; yandere, written before lohen and snezhnaya's release, snegurochka fae (y/n), freakhen creephen yanhen you get the point, obsession, branding (in the sense that..), brief implied assault, (y/n) is a passive character because she's a fae not well-versed in human culture and fae morals differ please keep that in mind because she really just lets him do whatever, proofread to the best of my ability.
; Your glacial heels barely crossed the threshold of the Anemo Archon’s land before you found yourself your very own tour guide. Wearing a paldron and cape with an emblem on his chest, he looked the very part of a knight, even going as far as to bend down with his arm stretched and the other hidden from view, awaiting your hand. It’s rare for Mondstadt to receive a Snowland Fae like you, he had said. Let me show you around the city, Miss Snowflake.
It has been five days since, and you’ve been ensnared by him for at least two.
Your luggage (or lack thereof) is minimal: a Cryo Vision for keeping up appearances and a hefty pouch of Mora sponsored by your mother. Two items that you can hold with just one hand, yet the gentleman who made it his personal mission to be your guide – Sir Lohen, as you’d call him after being informed of his status as a knight – insists that he holds your belongings for you while escorting you to your lodging, the Goth Grand Hotel.
He even took your room key, claiming there’s no need for you to open your room yourself. He’ll gladly do it for you.
Thinking that it’s part of Mondstadt’s culture to be so accommodating to visitors from afar, you agreed. You follow closely behind him, trusting his judgment and expertise as he winds through the maze-like hallways of the Goth Grand Hotel. The interchanging sounds of him chewing gum or humming a tune you’re not familiar with dominate the silence, your gloved hand fiddles with its lace scalloped edge, unsure how to approach him entirely.
Faes teach their youngins the importance of being alone fresh out of the womb. It’s a paranoia caused by the fall of Hyperborea – the Fae’s population diminishes with each passing decade, and as such, independence is instilled as soon as possible. Should the parents die, the young will survive on their own. But in the process of your parents leaving you be for most of your childhood, it stunted your ability to socialize. You had no fae friends your age, the human children outlived you too quickly, and you were their only child.
While not completely inept, you… don’t know how to talk to an eccentric person like Sir Lohen. Or could it be that this is how humans beyond Snezhnaya act?
“We’re here!”
Your guide rouses you back to the present. When you come to, he’s standing right outside your hotel room, single-handedly fishing out the hotel keys from his pocket. He doesn’t bother waiting for your initiative before inserting the key and unlocking the door – you don’t mind, it’s your first time being a tourist, and you are grateful for Sir Lohen’s proactive nature.
He holds the door open for you, and you nod at him before entering. The interior has you awing at the sight; despite mainly housing Fatui delegates, the Goth Grand Hotel’s walls and ceilings scream Mondstadt. You prefer it this way, seeing more Snezhnograd buildings while on a supposed trip would make you sick.
Centerfold of the room, an emblem hangs high and proud, mounted on the wall like a trophy. You turn to the side, intending to ask Sir Lohen about it, only to stare in confusion when you see that he hasn’t moved an inch from the closed door. He’s intensely staring right at it – rather, something on it.
“...Sir Lohen? Is something wrong?”
He casts you a glance before signaling you over, “Yeah, there is.”
Now standing beside him, you finally see what’s caught his attention. “Oh?”
Unnoticeable at first glance, the moment you see the disparity, you can never unsee it again. Around eye level on the door is a hole the size of a drilling nail – just big enough to see inside. You wonder how long this has been around and why this hole came to be; is it for infiltration purposes? Fatuis are a hotspot in this place. Information is a form of currency, too.
“Should I talk to that old man about this?” Sir Lohen asks, eyes flickering to your face.
You’re perplexed, staring right back at him, “Why? I’ll only be staying here until the end of the week – I find it quite pointless to do so.”
He’s silent for a second or two before shrugging, easily letting the issue go, “Alright, if you say so. If you’re done here, we can head out.”
“I would be, but… my Vision and Mora pouch are still within your possession, so if you’d please…”
He hides your items from view and cheekily grins, “What? Not a chance! I’ll carry this for you until the day ends, Miss Snowland Fae.”
Sir Lohen takes you to a quaint restaurant you glimpsed hours ago: Good Hunter, a must-visit for tourists. He had kindly paid for both meals using his own money, something you frowned upon and insisted that he take out a portion from your Mora pouch to pay for your own meal. As with all things with him, he operates by his own wants and needs, so he pretended to be deaf until the food arrived.
Your order, Fisherman’s toast, sits piping hot on its plate. The steam emanating has you subtly inching away, fearful it’d melt your ice-cold face off. It most likely won’t, but your aversion to heat is instinctual; knitted into your race. Your companion takes immediate note of it too, for he loudly clears his throat and points to your untouched meal, as if his perfectly poised Tea Break Pancakes were anywhere near being finished.
“Not liking it, Miss Fae?”
You shake your head, “It smells delicious, but we Snegurochka Faes are more susceptible to heat than our other kin. I’m merely waiting until it cools off.”
Being burned from the inside is not ideal. You could use Fae magic, but you’re unsure if Mondstadt approves of such practices. With alchemy being banned in Snezhnaya, it’s not out of the realm of possibilities for other nations to forbid other sources of power.
“Oh, that’s it? I can use my vision to cool it off!”
He needs no objections. A blast of cryo shoots from his hand, instantly freezing your Fisherman’s Toast and supplementing you with a cool, icy breeze in the same breath. Had it been anyone else, they’d be forced to thaw the objectively ruined meal. But this state of frozen is perfectly ideal for you; you are incredibly grateful.
Your fork attempts to penetrate through the frozen toast, but all it manages is to get a few ice shavings. “This is… commendable. I must repay you in kind, Sir Lohen.”
Equivalent exchange is important among Faes; you will be condemned to Celestia if you let his favor go unseen.
He smiles at your compliment, pushing his plate towards the middle. “Really? Then I suppose it’s not too much to ask that you feed me?”
Your head snaps to attention, instantly meeting his cheeky grin and scheming eyes. “I’m sorry?”
You truly do not know how to talk to a human like Sir Lohen. He may be sent from the heavens to help you navigate through this foreign country, but he catches you off guard in times like this.
“Please feed me, dear Fae.”
He chuckles and passes his fork to you, nodding in encouragement. Reluctantly, you take it, unpleasantly frowning at the warmth his body heat left on the item. Your eyes dart from the Pancakes to his tilted, smiling face, contemplating whether you should heed his wish. But to feed a human… surely this counts as giving them food, no? And for a Fae to offer food to a human…
You shake your head. That’s illogical, this meal came from his own pockets. It’s illogical. Still, what if? What if it falls under that tradition? then you’d have a human you hadn’t intended to have on your hands. Sir Lohen is human, he’s not aware of Fae traditions like you are. Pushing the plate back to his side of the table, you return his fork, gently slotting it between his fingers apologetically.
“Due to… certain restrictions, I’m afraid I cannot do that, Sir Lohen. But please don’t be deterred from holding this favor I owe you on future occasions.”
“Aww, why not?” He pouts, fingers curling in on the utensil, undeterred by the thin layer of frost that formed, “Scared you won’t like me?”
You blink, taking a clean bite out of your frozen toast, “I don’t quite follow what you mean?”
He gives you an enigmatic smile in turn, silently watching you devour your food from a frozen mess until all that’s left are soggy crumbs.
The slightest sensation of warm sunlight dancing on your skin has you stirring awake, the distaste for heat ever so present. You withdraw your body from its touch and flutter your eyes open. Immediately, you see the curtains parted all the way, generously welcoming the unwanted guest into your hotel suite. It’s pure absentmindedness on your part; you swore the curtains were drawn when you went to bed last night, or had Sir Lohen visited you with the room key he possessed and thought you’d do well with the cold air heralding into your room?
That would be thoughtful of him, even if he failed to account for the fact that the sun would rise hours later. But it doesn’t matter much to you – closed or drawn curtains.
You lay the thoughts of a possible late-night visitor to rest, and with a swish of your hand, begin undressing yourself using Fae magic. Left in your bare state – the almost translucent icy parts on your skin intermingling with normal human flesh on full display to an audience of no one else but the figure now standing just outside your door.
Your mother taught you to never let a guest wait for too long. Conjuring icy mists of pale cobalt blue, you make an outfit for yourself in the blink of an eye. A Dirndl flows into fruition, dreamily swaying when you turn around to approach the peephole. Peeking in, you see expect to Sir Lohen tapping his foot, impatient. What greets you instead is a dark plane of space with a red line in the middle.
You realize it a second later: Oh, Sir Lohen is staring right back at you. You’d know his pupils anywhere with how eyecatching he is. Had he seen you nude, then? You hope he’s not the type of human to take bareness as something scandalous. Twisting the doorknob open, you smile at him and, to confirm, “I hope you didn’t mind seeing me stripped off my clothes, Sir Lohen. I respect human culture, I truly do.”
He throws his head back and laughs, voice cracking in every other ‘haha’ he lets out. He even grabs onto his stomach. Is it that funny? It couldn’t have been… but he tends to laugh at the most unexpected situations, you surmise. Just yesterday, after finishing your meal at Good Hunter, he saw a running child trip on a stray rock and fall to the ground with a loud splat. You rushed to help her up, applying cool air to her wounded knee when you heard his cackling just a few feet away. The child cried solely from the humiliation he subjected her to.
Today, you’re the main subject of his humor. Left standing in your doorway, watching him until his laugh fizzles out into wheezes, and lastly, a final, pleased sigh. Comically, he wipes a stray tear from his eyes. “Don’t fret, I don’t mind at all. I never knew Snegurochka Faes’ bodies were like that. I think I almost saw your actual sternum – you really are part ice, huh, Miss Snowflake?”
“I am.” You step outside so he can lock the door for you. “Where will we be going today, Sir Lohen?”
A click in place, and he’s back to pocketing your room key once more, “The Favonius HQ.”
You gasp in wonder, “They allow outsiders to visit?”
“Not usually,” Sir Lohen shrugs, walking ahead to act as your navigator, “But they know better than to interfere with me.”
He must be a respected figure among his faction.
His remark proves to be true when, despite being thrown curious and gauging looks the moment you enter the headquarters, the knights present in the vicinity dared not intervene when they saw Sir Lohen coldly staring them down, silently challenging anyone brave enough to tell him off. No such person ever came; the trip to the training grounds was undisturbed.
You stand under the shade as Sir Lohen sets his eyes straight on an arrangement of weapons organized on top of velvet. He picks up a dagger, turns it back and forth with a hum, and asks, “Say, you ever held a weapon before?”
You think back to your childhood: the solitude and mountains of hardback books as your only companions. Your parents would visit you every three years, told you they were proud of your studies, before you were dragged back to books and quill pens. It had gotten better over time, but the lonely, little Fae girl still lives in you from time to time.
You retreat further into the shadows, feeling the sun shift ever so slightly, “No, why do you ask?”
He keeps the dagger and approaches your spot, haphazardly tossing the weapon a few inches in the air and catching it without even looking. Murky eyes are fixated on you, watching a bead of sweat roll down your neck.
He snaps his head to face you, now smiling, “Want me to teach you?”
Without warning, the tip of the blade is teased on your collarbone, slowly being dragged from one end to the other. You tense, you have no qualms about being taught by Sir Lohen, but the temperature of the blade–
“I-it’s warm,” you cautiously take a step back, backside meeting cobblestone, “I’ll start melting if you keep that blade on my skin, Sir Lohen.”
“Don’t say that, it’ll get me going.” He chuckles, pressing the edge of the blade to his exposed skin, “Must’ve been left out there in the sun. You really aren’t fond of heat, huh?”
You shake your head, sighing pleasantly when his free hand suddenly cups your face, seeping Cryo energy into your body. He regulates it back to its normal state of coolness. “As I’ve mentioned, I would melt or burn.”
“Poor thing, you’re like a snowman,” He coos, pouting, “Rest assured, you’ll be nice and cold in my care, (Y/N).”
Sir Lohen escorts you back to your hotel room hours later, Cryo vision still being used to cool you. Hand pressed to his chest, he bowed before leaving your room.
You never understood the humans back in Snezhnograd, and the current one growing closer to you is even more puzzling. But you don’t feel the urge to understand him – akin to letting flowing water be, you feel it’s better if you allow Sir Lohen to be his unique self.
It’s not easy to get lost in Wolvendom, Sir Lohen assured you when you first set out past Mondstadt City and crossed the stone bridge. Even in the surrounding lands, there’s not much danger to be found so strictly staying within the city walls is, in his words, “Boring. There’s more to Mondstadt than that! Come on, I’ll show you.”
Hence why, while carrying a small bag he borrowed from a surveyor named ‘Mika’, he persuaded you to come along here deep into the woods of Wolvendom. He showed you the local flora, a fruit named Wolfhook, and held you close to him while hiding in the bushes, observing wild wolves and rifthounds together. Two sets of footprints are left on the ground, there for anyone to discover as you trek deeper within, fully trusting Sir Lohen’s experience as a local.
Unfortunately, exploring is an exhausting task for a part-ice creature such as you. Normally unbothered with walking miles on snow, you’re left panting and needing to lean into Sir Lohen’s side after crossing past ten minutes of walking. Even with the shade provided by the trees, the sun beats down on you, squinting its harsh rays without mercy, which has you lapping up Sir Lohen’s use of his Cryo vision as if it were an oasis of salvation in a never-ending desert.
A few minutes are spent recuperating while Sir Lohen remains kind and patient, the blessed man that he is. You feel ready to continue on, and the journey is resumed until you feel yourself dangerously close to melting once more, and the cycle repeats.
You’re a heavyweight that he’s cursed to carry. Had it not been for your delicate constitution regarding heat, Sir Lohen would have had an easier time delving into Wolvendom and probably reached the heart of the forest within an hour. Instead, all he gets from travelling with you is staying way past the agreed time. It’s night now. While the sun no longer torturously pricks at your skin, the pitch-dark night isn’t any better.
You failed to bring an item that can light the way, and you doubt Sir Lohen did either. And cryo isn’t known for lumination.
“I’m sorry,” You bow, “I held us up, I’m truly sorry, Sir Lohen. And now we can’t be too sure on where we’re going…”
Your mother would chide you for spouting numerous apologies to a human, telling you that they are nothing more than rotten beings, but you are seized by remorse. This kind human had made it his duty to show you his birthland, and you, as a Fae, have been nothing but trouble. Perhaps your peers will revel in mischief at such an opportunity, but not you.
Sir Lohen shrugs off your heavy guilt, opting to point to a small clearing of space up ahead, laden in fallen leaves and twigs, “You worry too much, (Y/N). Look over there, we can build a campfire!”
Lips pursing, you hesitate for a split second. To be so close to actual fire when daytime alone has you sweating and close to melting point…. Ah, but Sir Lohen has done so much for you; he’s most probably a human who can’t brave through the cold night without warmth – essentially the polar opposite of your kind.
Sacrifices must be made on your part, too. After swallowing the saliva pooling in your mouth, you nod.
Sir Lohen manifests his polearm, quickly brutalizing a tree for its trunk. After removing sharp wood edges, he makes you sit down while he gathers the unused wood and stray leaves into one pile stationed a few inches away from you. You often watched humans try their best to survive the tundra with a measly campfire back in Snezhnaya, what Sir Lohen is doing right now is oddly reminiscent of it.
An odd twinge in your heart kicks up, homesickness inflicting you with a bigger ailment the longer you spend time here in Mondstadt.
The fire crackles to life, dislodging your line of thinking as you flinch back in surprise. Peeking from behind the growing curtain of yellow and red, Sir Lohen smiles, his face doused in warm colors, “Sorry, I didn’t scare you too bad, did I?”
“No… I was caught off guard, that’s all.” Your gaze sweeps down to the heart of the fire, already feeling the heat reach out to you, “Uhm, how long will we be staying here?”
“Probably the entire night, I’m not well-versed with Wolvendom at night, unfortunately.” Sir Lohen leans back on a tree, watching you with rapt attention, “We have no choice either way.”
You breathe a sigh, pointedly ignoring the sweat beginning to bead around your forehead, “I… I understand.”
You scoot back, even if it’s just to prolong the inevitable creeping heat, slowly cranking up until you’re no different from a boiling frog. You bear it until you no longer can – your skin, ice and flesh, will melt soon if you continue facing the blazing campfire. Sir Lohen needs it, but your life…
Now panting, you weakly call out, “Sir Lohen?” At his questioning hum, you continue, “If it’s not too much to ask, the fire… Can you please.. relocate the campfire else…where?”
Closing your eyes, you try to regulate your body temperature back to freezing point without using past a drop of Fae magic, but it feels impossible when the daunting color of yellow invades even in your closed eyes. You hear dead leaves crunch from the force of his boots walking to you and feel the shadow of Sir Lohen settling over your form like a cool tide.
“Too hot?”
You shyly nod, ashamed to inconvenience him even at night. You flinch upon feeling his bare hand, having discarded his gloves somewhere, cupping your face as he had previously done before.
A now familiar, cool feeling circulates throughout your entire body, and it’s embarrassing, but the pleased sigh you intended to vocalize is akin to a soft moan, a pleasure brought by his own power; his vision. He laughs, “Better?”
After stewing in both shame and appreciation, you open your eyes to look up at whirlpools of shadows partially covered by minty green hair. You give him a small smile, face slick with sweat, “A bit, thank you.”
“Scoot over then, I’ll cool you off even more.” He subsequently drapes over you like a blanket, his warm human body an afterthought in the face of crystalline ice forming at his fingertips, traveling from your earlobes down to your collarbone, then lower. Yellow and blue never work together, but Lohen, yellow cast from the fire and blue from his vision, makes it appeasing; palatable for your eyes.
But a pressing matter remains: your body lacks heat, surely being this close to you and turning his fingertips to literal ice is… “Won’t you get frostbite?”
He laughs with a close-eyed smile, icy fingertips now feeling up your forearms, “Fine by me, it’d feel like I’m getting marked by you. I’d like that – since you refused to own me.”
You stay quiet, focused on being blessed by the pocket winter he momentarily turned his hands into. Curious fingers press deeper into the patches of ice skin, squeeze a tad bit harder at your sides, linger a little longer near the space between your thighs. You let him, finding his hands a bit too pleasant. It’s like being back home in the frigid winter of Snezhnograd; it feels as if you never left at all when you’re under him like this.
He provides relief and cures the homesickness you’ve been having. Sir Lohen is a miracle worker, a commendable human you never expected one to be.
You grow drowsy from his ministrations, head lolling and eyes turning heavy. The last thing you hear is a deranged, throaty laugh and a tapered comment that you can’t bother to make sense of as you fully give into repose.
“...Act… you’re drugged… cute…!”
His sole companion for the rest of the night is your unconscious body; only the Wolvendom forest and Celestia above are privy to the sins he committed.
You wake up to the campfire put out, it’s early morning – the skies are tinged with a soft blue, the air still cold from the night before. Sir Lohen, with his chin propped on his hand, stares at you, completely silent.
“Good morning, Sir Lohen,” You stretch and stand up, “How did you sleep last night?”
“Hm? Oh, I didn’t sleep at all,” He gathers his items, “I was busy looking out for you.”
“Ah… thank you, you shouldn’t have.”
His eyes return to you, light oddly failing to reflect as he responds in kind, “Watching you is better than sleeping, don’t worry about it.”
And so you don’t.
You’ll be leaving tomorrow. You informed Sir Lohen of this when he came knocking on your hotel room door for the day. He takes it in kind when you elaborate: “I believe that fire weakened me, even with your tremendous help. I must return to the motherland as soon as possible to recuperate, lest I incur her Majesty’s wrath.”
He taps his foot, “That so? Well, come meet me at my personal residence, and I’ll escort you out of Mondstadt’s borders from there. Is that suitable? I’d hate for an airhead like you– I mean, a sweet snowland fae, get taken advantage of.”
“You have been a big help to me, both as a guide and protector here in Mondstadt, I appreciate your kindness, Sir Lohen.”
You hope he’ll use the favor you owe him right before you leave Mondstadt.
Sir Lohen’s residence is located quite a distance away from Mondstadt City; for this reason, you chose to visit at night, where it’s chilly and comforting. Feels more like home.
It’s a small, humble home that’s certainly seen better days, but you see the appeal in living in one. You would knock, but you fear the beaten door staring you down will keel over the moment you apply a force remotely similar to a gust of wind. Instead, you stand on your tiptoes, inhale, and call out: “Sir Lohen! I’m here!”
You expect him to be punctual and dilly dally no further when the door cries open, revealing him out of his knight attire, dressed down. You’ve heard city citizens gossiping on the way here: Sir Lohen will be busy in the upcoming days, nay, the upcoming weeks, for he’s taken a formal paid leave from the Knights of Favonius.
It’s only right to assume he has no patience left for you with his personal plans on the horizon, yet his amicable attitude, his warm smile, and crinkled, dark eyes open the door wider and invite you in with a, “Care for some ice cream before leaving? I’ll miss you, you know, my dear Snowland Fae.”
Faes cannot enter one’s personal abode unless given an invite. Sir Lohen has gifted exactly that, so you feel inclined to agree, and for all he’s done for you, too. Walking up the incomplete mossy stone stairs, you bow in greeting before discarding your glacial heels and stepping foot inside.
It looks lived in yet feels nothing like Sir Lohen’s soul, oddly enough. The open cupboards reveal bags of coffee beans, and two bowls lie on the countertop with what you presume to be vanilla ice cream. There’s a small wooden table, two chairs on opposite sides, and a bed peeking out from the corner. It’s cozy, but the taxidermy mounts of hilichurl and wild hunt phantoms you remember Sir Lohen telling you about are nowhere to be found. It’s sanitized to the point of being clinical, you think, sitting down on one of the chairs.
Truth to be told, your Fae senses tell you that this small stone house is not Sir Lohen’s actual home. A place to rest in, but not a home. Perhaps he doesn’t trust you enough to reveal his true home, a rational caution on his part, considering the nature of Faes.
You hear the door click into place. Turning around, you watch Sir Lohen take both ice cream bowls and settle them down on the creaky wooden table. You feel your mouth water, itching to taste the icy treat. Grasping the spoon, you’re ready to dig in when Sir Lohen cruelly tugs it away from you. You pathetically whimper at the loss, to which he cruelly laughs.
“Not yet, I almost forgot something! Wait here, okay?” He casts you his best case of big, puppy dog eyes before disappearing into another room behind you. You’re left staring at the slowly melting bowl of ice cream, internally weeping at its rising temperature.
Back turned to where he exited, you’re left in the dark when he comes back, hiding something behind him with both hands.
You are a rabbit trapped in its snare. A feeble animal constricted by a Boa. A prey to its hunter. A Fae to a human.
He approaches like the creeping, unwanted chill on your spine; like the goosebumps rising on your skin with every muted step he takes. It’s a Fontainian film actualized, Lohen is tempted to laugh. He’s a few steps away when he lunges for you, experienced in both upfront battles and sneak attacks, unperturbed by your gasp and pathetic attempts at clawing his skin. He welcomes it, head almost lightheaded at the scars he’s sure you’ll leave behind if given enough strength and will to fight.
You’ll give him that, won’t you?
Hot iron dagger raised high in his left hand, he takes a deep breath and stabs you until it rips a bloodcurdling scream out from your throat - raw and primal, coming from the deepest desire to survive and be free of pain. In response, he only digs it in deeper, ensuring that your injury will leave you bedridden for months, maybe years if he’s hopeful enough.
You contort in his hold, streams of tears escaping your eyes as you babble loosely held strings that resemble pleading. Ple… let me… I won’t… Mother... – he doesn’t bother deciphering them, much more interested in licking up your freezing tears like they’re droplets of molten gold. Weird, you only sob harder at his ministrations, he snickers.
“Shh, shh, shh–” He dislodges the warm, iron dagger from your body, watching in fascination when both water and blood mix into a diluted mess on the hardwood floor, “I’ll keep you cool here. You like my vision, right?”
You weakly shake your head. A cute attempt at lying, he admits.
Fortunately, it’s hook, line, and sinker – he has you right where he wants, Snowland Fae.
You won’t be coming home anytime soon.
anastasya please bless snegurocka (y/n) she's a little slow
synopsis: the knights of favonius' year-long expedition has finally come to an end as the city of freedom welcomes back the triumphant. being a member of the knights' fifth company, you can't help but notice something about your supposed vice-captain, whom you have never had the pleasure of acquainting yourself with yet.
contents: (!) lohen/reader, non-consensual kissing, knife violence, knife play, stabbing, blood and injury, psychological manipulation, gaslighting, coercion, unhealthy relationships, obsession, blackmail, implied stalking, power imbalance, unreliable narrator, psychological horror, unhappy ending, hurt no comfort, yandere lohen (genshin impact), out of character kaeya (genshin impact), gender-neutral reader-insert, forced proximity, guns (don’t like? don’t read! do not come for me, or else i will bite you!!!)
word count: 4.4k
note: lowercase intended for that whisper-hushed narrative lol. a lot of this is basically pulled from lohen's appearances in dornman port. if you haven't played those instances, no worries, i promise you won’t miss anything (⌒‐⌒)
also, wrote this in a single sitting... this man got me weak af. i don’t want to talk too much about the leaks, but that burst animation??? help, he’s got me all bothered up (/´△`＼) please let him have not an ounce of sad lore or a traumatic past. please let nothing about him be able to be rationalized. please i need him unhinged; i need him mental af. hoyo you better not mess him up, or else i will come for you ( `_ゝ´)
tmi: i had toes by glass animals on repeat while i wrote this, and i don’t know why it reminds me so much of lohen...
you try not to think too much about it.
“it’s just a homecoming ceremony,” you mumble to yourself, standing in a lone corner. here, the world seems to dance in a spiral; drunken bodies sway to a tune only you can’t hear. murmurs of affection occasionally arise from a few devoted knights, while some more level-headed peeps snicker at the ever-so-stumbling mika.
the wine glass in your hand is cold, almost icy to your warm, though quickly paling, fingers. the occasion? you find yourself snickering the same at the thought. the mondstadt expedition team has finally returned, and with it, captain and grand master of the knights of favonius, varka, and, of course, your senior, lohen too.
adored and beloved vice captain of the fifth company, lohen.
your eyes glance back at what should seem like a heartwarming scene. varka keeps lohen close to his chest. the captain must have been drunk; if anything, the red hue on his cheeks is a huge telltale sign. his grip seems too tight, suffocating even, as you look at the poor, smaller man unfortunate enough to be caught in his hold. the man, however, doesn’t appear to mind varka’s hug that much.
on a much deeper observation, lohen seems dazed — almost out of this world, out of his wits. you know for a fact he hasn’t taken a single sip of alcohol all night. strange. he blinks too slowly, always lagging a beat behind normal. his lips purse and open like a gaping fish, as if he’s struggling to catch some air. whatever happened in nod krai was not for the faint-hearted, and you wonder if it has taken a toll on him.
but you know better.
your eyes fall to your shoes, polished clean and squeaky as they shimmer under the faint gleam of the overhead lights. varka seems fine, exceptional as everyone else in the team, just like he was, they all were before the expedition started. lohen doesn’t, and you are not sure why it bothers you so much, why him all of a sudden.
he and you weren’t even that close. heck, you don’t think you can even consider yourself to be on talking terms!
then why?
a shout echoes through the hall, followed by muffled chants of a toast bouncing off the pale walls. you find yourself looking at him again. this time, surprisingly, he looks back at you, just for a second as your eyes meet. and then with varka’s booming laughter, his own deflects, back to something you were not privy to. you think you know, but you actually don’t, even if you pretend to.
this moment — if you can even say it like that—is short-lived. you can’t really find an appropriate word for his current state, or rather, predicament...
lohen’s looking at his feet when your eyes return to his face, like dangling in the middle of something, awaiting the balance to tip. you almost, almost feel pity for your senior, who you’ve never even talked to once. with varka’s next shout of “hurray!”, you turn back. you don’t linger on him or the celebration anymore. the remaining wine is finished quick, and you move away toward the entrance of the headquarters, just as everyone starts conveying their welcomes back to the triumphed returning.
outside, night peaks. no one comes after you — not that you expected anyone to. you carefully walk down the stairs, ignoring the slumped bodies of your fellow knights, passed out. on the ledge in front of the headquarters building, you find kaeya sitting, swirling what you think is a glass of wine or whiskey; you can’t tell from here. his back is pressed against the merlon, head swinging gently in the calm wind.
a nice surprise, you think you can say that.
“kaeya?” you whisper, albeit loud enough for him to hear. he moves just as you approach him.
“fancy meeting you here...” he chuckles.
up close, the alcohol hits harder, more hypnotically, practically drowning the usual alluring scent of his. you can only nod your head, trying to calm the sudden rush in your brain. kaeya doesn’t say anything after that. he only leans back further, almost sliding down the merlon. his little sips don’t stop, neither do his frequent glances at you. he’s being annoying, you will admit that.
“hmm...” another sip, smooth voice drawling, he finally talks, “you all right?”
“huh?” you blink. “uh — yeah, i guess so...”
kaeya chuckles again, bordering dangerously on full-on laughter. he finishes whatever he has been drinking and sits up straighter. “not very convincing, ya know?”
there is something bittersweet about the way kaeya looks right now. his eyes are trained on the glass that catches the twinkling moonlight ever so often. his smile is barely there; you think he’s trying desperately to make it not look like a frown. kaeya doesn’t look at you, not once — like he is aware of something, something pertaining to you. what could it be? is there even anything?
“so... it’s back to normal from now on, huh?” he asks.
is it really, though?
for sure, jean’s finally having her work cut short (that is if varka stays off the alcohol while on duty). but apart from that, what does this — the return of the team, of varka, of... him — mean for you? would it really change anything?
it is your turn to laugh now. your arms fall on the edge right beside his spread legs. there must be something wrong in the air tonight. what should have been a happy get-together for the knights, for everyone else, for you, is turning out to be anything but.
it doesn’t feel like normal.
“yup.”
no, not at all — more like the start of something new. good, bad, worse. only time will tell.
a gust passes between you, pressing and slow. you faintly hear the building’s door open behind you, and kaeya stiffens. heavy footsteps sound within the next few seconds, dallying late a breath or two. you find yourself turning to look at the commotion, but kaeya stops you.
“i should accompany you home.” he takes your hands in his fast, grip tight. the sudden contact makes you jump. he suddenly sounds... desperate?
“uh, there’s no need! i can—” you try to reason.
“oh?”
everything stops. a familiar, tangy voice comes — one that is quickly etching itself into your brain.
“what do we have here, lovebirds?”
“vice captain lohen.”
it’s kaeya who acknowledges lohen first. his hands quickly let go of yours, almost shocking you for a second. you compose yourself fast, following in kaeya’s stead. your head bows, not too low.
“captain.”
one word, one exclamation, one that should have sated anyone’s ego, but it doesn’t even caress his. not enough for lohen, because you should have learned this sooner: he’s not just anyone else, just as what everyone says. the man is quick to cross the distance. he comes to stand before you, not faltering upon kaeya’s full height. eyes wide, almost uncanny, one would think he was really drunk, but you know the truth.
“you are the latest addition?” his eyes run over you, lingering on the crest on your chest — the emblem of the ranged company — before they are back, gazing into yours. “to my unit?”
the wind rushes now. you can’t help the tilt in your head as confusion racks over you. beside you, kaeya barely moves, not sharing the sentiment. it’s been a few months since your addition to the fifth company — his company. well, considering he’s been out of the loop from everything because of the expedition, you expected your recommendation to the ranks to be much-delayed news. but what you didn’t know was it would be this “delayed.”
has he not been informed yet? to this day? what exactly is going on?
“sir...?” you start to speak, but kaeya beats you to it. “hold on, wasn’t it you—”
“uh-uh. i am talking, all right?” lohen shushes kaeya, not caring about the loudness of his voice or the way the calvary captain grimaces. he turns to you fully.
“you were saying, mhm?”
something feels unnerving. you feel little pricks rise on your skin, exposed to the chill of the night. except, there’s some heat in your cheeks which is impossible to ignore. lohen’s impromptu questioning seems unending, almost like he’s trying to catalog everything about you. this shower of attention, especially from someone whom you should consider respect-worthy, should be enough to put you on cloud nine. but nothing about his “attention” feels cordial. you don’t dare to think about your way-too-early promotion.
it’s only after kaeya’s fifteenth sigh that you snap back to reality, with lohen begrudgingly following not too far behind. you laugh, try to, appearing as polite as you can despite the fatigue and the wine you have downed weighing on your bones. it is getting late, too late even for kaeya.
“very promising...”
lohen’s voice stretches, long, raspy, in a way almost... inappropriate. his final question never comes. he turns on his heels, ignoring kaeya’s hand that extends to him. a pause, and then he looks back at you.
“you are promising.”
his eyes glimmer with a promise of his own, a lick of his lips, and:
“don’t disappoint me.”
lohen’s definitely high.
you can’t help but watch him go back inside. “what was all that about?”
kaeya doesn’t joke around this time. he quietly places the empty glass on the ledge, leaving it for a poor servant to fetch later. “you should go home. come—” his hand is back on yours this time, not willing to let go, “i will go with you.”
he looks at you now, or... through you. you comply, hesitant but too tired to do anything about it.
(of course, you miss the way a certain someone peers from the window, with a knife pressed against his thrumming chest and a smile resembling tonight’s moon.)
kaeya accompanies you all the way to millhaven, which you are very grateful for.
“i still don’t understand why you have to live so far...”
the alcohol in him seems to have run its full course. you reckon, as he barely walks straight now, occasionally running into some windrest flowers, that throwing up is already on its way, and you hope you can reach your very much isolated cabin before anything unfortunate happens.
“... it’s easier for me.”
“as if, heh.”
well, it is indeed easier, considering you are only ever stationed in dornman port — the commute proves to be much more hassle-free. it’s not much; the shifts are barely eventful. the vendors are the only ones you look forward to seeing every day, and you do want that sweet, sweet promotion, that confirmation that one day you can join or maybe even lead a company on your own, but poor little you can only wonder for now.
who knows how far away that awaited day is? who knows just how much longer you will have to wait?
“this is me...” you stop before a rustic fence gate, your humble accommodation situated further west of the village.
“truly, thank you for coming this far. i—”
“alright, no worries.”
you open the gate, quietly shuffling inside. “see you around then?”
“...”
“uh—”
“be safe.”
kaeya responds, a beat too late. his uncovered eye gleams with something deep; that same concern screams through his words, and you feel the urge to ask him directly, or maybe you should. what exactly is troubling him? he has been so unlike himself this whole time; you don’t know what to make of it.
perhaps it’s the alcohol, making him all hypervigilant or something...
you can only sigh. “i will, kaeya.”
“good night.”
“good night, [name].”
you do hope he won’t be puking his guts out in some lonesome alley.
dornman port: it is a new day, not a new you, though.
“herstal, are you sure i should be doing this?”
by this, you mean the giant gun she has balanced (forcibly) into your arms. the weight of it feels alive, and you fear you would fall to the ground any minute.
“herstal—”
“please just hold on tight, all right?”
something is strapped onto your front. you look down only to see a chest plate; the knights of favonius insignia bright and loud. that is concerning, to say the least... you didn’t know you were finally going to be sent to a hilichurl camp or something, and without special training too. that is definitely going to turn into a sour experience.
“at least tell me what’s going on!”
“orders from higher-ups!” she walks back before running in through the side of the little area the knights have built just on the side.
it’s a new day — you know that already, but you didn’t expect something out of the ordinary... would it be your own fault? your morning schedule does not include this little thing herstal has pulled you into either.
never mind that.
you lift the gun a bit higher before following her. in through the open archway, you see ursula and gunther... not in their best forms. they are trembling, almost quaking in their boots. with eyes clenched, ursula rambles prayers upon prayers to the anemo archon while gunther repeats his denial for the “special” training they both have been sucked into. their own guns are lined up, presumably at the wooden targets you know herstal usually had lined up for training.
they are just inanimate objects in the end. why the sudden hesitation, fear then?
you walk further in. they certainly do not seem like the ursula and gunther you knew. the two scared-to-death knights notice you first, with something like relief flooding inside them. strange. you did not walk into something wrong, did you?
“oh?”
again.
it is your body that reacts first, even before your brain can comprehend anything. your head whips to the left, and there stands, of course, lohen. still donning his usual attire, he holds an apple in one hand, with a smirk as loud as he is.
his lips part, plump, unusually glossy. “hmm, where are your manners?”
“apologies, captain.”
your head drops despite yourself. you do not lift yet, not until you hear herstal sigh loudly or lohen’s pleased, “that’s more like it!”
“come — join them!” lohen places the apple on his head, somehow balancing it without doing anything.
“show me what you’ve got, sweet deal.”
a bird flies by; no one says anything. you get it now. you understand ursula and gunther, and their pathetic whinings.
“i-i couldn’t possibly—”
your words break just as a dummy falls to the ground, courtesy of the strong wind.
“tsk tsk.” lohen shifts his weight, the apple still on his head. “you really, like really, need to stop doing that.” he air-quotes “that.”
“sir, i promise you i am not well equipped with a gun—”
“what did i just say?” he turns to ursula, lips pouting. “go on, ursula. tell us, what did i just say?”
your silent pleading is deliberately pushed aside. ursula’s own hands shake as much as yours. “j-just get it o-over with, [name]...”
“hmm, you hear her?”
lohen prompts you to look at him. his arms are outstretched to the sides, hands facing up, as if he’s presenting something magnificent.
“[name], is it?” if he wanted to come closer to you, he doesn’t.
“stop. denying. me.”
his every gritted word nails something deep inside of you. shaky hands lift the gun up to your nose. through the magnified glass, you could clearly see the picture of a too-happy lohen if it weren’t for the tears blurring your vision. you hear the gun reload — a soft tick, locking everything inside the gun: your sanity, his amusement; a gamble. your left eye falls shut, and the right follows suit. the trigger rests just before your forefinger, its metal hot, awaiting your strike. you can’t focus, you can’t even think coherently.
the apple — the bright, red apple — that sits right above his sea-green hair.
“come on—”
your next inhale falls short. something falls alongside your heart. the gun is slipping from your hands, or maybe it’s the ground beneath your shoes. the trigger is never pulled. the knights around you erupt in emotions unknown to you. all you can feel is shame, humiliation, everything harrowing burying deep in your guts.
“utterly pathetic.”
seconds before you lose consciousness, your misty vision catches lohen’s kicking the apple toward you. it boops your nose just as your head hits the ground — bright, red, sea green, a sight you won’t be forgetting anytime soon.
it’s a little dark when you wake up. still in the training ground, you find yourself on a makeshift pallet. above you, dusk paints a sight worthy of praise, one you don’t feel anything toward, unfortunately.
“you are finally awake....”
you look to the right: herstal — you don’t acknowledge your senior. you don’t want to. you let her push a spoon filled with some kind of medicine toward your mouth, not responding to her ramblings, and she does her work quietly, not minding your sudden withdrawal.
“you hit your head pretty hard — gunther was afraid it might have been split open...” a chuckle.
“and captain—”
her hand pauses. you are certain herstal sees you flinch, and you hope she knows what that implies.
“look, we are sorry — uh — lohen said he was sorry.”
well, isn’t that surprising. you can’t help but snort before swallowing the bitter syrup.
“he also said he wants to make it up to you. a meeting of some sort. he’s waiting just outside—”
“well, there’s no need anymore.” you sit up, just as herstal pulls the spoon away.
“wha— what do you mean?”
you have decided: you won’t tolerate this any longer.
“i am requesting a transfer.”
herstal has no right to hold you back, but she does end up keeping you stuck in the training grounds longer than you’d like. “i don’t want you to feel lonely...” anyway, the news of your predicament has reached the other departments somehow, only some of them, as you only remember kaeya and mika visiting you. as usual, mika only indulged in some appropriate curtsies — that much you expected.
“i wish you a speedy recovery!”
“thanks a lot, mika...”
what you did hope to do was convince kaeya to finally unveil that something he has been hiding from you.
“quite unfortunate, eh?”
now sober, his usual and painfully relentless teasing is back, and on a much higher level. he plops right beside you, shoving a box of natlanese chocolates in your lap. “care to explain, dummy?”
a mishap, or a shortcoming with a hilichurl. you could say anything to put his mind at ease, but you can’t. something is not right. you read, or try to, his emotions as you go on a traumatic recall of your morning events. the heavy gun, the bright red apple, the sea-green hair — all of these are like pieces to a puzzle, one you don’t know how to put together, and one kaeya certainly understands.
unlike yesterday, he opens up. “and what if i say this has been going on way too long before everything?”
you were right. kaeya does know something.
“what do you mean?”
“lohen, he — who do you think recommend—”
kaeya shakes his head, eyes closing. “i can’t.”
“wait, what?”
“that’s all i can say for reasons of my own. i just hope you can forgive me.” he stands up.
“no, kaeya, wait—”
you stand too, knocking the chocolates off your lap, albeit too fast, causing your head to spin. his arm slips from your hold, and you are quickly falling back on the pallet.
“i am so sorry, [name].”
“n-no, please.... you... have to—”
a hiss, as pain digs its claws into your temple. you are forced to watch his departing figure disappear among the high slopes of dornman port, leaving you alone with more unanswered questions and the dreaded obligation to meet with lohen.
it’s not lohen himself who comes to call you, but ursula. you are beginning to question if she is somewhat of a lapdog for him. you ignore her and her request of carrying your bag, even if her frown pinches at your heart. out through the archway, you are displeased to find lohen leaning against the stone wall. just how long has he been waiting for you?
what a creep...
“i will leave you to it, captain.”
with ursula excusing herself, you too start walking, not paying mind to your supposed senior, before something, someone stops you.
“ouch, honey, are you always this crude?”
the sheer audacity. your jaw ticks.
“i would appreciate it if—” his gloved hand on your shoulder feels too big. “—you could refrain from this, sir.”
“sir?” lohen blinks before a smile creeps onto his face. a gaudy laugh follows, almost shocking the nearby flock. “oh, now you remember your honorifics?!”
his hand is swatted away, quite impolite considering both of your statuses, but do you really care right now? you should really get a move on. after all, it’s late; you need to get home.
quick — before your quivering heart gets the best of you.
“eh? where do you think you are going?”
lohen walks toward you, making you back away unknowingly until your behind hits the same wall he’s been leaning against. something metal touches just below your jaw, cold against flesh. his voice drops as colorful, yet dull, eyes pierce into yours.
“we do have something to do right now, you do know that, right?” the cold sensation runs along your entire jaw.
“don’t tell me your pretty little brain forgot about this already~”
... is that a knife? against your neck?
“you want to go home?” you gulp. “hmm... what was it again?”
“...”
“uh-uh, you gotta say it, sweets.”
“[name], sir...”
“so tell me, [name]—” lohen leans in, impossibly close, nose grazing yours. “you wanna go home?”
your eyes divert to the side, much to his dismay. he only cups your jaw harder, his hand replacing the knife as it moves your head to face him again. “no, no, you can’t do that.”
“home?” he asks again, voice melting like saccharine on your tongue.
sweat drips down the side of your face, ultimately landing on the tip of the knife. words matter; your actions matter. what can you even do at this very moment to save yourself?
“i-i... yes.”
“see, so easy! if only you would have pulled the trigger earlier! alas...”
lohen pats your cheeks twice before he lets go of your jaw. the warmth from his harsh grip still lingers on your reddening skin; your eyes feel dewy, and your limbs tremble. you don’t know what awaits you tonight.
“let’s go home then!”
the entire walk, lohen rambles behind you. he doesn’t mind the dark that is quickly sheltering everything evil, or the hordes of monsters that have begun to come out of hiding. he doesn’t help you when you miss a step and slip on the stairs. he doesn’t notice when you bite your lips to silence the cry that has been forming in your throat. you are barely conscious when you enter millhaven. the sight of your little, cozy home should be a succor, but it only fuels the nightmare that is already tormenting you further.
lohen waits for you to open the fence gate. “you don’t look too good.”
no retort rests on your tongue this time. your feet slip once again, and you almost fall to the ground if it weren’t for the bastard. it hurts, terribly so.
“poor you!” lohen chuckles, his arms tightening around your sides. he looks at you like a meal he won’t ever, ever regret.
“don’t worry, i’ll take good, good care of you.”
tears well up in your eyes. “please, don’t be too rough…”
“eh?” lohen stops just before your front door. “what do you take me for? a manipulator? an abuser?”
the door's unlocked — you don’t need to guess why. lohen drops you right on the floor. “i am offended, actually. very! so, now—” a sudden pause hits him, one that makes you look at lohen. the knife is out again; only now does the green dripping from its tip make itself known to you.
“—now… you have to make it up to me~”
this is the end of your sensibility.
“you know…”
you try to shuffle, aching feet hitting the wooden floor in an attempt to push back, away from him.
“i always knew you were going to be promising.”
your feet hit his shoes. he doesn’t mind you thrashing like a drying-up worm.
“and when varka personally — i know, crazy! — approved my proposal of your addition, i was livid! over the moon!”
“eh?” lohen eyes the green that drips from the tip before he flips it.
“but then, nod krai happened. of course it did!”
you see him pause, kneeling before your shivering body. “no offense to miss columbina — the moon goddess, ya know, right?” he feigns worship by cupping his hands in front of him, eyes closing for a few seconds.
“it was torture. absolute torture!” the knife is lodged in the wood right beside your head.
“i was counting the days until i returned, back to mondstadt, back to something more precious than the moon itself.”
“and then—”
lohen bends face-to-face with you while removing the knife from the floor. “i finally saw little you in a lone corner. all alone, weren’t you? oh, you poor thing.”
“of course, i had to bend some things here and there to get you beneath me.” the green liquid is cool as it contrasts with your blazing face. his forefinger lifts and traces over it, smudging and spreading the coolness over your cheeks.
“I couldn’t care less about your lover, but seriously, though, do you know he’s a descendant of khaenri’ah?”
your eyes widen as your lips part — a reaction lohen clearly enjoys. he whistles loudly. “no? oh, he really kept you in the dark, didn’t he?”
“kae—mhmp—!” his hand presses over your mouth, silencing your scream.
“who cares now? am i right?”
a wink. you feel his tongue drag up your cheeks. “uh-uh, don’t cry. didn’t i say i will take gooood care of you?”
“i am a man of my words, you know that, right?”
lohen smiles; a genuine one.
“don’t hate me too much for this, m’kay?”
you don’t know whether it's the knife in your abdomen you feel first or his lips on yours.
you suspected the only reason the knights of favonius tolerated a battle-crazed lunatic like lohen was because someone had to be cruel enough to handle the grisly work their ranks were too noble to touch. to them, he was a necessary evil; to you, he was a waking nightmare. he hadn’t just caught a spy. he had claimed a new toy to break in the isolated dark of the aftermath.
or: the one where your arrogance lands you in the hands of the devil himself. you do not want to break free from his grasp.
✦ content. 5.6k words. lohen x f!reader. brief outsider pov. blood play. knife play (except it's a polearm??). temperature play. stockholm syndrome. EXTREMELY dubious consent. drugging. very tricky to tag this but basically u're a fatui spy and lohen tortures you kinda HAHA. written pre-6.6 so don't expect on-point characterization. smut (MINORS DNI)
✦ foreword. so i take it that if you're here, you've seen his burst animation leaks, yes? :3c lohen is far from my type of guy, but i've been making weird experimental bouts with my writing lately, and he is the perfect muse for a basement wife fic. he would chain you to the radiator and call you the love of his life in the same breath /j
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“Do you think Vice Captain Lohen is hiding something?”
This was a question that Ekbert has been tossing around in his mind for the past few weeks. He tried not to dwell on it too much since unnecessary speculation could only lead to unnecessary squabbles. But as he polished the hilt of his sword, he couldn’t help but let his gaze trail after the Vice Captain of the 5th Company as the man descended the stone steps of Favonius Keep.
To anyone else, Lohen was exactly as he had been since they first marched into the farthest reaches of Nod Krai: a cold, deranged fighting machine. His hair was somehow perpetually ruffled, and those dull red eyes always seemed to scan the horizon for something to kill. He looked every bit the sadistic officer who had whipped the recruits into a force capable of surviving the Abyss. Lohen was a man who didn’t do subtlety. If he hated you, he told you. If he wanted to break your spirit during training, he did it with a smile that never reached his eyes. But as Lohen vanished past the perimeter fence for yet another solo patrol, Ekbert felt a prickle of unease.
“Give it a rest, Ekbert,” Winfried sighed, leaning against a supply crate. “The Wild Hunt is gone. Rerir is gone. The Vice Captain is probably just... itching for a fight. You don’t spend years hunting monsters and then just stop because the Honorary Knight finished the job.”
“That’s the thing,” Ekbert hissed before turning to his comrade. “Vice Captain Lohen is always itching for a fight. But have you seen him lately? He’d disappear for hours and you won’t find a speck of blood on his uniform. Since when does the guy come back from a patrol without a scratch or two?”
Winfried just laughed. “He’s probably learned how to use that Cryo Vision to stay clean so he won’t give the knights on laundry duty a heart attack. You’re overthinking it, man. Maybe you should’ve taken that transfer back to Mondstadt.”
Ekbert shook his head. He wasn’t crazy.
All this started after you disappeared.
You hadn’t exactly been with the expeditionary force from the start. You were part of the late reinforcements, summoned personally by Grand Master Varka from the Reconnaissance Corps back home. They needed someone agile, someone who was professionally trained to slip through the shadows and stake out the enemy before the Knights could close in for a siege. While their usual scouts could do this just fine, you operated twice as fast and twice as efficient.
But despite the nature of your work, you were a breath of fresh air in a camp that smelled of old blood and dandelion wine. You’d linked up with the rest of them quite easily, sharing stories from home while the rest of the knights huddled for warmth. But it was your behavior around Lohen that had everyone especially enthralled by your presence.
You had the sheer, unadulterated guts to tease him. You’d prod at the elaborate corset he wore under his coat, asking if it helped his posture while he was busy berating a trainee, or you’d make some cheeky comment about how he’s probably as bloodthirsty as he was because he was compensating for something (read: his height). Everyone expected Lohen to snap. Whether it would be challenging you to a spar or assigning you to the most dangerous vanguard post, the Vice Captain always set straight anyone who dared to cross him.
Instead, Lohen would just stare at you with those eerily blank eyes of his, and tell you to get out of his sight before he found a use for your misplaced confidence. Which was, of course, a shock to anyone and everyone who had the misfortune to train under him.
As the campaign wore on, Lohen’s unusual tolerance for your presence shifted from a camp-wide spectacle to a quiet, functional staple of their operation. While you threaded through the frost as the Reconnaissance Corps’ primary ghost, mapping the Wild Hunt’s movements, Lohen sat hunkered over jagged maps with Anselm and Nannina, translating your intel into lethal strikes.
This seamless synergy didn’t escape the Grand Master’s notice. Despite Lohen’s abrasive personality and your penchant for poking the bear, the expeditionary force had transformed into a singular, razor-sharp weapon. Varka watched on with boisterous approval, less concerned with the strange social friction between the two of you and more impressed by how his subordinates had become the very axis upon which the campaign’s success turned.
In fact, you two were so in-sync, Ekbert and the others were quite certain you’d be absorbed into the Fifth Company in no time.
Until you went missing, that is.
“Ekbert!”
The sharp bark of Winfried’s voice snapped the thread of Ekbert’s thoughts. He blinked, the phantom image of your teasing smile fading as he was shoved back into the reality of the Favonius Keep courtyard.
“Get your head out of the clouds and grab a corner of this crate!” his fellow knight pleaded with a grunt. “This shipment isn’t as massive as our usual, but it’s still rotten work.”
As Ekbert got ahold of his senses, he spotted several wooden crates branded with the seals of the Dawn Winery and Good Hunter being hoisted off a nearby carriage. The scent of aged oak and fermented grapes cut through the biting chill of the Nod Krai air—a cruel reminder of the home they were still waiting to return to.
“Sorry,” Ekbert muttered, lunging forward to catch the rough wood before it could slip from Winfried’s grip. He grunted under the weight, his muscles straining as they maneuvered the shipment toward the supply tent.
“Speculating about the Captain won’t get these rations into the racks,” Winfried huffed as his face reddened from the exertion. “And it certainly won’t bring the Recon scout back. The Grand Master already had the entirety of Nod Krai combed twice. If he says the trail went cold, it’s cold. Got it?”
Ekbert didn’t argue.
He forced himself to focus on the rhythmic thud of boots on stone and the mundane logistics of post-war occupation. He hoisted barrels of flour, counted bundles of medicinal herbs, and tried to ignore the nagging itch in the back of his mind. He told himself that Winfried was right—maybe the stress of the campaign did make him paranoid. Lohen was likely just relishing the silence of a land without monsters, and your disappearance was just another tragic casualty of a war that had claimed too many.
Yet, as Ekbert hauled the last crate of bandages toward the medical tent around midnight, he couldn’t help but notice that the supply log was already short three rolls.
And the Vice Captain had yet to return from his patrol.
That monster wrapped your bandages too tight again.
Every pulse of your blood felt like a dull hammer striking against the sensitive, raw skin where he’d nicked you on purpose, a constant reminder of the metal that bit into you whenever he wasn’t “caring” for you. You were slumped against the foot of a rotted wooden bedframe, your ankles secured by heavy, rusted iron shackles to a thick support beam that felt as immovable as the frost-laden earth of Snezhnaya itself.
Through the cracks in the cabin’s walls, the distant roar of the sea drifted in, the violent crashing of waves against a jagged shore. It most likely placed you somewhere near the Lightkeeper stronghold in Piramida, though the geography of your prison mattered little when your own mind was a fractured mess.
The lingering haze of whatever concoction Lohen had forced down your throat always made the world tilt sideways. It was a chemical leash designed to strip away your Fatui training, leaving you pliant, babbling, and sickeningly open to his whims. You felt a wave of nausea, not just from the drug, but from the crushing weight of your own humiliation.
You had played them all for fools—or so you thought. Your successful infiltration of the Knights of Favonius made you arrogant. You thought they were soft, a collection of self-righteous idealists blinded by their own sense of justice. People like them would never brand a comrade who’d assimilated so seamlessly into their ranks as a traitor.
But Lohen was not like them.
He was the rot in the woodwork, a cold-blooded outlier in an organization of posturing heroes. You suspected the only reason the Knights of Favonius tolerated a battle-crazed lunatic like Lohen was because someone had to be cruel enough to handle the grisly work their ranks were too noble to touch. To them, he was a necessary evil; to you, he was a waking nightmare. He hadn’t just caught a spy. He had claimed a new toy to break in the isolated dark of the aftermath.
The Vice Captain was a connoisseur of weapons, and he took a delight in showing you exactly why the 5th Company was known for the full range of its arsenal. He’d start by using the cold, heavy shaft of his polearm to pin your shoulders against the rotted wood, the weight of the weapon making it hard to draw a full breath as he loomed over you. With you trapped under the length of the pole, he would draw one of his daggers, the blade gleaming with a dull, predatory light that matched his eyes.
He treated your skin like parchment for his incident reports, dragging the tip in slow, agonizingly steady lines across your collarbone and thighs—not deep enough to reach a vein, but certainly enough to ensure you wouldn’t forget the sensation for days. He would narrate the process in that detached, airy voice, debating whether a Snezhnayan spy’s blood ran colder than a Knight’s as it pooled in the hollows of your skin.
“Does it hurt?” he cooed at you once, his tone dripping with mockery. “Or is the drug finally making you forget which side of the border you were born on?”
Once Lohen had mapped your body in fresh, stinging nicks and left you shivering from the combined chill of his Cryo Vision and your own terror, the caretaking would begin. He would transition seamlessly from butcher to medic, his expression softening into something terrifyingly domestic. He would sit on the edge of the rotting bed, humming a low, tuneless Mondstadtian lullaby while he dabbed antiseptic onto the very wounds he had just opened.
He’d whisper about the tragedy of your disappearance, telling you how much the other knights missed you and how Winfried had toasted to your memory—all while tightening a tourniquet or wrapping a bandage just enough to make your nerves go numb. By the time he was finished, your mind was so fractured by the drugs and the pain that you found yourself leaning into his touch, seeking warmth from the same hand that still held the blood-stained blade.
He had swiped your dignity from under your nose, leaving you with the sickening realization that he was now the only world you had left.
Yet he always acted as if you still had a choice in the matter.
The passage of time in this cabin was a jagged, broken thing. Between the constant fog of the drugs and Lohen’s masterful psychological pacing, the interval between his visits felt like a blurred eternity or a heartbeat’s flash. You weren’t sure if it had been days or simply minutes since he last wiped the blood from your skin, yet here he was again, the heavy click of his boots signaling the end of your reprieve.
He set down a lantern—one he had clearly nabbed from a Lightkeeper. There was never a schedule to his cruelty; he might arrive when the sun was at its zenith, or ensure your muffled cries were swallowed by the dead of night. Today, the way he adjusted the silver wing-shaped crest on his chest suggested he intended to take his time.
“You look pale, little bird,” he murmured, crouching before you. He began to forcefully spoon a lukewarm broth into your mouth. You knew the taste. He had spiked it again with that same hallucinogen that turned your thoughts into sluggish, melting wax.
“Eat. I can’t have you fading away before we’ve had our talk.”
Lohen tilted your head back, his gloved fingers digging into the hinges of your jaw to ensure you swallowed every drop of the laced meal. He wanted you receptive, vulnerable, and utterly untethered from your own mind. In your hapless state, all you could do was submit to his whims, gulping down the sustenance that served as your leash until the bowl was emptier than your mind.
“Now, tell me,” the Vice Captain whispered, his dull red eyes searching yours for a flicker of clarity. “Are you in the mood to finally fess up today? Or do I need to remind you that the Tsaritsa cannot hear you when you’re so far away from home? I’m not as cruel as you think, you know. I told you time and time again that you need only tell me your orders and I’ll let you go.”
Despite the warmth of the broth and the deceptive softness of his voice, you fought the urge to spill everything. Your loyalty to Snezhnaya was the only thing the drug couldn’t quite dissolve, even as your humanity was being stripped bare. You clamped your teeth shut, a glare of defiance cutting through the haze, but Lohen only sighed with a terrifyingly patient smile.
“Still playing the martyr, huh? How tedious.” He set the bowl aside and reached for the polearm leaning against the wall, the metal tip catching the lantern light. “If you won’t give me your mind, I suppose I’ll just have to settle for the rest of you.”
The heavy hilt scraped against the uneven floorboards as Lohen lifted it with casual ease, the long shaft gleaming faintly in the lantern’s sickly light. He never rushed when he had you like this—trapped, drugged, and deliciously defiant. The metal tip hovered near your collarbone for a moment, tracing the air just above the half-healed lines he’d left days ago, before he angled it higher.
“Hold still, little bird,” he murmured. “Wouldn’t want to slip.”
The cold edge of the polearm’s blade kissed the side of your neck, just below the jaw. Not the flat of the weapon this time. The sharp tip. It pressed in with surgical precision, breaking skin in one clean, shallow nick. A thin line of crimson welled up immediately, warm against the perpetual chill of the cabin.
Lohen’s dull red eyes tracked the bead as it slid downward, following the curve of your throat.
“Did you know,” he began conversationally, “the human body is a masterpiece of fragile plumbing? You’ve got all these little rivers of arteries and veins and capillaries under the skin. One wrong cut and it’s over in seconds. The carotid here,” the blade shifted ever so slightly, pressing just beside the fresh nick, “branches into the external and internal. Slice it clean and you’ll bleed out before you can even scream properly. Then there’s the jugular. That one’s less dramatic, but just as effective if you want someone to suffer a bit first.”
He tilted his head, studying you like a specimen on a dissection table.
“I apprenticed under an old doctor once. Not because I had any interest in saving lives, mind you. Quite the opposite. I wanted to learn the fastest ways to end them. Turns out medicine and murder share the same textbooks.” Lohen took a moment to simper. “Funny, isn’t it?”
Another tiny flick of the polearm. Another shallow cut, parallel to the first. More blood trickled down, warm and sticky, soaking into the collar of the thin shirt he’d dressed you in after the last session.
You bit back a gasp, body tensing against the shackles. The sting was sharp, immediate, but the drug made it bloom into something that sank low in your belly despite the hatred burning in your chest.
Lohen set the polearm aside with a soft clatter and crouched closer, boots creaking on the warped wood. His gloved hand came up to brush his fingers along the fresh wounds almost tenderly. Then he leaned in, tongue dragging slowly along the trail of blood on your neck. The wet heat of it made you shiver violently, an involuntary full-body tremor that had nothing to do with the cold.
A satisfied hum vibrated against your skin as he licked again, tasting the copper-salt of you.
“See?” he whispered, breath ghosting over the cuts. “Your body already knows what your mind refuses to admit. It craves this the pain. The way I put you back together after I break you open.”
You hated it. You hated how your pulse raced, how slick was already traitorously gathering between your thighs, soaking into the fabric of the skirt he’d brought last time. Your training screamed at you to fight and spit defiance, but Lohen had spent weeks rewiring you. Every cut and bruise, every humiliating moment of care afterward had conditioned your nerves to associate his cruelty with the only relief you ever received.
He pulled back just enough to look at you, those empty red eyes gleaming with dark amusement.
“Interrogation was never really my strong suit, you know,” he continued casually as he reached down. His fingers slipped beneath the hem of the skirt, pushing the fabric up your thighs. “Too much talking. Too much waiting for answers that might never come. I prefer a more… proactive approach.”
His hand found your clothed cunt, palm pressing firmly against the growing dampness. He rubbed slow circles, the heel of his hand grinding against your clit through the thin underwear while two fingers teased along your slit, feeling exactly how wet you’d become. A soft, mocking chuckle escaped him when you couldn’t suppress the small hitch in your breath.
“Look at that. Seems like this little Snezhnayan spy is fucked up enough on her own.”
He kept talking, voice steady and taunting even as he massaged your throbbing pussy with practiced ease, fingers pressing harder, coaxing more slick to ruin the fabric.
“Routine suits us, doesn’t it?” The monster laughs. “I taunt you. I defile every last inch of that proud body until you’re crying. Then I patch you up, feed you, hold you until the drugs pull you under. And the next time I walk through that door… we start the whole thing all over again because you’re just too stubborn to save yourself from all of this.”
Gods damn him.
Your mind was a storm of conflict. You knew how to escape. The lock on the shackles was laughably flimsy. One calculated twist of your wrist, a bit of wire you’d hidden in the hem of the skirt during his last session, and you could be free. Slip out into the night, disappear into the wilds of Nod Krai before he returned. But as Lohen’s fingers continued their relentless, teasing massage—pressing, circling, occasionally dipping just under the edge of your underwear to feel the bare heat of you—your eyes met his. Those dull red eyes. Cold and predatory. Utterly in control.
You didn’t want to be anywhere else.
Not when the pain he gave you made the pleasure burn brighter. Not when his twisted version of care was the only warmth left in your fractured world. Not when the monster wearing the Favonius crest had somehow become the center of everything.
Lohen’s smile widened, slow and knowing, as if he could read every traitorous thought flickering behind your hazy gaze.
“Good girl,” he purred, pressing a little harder against your clit, watching your hips twitch despite yourself. “Keep looking at me like that and I might just forget about the questions for tonight. We have all the time in the world… now that you’re exactly where you belong.”
Lohen didn’t move to strip you. There was something more degrading about the way he kept you partially dressed—the soft skirt bunched up around your waist a mocking contrast to the heavy iron biting into your ankles. He kept his overcoat on, the silver wing-shaped crest on his chest pressing against your shoulder as he crowded into your space, a constant reminder of the rank he held while he systematically dismantled yours.
He didn’t bother offering you the dignity of the bed either. You remained on the cold, grit-covered floorboards. He liked it better this way—forcing you to endure his touch in the dust, proving you didn’t even deserve the luxury of being degraded on a mattress.
He used his free hand to snare both your wrists, wrenching them upward and pinning them against the rotted support beam. The movement was sharp and unforgiving, pulling your arms so taut that the fresh nicks on your neck flared with red-hot agony as the skin stretched. You could only let out a fractured mewl, your breath hitching in your throat before you could even draw air. With a flick of his wrist, Lohen hooked two fingers into the elastic of your underwear and yanked it aside, exposing your dripping heat to the biting chill of the cabin for only a heartbeat before his fingers slip inside you with delicious friction from his gloves.
The rough leather dragged against your inner walls as two thick digits pushed deeper, stretching you open without mercy or preamble. Lohen didn’t ease you into it—he never did. He curled them immediately, pressing hard against that spongy spot inside you that made your vision spark white even through the haze. A broken sound tore from your throat. Your hips jerked involuntarily, trying to chase the sudden fullness, but the shackles on your ankles kept your legs splayed and helpless. The cold floorboards bit into your bare ass where the skirt had bunched uselessly around your waist.
“Shh,” Lohen cooed, soft and mocking as he pumped his fingers in a slow, deliberate rhythm. “Listen to you. Already making such pretty noises for a traitor. Does it feel good, little bird? Having a Knight of Favonius knuckle-deep in this greedy cunt?”
He scissored his fingers, stretching you wider, the wet, obscene sounds of your slick echoing in the quiet cabin. He knew exactly where to press, exactly how deep to go to make your thighs tremble and your breath stutter.
Your head lolled back against the rotted beam, fresh blood from the nicks on your neck trickling warmer down your skin. The pain and pleasure twisted together until you couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began. Every time his fingers dragged over that sensitive bundle of nerves inside you, another gush of slick coated his hand, dripping down to smear across your thighs and the dusty floor. Lohen leaned in closer, his ruffled hair brushing your cheek.
“Look at how wet you are,” he whispered, adding a third finger without warning. The burn of the stretch pulled a sharp cry from you. “Crying for mercy with your mouth, but this sloppy little hole is begging for more. You hate me, don’t you? You hate how much you need this. How much your body has learned to crave the monster who keeps you chained up like a dog.”
He twisted his wrist, curling all three fingers viciously, thumb coming up to grind rough circles over your swollen clit. The dual assault made your back arch violently, a wrecked sob spilling from your lips as stars burst behind your eyelids.
“Please—ah, fuck… Lohen—”
The name slipped out before you could stop it. His dull red eyes flashed with dark delight.
“Oh? Using my name now?” He laughed, low and cruel, speeding up the brutal pace of his fingers. Wet squelching filled the cabin, louder than the distant roar of the sea. “How sweet. Beg for it properly then. Tell me what you want, spy. Tell your captor how badly you need to cum on the fingers that just carved your neck open.”
You shook your head, tears leaking from the corners of your eyes, but your hips rolled desperately against his hand, chasing every thrust like a high you desperately wanted to keep. The drug made everything feel liquid and overwhelming—every stroke and press, every filthy word sinking straight into your core and melting your resistance into nothing.
Lohen’s free hand left your wrists only long enough to grab your jaw, forcing your head up so you had to meet his empty, predatory gaze.
“Don’t look away,” he ordered, voice dropping into that dangerous, silky tone. “I want to watch your face when you break. I want to see the exact moment the proud Fatui agent realizes she’s nothing but a desperate whore for Mondstadt’s favorite butcher.”
His fingers fucked into you harder, faster, the heel of his palm slapping wetly against your clit with every brutal plunge. Pleasure coiled tight and vicious in your belly, building so quickly it terrified you. Your walls clenched greedily around him, sucking his fingers deeper as if your body had already surrendered even if your mind still screamed traitor.
“P-please, Lohen... Too much. I can’t... ah, I’m gonna—”
“That’s it. Cry for me,” he growled. “You could’ve escaped days ago, but here you are, dripping all over my hand like the pathetic little toy you were always meant to be.”
As you teetered on the knife’s edge of release, Lohen’s Cryo Vision flared. A sudden, biting frost blossomed from his palm, turning the heat of your friction into a searing, sub-zero burn. The metal guards on his wrists grew lethally cold, pressing against your inner thighs until the skin stung with the sensation of dry ice. The contrast was a violent assault; the core of you was a fevered, pulsing furnace, while his touch had become a frozen blade, carving through your sensory static.
He didn’t just let the cold sit. He pulsed it—letting the frostbite-chill numb your clit for a terrifying second before withdrawing the power, allowing the blood to rush back in a stinging, hypersensitive flood. You sobbed at the whiplash, your hips bucking helplessly against the floorboards as he forced your body to navigate a landscape of fire and ice.
He sent one final, concentrated surge of Cryo through his gloved fingers as they buried themselves deep inside you. The internal freeze acted like a detonator, and the pressure snapped instantly.
Your orgasm hit like a lightning strike to a fraying wire. Your whole body seized, thighs racking with uncontrollable tremors as you came hard around his fingers, your slick gushing out to soak his glove and the grimy floorboards beneath you. A strangled scream tore from your throat, raw and humiliating, echoing off the cabin walls while your vision fractured into a blinding, white-hot void.
Lohen didn’t offer you the mercy of a reprieve. He drew out every last agonizing spasm, forcing your exhausted muscles to contract again and again until the pleasure became an unbearable noise. You were left twitching beneath him, your nerves raw and exposed, sobbing openly as the last of your resistance was washed away by the sheer, brutal weight of his persistence.
“Good girl,” he purred, finally slowing but not to offer you mercy.
With a slow, deliberate suction, he withdrew his fingers from your fluttering heat. You felt a cold, hollow ache the moment he left you, but he didn’t give you time to mourn the loss. He grabbed your chin, tilting your head back until you were forced to look at his stained leather glove, glistening under the lantern’s sickly glow.
“Such a messy, broken thing,” he whispered, the dull red of his eyes fixated on your trembling lips. “And you still haven’t told me what I want to know. I’ll need to praise whoever trained you, really. But for now, don’t let a drop go to waste.”
He shoved his fingers into your mouth, the taste of leather and the sharp, salty tang of your own release hitting your tongue all at once. The drug-induced haze in your mind combined with the crushing need to please him stripped away the last of your hesitation. You didn’t pull back. Instead, you made a pathetic, broken noise and began to enthusiastically lap at his fingers, your tongue swirling around the gloved digits to catch every bit of your own ruin. You tasted yourself, flavored by the copper of your fresh wounds, and for a terrifying second, it was the best thing you had ever had.
You were a map of shallow, stinging nicks lying beneath him. The fresh cuts on your neck had only just begun to clot, the tacky copper of your own blood smearing against his hand and your collar right after he pulled his fingers from your lips. You looked down at your shackled ankles and your ravaged skin, and the horror that should have consumed you was replaced by a hollow, sickening sort of peace. The Tsaritsa, Snezhnaya, your mission—they were all becoming distant, meaningless ghosts compared to the heavy, solid weight of the man pinning you to the floor.
Lohen grinned maniacally. “But that’s alright. We have all night. I’ll fuck every last secret out of you eventually…” He leaned in, licking another slow stripe over the slowly healing cuts on your neck, tasting blood and sweat and surrender. “Or maybe I’ll just keep you like this forever. My perfect, dripping captive who doesn’t even want to leave anymore.”
His red eyes bored into yours, pressing his fingers on the flat of your lolling tongue once more.
“After all… you’re right where you belong now, aren’t you, little bird?”
The night air in Piramida was thick with salt and the biting chill of the ocean, but the sweat on Ekbert’s palms had nothing to do with the humidity. For hours, he had trailed the Vice Captain through the terrain, moving like a ghost through the pines until the silhouette of a dilapidated cabin appeared against the moonlit cliffs.
He watched from the tall grass as Lohen disappeared inside, the heavy door thudding shut with a finality that made Ekbert’s stomach churn. He waited. One hour passed, then two. The sounds of the crashing waves below were occasionally punctuated by muffled, rhythmic thuds and high-pitched, unintelligible cries that the wind quickly snatched away. Ekbert contemplated retreating—turning back to the safety of Favonius Keep and pretending he had never followed his superior.
But the gnawing suspicion continued to burn in his mind. With a pounding heart and a sense of dread he couldn’t quite stomp down, he stepped onto the porch. The wood groaned under his weight. He took a breath, steeling himself, and knocked.
The silence that followed was deafening. But then, the slow click-clack of metal-soled boots approached the door. It creaked open only a few centimeters. Lohen stood there with his mint-green hair disheveled and his coat draped loosely over one shoulder. His dull red eyes narrowed, eyeing the shivering recruit with a terrifying, vacant calm that made Ekbert’s knees weak. Despite being the taller man, Ekbert felt small, like a mouse that had accidentally wandered into a viper’s nest.
“V-Vice Captain,” Ekbert stammered. “I... We were worried you hadn’t checked in with your patrols.”
Lohen stared at him for a long beat, a predatory smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Worried? About me? Well that’s a first. Consider me touched, Ekbert.”
Without another word, Lohen kicked the door wide, the lantern light from inside spilling out to illuminate the nightmare within. Ekbert’s breath hitched, his gorge rising as his brain struggled to process the figure chained to the bedframe.
It was you.
The Recon scout. The one they’d combed the entire region for. But you were practically unrecognizable like this—stripped bare, your body a roadmap of silver scars and fresh, weeping nicks that hinted at a violent history. A thick roll of gauze was wrapped tight around your neck, stained at the edges with the copper of your surrender.
But it was the sound you made that truly broke Ekbert’s spirit.
“L-Lohen... where’d you go?” you slurred, your head lolling back as you looked past the doorway with pupils blown wide and glassy. You didn’t even seem to see Ekbert; your entire world had narrowed down to the monster in the indigo coat. “Don’t stop... please... come back and make me feel good again. I’ll be good, I promise...”
Ekbert stepped back, his hand trembling as it went to the hilt of his sword. “Vice Captain... what have you done to her?”
Lohen didn’t look at you; he kept his gaze on the horrified knight, a perverse sort of amusement dancing in his eyes. “Just doing my job; wringing intel from a Snezhnayan spy. She’s been quite stubborn about her secrets, but I’m nothing if not patient. Only took a few weeks for her to finally give a detailed account of the Tsaritsa’s plans moving forward. Though, I feel like there’s still more to uncover.”
Not letting Ekbert stew in the shock of finding out one of their comrades was actually Fatui scum, Lohen reached into his belt and pulled out one of his gleaming daggers.
“You’re just in time actually. She’s finally starting to learn her place,” Lohen purred, his voice dropping into a silky, inviting tone. He stepped aside, inviting the younger knight into the room filled with the scent of blood and sex.
Then, he held out the weapon hilt-first to Ekbert.
“Care to join us?”
✦ afterword. rip to ekbert, the unsuspecting npc i picked out of favonius keep to also indirectly torture in this fic. you are a brave soldier, you! if you made it this far, congratulations. you deserve a round of dandelion wine on the house. will i pull for lohen when he comes out? probably not, but he is very amusing to write for, seeing as he's like childe without adderall LOL please be kind to me, this is the first time i've written smth like this BSHDBSHGBDF t_t
not proofread, i literally just wrote this impulsively because lohen's leaked animations made me feel THINGS.
“that’s a sweet girl.” lohen coos in your ear. there’s something in his eyes that both terrifies you, and also strengthens the heat pooling between your legs. it’s a sadistic gleam - the very same he wears whenever you catch him up close slaughtering hilichurls, whenever he’s sharpening his weapons before a fight.
that look isn’t what’s causing you to tremble beneath him, however. your wrecked state is caused by the knife pressed against your throat, cool, stainless steel that leaves goosebumps in its wake as lohen drags it further and further down. once it reaches your bra, lohen doesn’t even hesitate before he slices it off, freeing your breasts. “you’re so scared… i can tell, you know?” he adds in a quiet voice, only for you to hear, “but you’re not running away. what a brave thing you are.”
the knife finally arrives just above your panties, and just like before, lohen doesn’t bother getting rid of the fabric in the traditional way. he rips the garment off with the knife. instinctively, you attempt to close your legs - but lohen grabs your knee, his grip nearly painful, to keep them open.
“no no, sweet girl,” he says, and though his tone is sickeningly sweet, you can tell he won’t repeat himself if you dare go against his wishes, “keep them open for me. i’m not done yet.”
you can’t even begin to come up with a reply - your attention is onto the cool blade, which leaves your flesh, providing you a short sense of relief. however, said relief is gone when lohen presses it against your clit. your hips hiccup forward, and seeing you squirm makes lohen bite his lip.
he adds more strength to the blade, rubbing circles with the flat side of the knife against your clit. this shouldn’t arouse you so badly, and yet, it very much does, considering how the blade is already glistening with your fluids. seeing you enjoying yourself makes lohen’s grin grow even wider somehow, and he increases his pace. it’s dangerous, and he’s well aware of that - but he keeps his knife at an angle that wouldn’t harm you. he doesn’t want you bleeding, at least not there.
you’re lightheaded with pleasure now, head lolling back and whines escaping your lips when you aren’t begging him for more. but, just as you’re about to cum - the blade is gone. whatever pleasure you were feeling is replaced with aggravation, and you can’t help the groan that leaves you.
your head snaps down to between your legs, then back to lohen. he’s eagerly licking the knife clean, refusing to break eye contact with you. and once he’s done… he laughs. laughs at your frustrated face, at how you were begging him to make you cum just a minute ago…
“i’m sorry, i’m sorry,” he lies, as he leans forward until your foreheads are nearly meeting, “you know i can’t help myself. that look on your face when you can’t cum makes me feel so good, sweetheart.”
the knife is once again brought to your cunt - this time, however, the blade is facing away from it, and instead, you can feel the thick handle probing at your entrance.
“this time, i’ll let you cum… so long as i get to hear you scream.”
tamsy’s long hair fell around you like a cage, leaving you to look at him and him only as he loomed above you.
he held your eyes as he thumbed the ampallang piercing at the flushed pink tip of his cock. he made a show of it, his eyebrows furrowing and his lips parting to let out a sigh as he touched himself, the teasing flicks and traces turning into full strokes up and down his pretty cock.
“it’s new, do you like it?” his voice slithered into your ears like something addictive. “it fucking hurt. soo bad, but don’t you think it’s worth it?” the words came out breathy as he picked up the pace of his hand, the other gripping the sheets of his bed. “you like this don’t you? watching me touch myself while you’re bound by my tokushin and can’t do a thing?” he smiled wildly, leaning in with that crazed look of his.
“you’re addicted to my cock, isn’t that right? ‘s that why your messing up my bedding like that? because my angel wants tamsy’s dick sooo badly but can’t have it?” he cooed, the hand pumping his length faltered for a second.
the glint in his eyes didn’t change but his smile fell. his free hand suddenly gripped your jaw so hard it stung. “i’m asking you so many questions but you haven’t responded to a single one, that’s rude you know? just because i gagged you doesn’t render you mute.”
your eyes widened, your body instinctively struggling against your bindings but instead being held more still. “sshorry! yesh! ih lihke it! ih’mh ahdditcted to tamsshy’sh cock!”
he didn’t have any sort of reaction other than mild disappointment. if it weren’t for his cock pulsing in his grip you would’ve thought he didn’t like the sound of you humiliating yourself.
“… what? stop giving me those eyes. you think i’m gonna praise you for basic manners? you’re even more pathetic than i thought.”
he leaned back, his hand working on his cock again. the slick sounds made your whole body ache to just take what you want, but you couldn’t, and that just made tamsy even harder. his eyes shamelessly roamed your body, lingering on where blue yarn held you open and immobile for him and where it was stuffed into your mouth.
“the piercing. do you think it’ll hurt while i’m inside you? or will it feel so good you’ll lose your mind? i’m sure it doesn’t matter to you, little painslut.”
“ghhghk— ‘m not ah paihnshlut—!”
“oh?”
you didn’t even see his hand move. all you felt was the stinging, intoxicating pain and the loud crack! noise tamsy backhanding you made.
and then you felt a gush of slick drool from your traitor-ass pussy.
“ah fuck— look at that. that’s not normal you know? only desperate, eager, masochistic little painsluts get this wet from being slapped.”
“tamssssyyy…” you whined, your body trembling with the desperate need for any kind of attention to your weeping cunt.
“shhh,” he hushed, his grin came back, this time less manic. “listen, i’m gonna make myself cum looking at how pretty you are for me. t-then i want to feel this piercing scraping the back of your throat until i cum again, after that i’ll untie you.” he promised, voice like honey on top of all the stinging. “then i’m going to watch you struggle to make yourself feel good until you beg for my help because—fuck—no one makes you feel as good as me, right?”
you didn’t answer, you just kept leaking and crying while imagining everything he was about to do to you. oh, it excited you. it excited you so bad.
“what did i tell you about not answering me? anyway, after all that i’ll finally let you come. unless i change my mind of course. how’s that sound, angel?”
“nghhgh—perfect.” his fingers twitched around his cock when you said that. then they sped up, an erratic, violent pace.
“hah—ahshit- have i really broken you? or do you actually like me—like this—that much?”
his voice started to crack, eyes rolling back into their sockets. both his tells for when he’s riiight on the edge.
“‘m close… i—hah—love you too, angel.”
a/n: a lil’ something bc i fell in love w tamsy and im writing something else with him atm nd wanted to post one more thing before writer’s block hits & i scrap it. this is soo self-indulgent and maybe ooc i hope at least one other person likes this. okay i’m yapping bye 🧛🏾♀️.
warnings. mdni. medic! reader. fem! reader. sexual-ish (?). imagined violence (?) blood. uncomfortable intrusive thoughts. tamsy is chasing ur moral collapse. corruption fantasies (?) manga spoilers (personality). based on this. treatment might b inaccurate ngl blame google
summary. your kindness unnerves him. tamsy’s drawn to it in ways you can’t see.
Tamsy’s rational. Reliable. Decent enough, for someone you hardly ever deal with beyond the infirmary. Everyone leans on him—through battles, through pointless decisions no one else will touch. Though calculated as he is, he accumulates damage with unsettling frequency. Preventable wounds, Patterns disguised as accidents. You treat the flesh and ignore the implications.
You wash your hands, palms moving in slow circles to build a lather before you work between your fingers and around each wrist. Blue latex gloves lie on the wooden counter, stiff and waiting. You dry your hands, rubbing the warmth back into your skin before sliding them on, fingers flexing into the latex.
Tamsy watches from the edge of the medical bed as you slide into the spinning chair in front of him. A gentle smile you wear for anyone who walks in, no matter how deep the cut or how tight the room feels. It’s not a throwaway smile meant to reassure, it’s a reflection of your whole self—Sweet, nauseatingly so. Optimistic. Gentle in every way. He’d like to shred it off your face, just to watch the pieces fall.
“Let’s get your jacket off, so I can take a closer look, okay?” You say and even your voice sounds sweet. He bites back the urge to gag and forces a polite smile as he peels his jacket, then the tie and the blood-stained layer beneath.
On his right shoulder, where the burn marks stop, a deep cut drips slowly. Your eyes trace the red first, accidentally wandering to the muscle previously hidden beneath oversized layers. Despite the delicate features on his face, he’s well built. Would do him some good to stop hiding underneath those clothes, you think.
“This one’s not as bad as last time.” You tell him, already refocusing on the cut, “I’ll clean it up quickly, alright?” The cut’s deeper than ideal, still manageable with antiseptic and antibiotic ointment, which you turn to search for.
Tamsy’s jaw tightens, he misjudged. Pulled back too soon, should’ve taken a few harder hits.
Next time, he decides he will.
Your fingers ghost along his shoulder, cotton pressing lightly against the bleeding skin. You move with careful precision, as if coaxing the wound into calm. You’re close, so close. He can count every eyelash when you blink, see how they cling together softly at the tips. The smoothness of your skin looks unreal. His eyes keep catching on your mouth, your lips. They’re plump, glistening faintly, swollen like they’ve been made to be bitten. The curve of your bottom lip, the slight parting when you breathe, the gloss catching the light. They look made for kindness, for saying things that mean well.
And yet, he can’t stop imagining them wrapped around him, used in ways that would make your sweet optimism fracture, used until fat, hot tears spill down your soft cheeks, until your lungs claw uselessly for air. An awful writhing sensation climbs from his chest, scraping at his throat.
He clears it with a small cough. Yellow, pupil-less eyes track your working hands. “You take your time,” he finally says, “Most don’t.”
Your eyes meet his, wide and earnest. “Don’t wanna hurt anyone,” You murmur, “It’s not the goal.”
Tamsy wonders if you’d still mean it if someone drew blood first, wonders about what happens when compassion and tenderness gets split open. If it were him who cracked that pretty mouth, put red on it, would you finally bite back, or would you break and beg? He isn’t picky. Either outcome would feel earned.
He straightens a fraction, humming softly, the tiniest smile playing at his pierced lip, “That kind of thinking doesn’t survive pressure.”
You pause, frowning slightly. “Pressure?” you ask, head tilting to the side. He watches the movement closely, curiosity comes so easily to you.
“Life has a way of teaching people differently.” He tells you, voice smooth. You press the antibiotic onto his cut. The sting should register, but it doesn't. He doesn’t flinch, doesn’t even breathe differently. His eyes stay on your face, tracking the smallest reactions instead. The crease between your brows, the way your mouth tightens with concentration.
“I’m curious to see if yours will hold.”
The words settle heavier than they should, but you press the white cloth to his shoulder anyway, wrapping it carefully around the injury. You’ve learned not to let unease steer your hands, letting worry interfere would mean admitting there’s something to worry about.
“All set,” you tell him, relieved enough to sound the slightest bit bright. You remove your gloves and gesture toward his clothes, eager to put an end to the quiet stretching between you.
You turn your back and toss the gloves into the garbage. “Take it easy, Tamsy,” you say, voice softened with concern. He hates the way you say his name, it does something unpleasant to his chest, a tight and wrong sensation he doesn’t bother naming. “Try not to push yourself so hard.” You add, “I’d hate to see it turn into something worse.”
You feel his gaze before you see it. When you turn, he’s already looking at you, long hair fallen loose over his shoulders. He’s undeniably pretty that much is certain, but the steadiness of his attention raises the fine hairs along the back of your neck. An appraisal rather than something meant to understand.
“You don’t need to worry,” he murmurs as he stands,voice low, even. The smile he gives you is polite, although too smooth to be comforting. It doesn’t even reach his eyes. “I can manage.”
You nod and wave him off, accepting it without resistance. Maybe it’s easier to file him away as reliable, capable. A good person, or maybe you simply assume the best in people by default. You don’t dwell on the way his gaze lingers a second longer than necessary, though you feel it prick at the base of your skull, a faint warmth creeping along your spine. The room seems heavier after he speaks, pressing a quiet weight onto your chest. Every breath feels fractionally slower, as if the space itself is waiting, holding for something unsaid, something decided without your knowledge.
warnings. 18+. mdni. ditzy reader. reader is dumb. like rlly dumb. manga spoilers (!!) tamsys mean but sweet in a manipulating way (?) fem reader. gendered terms. he insults ur intelligence. degradation. praise. thigh riding (kinda?)
note. loosely based on a req i deff lost. don’t rmbr the scene well so turned into straight self-indulgence. prob my best tamsy thing tho
You stand in his doorway, hands fidgeting with the hem of your skirt, lip under your teeth and your brain trying to remember how thinking works.
“‘I’m sorry,’ you whisper, soft and shaky, shoulders curled in, making yourself seem smaller. Wide eyes glued to the floor praying it’ll somehow open up and save you. You shift your weight, swallow hard, voice going thin as tissue. “I— I didn’t mean to screw it all up. I just… he wasn’t there. The guy who was supposed to take it. And I got confused and—”
You shut up fast, breath catching in your throat. Hot, dizzy realization hits, the kind that crawls up your spine and makes your stomach twist. You gave the package to some random man. Some stranger with a nice smile and a ‘yeah, sure, I’ll take that for you’ tone. And you believed him, handed it over like it was nothing. Now that you’re standing here, the stupidity of it all sits heavy in your chest and saying it out loud makes it sound even worse, even dumber.
He looks up at you from his chair, head tilted just a little, enough that long blonde strands of hair stray and fall messily over his shoulders. That lazy, sharp-eyed stare that makes your brain glitch.
“Didn’t mean to,” he repeats, voice flat as concrete, scraped down to the bone. “Yeah. I figured.” Your face actually brightens, same little spark you get when someone tells you they like your outfit or your hair. It’s pathetic. Embarrassing. His mouth pulls into that cutting smirk he saves for when you’re circling the drain of your own cluelessness. You’re a dumb little thing, and pathetic settles on you pretty. It’s why he keeps you around
“C’mere.” Tamsy crooks a finger, slouched back, patting his thigh as if calling over a pet he already owns. You move without thinking. While you’re not the smartest girl, you’re certainly an obedient one, it sits in your bones, sweet and automatic. You stop right in front of him, coated lashes fluttering in that helpless little way you do when you’re waiting for direction. He doesn’t even bother hiding the amusement; his hands slide to your waist and he drags you down into his lap, settling you exactly where he wants you. You sit there, light and pliant, already melting under his hands.
“You know the part I like most?” he murmurs, fingers dragging slow up your thighs. “It’s how you thought you could help. Thought you could run errands for me like a clever girl.”
You blink. Hard. Your lip pushes out in a tiny pout, the kind Tamsy always watches for. “I— I can be clever,” you offer, small and hopeful. He laughs under his breath, eyes crinkling with that lazy, soft meanness that hits you deep. “No,” he says, gentle as a slap. “You really can’t.”
Your face warms instantly. Thighs squeeze together, a small, helpless reaction you can’t control. You don’t know why it turns you on, but it does, and he feels the way you absentmindedly grind your pretty leakin’ pussy needily against him. “See?” His hand snaps to your jaw, fingers firm as he tilts your face up, forcing your eyes on his. “That right there. You get dumb the second I talk to you.”
A tiny sound slips out of you, thin and embarrassed. You hate how fast you fold, how one sentence from him can wipe your head clean. “Don’t get sad,” he murmurs, thumb brushing your lower lip until it parts. “I like you better this way.”
“Tamsy…” Your voice cracks, soft and low, squirming in his lap. “What?” He leans in, lips brushing your cheek, breath hot and dizzying against your ear. “Use your words. Try your best, yeah? Want to hear that tiny brain work.” You swallow, throat tight. His large hand slides between your legs, warm, deliberate, adjusting you for easier access. “I—I just wanted to help,” you whisper, hope and shame tangled in each word.
“I know,” he murmurs, mouth curling at the edges. “And now you’re gonna let me help you. Fix your little mistake.”
You nod fast, too fast, desperate for his approval.
“Such a good listener,” he muses and the praise hits you so hard your breath stutters. He pushes your skirt down and there it is, pink cotton stretched over your pussy, pretty and shiny-wet. The patch is sticky ‘n clings to the outline of your swollen folds.
“You’re lucky I like stupid,” he says, voice dropping into a low, mean register that sometimes hurts your feelings. “Otherwise I’d find someone a little sharper.” Your eyes gloss instantly at his words, panic fluttering behind them. “N‑no—I can—I can do better—”
He laughs, quiet and cruel and fond all at once, pressing a slow kiss to your jaw as his fingers slip under the waistband of your panties. “Don’t,” he murmurs, whisper-soft and absolute. “Don’t get smart now. You’re perfect like this.”
dededos
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