You wonder whether he would take away the biology textbooks if he knew why you study them.
Probably not. Dr. Ratio prefers to watch you fail, correct the error, and call it a lesson rather than confiscate. Still, you keep the books tucked beneath your physics notes, just in case.
He insists you accompany him while he works. “Accompany” is his word and it means to being installed in his office like a houseplant he remembers to water with exam questions and personalized lectures.
You’re here for his emotional support more than anything. Definitely not to help with his research. You don't know what the equations on the grand central board even mean. You stopped asking months ago, even though he encourages the questions, theatrically, with that open-palmed gesture “oh please, enlighten me with whatever misguided thought you're about to voice”. You can't stand the way he breaks up your answers. He never tells you that you're just wrong. He walks you backward through every assumption you didn't realize you'd made until you're staring at a basic addition error and he's just sighing.
On days when he pays more attention to how you spend your time in his office, his favourite pastime is putting you through exams he designed himself. "To assess retention," he says. Your answers definitely aren’t brilliant, but after each pop quiz he looks satisfied. Maybe he notices progress or maybe he just likes to watch you squirm over ridiculous math equations.
Today isn't one of those days. Today he's absorbed in his own work, draggiing his chalk across the board in neat, rapid, sharp strokes. You listen to the almost rhythmic beats of his writing before returning to your own papers.
The stack of books on your table makes you proud in a way you'd never admit before him. In last five weeks, you've studied harder than the most desperate pre-exam students, harder than you ever studied in university. Your head feels heavy from the amount of crammed knowledge each day, your eyes are dry from reading past the point of retention, but the progress makes you ecstatic. You understand things now that were gibberish two months ago. Metabolic pathways. Gene expression. The delicate machinery of cells. You can name so many bones now.
Maybe if you learn enough, you could become Ruan Mei's assistant.
It's a dubious hope, and you’re aware of it. Plenty of researchers dream of working under a genius like her. But your wish isn't entirely ungrounded. You met her once, back when you were just a beginner researcher fumbling through your first conference. She liked you. She told you so when you commented on her cat-cakes and cracked a joke about making a whole collection of dessert critters. Mochi that changes flavour with their mood. Shortcake which grows its layers like bacteria.
"Hm. A refreshing side project," she praised, and she granted you a ghost of a smile, barely there, but there. It made you think that maybe you two would get along, and maybe she isn’t as unapproachable as she had seemed. "It's a shame you don't specialize in biology. I would have had one team member already."
You'd chuckled politely then, apologizing for choosing physics.
Now that joke is the brightest bet on your future.
"Do pray tell." His voice cuts through the silence like a blade through thin paper. "Is a blank wall interesting enough to entertain you?"
You jolt. He doesn't turn from the board. He doesn't need to. He knows exactly what you were doing. He always seems to know what you are doing, and it’s one of his worst qualities.
"You've been staring at nothing again." The chalk keeps moving. "Should I take it as a request for my latest set of exercises?"
Oh, how much you hate this man.
"No need." You bite back every insult you'd love to throw at him. You don’t want to test your luck. Who knows if he’d let you study in peace if you told him to choke on his chalk. "I want to finish this unit today. I'm very busy, thank you."
You fight him on everything else, except these study sessions. You request them. You ask nicely, setting aside your dignity. You call him Veritas instead of Doctor when you want something, because you noticed once that it makes his jaw tighten in a way that isn't quite anger.
Of course he knows something's up. He just doesn't know what. At least, that's what you allow yourself to think.
Chapter Seven: Epigenetic Regulation. Your head throbs at the temples, since you skipped lunch. You'll endure it another hour, then suggest dinner. You'll eat with Doctor Ratio pressed to your side, hoping to sate the hunger until tomorrow's breakfast. During each meal he picks at your psyche, so the fewer meals together, the better.
He crosses the room and his hand closes over the book. He lifts it from your grip.
"Ah." He examines the cover with the same expression he wears when grading your exams. "Genetics." His eyes flick to you. "How ambitious of you."
Your pulse spikes. Does he know? He knows. He has to know. How would he know? His expression is unreadable. He wears that careful, assessing neutrality he wears when he's deciding whether to indulge you or dismantle you.
"Though I do wonder," he continues, turning the book over in his hands, "what's so fascinating about it. Ruan Mei's work, perhaps?" You don't answer. You feel your throat closing. "You met her once, didn't you? At a conference. A conversation about her... creatures."
The book snaps shut in his hands, but he doesn't give it back.
"Here is what I don't understand." He sets the genetics text on the corner of your desk. It’s within reach, but he doesn't release it. His fingers stay pressed to the cover. "You assume I would object to this pursuit of knowledge. You treat your interest in biology like contraband. Why?”
You stare at him. He continues being insufferable.
"You failed your first two attempts at the physics qualifying exam. Your mathematics are adequate at best, and that's a generous description. Do you know what I see when I look at you studying genetics?"
He doesn’t expect you to answer.
“I see a student who has finally found something she wants to learn,” he says and actually smiles. There is some proud spark of self-satisfaction which you deem misplaced. “It’s a refreshing change. There’s finally something that you dont treat like a punishment, but something you chose for yourself. Or maybe not just for yourself. It’s for Ruan Mei too, isn’t it?”
He pauses and the silence is worse than his monologue.
"You think that if you learn enough, if you become competent enough, she might take you on as an assistant. And then-- hm, what? You think you’d be somewhere else. Studying something I did not teach you. Did you plan anything beyond that or did I sum it up correctly? It's a decent plan. Flawed, of course. Your timeline is optimistic, and your end goal depends mostly on luck. Your foundations are full of holes. But the impulse itself that I cannot fault. That I even respect."
He straightens, folding his arms. "So here is what I propose. Keep studying. I'll get you whatever volumes you need. You may pursue biology to your heart's content. You may fill your head with every pathway and mechanism and delicate cellular process that Ruan Mei has ever written about."
He turns back toward the board, but pauses mid-stride.
"By the time you're skilled enough to impress someone like her," he says, glancing over his shoulder, "you'll have impressed me first. And that, I assure you, is the harder exam. It opens many pathways to our future collaborations. My field of work, as you know, expands beyond domain of math."
You should feel relieved. You should feel something other than the wave of cold dread, slowly sinking in. He knows your plan and he doesn’t stop you. He knows of every book you thought you'd studied in secret. He has been watching you chase a way out, and he has done nothing to stop you and it’s not because he can't, but because he doesn't need to.
He believes you'll fail. Worse, he believes that by the time you succeed, you won't want to leave. The thought makes you nauseous.
"You're not going to talk me out of it," you say, and your voice comes out fainter than you meant it to.
"Talk you out of it?" He picks up his chalk, and turns back to the board. "Why would I do that? You're finally applying yourself. You're reading beyond the syllabus. You're curious. You're almost tolerable like this. Maybe you’ll have something worthwhile to say soon."
"High praise."
"It is, coming from me." He begins writing again, the chalk clicking against the board. You promise yourself that one day you will learn whatever he’s researching and criticize his research, for the pleasure of it. "Consider it a reward for good behaviour. You want to study under Ruan Mei? Sure. Earn it. In the meantime, you'll study under me. I won't have you embarrassing yourself, and by extension, me, when the opportunity comes."
You open your mouth to argue, then close it. He's letting you. He's encouraging you. And somehow it unnerves you much, much worse than if he'd forbidden it outright. Your escape route now runs through him. Every page you read, every concept you master… he'll be there, correcting your deductions, suggesting a better textbook, asking you pointed questions about gene regulation over dinner.
a/n: yandere aventurine x female reader, suggestive, non-consensual touching and forced kisses
“Ah, ah, ah, don’t say a word, darling,” a glowed finger pressed to your lips makes words die on your tongue almost as effectively as the Aventurine’s vivid, piercing eyes. Except for the shallow breaths, you stay in silence, and he glides his hand from your lips to cup your cheekbone. “I must say, you are really bold, testing my connections like that to find you. Being sceptical is a great quality…”
He pushes you onto the bed and lays on top of you, interlocking your fingers together so you don’t ever try to push him off yourself. He stares at you, his smile growing smug with your every try to wiggle out yourself of the embrace.
Aventurine’s head falls on your shoulder. You shiver as he chuckles and his warm breath sends a chill through your spine he muchly adores tracing his fingers on.
“…But not when it comes to me.”
You turn your head away from him. Ugh, you wish you could have at least a full day without him, but you could pride yourself in having a plan good enough to escape the room he locked you up two weeks ago when you first arrived on this planet.
Though, it hurts your ego a bit that Aventurine doesn’t seem to be bothered at all.
He shifts on the bed, and you hate how the sheets that smelled of the hotel’s cleanliness are already starting to stink with his perfumes. The smell you once loved now suffocates you with each breath.
He wraps his arm around your waist so he spoons your back for a second before grasping you tighter and throwing you over himself, having you face him. He entangles your legs before you can think of hitting him with a knee.
You whisper into the pillows.
“…At least I know you are a real deal.”
Aventurine chuckles in a tone you would find endearing if you didn’t feel he laughs at you. When he first started to show you the best parts of the world he’s been living in—the casinos that always had a nice pianist playing on a grand piano, the numerous vine tastings, the breakfasts that make your mouth water, clothing that feels like silk in touch—you could hear the tone everywhere, usually just by your ear. He then told you how he loved how your eyes shone and how much more enchanting you look every day.
You wonder which night he started to plan to cut you off from both worlds, yours and his, to only have him as your everything.
“That’s news to me,” he says, theatrically raising his eyebrows. “You didn’t believe me at all? You must know, darling, that everything I told you after we got together is true. That’s a real privilege right there.”
His finger starts to trace circular patterns on your forearm’s skin. Your heart throbs painfully.
“Aventurine…” Your voice is as demanding as can be the voice of a woman squished in the arms of a man who knows how to use words and guns. “I don’t believe you really love me. That’s not how love looks like.”
The man is still in his position. He blinks, and his eyes are fully on you. You have yet to find out if that look is a warning for you or whether he is enticed by what are you saying. Or maybe he just wants to hear your voice—you know Aventurine is not a man above misleading you into believing you aren’t in a hopeless position just to hear your pleas.
“When you love someone, you want the best for them. You want— You see them as equals. You don’t strip them of what they love to do, and… and people they love. You just… join their life and slowly build a new one together…”
When you fall silent, Aventurine pulls you in and with the other hand brushes hair off your face.
He hums. “That’s an inspiring speech. Oh, and I loved how you looked when you talked about it. Such a view. You must’ve thought about it for quite a while, huh?” He pats you on the head, lingering a bit to loosely twirl your hair on his fingers. “But, dearest, everything you’ve said, well, it all checks out.”
“No.”
“I do view as equals. We have a trade: my everlasting love for a bit of your freedom. It looks like a good deal.”
“It doesn’t look like—”
Aventurine shuts you up with a kiss. You hate, hate, hate this feeling, because in these moments you wonder if you could ever truly fall in love with a man you despise that gives you the hugs you long for and kisses you think about for days.
As he pulls away, with your free hand, you wipe off the traces of the kiss on your lips. Of course, you know it’s meaningless—he kissed you many times, you would have to count in hundreds at least—he will revenge you for that later.
“Awh, don’t be like that,” He says, kissing you again and holding your wrists this time. “You know, I pride myself in being a good businessman. If you are going to put your undying love for me, I will give you the freedom back.”
“You may beg all you want, but with begging you can’t get my love.”
It’s a brave thing to say when you are at the mercy of a man who’s famished for your affection.
“Hm, is that so?” Aventurine chuckles, but for the first time in the evening, it lacks the usual flippancy. He begins to pepper your neck with kisses, and you feel his sturdy hands travel down your stomach and a tugging on your shirt. “Well, say what you want, darling. But since you’ve been by my side for such a long time, you must know I only engage in bets I know I will win.”
a/n: jealousy themes, yandere sunday x reader, mentions of abduction, incapacitation, drabble
Your artistic silence is broken with a snap of fingers and a question.
“Now, who is that man?”
Before the vision disappears, you have a split second to admire your efforts. Your skills have improved over the last three hours where Sunday had left your dreamscape to attend to some urgent and questionable matters.
This time, you have delved into the concept of imaginary creations that followed your newfound belief that even in this kind of twisted dream, deliberately manipulated by Sunday, you could still treat it like… a dream.
Do wonders. Keep yourself occupied to take care of your sanity.
The man you’ve created doesn’t have a name as you don’t recognize him. Maybe he was your own creation, or maybe he was one of the countless tourists at Reverie Hotel whose face you’ve been fortunate to remember. He would have made for a much more entertaining company than Sunday is, especially as he presses his lips into a thin line and looks disappointed in you.
“A secret boyfriend. We were planning to elope tonight, before you…” The story cuts short, as Sunday closes his eyes and sighs heavily, as if dealing with a troublesome kid. You take the warning and end your joke here, but because you know you have the privilege to as his beloved, you pout at him. “Alright. I was bored. Happy now? I thought you said I can do whatever I want here. Well, you keep calling it my dreamscape, after all.”
Sunday sits you down on a sofa that materializes within a blink of an eye. It’s another reminder you’re not in Penacony; there, nothing like that could happen, as it’s a dream with rules you are bound to obey. But at least there, you could understand its mechanism as it was created to mimic the real world.
‘Your’ dreamscape was solely ruled by Sunday’s whims.
You fall on a stack of heavenly puffy cushions, with his arm draped around your waist.
“Dearest. It’s our dream. This fantasy wouldn’t exist without any of us,” Sunday promptly corrects you and smiles gently at your irate gaze. “Believe me, I wholeheartedly would love to give you a fair share of power over this place, but it would be a bit dangerous to someone not practised in lucid dreaming.”
If you didn’t exceed his tolerance for defiance for today, you would have hit him with one of the pillows. Instead, you sink yourself deeper into them.
“Alright, then… What do I have to do to be classified as experienced? As far as I am aware, spending a whole three months in a dream should have made me an expert.”
“That’s a lovely conclusion. But does spending time in a library make you able to get a degree in every subject that’s written in the books?”
The question silences you. The break is long enough for Sunday to design your surroundings: a coffee table that matches the times, a porcelain tea set with golden details and some infusion with fascinating taste. They go with a tray of cookies and little sandwiches, as well as a bowl of fruits and nuts that would taste better if they were real.
However, you have to do with what you have on your hands.
You bite into a biscuit. “Then, what should I do? To be adept enough, that is.”
“There are many other requirements…” He falls into a reverie, and just as you think he closes the topic—you’ve been willing to give it up at this point, solely for the quiet to continue—Sunday speaks again. “If you can wake up on your own or overwrite any of the aspects of this dream, for example, gravity, I will consider giving you a little more power here.”
So, he’s asking you for the impossible.
“…I won’t be wiping myself out only for you to ‘consider’.”
Sunday takes a sip of tea. The porcelain can’t hide a tenderish smile, but the unexplainable gleam in his eyes is exposed.
“There is always a shortcut.”
“That doesn’t, um, doom me for eternity?”
“Yes. If I have a say in this, it’s a very delightful one.” And after the next sentence, you know why he’s so engaged in this discussion. “Marrying me.”
…
Sighing, you cross your arms and shake off Sunday’s arm from your shoulder. “I thought you hated liars.”
“Which part of what I said do you consider a lie?”
You ignore him and get up from the sofa, heading towards the big door. Sunday might have changed the look of the place, but the layout always remains the same. Behind that door, you will find a short hall that leads to several other rooms that don’t have Sunday in them and so are preferred.
“I don’t want to talk (to you) anymore, sorry,” you mutter out the apology just to defend yourself if Sunday was going to accuse you of being rude. “I am going to daydream—dreamdream?—about, I guess, men, if I can’t have anyone here. Goodbye.”
You reach for the pair of doors and find them uncharacteristically too heavy. You try to open the door, but just then a big silver chain crosses over their handles, a small lock appears, but you don’t have time to notice the details as you find yourself staring into a plain wall.
“Now, no need to rush,” Sunday purrs, and you turn around to see your beloved doors behind his back. “Would you like to play a round or two with me? I think we could have a wonderful conversation about how to pry the imaginary door locks and who are the people you’ve been thinking about so much.” He smiles. “All with names and examples. There shouldn’t be any secrets between us, isn’t that so?”
a/n: yandere sunday x female reader, mentions of abduction and incapacitation, drabble
Waking up from your carefully crafted dreamscape has been a little more challenging for Sunday since he got you by his side.
Parting with you is difficult too, but he considers it a real hurdle the moment he wakes up in a dreampool, with you in his arms and always embracing you from behind. In the lukewarm water, your warmth is tempting, and he can feel your heartbeat.
You wouldn’t know how he instantly takes in the sight and gives in to the temptation. His guilty pleasure is pressing his cold lips to your exposed neck as a good morning.
Having you asleep is a fine quality as well; though the thought that almost every bit of your relationship was formed in dreamscape—"so it isn’t real," you argue when you feel cheeky or angry enough to test his limits once again—your sleeping form is an artwork.
There is no hatred towards him in your pretty eyes, and you don’t shy away from his touch. You don’t grimace as he holds you closely, nor do you wipe his kisses when he relishes your lips. Finally, he can kiss your hair, hold your hand, kiss you senseless so that your sleeping body will start gasping for air.
He can’t wait to tell you, once he’s back, how much more beautiful you have gotten over the past months. Your visage in the dreamscape hasn’t aged a bit, but he will tell you all about it: how your hair got a bit longer, and soon he will have to cut a bit shorter, how just you like it.
“Of course, you can do it yourself, my dear darling,” he always promises with that dulcet voice when you demand to let you leave. Sunday promises to show you how to wake up from this fever dream only under a tiny condition that always makes your voice hitch and heart clench painfully. If you sign that wedding contract that lies in your room, he will kiss you awake.
A few minutes after he told you this, you found out the contract doesn’t burn in imaginary fire and is from a funny material that hardly tears apart.
Your captor has the power to organize the ceremony with a snap of his fingers if he ever wants to. No one would ask for your opinion, as your status is nothing compared to Sunday’s.
And while he presents it as “his graciousness”, to have you sign your name whenever you will finally make up your mind, you know it’s solely for his delight. Now, what could please a man more than a lover willingly submitting herself to him? Nothing, as the stakes are too high: free will and pure love.
But don’t worry. He might be cold and controlling, but you could never call him impatient.
You can be sure Sunday will still be by your side when the insanity finally takes over you, and you decide to sign that damned contract.
Take all the time you need. It’s not like your nightmare will end when you wake up.
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