henry was quiet for half a beat too long. Then: “It’s me.”
Y/N turned slightly away, though there was no real privacy in the room. “I guessed.”
His voice was low, roughened at the edges in a way that told her everything had not gone well. Nancy, to her credit, didn’t leave. She just sat back against the bedpost and looked elsewhere with the kind of theatrical discretion that wasn’t actually discreet at all.
Y/N tightened her grip on the cord. “How did it go?”
A pause. Then Henry exhaled slowly through his nose. “Poorly.”
That almost made her smile, if everything else hadn’t still felt so wrong.
“She admitted it,” he said. “Without hesitation.”
“I know.”
“I know you know. I’m only saying it because I needed to hear how absurd that sounds out loud.”
Y/N leaned her shoulder against the wall. “What did she say?”
Henry was quiet again. When he answered, his voice had gone flatter, more controlled in the way it always did when he was talking around something that had actually gotten to him.
“She said I am capable of loving you and still being dangerous to you.”
Y/N’s face tightened. There it was. The line. The one that had clearly lodged itself under his skin and stayed there.
“She said things I already…” He stopped, then started again, lower. “She got under my skin.”
Y/N closed her eyes for a second. Because of course she had. Patty had found the exact shape of what Henry already feared about himself and pressed on it until it bruised.
“What things?” Y/N asked softly.
Henry didn’t answer immediately. Then: “The things I already think when I’m trying to be rational.”
That made her chest ache. He sounded angry still, but underneath the anger was something more private and more dangerous: doubt.
“Henry.”
“She’s wrong,” he said, too quickly.
“I know.”
“But not enough for it to feel clean.”
That one hurt. Because it was honest.
Y/N pressed her fingers to her forehead. “I’m tired of this.”
His voice softened slightly. “So am I.”
“No,” she said, sharper now. “I mean I’m tired of everyone acting like I have no agency.”
That got his full attention. The line went still.
Y/N’s grip on the receiver tightened. “I’m tired of Patty deciding she gets to save me. I’m tired of Nancy and you and every other person in this story looking at me like I’m some fragile thing that this is just happening to. I know the risk. I know what could happen. I know exactly what people would say about me if this came out.” Her throat tightened, but her voice didn’t shake. “But it is still my life.”
On the bed, Nancy looked over at her then, quiet now, not interrupting.
“I chose you,” Y/N said into the phone. “I keep choosing you. That matters. And I’m tired of people acting like my love life is something they can manage better than I can.”
Henry was silent for so long she started to wonder if the line had gone dead. Then he said, very quietly, “You’re right.”
That softened something in her immediately, though not all the way.
“I know I am,” she said.
A faint breath on the other end that might have been the ghost of a laugh. Then Henry said, “What are you going to do?”
She looked toward the dark window over Nancy’s desk, her own reflection staring faintly back. “I’m going to talk to Patty tomorrow morning.”
Nancy’s head snapped toward her.
Henry was silent again. “Y/N.”
“I mean it.”
“Don’t go in there angry.”
She nearly smiled. “That’s rich coming from you.”
He let that sit for a second, because he knew it was hypocritical. Then, more quietly: “Don’t go in there alone.”
Y/N looked over at Nancy. Nancy folded her arms and mouthed, obviously not.
Y/N smiled faintly despite everything. “I won’t.”
Henry exhaled. She could hear the effort it took him to let that answer stand.
“She should hear it from me,” Y/N said. “Not just from you. If she thinks she’s protecting me, then she can look at me while I tell her I don’t need her deciding my life for me.”
On the bed, Nancy’s expression shifted into something almost proud.
Henry was quiet for one more beat. Then: “All right.”
Y/N leaned her head back against the wall. “All right?”
“I don’t like it,” he said. “But all right.”
That was as close to peace as they were likely to get tonight. The silence that followed was not easy, but it was less sharp than before. Bruised, maybe. Tired. Real.
Finally Henry said, voice lower now, “How are you?”
“Honestly?”
“Yes.”
She looked over at Nancy, at the room, at the finals clutter and the half-packed shape of sophomore year collapsing around them. “Angry. And tired. And annoyed that all of this is happening during finals.”
Henry’s answer came immediately. “That, at least, is reasonable.”
She smiled, just a little. “And you?”
A pause. Then, very quietly: “Still angry. Less certain.”
That made her chest hurt again. But before she could say anything, Nancy made a small, pointed clearing of her throat from the bed.
Y/N looked and nearly laughed. Into the phone, she said, “I should go.”
“All right.”
“I’ll talk to Patty tomorrow.”
The line went quiet one last time. Then Henry said, softer than before, “Be careful.”
“You too.”
She hung up slowly and set the receiver back in place. For a moment neither she nor Nancy said anything.
Then Nancy looked at her and asked, “So. Are we confronting Patty at sunrise?”
Y/N turned and leaned back against the wall again, all the fight finally draining out of her in ugly, exhausted waves. “Basically.”
Nancy nodded once, like that had always been the obvious next move.
And in the cramped, cluttered room at the end of sophomore year, with finals waiting, danger named, and tomorrow already sharpening itself into confrontation, Y/N realized there was no going back to thinking of Patty as just the guidance counselor anymore who happened to be his ex.
. . .
Nancy stopped outside Patty’s office with her arms folded and a face that made it clear she considered herself both lookout and backup plan.
Y/N turned to her once before knocking. “Wait here.”
From inside, Patty’s voice came calm and warm as ever. “Come in.”
Y/N pushed the door open and stepped inside, closing it carefully behind her. Patty looked up from her desk. For one brief second, surprise crossed her face. Then her counselor expression settled neatly back into place.
“Y/N,” she said. “Good morning.”
Y/N stood straight, hands calm at her sides even though her pulse was running too fast. “Do you have a private moment?”
Patty’s eyes flicked to the shut door, then back to Y/N. Something in her face shifted, alert now, less casual. “Yes. Of course.”
Y/N moved further into the office, but didn’t sit. That was deliberate. She didn’t want to look like a student sent in to be managed. She wanted to look like someone choosing this conversation on purpose.
Patty noticed that too. “What can I do for you?”
Y/N took one slow breath. Then, very evenly, “I know it was you.”
Patty went still. Not guilty-looking. Just still.
“The notes. The warnings. Yesterday in Henry’s classroom.” Y/N’s voice stayed controlled. “I know it was you.”
For a second neither of them moved. Then Patty leaned back slightly in her chair, expression careful. “All right.”
No denial. That made Y/N’s spine straighten further.
“I came here because I wanted you to hear this from me,” she said. “Not from Henry.”
Patty’s eyes sharpened at that.
“What I have with him is consensual.”
Patty’s mouth parted slightly, but Y/N didn’t stop. “He did not tell me to come say this. He did not coach me, or send me, or ask me to defend him. I’m here because I chose to be.”
Patty looked at her for a long beat, then folded her hands on the desk. “Y/N—”
“No,” Y/N said, still quiet. “Please let me finish.”
That landed. Patty nodded once.
“I am not in danger,” Y/N said. “I am not doing this for a better grade. I am not sleeping with him because I’m desperate or confused or because I think it’ll get me something academically. And I’m not too stupid to understand the risks.”
Something in Patty’s face changed at that last part. Not softer. More conflicted.
“I know it’s your job. I know you think you’re protecting me,” Y/N said. “I know you think if this blows up, I’m the one who gets ruined first. And you’re probably right about that.” Patty’s gaze flickered. “But that still doesn’t give you the right to decide my life for me.”
The office went very quiet. Outside, Y/N could faintly hear someone walking past in the hall, the distant movement of a school morning continuing on as if this conversation weren’t happening at all.
Patty spoke carefully. “I’m not trying to decide your life.”
Y/N gave her a measured look. “You left anonymous notes on his car.”
Patty had the decency to look ashamed for one fraction of a second. “I was trying to stop this before someone crueler noticed.”
“I know.”
Patty blinked, maybe expecting more anger there.
Y/N’s voice softened, but only a little. “That’s the problem. I know.”
Patty sat with that.
“I know you and Henry have history,” Y/N said.
That got Patty’s full attention. Y/N didn’t say it cruelly. Didn’t weaponize it. Just placed it there, plain and careful.
“I know that makes this more personal for you than you probably want it to be,” she continued. “And I know you’re a guidance counselor, and that means you feel responsible for students here.”
Patty’s hands tightened slightly together on the desk.
“But I love him,” Y/N said.
There it was. Simple. Unhidden. Not teenage dramatics, not defiance for its own sake. Truth.
Patty’s face changed in a small, unwilling way.
“I love him,” Y/N repeated. “And he has respected me enough to give me an out multiple times.”
That one landed hard.
Patty’s brows pulled together. “An out?”
“Yes,” Y/N said. “He has pushed me away before. He has tried to end things before they got worse. He has tried to do the right thing more than once, even when it hurt both of us. So whatever else you think of him, do not reduce this into me being trapped by someone who never gave me a choice. He did. Several.”
Patty looked down briefly, then back up.
“And I stayed,” Y/N said. “I chose him anyway. I still do.”
The silence that followed felt different. Not broken. Shifted. Patty leaned back in her chair a little, studying her now not like a counselor glancing at a student in trouble, but like a woman realizing the person in front of her was more fully formed than she had allowed herself to believe.
When she spoke, her voice was quieter. “You are very young.”
Y/N almost smiled. Not because it was funny. Because of course that was the line Patty came back to.
“I know how old I am.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“I know what you mean.”
Patty’s expression tightened. “Then you know why I can’t just hear this and decide everything is fine.”
Y/N nodded once. “I know.”
“Do you?”
“Yes,” Y/N said, and this time her own voice hardened just a little. “I know you think being older makes him responsible for both sides of this. And maybe in some ways, it does. But I’m telling you right now: I am not a victim of my own feelings.”
That sat between them for a long moment.
Patty let out a slow breath through her nose. “You sound very sure.”
“I am sure of him.”
Patty’s gaze shifted, just for a second, toward the shut door. Then back to Y/N. “That is what scares me.”
Y/N’s throat tightened, but she didn’t look away. Because that was the truest thing Patty had said yet. It wasn’t just disapproval. It was fear. Fear that certainty like this could wreck a life if the world decided to be cruel.
“I know,” Y/N said.
Patty’s face changed again, something weary this time, and older than jealousy, older than professional judgment.
Y/N took one final breath. “I didn’t come here to ask you to approve. I know you won’t. I came here to tell you that whatever you think you’re saving me from, I deserve to be part of that decision.” Patty said nothing. “And if you really care about my well-being,” Y/N added, “then stop frightening me on purpose. Because I don’t plan to leave him anytime soon.”
That one hit. Properly. Patty looked away first. Only briefly. But it was enough.
When she looked back, her voice was very controlled. “I never wanted to frighten you.”
Y/N’s answer came gentle and unforgiving at the same time. “You did.”
The office went quiet again. Then Patty said, after too long, “All right.”
Y/N studied her. “All right what?”
“All right. I hear you.”
It wasn’t an apology. But it was the closest thing Y/N was going to get today.
She nodded once. “Thanks.”
She turned toward the door. Her hand was already on the knob when Patty spoke again.
“Y/N.”
She paused, but didn’t turn around fully.
Patty’s voice came quieter than before. “Be honest with yourself if it ever stops feeling like a choice.”
That sat in the air for a second. Then Y/N looked back over her shoulder and said, calmly and clearly, “I will.”
She should have left it there. She almost did. But something in her still needed to know.
So before she opened the door, she asked, “When did you know?”
Patty went still. For one moment, her face changed—not defensive, not professional, just tired in a way that made her look older than she had a second ago.
Then she said, “I had a few books on psychology I wanted to read one day.”
Y/N’s fingers tightened slightly on the doorknob.
“I went to the library,” Patty continued, voice measured, “and I saw you…and him.”
She didn’t say more than that. She didn’t have to.
Y/N felt the meaning hit anyway, sharp and immediate and humiliating in a way that made heat rise at the back of her neck. The library. The quiet corner. The bookcase. Henry’s body crowding hers, her hands pinned above her head, his mouth at her neck.
Y/N’s face stayed still only by force. Patty watched her carefully, as if measuring how much to say and choosing, finally, not to say the rest out loud.
Y/N didn’t ask anything else. Couldn’t. Because now she knew, and because anything more would make it too real in words.
So she only nodded once, small, tight, final, and opened the door.
When she stepped back out into the hall, Nancy was exactly where she’d left her, leaning against the wall, arms crossed, watching every passerby like she might personally tackle them if they looked too interested.
Nancy straightened the second she saw her. “Well?”
Y/N shut the office door behind her and let out one long breath. “I didn’t kill her.”
Nancy lifted a brow. “That bad?”
Y/N looked down the hall once, then back at her. “Let’s go before I change my mind.”
. . .
The halls had gone mostly empty, the last stragglers thinning out as students either went home, went drinking, or went into hiding with flashcards and despair. The building felt hushed in that particular last-week way, like even the walls were beginning to understand the year was almost over.
Tomorrow was the last day of class.
Y/N stood outside Henry’s classroom for one second, steadying herself, then knocked once and let herself in.
He was at his desk, papers in front of him, jacket off, tie loosened, the room lit only by the late light from the windows and the lamp near his desk. It cast everything in softer edges than usual.
Henry looked up immediately. Whatever he’d been doing stopped mattering the second he saw her.
“You’re alive,” he said.
“Debatable,” Y/N replied, shutting the door behind her. “I finished the portfolio.”
Henry leaned back slightly in his chair, looking at her more closely now. “You look exhausted.”
“I am exhausted.”
That got the faintest shift at his mouth.
Y/N crossed the room slowly, the ache of the day still in her shoulders, the strange emotional heaviness of the morning sitting lower now but not gone. She came to a stop in front of his desk and rested her hands lightly on the edge of it.
“I talked to Patty,” she said.
Henry went still. Not dramatically. Just enough that she felt it immediately.
“And?” he asked.
Y/N let out a breath. “She doesn’t approve.”
“I didn’t expect her to.”
“No,” Y/N said, fingers tightening slightly on the desk edge. “But she knows I’m not in danger.”
That landed. Henry’s eyes searched her face. “She said that?”
“Not exactly in those words.” Y/N gave a tired little half-smile. “But she heard me.”
Henry looked down at the papers on his desk for a second, then back at her. “And you’re all right?”
Y/N shrugged one shoulder. “I’m annoyed. And tired. And I may actually die if anyone hands me one more exam packet. But yeah. I’m all right.”
Silence settled for a moment between them, not uncomfortable, just full of what the day had been.
Then Y/N said quietly, “I’m sorry.”
Henry’s brows lifted slightly. “For what?”
“For…earlier,” she said. “For the fight. For getting mad at you for not telling me about the notes sooner. For acting like you were already leaving when really you were just scared.”
Henry held her gaze for a long moment. Then he stood. “I’m sorry too.”
Y/N blinked. “You are?”
“Yes.”
The answer was immediate enough to make her chest tighten.
Henry came around the side of the desk, stopping just in front of her. Close, but not touching yet. “I let fear make me cruel,” he said quietly. “Or close enough to cruel that it felt the same. You didn’t deserve that.”
Y/N looked at him, tired all over again in the softest possible way. “No. I didn’t.”
That almost made him smile. Almost.
Instead, his hand came up and brushed lightly along her sleeve, then settled at her arm in a way that was careful enough to ask. Y/N let him.
The classroom was so quiet she could hear the clock again.
Tomorrow, she thought. Last day.
And because the year was almost over and the room was empty and the fight had stripped too much truth out of both of them to bother pretending there wasn’t still something raw under the apology, Y/N looked up at him and asked, very quietly, “I just wanna make sure…are you scared enough to break up with me over this?”
Henry’s hand stilled on her arm. For one awful second, she thought she’d gone too far. Then he looked at her like the question itself offended him on principle.
“No,” he said, voice low. “Why would I do that?”
Y/N swallowed. “Because you said Patty got in your head.”
“She did.”
“Because she said things you already worry about.”
“Yes.”
“Because it’s the end of the year.”
He looked at her for one long beat. Then his hand moved from her arm to her waist, drawing her the smallest step closer.
“Why,” he repeated, quieter now, “would I break up with you when we have a trip to go on in a few days?”
That stole the air right out of her.
Y/N stared at him. Not because the logic was complicated. Because of how simple it was. Not denial. Not panic. Not distance.
A laugh escaped her before she could stop it, small and shaky and tired.
Henry’s thumb moved once at her waist. “Was that meant to reassure you?”
“A little.”
“Good.”
Y/N smiled despite herself. “You’re very practical.”
“Yes.”
“You answer emotional questions like a man filing paperwork.”
“That is unfair.”
“It’s completely fair.”
His mouth finally twitched.
Y/N let herself step in a little closer, close enough now that if someone looked through the door window they might just see two figures standing too near in a room that was almost done being theirs for the year.
“We’re really still going,” she said softly.
Henry’s gaze held hers. “Yes.”
Even now. After the notes. After Patty. After the fight. Yes. That mattered more than she knew how to say.
So instead of trying, Y/N leaned forward and rested her forehead lightly against his chest for a second. Henry’s hand moved to the back of her head at once, steady and familiar.
“You smell like the library,” he murmured.
Y/N laughed softly against his shirt. “That’s cruel.”
“It’s true.”
“I also smell like academic suffering.”
“That too.”
He held her there for one quiet second more before she lifted her head again. The room had gone soft around the edges, the empty hall beyond the door, the fading light through the windows, the last strange stretch of sophomore year finally almost behind them.
Tomorrow was the last class. But tonight, standing in his classroom with his hand warm at her waist and the Cape still waiting just ahead of them, the ending didn’t feel quite so much like an ending.
It felt like surviving long enough to reach the next thing.
. . .
Students were already filtering out in loose, relieved clumps, voices louder than usual, backpacks slung carelessly, the whole building beginning to loosen at the seams like it, too, knew the year had ended.
Y/N turned and started back down the hall toward Henry’s wing. The building felt even emptier there. Quieter. Like everyone had already emotionally vacated and the walls were just waiting for summer to finish the job. By the time she got to his classroom, the door was unlocked, just barely ajar.
She pushed it open and stepped inside.
The room looked even more stripped than before. The desks had been stacked on top of one another now, chairs turned upside down or pushed aside, the whole space transformed into something in between: a classroom no longer in use, not yet fully packed away. The blankness of the walls looked starker with the furniture shifted, and for one second Y/N just stood there taking it in.
The only thing that still looked normal was Henry’s desk. And Henry behind it.
He looked up the second she came in, his expression changing immediately in that small, private way he never quite managed to hide from her.
“You survived,” he said.
Y/N shut the door behind her and smiled. “Barely.”
Henry leaned back slightly in his chair, looking at her more closely. “How bad was it?”
She crossed toward him through the half-dismantled room. “I think I blacked out halfway through and just started writing words I hoped were mathematically meaningful.”
Henry’s mouth twitched. “A strong strategy.”
“Thank you.”
She reached the desk and rested both hands on it, looking around again. “This is sad.”
Henry followed her gaze over the stacked desks and cleared-out space. “It’s temporary.”
“It still looks sad.”
His eyes came back to her face. “You say that about everything ending.”
Y/N smiled a little. “Because it’s true.”
Henry studied her for a second, then said, “Let’s leave tomorrow morning.”
She blinked. “What?”
“The Cape,” he said, as if this was a perfectly normal administrative note and not something capable of making her entire chest warm at once. “After you turn in your dorm key, of course.”
Y/N stared at him. “Tomorrow?”
“Yes.”
Her smile came slowly. “You want to leave tomorrow?”
“I do.”
That wasn’t really a question. More like a fact he had decided on and was now placing into her hands like something real.
Y/N’s brows lifted. “Very spontaneous of you.”
“No,” Henry said. “It’s planned. You just weren’t told until now.”
She laughed softly. “That’s not how spontaneity works.”
“It is for me.”
Y/N leaned in slightly over the desk, smiling in that helpless, too-pleased way she only got with him. “Okay.”
Henry’s gaze held hers. “Okay?”
“Yes,” she said. “I’ll turn in my key and then we’ll go.”
Something softened in his face at that. Small, but there.
Y/N looked at him for one more second, at the loosened tie, the rolled sleeves, the half-empty room around him, and felt the strange rush of it all: finals over, sophomore year ending, Patty behind them for the moment, the Cape suddenly no longer theoretical but tomorrow.
“Come here,” she said softly.
Henry stood. He came around the desk, and Y/N met him halfway.
The kiss landed easy at first, warm, familiar, relief-laced. The kind of kiss that said we made it through something before anything else. But the second his hand settled at her waist and hers slid up into his hair, it changed. Not sharply. Just enough. Enough that the relief turned warmer. Enough that the empty classroom started to feel less like an ending and more like a space they had one last right to use.
Henry’s mouth moved more deliberately against hers, his hand tightening slightly at her side. Y/N kissed him back without hurry at first, then with a little more intent when his other hand came to her jaw.
When they broke apart, it was only by inches.
Y/N looked up at him, breath slightly uneven, and smiled in that dangerous way he knew too well. “For old times’ sake,” she murmured, glancing toward the closet.
Henry’s eyes followed hers immediately.
The tiny pause that came after was probably nothing. Barely a second. But after the week they’d had—after Patty, after the notes, after the way he’d pulled back and made her feel like something dangerous to hold—Y/N noticed it.
And because she was no longer angry but absolutely still petty, that was enough.
She stepped back before he could answer.
Henry’s attention snapped back to her face. “Y/N—”
But she was already smiling, slow and sweet and entirely unhelpful. “No, it’s okay. Take your time.”
His brows pulled together. “That isn’t—”
Y/N picked up her bag from the desk and slung it over one shoulder. “You know what, actually…” She looked at the closet, then back at him, expression all false innocence. “You probably won’t touch me until we get back from the Cape.”
Henry went completely still. The words landed exactly the way she wanted them to.
“What?”
Y/N turned toward the door, clearly enjoying herself now. “I mean, who knows? I probably won’t feel like it. You hesitated.”
Henry stared at her like she had just committed a moral crime. “That is not what happened.”
Y/N opened the door and looked back over her shoulder, her smile bright and wicked. “Sure, professor.”
“Y/N.”
She laughed softly under her breath and stepped into the hall. “See you tomorrow.”
Then she walked away before he could recover, leaving him standing in the middle of his half-packed classroom, staring after her with the expression of a man who had just been very deliberately punished and knew he had, in fact, earned it.
. . .
The door shut behind her. And suddenly it really was over.
Y/N looked around the room one last time. “Wow.”
Nancy picked up her bag. “Don’t start.”
They gathered the last of their things and headed down the hall together, bags knocking lightly against their legs, keys in hand. The residence hall felt strange too: too many open doors, too many half-empty rooms, too many people in transit between one version of life and the next.
At the front desk, they turned in their keys.
That was somehow the worst part. A tiny metal thing dropped into a tray, and with it went the whole year: freshman survivors turned sophomore disasters, nights spent talking too late, mornings spent pretending they hadn’t, all of it handed over like property.
When they stepped back outside into the late spring light, the air felt different. Freer. Sadder.
Y/N shifted her bag higher on her shoulder and looked at Nancy, who was already trying to look brisk and unaffected and failing just enough for Y/N to notice.
“So,” Y/N said softly.
“So,” Nancy echoed.
They stood there for a second, bags at their feet, the campus behind them, July and Hawkins ahead, June and the Cape waiting in the space between.
Y/N smiled first, smaller than usual. “I’ll see ya.”
Nancy’s mouth twitched instantly. “Not if I see you first.”
That got her. Y/N laughed, the sound catching at the edges, and stepped in before she could think too hard about it. Nancy hugged her back immediately, tight and familiar, not dramatic but real enough to say everything neither of them was especially good at saying directly.
“Don’t let him annoy you to death before July,” Nancy muttered into her shoulder.
“No promises.”
Nancy pulled back just enough to look at her. “Write me. Call me.”
“I will.”
“And if the Cape is terrible, I want details.”
Y/N smiled. “If the Cape is terrible, you’ll know first.”
Nancy nodded once, satisfied. “Also, tell your boyfriend thanks for more me. For Palm Tree Delight.”
“He’ll say thank you for the money.”
Nancy stepped back fully, reclaiming some dignity. “Go.”
Y/N looked at her one more second, memorizing her like she didn’t need to because July wasn’t that far away, and because it still felt like she should anyway. Then she picked up her bag and turned.
Henry’s car was waiting at the curb just beyond the residence hall drive, engine running, one hand resting at the top of the wheel. He looked different outside campus like this, not less himself, just less contained by the building behind them. Less professor. More man already halfway gone from Boston.
He saw her and reached across to unlock the passenger door before she even made it to the curb.
Y/N glanced back once. Nancy was still standing there with her bag by her feet, arms crossed now against the wind, watching.
Y/N lifted a hand. Nancy lifted hers back once, short and sharp.
Then Y/N got in.
The door shut, muffling the campus instantly. Henry looked at her, then at the bag in her lap, then back at her face.
“All set?”
Y/N let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. “Yeah.”
His hand came off the wheel just long enough to settle over hers where it rested on top of the bag. “Ready?”
Y/N looked out through the windshield, past the familiar buildings and paths and doors that had held so much of the year she’d just finished. Then she looked back at him.
And smiled.
“Yeah,” she said again. “Let’s go.”
Henry pulled away from the curb.
The campus began to slip behind them in pieces: the residence hall, the main building, the library, the last corners of sophomore year turning smaller in the mirror.
Ahead of them: the road, the Cape, a few days where no one knew them, and the quiet chance to begin something that didn’t have to hide inside the shape of a school year anymore.
Y/N leaned back in the seat, Henry’s hand still warm over hers, and watched Boston fall away.
Summary: A god, a demon, a man... what was the difference? They all look the same when they're deciding how to damage you.
Pair: Henry Creel/Vecna/001 x Female Reader
Content/Warning Labels: dark slowburn, Hawkins Lab, angst, violence, flashbacks of abuse, Martin Brenner is straight up evil in this, trauma, manipulative Henry, smut (kissing, voyeurism, masturbation, oral if you squiiiint, Henry wants to be in control so bad), touch starved, yearning
WC: 8k | Read on Ao3
(Part One - Part Two - Part Three - Part Four - Part Five - Part Six)
Yet, no matter how deeply I go down into myself, my God is dark, and like a webbing made of a hundred roots that drink in silence.
- Rainer Maria Rilke, The Selected Poetry
The next day was as frigid and clinical as every other.
You were glad Henry wasn’t on the day shift. You didn’t know if you could bare to look at him ever again. You knew, in the very pit of your being that he’d seen you, in that fraction of a second as you’d yanked yourself out of the void.
How were you meant to explain yourself? How were you meant to face him? Your mind ached as you sat at the maze in the rainbow room, absentmindedly spinning the marble through it.
When night came, you almost decided to stay in your room like an obedient, shamed little rat. The more you looked at the frigid space, however, the more you wanted to be in the tide of his warmth.
So you went.
As you heard the night nurse clipping away down the halls, you moved, blanking the camera lenses, using the blind spots Henry had shown you to get your bearings.
You found the white rook settled in the crevice of the door frame of the utility room on your floor, a beacon. Suddenly the door felt like a dam, threatening to burst as your fingers fell around the handle. You opened it tentatively.
His hand fell around your wrist as soon as you stepped inside. He moved in the darkness, shutting the door with a quiet click as he pulled you in. For a moment, neither of you spoke. The only light was dim, coming from a single thin strip of a fading fluorescent. The shadowed hues played off his blond tufts, set neatly as always, iced his blue irises.
The air was thick. His face was maddeningly unreadable.
“Henry,” you exhaled. “You weren’t followed?”
He shook his head softly.
“Feeling better?” He asked quietly.
“Still a bit out of it.”
“Hm.”
Your throat tightened.
“Did you… did you find anything out?” You aimed at casual, but it came out as a strained whisper in the dark of the utility closet.
He studied you for a moment, expression calm but obscure.
“You know, it’s not an easy thing, breaking in to Brenner’s private offices.” His voice was strange, stilted.
“I - I know it mustn’t be.”
“No,” he said, his voice low as he took a step closer to you. “It is even more difficult not getting caught.”
Your breath hitched at the back of your throat.
“Did - did you?”
You didn’t know why you were still pretending. Your insides felt on fire at his gaze, at his every word that was pointed and dripping.
“No.”
You breathed out. He stepped closer in the dark.
“But you did.” He said softly.
Your lips pulled apart a fraction as he studied you. “I -”
“I saw you.”
You felt a surge of hot defensiveness crawl through you, desperate to save your reputation, which you feared was now bleeding out into nothing in front of him.
“I - you - you saw me. It - it was only fair -” But you knew it was useless. You knew how wrong it was, watching him like that.
“I was helping you then.” He said, eyes narrowing.
You pushed a sharp breath through your nose.
“I know.” You admitted quietly, finally. “I’m sorry.”
“Are you?” His eyes had grown darker, the cerulean a deep midnight blue.
You hesitated, and then raised your eyes back to his.
“No.”
He huffed softly, taking another step forward, invading your space.
“Neither am I,” he murmured, his index finger rising slowly to stroke featherlight under your jaw. “For seeing you.”
He tilted your chin up, the pad of his thumb brushing over the flushed pink of your lower lip, sending a jolt through it.
“You saw everything?” He asked softly, his sculpted face flushed a delicate shade, barely perceptible in the low light, if you hadn't been looking at him so intently.
“Yes.” You breathed.
He was so close you could feel the hum of his warmth. Was that your heart hammering, or his?
“I shouldn’t have.”
“No.”
Henry stepped forward far enough to push you back into the mental bench. It was cold, bumped up against your lower back. His face was still, but there was something lurking behind his eyes. He leaned into you, his height towering as he pressed his body against yours.
Your insides were aching, embered and alive by the heat of him so close to you. His mouth hovered over the shell of your ear.
“But you did. You wanted to. You wanted to watch me like that,” his voice was a ghost of itself, writhing into your head.
You swallowed audibly. “Yes.”
He hummed, the vibration rumbling through your ear, sending a cold shiver up the back of your neck. He ran a finger down the softness under your throat that pulsed with life. A slickness pooled out between your thighs as he hovered there, gentle yet commanding.
He leaned back a fraction to take you in, looking intrigued, his doe eyes shifting over every inch of your face.
“Henry -” The way your voice shook surprised you.
He smiled calmly. His lips parted before he spoke.
“Your turn.” He whispered.
“W-what?”
“It’s only fair, isn't that what you said?” He murmured, running his knuckle up your flushed cheek. Your breath hitched as you realized what he was asking for.
“You watched me come undone, now I want to watch you.” He purred, the edge to it unmistakable.
He brushed his full lips over the bone of your jaw, and dragged them down to the beat kicking wildly in your throat. You shuddered against him as he sucked over your pulse with wet lips, claiming the proof of life like it was his own.
For a moment, you wondered if you had fallen asleep waiting for midnight. If this was one of the dark corners of your selfish desire that found you when you were floating somewhere between wake and dreams.
Your hands finally left the cool metal, attempting to brush up the sides of him, but his fingers snapped across your wrists abruptly.
“No,” he muttered as he raised his head, his nose dragging up your jaw. “I said, your turn.”
He let one of your hands go and shoved the other to the bench behind you, his fingers still tight on your wrist, holding you there as he pressed against you. You could feel the hard line of his erection against your thigh. It was an agony, the ache so hot and deep within you as your mind reeled over the feeling.
“Henry -”
Henry's eyes pierced into yours, an unrelenting instruction. You swallowed. He pulled back just enough to give you room, his heat still radiating onto you.
Your breath shook, the fingers of your free hand trembled as you brushed under your sweater and hooked the waistband of your pants. Henry’s gaze fell, tight on your every movement, following your fingers as you swept your trousers and underwear from your hips.
The low light fell across your exposed flesh in the space between you.
His eyes were unyielding, analyzing every detail of you as you stood there, your blood hot with the vulnerability of exposure. And yet, you'd wanted nothing more than for him to see you like this again. He hummed gently, shadows falling about his angelic face.
“Show me...” His voice was caught between a command and a beg.
Your chest rose in a jagged breath and you moved your hand. You slid a finger languidly through your slit, parting the slick flesh, gathering your arousal. You brought your hand up to his face, your finger glistening under the light.
Henry was motionless, a sharp breath drawing in as he surveyed it.
Then, as if he physically couldn't restrain himself, his lips curled over your finger, hot and wet as he sucked it into his mouth. You couldn’t contain the broken noise you made as he whined in his throat, his eyelids fluttering closed. He breathed against your finger as you ran it over his mouth, pulling his bottom lip down under your fingertip.
“Show me what you wanted to do to yourself when you watched me.” He murmured.
He followed your fingers as you moved between your legs again. Your every nerve felt alight under his controlled gaze as you slid your fingers slowly through yourself. Your lips parted on a soft breath as you dragged up over your clit.
Henry's face was veiled in shadow as he watched every flicker, every tight circle you made over the swollen nerves.
“That's it,” he said softly, “did you want to touch yourself like this when you saw me?”
You whined at the coiling pleasure, as he started undoing you with his eyes and his words alone.
“Yes...”
“Do you want my fingers touching you like that?”
Your hips rolled against your hand desperately, your thighs brushing against his.
“Yes, I do,” you whimpered pathetically, your insides blooming with heat.
“Show me where you want them.”
You slid your fingers down through your slick and pushed into yourself, whining as you stretched around them. Your chin tilted up, your mouth begging for his, but he kept his gaze between your legs.
“That’s it, go inside like that.” Henry praised, watching your fingers intently. “Deeper.”
You pushed higher into your aching cunt, curling your fingers up, the sounds wet and obscene in the quiet of the room.
He groaned, content, finally leaning back into your neck. “Should I tell you what I wanted?”
“Y-yes, tell me...” you begged as his lips parted over your skin, laying a wet trail.
“I wanted your hand around me… your mouth… wanted to be inside that pretty thing I saw between your legs. I looked at you for so long.” He breathed, his finger brushing under your ear. “So long.”
You moaned at his confession as you pumped your fingers faster, your eyes becoming hazy. His fingers tightened around your wrist.
“I wanted you undoing me,” he purred into your ear.
Your desire mounted into a scorching pleasure twisting deep in your belly.
“Please, Henry… kiss me,” you begged. “I’m doing what you want, aren’t I?”
“No, you’re repenting.”
He brushed his lips against your throat as a string of broken moans fell from your mouth. His hand came up to cradle your jaw, his thumb sliding through your parted lips.
“Please…” You groaned as you pulled your fingers from yourself and circled them tightly over your clit again.
“No. Not yet.”
There was something cold lurking in his eyes that made the thrill even more exquisite, made you ache desperately for him. The way he was controlling you so angelically, with nothing but his eyes and his whispered words.
“Fuck -” you whined as your fingers spun urgently across your swollen nerves.
“That’s right,” Henry purred, “keep going.”
He was undoing you with his velvet cadence and his intense eyes, every atom of himself narrowed in to you, in to the world between your legs, his angelic face edged with a quietly violent hunger.
“I’m - going to -” you breathed raggedly as you felt your orgasm cresting.
“Say my name.” Henry demanded excitedly, his hand twisting tight around your wrist.
His command was the final pin he pulled.
“God - Henry -” you cried out as you climaxed, your hips shuddering and thrusting, your cunt clenching around nothing as the pleasure pulsed through you in exquisite waves.
Henry was swift, falling to his knees between your legs. His hands were tight on your bare thighs as he tilted his face up between your legs. He licked a single broad stroke through your pussy, making you flinch and whine as he tasted your slick. He groaned in content, lapping another single stroke over you before his mouth fell to your thighs with gentle, possessive kisses.
He breathed at your knees for a moment before rising, his fingertips running up your bare legs as he stood. Finally, he crashed his lips over yours, a reward, letting you taste yourself on his mouth.
“Next time,” he murmured into you, “next time I will do this properly.”
Your breaths drew down, normalizing again as he lingered in your neck.
“Next time? Henry, I’m here right now.” The desperation was hot on your tongue as you slid your hands up into his hair. He breathed into your mouth as you spun your lips across his.
“I can’t.”
“What, why not?”
“I’m on shift. I have to return.”
Your hands slid down his neck and settled against the hard plains of his chest contained beneath the crisp white fabric.
“Why do you do this? Why do you deny yourself?”
“What? I don’t.”
“Yes you do,” you said irritably, dropping your hands from him. “You don’t let yourself have anything good. No without clawing for it first, do you Henry?”
“That’s not true”
“Then why are you always running away?”
His face had softened now, his eyes calm and stripped of their edge.
“I’m not running away.”
“Yes you are,” You sighed. “You can’t run away from this place so you’re running away from me instead. Every time you get close it’s like you can’t stand it. It’s like you - you want to punish yourself. I'm sick of it. I want you to show me who you really are.”
He tensed at your words, and expelled a long breath. “You shouldn't want that.”
Your teeth clenched.
“Why shouldn't I?” You snapped. “Don't you want something good in all this misery?”
He was silent, studying you.
“My priority is finding out who you are. Helping you.”
“Is it? Or is it playing games with me?” You spat, shoving him away and pulling up your pants.
“I'm not -”
“Yes you are. And you keep doing it.”
His brow knitted softly, his jaw clenching in the dim light.
“I don’t think you really want love, do you Henry? I think you just want to feel its sting so you can prove to yourself that you’re alive.”
“Love,” he pushed the word out like it was sour. “Cannot exist in a place like this.”
“In the lab?” You spat. “Or in you?” The light flickered aggressively above you, whirring like a threat as your frustration coiled.
His head jerked back a fraction, as if you’d shoved your fingers into an open wound. For a moment, you thought he might sweep out the door and slam it behind him. But he just stood there, looking like a desolate angel in the dark.
“You want to figure out who I am so badly then do it. Figure me out. But I won’t give you any more of whoever the hell I am without you showing me who you are first.”
You swung past him in the dim light.
“Nineteen, please -”
“That’s not my name.” You hissed, not looking back at him as you left him in the dark.
***
You could barely sleep for days after your encounter with Henry. When had your waking life become even more of a nightmare than your shattered dreams? You tossed aggressively in your bed, heaving sighs out into the dark.
You were angry.
Angry at him. Angry at yourself for wanting him, for how desperately you needed him to save you from yourself, from this place. This wretched place and it's ceaseless control, gripping you tighter every second of every day.
When had you become someone who needed rescuing? When had you become so fragile? It was a feeling that didn’t settle, like it didn’t belong to your body. Not in this life, not in the one you couldn’t remember.
The frustration was coursing through you, unbearable. You shoved your pillow over your face and screamed. The force left you before you could reason with it. The light above you shattered, raining glass and plastic and bits of fluorescent tubing down onto you in an array of sparks and crackles.
“Fuck!” You yelled, bolting up out of bed to throw the blankets off, sweeping the debris from your face and the mattress. It spread with a harsh scattering across the floor.
You sank down onto the side of the bed and hung your head in your hands. You didn’t know what was ruining you faster. Your mind, or Henry.
It wasn't long before the night nurse was knocking on your door. She unlocked it, and swung the metal open into the dark.
“Why bother knocking if you were going to come in anyway?” You asked in a huff.
She eyed you, then the floor, then the ceiling.
“What happened?”
“The light... malfunctioned.” You said, flicking on the desk lamp.
“Right.” She frowned as she assessed the damage. “Are you hurt? Cut by any of these shards?”
“No.” You huffed.
She hummed disapprovingly. “I'll come back with a brush and dustpan. Stay here, don't step on any of this.”
You shot up off the bed and advanced. For a moment she looked terrified, as if you were about to throw her down the corridor. You had to admit, you'd thought about it. But really, you and your aching head just wanted out of this room.
“I'll get it.” You said tightly.
“What -”
“I know where the supplies cupboard is. Please. I can't sleep, I need a walk. My mind is... overloaded, clearly.”
She frowned and curled her lips in, studying you.
“Please,” you said, in your most pleading voice that still afforded you a shred of dignity. Your eyes fell to her name badge. “Please, Helen -”
As her name tumbled from your mouth, you heard a voice carry behind your own. Sinister, covered in a layer of honey too thin to completely mask it. Your own voice choked, your skeleton growing cold bone by bone as you heard it.
His voice. Papa.
"...Nurse Helen here will give you some oxygen now..."
Then came the splitting pain in your head. A flash of film behind your eyes. The nurse, half hidden behind a surgical mask, the same dull hazel eyes peeking out. Bright lights blowing out your pupils, steel suns radiating directly from above. Shaped, suffocating rubber being placed over your face by the nurse's hands.
You felt the imprint of it, felt the dread rising, every nerve screaming under your skin. A scorch of fury ran through you, alive and untamed, and for a fleeting moment, you saw yourself crush her into a mangled pile.
Instead, you stuttered, swallowing the shadows down your throat.
“H-Helen,” you repeated thickly, voice sounding miles away as you stomped down the dread.
“Are you alright, Nineteen? You've gone awfully pale.” She remarked.
“I, uh, yes, I'm fine. I just - I just need some air, like I said. Please?” You asked again, your eyes staring into nowhere.
She considered you for a second longer before finally sighing in surrender.
“Three minutes. If you're not back in that time I will call the guards,” she warned tightly. “I'll fetch some new linens, in case there's any shards in these.”
You nodded and sped out, trawling down the halls in hurried paces. You knew where the supplies cupboard was, you'd passed it hundreds of times.
So how did you end up outside the staff dormitories? Specifically, the wing labelled 'Orderly Staff'? You stood staring through the steel-netted windows in the doors for far too long, your mind feeling both completely blank and entirely too full.
The hairs on your neck stood up, electrified as you felt the air behind you shift.
A hand grabbed your wrist.
Reactively and unstoppably, you spun, yanking your arm free and pushing a violent, frightened wave of kinetic force forth from your other hand. He went skidding down the hall and hit the wall with an ungracious thud, gasping as the wind was knocked clean from his lungs. He doubled over, his blonde tufts falling haphazardly as he coughed.
“What the fuck, H -” Your voice caught as you saw the camera blink red down the hall. “- Peter.” You hissed.
You stalked towards him and helped him straighten up. He shook his hair back and pushed his hands over his trousers, neatening them.
“Sorry,” he choked, voice tight and strained from the lack of air. “I should have known better than to grab you like that.”
“Yes, you should have,” you groaned. “Are you hurt? I didn't mean to -”
He held up a hand and shook his head, his hair still falling in a delicately mussed way that was far too beautiful for the walls around you.
“No, don't,” he protested. “My fault entirely.”
You sighed, heart still hammering, stomach tight with guilt. He searched your face, his eyes turning inquisitive as he recovered from the blow.
“What are you doing here?” He asked quietly.
Your head didn't move, but your eyes flicked up to the camera blinking down the hall again.
“I - I got lost.” You replied, too low for the camera to hear you.
“You got lost?”
“I was meant to go to the supply cupboard.”
“At 3am?”
“Yes.” You chewed your lip. “I - exploded a light.”
His eyebrows slid upward together, curious.
“You... okay,” he breathed. “Why?”
Because of you.
“It was accidental.”
“Well I didn't imagine it would have been recreational.” Henry chuckled lightly. “But you came here, instead? Why?”
“I didn’t mean to.”
He stepped a pace closer. Close enough for the shape of the conversation to change, but not close enough that it would have looked inappropriate to anyone viewing the monitors.
“You didn't?”
“I -” you breathed, “I don’t think so.”
His eyes were swimming in yours again, dangerously, too dangerous for a monitored hall way.
“Something happened,” you whispered even softer, your eyes falling to the floor. “I saw something.”
He exhaled slowly, his brow knitting down as he studied your face, only now realizing how fraught you looked behind the eyes.
“Tell me.” He murmured.
“The nurse -”
At that moment, she rushed around the corner, finding you and Henry standing a perfectly acceptable distance apart. Just a simple orderly and a lost looking experiment.
“Ah, there she is now.” Henry said, his tone calm and practiced. “Helen, I’m afraid Nineteen here went a corridor too far. I was just about to escort her back.”
Helen's cheeks pulled in, her face set in a stern frown.
“Well, thank goodness for you, Peter. I was about to call the guards, Nineteen. You told me you knew where to go.”
“Sorry,” you offered meekly, shrugging.
“What do you two need?” Henry asked, addressing Helen deliberately instead of you. “I can get it for you, if that would help.”
“It’s no problem Peter, I’ll get it on the way back to her room.”
Her fat fingers grasped your forearm, making you flinch. He nodded politely, his hands settling steadily in front of him.
“Wonderful. And don’t worry, Nineteen. Soon you’ll know this castle like the back of your hand. Right Helen?” He smiled, gesturing at the walls.
Your ears rang at the way his voice fell around the word.
Castle.
Helen returned his smile, though hers was oddly stilted, something about him making her wary like it did so many others. As she lead you away, you could see the instruction in his eyes. You nodded once at him, imperceptibly, letting her drag you back through the halls in clipped silence.
***
After finally cleaning up the ungracious scene, once the nurse had decided you weren’t a complete basket case and finally left you alone, you slipped into bed and closed your eyes.
You left yourself there, pulling your mind from your body like separating Velcro. Your feet touched the waterlogged floor of the darkened ether, and he materialized almost immediately, pacing in the blackness in front of his bed.
“Henry?” Your voice was a hollow whisper, eerie tendrils of sound reaching through dimensions towards him.
He stopped pacing and looked up, his eyes drawing towards you.
“Can you see me?”
“A little, not properly. Not all of you.” He said softly. “It's as if you're a ghost.”
To him you looked like nothing more than a faded apparition, while to you he looked like a pale beacon of radiance in the blackness, every detail shockingly vivid.
He sat on the side of the bed.
“Finish telling me what you saw earlier.”
“It was her name that did it, I realized I'd heard it before.” You sighed. “I saw her above me. She was wearing a mask, but I recognized her eyes. She was leaning over me, putting an oxygen mask on my face. I can... I can still feel it. I can taste the rubber.”
Henry frowned. “Do you think it could be from when you were in the infirmary?”
“No, Henry, this was before, I'm sure of it. Just like the other things I've seen, it came to me so violently, the way they all do. It made me want to...”
“Want to what?”
You paused, a sigh falling from you.
“Tell me.” He said softly.
Not a demand, an invitation. One you trusted.
“It made me want to kill her, for a moment. I - I thought I might -”
His face remained oddly still and composed despite the harshness of your confession. His hands slid down to rest on his thighs as he looked at the shade of you.
“There was something else. Papa, he was talking. He said something about her giving me oxygen.” Your brow creased as you recalled it. “Bright lights... but I couldn’t make out anything else.”
Henry was quietly studying you, taking in every word.
You came closer, and sat on then edge of the bed next to him. The void was so cold and empty that even his warmth couldn’t penetrate it. It felt like sitting the bottom of a lonely ocean.
“You said, once you’re caught or made or lured, you can never get out.”
“I meant it.” Henry huffed, looking at his feet.
Your eyes fell to his long, slender fingers resting elegantly on his thighs.
“I think I was made.” You whispered, as if the words said too loudly would make the thought solid enough to break you.
“Of course you were.” He said stiffly. “Tell me everything you remember, from the beginning.”
“I don’t know if things are in order, exactly.” You sighed.
“It doesn’t matter, just tell me the things you have seen.”
“Well, there's a man, a violent man. Always hurting me.” Your throat tightened. Henry’s jaw clenched.
“Then, there was the sound of cans, empty ones. Like they’re being crushed. Um - there's a bus. That was a vivid one. The driver, I saw him too. The seats… and the noise. Really shrill, like old brakes.”
Henry nodded calmly.
“There was another one - a man in a suit. He gave me something...a piece of paper, or a flyer or something. There was rain, rain in my shoes...”
“You said you needed to fix your shoelaces.” Henry said suddenly, his head turning to you. “When you were drugged, you said your shoelaces needed more thread. You said they were ripped, you'd tried to mend them.”
You bit your lip.
Henry stood up swiftly, moving through the space. As you followed his form in the blackness of the void, a dresser materialized. He pulled open a drawer and rustled inside briefly before pulling out a bundle of keys, rattling together metallically on the ring.
“Keys?” You asked, your voice hollow as it stretched through the ether.
“Brenner’s office, the filing cabinet, probably some others on here.”
“How did you...?”
“His personal assistant. She’s new. I -” He paused.
“You what?”
“I got them from her.”
“I don’t suppose she just handed them over.” You said snidely. “What did you do?”
His face was stony. “I know how people work. They are easy to distract. Easy to make do things.”
Your eyes fell to the floor, stomach twisting as you recalled doing everything he said only days ago in the dark confines of the utility room, nothing but his velvet voice and haunting eyes controlling you.
Did he see you as something just as commandable, just as pathetic?
He read your expression, and his feet shuffled awkwardly.
“Not like that.”
“I’m not like that, or you weren’t like that with her?”
“Both.” He said tightly, sitting down beside the ghost of you on his bed.
You didn’t say anything, just stared down at the dark water rippling gently underneath your bare feet for what felt like forever.
“I shouldn’t have done that,” he admitted in a hush. “It was... self indulgent.”
You shook your head softly. “No, watching you was. But I don’t... I don’t regret what happened.”
His eyes gazed into the ghost of your own. “Neither do I.”
Your hand whispered out towards him, coming to rest on his thigh. He flinched, the muscle in his leg twitching in response.
“You can feel me, can’t you?”
“A little.” He murmured, his eyes tight to tour had on his leg. “It’s cold, though.”
Your stomach twisted oddly. You let your hand rest there in the dark as he studied it, his initial reaction settling into calm and curiousity.
“I will look in Brenner’s office first. See if I can find anything out -” His breath hitched sharply as you moved your hand upwards, turned your fingers in to his inner thigh.
“You flinch every time I touch you, you know?” You said softly, brushing your hand higher.
“Do I?” He breathed tightly.
His leg jerked a touch more as you hitched your hand up to the crease of his hip.
“Do I repulse you or something?” You frowned.
“Don’t be ridiculous.” He huffed, his voice still tight and breathy. His Adam’s apple bobbed in his pale throat as he swallowed. “I’m not - I’m not used to people touching me like that.” He said quietly.
“Sorry,” you said, pulling your hand away. “I... know what you mean. Everyone who has touched me has damaged me.”
Henry’s eyes followed your hand as you dragged it away.
“Can you-” he paused, words stuck in his throat. “Do you think you can put it back?” It was barely a whisper.
The contrast of this Henry compared to the commanding presence he’d wielded over you in the utility room was so harsh it took you a moment to reconcile that this was the same man.
You obeyed, resting your hand on his thigh again. He exhaled a short, soft breath, his brow knitting down.
“I can barely feel you.” He said sadly.
“Well, I’m not really there.”
He huffed a small breath, turning to look into your shaded eyes. He looked like an angel in the blackness, lit from within, a sort of gentle halo thrumming around him.
“No, you’re not.”
You sat in silence for a while, your cold shade of a hand resting on his leg in the darkness, his face contorting into several different emotions, all lit with the same cerulean blue. Your fingers rubbed idly against the white fabric.
“I can’t... I can’t feel it anymore.” He frowned after a while, looking up at you. “In fact I can barely see you.” He reached out towards your face, but his hand touched nothing, just sank heavily through the air.
“I’m fading, I think. My head is hurting.”
“Then go,” he smiled softly. “You don’t have to sit here with me all night.”
“What if I want that?”
He smiled higher, shaking his head.
“Go, please.” He instructed softly. “There will be testing tomorrow and if you’re exhausted, he’ll know. They’ll medicate you again.”
You sighed, breath falling out into the blackness between you.
“Alright,” you pulled your hand away, and this time he flinched when you removed it.
You stood up, his eyes intense on your form as it began fading in and out of view with the exhausted effort of your psyche.
“Goodnight, Henry. And whatever you do with those -” you nodded down towards the keys still clutched in his fingers. “Be careful. Don’t make me watch them break you again.”
His face held a hung smile, an edge of grief in his eyes.
“I will be careful. I promise.”
With that you faded into nothing, pulled backwards into your body.
You wanted to return to him, properly. You wanted to touch him until you stopped feeling haunted. You wanted to claim every part of him, sink your teeth into his neck, feel the shape of him weighed down by you, by every terrible thing inside you that only he could soothe.
You lay heavily on your mattress, blood trailing a thick path of crimson into your lips and down the side of your cheek. You swiped at it, limbs boneless and sapped, head throbbing as you spun into the pit of dreamless sleep.
***
Henry stood like a chalk sentinel against the dark tiles of the testing room. Perfectly still, perfectly gentle, perfectly observing.
The room still held the ominous imprint of your chaos from weeks prior. The feeling settled oddly against your skin. You stared at the spot where the bodies had crumpled, bloodied and crushed by your chaos. Nothing but shiny black tile stared back at you.
Your throat dried.
You fell into line at the wall with the others. A row of grey, hairless rats, waiting for your lord’s instruction.
“Today you will be tested against each other.” Brenner said as he paced down the line. He moved to the center of the room and outlined two large chalk circles on the floor.
“Each of you will take a turn in the circle. You will attempt to push your opponent out of their circle. Whoever’s feet leave the circle first will be the loser. The winner will face another challenger.” He said brightly, rubbing the chalk off his fingers as he spoke.
You thought about how easy it had been to throw Henry down the hallway. But you hadn’t had an audience then. You hadn't had Brenner's ominous presence looming over you, or the many eyes that now glanced at you warily, the memory of the room not only weighing on you alone.
“Two and Eight, you’ll start. Peter, if you will?”
Two strode into the circle as if he owned it. Eight hesitated, small stature eclipsed by the brutish teen. Henry nodded dutifully, approaching each of them in calm paces, placing blindfolds over their eyes with practiced hands.
It was easy work for Two, easy as swatting flies. You watched as he dispatched his opponents one by one, sending their small feet skirting outside of the chalk lines with his forceful strength, his face curling with smirks of triumph with each subject he sent careening over the floor.
One by one until it was only you, waiting against the wall alone.
“Nineteen.” Brenner nodded.
You studied Two’s face as you stepped forward. It was square, sweaty, arrogant. A deep red blood trail slipping from his nostril to his lip. The edges of the circle were warped and smeared from the many who’d been defeated before you.
Henry stepped up behind you like a ghost. You kept your face rigidly composed as he slipped the blindfold over your eyes. His fingertips ghosted across the top of your ears as he went, heating your entire spine with a static hum.
Your mind trailed into the dark spaces you'd shared as he shrouded your vision. Your body bloomed with heat, yearning to return to them.
“Begin.”
Two’s power thrust forward like a wall against you, a dense thrumming of energy as you attempted to push against it with your own. The two forces ground against each other like opposite ends of a magnet. You felt your heels rise a touch as his turned heavier, becoming leaden against your limbs, a weight that threatened to send you backwards. You could feel the blood already slicking your upper lip as you grunted your own force forward, attempting to move him even an inch.
Then, the taunting began.
“Is that all you’ve got? Useless.” He shoved harder, forcing your heels to lift higher, sliding you back in your circle. “You think you have a chance against me, is that it?”
“Two.” Brenner warned.
“Can’t you see how weak she is Papa? You waste so much time with her.” He snarked. You heard a few of the others snicker in response.
You grunted louder, pushing out more force, but he quickly retaliated, making you slide even further back.
“The six year old gave me more of a challenge than this mangey dog.” Two snarled.
His force began to shift. It took on an odd shape, the wall finessing down into a precise form. It pushed up you in a wave, landing over your throat. It wrapped around your flesh, digging, choking.
Tighter, tighter...
You felt the white-hot agony, splitting you at the seams.
-
All you could taste was the rancid copper. Had your teeth been knocked loose this time? Had you swallowed them? Your fingers were in your mouth, counting them, smearing blood across enamel.
Tattered threads ripped free under your fingernails, tiny fibers of dread, the floorboards beneath you groaned. There was an animal... no, a voice. Was it Death's this time?
“What the fuck did you say?” He snarled, spit flying down onto you.
Is this how you die? Is this how you join her? Blood falling against the tatter as his fist grappled around your collar, yanking you up from the floor.
“Do it.” It's hysterical, pure elation at the thought. Though you really want to say "please... please, don’t make me beg... don’t make me do it myself."
A god, a demon, a man... what was the difference? They all look the same when they're deciding how to damage you. Your head against a rock, a wall, a floor... what was the difference? They all feel the same when your skull is rammed against them.
“I know what you did to her. I know you did it but I just can't prove it.”
It was taunting disguised as begging. Begging through blood and saltwater and bone. His face was a contorted snarl of itself, red-raged and seething. His fingers were digging into the column of your neck, so deep, so brutal, as if to breach the flesh.
It ached and clawed and crushed until it didn’t, until the oxygen was gone, until he had sapped every pathetic atom of it. Until the hall was empty, liminal, white.
Could you hear her? Was she singing? Were you there now? Were you finally gone, was this mercy?
Was this mercy?
-
Darkness had a shape.
The shape of tiles, the shape of grout, the shape of something terrible and powerful and wretched. The shape of Two. Levitating, pinned flat-backed against the wall, his limbs splayed, his fists tight and trembling, pathetic and useless.
Who was doing this? Who had him so violently restrained? Who had their hand outstretched in front of you, fingers splayed? Who was splitting you open straight down the middle?
A crunch, a scream. Then another. Another.
“Enough!”
The hand receded. The arm fell. Two slid to the floor, a whimpering mess, three fingers bent into jagged shapes, face purple and sweat-soaked, his chest heaving with cries.
Your hands were shaking violently, your lips and teeth were saturated in the taste of your own blood.
“Two, can you stand?” Brenner was hovering over the boy, a hand on his shoulder.
He groaned and cried as he was lifted by the arms. “Y-yes Papa.”
The rest of the children were all huddling terror-eyed against the wall.
You found the only face you could. Your sentry, your rook. His face was rigid, his haunting blue gaze already boring into you. He had that look in his eyes again.
Recognition.
“I -” was the only word you knew.
“Peter, take Two to the infirmary. Then return to us.”
Henry nodded, lingering on your bewildered face for a beat before moving.
“The rest of you will return to the rainbow room.” He said simply.
They filed out obediently. You moved to follow them, but you were stopped abruptly, a cold hand around your wrist.
“No.” Brenner spat. “Stay. Sit.”
Like a dog, you did.
He sank you down into an empty chair by the shoulder.
Henry’s eyes darted back to you as he helped Two through the door, the brutish arrogance of the boy reduced to nothing but tears and wails, holding his mangled hand by the wrist.
“Have I not warned you enough, Nineteen?” Brenner snarled, pacing calculated strides in front of you. “Have I not made you understand the gravity of your actions, the seriousness of the consequences?”
You were silent, wordless. You could still feel the dread and despair of what you'd seen writhing through you. It would be all too easy to mangle him as well, wouldn’t it? You could do it right now, you could -
“Don’t even think about it.” Brenner said, his practiced eyes reading every single thought behind yours. “You’re nothing without me, don't you remember? You were nothing before me, and you’ll be nothing after I’m gone.”
You swallowed. His fingers shoved into the buttons of his pager. He leaned down into you, his breath a flume of cold mint and tobacco.
“It seems you have real power, Nineteen. Beyond what I thought, and your progress is nothing short of remarkable. And regrettable as this next part is, it is a necessity. You are fortunate that I do not take away your powers completely. The only reason I am not doing so is because of what you displayed here today. It was... remarkable.”
He clicked his teeth as he eyed you. “Regardless, punishment is inevitable.”
“Papa, please, I didn't mean to -”
He held a rigid hand up, silencing you. The door opened.
Henry's steps faltered a fraction as his eyes darted over you, desolate and slumped in your chair.
“Ah, Peter.” Brenner said curtly, straightening up. “Two?”
“Broken fingers. He should be perfectly fine, once mended.”
Brenner turned his sharp gaze back to you.
“How many?” He asked over his shoulder.
Henry hesitated. “Three.”
“Hm.” Brenner hummed. “Three it is.”
Your head darted back towards the door as one of the guards swung it open, his heavy black boots thumping over the tiles.
“Nineteen - left or right?” Brenner mused casually.
“W-what?”
“Your left hand, or your right hand?”
“Papa, please, I didn’t mean for any of that to happen, I swear, I didn’t even know I was doing it - I didn't even see -”
He leaned down into you again, his face so calm it was sickening.
“I said - left hand, or right hand?”
You knew he wasn’t going to relinquish the reigns of punishment, the thrill of the performance. It tasted too sweet, to satiating for him to surrender.
Henry’s jaw was clenched harder than you’d ever seen it, the blue hue of his eyes depressed into a dark ocean.
“Left.” You murmured weakly.
“Peter, hold her back.”
His command was the blade of a guillotine, coming down across your neck. Ice ran through every one of your veins in slow motion. Henry’s whole body stiffened.
“Doctor Brenner -” He protested, voice stuttering.
Brenner’s fingers cinched a vice around Henry’s wrist. Brutal, bruising, the threat not even disguised. He flinched aggressively, looking more terrified than you thought possible, every perfect feature marred with dread.
He stared at you, his face twisted into helpless guilt and turmoil.
“Now, Peter.”
Henry’s throat worked. He glared into the face of the monster, and then moved, his chest bowing in with a great sigh as he approached you.
For a moment, it was just the two of you. Two chess pieces on the board in the dark, two terrorized souls spinning into each other's eyes with regret and fury and lament toiling in the color.
Henry guided you up from the chair gently, as if trying to ease the brutality that would come next. He slipped his fingers around your right wrist, and stepped behind you. You gasped sharply as he pulled your hand up behind your back, twisting your arm up to your shoulder blades, pinning it there.
“Papa, please -” you choked out.
Brenner simply nodded at the guard. You could feel Henry’s entire body trembling behind you, could hear his breaths wracking through him. In one swift move the guard yanked you to the floor. Henry followed you down, his knees buckling, his grip unyielding. As you yelled out, you heard him whisper, the sound falling sombre and strained from his lips.
“I’m sorry.”
He was a wall behind you, still pinning your right arm back as the guard violently pulled your left to the ground. He crushed his boot to your wrist, forcing your fingers to splay across the tile. You writhed and thrashed, yelling desperate choked pleas. The guard pinned your wrist with his entire weight.
“I’m sorry.” Henry murmured again, his voice breaking over itself, cracking in the back of his throat. “I’m so sorry.”
The pain was almost blinding as the guard's other boot came crashing down onto three of your splayed out fingers. You shrieked, guttural cries of agony as his foot came down again, and again, his entire weight cracking over your fragile fingers, until you could do nothing but whimper and sob. Henry was violently shaking, amongst your own cries you could hear his chest catching with silent, guilt ridden sounds.
“Sufficient.” Brenner said finally. His face was nothing but a collected, composed expression of nonchalance as he stared down at your fingers, mangled a deep, bone-bruised purple, streaked with blood where your skin had torn.
Henry relented your right arm immediately, but his fingers lingered around your wrist, as if he physically couldn’t bring himself to let go. The guard just smirked, straightening himself up and retreating.
“Peter, take her to the infirmary. That looks like it needs attention.” Brenner nodded at your mangled, bruised fingers before leaving the room in his usual clipped stride.
Henry said nothing, only the sound of his ragged breaths in your ear as he led you through the halls, his hand still around your wrist, the other at your upper back. Your sobs of pain drew down as you walked, your fingers throbbing ceaselessly.
He stopped you just outside of the ward.
“I can’t tell you how sorry I am.” His voice was almost a whimper, almost nothing. His eyes were damp and avoidant.
You felt devoid of all emotion but pain.
“It’s not your fault.” You said, voice robotic. “Better Papa hurt me than both of us.”
He looked broken, traumatized. Your eyes felt hollow as they tried to hold the image.
“Besides, I deserved it.”
“Don’t.”
“I hurt Two, Henry. I didn’t mean to, I didn’t even know I was doing it at first. But he - he started choking me. After that it’s like I’d fallen back into a nightmare.” Your voice choked as the images reeled through your mind.
There were cameras, of course there were.
Henry held you anyway, pulling you into him, his body stiff and still trembling with guilt-laden breaths as he held you there, letting you cry against him in your pain in anguish.
“What you did in there -” Henry said finally as your head pulled back from his chest, his tear-stained white shirt. “I’ve seen that kind of power before. Papa has seen it before. You need to be very careful.” He murmured.
Papa...
“What do you mean you’ve seen it before?”
Henry sighed. “There was someone else, before. A long time ago. Someone he could not control. In the end, he took away their power.”
“Soteria.” You murmured.
Henry nodded. “Yes.”
“What happened to them?”
“That story doesn’t have a happy ending, I’m afraid.”
His thumb whispered up your wet, tear-stained cheek. “I meant what I said. I am going to figure this out. Until then, you must do whatever he says, you must be whatever he needs you to be. Don't give him a reason to weaken you.”
You nodded, eyes still wet, fingers throbbing with a hot drench of pain. Henry's hand tightened around your wrist one last time.
“The time will come. You'll need your powers if you're going to survive this place. Or ever leave it.” He breathed.
You knew he was right. The time would come.
To end the nightmare once and for all.
⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘
☣︎ Comment if you'd like to be added to the tag list for this series! ☣︎
Who’d have thought that working 3-4 12hr shifts a week would lead to refractory sleep deprivation😔 I knew it would happen, I just didn’t think I’d be sleeping for 15 hours on my days off
ᯓ★ 001 doesn't have to put on the good boy act when you are asleep.
Pairing: Henry '001' Creel x f!Reader || Stranger Things
Warning: smut, dom!Henry got his powers back, slight manipulation/gaslighting, fear play, still con though, choking, unprotected p in v, cunnilingus, restraints on reader [his powers], feral 001, a bit rough
Chapters: [Part 1] | [Part 2] | [Part 3]
Song: I suggest listening to Closer - Nine Inch Nails for this one. I snuck a few lines of the song in.
001's shoe pressed confidently against the tiling, causing an echoing sound that made your blood freeze. Each step, calm and calculated, chilling.
A thud.
Another.
Nothing but the silence pierced by the sound of his shoes.
The air was heavy, dizzying. In your ears, a subtle ringing, but insistent, a forewarning, matching the pace of your heart.
"Don't do that. You... know better than to do that, sweetheart."
Henry's head cocked to the side so slowly that you couldn't tell if he was taking his time or time itself had stalled. You didn't even realise your feet were working against you, causing you to back with each step 001 took forward, closer to you.
"What's wrong?" 001 furrowed his brow, every muscle in his face tense, his eyes locked on you. Behind them, nothing you could discern, nothing but that radiant otherworldy blue hue that bore through you. "You are not afraid of me, are you? Why are you trying to leave, sweetheart, hm? Answer me."
But you couldn't. The words were stuck in your throat. What was there to be said when you witnessed the orderly fling someone across the room with a mere wave of his hand? His pristine white orderly uniform was stained here and there with prickles of red. Unfortunately, you could've guessed the origin of the crimson liquid even if you hadn't just witnessed 001's show of strength.
"What have you done?"
001 drew back, offended, his head cocked to the side still, before he leaned in closer, conspicuously close to you.
"What have I... done? Sweetheart... you don't remember him? He is the one who dared to..."
"And you killed him?"
001 scoffed.
Why did it matter? The punishment was fit for the offence. That man, a few weeks prior, had dared to act indecently with ludicrous intentions in mind. And now, he was permanently dealt with. Was that not a good deed, if anything? He spared the lab and world of another pest who only sought a body to conquer. He was insignificant, a nuisance that had to be disposed of, and he had done just that. Perhaps, it made sense. At first, you'd not understand his pursuit, but you'll get used to it. You'll learn.
He will teach you.
001 had to remind himself that you, even though you understood him to an extent, still had your mind plagued and corroded by the ideals and desires that those pests bore, and he had to unteach you. To show you the truth of his path. So the tension in him eased, his lips relaxed in a smile, and his hand came to your cheek. Despite what you had seen, his hand was not any different from the hand you were used to, from the hand which caressed you time and time again.
It was the same delicate texture, the same slightly cool skin that stroked your cheek.
"I understand, sweetheart. It is all so... so new to you... You are only starting to see it now. But I will take care. I will make you understand the world the way it should be understood. It will be scary at first... unlearning... it is always scary."
"What are you talking about?"
"Shhh... Don't question it now. Back when I saw the truth, I was alone. But you have me, sweetheart. You should be grateful. In this new, better world... with the right order..."
"You need to stop this."
"No... No, sweetheart, don't oppose it. Don't you trust me?"
"I do! I... I did. But I just saw you..."
"No. What you saw... it was necessary. I showed you that fear... is not something that should rule you anymore. It was fear all along that made us hide, was it not? This fear... of what? Of him?" 001 pointed at the man splattered on the floor a fair distance away from you. "No. You were not afraid of him, but of what he represented. The hierarchy, it can all fade away, but you have to let go of everything you have up here," the index of his right hand pressed lightly against your forehead. "And let me show you the true nature of this world. Accept this gift... and you won't have to feel fear, frustration, pain... nothing of the kind."
"This can't be."
"But it can... You saw the proof before your eyes. What I can do... is it not proof of a gift? A gift I can offer you."
001 saw you were hesitant.
He didn't like that you had to think about it; after all, did he not prove his loyalty to you? He could have taken his revenge for your punishment, but he chose to allow it, and now you were hesitant. A soft displeased grunt left his throat, and the noise, in sheer contrast to the room's stillness, made you nod.
"I accept it."
There was worry in your voice, concern, as if you said it only to please 001. The man dreaded that, the fact you felt you had to say something for his sake. The orderly wanted you to be eager to join him. Eager to share his vision and be by his side. You were lucky. You were different and had the potential the others in this lab lacked, and more than that, you were the one person he would have done anything for.
"Is it fear that makes you accept it?" 001 lifted you slightly off the ground, his hand making you levitate until your feet no longer touched the tiled floor. "Hm, sweetheart? No... It's not fear that should rule you. Accept it because you believe in me, and my cause. It must become our cause."
"I mean it, I accept it..."
"And yet, I still sense fear in you, sweetheart. This... power can be used for good."
001 got an idea, bringing you closer and keeping you still with his powers. He leaned into your ear, speaking barely above a whisper.
"Allow me to prove it to you, sweetheart."
001 shoved you back into the wall with his powers. He wasn't as rough as he could have been, merely using this chance to display a figment of what he could do. With you stuck against the wall with his powers, he approached, his eyes trailing predatorily from your eyes, lower to your body, taking in everything now that you were at the mercy of his power. From your lips to your neck, shoulders, chest and below, nothing escaped 001, a smile tugging at his lips.
"Do you... understand now, sweetheart? No... no. I am getting ahead of myself. We've merely begun."
He held you still against the wall, his hand looming over your shirt, playing teasingly with the fabric, slowly, gently lifting it. It was enough for his hand to sneak underneath and feel the contours of your skin, far warmer than his own. The contrast of heat made a soft, curious hum leave his lips as his hand rode up underneath your shirt, the fabric rising too with the motion, revealing your abdomen. But as tempting as that was, 001 wasn't looking at the revealed skin.
His eyes were locked on yours, learning every reaction, as minimal as it was; each arch, each wince, all had a display on your features, and 001 needed to memorise them. The soft quiver in your lips, the hue in your cheeks, the soft squeeze of your eyes shut.
The man exhaled.
He removed his hand with a displeased grunt. Your shirt was slowing him down, distracting him, so he lowered you with his powers, just enough so he could personally tug it off your shoulders and discard it on the floor, before stunning you again.
"Does he bother you, sweetheart?" 001 asked, his hand reaching behind you to unclasp your bra and remove it too, calm. Imperturbable. Unphased by the sight of your breasts, which before would have humbled him to his knees. He was in control now, your body his to play with.
His finger curled and came to rest underneath your chin, holding your head up to face him.
"Who?"
001 nodded. The orderly liked this answer better.
"That pest. The sight... It had upset you before, sweetheart. I am glad... You're no longer focused on what isn't important."
You remembered the dead body in the corner of the room, which had left your mind in such a swift way once 001 began to play with you. After all, like all beings, when you were the target, your mind would become selfish and seek its own survival. But was it survival? You knew 001 wasn't going to harm you, and yet you couldn't help the looming anxiety that you felt with each movement he made, his mannerisms so close to that of a hunter, carefully running the game where he wanted it to be.
001 did the same with your lower half, as he had with the upper. He didn't need the clothes to distract him. Yet as he undressed you, he couldn't help but feel a slight... resistance against his powers.
"Don't you fear we'll be caught?"
001 sneered.
"I mean, our room... why did you kill him here? He will be found."
"Do you believe we'll be here for much longer, sweetheart? This room... It no longer matters... Nor does this facility. Nor anyone inhabiting it."
001 made sure you were completely naked before he released you from his powers, allowing your own feet to keep you upright. His hand came to your neck, thumb pressed lightly into your pulse point as he held you before him, head tilted forward so his forehead was against yours.
"From now on, sweetheart, you must unlearn everything and start again. Everything here is a lie," 001 lifted the cuff of his orderly shirt, exposing his tattoo to you. "But you are no longer under its haze. I will help you see it all clear..."
Your eyes lingered on the tattoo.
Brenner had never told you; he had always made it a point to never talk about 001.
"My name is Henry."
"Henry..."
Hearing his real name off your lips stunned him for a second, so used to hearing that false alias of Peter Ballard. For a moment, he was back at that soft, yearning man he had been before he regained his powers. For a moment, he gazed into your eyes with a humble frailty that made you reach out and hold his cheek.
No.
001 drew back.
He must not be weak. It was not the time for that.
Henry could have used his powers to have you on the bed, but he chose his own strength over it. He picked you up, cheating a little as he did use his powers to make his time easier, but that didn't matter. Before you could do as much as complain, you were back on that bed that had witnessed far too many times the lengths of Henry's longing for you. He unbuttoned his shirt, shrugging it off his shoulders with your aid, then helped himself out of his trousers as swiftly as he could before his hand was on your cheek, guiding you to lie back with him hovering over you.
"You denied me this... for so long; all I've wanted was to be able to have you... and you denied me. At first, I had to deny myself... to respect you... to worship you, sweetheart. And then you punished me for my restraint..."
He pressed his forehead against yours, one hand on your cheek, the other reaching boldly to your thigh. Henry's breathing hitched as he felt how warm your flesh was in his palm, how obediently you allowed him to find his way between your legs. How right it felt for his body to be against yours.
"Will you deny me again?" Henry sounded as if he wouldn't take no for an answer, and yet you knew that he would; for you, he would restrain himself again, but this time, why should you have him hold back? "No, I see it in your eyes, in your mind. You will not play any more games with me. Isn't that right, sweetheart?"
His lips lingered at the sensitive spot beneath your ear, pecking it, making your body shiver.
"Yes, that's it, sweetheart. Obey it. That hunger within you, let it speak, let it consume you... It is uncorrupted hunger, devoid of this world's impurities. The only desire I allow myself to feel..." Henry's lips trailed across your neck, leaving soft kisses from beneath your ear all the way across your pulse point and to your clavicle. "The only desire you will allow yourself to feel from today on."
Henry continued to kiss, below to your breasts, humming praises over them as he appreciated the feel of a woman's body. The softness of your chest, the taste of your nipple as he twirled his tongue over it, giving it a gentle suck before releasing it, both of them receiving the same treatment before he moved on lower. He kissed your sides, your stomach, thighs, knees, and calves, to your ankles, his eyes closed to fully feel everything, every spark of that desire as it set him ablaze, yearning for more.
He moved up again, his lips trailing across the inside of your thighs until he reached your cunt. This time you were awake to see and feel it all, observe how he guided your legs to rest on his shoulders, his eyes glued to yours as he let his head descend lower, mouth pressing reverent kisses on your cunt.
"We will relearn everything together... From this..." He gave your cunt a long lick, tongue pressed flat between its lips, gathering your taste and letting it spur him on. "Do you think you can take that, sweetheart? Oh... even if you can't..." He flicked his tongue over your clit, grunting needily, "I will make sure you can. That's why you have me, after all... to make sure you can take it..."
He anchored his arms around your thighs, keeping them on his shoulders as he started eating you out. Your hand reached down to grab his hair, but he lazily glanced up, using his powers to force your arms above your head, pinned to the bed, eyes closing to devour you again. His mouth was relentless, starved, lapping everything he could. The more your body tried to arch and escape him, the more your hips jerked and rolled, the harder he used his powers to keep you still, to make you take it.
It was as if you could hear him in your mind, vividly, telling you, "Don't try to escape it, sweetheart, let it consume you."
He could have used his fingers again, but he didn't want to give you that satisfaction. Your cunt had to crave him, so all you'd have for warm-up was his tongue abusing the sensitivity of your clit until you came undone, held in place with his powers.
Your desperate arches stood no chance in front of his powers, and he had to put in no effort to have you spread open for him as soon as he was done.
He wiped his mouth, taking in the sight of his progress. The way your body was taking in the aftermath of an orgasm he leisurely gave you with his tongue alone.
Henry wasn't done.
Not so easily.
He guided your thighs to rest against his hips as he moved to hover over you, your bodies pressed snug together so he could feel every inch of your skin bare against his own. This union, so strange and enticing, so human yet right, despite the pestilence nature of humanity. You wanted to speak, to say something, but you didn't get to because his lips found yours and he used the opportunity to deepen the kiss right away. Henry's tongue was gentle in its wake, exploring with care the taste of yours against his, the flavour of your mouth and his own, your own slick's savour mingling with the taste of your saliva.
What a strange and alluring blend of tastes which he took in greedily, his body moving against yours reflexively.
Despite all, his nature was undeniably human.
He too felt what was right in this moment. What a human ached to have at a time like this. His hand reached down between your bodies, and he angled himself against your cunt, lips away from yours just enough to warn you.
"It will be for only a moment," Henry cautioned, his words a mere whisper above your lips, "Allow me to be in you... mind and body, sweetheart... Let me feel, explore it all... Let me have it all..."
A soft grunt, the head of his cock prodding your cunt.
"Let go... Let yourself go... Let me be the Master of your mind and body," Henry's breathing quickened, heart pounding in his chest as he felt himself slowly make progress, his cock pushing inside you. "That's it, sweetheart, you're so brave for me..."
Henry didn't want this torturous ache to keep you apart any longer, and his hips thrust forward sharply, a loud gasp filling the room as he pressed himself to the hilt inside you. Your cunt welcomed him, but not without a slight opposition at first, which faltered quickly upon hearing his voice encouraging you to have him.
His voice felt like it came from not only his mouth but your own mind, as if he knew how to talk to you without words.
And then it changed.
Whatever gentleness he gave at first turned to need. His hand latched onto your throat to keep you at his mercy on the bed, his hips pressed harder into yours despite already being as deep inside you as he could be. When your hands tried to claw at his shoulders, he glared at you, forcing them down again with his powers.
"That will not work, sweetheart; haven't you learned?"
He began to move his hips against yours, thrusting so slowly it was torturous, yet he loved it. He loved the way your eyes welled up with tears, aching for a different pace. Yes, those tears, those same tears you had him spill, now were in your eyes. Henry licked his lips, his other hand finding your breast and giving it a slight squeeze, groping it.
The sensation caused you to arch slightly, but Henry shoved his hips forward against yours, punishingly, his cock snapping into you, causing you to moan and obey him again. Lying with him, resuming the slow, aching pace.
"I wanted you for so... so long, sweetheart. Why should I rush? You don't understand the power it takes to hold back now... I am afraid your body would not endure the things I wish to do to it."
Henry gave your lower lip a nip.
"Perhaps, if you are so eager... I should give it to you, hm?" His tone was almost mocking you. "Perhaps you will surprise me... with your... resilience."
Henry tightened the hold on your throat, his hips picking up the pace in an instant, cock thrusting inside you like a feral animal, desperate to conquer your body. He was driven by something he couldn't understand, a need, a hunger that he didn't lose himself to before as completely as he had now. His mind was no longer his own, but it was intoxicated with the need to keep going, no matter what; he had to keep going. He was capable of destroying an army with a flick of his head if they'd dare interrupt him in this moment.
He grunted, his cock working at a pace that made you arch and moan, yet this time Henry didn't keep you still with his powers. No. This time he wanted to see what he made you feel. He wanted to feel each reaction of your body as he claimed it, your body and mind, both his.
He growled, leaning into your ear.
"That's it, sweetheart. Help me get away from myself..."
It was addicting, this feeling of his mind no longer his own but vassal to his desire. Vassal to the shared need you had too.
"I want to feel you from the inside."
Your body was his, but he was greedy. Henry wouldn't stop at that.
He pulled out and rolled you onto your chest, driving inside you again, this time from behind. Henry's hand slid up the back of your head, burying his fingers into your hair, gentle at first, almost hypnotic before he gripped and pulled your head back. His lips came by your ear, licking the shell of it as he pounded into you.
Your mind was as easy to penetrate as your cunt.
He kissed the back of your neck, his mind doing the talking now while he pounded into you.
"You belong to me, sweetheart. And you will take everything I give you... Without ever complaining." Henry gasped, feeling your cunt throb around him. Oh, that was right; you were close; he could feel your body nearing it. "We... are one now. Your mind is my servant. Its servant. Pride yourself on this gift..."
He kept going, his cock twitching too; after all, your minds and bodies aligned had the effect of your needs to match too. He continued at the same pace he felt you enjoyed most, one hand in your hair, the other sliding down between your legs to tease your clit.
The sensation brought tears to your eyes again, too much to take. Even if it was good, it was too much, but Henry didn't stop. That was what he wanted, to push you past every boundary you once believed yourself limited by. Quicker, more. More, until your body was mindlessly subdued to his will.
"Cum for me."
And you did, and so did he, the command powerful enough to bend the limits of both your bodies as you came undone. The bliss was liberating, your body shivering, arching into his and his own coiled around you, hips pressed into yours, seeking to cum deeper inside you. Fascinating, the bliss, the need for closeness, for absorbing the other and to become one.
He had achieved it, more than any other human ever could.
And still, it was a trick, for it wasn't enough.
He let himself drop against your back, panting, barely able to catch his own breath as you did the same. He was worn out, more than he had ever been, but it was to a blissful extent. A magnetic and captivating extent. He found your mind so easy to bend to his will, so willing that as he had fucked you, it felt as if your mind had become his; not a mere servant, but its equal and mirror.
"Are you alright, sweetheart?"
You nodded, too weak to respond with words, but pleased enough to give him an answer. His power had been indeed enchanting, because you felt it in a way that made you want to have it.
Henry had achieved it.
He had successfully shown you the allure of this gift. And had you not already wanted to be with him, you certainly did now. Henry moved away from you, giving you room to catch your breath without his weight on you. He helped you roll on your back, his hand caressing your cheek as he observed the beauty of your body. It lay there, recovering from his demonstration.
How beautiful it was, how stunning.
The only one deserving of learning to stray away from the deceptive rules of this world, away from fear. Another like himself. And despite how much there was still left for you to learn, Henry had managed to overcome the most important barrier.
Your mind, the opposition against change.
With that aside, everything else would be only a matter of time.
He pushed himself up and dressed himself while you turned to give him a curious look. With his back turned to you, he already knew you were watching. Your mind was his, wasn't it? Your thoughts- he heard them, tasted them. He knew you were curious.
Henry's head turned to yours, that menacingly innocent smile on his lips again. Yet, you found solace and comfort in it now as you always had.
"Don't worry, sweetheart..."
Henry placed a tender kiss on your forehead.
"I will be back before you know it. There are still some... things... in this facility that I must mend before we can leave."
NOTE: Thank you everyone for requesting Part 4. Even made a specific new banner for it. Hope it was worth the wait :3
COMMENT if you want to be added to the tag list so you're notified each time I post! [if any of the @ people wish to be removed, also be sure to let me know!]
Summary: You weren't even conscious. And you were the most threatening thing in the room.
Stolen moments and a bad drug reaction lead to the binds of obsession tightening around you and Henry.
Pair: Henry Creel/Vecna/001 x Female Reader
Content/Warning Labels: dark slowburn, Henry POV, flashbacks, Hawkins Lab, Martin Brenner is his own warning, angst, medical abuse, pills, drug trip, forbidden relationship/yearning, kissing, voyeurism, masturbation
WC: 7.3k | Read on Ao3
(Part One - Part Two - Part Three - Part Four - Part Five)
Somewhere between the swamp and the mountains. Somewhere between fear and sex. Somewhere between God and the Devil passion is, and the way there is sudden and the way back worse.- Jeanette Winterson, The Passion
[HENRY]
Henry knew it was reckless. Feeling like this.
Yet, the thought seemed obscured behind the magnetism that pulled like a hook from his gut.
His body still pained, his ribs and soft tissues aching with the remnants of his punishment. Not the worst he’d had, of course, owing to Brenner’s knack for punishment pageantry, but still one that lingered for days after he’d left the staff infirmary.
He should have walked away then. He should have put an end to the longing, the stolen glances, the nights he spent mulling over the question of you and the lines of your shape, the hue of your eyes, which were so marred with the grit of damage.
Though the question remained, crawling through him like a slow venom, one he was powerless to suck out.
Who were you? How did you come to be here? What had Brenner made you for? He couldn’t let it go.
When he saw you in that god forsaken collar, one of Brenner’s favourite toys, he felt it like a fist around his throat. Was it the same one that had so lovingly graced his own neck countless times? He could still feel it's imprint, even now, and like a map of pain the memory of it seemed to light up every other scar the lab had left on him. He stood there, watching you, collecting every purple bruise on your jawline with his eyes like shreds of evidence, filing them away inside his head.
For someone so broken, you seemed so in control, sitting there at the chess table, nose dripping crimson onto the board. You were starting to learn to be calculating. He felt you before he saw you. The soft grace of your fingertips upon his knuckles. He was surprised he could hear you, your voice reaching him as if he was in the bottom of a well. Hollow and dark.
“Peter…”
He couldn’t stand it. He couldn’t stand the name. He couldn’t stand that it was invading your mouth, stealing the place of the name he wanted to pass your lips instead.
So he chose. Waited until midnight. Descended the steps to the machinery room. Left the rook on the bottom step. Lurked in the dark, pacing, waiting.
He didn’t know if you’d come. He didn’t know if you’d risk it.
What would you risk, for him? Anything? Everything?
He’d only wanted to know if you were okay, at first. That want turned into a writhing need as he watched your face, lit in dark blue. A need he couldn’t stand, a need he wanted to indulge more than anything.
His blood ran hot with malice as he imagined Brenner’s calloused hands clenching around your delicate jaw. When you compared him to the monster with that venom in your voice, he couldn’t stand it.
There was a war raging inside him, dragging him like a restless tide. Nothing felt real anymore, not really. Nothing except you, standing in the veil, a beacon.
And he shattered against it.
He imagined this is how it was to taste fire, what Icarus tasted behind his teeth the moment before he wrenched back down from the heavens, wings aflame.
He’d never felt so strangled yet so alive. The taste of you was an unravelling, and he wanted nothing more than to be pulled apart stitch by agonizing stitch.
His name. His real name, in your mouth. It was a siren song in his ears, unmooring him entirely, drawing him helplessly into the depths of you. The way you looked at him, because you knew how it sat in the bones to have your identity stripped and stolen from you. He knew then that your restless hearts beat the same broken rhythm.
He wanted to hold yours in his hand, bloody, watch it pulse with life.
***
[019]
Your mind was rotting.
The usual dredge of darkness and fear looming within you had only been concentrated by Henry's warnings. His words hung like lead in your ears.
Prisoners, weapons. Caught, lured.
Underneath it all, the question of his identity. Hammering into you like a rusted nail. You understood well enough that you and all the people here were bound to this place, like mice in glue.
But it didn't make sense. Why would his identity be a secret?
You wondered if all of the staff had fake identities. Was it a safe-guard of Brenner's? In case anyone escaped, told someone about the people here? So there was no way to trace them, no way to know them? Perhaps.
The incessant buzzing of your brain was only calmed by the ghost of Henry on your lips. Your fingertips danced across the surface slowly as you sat there. Your ears felt full of water, as if you were tumbling at the bottom of a lake. A lake so blue it could never exist anywhere other than a dream or an oil painting.
You could barely hear the clipped inflection of Brenner’s voice.
“Nineteen.”
“Hmm?” Your gaze snapped upwards.
“Your focus is waning.”
“I - just didn’t sleep very well, that’s all.”
In reality, you hadn’t slept at all. The shape of the fluorescent lights set into the ceiling above you had morphed into his face in the dark. The shape of his lips. The shape of his eyes.
The ghost of him haunting every corner of you.
Brenner studied you in his usual calculated silence that made the back of your neck ache.
“Your concentration is vital to our work here Nineteen. Sleep is essential for that concentration.”
He noted something down on the clipboard before returning his eyes to you. Your eyes traced his hand movement, and your jaw ached with the imprint of his violent fingers.
“The nurse will bring you something to help you sleep tonight. And you’ll take it, without incident. Won’t you?”
Your throat dried, your neck aching with the memory of the collar.
“Yes, Papa.”
He nodded approvingly. “Good. Now, one more time. I want you to tell me what the pictures are.”
His hands rustled a stack of images which were concealed from you, only the glossy white backs of the paper visible.
You sighed through your teeth, and closed your eyes. The needle began scratching furiously on the monitor as you tuned your mind inward like a psychic radio.
“Don’t linger too long. Just tell me the first thing that you see. You may begin.” He instructed smoothly.
Your brow knitted as an image came to you. Red, shiny, with a dirt coloured stem.
“Apple.”
“Good.” Brenner said, his pen scrawling.
You heard the paper rustle, and the image shifted. The flash of a great concrete overpass glared through your mind in the static.
“Bridge?”
“Correct.”
The papers rustled again. You frowned deeper, your concentration beginning to wane, a fat drop of blood pooling at your nostril.
“What do you see?”
“Um -”
“Don’t linger.”
“No it’s a - a cloud. I think.”
“Yes.”
The needle beside you was beginning to wobble in response to your psychic exhaustion, the lines becoming jagged and slowed.
“How about now?”
The next image didn’t fade in or gather softly at the edges until you could make it out. It came crashing into the darkness of your mind like an iron fist.
Metal, rusted yellow, with shrill wheels and the groan of an ancient engine.
“B-”
“Go on.”
The word felt like vomit forcing its way out of you.
“Bus.” You choked out.
You were doused in cold dread as you sat there, the image invading every corner of your mind. It pulsed with the shrieking sounds of bare breaks, and the grim face of a man with age-nobbled knuckles hung lazily around the wheel.
Then, a second of film grain. A clipping cinema reel.
Your feet moving down the metal-floored aisle. Your body sinking into a seat with ripped upholstery.
The needle had stopped wobbling. It was scratching furiously now, so intensely it sounded like it was tearing the thermal paper beneath it. You were trembling, the blood from your nose now streaming a slick crimson river over your lip.
“Nineteen.” Brenner said sternly as your eyes swiveled aggressively behind your stuck eyelids.
Your breathing was coming in ragged bursts as you helplessly tried to claw at the images, like you were simultaneously trying to pull more out of it and keep it concealed.
“Nineteen. Come back to the room. Now.” It wasn’t a request.
This was how it always began.
The unravelling, the mental delirium that had painful and often catastrophic consequences. You were bowing to it once more, letting the weight crush down upon you, when something else began leaking into the confines of the image.
Henry.
Flickering in and out of focus. A still image of him at first, like an angelic overlay within the dread. Then, his hand moved, hot and alive, gripping yours from somewhere behind the pieces. The feeling yanked you back into the room abruptly.
Your eyes flew open, and you pulled the wired crown from your buzzed head, chucking it down, chest heaving. Blood had fallen in heavy droplets onto the white table in front of you. You smeared your face with the back of your sleeve, tasting the rancid copper on your teeth.
“What did you see?” Brenner asked tightly.
“A bus.”
He eyed you skeptically.
“That was all?”
“At first. Then -” you paused for a fraction, remembering Henry’s warnings like a lit up neon sign behind your eyes. “Then it was black. Nothing.”
Brenner’s face was laden with disbelief. He inhaled a pointed breath and turned over the image in his hand and held it up. A yellow cartoon bus.
“So I was right then?” You said, body still trembling. “It was a bus.”
Brenner studied you over his nose, his face held like he was making several silent calculations. “Indeed.”
The room felt heavy, occupied with something other than the two of you and the whirring of the monitor dying down.
“Odd, don’t you think?” He said, a heavy skeptical lilt in his voice.
“Odd, Papa?” You swallowed.
“Your reaction. To nothing. To blackness, you say?”
Your heart kicked a little. You had to get better at lying.
“I - I don’t know why that happened.”
A low, short hum was all he offered as he eyed you over his nose again. The air thickened as he studied you, until finally he rose into his tall, imposing frame and slid his pen into his blazer pocket.
“We can end here. The orderly will see you to your room. The nurse will be along later - to help you sleep.” He smiled, a menacing curve to it that he couldn’t quite soften.
You weren’t surprised when the orderly who came in at the sound of the buzzer was another lifeless face you didn’t care for. Of course it wasn’t Henry, it was never Henry anymore. Brenner had seemingly made it so that his movements hardly ever coincided with you now. Another string of control he was pulling on the puppet of his kingdom.
You rose to follow the orderly out.
"Oh, and Nineteen?" He said, a thick honey in his sinister tone.
"Yes, Papa?"
"You won't lie to me again."
***
[HENRY]
Henry could’ve left the rook anywhere. The machinery room, a supply closet, some blind corner of the lab that meant nothing. But it was the memory of your mouth, and the fact of your very existence, that emboldened him into recklessness. The intimacy of your bedroom drew him in, far better than any cold corner of the lab.
He sat white-knuckled on his bed, waiting for the drag of the clock hands. He didn’t know what he wanted to say. He didn’t have a plan. He didn’t have a reason or some classified information to share.
He just wanted to sit in your warmth.
Which was somehow more terrifying to him than any of Brenner’s classified nightmares. More terrifying than the white-walled hell that had stretched out in front of him for so long.
You were an angel. You were a weapon. Both things could be true.
Midnight came, and he moved. Swiftly as always, waiting for the telltale gurgle of the coffee machine before fully slipping out into the halls. He’d mastered the art of making his steps almost noiseless on the linoleum. His shoulders relaxed once he rounded the corner to your bedroom door.
Locked. From the outside?
His brow knitted. He could hear the faint splattering of water running. He drove the floor key into the lock, and slipped in, clicking the door shut behind him.
The room was oddly dark. He flicked on the desk lamp, and his eyes were met with disarray. Paper scattered everywhere, your clothes and shoes tossed haphazardly around, a capless pen on the floor.
Then, his ears drew back to the sound of the shower.
The bathroom door was ajar. He could see your bare legs across the floor of the shower, feet out the door.
For a cold second, he was paralyzed. You weren’t moving. You hadn’t reacted to the light, to the sound of him entering the room. He hardly felt himself move toward you.
The sight of you made his heart twist with dread. His fingers slammed around the shower knob, shutting off the frigid water, which had completely saturated you. For a moment he just stared at you, eyes tight on you until he saw your chest inflate with a ragged breath.
He slid his hands beneath your arms and pulled you up out of the shower. The water on you soaked into his white uniform as he held you against him, moving you onto the bedroom floor. He sat you up against the end of the bed.
“Nineteen?” His hand slapped lightly against your face. You didn’t move. He sighed, and grabbed the towel from the hook.
He carefully dried your face first, so pale and white from the cold water. You whimpered but didn’t move as he wrapped the towel around the back of your neck and ran it across your shoulders.
He tried not to look. He knew it was wrong. But his eyes moved without instruction. His gaze flickered down to your chest.
Your white tank was soaked and utterly see-through. The soft swell of your breasts and the darkened pop of your nipples made his breath catch in the back of his throat.
He forced his gaze away and focused on running the towel down your arms, until he found his eyes following the line of them back up to your chest. He threw the towel over your torso, flustered, and tried to soak the water out of your tank, pressing his hands against you. It was useless, though. All he was doing was wetting the towel. He couldn’t put you into bed like this.
“Can you hear me?” Henry murmured, his hand on your cold cheek, trying to ask permission from someone with the consciousness of a corpse.
You didn’t respond. He didn’t have any other option. You were shivering aggressively.
The breath he drew in was shaky as his fingers hooked softly under the bottom of your tank.
To him, it felt like witnessing something both sacred and sinful. He revealed more of you, peeling your tank up with cautious fingers, faltering for a beat when he reached the bottom of your breasts. He tried looking away as he drew the tank up over them, and it worked for a moment, until he realized he had to get your arms out of it.
He picked up your forearm and bent it carefully, folding it through the armhole. As he rested your arm down against yourself and reached for the other, his gaze fell back to your chest.
So bare, so beautiful. He felt his fingers go numb as he stared, taking in every curve, every shade, every bump and ridge of your nipples.
His stomach lurched violently.
He pulled your other arm through, and lifted it over your head. He threw the soaked tank into the open shower cube. He ran the towel over you, smoothing it across your chest, your torso, underneath the soft folds of your breasts.
Then he sat back, knees bent, just staring for a while. The odd whimper fell from you, but you were completely gone.
You wouldn’t know, would you? You wouldn’t feel him if he just…
His hand moved too suddenly for him to control it, before he could even comprehend it's motion. His fingertips whispered over the swell of your breast, slowly, his eyes darting up into your face to check if you were responding to it.
You weren’t, and it made something reckless twist inside him.
His touch grew firmer, his fingers greedier as he dragged his thumb down and across your nipple. It was already a hardened peak from the cold. He circled the pad of his thumb over it just once.
Your breathing picked up at that, and it made him panic.
He pulled his hand away.
You were in no state to be fawned over. Yet, here he was, eyes wide as planets, hands hungry and tingling at the thought of you bare underneath them. He smoothed the towel over your hips. Your underwear were saturated as well. His throat dried as he tried to ignore it, brushing the towel down your bare thighs, pulling it over your calves to your ankles.
You were shivering again.
“Nineteen?” He asked again, louder. He tried to rouse you, shaking your shoulder gently. It was useless.
He told himself he had no choice, that it was a matter of your health and comfort. And maybe that was true, in part. But a much more selfish part of him was what drove his fingers to reach for the waist band of your wet underwear.
Henry felt every atom of air leave his lungs as he slid them down over your hips. He averted his gaze as he peeled the wet fabric down your legs.
Then, his eyes drew back up. What harm would it bring you, to look?
The breath he drew in was sharp as his gaze came to rest on the flesh between your legs. For a moment, a long one, he didn’t feel his heart beat at all. Then, suddenly it was violent and hammering in his chest, threatening to break free.
He felt wretched, wrong, and yet he didn't look away. He took in every shape, every delicate fold, every plush part of you with his hungry eyes, cataloguing every detail.
Until you whimpered again, and a cold panic shot through him. He hadn't even realized his hands were on your thighs, his fingertips and thumbs gripping into you.
You weren’t even conscious, and you were the most threatening thing in the room.
Once he realized you were shivering again, he forced his attention away and crossed the room to your single drawer. He took out a grey tank and underwear, his fingers brushing over the fabric as he thought about it gracing your skin, clinging to you like he wanted to so desperately.
He was gentle, cautious, trying his best to control the self-indulgent glances that keep drawing his eyes to your bare body as he dressed you. He pulled your underwear softly up your legs and over the curve of your hips. He fed each of your arms gently through the holes of the tank and drew it down over your chest and torso.
You huffed quietly.
“Nineteen?” He asked again, brushing a thumb up your temple.
Nothing.
He pulled back the covers of your bed and picked you up. One arm snug under your knees, one arm supporting your lolling head. You were warmer now, a flush of pink coming back to you. Part of him just wanted to stand there and hold you like this until dawn. He lay you in the bed, rest your head back on the pillow, and pulled the blankets up over your chest. He stood at the bedside for a moment.
He wanted to crawl in next to you. He wanted to run away. He wanted to bang his head into the wall for looking at you. He wanted to peel your clothes back off and look closer.
With a long, quiet sigh he dragged the chair over and sat, his eyes lingering on your face. He curled his hand in to yours, barely noticing as the night began to press in on him.
***
[019]
The control, the illusion. All of it.
It was going to slip. Piece by fluorescent piece.
The first piece was sitting on the floor, nestled into a tight crevice of your bedroom door frame, almost unnoticeable against the white tile.
Henry's rook.
You bent down casually, pretending to adjust your scuffs, blocking the crevice with your body as you curled it into your palm.
“Thanks.” You muttered to the orderly, who nodded without a word and plodded off down the corridor.
You clicked the door shut behind you, and paced softly about the room, fondling the rook and it's carved ridges between your fingers.
Henry wanted to meet here? Here in the camera-less confines of your room?
Your stomach lurched with the same violent heat that seemed tightly stitched to your every thought of him, and you lay on the thin mattress of your bed, staring up at the cracked ceiling tiles for what seemed like forever.
Your mind felt like it was being pulled at the seams with everything it was holding.
The broken pieces of yourself, coming to you in jagged, unending shards. Your fixation with Henry and the ghost of him haunting your mouth. The memories of his tortured shrieks. The dread that was slowly uncoiling the more you learned about where you were.
Eventually, the sound of the door opening made you flinch. You swiftly stuffed Henry’s rook into the pocket of your grey sweatpants, and sat up, swinging your legs over the edge of the bed.
A nurse with a sharp face strode in, her white kitten heels clicking over the tiles.
“Doctor Brenner has requested a sleeping aid for you.”
Your eyes narrowed. “What kind of sleeping aid?”
“Medicinal.”
You could feel the rook in your pocket. You looked at the clock.
10pm.
Henry would be here in two hours. Could you fight the effects for that long? Would you even be able to hold a conversation? Surely it was a simple concoction to make you groggy a worst.
At least, that's what you told yourself.
But you knew better. You knew Brenner for what he really was. And if it was anything as controlling and insanity-fueling as the rest of it...
The nurse held out a tiny plastic cup of water and a brown pill bottle, rattling it slightly in her fingers as she eyed you. You didn't move.
“Doctor Brenner assured me there wouldn’t be a fuss. You wouldn’t want to have me send for him now, would you? You wouldn’t want to interrupt your dear Papa’s night, would you? He is such a busy man...”
You throat worked, fingers flickering into your palm, a reactive fist almost forming at her words. You brushed your hand over your thigh, bumping over the rook again.
There was a time for fighting, and a time for surrender. Henry could come back tomorrow. You’d tell him they'd given you something. You'd leave him a note and then drift off into a dreamless slumber, which if you were honest, did seem like it could be a salve to your aching head.
You took the pill bottle and cup from her with tentative fingers. Her tilted smile made it obvious she wasn’t going to leave until you’d downed them. You hesitated for a beat to long, and her fingers fell to her pager.
“No! No, I’m taking them.” You stuttered.
Three fat little pink pills sat threateningly in the bottom of the bottle. You exhaled sharply, and threw them back into your throat, following with the water, swirling it all down against the dryness.
“Now open.” She smiled.
“What?”
“Open.” She said more sternly, her smile dropping.
You opened your mouth and tipped your head back as she inspected you. The fact that Brenner could control you like this, using nothing but the threat of his presence and a small-statured nurse you could have easily thrown down the corridor, wasn't lost on you.
“Good.” She said snidely. “Sleep well.” She clicked out of the room, shutting the door behind her. It locked from the outside with a clunk.
You had just under two hours until Henry would be here. What had you taken? What would it do to you? The panic rising within you seemed to be making it take effect faster, like some sort of sick nocebo.
10:23pm.
The room was suddenly too warm, flushing your face. You shed your sweater and flung it across the room, limbs already feeling careless. You could feel your head pulsing at the edges. How long had you been staring at the wall? The clock looked distorted as you squinted at it accusingly.
10:40pm
Fuck, when had that much time passed?
You could feel yourself slipping as you stared at the wobbling hands. You kicked your shoes off. Your socks disappeared somewhere without your knowledge. The cold tiled floor was sending a buzz up through your feet. You paced around it like a madwoman, counting on your fingers in an attempt to combat the fog settling behind your eyes.
How many numbers were there? How many fingers did you have? There was a bus rambling around the curves of your brain.
11:07pm
You peeled your sweatpants off and lay on the floor in nothing but your white tank and underwear, trying to use the cold tiles as an anchor. You could feel the rook being rolled around by fingers that didn’t feel attached to your hand.
I just need to cool down. I just need to cool… I just…
The ceiling plaster was breaking off in chunks and landing in your mouth, choking you. You sat upright in a bolt and starting coughing violently, spitting up chunks of absolutely nothing but your own saliva. Your fingers slid over your tongue, around your mouth, but there was nothing.
11:2?pm
Your thoughts were a half lost jigsaw, cardboard pieces swollen by the rain.
the rain... rain on the pavement... rain in your converse…. petrichor… Henry, Henry, Henry… Peter… no, not anymore, weren’t you listening?
You slapped a sweaty palm against your head aggressively and stumbled over to your tiny metal shelf of a desk. Your fingers somehow found a pen, but the paper seemed to evade you, jerking away from your hand every time you tried to slap it down on top of a piece.
You decided on your arm instead. Your scrawl was wonky, distorted even more so by your spinning eyes.
Henr y .. …. Dr ugs
Was that right? It looked right. Did it? Fuck. What was that noise? Did you say something?
11:4?pm
The blackness started enveloping you like a consuming weight. It was a sphere of dark matter, the inside of a black hole pressing in on every corner of the room.
Cold… you needed cold…
Your legs apparently carried you into your shower cube, though you couldn’t feel the floor beneath your feet, only the thick weight of the darkening fog. Your fingers fumbled the knob. There was a blast of white noise as the frigid water burst from the metal head.
You stared up into the cascade, utterly mesmerized as the walls began to move into you. Or were you moving into them?
You were soaked. Still in only your tank and underwear. Spluttering for air as the cold monsoon rained down onto you. You sank to the waterlogged floor, legs splayed out of the shower door.
The sound of the lock… the soft shuffle of careful steps… the distorted, clouded outline of him… white and blonde and blue and…
You slumped, head hitting the shower wall, pressed into nothingness as you heard the white noise abate, felt the warm pressure of hands sliding under your arms.
***
You discovered there was a veil beyond sleep. One of absolute obscurity, where even the darkest pieces of your mind couldn't break through. Tumbling through the shade of night, as if Somnus himself had plucked you from earth and swallowed you whole.
It was a formless thing. You thought it might be death, but you could still feel the drum of your heart as you floated through it. And something else, something warm. A weight in your palm. A soft brush over your wrist. The smell of soap and fresh laundry.
Pulling you back from the ether.
You wanted to float here forever, to dissipate into the nothingness atom by screaming atom. But you wanted even more to see his face. There was a faint sound in your ears. Your own breath? No. It had solidity, shape, and the cadence of a melody.
“Can… you... hear me?”
Your mouth was wired shut, voice wrapped in twine behind your teeth.
“What... did they give… you?” A hollow echo of a voice.
Then, you were lost. Pulled into the darkness by a force you couldn’t escape.
***
The veil was smothering your head for a long time, swirling together with the mismatched images you couldn’t place. But eventually, you peeled your eyes open like two stuck Band-Aids.
The room dissolved into view inch by inch, fragmented and utterly too bright even in the dim light of your lamp, which had been turned on.
There was a head of askew, blonde hair dipped against the mattress at your hip. The rest of him was awkwardly slumped in a chair pulled close to the bed.
“Henry?” You mumbled, voice thick and groggy.
He lifted his head almost in fright, taking a second to analyze where he was, the blue in his eyes cooled by the touch of sleep. You wobbled up on your elbows.
He shook his head and rubbed his eyes between his thumb and index finger.
“Sorry I - I must have fallen asleep.” He mumbled.
You realized you were still wearing nothing but your tank and underwear. It took you a beat longer to realize they were grey, not the white set you’d had on in the fragmented memory of yourself laying on the ground the night before.
“What... what happened?” You asked sleepily.
Henry looked like even more of an angel like this. Soft, mussed, control pulled away at the edges into something far more human.
“I came to see you last night. I found you unconscious in the shower.”
The memory came to you like a cold spattering of water.
“I knew you were coming. I tried to stay awake, I really did. But they gave me something.” You groaned.
Henry’s face tightened.
“The pink ones?” He said with a knowing look.
“Mhm.”
“They like doing that.” He sighed.
“I can’t even really remember what happened, I just remember trying to stay awake, so I could talk to you.”
Henry’s eyes were still sharp in their sleepiness.
“You did.”
“What?”
“You did talk. Well, Sort of.”
Your throat thickened with a feeling close to embarrassment. What had you said in your drug-induced delirium?
Henry read the feeling on your face.
“Mostly you talked about a bus.”
You nodded, teeth sinking into your bottom lip. “When I was in testing yesterday with Papa, I had a vision of a bus.”
“A memory?”
“I’m beginning to think so.” You sighed.
“You said my name.” Henry said, the shadow of a small smile curling over his mouth.
“Oh.” Your stomach knotted. “Did I?”
“And something about your shoes. You needed to fix your laces.”
You frowned, and took a deep breath, running your hand through your buzzed hair.
“I’m sorry. You risked a lot coming here and I was totally out of it.”
Henry huffed air out of his nose, shaking his head. “Don't apologize. I wanted to come. Besides, you might have ended up with hypothermia if I hadn't have pulled you out of that shower.”
“I tried to leave you a note, I think.” Your eyes scanned the desk. Paper was strewn everywhere, a pen was laying with the cap off.
“I noticed.” Henry’s eyes fell to your forearm.
Your jagged words were smeared and blotchy. Henry’s hand came to rest on it, flinching slightly. His thumb trailed over the messy ink.
His touch was pure static, firing the nerves under your skin to life. He trailed down your arm, and his eyes followed his fingers curiously, as if watching where they'd go. His thumb stopped over the raised, black ink of the 019 etched into your wrist.
Your gaze was locked to his hand. Then to his face, serene. His eyes, curious. His mouth, flushed and perfect. Even the slightest touch from him made your stomach turn with heat.
The sensation made you glance down, and you caught sight of your clothes again.
“Henry?” You asked softly.
“Hm?” He snapped his face back to yours, pulling his hand away from absentmindedly stroking your wrist.
“Did you - did you change my clothes?”
His eyes flickered down your torso for a moment.
“Yes.”
Your stomach flipped.
“Oh.”
“You were completely wet. From the shower.”
You didn’t say anything, but your lips parted softly.
“I’m sorry. I - maybe that wasn’t the right thing to do, but I didn’t want to put you in bed soaking.”
“No, it’s okay.” You breathed. “Really, it’s not a big deal.”
It was a big deal. It was banging through you like a hammer. He’d seen you. All of you. His hands had touched places you’d only dared dream of in your darkest hours.
Had he carried you like a ragdoll? Or was he careful with you? Did he cover you quickly, or did his eyes linger? Did his stomach knot like yours was now as he’d peeled the wet fabric from your skin?
You feel the furnace toiling. Henry shifted awkwardly in the silence.
“You saw me.” You murmured.
“Yes.” His voice was soft.
You swallowed.
“All of me.” You said, quieter, almost a whisper you wished he wouldn't hear.
“Yes.”
His eyes were lit gently at the edges, like he was remembering.
“I’m sorry.” You said finally.
His face contorted, as if you’d said the most ridiculous thing he’d ever heard. “Why are you sorry?”
“I - that must have made you uncomfortable.”
He inhaled a short breath, like he didn't quite trust the words he might say.
“It didn’t.”
“No?”
“No.”
His eyes were swimming in yours now. When had he shifted closer? He looked like he was waging war with his thoughts again, almost pained. After a beat he nested his hand in yours. His finger drew circles in your palm.
“I saw you.” He murmured softly.
“I know.”
He leaned closer.
“And I didn’t feel bad about it.”
“What did you feel?”
He was silent for a moment.
“Impulsive.”
Then, his mouth was falling against yours. Soft but insistent, tasting of sleep and thoughts that belonged to the night. His hand came to your face, cradling you as he kissed you, his mouth like a livewire against your lips. Your fingers slid into his soft, mussed waves.
You pulled at his hair subconsciously as the desire snaked within you. He whimpered between your mouths, his tongue sliding between your lips to taste your teeth.
“Stop…” he murmured, pulling his head back. His perfect features were screwed up, as if he was in pain.
“Why?”
His eyes slid to the clock.
“Morning rounds start soon. I should go.”
You huffed and fell back into the pillow. “You’re making a habit of this.”
“Of what?” He frowned.
“Running away.”
“Nine-”
“I told you not to call me that.” You snapped.
He studied you. “I am not running away.”
“Yes you are.”
He sat back in his seat. “Anyone could walk in.”
You sighed, and looked at the ceiling pointedly.
“Besides, you should try to sleep a little longer. Before breakfast.” He said, as if you cared about any of that.
You looked at the clock. 4am.
You didn’t want to sleep. You wanted his weight and warmth on top of you like a divine force, pinning you to the earth.
“Sure.” You said, not looking at him.
You could see him studying you in your peripherals, deciding how to respond to your attitude.
“I’m on the night shift.” He said smoothly.
“So?”
“I can freely move around after hours.”
“And?”
He inhaled. “Meet me in the utility room down the hall. At midnight.”
Your stomach lurched. Another dark space, alone.
“Okay.”
His lip curved up at the corner and he stood up, hesitating for a moment as if giving himself permission. Then, he kissed you softly on the head before moving towards the door.
He paused and looked at you, eyebrows aloft.
“I’ve got you.” You said, nodding at the door. “Go.”
You focused in to the cameras as you lay there, blanking each one in succession as you heard his feet recede quietly through the sleepy corridors. Eventually his steps faded, and you couldn’t make sense of where he was. You just had to hope that you’d blanked enough for him to get back to his room without being noticed.
***
You let your breath tumble from you as you lay there, still feeling only half alive in the post-drug haze of yourself.
He’d seen you.
But more than that; he’d taken care of you.
Your heart squeezed in on itself, the blood rushing hot through your veins as you thought about his delicate, pale fingers peeling off your soaked clothes. His careful, practiced hands ghosting across your bare skin as he covered you again.
You tried to let sleep take you. You tried to will it down on top of you like a great black sky but it refused, hanging above you, spiting you. Your mind hummed his name as you lay staring at the dark ceiling.
Henry. Henry.
Your lips still burned. The dark corners of every night where you’d laid your most selfish, damp desires pressed in on you. His eyes. His mouth. His soft tongue that had graced yours for only a fraction of time. The dark, predatory toil inside of him that you could taste lurking in his mouth.
The way he was so many beasts at once.
The hunted, the hunter. The one observing them both.
Your fingertips traced over your lips. Your nail scraped against the edges of them. The furnace roared within you, and it was alive. It snaked from your chest to your core as you lay there feeling him on your mouth.
Did he feel it, too? Was he still awake, tasting the memory of your mouth in the dark?
Something dark twisted around your desire.
You knew it was reckless. You told yourself you’d never do it again. You shut your eyes.
Just this once. Only once.
You slipped into the ether of black space, and roamed around until your mind focused in on Henry. You only needed the image of him to drive your psychic landscape.
After a moment, a shower cube materialized in the black space in front of you. The sound of water cascading echoed through the void as you stepped closer to it. The glass was foggy, clouded with condensation, but the water falling against it created a rippling distorted window through which your violating gaze pierced.
You stepped closer. You couldn’t stop yourself.
Another step. So close you could’ve reached out and touched the glass. So close you could see the beautiful shape of him, distorted through the rivers of water.
Your eyes feasted.
Pale, lean shoulders. Shaped biceps. The line of muscle popping in his forearms as he reached up to soak his hair in his hands. Delicate plains of muscle descended from his chest to his torso, sculpted peaks and troughs through which the water rippled.
Your eyes were wide, starved as you followed the lines of his body down to his hips, to the steep muscular ridges that led down into his groin.
Your breath hitched.
If he knew you were watching him like this… you should leave… you should...
But the furnace was roaring desperately inside of you, and like a beast, like a madwoman, you didn’t leave.
You kept watching.
Just as your eyes were trailing down between his legs, his hand moved, making you jerk back in fright. You were jumpy, skittish. Because you knew how wrong this was.
You watched as his hand moved down his torso, as his fingers slid across his beautiful skin. Soaping himself, you supposed.
Until his hand trawled downwards and didn’t come back up. Your heart hammered as you let your eyes fall to it.
His hand was wound around his cock. It was long, swollen and rigid in his grip. The pad of his thumb circled the head once, twice, before his hand started moving across his flesh in slow, tight drags.
Your breath went ragged, your very lungs quivering at the sight of it, the sight of Henry stroking himself. You watched unblinking, your core throbbing out a wet pool between your legs.
Was he imagining you? Was he imagining your hand around him?
He was leaning against the wall of the shower now, his head bowed, wet locks of hair falling about his forehead. His eyes were shut, his brows pulled together, his divine lips parted. You watched with a fever hot enough to kill as he palmed his cock, soft broken sounds tumbling out between the bursts of water as he sped up, the muscle in his forearm flexing.
His strokes became more desperate until his hips were rutting forward, fucking his hand entirely.
Your cunt was pulsing, surging as you watched him unravel himself.
Suddenly his other arm jutted out, palm flattening against the shower wall as his entire body tensed under the water.
He grunted as he spilled into the shower, his shoulders heaving as the water fell over them. He shuddered, eyes tightly shut, pulsing slow strokes over his swollen cock as the water spun his thick release down the drain.
The fact that he had no idea you were watching him made your core quiver even harder. The wrongness of it, the desperation of it, all embering the furnace.
Your fingers were crawling under the waistband of your underwear to address the sodden flesh between your legs when the shower door opened into the blackness.
You froze in terror.
Henry stepped out into the void dripping with water, his cock still thickened a touch, and reached for a towel.
Then, his head quickly drew up, as if sensing.
You weren’t fast enough.
He stiffened. His eyes pulled directly towards you for a split second, before you wrenched yourself out of the void and back into your body.
Fuck.
Your thoughts were frantic as you wiped the stream of blood hastily from your upper lip. You’d been watching him so long that it had pooled between your lips, staining your teeth with the taste of copper, and your head was pounding.
Had he felt you? Had he seen you, or just an eerie fading shape dissolving away in front of him?
You sat up on your bed, guilt icing through you. Your heart hammered with panic and thrill and your own unspent lust that remained unsated within you.
Sleep didn’t come after that.
It punished you, let you writhe in panic until dawn, until the steps of the morning staff were clicking through the halls outside your room.
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synapse: packing up the past and planning for the future should feel simple, but nothing about them ever is.
pairing: professor!henry creel x reader
contains: professor/student relationship, fluff
a/n: enjoy…. 😈
. . .
Steam curled thick and slow through Henry’s bathroom, softening the edges of everything.
The water in the tub had gone from hot to that perfect, heavy warmth that made Y/N feel like her bones had finally unclenched. She sat between Henry’s legs, back against his chest, one of his arms draped across her middle while the other lazily skimmed over bare skin like he couldn’t help himself. His hand never stayed still for long, her shoulder, her collarbone, the inside of her wrist, the damp curve of her thigh just beneath the water.
Touch, always touch.
It was his way of soothing her.
And tonight, with finals closing in and that sharp restless energy starting to creep under her skin, she let him.
Y/N tipped her head back against his shoulder, eyes half-lidded. “You know,” she murmured, “this is a very effective way to keep me from having an academic meltdown.”
Henry’s mouth brushed her temple, almost a kiss. “That was the intention.”
She smiled faintly. “I knew it.”
His fingers moved in a slow line down her forearm, then back up, tracing nothing, just the shape of her. He was quieter tonight, but not distant. Soft. Thoughtful. The kind of thoughtful that meant something was coming.
Y/N felt it before he said anything.
Outside the bathroom window, Boston glowed dim and blurred in the dark, the city muffled by distance and steam. Inside, all she could hear was water shifting when either of them moved and Henry’s steady breathing at her ear.
After a moment, he said, “About the Cape.”
That got her attention immediately.
She turned her head slightly, enough that she could look up at him from where she rested against him. “What about it?”
Henry’s hand settled at her waist, thumb stroking once through the water. “I was thinking we should plan it properly.”
Y/N’s smile widened. “Look at you.”
His eyes narrowed a fraction. “Don’t.”
“You’re planning a trip with me,” she said, too pleased not to enjoy it. “That’s very domestic of you.”
“It’s practical.”
“It’s romantic.”
Henry’s mouth twitched against the side of her head. “It can be both.”
That made something warm bloom in her chest.
She shifted in the water just enough to face him a little more, one hand coming up to rest over his on her stomach. “Okay,” she said softly. “Plan it properly.”
Henry looked at her for a long moment, then leaned his head back against the edge of the tub, visibly settling into the conversation. “I was thinking early summer. Before July gets crowded.”
Y/N nodded. “So June.”
“Yes.”
“We’d drive?”
“Yes.”
She smiled. “You driving me to the Cape sounds hot.”
Henry’s gaze slid to hers, unimpressed and very much not unaffected. “Everything sounds hot to you.”
“Not true,” she said. “Finals don’t.”
“That’s one.”
Y/N laughed softly and let her head fall back against him again. “Okay, June. Drive. Where are we staying?”
Henry’s hand moved up her ribs, then back down, absent and possessive all at once. “Somewhere quiet.”
“A motel?”
“If necessary.”
She made a face. “That sounds suspiciously unromantic.”
“It sounds affordable.”
Y/N turned her face enough to press a quick kiss to his jaw. “There’s my practical professor.”
His arm around her tightened slightly in answer.
“We could get a little inn,” she suggested. “Something old. Somewhere with creaky floors and ugly floral bedspreads.”
Henry considered that. “That sounds probable.”
“And a view.”
“That sounds expensive.”
Y/N sighed dramatically. “You hate joy.”
“I hate wasting money.”
She smiled. “No, you don’t. You just pretend to.”
Henry’s fingers slid over her hip under the water. “Do you want the truth?”
“Always.”
“I just want somewhere no one will know us,” he said quietly.
The teasing in her face softened.
There it was.
Not just a trip. Not just a few days away.
A place where they wouldn’t have to look over their shoulders.
Y/N’s hand squeezed his lightly. “Me too.”
Henry’s chin brushed the top of her damp hair. “So. Somewhere small. Somewhere quiet. Near the water.” A beat. “A bookstore, if possible.”
She smiled immediately. “See? Romantic.”
“Still practical.”
“You’re impossible.”
“And yet.”
Y/N laughed under her breath and sank a little deeper into the water. “What else is on your very practical itinerary?”
Henry’s hand drifted up to her throat, then down again, never lingering too long in one place, as if the touch itself was helping him think. “You wanted to go to Hawkins in July.”
“With Nancy.”
He nodded once. “Then June makes more sense.”
She turned enough to study his face again, wet hair falling across his forehead, expression softened by steam and dim light. “You’ve really thought about this.”
“Yes.”
That simple answer hit harder than she expected.
Because Henry was not a man who planned lightly. Not with her. Not with something like this.
Y/N’s voice dropped. “You want it that much?”
His gaze held hers. “Yes.”
She just looked at him.
Then she smiled, slow and bright and a little overwhelmed. “Okay.”
Henry’s thumb traced once over the inside of her wrist. “Okay?”
“Okay,” she repeated. “We’ll do June. We’ll go somewhere quiet. Near the water. With your practical little bookstore.” Her smile turned teasing again. “And your deeply unpractical girlfriend.”
Henry’s mouth curved faintly. “You are very unpractical.”
“Untrue. I’m excellent for morale.”
He huffed a breath that was almost a laugh.
The water shifted when she moved, turning more toward him now until one of her knees slid between his under the surface. His hand left her waist just long enough to smooth damp hair from her shoulder, then settled at her thigh.
“Finals first,” he said.
Y/N groaned and let her forehead fall to his shoulder. “You ruin everything.”
“Finals,” he repeated.
She looked up at him with open betrayal. “You brought up the Cape.”
“Yes.”
“And then reminded me I still have responsibilities.”
His expression was maddeningly calm. “You do.”
Y/N narrowed her eyes. “I liked you better five minutes ago.”
“That’s unfortunate.”
She studied him for another second, then smiled despite herself. “…No. I like you exactly like this.”
Henry’s face shifted, just slightly.
“Like what?”
“Comfortable,” she said quietly. “Planning things with me from a bathtub like we’re some weird little married couple.”
That got a real reaction, a faint tightening of his hand on her leg, the smallest glance away before he looked back at her.
Y/N’s smile softened. “It’s nice.”
Henry’s fingers moved again, tracing lazy circles at her skin under the water. “It is.”
The silence that followed felt full instead of empty.
Y/N rested against him more heavily, all the restless static in her chest gone quiet for now. He kept touching her, shoulder, hip, wrist, thigh, like if he stopped, she might float away.
After a minute, she murmured, “You know what we need.”
Henry’s voice was low at her ear. “What?”
“A list.”
He was quiet.
Then: “A list.”
“Yes. Of what to bring. Of where we’re staying. Of what books.” Her face brightened with the thought. “And beach clothes.”
Henry’s gaze dipped over her shoulder. “Beach clothes.”
She smiled. “You sound worried.”
“I am.”
“That’s fair.”
He kissed just below her ear, slow and absent. “You are not making a list in this tub.”
“No,” she agreed, closing her eyes. “That would be soggy.”
His hand slid across her stomach again, holding her there.
“So,” she said, voice drowsy now, warm from the water and him and the fact that summer had suddenly become something real. “June. The Cape. Quiet inn. Bookstore. Public hand-holding.”
Henry’s arm tightened around her, almost imperceptibly. “Yes.”
Y/N smiled to herself. “I’m going to make you miserable with how much I touch you in public.”
“You already make me miserable.”
She laughed softly. “Liar.”
His lips found her temple again. “Sometimes.”
And held there in the steam and warm water, finals still looming but summer suddenly waiting for them on the other side, Y/N let herself imagine it fully, the road out of Boston, the water, his hand in hers where no one knew to question it, and Henry beside her, no longer just a secret kept inside classrooms and locked doors, but someone planning a future with her one quiet detail at a time.
. . .
The dorm room looked like the end of the world in the least dramatic way possible.
Not fire. Not ruin. Just stacks.
Stacks of books, half-folded clothes, empty hangers, notebooks shoved into milk crates, Nancy’s newspapers and article drafts in uneven piles on every flat surface. The semester was ending in a clutter of finals, packing, and the strange emotional whiplash that came with realizing sophomore year was almost over.
Y/N sat cross-legged on the floor in front of her open suitcase, holding up two shirts like either of them mattered at all.
“Nancy,” she said, “be honest. If I disappear into Hawkins with you in July, do I need this top?”
Nancy, kneeling beside her desk and sorting typed drafts into folders with the kind of intensity she brought to every task, didn’t look up. “No one needs that top.”
Y/N gasped. “That’s so rude.”
Nancy slid a folder into her tote bag. “You asked for honesty.”
Y/N narrowed her eyes, then tossed the shirt onto the bed. “You’re hateful during finals.”
“I’m hateful year-round,” Nancy said. “Finals just make me more articulate.”
That got a laugh out of Y/N.
The room went quiet again for a moment except for the sound of paper shifting and Y/N zipping and unzipping things she wasn’t actually ready to pack. There was a strange mood sitting under everything lately, not sad, exactly, but stretched. The end of sophomore year felt heavier than freshman year had. More real. Like life was actually starting to move now instead of just pretending to.
Nancy finally looked over at her.
“You’ve been weird for ten minutes,” she said.
Y/N blinked. “Only ten?”
“Yes. Which is how I know something specific is wrong.”
Y/N smiled faintly and looked down at the half-packed suitcase. “Nothing’s wrong.”
Nancy gave her a look that could have withered paint. “That’s never a reassuring sentence.”
Y/N sighed and leaned back on her hands. “I was just thinking about summer.”
Nancy shut the folder in her lap. “Okay.”
There was a beat.
Then, because Nancy Wheeler was not a woman who let silence live longer than necessary when she smelled information, she added, “And?”
Y/N bit the inside of her cheek for half a second, then smiled. “Henry and I made plans.”
Nancy froze.
Not dramatically. Just enough.
Then she slowly set the folder down. “…What kind of plans?”
Nancy blinked once, taking that in, then sat back slightly on her heels. “For how long?”
“Just a little while. June.” Y/N’s voice got softer, more excited now that she was saying it out loud. “A few days. Somewhere quiet. Near the water. Bookstore if possible, because apparently he’s ninety.”
Nancy’s mouth twitched despite her best effort not to let it. “And this is happening?”
“Apparently.”
Nancy looked at her for a long second, measuring. “You sound happy.”
Y/N looked down at the suitcase again, then back up. “I am.”
Nancy’s expression softened by inches.
That didn’t mean she wasn’t still Nancy.
“So,” she said carefully, “you’re going to spend part of the summer playing house with your middle-aged professor by the ocean.”
Y/N snorted. “When you say it like that, it sounds weird.”
“When I say it accurately, it sounds weird.”
Y/N laughed and reached for a shoe on the floor, turning it over in her hands. “It’s only for a few days.”
Nancy leaned back against the side of her desk now, folding her arms. “And after that?”
Y/N looked at her immediately. “After that, I’m never leaving your side.”
Nancy’s brows lifted. “That’s dramatic.”
“I’m serious.”
Nancy gave her a skeptical look. “You say that now.”
“No.” Y/N sat up straighter, shoe forgotten in her lap. “I mean it. After the Cape, I am all yours. Hawkins, whatever you want, however long. I’ll go with you, I’ll stay with you, hang out with friends, and I’ll help you judge your hometown and all its men.”
Nancy’s mouth twitched again. “That is tempting.”
Y/N smiled. “I know.”
Nancy watched her for another second, seeing more than Y/N probably meant to show. The happiness, yes. The excitement. But also the little undercurrent of guilt, like she wanted Nancy to know this trip with Henry didn’t mean she was drifting away for good.
Nancy sighed softly through her nose. “You know you don’t have to negotiate friendship like visitation rights.”
Y/N’s face changed instantly, softening. “I know.”
“Do you?”
Y/N nodded, slower now. “Yeah. I do.”
Nancy held her gaze.
Y/N set the shoe aside and tucked one leg beneath the other, quieter now. “I just don’t want you thinking I’m disappearing.”
Nancy looked down at the floor for a second, then back at her. “I don’t think that.”
Y/N’s voice dropped. “You’re still…my person.”
Nancy made a face like she deeply objected to sincerity on principle. “That was gross.”
Y/N laughed, but her eyes stayed warm. “I’m serious.”
“I know.”
“Like I said before,” Y/N motioned to herself. “Gordie.” She motioned to Nancy. “Chris.”
There was a pause. Then Nancy added, drier, “Unfortunately.”
That got another laugh out of her, softer this time.
Y/N smiled at her. “I mean it, though. Cape first. Then Hawkins. Then you and me all summer. You can make me go to weird diners and tell me local gossip and make me listen to your theories about every single person in that town.”
Nancy narrowed her eyes. “I do not have theories about every single person.”
“You absolutely do.”
“That’s because I’m observant.”
“That’s because you’re nosy.”
Nancy picked up a balled-up sock from the floor and threw it at her.
Y/N caught it, laughing.
The room settled again after that, easier now. The heaviness of endings was still there, but it felt less sharp with the future spoken aloud between them, Cape, Hawkins, summer, all of it arranged into something survivable.
Nancy reached for another stack of papers and said, more casually than the moment deserved, “So what’s the Cape plan exactly?”
Y/N smiled slowly. “You want details.”
“I want to know how many crimes I need to prepare to cover up.”
Y/N grinned. “No crimes. Just an inn, probably. Lots of sex—“
“I can’t stand you,” Nancy said, nose wrinkling in disgust.
“You love me. Anyway, quiet town. Ocean. Bookstore. Public hand-holding.”
Nancy made a small face. “That part is disgusting.”
“It’s romantic.”
“It’s dangerous.”
Y/N’s smile softened. “It’s both.”
Nancy looked at her, and for once there was no joke in her face, just the complicated concern of someone who wanted her friend happy and safe and wasn’t fully convinced those things could coexist.
But she didn’t push.
Not this time.
Instead she reached for her typewriter ribbon and said, “Fine. Cape first. Then Hawkins.”
Y/N’s smile brightened. “Then Hawkins.”
“And after that,” Nancy added, shooting her a look, “you are helping me carry things like my typewriter.”
Y/N put a hand to her chest. “You wound me.”
“You’ll live.”
Y/N laughed again and looked around the room, the boxes, the drafts, the mess of their shared years all over the floor, and felt that sudden, strange ache of affection she always got when she realized how much of her life Nancy had become without either of them ever formally deciding it.
“Hey,” she said.
Nancy glanced up. “What?”
“I love you.”
Nancy’s expression immediately twisted like she’d bitten into something sour. “This room has become too emotional.”
Y/N smiled helplessly. “You didn’t say it back.”
Nancy lifted one shoulder, already reaching for the next page in her stack. “I’m still letting you go to the Cape and come back to me, aren’t I?”
Y/N laughed so hard she had to look away.
Nancy, satisfied with that as an answer, returned to her papers.
And on the floor between unpacked plans and half-packed futures, with the last days of sophomore year closing in around them, the summer ahead didn’t feel like a separation.
It just felt like the next thing they were both going to survive.
. . .
The little brown coffee table in front of Henry’s couch had become a battlefield.
Books were stacked in uneven piles around Y/N, along with loose pages, uncapped pens, a half-empty mug of coffee gone lukewarm, and the growing evidence of her patience dying in real time. She sat cross-legged on the floor with one elbow braced against the table, hunched over her paper as if glaring hard enough at the paragraph might force it into brilliance.
It wasn’t working.
She scribbled something out with unnecessary force, groaned, and dropped her forehead briefly to the edge of the table.
“This is evil,” she muttered.
Behind her, Henry sat on the couch with one ankle resting over his knee, reading glasses low on his nose, a book open in one hand. He looked maddeningly calm, like finals were a charming little academic tradition rather than a full assault on student humanity.
“Writing is not evil,” he said without looking up.
Y/N lifted her head and turned enough to glare at him. “You would say that.”
Henry turned a page. “Because it’s true. You like writing.”
“No, I like writing fiction,” she said, pointing her pen at him. “Writing papers for one class while having three other finals crawling toward me like death itself is evil.”
That got the faintest twitch at the corner of his mouth.
Y/N huffed and bent back over the paper, rereading the same sentence for what felt like the twelfth time.
She hated this paper now.
Not because it was bad. Because she was tired. Because her brain felt overstuffed with material from five different classes. Because every time she finished one assignment, another one reared up behind it like a worse replacement.
Henry watched her over the top edge of his book for a quiet moment before closing it altogether.
Y/N noticed the sound immediately and narrowed her eyes without looking up. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Distract me.”
His voice stayed mild. “You’re already distracted.”
Y/N looked up at him, deeply unimpressed. “That’s not the point.”
Henry leaned forward slightly, resting his forearms on his thighs. “What’s the paper on?”
“You know what it’s on,” she muttered. “It’s for your class.”
“Yes,” he said. “But I want to hear you say it.”
Y/N gave him a flat look, then sighed dramatically and dropped her pen onto the table. “Narrative unreliability and repression in post-war literature.”
Henry’s brows lifted. “That sounded almost resentful.”
“Because it is.”
He held out his hand. “Let me see.”
Y/N narrowed her eyes further, putting her hand protectively on the paper. “No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m still working on it.”
“You’re glaring at it,” he corrected. “That’s not the same thing.”
She made a face, but after a second she grabbed the pages, shuffled them into something resembling order, and handed them up to him with obvious reluctance.
Henry took them, settled back into the couch, and started reading.
Y/N tried to sit still while he did.
It was impossible.
She shifted on the floor, tugged one of the books closer, pushed it away again, picked up her pen only to tap it against the table instead of writing anything. Her foot bounced. Her jaw clenched every time his eyes paused too long on a sentence.
Finally, she snapped, “Stop making that face.”
Henry didn’t look up. “What face?”
“That one.”
“I’m reading.”
“You’re judging.”
That got him to glance down at her.
His expression was maddeningly unreadable. “Those are not mutually exclusive.”
Y/N groaned and dropped her head back against the couch cushion by his knee. “I hate you.”
“No, you don’t.”
He went back to reading.
A full minute passed.
Then another.
Y/N stared up at the ceiling, already planning her own funeral.
Finally Henry lowered the pages slightly and said, “I don’t know why you’re stressing.”
Y/N turned her head sharply. “Excuse me?”
He looked at the paper again, then back at her. “This is good.”
She blinked. “What?”
“It’s thoughtful. Clear. Arguably more coherent than half the class.” His gaze slid down the page once more. “More than half.”
Y/N sat up straighter. “Are you serious?”
Henry’s mouth twitched. “Yes.”
She stared at him, suspicious now instead of irritated. “You’d actually give this a good grade?”
“I’d more than likely give it a very good grade.”
Y/N narrowed her eyes. “…Is that because I sleep with you?”
Henry looked up at her fully then, glasses low on his nose, expression flattening into offended disbelief.
“No,” he said.
Y/N folded her arms. “That was very quick.”
“Because it’s insulting.”
She blinked. “To who?”
“To both of us,” Henry replied, setting the paper down on his knee. “To you because you wrote it. To me because I’m not inflating your grade out of favoritism.”
Y/N’s brows lifted slightly.
Henry held her gaze, voice quieter now but no less firm. “You are one of the strongest students I have. You were before we ever touched each other. You would be if we stopped tomorrow.” His eyes flicked to the paper. “The work is good because you’re good.”
That stole the joke right out of her.
Y/N looked at him for a second longer than she meant to.
Then, because she didn’t know what to do with sincerity unless she poked it a little, she said, “You sound very sure of yourself.”
Henry took off his glasses and set them aside on the coffee table. “I’m sure of you.”
That landed too hard.
Y/N looked away first, suddenly very interested in the grain of the wood on the table.
Henry noticed the shift immediately, of course, and because apparently praise from him had become one of the few things capable of short-circuiting her brain, he decided to make it worse.
He leaned forward and nudged her shoulder lightly with his knee.
“You’re pouting less,” he observed.
Y/N glared at him. “I’m not pouting.”
“You were.”
“I was academically distressed.”
Henry’s mouth curved. “A tragedy.”
She picked up a crumpled note card from the floor and threw it at him.
He caught it without effort.
“Violent too,” he said.
“You started it.”
Henry set the note card aside and reached down, fingers brushing the side of her neck just once. “And now you’re distracted enough to stop spiraling.”
Y/N hated that he was right.
Her shoulders had loosened without her noticing. The paper no longer looked like a personal attack. The stress was still there, but it wasn’t crowding her lungs anymore.
She sighed and leaned back against the couch again, this time less dramatically. “You’re annoyingly helpful.”
“Yes.”
“You’re also smug.”
“Also yes.”
Y/N looked up at him. “I don’t like how easily you say yes to accusations.”
Henry’s hand slid down to the back of her neck, thumb moving once there in that absent, soothing way he always had when he was pretending not to comfort her too openly. “Finish the conclusion.”
She made a face. “Bossy.”
“Your favorite.”
That made her smile despite herself.
Y/N reached up, took the pages back from him, and set them on the table again. Her pen found its way back into her hand.
This time, when she looked at the paragraph, it seemed less impossible.
Henry stayed where he was on the couch above her, close enough to touch, calm enough to borrow from.
And as she started writing again, he said, almost casually, “For the record.”
Y/N looked up. “What?”
His gaze dipped to the paper, then to her face. “If you want special treatment, you’ll have to ask for a different professor.”
She stared at him for half a beat.
Then she laughed so hard she nearly dropped the pen.
Henry’s hand had just started to leave the back of her neck when Y/N reached up and caught his wrist.
He looked down at her immediately. “What?”
Y/N tilted her head back against the couch cushion, eyes tired now that the worst of the spiraling had passed. “Don’t stop.”
Henry’s brows lifted slightly. “How vague.”
She gave him a look. “Massage my neck.”
He stared at her for one beat, then her shoulders, then the pile of finals notes spread across the table like evidence.
“You’re tense,” he said.
“No kidding.”
The corner of his mouth moved.
Y/N let go of his wrist only to lift both hands and gesture weakly at herself. “My neck and shoulders are killing me. Fix it.”
Henry’s expression turned faintly offended. “You say that like I’m a service.”
Y/N smiled sweetly. “Massage is required as my boyfriend.”
That got him.
Not a full smile, but enough of one to soften his face.
“Required,” he repeated.
“Yes,” she said. “It’s in the contract.”
Henry gave her a look. “I never signed anything.”
“You did emotionally.”
That pulled a quiet breath of amusement from him.
He shifted on the couch, setting her paper aside on the coffee table, then leaned forward and said, “Turn around.”
Y/N blinked up at him. “Bossy.”
“Yes.”
She smiled faintly and obeyed, scooting back until she was sitting between his knees on the floor, facing the coffee table again. Her hair fell down her back, and she swept it all over one shoulder for him without being asked.
Henry’s hands settled on her shoulders a second later.
Y/N exhaled immediately.
His palms were warm, his grip firm but careful as he worked his thumbs into the tight muscles at the base of her neck. Not rushed. Not playful. Focused in the same way he did everything else, like once he started taking care of something, he intended to do it properly.
“Oh,” she murmured, eyes sliding shut.
Henry’s voice came low above her. “That bad?”
“Yes.”
His thumbs moved a little deeper, and Y/N’s head fell forward slightly with a quiet groan she didn’t bother hiding.
Henry paused for half a second. “Am I hurting you?”
“No,” she said quickly. “If you stop, I’ll kill you.”
That made his mouth twitch.
He kept going, working slow circles into the knots gathered there from too many hours bent over books and papers and worrying herself into stiffness. His fingers skimmed up the sides of her neck, then back down to her shoulders, pressing and kneading until the tension started to give way.
Y/N melted by degrees.
A relieved sigh slipped out of her. Then another. Her head tipped helplessly to one side beneath his hands, and Henry leaned closer, just enough that his mouth was near her ear when he murmured, low and amused:
“I’ve never seen you make these faces or noises outside of bed.”
Y/N’s eyes opened halfway in immediate offense. “Oh my God.”
Henry’s thumbs pressed into another sore spot, and she let out an embarrassingly soft sound before she could stop herself.
His mouth twitched against the side of her hair. “There it is again.”
“You’re horrible,” she muttered, though the words had no real bite to them.
“Yes,” he said quietly.
He kept going, unbothered by her glare, and Y/N, traitorously could only sink further into it.
“This,” she said faintly, “is why I keep you around.”
Henry’s hands slid to the tops of her shoulders, thumbs pressing in again. “That and my grading standards.”
“Mostly this.”
He leaned slightly closer over her, his breath brushing the top of her head. “You’re very spoiled.”
Y/N smiled with her eyes still closed. “By my boyfriend.”
Henry said nothing to that.
His hands moved lower now, along the slope of her shoulders and back up again, loosening the tightness until even her jaw unclenched. She let herself rest there between his knees, limp and heavy and trusting, the clutter of finals temporarily forgotten.
After a minute, she murmured, “If you’re this good at massages, you’ve been withholding useful information.”
Henry’s thumbs pressed into a particularly sore spot, and she made a soft, startled sound.
“That,” he said calmly, “is for accusing me of grade inflation.”
Y/N laughed weakly. “You’re evil.”
“Yes.”
He worked the other side next, one hand steady at the base of her neck while the other smoothed over her shoulder. The touch had gone from practical to intimate somewhere in the last few seconds, close enough that Y/N could feel the shift in the air around them.
Her head tipped back slightly, just enough that she could look up at him from where she sat.
Henry’s gaze dropped to meet hers.
Neither of them said anything.
Then Y/N smiled, sleepy and pleased. “You like taking care of me.”
Henry’s hands stilled once on her shoulders before resuming. “You make it difficult not to.”
That warmed something in her chest.
She let her eyes close again and leaned back just a little more into the space between his knees. “Good.”
For another long moment, the apartment went quiet except for the rustle of paper under the lamp and the slow, steady rhythm of his hands working her shoulders.
And when Y/N finally opened her eyes again, finals felt a little farther away than before.
. . .
By the time Y/N reached Henry’s classroom after her last class, the building had gone quieter in that strange end-of-day way that made every hallway sound longer.
Most of the students were gone now, drifting out into the late afternoon with finals on their backs and summer already tugging at the edges of their attention. The light through the classroom windows had turned soft and gold, catching dust in the air and laying long bars across the desks.
Henry had left the door unlocked.
From the outside, it looked harmless enough, just a student helping a teacher pack up for summer. And inside, that was exactly what it was.
Mostly.
Y/N stepped in with her bag still over one shoulder and found him at the front of the room, sleeves rolled, tie loosened, sorting through stacks of papers and books with that same precise calm he brought to everything. One cardboard box was already half full beside his desk. Another sat waiting near the shelves.
He looked up when she came in, and the expression that crossed his face was small, private, and immediate.
“You’re late,” he said.
Y/N shut the door gently behind her and smiled. “I was in class.”
Henry lifted a brow. “A weak excuse.”
“Rude,” she said, crossing toward him. “I’m here now.”
He handed her a stack of slim paperback texts without another word, and she took them automatically, carrying them over to the nearest box.
The room looked different already.
Less like the place that had held them all year and more like a version of itself being folded away, desks still there, chalkboard still smudged, but the edges of it being stripped down into summer. It made something in her chest ache a little in a way she hadn’t expected.
She crouched to set the books in the box and said quietly, “I don’t like this.”
Henry glanced over at her. “Packing.”
“The room looking less like your room.”
His gaze moved over the classroom once, slower now. “It’ll look worse by tomorrow.”
Y/N stood and made a face. “Don’t say that.”
He almost smiled.
For a while they worked in comfortable silence, Y/N boxing novels and anthologies, Henry sorting essays into piles to keep, archive, or throw away. Every now and then he’d hand her something and their fingers would brush for just a second too long. Nothing anyone could call suspicious if they walked by the open door. Everything enough to matter.
Y/N picked up a chipped mug from the corner of his desk and held it up. “Keeping this?”
Henry looked over. “Unfortunately.”
“It’s ugly.”
“It holds coffee.”
“That’s not a defense.”
“It is for me.”
Y/N smiled and set it carefully in the box marked ‘OFFICE’.
The quiet settled again after that, but not empty. Full. Weighted by the fact that this was the end of something, this school year, this room in this exact version of itself, this routine of sneaking around between lectures and passing notes like the semester would never run out.
Henry seemed to feel it too.
Because after a while, while he was taping one of the boxes shut, he said without looking up, “I want you in my seminar next year.”
Y/N froze.
Not dramatically. Just enough that the book in her hand stopped halfway to the box.
She looked at him slowly. “What?”
Henry pressed the tape down neatly along the seam and finally lifted his eyes to hers. “The advanced seminar. Fall term.”
Y/N stared at him.
“You’d do well in it,” he said, as if that were the only thing he meant. “Better than most of the students who’ll enroll.”
Her heart gave one hard, stupid thud.
He said it so calmly. So reasonably. But underneath it, she could hear what mattered.
Next year.
Her.
In his class.
Y/N set the book down on top of the stack instead of in the box because suddenly her hands didn’t feel especially reliable.
“You want me in your class again,” she said softly.
Henry’s expression didn’t shift much, but something in his eyes did. “Yes.”
That alone would have been enough to make her chest tighten.
Then, after the briefest pause, like he was deciding whether to say the rest, he added, “And I think you should consider an independent study.”
Y/N blinked.
He continued before she could interrupt, quieter now, more deliberate.
“You’re strong enough for one. You read quickly. You write well when you stop doubting yourself. And you’re capable of more than the standard course load asks of you.” His jaw flexed once, the words getting more personal than he probably intended. “You’d suit it.”
She just looked at him.
An independent study.
Under him.
One-on-one. Official. Planned.
It took a second for the full meaning to settle.
This wasn’t just him thinking about next term in some abstract, academic sense. This was Henry making space for her in a future he was actively arranging. Building.
He was planning for a version of his life where she was still in it.
Y/N’s face softened around the edges, and when she spoke her voice was quieter than before.
“You’ve really thought about this.”
Henry looked back down at the box in front of him and smoothed the tape one more unnecessary time. “Yes.”
A smile touched her mouth before she could help it. Not bright. Not teasing. Something smaller, warmer, more affected.
She crossed the room toward him slowly.
Henry noticed. Of course he noticed.
He straightened, one hand resting on the box cutter in his palm, and watched her come to a stop in front of him.
Y/N tilted her head. “You know,” she said softly, “you’ve come a long way.”
His brows drew together slightly. “From what?”
“From pushing me away every time I got too close.”
That landed.
She saw it in the stillness that came over him. In the way his hand set the box cutter down on the desk rather than keep holding it. In the way he looked at her now, not guarded exactly, but caught.
“At the beginning of the year,” she said, “you acted like I was a problem you had to manage.” Her smile turned faintly crooked. “Now you’re planning my junior year.”
Henry’s jaw tightened, but not in irritation. More like the truth of it sat somewhere difficult.
“I was trying to do the right thing,” he said quietly.
“I know.”
“And now?”
Y/N’s eyes held his. “Now you’re trying to keep me.”
The room went very still.
Outside the door, footsteps passed once in the hallway and faded again. Somewhere farther down the building, a cart rattled across tile. But inside the classroom, everything narrowed to him and the open door and the boxes and the fact that she’d said it out loud.
Henry looked at her for a long second.
Then, with that same maddening restraint he used when he was closest to honesty, he said, “Yes.”
It wasn’t loud.
It didn’t need to be.
Y/N’s breath caught.
A smile broke properly this time, helpless and bright and too full of feeling to hide. She stepped closer, close enough that if someone passed the doorway they’d only see a student and a teacher standing too near each other and maybe think nothing of it.
Maybe.
“You really are planning for me,” she murmured.
Henry’s gaze dropped briefly to her mouth, then lifted back to her eyes. “I am.”
Y/N let that sit between them for a second, warming everything it touched.
Then she said, a little breathlessly, “That’s so unfair.”
His brows lifted slightly. “Unfair?”
“Yes,” she said. “You don’t get to say things like that when I’m trying to help you pack and not completely melt into the floor.”
The corner of his mouth moved.
“You’re not on the floor.”
“Yet.”
That got him closer to a real smile, and Y/N loved it enough that her chest almost hurt.
She looked around the room then, the half-packed shelves, the boxes, the fading shape of sophomore year all around them, and back at him.
“It feels weird,” she admitted. “This ending.”
Henry’s expression softened.
“But,” she added, her smile returning, gentler now, “it feels less weird if I know you’re there next year too.”
His hand came to rest on the desk behind her, not touching, just close enough to alter the air between them.
“I’ll be there,” he said.
Y/N looked up at him. “And I’ll be in your seminar.”
“If you enroll.”
She smiled. “That sounds suspiciously like a challenge.”
“It’s advice.”
“No,” she said. “It’s you trying to sound professional about the fact that you want me around.”
Henry’s eyes narrowed slightly. “You are very pleased with yourself.”
“I am very pleased with you.”
That shut him up for exactly one beat.
Then, quieter, “Keep packing.”
Y/N laughed softly and turned back toward the box nearest her, but the smile stayed on her face, impossible to hide now.
Because the room might be emptying. The year might be ending. This version of them might be changing.
But Henry Creel, who had once pushed her away the second she got too close, was now standing in the middle of his half-packed classroom planning a future that still had her in it.
And that mattered more than anything else in the room.
. . .
When they finally finished, the classroom no longer felt like his.
Not entirely.
The shelves stood bare now, the little personal traces gone, the extra stacks of books, the chipped coffee mug, the papers that had made the space look lived in. The walls looked strangely blank without the posters and notes and pinned-up reminders. All that remained were the desks, the chairs, the chalkboard, the bones of the room.
Y/N stood in the middle of it and turned slowly once, taking it in.
“It looks sad,” she murmured.
Henry, locking the last desk drawer, glanced over at her. “It looks clean.”
“It looks abandoned.”
He straightened, keys in hand. “It’ll look worse after the summer crew gets to it.”
Y/N made a face. “You keep saying things I don’t want to hear.”
The corner of his mouth moved faintly. “You keep asking honest questions.”
She smiled a little, but it didn’t fully stay. There was something strange in her chest now, part tenderness, part grief, part the odd ache of standing at the edge of a version of life that was already disappearing.
Henry seemed to feel it too.
Because when he looked around the room, his expression went quieter, less teasing. Like even he could see the year stripping itself down around them.
Y/N picked up her bag from beside the teacher’s desk and slung it over one shoulder. “So this is it.”
“For now,” Henry said.
She looked at him. “For now,” she repeated.
The hallway outside had gone almost fully still by then. Just distant cleaning carts, the occasional echo of a closing door somewhere else in the building. The open classroom doorway no longer felt risky. Just empty.
Y/N moved toward him, stopping close enough that if someone passed by, it would still look harmless from a distance.
Maybe.
She looked up at him for one long second, all the things she wanted to say pressing at the back of her throat.
Then she only said the one that mattered most.
“I love you.”
Quiet.
Not dramatic. Not asking for anything back. Just true.
Henry’s face changed in that small, unmistakable way it always did when she caught him off guard with tenderness. His hand, still holding the keys, tightened slightly around them.
He didn’t touch her.
Not here. Not with the room open and stripped bare and the building not quite empty enough.
But his eyes held hers, and that was somehow worse.
“I know,” he said softly.
Y/N smiled, faint and warm, like that answer belonged to them now.
Then she stepped back before she did something reckless, lifted her brows a little like she was trying to make the moment lighter, and said, “Go home, professor.”
Henry’s mouth twitched. “Go to your dorm, Miss Y/L/N.”
She grinned. “Bossy.”
“Yes.”
For one more second, neither of them moved.
Then Y/N turned and walked out first, her footsteps fading down the hall toward the stairs, toward the dorm, toward the last few days of sophomore year that still had to be survived.
Henry stayed where he was until he could no longer hear her.
Then he shut off the classroom lights, stepped into the hall, and locked the door behind him.
The building felt different without students in it.
Too echoing. Too hollow.
He made his way out to the faculty parking lot in the soft late-evening light, jacket over one arm, keys in hand, the day settling heavily but not unpleasantly in his bones. Summer cleaning, finals, junior year schedules, the Cape, too many thoughts moving at once.
He reached his car.
And stopped.
Something white was tucked beneath the driver’s side windshield wiper.
A folded note.
Henry’s body went still before his mind did.
For a second he simply stared at it, unmoving, the quiet lot suddenly feeling a degree too empty.
Then, slowly, he stepped closer and pulled the note free.
It was folded neatly. Deliberately.
Not random.
Not trash caught in the wind.
His jaw tightened as he unfolded it.
Typed. Not handwritten.
Just one line.
She is the one who will suffer for this.
The world seemed to narrow around the words.
Henry stared at the note for one long beat, then another, the keys in his hand biting into his palm.
Somewhere across the lot, a car door slammed.
He looked up sharply.
No one was there.
Only the long rows of faculty cars, the dimming light, the blank windows of the building behind him.
He looked back down at the note.
And for the first time all day, the future he’d let himself imagine with her felt like something standing on very thin ice.
Summary: After being forced to witness Peter's punishment, you find a way to get close to each other again. When boughs are broken, a covenant is forged.
Pair: Henry Creel/Vecna/001 x Female Reader
Content/Warning Labels: dark slow burn, flashbacks, Hawkins Lab, violence/torture, physical abuse, Martin Brenner is his own warning, yearning, inner conflict, forbidden relationship, dark/dominating undertones, kissing
WC: 7.7k
(Part One - Part Two - Part Three - Part Four)
She thought that she felt a touch of fire imprinted on her lips, a kiss more burning than the red-hot iron of the executioner.
- Victor Hugo, The Hunchback of Notre-Dame
For hours you’d been panic pacing. Up and down, up and down.
You kept recalling the night as you stepped around the room, your footfalls growing more frantic.
You hadn’t said anything wrong, exactly. And Peter’s words were so hushed that there was a good chance the camera didn’t hear him.
At least, you hoped so.
It saw him though. Slipping in in the middle of the night unauthorized. Stepping ever closer to you. Sitting with you as you slept, his fingers curled into your palm.
His touched lingered still, a steady ember on your cold skin.
Finally, the metallic click of the lock broke through the quiet hum of the infirmary room. Pointed, sharp, like the raising of the guillotine.
He entered in a way only he could.
Clipped, calculated, tailored to the seams. Papa.
“Hello, Nineteen.” He said coolly. “Sleep well?”
You chose silence.
“Tell me about your late night visitor, hm?”
No pretense. Your stomach leapt aggressively into your throat.
“Peter?” You asked as casually as you could, like you hadn't been pacing on his thought alone for hours.
Brenner's gaze was cold, shirred with something that urged caution in your teeth.
“He just - wanted to check on me.” You added with a non committal shrug.
But Peter was right. You were a bad liar.
“Did he now?” Brenner asked snidely. “How very caring of him. And tell me, what did you discuss with him?”
So he didn’t know. He didn't know the warnings Peter had murmured through that very air about him. A man capable of murder, who now stood in the tight space in front of you.
Or, he did know, and he was trapping you into another lie.
“Nothing interesting.” You said casually, though your hands shook. “He just asked how I felt.”
You hoisted yourself back up onto the side of the bed and swung your legs like you were merely reporting the weather.
“Is that so?”
Brenner studied you closer. You knew if he looked too close, he’d see the lie sitting plainly on your lips.
“You wouldn’t lie to your Papa now, would you Nineteen?” He asked, sickly sweet.
“No, Papa.” You shook your head. “Of course not.”
He was measuring you with his frigid, calculating gaze. “Good, because if you did, you would be punished. Punished just the same as an orderly who oversteps their duties... or becomes attached.”
A shard of ice sliced through your gut.
What had he done?
Rage was boiling beneath you, the way it did when you started losing control, curving the edges of your mind inward toward that concentrated point of fury. You wanted to choke him, send him careening into the walls, snap his fingers like twigs.
You had to leash it, feral beast that it was.
Brenner was observing you as if he wanted you to unhinge. As if he wanted a reason.
You could hear Peter's voice ringing through your ears.
Calculate your opponent. Then act.
It took every ounce of strength you had to swallow the beast. You looked up at Brenner with wide, innocent eyes.
“I understand, Papa.”
He looked almost disappointed. But he was calculated in the way you needed to learn to be, and he already knew his next move.
You didn’t need to ask about Peter.
He was going to make sure you knew exactly what it had cost him to comfort you.
“Wait.” Brenner instructed sternly.
You had to play along, for now. You stilled at the edge of the bed, not moving an inch. Panic was a creeping tide, pulling up your throat.
He returned not long later, a nurse at his side. She was holding a large, circular device. Metal, with probes on the inside. The sight of it made your throat dry.
“Collar her.” Brenner said casually.
The nurse hesitated, but obeyed. The device clicked open threateningly, and she secured it around your neck. It was tight, rigid, the probes pressing against your fragile skin.
“Doctor Brenner, I would advise against -”
He held his hand up to silence her.
“You may go.”
She nodded once, and then slipped from the room, avoiding his eyeline as if trained to.
He was fiddling a remote between his calloused hands. Your fingers tugged the edge of the collar, trying to move it, but it was unyielding.
“Oh, it’s not meant to be comfortable.” Brenner smiled.
“Papa, what is this?” You coughed, throat tight inside the metal confines.
“Merely a precaution.” He stated. “But if you lose control again, you will find out.”
It was a threat he didn’t bother to honey, and it sank like one.
You swallowed against the dryness in your throat, the collar pressing in just enough to remind you who was in control.
“I won’t.” You said quietly.
Brenner’s mouth curled up at the corner. His chin tilted up as he eyed you.
“No, you won’t. And orderlies won’t overstep their bounds. They won't form attachments. They won't toy with inappropriate relationships.”
Inappropriate relationships? Something tight curled inside of you at the words.
He held his hand out, serpent that it was.
“Come. I have something to show you.” He said. “I believe you’ll find it quite eye-opening.” He smiled, a wicked edge to the curve.
Your entire body pinpricked, nerves firing as you eyed the remote in his fingers. You took his hand obediently.
He led you from the infirmary, polished leather shoes clacking through the white-washed halls. He smiled sickly the entire way. Around every corner, down every length of corridor, through the antiseptic concourse.
Until you arrived outside a door inset with a small window. Not unlike most of the doors, except for the fact that Brenner looked most pleased to be outside of this one.
It looked like a disused testing room. Dimly lit, a wall with a large pane of glass separating it into two halves. On the other side of the glass stood two orderlies.
Composed, still, waiting.
You’d seen their faces before. In passing, in testing, sometimes in the rainbow room whenever you’d forced your focus from Peter. Against his seraphine beauty they were just lifeless faces.
“Watch.” Brenner said, too softly.
Your eyes flicked apprehensively over his face and slowly back through the window.
Brenner nodded sharply. One of the orderlies walked a few paces away, disappearing behind the wall for a moment.
When he reappeared, your heart wrenched into the linoleum.
Peter.
Hands tied behind his back.
Face as forlorn as it was beautiful.
Your blood morphed into crystalline ice, every vessel frozen in fear. You tried to swallow the feeling, but it pulsed against your throat, the tightness of the collar pressing in even further.
The orderly had him gripped at the collar of his shirt, the usual neat white fabric was crumpled under his aggressive fingers. He dragged him violently to the floor, dead center in the window pane. He fell to his knees with a bruising thud.
Then, you noticed the rods. The same ones that had been used to light you up like a livewire.
“Papa -” you choked out, voice cracking helplessly over the weight of the scene unfurling in front of you.
“Quiet.” Brenner hissed.
You tried to drop your eyes, turn your head as your lungs began bursting with quick panic. But Brenner was not about to allow you the mercy of looking away.
“I said, watch.” He commanded sharply.
Suddenly, he gripped your face, pulling your chin up with his calloused fingers, forcing your gaze forward through the window.
Peter was kneeling, his back bent, his head lowered. His soft blonde waves falling over his forehead, a frame to his fear.
Brenner nodded once more. They wasted no time.
Peter’s tortured yell was a broken, desperate sound as the tasers hit him, one in each side, lighting him up with violent bursts of hot electricity.
You writhed and squeaked against Brenner’s grasp still tight on your chin, but he only held you harder, his fingertips pressing demandingly into your jaw.
“Watch.” He growled.
Peter wailed again as the orderlies shocked him with more unrelenting bursts. His ribs, his sides, his back, every scorched assault pulling a tormented yell from his mouth.
Tears started pooling in your eyes as you witnessed him, wrecked and demented with pain. They streamed hot rivers over Brenner’s knuckles.
“See what happens when you stray from your place in my lab?” He sneered. “Peter is not your friend. Nor are you his. You would both be wise to remember it.”
Peter was wracked with violent jolts until he collapsed helplessly to the floor. He crumpled, his body shuddering with pained breaths. His white clothes were singed. Scorched and blackened where the tasers had burned past the fabric into his skin.
“Papa... please,” you forced out through your tears. “Please, he only wanted to check I was okay.”
But it was a performance, an entertainment they reveled in.
Brenner’s fingers tightened on your jaw even harder, making you hiss a sharp breath. His mask had slipped entirely, the full extent of malice visible between the aged lines on his face.
“Peter will abide by his duties. You will control your abilities. And neither of you will attempt to befriend the other, nor attempt to deceive me again. Are we clear?”
“Y-yes Papa.” You murmured, tears still falling hot rivers.
“Good. Now rejoin your brothers and sisters.” He finally dropped his bruising grip. His lips curved back into a controlled smile, as if you'd been merely having a cordial conversation.
“How… how long do I have to wear this?” Your neck craned awkwardly in the collar.
“Until I am satisfied.”
He pressed the buzzer outside the door, and one of the orderlies exited.
Peter was motionless on the ground. Your heart was choked, spun tight with barbed wire, racing against every wretched vengeful thing you wanted to inflict on them all. Your fingertips were numb with it, coursing with embers of hatred.
“Doctor Brenner.” The orderly smiled cheerfully.
His teeth looked far too comfortable in his mouth, and for a fleeting moment you saw yourself grabbing his head and smashing it into the tile, painting the white gloss red.
“Take Nineteen to the rainbow room.”
The orderly nodded, and grabbed your frail bicep like a vice, dragging you along the halls with sick satisfaction.
“Did you enjoy the show?” He smirked.
The embers coursed through you, mind lashing and serpentine. You were silent, letting it writhe inside of you.
“Well, we had fun.”
Your teeth clenched together, bone against bone.
“Don’t worry your pretty little head. That’s not the worst he’s had.”
That made your steps falter.
How often did Brenner do this to him? How often did he break upon the tiles, how often was he lit up like a livewire, shattered and tortured?
And why on earth would he stay here?
Unless he had no choice. Unless he was also a prisoner.
A wounded animal, a beast. Just like you.
***
You didn’t see Peter for a few days.
Agonizingly slow days, filled with anguish and anxiety and the images replaying like a stuck cinema reel behind your eyes.
His wails, his shuddering body, his angelic face twisted into torment. His limbs tense with pain, his hair thrown into disheveled splays of blonde. His perfect white uniform blackened and singed.
The malice on Brenner’s face, coupled with the cruel entertainment in his eyes.
His bully grip on your jaw, which had left pink-purple bruises along it. Your fingers trailed along the tender spots, and your mind pulsed with an odd sense of familiarity.
You'd felt bruises like this before.
Your brothers and sisters were wary of you. They eyed you with an array of paranoia, suspense, fear. 002 looked like he was on the cusp of throwing you across the room.
Maybe you deserved it. Shattering had a cost. It had cost Peter in a way he never deserved.
Guilt spun a web through you as your eyes lingered on the empty space that Peter usually occupied. The chess pieces that sat untouched on the table across the room.
Your fingers ran against the collar, still tight on your neck. Your head pained oddly in sputtering bursts, the remnants of your own punishment.
You were beginning to fear the worst. Shadows crawling beneath your skin.
Until the doors of the rainbow room parted.
Brenner.
And behind him, Peter. Stoic and controlled as always.
Your heart breathed out when you saw him. The anguish dissipated little by little as you watched him walk across the room in perfectly spaced strides and take his usual post.
He looked normal, at first glance. Beautifully angular, all long lines and lean frame draped in crisp white. His hair was sitting in its neat blonde waves.
But the longer you looked, the more pieces you found disjointed.
He stood too stiffly. His face was framed with a sharp edge, his eyes a little too dark in the hollows. His shoulders were taught. His chest rose with a quiet jaggedness, like every breath quietly pained him.
His eyes flicked up towards you for no more than a second. They fell to your neck.
Long enough to see your collar, to see the fingertip bruises on your jaw. Long enough to see the eyes of someone who had witnessed the pantomime of punishment.
Long enough to understand.
He didn’t react. Not loudly.
But his weight shifted a fraction. His knuckles grew several shades paler as the blood tightened out of them.
The urge you felt to be near him was painfully overwhelming.
You scanned the room. Brenner was busy speaking to 010 near the small bookshelf. His attention was diverted.
Your gaze darted back to Peter, and you shifted to stand up.
Peter noticed.
At once his eyes were in yours. Piercing and sharp with an urgency that felt misplaced framed by the rest of his stoic features. A singular, unmistakable instruction.
No.
So you waited. Eyes glazing as they stared around the room, breaking only to flicker over Peter's face and form every so often.
Every so often, his lips would part. Tiny, pained breaths. Every so often, his eyebrows would knit together a single stitch. Every so often, his weight would shift, as if his body was aching.
As soon as Brenner and 010 departed the rainbow room for lessons, and the door clicked decidedly shut, you moved.
Not in a dramatic, extravagant way. But quietly, calmly, like you were simply going about your morning, moving on to the next task.
You sank into the plastic seat at the chess table. Your fingers slid around a carved, white rook. You spun it across your fingertips once, twice, before setting it back down.
You could feel Peter’s eyes on you.
You didn’t look at him. You looked at the rook on the board. Focusing intensely inward, you reached toward it with your mind, feeling the tendrils of energy encasing it.
Slowly, obediently, it lifted.
You willed it forward like an extension of yourself. It drifted through the air, wobbling a touch.
A few heads looked up. To them, you were simply practicing. Hovering a random item. Moving it around like everyone else was doing with their blocks and cars and spinning tops. They lost interest after a few seconds.
Peter kept watching you.
The rook inched further and further from the board, and you could feel it pulling away from your hold the further it got.
Almost there.
With your brow furrowed unfathomably deep in focus, you hovered it in front of Peter’s clasped hands.
For a still beat, he just stared at it.
Then, decisively, his pale fingers curled around it. You saw his hand tighten. His gaze travelled toward you, lingered on the collar. You waited until his eyes fell to the board.
When they finally did, you plucked a black rook from the other side, and twirled it between two fingers. You tucked it into the sleeve of your grey sweatsuit jumper, and stood up.
Peter frowned, a brief flicker of analysis.
You approached the only other orderly that was on the observation shift in the rainbow room.
“Hello Nineteen, is everything okay?”
“We are missing some chess pieces.” You said, nodding towards the board. “I’m not sure which… maybe you could get a whole new set for each side?”
She scanned the table behind you, and sighed.
“I’ll check if we have any spares in supplies.” She said. “Stay here.”
“Of course.” You nodded. “I’ll stay right here.” You paced back to the board and sat, arranging the other pieces casually.
The corners of her mouth softened back into her cheeks. “Alright.”
“Thank you.” You smiled.
She paced out of the rainbow room, the door shutting with a metallic clunk behind her.
You didn’t shift dramatically in your seat. You didn’t look at the cameras looming in the corners of the rainbow room. You just focused on the board in front of you, as if studying it.
The supplies cupboards were a few corridors away. You had at least three minutes to work with.
With a sharp inhale and focus intense enough to set your teeth on edge, you slipped into the black space of the void. The room dissolved around you, replaced with the endless dark expanse of nothingness. Your feet, always inexplicably bare in here, stepped over the waterlogged floor.
You focused on Peter. You could see him, standing in the blackness, rigid as ever, his eyes on you at the table.
You padded, water rippling across the ground until you were standing directly in front of him. Slowly, you reached your fingers out to brush over his tight knuckles.
Only a tiny pop of his jaw muscle and the pulling of his gaze to the space in front of him told you that he’d felt you.
He didn’t just feel you. He knew where you were.
And odd feeling crawled through you. If he could feel you, could he... hear you?
You spoke. Barely a murmur that passed your lips as you sat at the chess table. Tiny octaves that no one would pick up over the sounds of their own activities.
“Peter.”
His eyes were sharply focused into the space where you stood.
“Can you hear me?” He didn’t move for a second. Your stomach dipped with disappointment.
Until he flicked his head, a tiny, minute nod. Your stomach lurched back up.
“We need to speak.” You whispered.
His head tilted up and away from you, scanning the room, cataloguing where everyone else’s attention was.
“Machinery room.” He murmured on the ghost of a breath.
“How -”
“Midnight. One week.” Was all he said, another almost inaudible whisper.
The sound of the rainbow room doors groaning open pulled you back from the ether. You were looking at the board in front of you, head tilted down.
A drop of crimson fell to the white square under your nose. You hastily wiped across your face with the back of your sleeve, smearing it. You licked the pad of your thumb and ran it furiously against your skin to clear the painted red streak from your face. You swiped the drop up from the board on the edge of your sleeve.
You looked up just as the orderly reached the table, a bright thankful smile on your face. Nothing amiss.
“Here you go.” She said, dropping a small cloth bag onto the board. It rattled slightly as the wooden pieces tumbled around inside of it.
“Thank you.” You smiled, perfectly normal.
As she retreated back to her observations, your gaze landed back onto Peter. He shifted his weight again, glancing at you for only a moment.
His fingers were still curled around the rook, nestled in the palm of his hand.
One week.
You could do it. You could play the game.
***
The week was painfully dragging.
Brenner watching you eagle-eyed through every test, scrawling notes as the needle recorded your heavy neural waves.
You didn’t know if you were stronger, or if the thought of being near Peter again was acting as some sort of generating force inside your mind.
Either way, something clicked.
You crushed the cans. You didn’t let the sound unravel you, even as it scraped through your ears, even as the images flashed.
You lit the bulbs. As bright as you possibly could, forced them into patterns of hotly buzzing light. You refused to acknowledge the violent scene that played out behind your eyes as you did.
Brenner was receptive. He’d slipped out of the role of punisher and back into the role of Papa. The way you remembered, his warmness forced and edged by a sharpness he couldn’t entirely hide.
He seemed content that his performance of punishment and rituals of torment had done their job.
You’d hardly seen Peter more than a few moments a day in the rainbow room, or in passing through the halls.
His face never gave anything away, but the feeling coming off of him did. He was stiffer, more obedient, quieter - if that was even possible.
He was holding up the facade as well. Performing, just like you. Climbing the ladder back in to Brenner’s good graces. Or at least, his precarious trust.
On the seventh day, you’d successfully pushed the silver marble through the maze on the table. Facing the wall, eyes shrouded by a blindfold.
You heard Brenner's hum of approval.
“Well done.” He said, scrawling down the readings. “It seems you are finally thriving, all things considered.”
You smiled graciously, though it felt sickening to look warmly into his face.
“Thank you, Papa. I am trying my best.” You said sweetly.
Too sweetly, anyone else would have noticed. But he was too preoccupied with his selfish feelings of triumph to notice.
“You’re making great strides here.” He placed the clipboard down and stood up, rounding the table towards you.
“You’ve displayed remarkable control of late.” He brushed a thumb up your cheek. You had to shove down the violent shudder that crawled up your neck.
You smiled softly instead, looking away as if humbled, as if the praise did anything but make your stomach churn violently.
“I think you’ve earned having this removed.” His hand nudged at the collar that had made a home around your neck.
His fingers slipped into his tailored pocket and pulled out a small ring of keys. He reached to the back of your neck, to the clasp of the collar.
He was too close. Smelling of tobacco and leather polish and something antiseptic, making your nostrils scorch.
The collar came away. The relief was instant.
The removal of the weight you’d become so used to almost made your head wobble on your shoulders. Your fingers dragged over your skin, hot and numb from the constant pressing in of the electrodes.
“Th-thank you Papa.” You breathed graciously, making your eyes as big and sweet as possible. “That feels much better.”
“I trust you won’t need it again.” He said, dipping his head to look at you from under his eyebrows.
You shook your head too vigorously. The extra movement in your neck sent a sharp jolt of pain up the back of your head.
“No Papa, I won’t. I promise.”
***
You were sitting cross legged on your bed, hospital scuffs thrown off in favour of socks you knew would muffle your steps better.
11:45pm.
You stared at the clock hands, ticking slower than ever around the circular face. Your gut writhed almost painfully. If this went wrong, the consequences would be severe.
Peter’s tortured wails were hanging in your ears as you sat there, waiting for the minutes to pass.
What would Brenner do to him if he found out? If a single pair of eyes spotted either of you moving about the halls after hours, let alone disappearing into the same darkened spaces together.
Together.
Alone.
Your throat thickened. Your ears suddenly felt full of running water. Rumbling with hot sound. Something was hammering at your heart behind the anxiety.
Quieter, warmer, the kind of thing you’d only let yourself feel in the darkest corners of the night. The kind of thing that was foolish and selfish and starved.
Your thoughts drifted into a space tinged with a pink haze.
Alone with him.
Then, the hands struck midnight. You squashed the flippant fantasies toiling in your brain and moved, opening the door as quietly as possible.
You craned your head out into the darkened corridor.
An excuse was ready on your lips, but there was no one outside. Only the sound of the heels of the night nurse, fading down the end of some corridor, carrying away from you.
You slunk out into the halls, feet padding over the linoleum as you crept close to the wall, the breath rising in your lungs as your apprehension grew with every corner you turned.
You pushed through the swing door to the basement. The concrete stairs were cold, the chill seeping through your socks as you descended them. On the very last step, nestled to the side sat the white, carved rook.
It was dark through the long, steel-netted window you peered through. Only the deep blue hues of light from the machinery whirring stretching throughout the concrete expanse.
Your palms pushed against the metal doors. The cold air met you as you stepped into the dark.
Just as you moved toward the railing to scan the room below you, a hand yanked you away from the doorway.
***
For a held moment you both hung there silently in the dark atop the metal platform, so close you could feel the warmth coming off of him.
The air between you was baring it's teeth.
“Peter -”
“Quiet.” Peter whispered, dropping your arm to lay a finger across his full lips.
“Cameras?” You whispered.
He shook his head, the blue hue of the room flittering over his blonde tufts. “Not in here. There’s one in the stairwell. So stay away from the door.”
“How do we know they haven't seen us already?”
“We don't. But midnight is shift break. No one is monitoring the cameras.”
He pointed to the ceiling. You craned your head upwards. You could hear the very faint sound of boots stepping, the low gurgle of a coffee machine, the hushed beeping of a microwave.
“Staff room?”
Peter nodded softly.
“For how long?”
“Fifteen minutes.”
“That doesn't seem long enough to have a conversation.” You frowned.
“No, it isn't. You'll have to help us on the way back.”
His hand twitched out towards yours again and then faltered, hanging in the air between you oddly. Your eyes darted to it.
“Come.” He moved toward the metal stairs of the platform.
His feet were purposeful on each stair, delicately placed as if he knew exactly where to step. He slunk underneath the platform at the bottom.
It was even darker under here, the blue light dissolved across his features. It made his cerulean irises stand out shockingly more than usual. They seemed to pierce sharper, here in the dark silence, alone.
Every hair on your body felt stiff as he studied your face in a solemn silence.
“How badly did he hurt you?” A strained tone, as if he physically pained.
“How badly did he hurt me?” Your mouth parted in disbelief.
“The bruises.” He said, his gaze hard as a rock.
His hand came up to your face.
His expression flickered, as if observing his own motion with intrigue and something sideways of surrender.
Your breath stopped. A tiny catch betraying your composure.
The knuckle of his index finger whispered up your jaw, his touch a feathered phantom.
“Here.”
Your entire face was hot in the frigid air of the dark undercroft.
“You didn’t have them in the infirmary.”
“No, I didn't...” Your gaze drew back up into his, which hadn’t left your face.
He didn’t say anything, just waited. Waited for the words that felt too heavy for you to say.
“He made me watch.” You said finally, eyes welling against your will.
Peter's eyes squeezed shut as he drew in a long breath.
“When they punished you.” You choked out, the memories rearing violently in your mind as your eyes dropped to his feet. “He didn’t let me look away.”
Peter stiffened. His face darkened with a shade far more dangerous than anger.
“Of course he did.” He pushed through his teeth.
“How badly are you hurt?” You asked, eyes dragging over him in the dim light.
“I am fine. I have had much worse.”
You stared at him with disbelief painted plainly on your face. “You mean - does he do that to you often?”
His gaze dropped, enough to confirm the question.
“Whenever he can find a reason.” He muttered. “Control is all he has. Control of us, control of the lab. It makes him feel powerful.”
Control of… us?
You frowned in the low light. “Why do you stay here?”
His breath sounded broken. His eyes were fraught, like they were being pulled toward the truth and trying desperately to stay back from it.
“Answer the question, Peter. I'm tired of not understanding things.”
His eyes shut, a long breath escaping him before he opened them again.
“I can’t leave.” He murmured.
“You can’t leave your job? Why? Because what we can do is classified, or something?”
He didn’t answer, just looked at you. “In a manner of speaking.”
Your eyes narrowed.
“You sound just like him.” You hissed, stepping backwards.
His face contorted, as if doused in acid. “What did you say?”
“Don’t look at me like that.” You said, voice sharp as a knife. “You bring me here, you put us both in danger and you can’t even be honest with me. You give me the same excuses he does.”
He glared at you, stepping closer. “I am trying to keep you safe -”
You scoffed, the sound harsh in the tight, dark space. His expression tightened.
“I am not safe.” Your voice started breaking before you could stop it, a rush of emotion filling you in an uncontrollable tide.
“I am not safe.” You choked out louder, more shattered, tears filling your eyes to the brim as he stood in silence.
He exhaled a reserved breath.
“I have never been safe.” Your mouth said the words as if your mind had known them forever.
Peter’s face softened, every angelic feature marred with a quiet guilt.
“Nineteen -”
“What?” You snarled, anger rising to combat the pain.
“I am trying to protect you.” He rasped through his teeth.
“By deciding what truths I’m worth.”
The anger was steering you now, faster than the tide of emotional turmoil, damming it behind a solid mass.
“If you had any idea -”
“You still think I have no idea what he is capable of?” You hissed. “Peter, you were the one who told me not to be so blind. Now it is you who is blinding me. Just like he does.”
Your words crashed into the air between you, landing like lead at his feet.
He let out a long, sharp breath as you let the silence weigh purposefully, let it crush against him in the dark.
You stared up at him, eyes wet and wired.
“I am not like him.” He snarled. “You have to trust me.”
“The last person to tell me to trust them tortured me, then made me watch as he did the same to you.”
His teeth clamped together. You didn’t care if it made him angry. You were angry.
You were agony in the shape of a person, clawing desperately, trying to make sense of every wretched piece.
And he was hiding the pieces inside closed fists.
“I am not like him.” He said again, the hiss in this voice sharper as his eyes narrowed with a monstrous edge.
“You sure sound like him.”
For a thick, dark second, there was silence.
Then, he was on you.
His hands gripping into your shoulders, pushing you forcefully against a stack of plastic crates. His eyes were almost crazed, leaking acid blue into yours.
Animal. Predator.
Yet you felt the torrid coiling of something much more terrifying in the back of you neck.
Invitation.
Your breath caught in your throat at the sudden rush.
“You would compare me to that monster?” His voice was a dark growl, setting your nerves alight as it careened through your ears.
“If you’re going to hurt me, get it over with.” You braved, though your voice shook over the words. “I feel little else that isn’t pain.”
His grip slackened immediately. His face fell into a million truths that he couldn’t, or wouldn't, give a voice to.
“Peter -” your breath was a choked, broken thing falling out between you.
His fingertips trailed in a whisper up your neck. He lingered there, before claiming your jaw with his thumbs.
“I’m not going to hurt you.” His voice was a somber sound, a lilt of regret.
“Be honest with me then. You’re a prisoner here too, aren’t you?”
“Yes.” He murmured. “Just like you. Just like everyone else. The nurses, the orderlies, even the guards.”
“Everyone?” You breathed.
“Yes. Prisoners. Weapons.”
You shook your head, trying to will the sense together. “But I'm only here because of the accident, I -”
“You still believe that? After everything Papa has done to you, after everything you’ve witnessed? Lies come to him easier than breathing.” Peter hissed.
Papa?
“Brenner -” he corrected himself fluidly, before you could question it. “This place is his kingdom. His trap. Nineteen, people don't just wake up with abilities like yours. And once you are caught... you can never get out.”
“Caught?”
“Caught. Made.” He said gravely, not breaking his gaze from you. “Lured.”
Lured.
Your mind reeled with a single second of disjointed footage, like a glitch within a black tape. A man, a suit, the rain. Crisp white paper in your hands.
It faded before you could make out the words inked into it.
“You will never be free, Nineteen. Not for as long as he is.” Peter sighed. “You won't ever get the truth about yourself from him.”
“And you?” You asked, heart hammering. “Will you tell me the truth?”
His breath caught softly in his lips as he stared down into you, hands still holding your face like it was something breakable.
“I am trying to.” He breathed.
He was so close you could smell his breath tumbling over his lips with every word. Coffee, the remnants of spearmint toothpaste.
You were unsure exactly when the anger in you had morphed into a serpent of desire. The scorch had fallen from your head to your chest as Peter loomed over you, a shadowed seraph lit in midnight blue.
“I don't know the whole truth.” He frowned. “But knowing him... it will be painful.”
“I don’t care if it’s painful. I don't care if I have pull it out like a knife.”
“Truth is a knife.” Peter breathed, his mouth so close you could feel the hum of life coming off his lips.
“So cut me with it.”
His breath sharpened.
A beat of stillness.
“And I’ll bleed out at your feet like the wounded animal that I am.”
It was a dare.
A desire you could no longer contain.
He broke first.
He settled his lips over yours with the type of soft terror that tasted of desperation. It was controlled, guarded, charged with fragile restraint as if he wasn't sure how to let himself feel it.
Your heart had stopped it's incessant hammering, becoming instead a halted furnace radiating nuclear within you.
He drew back. He leaned his forehead down into yours, looking like it was a pain worse than what had already befallen him to restrain himself.
“I'm - I'm sorry.” He murmured, though his face stayed agonizingly close.
“I’m not.”
Your mind was racing. You tried to brush your lips against his, selfishly seeking, but he pulled his head back.
“I shouldn’t have done that.”
A tiny scoff fell from your mouth. “Why? Didn't you mean it?”
His eyes were full of something you couldn’t pinpoint.
“I did.” He murmured.
“Then do it again.”
“Nineteen, it’s not that simple.” He breathed. “The more I feel... the more I allow... the more danger you're in.”
Your lips parted.
“Allow?” You repeated, dumbfounded.
Was your desperation for him that plain? Was your desire held like a plea on your face that he'd simply wanted to indulge?
“Allowing this would put you in more danger.”
“Allowing this? You say that like you’re doing me a favour.” You scoffed. “You kissed me. I didn't ask you to.”
“Like I said I - need to protect you.” Peter murmured.
Need.
“So protect me.”
Your hands brushed over the sides of his shirt. His breath caught as you pulled him closer. His face contorted, as if in the middle of a painful thought.
“Peter, you’re allowed to feel.” You breathed desperately. “Kiss me again.”
“I… can’t.”
Your eyes narrowed into his.
“Coward.” You said, shoving your hands hard into his chest, making him stumble backwards.
“Nineteen.” He warned, his face growing rigid. “If anyone found out -”
“What will they do? Hurt me? Hurt you?” You snarled. “They’ve already done that, or have you forgotten?”
You were in his face now. Ignited, driven by your ceaseless desire and the anger that toiled ever presently in your blood.
“No.”
“So you’re going to take it upon yourself to hurt me instead?” You hissed.
“No, Nineteen -”
“You’re not protecting me by being afraid.”
“I am trying to be rational.” He said quietly.
“Tell me what you want.” You said, your voice picking up in the darkness. “Or I’m leaving.”
“I -”
Your hands fisted the front of his shirt.
“Tell me.”
His gaze grew sharper as you eyed him combatively, all fury and longing and frustration.
“I want to help you.” He breathed. “I want you to know the truth. I want to help you remember.”
He paused.
“You - you make me feel -” The words were barely a whisper.
“Feel what?”
His face contorted as if the feeling was lodged too deep in his throat to come out without a fight.
“Say it, Peter.”
He inhaled sharply.
“Human.”
“Then stop being so goddamn afraid.”
“Nineteen -”
“Peter.”
He shifted into you, tentatively this time, until your back was flush against the crates. His arms outstretched, pinning you a cage of himself.
He was looking directly into your eyes, with the expression of a man who’d been dueling with himself for far too long.
“Don’t. Please…” He said almost inaudibly as his head dipped against your shoulder.
Your heart was beating wild hooves against your ribs. You could feel the soft tufts of his hair against your chin, smell the faint clean scent of his soap.
Your stomach lurched with a passion that felt like violence.
“Don’t what?”
“Don't call me that.” He murmured through his lips.
“Pete-?”
“Don’t.”
“You don’t want me to call you by your name?”
“That’s not… my name.” He forced out.
You knew it all too well. A strangers name with your face. A name that wouldn’t stick. A name that was covering a much darker truth. There was not a shred of pantomime to his plea.
“That’s not… okay,” you said softly. “So what is it?”
He lifted his head solemnly.
The silence tasted like a loaded gun. Pointed at you, pointed at him. You couldn’t tell. You could only taste the gunpowder.
“Henry.”
He said it like pulling a splinter, with a whisper of relief tumbling through his lips.
“Henry?”
The azure in his eyes deepened.
Before you could say another word, he crashed his mouth into you.
This time it wasn’t the controlled, fragile man who wouldn’t let himself feel and be felt.
The bough had broken.
It was like falling through a supernova, explosive and alight and alive with colours you could scarcely imagine. He tasted like something holy, something your lips were unworthy of.
His hands drew tight around your face, pulling you against him like he wanted to sink behind your teeth.
He pulled back just enough to breath between your heated mouths.
“Don't stop.” You whispered.
“Say it again.” He begged.
“Henry.”
The ghost of a whimper fell from him as his tongue slid over your lips to taste you, starved.
It felt like every unspoken agony all at once, his mouth falling over yours desperately, drawing your breath out of you with every pass.
Eventually he broke his face away from yours as if it was torture.
“Nineteen...” He murmured.
“Yes, Henry?”
His chest seemed to catch in the most devastating way every time you said his name.
“I meant what I said. I want to help you. You don’t deserve to be in this hell.” He said softly as his knuckle trailed your jaw again.
“Neither do you,” you breathed.
His eyes were intense, wild with purpose. “I’m going to find out exactly what brought you here.”
The furnace in your chest roared.
Was this what it felt like? To mean something to someone? The feeling ran through you as if it was brand new, as if your bones had never held it.
“And then?”
Henry’s gaze was as sharp as a guillotine, his jaw set with clenched teeth as he spoke.
“Then… then we will get out. We will burn it to the ground. And Papa will be the first to burn.”
There it was again. Papa.
The darkness that spun behind the blue in his eyes was ominous. It wasn’t a fantasy or a dream or a game. His intent was clear on every single one of his angular, angelic features.
It was a promise.
A death sentence.
“Do you really think that's possible?”
“Ever since you arrived I've known it to be possible.”
Henry pressed his lips over yours a final time, the searing seal of a covenant.
“I still don't understand, though. Why is your name a secret?”
“Later,” he breathed. “We have to go. Before they notice.”
“How? The guards -”
“They’ll be back from break, but you can manipulate the cameras.”
“Can I?”
“Nineteen, you crushed two people to death and threw another into a wall without even trying. It will be as easy as breathing. Trust me.”
He lingered a moment, brow knitted as if deciding whether to move or stay in the dark. Your mind reeled with the image of your hands under his shirt, on his skin…
Before you could act, he was grabbing your hand and leading you back up the metal stairs, the blue light of the machinery filtering over him as he stepped out of the dark.
He flattened at the door, next to the window.
“There. In the corner.”
Your eyes trailed up to the metal box, blinking red at the top of the stairwell. You took a deep breath, steeling your focus as you willed the force towards it.
Henry gripped your wrist. “Not so intense. Don’t break it.”
“Exactly what am I meant to do, then?” You hissed.
“The shutter. Over the lens. It has to be fast, or they’ll notice.” He breathed. “It has to seem like a glitch.”
“We’ll have to run to the top. There’s a blind spot right outside the stairwell door.”
You nodded, and turned your focus back towards it. This time, you tunneled the force into a tiny point, pulling at the intricate, fragile machinery whirring within the camera until the lens blackened.
“Now.” You said through gritted teeth.
Henry grabbed your hand and pushed the door open, only faltering for a second to collect the white rook before pulling you up the stairs in a flurry.
He slid against the shadowed wall at the top with you as you relented control of the lens. A warm, slick drop of blood was creeping from your left nostril.
“Good.” Henry breathed. “There's one in every corridor, but I know where the blind spots are.”
***
You moved through the corridors like phantoms, Henry's fingers laced and unyielding through yours.
You blackened the cameras for mere seconds while he led you into each blind spot, the maneuvers becoming almost a dance by the time you'd reached your room.
You slipped inside, shutting the door with a soft click. Henry stood near the doorway, watching you closely.
Alone again.
Your legs moved for you, carrying you back towards him.
“Henry -” your fingers reached up to push a wayward tuft of blonde from his forehead.
He flinched, as if it was the kind of touch he'd never learned to feel.
His gaze dropped to your mouth for moment before he craned around to the dark window, surveying the corridor outside.
“I have to go,” He said tightly. “You can’t call me Henry out there. Only when we're alone.”
He looked pained. “If he hears you, he will kill us both. He can't suspect anything. Do you understand?”
You swallowed and nodded.
“Good. I have to go.”
Your hand lingered on his face, fingertips brushing down the warm marble of his cheek.
“Will I see you like this again?”
“Yes.” His thumb and index finger tilted your chin up. “Like I said, I am going to find out who you are. I promise.”
“We'll use these.” You said, pulling the black rook from your pocket. “Leave it somewhere I'll find it, and I'll meet you there at midnight.”
He nodded.
“Be careful.” You sighed. “Go quickly. I'll blank the cameras for you.”
He set his lips gently against your forehead. “Goodnight, Nineteen.”
He dropped your chin, studying you for a beat longer before turning on his heels.
“- and Henry?”
“Yes?”
“That's not my name.”
“Nineteen?”
You nodded slowly.
“No, I don't suppose it is. What is your name?” He asked softly.
“I don't know.” You admitted. “But that's not it.”
“I'll help you find it.” He said, his voice tipped with velvet.
He opened the door silently, and slid into the darkened halls like a shadow, leaving you trembling where you stood, your lips still burning with the phantom of his own.
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This is a gender neutral x reader and no physical description is given of reader so hopefully more people can enjoy this!
Just a quick short oneshot to try and break the writers block!! No warnings!
TLDR: Slurp is just a puppy, reader reads gothic poetry and suffers the consequences of that, zombie on the lose, guilt blooms and a love confession from an unexpected (not really) place.
And Now:
The first thing you notice is the smell. The Hummer Shed smells like rot and decay apposed to the usual pollen and honey scent. Curiously, you open the door and peek inside, and there sits a figure curled up pitifully in the corner. You frown worried, you can't quite make out the person's face, nor if they are okay or not, “Hey? Hey, you okay?” You walk over and bend down, reaching for their shoulder when they suddenly whip around and lurch at you. You jerk back with a yelp, the teeth missing you by mere inches. Shuffling back, you take in who just tried to take a chomp out of you. It’s a zombie. A literal zombie. Like something out of The Walking Dead or some other rotting zombie media. You watch as the zombie groans and whines, curling back up into his corner, tugging at the chains pitifully. Your heart tugs at the sight; he’s more like a wounded and trapped animal than a monster. You bend down, still keeping a safe distance and soften your tone, “Hey… can you understand me?”
The zombie turns and tilts his head at you; one of his eyes is missing, and the other is milky white, with a faint pupil in the centre, but he can at least perceive you. You sigh softly, taking in his sorry state. It must be hell being dragged from death into a rotting body and decaying mind. You can’t imagine how he must feel, even if he can’t fully comprehend it; regardless, it is still not fair. You gently edge closer, “Hey… can I help? Can I get you anything?”
The zombie tilts his head at you like a confused puppy and groans. Finally, after a few false starts, he manages to get out, “Br….braaainsss.”
Honestly… you can’t even be surprised… this is a zombie after all. The zombie looks at you expectantly until you sigh and stand. “Fine… I’ll see what I can do…”.
Right after you turn to leave, you hear a clinking of chains followed by a pitiful groan. Pivoting back around to face the zombie, you realise he is suddenly in front of you, pulling the chain taut. Startled at the fact you didn’t even hear him rise or sneak up on you, you edge closer to the door before fleeing completely. Slamming the door closed with your body, you hear yet another soft groan and the chain rattling.
What have you gotten yourself into?
——————————————————————————————-
Regardless of the strangeness of this situation, you retrieve some bovine brains from the biology lab stores. You pray that the zombie does not actually crave human brains, as that’s just a little… problematic for everyone involved. Pushing the shed door open slowly, you peek in to see the zombie turning to face you again, that white eye locking onto you.
“Hey,… uh… man… i got you something to eat?’, you place the bundle onto the floor and gently push it over to him. The zombie's head tilts before his jaw unhinges, and he lurches at the brains. His body folds inwards as he kneels to feast. You observe him with horror and intrigue as he slurps up the brain matter. Once he finishes his meal, the zombie’s posture softens, and he seems more at ease. He laps at the gunk around his mouth and looks up at you, content.
——————————————————————————————-
And so you keep this little feeding routine up, sneaking the zombie bovine brains whenever you can. With each feeding, the zombie is calmer in your presence, even standing up and drawing close to you without snapping his teeth at you. His milk-white eye starts to clear, and a soft brown iris is visible that tracks your every movement from entering to leaving. With this calm disposition, you start bringing books to read to the zombie, a mixture of class set reading, poems and chapters from books.
It is during one of these reading sessions that something shifts.
You are finishing the short story when it happens.
“”Villains!” I shrieked, “dissemble no more! I admit the deed! - tear up the planks! - here, here! - it is the beating of his hideous heart!”” You read out to the zombie when you feel a tug at your sleeve. Your eyes drift to the side to see the zombie gently gnawing at your sleeve. Your heart rate rattled in your chest, until you noticed the gentleness of the gnaws, that he avoids touching your skin and even keeps eye contact with you, making soft rumbly sounds.
“Oh”, you start, “… is this a thank you?”
The zombie whines like a puppy and shuffles closer, gnawing with more intent. He waits for you to understand his meaning before he lets go of your sleeve and leans back, mouth trying to form words that he does not have a developed enough Boca’s area or vocal cords for. He moans in frustration and lashes out, tugging at his chains, making the wooden wall creak and splinter. You yelp and stand, moving away. The zombie pauses and looks up at you, his breath hitches, and he looks at you with something like pleading and yearning before you turn and leave quickly with the sound of the wooden wall groaning again. You flee, clutching your book of Edgar Allen Poe short stories, catching the sound of the zombie's faint whines, groans and hitching of breaths as you depart. You are far too rattled to return anytime soon….
—————————————————————————————-
And then the camping trip happens, and the zombie is carted away to Willow Hill. Guilt eats at you. Perhaps if you hadn’t fled and stopped bringing brains, maybe the zombie wouldn’t have lashed out and ATE SOMEONE.
You feel like a ghost haunting the halls of Nevermore during the lead up to the Gala. You attend to support your friends, but before the drama can start, you slip back off to the Hummer Shed and just stand in the same place the zombie occupied. When you try to remember him, you feel an extra sting of pain when you realise you didn’t even give him a name. You sigh and let your head thunk onto one of the wooden foundation poles.
The door creaks open behind you, “I’m sorry, Eugene, I’ll leave now. Just needed… a moment.”
A soft raspy voice comes from behind you, amusement clouding his tone, “Oh, I am not Eugene.”
You frown and turn to see a tall man dressed in a red and black suit with a matching mask; his hair is slicked back, and his brown eyes peek out from the shadow of his mask. A smile curves his mouth, and he steps forward, “Well, hello.”
You blink, “uh, hi… what’s up? After some…. Honey?”
The stranger in red and black’s eyes briefly flicker to the jars of honey as if noticing them for the first time, before his eyes lock back on you, “No… not honey.” His eyes are soft but intense. Familiar with that contradiction.
His hand reaches out and holds onto your sleeve before gently rubbing the fabric between his gloved fingers. Eyes locked onto your sleeve and the movement of his fingers before they drift up to your eyes, they look like they implore you. You blink owlishly at him, confused but not minding a handsome stranger being this close and focused solely on you. It is quite flattering, and as you open your mouth to ask if you can help this gentleman in any way, your mind jerks. The soft brown eyes, the quiet intensity, the touch, the closeness…. Familiar. Painfully familiar. A surprised wheeze slips out between your parted mouth, “Zombie?”
The man huffs once and grips your sleeves slightly tighter, “Yes, but it is Isaac. Please. Please call me Isaac.”
You nod once, “Right.. Isaac… nice to see you got… better?”
Isaac huffs at your awkward small talk and steps closer, “Yes, not rotting anymore. Thanks to you…” His voice softens at the end. You have no words, and after a weighted pause the zombi- Isaac starts up again, “I have come to find you. Come with me. Choose me. Please. No… no one ever has chosen me. You stayed with me when my mind wasn’t fully healed, and my consciousness was foggy, but you stayed. You cared. You read to me. You sat with ME”, his hand gripping your sleeve tightens, and Isaac’s eyes drop to it. “I tried to show you. Before. When I was still rotten but I couldn’t articulate it. I scared you off. But I am better now. I am the smartest student to ever attend Nevermore, and I don't need to chew your sleeve anymore to show that I want you. So come with me. Please.” He pinches your sleeve with his finger and thumb again, and his brown eyes stare at you with an intensity that demands an answer…
So, dear reader, what do you reply with to our dear Isaac Night?
Chapter 1 : A Mind Of Its own
Pairing: Henry Creel (001) x Female Original Character (Fm!OC)
Rating: Mature (18+)
Word Count: 1,942 words
Type: Multi-chapter
Tropes & Themes: Slow Burn, Fluff, Future Smut, Soft Henry Creel, Canon Divergent, Alternate Universe - Lab Era.
Synopsis:
A new nurse is introduced to the pediatric wing of Hawkins Laboratory, and Henry instantly recognizes her. Though she is confused and under the heavy, fog-like spell of Dr. Brenner’s control, Henry remembers exactly who she is. Will he be able to break through Brenner's conditioning and bring her back to herself? With her arrival, the game in the lab has completely changed. and Henry is ready to play by a whole new set of rules.
How long had it been since she'd started this job at Hawkins Lab? A year? Time seemed to flow differently here. She knew it wasn't long. No, wait; it didn't feel like a while. Maybe that was because she'd been transferred to a different part of the facility. She had worked as a staff nurse for the past year. It wasn't terrible, but it wasn't what she wanted to do.
She finished up the files she was leaving for the next staff-appointed nurse. One of her co-workers, whom she'd become close with during her time here, stopped her as she cleared out the rest of her desk, putting her various nick-knacks in a box.
" Misty, are you sure that you want to go down to the basement level?" she asked her. Misty had heard a lot about where she was being transferred; the guards had talked about it often. telling her the rumor of all the terrible, inhumane things that went on down there, mentioning "Freak-kids," at first, she questioned the idea, how was she going to be useful in a top-secret wing of the facility. She was just a regular staff nurse. But Doctor Brenner had made it sound like she'd truly be useful down there.
" I originally was in pediatrics before I got this job, it makes sense that I would be transferred where I'm useful," she shrugged her shoulders as she finished packing up the last of her things. " I'm not thrilled about having to stay in the house, however. But Doctor Brenner insisted. "The other nurse took a moment before she leaned in so that only the two of them could hear.
" You do know he's heading this project there himself. "
Misty paused a moment, a pit growing in her stomach. She'd often tried to avoid doctor Brenner. He made her feel uncomfortable for some reason, and her head always hurt when he'd asked her certain questions. He was especially interested in her memory issues, knowing that she'd had a bout of amnesia when it came to her Past before she went to college. Even college was a little spotty, but that didn't quite surprise her. She was shocked that she was even able to graduate with her class, given how spotty that time was.
" I've heard, I think he wants me there for a reason, but I can't quite figure it out yet. He said something about me having a real nurturing spirit. I guess it helps that most of my patients when I was in school were children. " When the lid was finally put on her box, she carried it in her arms as she was led by her nurse friend down towards the basement level.
" If you change your mind, come back, we'd love to have you back," she said before patting Misty on the shoulder and letting her continue her long walk down into the pits of the Hawkins lab pediatric wing.
When she got to the elevator leading down, she felt something in her stomach do a flip. Her nerves were getting the best of her, but it seemed and armed guard was waiting for her at the entrance to the elevator.
This made everything that had been spoken in hushed whispers in her office seem more realistic. top secret lab, doing horrible who knows what underneath the surface.
Freak Children
She felt like a bird about to be caged. She knew , though, the moment the doctor had told her that she needed to pack whatever she couldn't live without. She was about to be a live-in nurse for this pediatric wing. But the kids, she could help the kids. And that would make things so much better. She loved children more than adults. They were innocent. and so much different than the jaded adults, they had such a pure worldview.
Standing in front of the guard now, however, felt strange. The way he looked at her, un-moving and without emotion, made her feel cold. There was no warm greeting, only a very curt and quick " Misty Starling?" to which she nodded. He opened the top of her box, looking through the items that she'd prepared to take with her, taking out anything he deemed too dangerous for the descent to the basement labs.
What he did with these prohibited items was toss them in the receptacle next to them. Taking a look at an old bound leather sketchbook, which he looked back at her before putting it back in the box. There were a few other sketchbooks, blanks . These were deemed acceptable.
Finally, he led her into the elevator, and they began their descent into the lower levels of the lab.
The elevators creaked and groaned on the way down, and the atmosphere turned colder as they lowered further into the lab. stopping only for a moment as the guard opened the door and escorted her out to a hallway. Getting out a key card, he swiped it against the wall panel and led her through the door and down the concrete hallway to a room labeled Starling.
"You have thirty minutes to put away your things, and then Dr. Brenner wants you in the lower medical dispensary to retrieve the patient logs from the senior orderly."
She nodded to the guard and walked into the cold concrete room, looking around at the lodging she'd been given. The room was smaller than a studio apartment. There was a washroom, a small fridge, and a sink next to a desk that she'd set her things on.
Her clothing had already been brought to the small room and put in the wardrobe in the corner of the room.
When she was through putting her things away in the desk, she took a moment to fix her curled red hair, and grabbed her clipboard from her desk before she followed the guard to the lower medical dispensary.
They passed on their way down a hall with rainbows painted on the concrete walls, in the middle, a large rainbow room with children inside. shaved heads and hospital gowns, playing games, and doing different puzzles.
These must be her new wards she was supposed to take care of.
They seemed normal for the most part. But with how this wing smelled of bleach and ozone, she could only imagine the horrors that the cold concrete walls held within them.
" Dr. Brenner will see you when he is free. He's asked you to seek any help you need from the senior orderly. and has asked you not to leave this floor. "
The steel door clicked shut behind her, cutting off the heavy footsteps of the guard. Misty took a shallow breath, her fingers tightening around the edge of her clipboard. The room was deathly quiet, smelling of rubbing alcohol and old paper.
A tall orderly stood by the metal cabinets, his back to her, meticulously organizing patient charts. His white uniform was immaculate, his posture rigid.
"Excuse me," Misty said, her voice sounding small in the sterile space. "I’m Nurse Sterling. Dr. Brenner sent me down to get the children's logs."
The orderly froze. For a second, he didn't move at all, as if her voice had physically locked his joints. Then, he slowly turned around.
The polite, generic smile he prepared for a coworker died instantly on his face. His pale blue eyes widened, fixed entirely on the vivid shock of red hair framing her face, tracking down to the dusting of freckles across her nose. His hands dropped to his sides, the medical files slipping slightly from his grip. He stared at her with an intensity that made the air in the room feel heavy, suffocating, and terrifyingly cold as if he were looking directly at a phantom.
Misty shifted uncomfortably under his gaze, unable to shake the feeling.
" Are you alright? You look as if you've seen a ghost."
His voice is a low, raspy whisper before he clears his throat, forcing his shoulders to relax a bit. something seemed to click in him that she noticed; his eyes, for a split second after she asked if he was alright, reflected both pain and anger. But he smiled at her, cool and calm, collecting himself again.
"Forgive me, Nurse Sterling. For a moment... the light in here played a trick on my eyes. You look remarkably like someone I used to know. "
She winces a moment and places a hand to her head, a strange, sharp ache hitting the back of her temples for a moment. The orderly simply watched her for a moment, a subtle shift in his demeanor. The room felt intense again. " Ah, I see. I just transferred down from Staff Medical. Dr. Brenner told me to come find the senior orderly to collect the children's daily logs."
He steps closer, and she feels a shiver down her spine. His movement is fluid. Yet predatory, like a spider approaching its web, he holds out his hand for her clipboard. That smile returned to his face. " That would be me, I'm Henry." his voice was like honey, sweet and yet smooth enough to hide a bit of danger in it.
She quietly hands him the clipboard, their fingers brushing gently, as a violent jolt of electricity seems to pass between them. making her gasp and withdraw her hand a moment, " I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to shock you."
The jolt seemed not to affect him, looking down at his hand before his gaze returned to her. His pale blue eyes pierced right through her. " There's no need for apology, Nurse Misty. The energy in this basement tends to fluctuate. One gets used to the sparks."
Henry takes a few papers, attaching them to the clipboard, and as he signs his name to the ones needed, she reaches out. The movement of his hand is sharp, familiar. And while she can't explain it, it seems her hands had a mind of their own.
The movement isn't unseen by him; he catches it with a small, polite, and uniform. but makes no remark about it, handing her back her clipboard. The smile itself seemed completely manufactured.
"There you are. Welcome to the lower levels, Nurse Sterling. I have a feeling you are going to change things around here."
She doesn't say much else as she gives him a soft wave, leaving the room and gently closing the door behind her. She takes her work right back to her room, moving to sit at the desk, and she looks over the papers, but something keeps coming back to her.
the way their hands sparked when they touched.
She gazes at her fingers, moving them slowly as she tries to think about the reaction that she had to the way he was writing. Why…why did she want to reach out to him so badly? Her head began to hurt more and more as she tried to pick at it. The more she dug, the worse the pain was, as if she were throwing herself against a spiked stone wall in her mind.
She had to stop.
Whatever it was, it was nothing for now.
Still unable to concentrate, she opened her sketchbook. taking her mechanical pencil and began to sketch out jagged edges and sharp lines. a faceless young man underneath a light post, static all around him.
There was one thing about all of this she did know.
Henry was right that things were going to be interesting from now on.
Remember that I have power; you believe yourself miserable, but I can make you so wretched that the light of day will be hateful to you.
- Mary Shelly, Frankenstein
The morning was the same as so many that had come before it. Dull, fluorescent, cold.
Lights humming above you, set into white plaster. The only sky you'd known for far too long. The only sky you could remember knowing.
Brenner sat rigidly in the chair opposite you, he slid a photograph onto the table with practiced, calloused fingers.
“Seven?” You asked curiously, studying it.
“I want you to find him. Tell me what he's doing.”
You exhaled and shut your eyes. The needle started scratching next to you as you pressed focus into the dark space of yourself, holding the image of Seven in your mind, willing yourself through the ether.
It felt like being wrenched into nowhere. Still in your seat, yet eons away from it. The void of consciousness was a vastness of space that wouldn't be defined by edges, or seams, or the measurements of men.
“What do you see?” Brenner's voice echoed coolly round you.
You scoured the darkness, not a shape or shift to be found.
“Nothing.” You sighed. “Just darkness.”
“Keep searching.”
You sat in silence for longer, taking steadying breaths. But there was nothing, just the empty, black vastness of the void pressing in on you.
“I... can't see anything.”
“Try harder.”
You huffed sharply out of your nose, fists curling in your lap. You concentrated, tensing every muscle as you traversed it, desperately tried to find any shred of evidence.
“There’s nothing.” You said, sharper.
“Very disappointing.” His pen scribbled against the clipboard. “You’re distracted.”
“I’m not distracted.”
Truthfully, you were.
It was him, front and center in your mind. An impossible monolith. Peter.
He'd been lurking in your nightmares like he belonged there, creeping behind your thoughts since your last conversation.
It didn't help that whenever your gaze drew to him, he was studying you with an intensity that looked like it pained him.
“I'm not.” You repeated louder, as if volume would disguise the lie.
Brenner looked wary, unimpressed.
“Nineteen, your brothers and sisters who are half your age can do this.”
You scoffed. Frustration was shifting beneath your skin as he eyed you, his head tilted backwards into the usual dissecting glare.
“And they’d be laughing at you. If they saw you failing like this.”
Your jaw clenched.
“They've been at it for years. You expect so much from me while I’m still learning how to exist.” You snarled, unable to squash the rancid feeling beneath your skin.
“When I don’t even know who I am.”
He set the clipboard down with a sigh, and brushed a finger over his aged chin. Any semblance of the care he usually played at was long absent. You were simply an underperforming pet with a brain that didn't work right, and you both knew it.
“In order to achieve what needs to be achieved we must obtain perfection.” He said plainly. “Anything else would be a risk.”
You were defiantly silent.
“We'll take a break. Go to the rainbow room. Re-center yourself.” He instructed. “But soon, there will be a group test. Hopefully, performance motivates you.”
He pressed his thumb into the buzzer. A moment later, an orderly entered obediently to collect you. Old, greying. Face like a weathered stone. Not Peter.
Your stomach sank a little as you got up and followed him out into the halls. The way he moved irked you. Laggard and ungraceful and nothing like Peter.
The ragged breathing from his ancient lungs wheezed across your ear, making the back of your neck fire pinpricks.
“I know where to go.” You blurted out “You don't need to take me.”
He looked at you as if you were nothing more than a colorless lump of a thousand faces he'd seen before.
“Gotta take ya. Doc's orders.” He shrugged, eyes half-lidded like he might expire right there in the middle of the hall.
You wished he would.
***
The rainbow room was too quiet today. So quiet that the hum of the lights seemed a shrill pitch to your ears. So quiet you could almost hear the blood writhing through you.
The quiet wasn’t a suture to your wound of a mind. Today, it was a scalpel, digging in, opening you.
His voice fell like gauze over it.
“You're out of testing already.” Peter stated, standing rigidly as he always did, his hands hung together in front of him.
Your eyes fell to them, to his long pale fingers. Every knuckle looked purposefully carved, painstakingly crafted.
“Thank god.”
“You must have done well.”
“The opposite.” You scoffed bitterly. “Papa was very disappointed.”
“What did he have you do?”
“Try to find Seven. Tell him what he was doing.”
“And what did you find?”
“Nothing. Just darkness.”
You leaned your elbows onto your knees, and ran a hand over your buzzed scalp. Your fingertips dragged softly across the follicles before coming to rest under your chin.
Peter was silent, studying you.
“Sometimes it’s helpful to step away for a moment.” He said.
His voice was laden with velvet. It sent a shiver through you in a way that made you want to put your fist through a wall. It was too melodic, too gentle for a place like this. The cold walls didn't deserve to hear it.
“Perhaps that’s why he sent me in here. Though I don’t see how blocks or mazes are going to help me.” You shrugged, eyes trailing over a few of the scattered, younger subjects who were toying with childish items.
“You may be surprised at what can help your powers. And what can hinder them.”
Your eyes narrowed in a fraction. “Sometimes you speak like you have personal experience, did you know that?”
The crook of his lip flicked up and he huffed, a single, breathy sound.
“I’ve been here a long time.” He said casually. “I’ve seen a lot, with the others.”
You nodded vaguely, your eyes drifting off into nowhere particular as they always did when your mind was trying to connect two ends of a disjointed thought.
Him, here. It didn't make sense.
Was he a nepotism hire? Was this some sort of get-out-of-prison deal he'd made? A kind of penance for some crime-stricken night of his youth?
“Why are you here?” You asked him finally, surrendering to the fact that you were unable to reconcile the absurdity of it.
“Ah, well, I'm afraid that’s a story for another day.” He smiled, the kind that looked like a thin shade of concealment.
“You don’t seem like you belong in a place like this. I don't understand why you'd work here.”
Your eyes trawled over his face. So defined, yet so gentle. It was as irritating as it was a intriguing.
“How do we know where we truly belong?”
“Your crypticness isn’t exactly inviting, you know.”
“And who exactly, am I meant to be inviting?” His eyebrows twitched upward.
There was amusement in his tone. Just enough to give away that there was something hiding under his perfect doll face after all. Something toying, something that fought back.
And there was something inside of you too, something that was screaming to be invited.
You huffed it out into the air between you. It was a foolish notion that belonged in the dark, untouchable space of your brain with the rest of the things you couldn’t decipher.
“Someone who enjoys puzzles, I suppose.”
“I puzzle you?” Peter asked, his voice soaked with an edge of irony.
“Peter, I would bet that you puzzle everyone who comes across you.”
“Why?” He frowned.
Did he really not know? That he looked like divinity and walked like his footsteps alone turned the very earth beneath them?
“Like I said, you don’t seem like you belong here. The other orderlies, the nurses, even Papa... they all have this dull energy… like a lifeless day of rain.”
Time seemed to still as you searched the blue in his irises.
“You still have something behind your eyes.”
As you spoke, an image began to take shape in the dark space of your mind.
Wet pavement. A grey sky. Rain falling about your face.
Then, a sound. The creaking of hinges. The shrill shriek of brakes.
Your breath staggered for a moment, quietly, but he noticed the falter.
“Nineteen?” He asked, his head tilted soflty.
“Hm?”
“You saw something just now, didn’t you?”
“I think so.” Your teeth rested indents into your bottom lip.
“What was it?”
“Rain. The footpath. Nothing useful.” You sighed. “It's always the same. Pieces of things that don't make sense. Faces, feelings, nightmares.”
“Memory.” He said simply.
“Perhaps. But how do I sort out the memories from the nightmares?”
“All nightmares are memories.” Peter said, his soft voice strained.
You studied him, trying to grapple with the images as they faded from your mind. His face was set like a stone. One washed with lime.
If he wanted to be cryptic, so be it.
“Then what are dreams?” You challenged.
“I'll tell you, when I figure it out.”
As you sat there, the air running with a current between you, a noise began whispering out of the speakers of the rainbow room. A song.
It was quiet, broken. An angelic voice distorted into sharp shrills and caught tendrils of sound.
Hold me tight…. Tell me… miss me…. I’m alone… as can be… dream… dream of me…
It cut off, the speakers cold and dead as they had been.
The quiet sounds of the room returned. the clacking of stacked blocks, the scrawling of pencils, the whirr of the lights.
“I know that song.” You frowned. “Since when do they play music in here?”
That’s when you realized Peter’s entire posture had changed. He was stiff, unblinking. His face was grave, overcome with an intensity you hadn't imagined it could hold.
As if he was witnessing something biblical, something eldritch behind his eyes.
His clasped hands were tightened against each other, knuckles turned white and bloodless.
“Peter?”
“They don’t.” The words sounded forced out. “They don’t play music.”
“Did I do that then?” Your eyes darted to the speakers for a moment. “Thinking about dreams? I must have -”
Your gaze dragged back to him, to the severity that had befallen his entire being.
“Perhaps.” He murmured, eyes staring into nowhere.
It was over a minute before he moved at all. Slowly he rolled his shoulders back, as if the frozen blood in his veins had thawed.
“Are you alright?” Your eyebrows were tight as you watched the blood return to his knuckles, to his face.
He took a beat to register your question. But when he met your eyeline again, his eyes were soft and still.
“Yes.” He said with a hung smile.
No part of you believed him, but you decided on the mercy of not pressing. Whatever pained him, it clearly did so well enough on its own without you prying into the wound with a scope of selfish curiosity.
Your expression told him that you wouldn’t let it rest forever, though.
***
That afternoon, you were back in the rainbow room.
Your eyebrows were furrowed down at the wooden chess board, jaw in your hands as you studied the carved pieces.
Peter’s fingers rested lightly across his rook as he moved it forward. He collected your pawn, and rolled it between his fingers for a moment like a prize. You exhaled in frustration.
“Don’t lose focus.” He instructed calmly.
Your eyes trailed up into his. They were sharp, intense, and drowning as always.
“I’m not.” You said.
“I’ve told you before, you are a bad liar.”
“Fine. Sure. I’m losing focus.” You sighed, rubbing your eyes. “There just isn’t a way in which I win this.”
“There’s always a way.” Peter said calmly. “Look at it.” He nodded down towards the board.
“I am looking.”
“Look harder.”
You exhaled again, and tightened your shoulders, inspecting the wooden squares.
“Think. Move only in a way that matters.” He said.
Your eyes trawled the board for a while longer, before your fingers fell onto your knight. You advanced it into his queen, smirking as you collected her from the board.
“Good.” Peter said. “But you forgot about the real target.”
“The king.”
“Exactly,” he slid his rook into the place of your knight. “Check.”
His remaining pieces were closing in on your king. You exhaled irritably.
“Take your time, Nineteen. Calculate, then act.” He said, his gaze piercing.
You stared at the board, brow knitting deeper as you looked. He waited patiently, nothing but quietness in his high brow as he watched you like a hawk.
Looking at it wasn’t doing enough.
You shut your eyes instead. There you were, exactly where you’d been, but not.
The rainbow room had been consumed by the black void of your consciousness, the only thing in sight was the table and the chess board, sitting in the blackness with Peter.
You walked around it in the darkness, your feet padding through the inexplicable layer of water that seemed to ripple across the entire ground of the nameless ether. You hovered at Peter’s back, the straight line of his shoulders, blanketed by his ever-crisp white shirt.
The waves of his blonde hair fell in a hushed kind of elegance at the back of his head. Your curled your fingers into your palms, fighting the urge to run your fingers through it.
You stared at the board from his side, assessing his pieces, assessing your own. It was an odd, disjointed feeling. The separation of mind and body. You could still feel yourself sitting in the chair across from him, but you were solid at his back.
And when he spoke, his voice echoed in the endless space around you, fell through your ears like you were at the bottom of a well.
“That is cheating.” He said.
“Says who?” You said. You felt your mouth move from in your seat, but your lips said the words from behind his head. “It's merely an advantage.”
“You’re meant to assess your opponent from where you are.”
“Not if I can access more information.” You replied smugly.
You knew he couldn’t see anything other than you sitting in your chair, eyes closed, voice murmured, chest rising in quick sharp breaths.
But he turned his head abruptly, seemingly looking directly into your eyes as you stood behind him in the black space. You knew that all he could have seen was the room around him.
Still, he felt you, saw you. Just as the night sees a ghost.
His gaze was so piercing that it snapped your psychic focus like a wash of ice water. You gasped, and opened your eyes.
The entirety of you was back in the room, and he was looking at you with his brow lifted pointedly.
“Against the rules.”
“I disagree.” You said, huffing in your chair.
Your fingers plucked your queen from the board and advanced her, taking his rook as your prize.
“Don’t be so quick to react.” He said calmly. “Like I said, calculate every move your opponent could make.”
He slid his bishop across the board, capturing your queen and ensnaring your king.
“Checkmate.” His voice was a gentle contrast to the harsh finality of his move.
Your eyes narrowed at the defeat, and you sank back in your chair.
“Next time, you’ll lose.” You griped.
“Next time.” He smiled.
***
It wasn’t long after that Brenner strode into the rainbow room to announce the group test.
You broke from your third chess game in a row, dropping a piece you had been levitating across the board.
Peter stood up abruptly and resumed his rigid, unyielding posture against the wall that always signaled the presence of Brenner. His hands clasped tightly in front of him, his face unreadable.
“Good afternoon, children.”
“Good afternoon, Papa.” The chorus rang out as you lined up with the rest.
You had always been small, in the way that meant undernourished rather than adorable. But even you shot above the rest, only a few of the others had height on you.
002, a tall and stocky teenage boy you’d placed around fifteen years old. 004, a girl of a similar age yet taller than yourself, and 005, who followed them around like a shadow.
They always moved together, a hierarchical alliance, sniggering among themselves and harboring looks of arrogance wherever they went. They didn’t bother with the younger children, finding them only irksome and believing themselves far superior.
002, you had to admit, had all but earned the arrogance he strode around with. In terms of abilities he always excelled, and Papa seemed to use him as a benchmark, a cornerstone for everyone else during group testing.
“Today we will be doing group testing.” Brenner said with a false brightness. “I hope you have all taken time to practice.”
You stared at the floor. Group tests made your skin crawl. To be studied under the microscope of not only Brenner, but the orderlies who assisted, and the children, every set of eyes always waiting to assess your performance.
As Brenner led the military-straight lines out of the rainbow room, your eyes rested on the chess board, the abandoned pieces.
The testing room felt far more oppressive than the usual rooms due its dark tiled walls and floor, gleaming ominously under the fluorescent lights. There was a single chair, and a large circular metal arch set with evenly spaced bulbs.
Peter fiddled with the crown of wires and the monitor. Your eyes fell to the lines of his fingers.
“Today you will be assessed on how well you can light the bulbs in front of you.” Brenner said, pacing up and down the line with his hands behind his back, already making measure of each of you.
“Two, you may begin.”
002 strode over to the chair confidently. Peter rested the electrodes over his head with hands far too practiced for his age.
Instantly, the bulbs began to fire. Almost blinding was the light as it burned through each bulb, one after the other, faster and faster until the light was an endless spinning flare shooting around the arch.
“Proficient as always, Two.” Brenner remarked as he noted the measurements down on the clipboard.
002 got up with a smug expression, one that he seemed to direct towards you.
One by one you watched as the others were called up. One by one Peter placed the crown on their heads, and one by one the machine lit up at various intensities and patterns under their focus.
Your stomach lurched violently when you were finally called.
“Nineteen, if you will.” Brenner said, nodding towards the chair.
“Yes Papa.”
Your breath was uneven as you approached the chair. You sank down slowly, eyes trawling between Brenner, the children, the bulbs.
Cold apprehension toiled beneath your skin.
Peter laid the wires across your head in a flourish, his hands skilled but gentle all the same. Your breath deepened dangerously as his fingertips ghosted against your ears.
As he fixed a few connections with a controlled expression, his eyes flicked down into yours. A tiny cerulean hold.
“Remember to stay focused.” He said softly. “Find the energy. Feel it.”
You nodded a single beat. The moment was uncharacteristically warm for such an environment, and fleeting as it was, Brenner caught it anyway. He eyed Peter as he returned to his position behind you.
Cold, stern, a wordless warning.
Peter’s own expression gave nothing away, only his usual controlled obeisance.
“Proceed.” Brenner said, his voice a shard colder than it had been.
You focused as hard as you could. The edges of your mind strained around the effort like tight wires as you directed every ounce of your power towards the bulbs.
But you could feel him behind you. His weight shifting the air around him, waning your focus.
Nothing was happening. 002 began sniggering and murmuring in line. Your skin was prickling painfully at the way everyone was witnessing your failure.
“Try harder.” Brenner stated coldly.
You obeyed, every muscle tensed, every synapse attempting to fire. The effort made a grunt fall from your mouth.
One bulb. That was it. One tiny flickering of soft light before it faded down to nothing.
As you sat there, panting softly, you caught 002's jeering voice.
“Useless…” he breathed to the others, who laughed in return. “So useless.”
“Quiet.” Peter warned, shooting 002 a glare.
“What?” Two spat out. “She is useless. Just look at her.”
The words came screaming into your head. Not 002's.
This voice was gruff, saturated in years of hatred.
Useless. Just like your mother.
You felt like you’d be doused in flame. Scorched from the inside out, lit with a rod of pure rage.
It burst from you before you could stem it.
With an ear splitting crash the glass in all the bulbs shattered, as if detonated, the shards exploding out across the room with javelin force.
Several flew across your face, slicing your cheek and forehead open, spilling crimson down your skin.
Your ears were shrieking with a high pitching ringing, your entire head pounding with the weight of the force that had left you. You stood in a flurry, ripping the wires from your head.
Before you knew it, you'd turned towards 002. A scream erupted from your throat and careened through the air towards him. He was lifted, thrown across the room like a ragdoll, landing with a heavy thud on the other side.
Brenner was flush against the wall, his arms covering his face. Your brothers and sisters had scattered into corners.
Peter moved. He was reaching for your arm, a hollow look in his eyes.
Brenner’s voice threw across the room.
“No!” He commanded sharply. “Don’t interfere.”
Peter halted in his tracks, his frame rigid. His face was apprehensive, almost fearful. But there was an edge in his eyes as he looked at you, standing there trembling with blood streaking down your face, a thick trail spilling from your nostril.
It wasn’t pity, or fear. It was an apology.
The alarm started blaring, making several of your younger siblings exclaim and clap their hands over their ears. The doors of the testing room flew open.
The two armed guards rushed you where you stood. Their rough, gloved hands yanked at your arms, pinning them behind your back as you screamed and writhed, trying desperately to free yourself.
It only served to derail you further.
“NO!” You screeched, pain shooting through your shoulders as they gripped you tighter. “LET ME GO!”
As they forced you to the floor, he was there again, flashing in your mind like a malfunctioning neon sign.
The unknown man. Big, greasy, mustached. You saw him rush you, felt his calloused hands grip your throat. You saw the tattered carpet as you careened towards it.
The ceaseless pounding of dread drew another shrill scream from your mouth, and the force erupted from you once more. An intense, untamed burst of energy. It gripped the guards like two invisible, monumental fists. You fell forwards as their grip on you slackened, your palms falling open onto the broken glass at your feet.
You watched in horror as they were crushed, agonizingly slowly, bone by bone with their mouths held wide open in soundless screams.
Every crunch, every splinter of their bodies rung out across the room until they fell limp and slack-jawed to the floor, blood pouring from their mouths.
Brenner's eyes were wide, unblinking. His face was painted with something other than shock or terror. It was recognition.
You scrambled backwards, overcome with fear, trying to flee yourself, trying to flee the room as if the doors would close behind you and hold your crime like a secret.
But it was too late.
As you clambered across the floor, a hot, electrified jolt burst through your every nerve. You stiffened, every muscle rigid as you shook violently against the floor. You could only just make out another guard standing over you with a taser rod before your head fell back, uselessly limp.
You felt your mouth open in a scream as you were tased again, but it was soundless, trapped inside you. You were dragged backwards, wrecked and weak across the debris and the tiles.
As your mind faded to black you saw Peter, horror-struck as he witnessed you, his cerulean gaze marred with dread.
***
It was the worst you had unhinged. The worst you had shattered.
A nightmarish display met with a nightmarish punishment.
You felt the paddles clamp against your temples.
Images flashed between your blackening vision as the next wave of violent electricity shot through your head.
Two bodies crumpled, slack jawed. A man throwing you to the floor.
Blackness again as your teeth clenched against leather.
Blood dripping from mouths. Faces in a waiting room.
Paddles on your temples. Another hot burst fired through your brain.
An operating table under bright lights.
On and on it went until your pupils blew out, shrouded. A final pulse flew through your head and careened through your limbs in searing bolts. You shrieked against the leather, a muffled sound of pure torment.
One last protest dying in your throat before the darkness consumed you.
A voice spoke, distorted in your ringing ears.
“That was too high, Doctor Brenner.”
Then, silence. Your body fell back, limp. Neck structureless rubber as your head rolled back against the plastic mattress.
***
Light was pinpricking through your eyelashes.
Your head was throbbing violently against a pillow, the softness your only solace as you lay half alive, listening to the beeping, squinting under the lights, every joint aching like you’d been dragged under a truck.
A minute. An hour. Your brain couldn’t make sense of how much time passed as you lay there trying to make sense of it all.
Finally, he entered the room.
Pressed grey waistcoat, sharp trouser lines, not a single white hair out of place. You were still alive enough to recognize him.
“Papa?” You choked out.
“Good evening, Nineteen. How are you feeling?” He asked, every word calculated.
“Awful.”
He ignored your answer, clearly only using it as a bridge to his next question. “Do you remember what happened?”
Your head throbbed painfully. “I remember pain.”
“Before the pain.” Brenner said flatly, like that part didn’t matter.
Your brow knitted in thought. Distorted images swam through your mind, disjointed, all alight with an edge of hot electricity. Shattered glass, 002 careening into a wall.
The hollow look in Peter's eyes.
“I - I did something, I think.” Your voice was quiet, meek. “Something bad.”
“Yes. Tell me what that was, Nineteen.”
You couldn’t meet his eye line as the images came back to you, more fully formed. The guards. Crushed, slack-jawed, lifeless and bloodied.
“I - I hurt them.” You admitted weakly.
“You attacked Two. And you killed two of my guards.” Brenner said, though his voice didn’t seem to carry the weight of the words.
He looked almost... intrigued. Impressed.
“I - why?” You stuttered, tears welling in the corners of your eyes.
“You lost control again. I told you what would happen, didn't I? Your Papa had to punish you. Do you understand?”
He placed his hand over yours. A comfort on the surface, a threat underneath. Your skin crawled violently in response.
“Yes.” You choked out.
“You had to be shocked. Detained. Your head may still hurt.” He said factually.
“It does.”
A smile soaked in satisfaction curved across his mouth. “Good. Then you will learn. Because this is the last time.” He warned.
“What -” You started, but paused as he raised his hand.
He sat on the side of the bed, and held his hand up. A red, metallic device shaped like a tiny capsule was pressed between two of his fingers. He held it up to the light, admiring it as your eyes widened.
“Next time, Nineteen - next time I will have to give you this. Soteria. I will have to take away your abilities. I will have to remove that which makes you special.” Brenner said coldly.
“If you cannot control, if you cannot obey, you will be... discarded. And where would you be then?” He asked, a sick softness blanketing the threat.
“Where would you be, without your Papa? You would be nothing. Do you understand?” His hand patted yours once.
Solid, final, a promise.
Your throat worked to swallow the thickness that had risen with the threat. He was right.
This was all you were now. All you could ever be.
“Yes.” A hot tear streamed down your cheek. “I’m sorry Papa.”
He smiled. In a twisted sense, you felt like you had done well. You had answered correctly. You had pleased him.
“Good.” He stood up, hands landing against his hips. “Now, recover. When you are well, you can rejoin the others.”
He strode out of the room, the heels of his polished leather shoes clacking as he went.
You lay there for what felt like forever, tears streaming endlessly as you stared up at the ceiling.
Your body was wracked with sobs, with guilt, with a darkness you could feel eating you alive.
***
It was the middle of the night when the door of the infirmary creaked open. Deliberately slowly.
You turned your pained head.
Peter.
He slid into the room, craning his head out the door and shutting it quietly with an inconspicuous click.
You leant up on your elbows, eyes hazy with exhaustion.
“Peter?”
“Nineteen,” he breathed, crossing the room in two long-legged strides and lingering near your bedside.
His brow was set deep in concern.
“Are you alright?”
“I think so.” You said raggedly.
His eyes trawled across your face, cataloguing every wound.
They fell to the red, rectangular burn marks on your temples. He lingered there intensely, as if trying to will your broken skin to mend under his gaze.
“You're not.”
The words were tiny, like he hadn't meant to let them out.
“I’m sorry.” You groaned. “About this afternoon I -”
“That wasn’t this afternoon.” He said tightly.
“What do you mean?” You frowned.
“With Two and the guards. That was... a few days ago now. I guess they really didn't hold back.”
“Oh.”
“You must have been out for a while.”
You groaned quietly, your head falling back.
“I thought -” he hesitated.
Your eyes fell back over to him. Even in the dim light you could tell he looked exhausted. His face was hollower than usual, his eyes weighted with dark shadows.
“I thought you might not be coming back.” He almost whispered, an obvious edge of fear and something akin to embarrassment lingering behind his teeth.
“You thought… I was dead?”
Peter craned his head back around, his eyes scanning out the small window into the dark corridor outside.
He nodded.
“Like I said, he is dangerous.” He murmured.
“Papa?” You asked, frowning. “You thought Papa would... kill me? Are you serious?”
“You have no idea what he is capable of, do you?” He asked, his tone still hushed. His face was rigid, set like stone.
“Don't tell me you're this blind Nineteen. You have to be careful, very careful.”
“How do you mean?”
His voice dropped lower. “If he thinks he can’t control you-”
“He already threatened to take away my abilities.” You said. “Some chip thing.”
“Right, yes, that.” He whispered tightly, the pulse in his neck seemed to jump. “But Nineteen, he will not hesitate to discard you if he thinks you too unpredictable.”
Discarded. That was the word Brenner had used. Did he really mean kill? Eliminate? Murder?
Your gaze dropped from Peter to the floor.
“Maybe... maybe that wouldn’t be so terrible.” You murmured, half hoping he wouldn't hear you.
“What does that mean?” He said sharply.
“I just mean… what kind of existence is this?” You asked, tears welling again.
“To be locked in here, not knowing who I am. Not belonging. Being tuned like a weapon. Being crushed by my own mind. All the things I can't piece together.”
His eyes were intense.
“Do not say things like that.”
“You don't know what it's like, Peter.” You snapped. “You know who you are. You can leave any time you want.”
Something flashed through his eyes. A nameless darkness that hung in his irises.
When he breathed in, it sounded ragged. The air around him felt frayed as he eyed you.
“What happened? In the testing room? What did you see?”
“The others, when they were saying those things to me I - it’s like I was gone. Somewhere else. I didn’t just see it. I was there.” You said quietly. “A man. The same man. Saying I was useless, choking me. Once it started I couldn't stop it.”
Your fingers dragged across your throat like they were trying to collect an imprint that didn't exist.
“I didn't mean to hurt them.” Your voice was breaking over itself.
Peter was quiet. Studying.
“You are not useless.”
“You don’t know what I am.” You hissed. “And neither do I.”
He moved closer by a single step.
“I know what it is to be different. To be a wounded animal.” He said softly. “To lose yourself.”
You searched his face for a moment, silently, trying to find the words. The air was charged with everything you could feel him not saying.
“Did you ever... did you ever find yourself again?” You asked, voice tiny.
His eyes were deep in your own, hesitant but swimming.
“I am still looking.” He said finally.
It was a door he opened by only a sliver. A sliver you could enter through.
A sliver that made you realize you weren’t the only one trapped in the labyrinth of yourself.
You sat up and let your bare legs fall over the edge of the bed. Your head throbbed as you straightened up and let your gaze drag over his face.
So angelic, even when fraught at the edges.
“Then I'll look with you.” You said slowly.
His breath caught. So softly you almost missed it.
“But... why?” He frowned, a genuine look of bewilderment in his eyes.
“You're the only person who has seen me as more than the wound that I am.”
He stepped another pace closer, maybe subconsciously, maybe not. But his eyes were fixed and intense as you spoke.
“If we can’t find ourselves on our own, then maybe we can find each other.” You returned his gaze, your own eyes as much a promise as they were a plea.
Instinctively, your hand reached out to ensnare his.
It was instant, the piercing shiver that shot through you at the contact. The same as before.
He didn’t pull his hand back this time. But you could tell by the way he twitched in your grasp that he’d felt it.
“Nineteen -” he said, his voice straining like it was holding him hostage.
Your grip on his hand tightened. “Don’t.”
“Don't make me spend the rest of my days in here going insane on my own. Don’t you dare. Not after the way you’ve seen me.”
He was silent, holding himself in a way that told you he had never known vulnerability. It was alien to him.
He didn't drop your hand. He let you hold it. You didn't know if it was a pity, or a kindness, or because he himself needed it as well.
But he let you hold it all the same.
His eyes were resting curiously on your fingers, a vice around his palm.
“Peter -”
His shoulders tightened the same way they always did when you said his name, as if it slid down his spine like a shard of ice.
Still, his expression was soft when he set his gaze back toward you.
“Yes?”
“Would you stay?” You choked out.
He hesitated, his shoe scuffing the tiled floor.
“I shouldn’t -” he started.
“Just… just until I can sleep?” You pleaded.
The warmth and need he elicited inside you felt like a weakness, a threat, the opening to a lion's den.
Despite yourself you were endlessly pulled towards it.
Peter nodded, just once. He dragged over a chair and sat, too perfectly upright, as if he was holding himself together. His eyes didn't leave your face as you lay there, head pounding, drifting in and out of the dark crevices of your mind.
As you faded backwards, falling into sleep, you felt it. The realest thing your mind could map out.
His fingers, cold and unsure as they were, curling around your palm like a covenant.
***
It was the first night that your sleep wasn’t fraught, pulled at the edges by some unknown weight.
As the morning light settled into your eyes, you realized that Peter was gone. Your hand was empty.
The void that was left made your stomach lurch. The yearning you felt towards his empty seat was a beast sitting in your chest.
Remnants of your punishment still throbbed in the spaces of your skull as you sat up. Your eyes drifted about the room as you centered yourself, swinging your legs over the side of the bed.
When you reached up to grab your grey sweatsuit jumper off of the shelf, a light caught your eye.
Red, blinking. Nestled in the corner, a mute threat made of metal.
You froze.
Of course there was a camera in here. There were cameras everywhere, mechanical all-seeing eyes locked over almost every inch of this place.
In your post-electroshock haze you hadn’t realized it.
Had he? When he slipped into the infirmary like a phantom, held your hand as you slept?
All at once, his hesitancy and hushed tones started to make sense.
He knew the cost of the conversation. The cost of comfort.
He knew the cost of being caught and he’d come in anyway.
Brenner was meticulous, calculating, and methodical. There was a near zero possibility that he hadn’t had your room monitored, especially after the level of terror you’d caused.
Peter’s words rang in your ears like a siren.
He is dangerous.
You stepped towards the door, let your fingers fall over the handle. It didn’t move.
Panic rose through your veins. Slow, limb by aching limb.
Trapped in the serpents mouth.
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synapse: a teasing little surprise before class turns an ordinary school day into something far harder for either of them to get through.
pairing: professor!henry creel x reader
contains: professor/student relationship, penetrative sex, oral sex
. . .
The hallway outside Henry’s classroom was still mostly empty, the early quiet of the morning not yet broken by the full rush of students.
Y/N stood in front of the locked door for a second, smoothing one hand down the front of her trench coat, feeling the shape of what was hidden underneath and the hard, excited beat of her own pulse. The small window in the door was still covered from the inside, which made her smile despite herself.
Of course it was.
She knocked twice.
A pause.
Then the lock clicked and the door opened just enough for Henry to look out.
His expression was neutral at first, mildly distracted, still half in whatever he’d been grading, until he saw it was her. Then the neutrality shifted into that smaller, private softness he never gave anyone else.
“You’re early,” he said quietly.
Y/N held up the coffee in one hand. “I brought you this.”
Henry’s eyes flicked to the cup, then back to her face. He stepped aside, letting her slip inside. The door locked again behind her immediately, and the hush of the room settled around them.
He was at his desk, papers spread in neat stacks, red pen in hand. Chalk dust still lingered faintly in the air. The room looked the same as always, except for the locked door, the covered window, the feeling that it had become theirs in ways it absolutely should not have.
Y/N crossed to his desk and set the coffee down beside his papers. Henry murmured a distracted “thank you,” already looking back down at whatever miserable essay he’d been correcting.
Y/N lingered in front of the desk.
He kept grading.
She tilted her head. “You’re not even going to look at me.”
Henry’s mouth twitched faintly, but he didn’t lift his eyes. “I am looking at you.”
“No,” Y/N said. “You’re looking near me.”
Henry drew one line through a sentence, capped the pen, and finally said, in that dry voice of his, “You’ve brought me coffee. Should I applaud?”
Y/N’s smile turned wicked.
She stepped a little closer, folding her hands behind her back like a student about to ask a very innocent question.
“Professor,” she said sweetly.
That got him.
Henry’s eyes lifted immediately.
Not because of the title itself—because of her tone. Too careful. Too soft. Too much like a setup.
His gaze moved over her face first, then the trench coat, then back to her eyes with growing suspicion.
“What?” he asked.
Y/N’s smile widened just slightly. “I wanted your opinion on something.”
Henry leaned back in his chair a fraction, already wary. “That never means anything good.”
“Maybe not for you,” Y/N said lightly.
He narrowed his eyes. “Y/N.”
Without answering, she reached for the belt of the trench coat.
Henry’s posture changed at once, not moving, exactly, but focusing. Every bit of his attention came to rest on her hands.
Y/N untied the belt slowly, then opened the coat just enough.
The lingerie underneath was dark and elegant, fitted close to her body, meant less to shock than to undo. It was the sort of thing she knew he would appreciate for exactly half a second before it drove him insane.
She looked at him with infuriating innocence.
“Does my outfit look okay?” she asked.
For one beat, Henry said nothing.
His face stayed composed, but only barely. His eyes swept over her once, quickly, intensely, then lifted back to her face with a tension that made her pulse jump.
The silence stretched.
Y/N’s mouth curved. “Well?”
Henry set the pen down very carefully.
Then he stood.
Not abruptly. Deliberately.
His voice came out low. “Close the coat.”
Y/N’s smile deepened. “That’s not an answer.”
Henry stepped around the desk. “Yes, it is.”
“No,” she said softly, holding his gaze. “It means you liked it.”
Henry came to a stop just in front of her, close enough now that she could smell coffee and paper and the faint clean scent of his cologne.
His eyes dropped once more to the open trench, then back to hers.
“You came to class dressed like this,” he said.
Y/N tilted her head. “I came to you dressed like this.”
Henry’s jaw flexed.
She let the coat slip open a little more. “So?”
Henry looked like he was trying very hard to remain a man with a job and a functioning sense of restraint.
“Y/N,” he said quietly, warning threaded through every syllable.
She smiled up at him. “You hate it?”
Henry stared at her for a long second, then said, with maddening control, “No.”
The single word landed warm in her chest.
She leaned closer. “Then say something nicer.”
His gaze darkened. “You do not make this easy.”
Y/N’s smile turned softer, more dangerous. “I’m not trying to.”
Henry’s hands hovered for the briefest second at her waist before deciding against touching her. The effort of that decision showed all over his face.
“It looks…” he said finally, each word measured, “more than okay.”
Y/N’s grin widened in satisfaction.
Henry exhaled through his nose, eyes still fixed on hers. “Now close the coat before I forget I have students.”
That made her laugh, quiet, delighted, triumphant.
But she obeyed, fingers slowly pulling the trench back together while Henry watched with the expression of a man enduring something he absolutely did not want to end.
When the belt was tied again, Y/N looked up at him and asked, “Better?”
Henry’s hand finally came to her waist then, brief but firm, pulling her the smallest inch closer.
“No,” he murmured.
And the way he said it made it very clear that the coat being closed had not helped him at all.
Y/N’s smile turned slow and bright when she saw the look on his face.
She let her hand rest on the knot of the trench belt and tilted her head just enough to be infuriating. “That’s a shame,” she murmured. “Because class is going to begin soon.”
Henry’s hand stayed at her waist, fingers firm through the coat, his gaze fixed on her like he was already imagining the end of the day in dangerous detail.
“Yes,” he said quietly.
Y/N lifted her brows. “So tragic.”
Henry leaned in just enough that his mouth nearly brushed her ear, his voice dropping into that low register that always made her pulse stumble.
“Class will begin,” he said. “And I will stand at the front of the room and do my job.”
Y/N smiled, pleased with herself. “Like the professional you are.”
Henry’s grip tightened slightly. “And after,” he continued, ignoring the teasing entirely, “I’m taking this coat off you.”
The words landed warm and heavy.
Y/N’s breath caught, but she didn’t let it show for long. She tipped her chin up, still playing brave. “Just the coat?”
Henry’s eyes darkened.
“And,” he said with deliberate calm, “your…little outfit.”
That did it.
A shiver moved through her so faintly she hoped he hadn’t felt it.
Of course he had.
The corner of his mouth moved barely, but enough to make it clear he knew exactly what his words had done to her.
Y/N recovered with a small, wicked smile. “You sound very sure of yourself.”
Henry leaned back just enough to look at her properly. “I am.”
Y/N’s fingers curled lightly against the front of his shirt. “What if I change my mind?”
Henry’s gaze dropped briefly to her hand, then lifted again. “You won’t.”
She blinked, half scandalized, half thrilled. “Professor.”
His hand slid once at her waist, not enough to drag her closer, just enough to remind her that he could.
“You came here dressed for me,” he said quietly. “Don’t pretend otherwise.”
Y/N’s cheeks warmed. “Maybe I just wanted fashion feedback.”
Henry’s expression stayed composed, but his voice sharpened into something more intimate. “And you’ve received it.”
Y/N bit back a smile.
Then his gaze stayed on hers for one long beat, and something quieter, more pointed slipped into his tone.
“And,” he added, “unless I imagined it, you were the one who said you didn’t think you could have sex for a while.”
Y/N’s mouth parted.
The callback landed immediately, warmth rushing back into her face as she remembered the conversation, the teasing, the half-serious boundary she’d drawn in the aftermath of the scare.
Henry’s brows lifted slightly, just enough to make it obvious he had not forgotten a word.
Y/N recovered fast, or tried to. “I did say that.”
Henry waited.
She tilted her head, letting her smile turn sly again. “I think it’s been a while enough.”
The smallest crack appeared in his composure.
Not enough for anyone else to notice. Enough for her.
Henry’s jaw flexed once, and his hand at her waist tightened just slightly. “A while.”
Y/N nodded with shameless innocence. “Yes.”
Henry looked at her like she was both impossible and entirely to blame for the state of his nervous system.
“You have a very elastic definition of time,” he murmured.
Y/N’s grin widened. “Only where you’re concerned.”
That got him, just a flicker in his eyes, a dark little shift that made her pulse jump again.
Outside, footsteps started to pass in the hallway. Voices. The warning sounds of the world returning.
Henry heard them too.
His eyes flicked toward the door, and when he looked back at her, the professor was already sliding back into place over everything else. But the heat hadn’t gone anywhere.
“Go sit down,” he murmured.
Y/N’s smile lingered. “Bossy.”
Henry’s hand fell away from her waist with obvious reluctance. “After class,” he said.
Y/N took one small step back, still looking at him with open challenge. “You’re going to be thinking about this the whole lecture.”
Henry picked up his pen from the desk with controlled precision. “Unfortunately.”
Y/N laughed softly under her breath and turned toward her seat, trench coat belted tight again, pulse still racing.
Behind her, Henry straightened the stack of papers on his desk like order could save him.
It couldn’t.
And they both knew it.
. . .
The classroom had settled into that familiar mid-lecture hum, pages turning, pens scratching, the occasional chair squeaking across the floor. Henry stood at the front with the book open in one hand, moving through the passage with that same measured confidence he always had, like every sentence belonged to him first before he handed it over to the room.
Then he assigned the activity.
“Turn to the person beside you,” he said, voice even, “and discuss the passage. Themes, tension, point of view, whatever you find most significant. You have ten minutes.”
A ripple of movement went through the room. Desks shifted. Students turned. Voices began in low pairs around them.
Nancy turned immediately toward Y/N, already halfway into her opinion before Y/N had even fully faced her.
“I think the whole thing is about repression,” Nancy said, tapping the page with her pen. “Not just socially, but emotionally. Like the narrator keeps trying to—”
Y/N nodded automatically.
But she wasn’t listening.
Not really.
Because Henry had moved from behind the desk and was walking the aisles now, hands clasped behind his back for a few seconds before one dropped, long fingers tapping lightly against the spine of the book in his hand.
And Y/N couldn’t stop looking at him.
It had been a week and four days of this.
Not desperate. Not frantic.
Just… hornier than usual in a way that felt almost embarrassing. Like her body had decided that once it knew what Henry looked like across a bed, in a shower, half-undone in the rain, it could never again be expected to behave in a classroom.
Nancy was still talking.
“…and I think the main theme is control, obviously, but also guilt—”
Y/N’s eyes stayed on Henry.
On his hands, first.
It was always his hands first.
The veins in them were more visible today, maybe because his sleeves were rolled, maybe because she was losing her mind. When he turned a page or gestured to a student’s paper, those hands moved with that same impossible precision that made her think of far too many things she absolutely should not have been thinking of during class.
Then his voice.
He stopped beside the second row and leaned slightly over one desk to answer a question, and whatever word he said came out lower than the rest of the sentence, just a slight drop, a darker note that shouldn’t have meant anything and yet did.
Y/N’s breath caught.
Nancy was still talking, still making perfectly valid points that Y/N would normally love to argue with.
Instead Y/N just kept staring at Henry like she had no self-preservation instinct at all.
He moved again, slow and calm, scanning the room with the same professor face he always wore. Untouchable. Controlled. Entirely too good at pretending he hadn’t spent the last week and four days making it much harder for her to think normally.
Y/N’s eyes dragged over the line of his shirt sleeves, the neatness of his tie, the shape of his jaw when he spoke.
Not subtle.
Not even close.
Nancy stopped mid-sentence.
Y/N didn’t notice.
Nancy followed her line of sight to the front of the room.
Then back to Y/N.
Then, without warning, Nancy shoved her arm.
Hard enough to snap her out of it.
Y/N jerked and turned. “Ow.”
Nancy stared at her with narrowed eyes. “Are you listening to literally anything I’m saying?”
Y/N blinked once, twice, then glanced down at the book as if the page might rescue her. “Yes.”
Nancy’s expression flattened. “No, you’re not.”
Y/N tried for innocence and failed immediately.
Nancy leaned closer, voice dropping to a sharp whisper. “You were staring at him like you stare at tacos.”
Y/N bit back a laugh and looked away. “That is so specific.”
“You like tacos.”
“I love tacos.”
Nancy’s eyes narrowed further. “Perfect example.”
Y/N picked up her pen and tried to look scholarly. “Okay, well, maybe I was just thinking.”
Nancy looked at her like she was exhausted by the whole concept. “Your thoughts are disgusting.”
Y/N’s mouth twitched. “You don’t know that.”
Nancy gave her a dead-eyed look. “I know exactly that.”
At the front of the room, Henry turned slightly, gaze sweeping over the class.
For one terrible second, Y/N thought he’d catch her looking again.
Instead he just said, “You should all be discussing the passage, not each other.”
The line hit the room generally.
It still felt personal.
Nancy slowly turned back to Y/N. “See? See?”
Y/N stared down at the page and tried to reclaim her dignity. “Fine. What were you saying?”
Nancy kept looking at her for another second, suspicious.
Then she sighed and tapped the paragraph again. “Repression,” she repeated. “Which you should understand, apparently not at all.”
That made Y/N snort softly despite herself.
She finally dragged her focus back to the passage, but even then, every time Henry’s voice moved through the room, some part of her still followed it automatically.
And Nancy, unfortunately, noticed every single time.
A few minutes later, the room had settled again.
Most of the class was half-paying attention in that way students did when discussion ran long, some still scribbling notes, some pretending to, some staring at the passage as if meaning might eventually rise off the page on its own.
Henry was speaking from the front again, one hand resting on the edge of a desk as he expanded on a point someone had barely made well enough to deserve it. His tone was calm, measured, perfectly academic.
Only Y/N noticed the way his eyes kept finding her.
Not often enough for anyone else to clock it.
Just enough.
A flicker toward her. Then away. Then back again a minute later, like some part of him couldn’t help checking whether she was behaving.
She caught him at it once.
Held his gaze for half a beat.
And then, because she was feeling reckless and because self-control had never been her best quality where he was concerned, she shifted in her seat and glanced around quickly.
No one was looking.
Nancy was bent over her notebook, actually writing for once. Two boys in the next row were quietly arguing over what a symbol meant. The rest of the class was lost in its own mild boredom.
Y/N’s heart kicked.
Very briefly, so fast it could almost have been imagined, she loosened the trench coat in her lap just enough to give Henry a glimpse beneath it.
Then she closed it again and sat back like nothing had happened, face smooth, pulse racing, eyes fixed on him and only him.
Henry went completely still for one fraction of a second.
It was tiny. Almost invisible.
But she saw it.
The ways his fingers tightened around the spine of the book, so tight, his knuckles were white.
His sentence did not stop. His voice did not waver. If anything, it got even more controlled, too controlled, the way it did when he was forcing composure over something very immediate.
Y/N bit the inside of her cheek to keep from smiling.
Henry kept talking.
Then, after another minute, he moved.
He began walking the aisles with the same composed stride he always used, book in hand, eyes on the room as if he were merely monitoring student engagement and not very pointedly making his way toward her desk.
Y/N sat still, waiting.
When he reached her row, he stopped beside her desk and looked down.
“Miss Y/L/N,” he said.
The formal address alone sent a warm shiver through her.
Y/N tilted her face up at him, all practiced innocence.
Henry’s gaze held hers for one beat too long.
“Are you focused?” he asked.
His tone was perfectly appropriate.
Only she heard the edge under it.
Y/N’s eyes dropped for the briefest moment, not to the floor, not to her notes, but lower. Deliberately tracing the line of his pants, imagining the heat beneath the fabric, the heavy weight of him. She looked at the bulge in his trousers, her eyes wide with a raw, unashamed hunger.
Then she looked back up at him and smiled faintly.
“I’m focused, professor,” she said.
Henry’s jaw flexed.
He held her gaze for one measured second, then nodded once like a professor accepting a satisfactory answer from a student who was absolutely not satisfactory at all.
“Try harder,” he said quietly.
Then he moved on, the lecture never faltering, the class none the wiser.
But Y/N sat there with heat crawling up her neck and a smile tugging at her mouth, because his reaction had been exactly what she’d wanted, small enough for no one else to see.
And impossible for her to miss.
Henry was standing in the aisle beside her row, reading from the passage in that calm, controlled voice of his, one hand holding the book open while the other rested loosely at his side.
He moved slowly as he read, pacing just enough to keep the room with him.
And when he stepped beside her desk again, close enough that the edge of his coat brushed the corner of it, Y/N’s eyes lifted from her page.
No one was looking.
Or at least, no one important.
Nancy was writing. The students behind her were half-lost in their own notes. Henry’s attention was on the book, outwardly, anyway.
So Y/N, because she had no self-preservation where he was concerned, let her hand slip lightly to the inside of his thigh over his trousers.
Just for a second.
A quick, teasing touch.
Then a gentle pinch—more bratty than anything else.
Henry’s reading did not stop.
But one word came out just slightly sharper than the rest.
Y/N bit the inside of her cheek to keep from smiling.
Henry moved away almost immediately, too smoothly for anyone else to notice, continuing down the aisle like nothing had happened.
Only Y/N saw the tiny change in him, the new stiffness in his shoulders, the way his jaw had set, the fraction of extra distance he suddenly seemed to need from her desk.
She looked back down at her page, pleased with herself.
At the front of the room, Henry turned another page with perhaps a touch more force than necessary.
And though his voice stayed perfectly steady for the class, Y/N could feel the warning in the air from where she sat:
Keep it up.
. . .
The bell rang, and the whole room broke apart at once.
Chairs scraped. Books shut. Students gathered their things in clusters of movement and noise. Henry remained at the front, stacking papers with maddening calm, as if the last hour hadn’t been a sustained test of his self-control.
Nancy stood first.
She looked at Y/N, who was still sitting there with suspiciously little urgency, then narrowed her eyes in immediate recognition.
“You’re not coming,” Nancy said flatly.
Y/N glanced up with a face far too innocent to be believed. “In a minute.”
Nancy’s expression soured. “You’re annoying.”
Y/N smiled sweetly. “I know.”
Nancy looked toward Henry, then back at Y/N, then gathered her bag with the air of someone refusing to be an accomplice any longer.
“Irritating,” she muttered, and headed for the door without waiting.
Y/N watched her go, amused, then slowly rose from her seat only after the rest of the class had filtered out in waves. The hallway noise swelled and then dulled as the last few students disappeared.
Henry waited.
Not looking at her. Not yet.
He moved to the door and shut it, then turned the key in the lock with a quiet click that sent a warm pulse through her immediately.
Only then did he look back at her.
Y/N walked down the center aisle without hurry, coat still on, expression composed, as though she hadn’t spent most of the class making his job impossible. When she reached the front, she perched on the edge of his desk and crossed her legs slowly, hands braced beside her, the picture of patience.
Henry watched her in silence.
She knew that look now.
The one that meant every little tease had been noticed. Catalogued. Stored.
And judging by the stillness of him, the cost of all that restraint was going to be very much her problem in the next few minutes.
Y/N’s smile was small and bright. “Hi.”
Henry came to stand between her knees, one hand resting on the desk beside her hip. “You’re pleased with yourself.”
“Yes,” she said honestly.
That almost made him smile.
Almost.
Instead, he lifted one hand and touched her throat.
Just his thumb at first, tracing lightly along the side of it, feeling her pulse jump beneath his skin. The gesture was quiet, but it made her breath catch all the same.
Y/N tilted her chin slightly into the touch, watching him.
“Last time your hand was there,” she said softly, “we had sex in your office area.”
Henry’s gaze sharpened.
Y/N’s smile deepened just a little. “That was at the beginning of the school year.”
The reminder landed.
She felt it in the subtle change in his expression, in the way his thumb paused, then resumed more slowly. And then his hand shifted, fingers curving more fully around the side of her neck, not tight, not enough to hurt, just a gentle squeeze that acknowledged exactly what she’d said.
She gasped quietly. “…Now the year’s almost over,” she murmured.
Henry’s jaw flexed.
His hand stayed at her throat for a second longer than necessary, the pressure just enough to make the memory feel immediate, office area, early year, the first version of this, and now all the distance they’d crossed since then.
“You remember everything,” he said quietly.
Y/N’s eyes stayed on his. “Only the important things.”
That made his mouth twitch once, but his hand tightened again in that same light, controlled way, as though he didn’t know whether to kiss her or lecture her for saying it.
“Today,” he said, voice low, “you were impossible.”
Y/N smiled. “You liked it.”
Henry’s gaze dropped briefly to her mouth, then lifted again. “That is not the point.”
“It kind of is.”
His hand slid from her throat to the curve of her jaw, thumb brushing once along her skin. “Flashing me in class.”
Y/N’s expression stayed shameless. “Briefly.”
“Touching me in class.”
“You were in reach.”
Henry exhaled through his nose.
“And the trench coat,” he added.
Y/N tilted her head. “That was for morale.”
That did make him look at her for a full second like she was beyond help.
Then his hand moved back to her throat, thumb resting there as if he liked the place too much to leave it alone. His other hand came to her knee, sliding slowly upward over the fabric of the coat until it reached her thigh.
Y/N’s pulse fluttered hard under his thumb.
“You spent the entire class building this up,” he said.
Y/N’s voice dropped. “Maybe.”
Henry leaned closer. “Maybe.”
She held his gaze. “I was bored.”
His hand at her throat gave the faintest squeeze again. “You were cruel.”
Y/N smiled. “You survived.”
Henry’s face lowered, close enough now that his breath brushed her lips. “Barely.”
For one suspended second neither of them moved.
The classroom had gone very still around them, locked door, covered window, fading hallway noise, the afternoon light stretching long across the desks. Y/N sat on his desk with her legs parted for him, heart racing, and Henry stood between them like a man who had finally run out of patience.
His thumb traced once more along her throat.
Y/N’s voice came soft. “What?”
Henry looked at her the way he only ever allowed himself to when they were alone.
“Quiet,” he murmured.
Then he kissed her.
It started controlled, deliberate, deep, his mouth firm against hers like he intended to make a point.
It lasted all of three seconds before the point got lost.
Y/N’s hands came up into his hair, and Henry’s hand at her thigh tightened as he stepped closer, crowding her back onto the desk. The kiss turned hotter almost immediately, sharpened by everything she’d spent the last hour provoking.
Y/N made a soft sound against his mouth, and Henry answered it by kissing her harder, the classroom, the clock, the rest of the world narrowing down to the heat between them and the locked door behind him.
Henry’s hand slipped under the trench coat, his palm hot and rough against the smooth, delicate lace of her bodysuit. He pushed the coat off her shoulders, the fabric sliding down her arms and falling open, revealing her to him. His eyes darkened as they raked over her, taking in the curve of her breasts, the dip of her waist, the swell of her hips.
"You’re exquisite," he murmured, his voice rough with desire. His hands traced the lace, his fingers hooking into the waistband and pulling it down, slowly, teasingly, revealing her inch by inch.
Y/N arched into his touch, her breath hitching as he bent his head to kiss the exposed skin of her stomach, his tongue flicking out to taste her. He moved lower, his hands spreading her legs, his mouth finding her center, his tongue circling her clit in slow, deliberate strokes.
"Henry," she gasped, her fingers tangling in his hair, pulling him closer. He groaned against her, the vibration sending shocks of pleasure through her body.
He pulled back, his eyes blazing with hunger. “You melt for me so easily, he said, his voice a low growl. "You like it when I taste you, when I make you come on my tongue." He kissed her inner thigh, his teeth nipping at the soft flesh. "You’re so sensitive. I can’t get enough of you.”
Y/N panted, her hips lifting, seeking more. "Please, Henry," she begged, her voice breathy. "I need you inside me."
He stood, his hands going to his belt, his eyes never leaving hers. "I'm going to fuck you now, Y/N," he said, his voice a promise. "I'm going to make you feel every inch of me, and you're going to take it all."
Y/N watched as he undid his belt, his pants, his cock springing free, hard and ready. He grabbed her hips, pulling her to the edge of the desk, his hand wrapping around her throat, the other moving her leg onto his shoulder. "You're mine, Y/N," he said, his voice rough with possession. "Every fucking inch of you."
He entered her in one swift thrust, his cock filling her completely. Y/N gasped, her back arching, her hands gripping his shoulders.
He started to move, his hips thrusting hard and deep, his hand tightening around her throat, his eyes locked on hers. "That's it, baby," he growled. "Take what’s yours.”
Y/N met his thrusts, her hips rising to meet his, her hands roaming his body, her nails digging into his skin. "Harder, Henry," she panted. "Fuck me harder."
He obliged, his thrusts becoming faster, deeper, his hand tightening around her throat, his voice a low, dirty litany in her ear. "You feel so fucking good, Y/N. So tight, so wet. You were made for me, weren't you? Made to take my cock, to make me come inside you."
Y/N moaned, her head falling back, her body trembling with the force of his thrusts. "Yes, Henry," she gasped. "Yes, I'm yours. I'm yours."
Y/N gasped as Henry’s hand tightened around her throat, his thumb pressing against her tongue, his eyes darkening with a possessive, hungry intensity. "Do you like that, Y/N?" he asked, his voice low and rough. "Do you like it when I take control, when I make you feel every inch of me?"
Y/N moaned, her hips lifting to meet his thrusts, her hands gripping his shoulders, her nails digging into his skin. "Yes, Henry," she panted, her voice breathy. "I-I love it when you take control…I love it when you make love to me like this, rough and hard, like you can't get enough of me."
Henry’s eyes darkened, his hand tightening further, his thumb pressing harder against her tongue. “Tell me you want me rougher,” he said, his voice a low, dirty promise. "You want me to make you feel every inch of me, to make you come so hard you see stars."
Y/N nodded, her breath coming in short, sharp gasps. "Yes, Henry," she panted. "Please. Make love to me harder. Make me come. I want to feel you, all of you, deep inside me."
Henry’s hips snapped forward, his cock driving into her with a force that made her gasp, his hand tightening around her throat, his thumb pressing against her tongue. "That's it, Y/N," he growled. "Take me. Take all of me. You're mine, Y/N. Mine to make love to, mine to pleasure, mine to make come."
Y/N moaned, her body trembling, her muscles clenching around him, her orgasm building, cresting, crashing over her in a wave of pleasure. Henry followed, his hips jerking, his cock pulsing inside her, his voice a low, guttural groan as he came, his hand tightening around her throat, his thumb leaving her mouth and slowly pulling down her bottom lip.
The room was quiet again except for the sound of them putting themselves back together.
Y/N lied on his desk, still a little flushed, still a little unsteady, letting out a soft whine as he pulled out.
She took a breath before pulling the lingerie back into place before pulling the trench coat back on with practiced fingers that were slower than usual. Henry was a few steps away, fixing his belt and dragging his trousers back into order, jaw set in that familiar way he got whenever he was forcing himself out of one role and back into another.
The classroom smelled faintly of chalk, paper, and the heat of what they’d just done.
Y/N watched him button what he could of his shirt beneath the jacket, then smooth a hand over the front of it like neatness could erase everything.
“When you’re done,” Henry said, voice low and even, “go home.”
Y/N’s mouth curved immediately. “Home?”
Henry glanced at her once. “My apartment.”
She smiled wider. “Better.”
He picked up the papers from his desk and squared them into a neat stack with entirely unnecessary precision. “I’ll be back soon.”
Y/N tilted her head, already reaching for her bag. “Then why aren’t you coming with me?”
Henry looked mildly irritated that reality existed at all. “Faculty meeting.”
Y/N’s expression fell just a little. “Now?”
“Yes.”
She pouted faintly. “That’s rude.”
Henry’s mouth twitched despite himself. “I’m already going to be late.”
Y/N stepped closer, the trench coat belted closed again, all evidence of her little stunt hidden away under innocence. She reached up, smoothed one hand over his tie where it sat slightly crooked now, and fixed it with careful fingers.
“Poor professor,” she murmured.
Henry’s eyes stayed on her face. “Don’t start.”
Y/N smiled and leaned in anyway, kissing him softly.
This one wasn’t hungry.
It was slower, warmer, a quiet little claim pressed into the space between class and whatever came next.
When she pulled back, she kept her hand resting on his chest for a second and said softly, “I love you.”
Henry’s gaze changed in that tiny, telling way it always did when she said it plainly like that.
“I know,” he murmured.
Y/N smiled. “I’ll be waiting on you.”
Henry’s hand came briefly to her waist, a firm touch that lingered only a second. “Go.”
Y/N grabbed her bag and headed for the door, turning back once just to look at him standing there behind his desk, tie straightened, papers in hand, trying to look like a man who had spent the last ten minutes doing absolutely nothing inappropriate.
It almost worked.
She slipped out first, moving down the hallway with that secret satisfaction still humming under her skin. Behind her, Henry waited just long enough to make it look respectable before stepping out too, locking the classroom behind him and heading in the opposite direction.
Y/N had almost made it to the corner when she heard a familiar voice.
“Henry.”
She slowed without meaning to.
Patty Newby was walking down the hall toward him, guidance counselor badge clipped neatly at her blouse, hair tucked back, expression warm and easy in that way that made Y/N instantly dislike her for no reasonable reason.
Henry looked up. “Patty.”
She smiled. “Are you heading to the meeting?”
Henry nodded once. “Apparently.”
Patty laughed lightly, adjusting the folder in her arms. “Good. I was worried I’d be the only one late.” She fell into step beside him naturally, like it had happened a hundred times before. “We can walk there together.”
Y/N stopped fully at the corner, half-hidden by the turn of the hallway.
She watched Henry glance at Patty, then nod once, polite and unbothered. “All right.”
That was all.
Nothing in his tone. Nothing in his face. Nothing that should have made her feel anything at all.
But Y/N’s stomach tightened anyway.
She knew better.
She did.
She knew Henry had made it clear Patty was just the guidance counselor. Just a friend. She knew he’d already drawn that boundary out loud, more than once. She knew he had just kissed her in a locked classroom and told her to wait for him at his apartment like she belonged there.
None of that stopped the little flare of jealousy from rising fast and mean in her chest.
Patty said something else, and Henry answered with that same easy professionalism he gave the rest of the world. They started down the hallway side by side, close enough to look comfortable.
Y/N hated how quickly it got under her skin.
Not because she thought Henry wanted Patty.
Because Patty got to walk next to him in public.
Patty got to be seen beside him without consequence.
Patty got to talk to him in daylight with no locked doors, no coded looks, no covered windows.
And Y/N, who knew his body, his apartment, the sound he made when he was trying not to lose control, had to stand half-hidden around a corner and feel ridiculous for wanting more than that.
She stayed there for one more second, watching them disappear down the hall.
Then she exhaled sharply through her nose, tightened her grip on her bag strap, and turned away before she could keep looking and make herself angrier.
She told herself it didn’t matter.
That he loved her. That Patty was nothing. That she was being stupid.
But the jealousy came with her anyway, hot and silent and unwilling to be reasoned with, all the way out of the building and into the cold.
. . .
By the time Henry got back to the apartment, the sky outside had gone fully dark.
The city beyond the windows glowed in blurred golds and grays, and his rooms carried that quiet, waiting stillness they only seemed to have when Y/N was already there. It didn’t feel like coming home to an empty apartment anymore. It felt like returning to something warm.
He set his keys down by the door and loosened his tie as he walked.
“Y/N?” he called, voice low, already knowing she was there.
No answer.
But the bedroom light was on.
Henry crossed the apartment, shrugging off his jacket as he went, and stepped into the bedroom, and stopped.
Y/N was lying on top of the bed like she’d been arranged there on purpose, the lingerie still on beneath the soft spill of lamplight, one leg bent slightly, one arm tucked under her head. She looked entirely too pleased with herself.
For a second Henry just looked at her.
His loosened tie hung at his throat. His sleeves were still rolled from the day. The fatigue of the faculty meeting was still in his shoulders but it all shifted the moment his eyes landed on her.
Y/N smiled slowly. “Hi.”
Henry shut the bedroom door behind him without taking his eyes off her. “You’re still wearing that.”
She lifted one shoulder. “I thought it would be rude to take it off before you got home.”
The corner of his mouth moved, but his expression stayed dark with the kind of attention that made her pulse jump immediately.
He crossed to the bed and sat on the edge of it, one hand bracing against the mattress, the other still at his tie like he hadn’t fully decided whether he was exhausted or doomed.
Y/N didn’t give him time to choose.
The moment he sat down, she reached for him, one hand gripping his shirt, the other sliding behind his neck, and pulled him to her.
Henry let out the faintest breath of surprise before her mouth was on his.
The kiss landed hot and immediate, all patience gone. Y/N kissed him like she’d been waiting through every minute of that meeting just to have him back in reach. Henry answered just as quickly, one hand moving to her waist, the other catching himself on the mattress before he gave up on restraint entirely.
The bed shifted beneath them.
Y/N lied back and tugged him closer. Henry’s hand tightened at her side. The kiss deepened fast, turning breathless almost immediately, the whole apartment narrowing down to the space between them and the fact that he was finally home.
Henry broke from her mouth only long enough to kiss along her jaw, then her neck, his voice dropping low against her skin.
“I haven’t stopped thinking about your voice.”
Y/N’s breath caught. Her fingers tightened slightly at the back of his neck. “My voice?”
Henry kissed just below her ear, then lower, slower, like the words were being pulled out of him with each touch. “Reading to me. In my bed. Like it was nothing.”
Y/N shivered and tilted her head to give him more room, her voice softer now. “And that did something to you?”
Henry’s hand spread more firmly at her waist. His mouth brushed her throat again before he answered.
“More than I liked.” He lifted his head just enough to look at her, eyes dark and steady. “You in my bed, reading like you belonged there?” His thumb pressed once into her side. “Don’t act like you don’t know what that did to me.”
That sent a warm, dangerous thrill straight through her.
Y/N’s mouth curved, a little breathless, a little too pleased. “Maybe I wanted to find out.”
Henry’s gaze sharpened at that, and whatever thread of restraint he’d been hanging onto slipped further.
He kissed her again.
Y/N reached for the last book she left on his nightstand, her fingers brushing the familiar leather cover of Dracula. She opened it, her voice soft and melodic as she began to read.
"There was something about them that made me uneasy, some longing and at the same time some deadly fear.”
Henry's hand slid down her body, his fingers hooking into the lace of her lingerie, slowly pulling it down as she continued to read.
"I felt in my heart a wicked, burning desire that they would kiss me with those red lips. They whispered together, and then they all three laughed, such a silvery, musical laugh, but as hard as though the sound never could have come through the softness of human lips.”
As she read, Henry's mouth found her center, his tongue flicking out to taste her, his hands spreading her legs, his eyes locked on hers.
Y/N's breath hitched, her fingers tightening in his hair, the book slipping from her grasp as she focused on the sensation. "Henry, please, don't stop," she begged, her voice trembling with need.
Henry's mouth never left her, his hands tightening on her thighs, his eyes dark with desire. "Read, Y/N," he murmured, his voice low and rough. "Read to me as I taste you, as I make you come. I want to hear your voice as I worship you, as I make you mine."
Y/N nodded, her breath coming in short, sharp gasps, her body arching as she reached for the book again, her voice trembling with pleasure. "I... I'll try," she panted, her fingers brushing the pages. Not bothering to find where she left off at.
"I lay…” she panted, trying to focus as he sucked his clit into her mouth. “I-I lay quiet, looking out from under my eyelashes in an agony of delightful anticipation. The fair girl advanced and bent over me till I could feel the movement of her breath upon me. Sweet it was in one sense, honey-sweet, and sent the same tingling—“
Every flick, every swirl sent waves of pleasure crashing through her body, the wet, sucking sounds of his mouth on her filling the room, mingling with her ragged gasps
But as the pleasure built, she found it harder to concentrate, her voice breaking, her body trembling. "Henry, I can't... I can't read... please, don't stop," she begged, her voice a broken, desperate plea. "I need you... I need this... please, don't make me stop."
Henry lifted his head, his eyes dark and steady, a light smack landing on her ass, hard enough to make her gasp.
"Keep reading, Y/N," he said, his voice a low, dirty promise. "You can do it. You can give me your voice, your body, your pleasure. You can give me everything. And I will give you everything in return."
Y/N nodded, her breath coming in short, sharp gasps, her body trembling, her voice soft and broken. "I... I can," she whispered, her voice a promise. She went back to reading, “The girl went on her knees, and bent over me, simply gloating. There was a deliberate vo…” she trailed off she struggled to grasp what that word was and not focus on his head between her legs.
“Sound it out, sweetheart,” he whispered, his tongue dragging slowly against her inner thigh instead, making her whine.
“V… Vo…Voluptuousness,” she managed to finally say. She felt Henry’s lips upturn as she managed to read it and his mouth was back on her. She could feel the roughness of his tongue against her sensitive nub, circling it relentlessly, building a tension that coiled tighter and tighter in her belly, her hips bucking involuntarily against his face.
She threw her head back but immediately brought back focus. “Wh-Which was both thrilling and repulsive…Lower and lower went her head as the lips went below the range of my mouth and chin and seemed to fasten on my throat…”
He didn't stop, his tongue plunging into her entrance now, fucking her with it in slow, deep thrusts that mimicked what she craved elsewhere, his nose pressing against her clit with each movement.
“I…” she moaned out, trailing off. His tongue was slowing down. She immediately forced her eyes onto the pages of chapter three. “I could feel the hot breath on my neck…”
The buildup was exquisite torture, every nerve alight with sensation, the slick warmth of his mouth, the firm pressure of his lips, the way her inner walls clenched around nothing, aching for more.
“Then the skin of my throat began to tingle as one's flesh does when the hand that is to tickle it approaches nearer…” her breathing got heavier. “And nearer—“
When she finally shattered, her orgasm ripping through her like a storm, her body convulsed, thighs clamping around his head as waves of ecstasy pulsed from her core, leaving her breathless and spent.
His hands never stopped touching her, his eyes never stopped watching her. He worshipped her with his mouth, his hands, his body, his heart. And Y/N gave him everything, her voice, her body, her pleasure, her love.
He pulled back slowly, his eyes on her. “There you are. That’s what your voice does to me.” He undressed, his body taut with desire, and Y/N kissed him deeply, her hands roaming his chest, her breath hitching as she felt his hardness against her.
But Henry had other plans. He lay back on the bed, his eyes dark with hunger, and guided Y/N on top of him, facing away. "Ride me, Y/N," he murmured, his voice rough with need. "Just like that. I want to watch you."
Y/N straddled him, her body trembling with anticipation, her heart pounding in her chest. She felt his hard cock against her, and she moaned, her body arching, her hips grinding against him.
Henry's hands gripped her hips, his fingers digging into her flesh, his eyes locked on the curve of her ass, the sway of her body. She positioned herself over him, guiding him inside her with a slow, deliberate movement that stretched her exquisitely.
Y/N's moans filled the room, her voice a symphony of pleasure, her body a temple of ecstasy.
She began to ride him, her body rising and falling, her breath coming in short, sharp gasps. Henry groaned beneath her, his hands tightening on her hips, his voice a low, rough whisper. "That’s it. Take all of it. Good girl, just like that. You feel incredible.”
She began to move, riding him with steady rolls of her hips, the slick friction of his cock sliding in and out of her pussy building a delicious tension deep within.
Each thrust upward from him met her downward grind, amplifying the sensation, his tip brushing against that sensitive spot inside her that made her gasp and arch her back.
His hand slid into her hair, fingers threading through the strands until his palm settled firm against the back of her head. Then he tightened his grip just enough to pull her head back, exposing the line of her throat and forcing her to look at him.
The pleasure built relentlessly, every nerve alight, until it crested in a shattering wave, her pussy clenching around him in spasms, milking his cock as waves of ecstasy crashed over her.
Henry followed, his hips jerking, his cock pulsing inside her, their shared cries mingling in the heated air as they collapsed together, breathless and entwined.
Y/N collapsed onto his chest, her body trembling, her breath coming in short, sharp gasps, her heart pounding in her chest. Henry's arms wrapped around her, his hands stroking her back, her hair, his lips brushing her shoulder, her neck.
Y/N eased off him slowly and settled onto the bed beside him, still catching her breath, one arm draped over her stomach as she stared up at the ceiling.
For a little while, neither of them said anything.
The room was quiet except for the faint hum of the city outside and the slow way their breathing started to match again. Henry lay on his back beside her, one hand still warm where it rested near her hip, like even now he hadn’t fully stopped touching her.
Y/N turned her head on the pillow and looked at him.
His hair was a mess. He looked softer like this, stripped of the precise edges he wore everywhere else.
And for some reason, looking at him now, with the year almost behind them, made something tighten in her chest.
“The school year is nearly over,” she said quietly.
Henry’s eyes shifted to hers. “It is.”
Y/N traced one finger absently along the sheet between them. “What are you going to do for the summer?”
Henry gave the smallest shrug. “Read. Work. Pretend I enjoy departmental planning.”
Y/N smiled faintly. “That sounds bleak.”
“It is bleak.”
She watched him for a second, then rolled a little more onto her side so she was facing him fully.
“What if you didn’t do that?” she asked.
Henry’s brows lifted slightly. “Didn’t do what?”
“Spend the whole summer being miserable in Boston,” she said.
The corner of his mouth moved. “And what do you propose instead?”
Y/N’s expression turned brighter, more tentative underneath it than she wanted him to notice. “We go somewhere.”
That got his full attention.
She kept going before she could talk herself out of it.
“Not forever,” she said. “Just… for a little bit. A few days. A week, maybe.” Her eyes stayed on his. “If we left Boston, we could actually be together.”
Henry went still.
Y/N’s voice softened. “Out in the open, I mean. We could go to dinner and not care who sees us. Walk somewhere without acting like strangers.” Her mouth curved just slightly. “You could hold my hand in public without having to develop a moral crisis about it.”
That almost made him smile.
Almost.
But the seriousness stayed in his face too, because he understood what she was really offering.
Not just a trip.
A version of them that wasn’t hidden.
Y/N searched his expression, suddenly a little more vulnerable now that the idea was out in the room.
“We don’t have to go far,” she said quietly. “Just somewhere that doesn’t know us.”
Henry looked at her for a long moment before answering.
“And where would you want to go.”
Y/N smiled, relieved he hadn’t shut it down immediately. “Somewhere pretty. Somewhere quiet. Somewhere with a bed that isn’t yours or mine.” She thought for a second. “Maybe the coast. Or somewhere with old bookstores and bad coffee and a motel that looks a little haunted.”
Henry huffed a quiet breath. “You’d make terrible travel brochures.”
Y/N grinned. “You’d still come.”
His eyes stayed on hers.
The hand near her hip shifted, settling more fully against her side.
“You want this,” he said softly.
It wasn’t disbelief. More like careful recognition.
Y/N nodded. “Obviously.”
Henry looked away briefly, toward the darkened window, as if the thought itself required space. When he spoke again, his voice was lower.
“You really think we could do that?”
She knew what he meant.
Not the logistics. Not the drive. Not the hotel.
Be together like that. Out where no one knew them. No covered windows. No locked classroom doors. No pretending she was just another student when someone walked by.
“Yes,” Y/N said softly. “I do.”
Henry’s gaze came back to her.
For a second he looked younger somehow. Not less serious. Just less defended.
Y/N reached out and touched his chest lightly, fingertips resting there.
“I want a memory of us that doesn’t have to be hidden,” she admitted. “Just once.”
That landed.
He covered her hand with his.
The room went quiet again, but not empty. Full. Like something was being considered carefully, maybe for the first time.
Then Henry said, “The Cape.”
Y/N blinked. “What?”
He looked at her, more settled now that the idea had taken shape. “If we went anywhere. The Cape.”
A smile spread slowly across her face. “Really?”
“It’s quiet,” he said. “Far enough. Close enough.” His mouth twitched faintly. “And there are bookstores.”
Y/N laughed softly, delighted. “And bad coffee?”
“I can’t promise that.”
She moved closer without thinking, her leg tangling lightly with his. “So you’d go?”
Henry’s hand slid from hers to her waist again, steady and warm.
“If we do this,” he said, “it has to be planned.”
Y/N smiled. “Of course.”
“No improvising.”
She smiled wider. “Probably.”
Henry narrowed his eyes a fraction. “Y/N.”
She laughed and tucked herself against him, cheek near his shoulder. “Okay. Fine. Planned.”
His arm came around her automatically.
And though he didn’t say yes in so many words, she could feel it in the way he held her after that, as if he was already imagining it too.
A road out of Boston.
A town where no one knew them.
Her beside him, not hidden, not secret, just there.
Y/N tilted her head up and looked at him. “You know,” she murmured, “I think you’d be good at summer.”
Henry glanced down at her. “What does that mean?”
She smiled. “Less tweed. More sunlight. Maybe fewer moral dilemmas.”
Henry’s mouth brushed lightly against her forehead. “Don’t get ambitious.”
Y/N laughed softly and closed her eyes, already holding the image in her head like something precious.
For the first time this year, she actually looked forward to summer.
Summary: Life with The Doctor is constantly changing.
Warnings: fluff then angst then angst then fluff
Word Count: 2,615
You had been travelling with The Doctor for quite some time now and you absolutely loved it. You absolutely loved him. You'd see his companions come and go, most of them seemed to fall in love with him in some sense, and it was always your biggest fear. Your biggest fear was The Doctor asking you to leave. You couldn't do it.
After you left Donna back on earth with no memories of the TARDIS, you, or The Doctor, you were terrified. You were terrified that not only The Doctor would leave you but that he'd make you forget the amazing things he has shown you, that he'd make you forget him. You couldn't contain your feelings any longer, that night you sat in your room and cried. You felt stupid just sitting there and crying but you couldn't hold it in anymore.
The Doctor wanted to check on you so he walked up to your door and just as he was about to open it, the sound of your cries stopped him. He didn't want to upset you any further and he remembered that talk you had with him about knocking so he decided to try it. He raised his hand and knocked on the door three times in rapid succession. The sound jolted you and you quickly got up and tried to clean yourself up a bit before you responded.
"Yes, Doctor?" you tried to make your voice sound as calm as possible.
"A-Are you alright? I know you were close"
"You were close too"
Silence fell on the conversation for a few moments before The Doctor spoke again.
"Can I come in?"
"Do-do you have to?"
"No" he sighed, not wanting to say what he was about to "If you want to go I understand"
"Do you want me to?"
"I-it's your choice"
You could hear the sadness and pain in his voice. You flung the door open and looked up into his eyes.
"Doctor, being here in the TARDIS, being with you, all of this, has been the best years of my life. I don't want to leave but if you want me to, I will"
The Doctor wrapped his arms around you and pulled your body tight against his.
"I don't want you to go"
Standing there in his embrace, you knew you had to say something. You knew it would probably ruin everything and he'd have to take you back to Earth and leave you forever but you could keep pushing your feelings down.
"Doctor, I'm sorry, this is incredibly selfish and I wish I didn't but I have to tell you the truth. I love you, I have for a long time now and I know you don't-"
You were cut off by the feeling of his lips pressed against yours in a beautiful, passionate kiss. The kind of kiss you had seen in movies and read about in books but never thought was real. The kind of kiss that made you melt into his arms and pray you never had to break it. But you did, you couldn't breathe so you had to pull away.
You rested your foreheads against each other as you panted, trying to catch your breath.
"I love you too"
If you thought travelling with The Doctor before was amazing you were completely shocked to see how much more it all was when you were dating him. He took you to some of the most romantic places you could've imagined. On your 1 year anniversary he took you to see Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole and Elvis all in the same night. After the concerts you went to a wonderful party in the 20s where for the first time in a long time, The Doctor danced. You had a delicious dinner in a French restaurant a few centuries ahead of your own time and to finish the night off perfectly The Doctor gave you a necklace. It was a small star pendant hung on a beautiful gold chain.
He placed it around your neck and fixed the clasp in the back "That, my love, is made of the stardust from the last star in the universe"
"Doctor, tonight has been one of the best nights of my life, thank you"
"I thought the concerts would be a big hit" he said with a soft smile.
"The concerts were amazing but that's not the reason. You are. This is one of the best nights of my life because I've gotten to spend the past year with you"
He leaned down and captured your lips in the perfect kiss, making both of you feel completely content with each other.
The Doctor knew what was coming. He didn't want to leave you but he had to, he had no choice. He took you to a beautiful planet, filled with waterfalls and strange little birds that sang the most beautiful songs. He wanted your last memory together to be one you could look back on fondly. He set up a picnic under the most beautiful waterfall he could find. You opened the doors of the TARDIS and were met with the fresh smell of the waterfalls and the sweet melody of the bird's songs. You walked over to the red and white checked blanket laid across the grass. You sat down and enjoyed the picnic with the man of your dreams. You strolled around the planet, taking in the exquisite scenery, hand in hand with The Doctor. You stood under the biggest waterfall around. You stared into the eyes of your lover and you saw your life with him. You saw the happiness you could have with him.
"I love you, Doctor, with all of my heart"
"I love you too, more than you'll ever know"
Your lips meet in the sweetest kiss you have ever shared, for you it was filled with promise and hope for the future, for The Doctor it was his last desperate attempt to hold onto you for as long as he could.
You made your way back to the TARDIS and turned in for the night. The next morning you woke up to find that The Doctor wasn't beside you, then you realised you weren't in the TARDIS anymore. You were in a hotel room somewhere. You called out for The Doctor but he didn't answer. You ran down the stairs and out the door looking for the TARDIS. You looked around and saw that you were in London sometime around the turn of the century. You stood in the middle of the street and you realised, he had left you there. He had done the one thing you never wanted him to do, he had made your worst nightmare a reality.
You collapsed right there in the street, tears started to gush from your eyes. Just one day earlier you had had one of the best days of your life and now you were alone. You barely gathered yourself together to walk inside, you saw the woman at the receptionist desk and thought she could answer a few questions.
"E-Excuse me, where are we?"
"Sandringham Hotel, London"
"And um, what year is it?"
"2006. Are you okay?"
"No, no I'm really not"
You've had enough, you've had enough misery and you've had enough time to wallow in self pity, you're done. You decide to make your way to Wales, maybe you can get the help you need there.
When you finally get to Cardiff you head for a large reflective tower that you know very well. You walk over to a section of pavement and stand there, waiting.
"Jack, I know you're in there. Let me in" you call out, making you look like a lunatic.
Suddenly the floor beneath you starts to lower and you enter The Hub. You see Jack standing there, you run over and wrap your arms around him.
"Hey, what happened?"
"He's gone, Jack. He just left me at some hotel in London"
"What? He didn't say anything?"
"No, nothing. We had an amazing day, we went back to the TARDIS, then I woke up alone"
"I'm so sorry"
"When was the last time you saw him?"
"That planet filled with those weird dogs with no noses. How long ago was that for you?"
"Over a year"
"Here, this looks like something" Jack said passing you some files "A little girl in Leadworth said she met a man called 'The Doctor" who had a blue police box"
"This is him, Jack. It has to be. When was it?"
"1996"
"She might still be there, what's her name?"
"Amelia Pond"
"I have to go"
"I know, just be safe and when you find The Doctor, slap him"
"Oh don't worry, I will"
You leave almost immediately, grabbing your things on your way out, you get in your car and drive to Leadworth. Once you get there you go to the girl's house and knock on the door. A young woman opens the door and addresses you with a thick Scottish accent.
"Who are you?"
"I'm a friend of The Doctor's and I need to speak with you"
"Come in, quick"
You head up to her room and see all of the TARDIS toys she's made over the years. You pick up a little sculpture of The Doctor.
"This is very good, Amelia"
"It's Amy and be careful with those"
"Of course, Amy. Can you tell me about when you met The Doctor?"
She tells you all about her experience with The Doctor.
"Really? Fish fingers and custard?" you giggle out.
"Yes, it was the only thing he would eat" she joins you in your laughter.
"Thank you for telling me all of this, Amy"
"You don't think I'm crazy?"
"Not at all, I believe you completely"
"How do you know The Doctor?"
"I used to travel with him"
"Why don't you anymore?"
"He left me"
"Just like he did to me?"
"Yes"
"Why did he leave you?"
"I don't know, that's what I've been trying to find out for the past 2 years"
"You spent 2 years looking for him?" she asked in disbelief.
"Haven't you been waiting for longer?"
"Yes, but I haven't been looking, I have no idea where to look"
"Neither do I really, you are the first solid lead I've got"
"I'm sorry I can't help you"
"You have, you've helped me so much"
"How?"
"Because of you, I know he's okay"
You visited Amy every now and then, but there was never any news from The Doctor. One day you were looking for anything that could be The Doctor or aliens in general and you got a phone call. It was Amy. She briefly told you about what happened with the Atraxi and you immediately drove to Leadworth. You decided to move there, It was the closest place to The Doctor so you thought it would be your best chance at finding him again. You rented a little cottage, just up the road from Amy's house and you settled in nicely.
One night you were out in your garden and you heard that familiar groaning whirr that made your heart skip a beat. You ran down to Amy's but you weren't quick enough. You just got through the gate in time to see the TARDIS de-materialise before your eyes. You were devastated, you'd spent 4 years looking for him and you were 7 seconds too late.
Amy's aunt saw you standing in the middle of her yard and called out to you. You went in the house with her and gave her a reasonable explanation as to why Amy was gone and why you were in her yard in the middle of the night. While you were talking to her you heard the TARDIS again. You ran out the door but it was nowhere to be seen then you realised, it had to be in her room. You dashed up the stairs and up to her room. You were suddenly extremely nervous, The Doctor left you for a reason, surely he doesn't want to see you. You stood in the hallway, working up the courage to face him. You turned, about to walk through the door and then you saw. You saw Amy and The Doctor kissing. Even though he had a different face you still felt like someone ripped your heart out when you saw the only man you ever loved kissing someone else. You ran down the stairs with tears in your eyes, wanting to forget the entire evening. Before you could walk out the door you heard Amy call your name.
"What are you doing here?"
"I heard the TARDIS and came running, but I'll leave. You don't need to worry about me"
"But The Doctor's here! This is what you've wanted for 4 years"
"It looked like I'm not what The Doctor wants anymore. I was stupid to search for him in the first place, he left me and I should have just accepted that. I should have just accepted the fact that The Doctor never wants to see me again"
"That's not true" you turned around to see him standing behind you.
"Doctor?" you looked up at him as a few years fell down your cheeks.
"It's me, love"
'Don't call me that"
"Wh-Ow!" he yelped, feeling the palm of your hand collide with his face with heavy force. Amy jumped a little, shocked by your actions. From what you had said to her she thought your reunion with The Doctor would be much different.
"You slapped me!"
"You left me!"
"I didn't want to"
"Then why did you?"
"I didn't want to watch you leave"
"I wasn't going to leave"
"You would've, when you saw what I had to do and when you saw me"
"You mean your regeneration? Do you really think that little of me?"
"I-I didn't know-"
"Exactly! You didn't know. Doctor, I would have loved you if you had regenerated into a Slitheen, I don't care what you look like, I only care about who you are"
"You don't understand. When I regenerate I change my face but I also change my personality. I'm not the same man you loved"
"You change aspects. You still save the Earth from alien invasions and you still care. You're still you, you're just a different version of you and if you had given me the chance I would have fallen in love with you all over again"
"You would?"
"Yes. But I understand that you don't want me anymore so I'll just go"
"What do you mean? I'd never not want you"
"What about Amy?"
"I don't love her"
"But what about what I saw upstairs?"
"You saw Amy kissing me?"
"Yes"
"Did you see what I did next?"
"No, I couldn't stand there any longer"
"Well if you had you would have seen me tell her that I'm not interested in her"
"You're not?"
"No! Of course not"
You wrap your arms around his neck and hug him as tightly as you can and he squeezes you back tighter.
"How long has it been for you?" you ask, still not breaking contact.
"A long time. How long has it been for you?"
"4 years"
"You kept looking for me for 4 years?"
"I loved you, I couldn't just forget you"
"You keep saying that word, 'loved' do you still love me?
"My dear, sweet Doctor, I could never not love you. You are my everything and I love you now just as much as I did 4 years ago. Do you still love me?"
