"Being bi means all the attraction you feel is gay" NOT ME. All my attraction is not only hetero, it's hetero in the most off-putting way possible. I like men in the fetishistic yaoi fangirl way and I like women in the creepy mouth-breathing guy in your workplace way
My attraction is pretty much characterized as like, that one person who decorates their workspace with printouts of various BNHA characters. Just blasting massively unpleasant vibes in every direction, setting off people's sexual Geiger counters to "Oh, Eugh" levels
I'm like a chaser if chasers were also into cis people. I'm like a Type O universal chaser. I'm fetishizing mundane features you've never even heard of. Salivating and not quite blinking enough as I tell you you have exquisite elbows
Many redrawn bits from chapter 3 of Center Stage In A Gilded Cage by @blindmagdalena
This dude is crazy!!
AHHHH I loved the shift in perspective!! Gosh he was so creepy and I bet if we see his perspective it’s going to be so much worse!! I was just as baffled as the self insert at every turn!! Can’t wait for chapter 4!!
Went with a more blobby reader insert this time round :3
Now that he's got you all to himself, it's clear that Homelander has no intention of letting you go. For the sake of your own survival, you have no choice but to adopt his madness and play along with his domestic fantasy.
Homelander is insane.
You don’t know how to reconcile the hero of Vought’s marketing with this man, whose very presence unnerves you. There’s something uncanny about the way he moves, speaks, even the way he smiles at you. It all feels simultaneously practiced, and yet like he’s never actually spoken one on one to another human being.
The sentiment spins in your mind like a record, the melody scratchy and discordant. It’s as though you’ve fallen into some kind of bizzaro dimension where up is down, the sky is green, and Vought’s golden hero is a delusional kidnapping maniac who premeditated your abduction to the point of filling his home with a perfectly curated wardrobe for you. Even the products in the bathroom mirror your own.
You are home.
The conviction with which he said it gives you goosebumps. In the moment you’d been numb, trapped somewhere between reality and dream. That feeling–some mixture of shock and whatever he drugged you with–lingers with you even now, like you’ll wake up from this nightmarish fantasy at any moment.
You smooth your hands down your body, now clad in unfamiliar silk that feels cool and expensive against your skin. The sleep wear fits you like a glove. It’s your favorite color. It could have been pulled straight from your own closet if not for the lack of wear and the undoubtedly exorbitant price tag. All for wearing to bed.
Bed.
Nerves flutter in your gut like caged birds. You give yourself one last lingering look in the mirror. Washed and lotioned with the menagerie of products left for you, you’re unable to stall in the bathroom any longer. You’re as “comfortable” as you’re going to get, and Homelander’s waiting for you.
The thought makes you shiver. You can still feel his hands on your wrists like phantom shackles. From the moment he snapped and grabbed you, shocking you with immeasurable inhuman strength, you knew you were going to have to proceed with extreme caution. There’s something deeply wrong with him, and you’re terrified of what else he’s capable of.
What if you’re not the first person he’s done this to?
Worse than that thought, what if you’re not the last?
It’s a short walk back to the bedroom, the way lit by the dim spotlights that hang over the portraits that litter the walls. There’s an eeriness to the penthouse that makes you feel as though you’re walking through an empty museum after hours. The glossy wood flooring is as cold as tile beneath your bare feet, every part of this place hard and manufactured. It feels more like an enclosure than a home.
Even more bizarre than the decor is the layout itself. You haven’t seen the whole place yet–he had insisted a tour was for daylight hours–but rounding the corner from the living room takes you to an open alcove that serves as his bedroom. You hesitate in the open hall, struck by the sight of yourself reflected a dozen times over in the mirrors that make up his bedroom walls and ceiling, and Homelander himself already tucked into bed, his torso bare.
Your stomach flips. He smiles at you, beckoning you with a nod towards the empty side of the bed. Anxiety crawls up your spine like an insect with every step you take towards the bed, worsened by the open anticipation he watches you with. It goes against your every instinct to move closer to him.
Just as you reach the bed, he flips the blanket down for you. You tense, gaze dipping, but you’re relieved to find that he is not entirely nude. He’s wearing sleep pants with a thin band that nicely hugs the sharp jut of his hip, following the slight curve of his stomach. He’s leaner than the chiseled exaggeration of his suit implies, but his strength is no illusion. His hand felt like a steel vice around your wrist, his pull like being guided by a freight train.
Homelander clears his throat and your eyes snap back up to his. You realize all at once you’ve been standing there in silence staring for far too long at his half-exposed body. Embarrassment hits in a hot rush and you mumble some kind of half formed apology, busying yourself with slipping into the bed, lingering at the edge.
“Don’t apologize,” he says, watching you settle on your back and tug the blanket over yourself. “Like what you see?” he asks, smiling crookedly. Though he claims he has no intention of eating you, you wouldn’t know it by the look in his eyes. He has all the intensity of a bird of prey watching a rabbit skitter through an open field.
Not knowing how to respond, you stare wordlessly at him. You notice the asymmetry of his mouth for the first time, how it curves on one side. Christ, why can’t you stop staring at him like this? Every time you try to formulate a response–something, anything–the words get jumbled up in your throat, threatening to choke you. At a loss, you roll onto your side, putting your back to him and screwing your eyes shut. The bed dips suddenly and an arm slipping around your waist startles you into a jerk, your body going tense.
“Jeeze, so jumpy,” he laughs, breath hot on the nape of your neck. He pulls your body flush against his, your soft curves fitting seamlessly against his wrought iron edges. His strength is impossible to ignore, inhuman and titanous. You can feel it in every part of him, but nowhere more keenly than in the flex of his arm as it encircles you, pinning you against him.
He sighs into the crook of your neck, sending shivers down your spine. “I’ve really been looking forward to this,” he murmurs, his words nearly beneath the thunderous racket of your own heart in your ears. Your body is awash in heat, and not just from the flush rolling through you. He’s as hot as a furnace at your back, as if his skin conducts heat just as well as the steel he feels made from.
If there was any doubt before that you had no choice but to yield to him, it’s evaporated now. He could crush you without so much as a second thought if he decides you don’t fit whatever elaborate fantasy he’s created in his mind. He could make you disappear.
“Hey,” he says softly, nudging the shell of your ear with his nose. “I’m gonna take good care of you, okay?”
The pressure of a sob swells up in your throat, the reality of your situation folding in on you with the weight of the world, but you choke it back. Hesitantly, you place your hand over his forearm and squeeze, hoping it will be enough of an answer to appease him.
You feel his smile in the way he caresses the sensitive flesh of your neck with his mouth. In turn, he squeezes you against his chest like a child would his new favorite toy, covetous and possessive. It makes you wonder what sort of boy he’d been: was he the sort to be precious with his toys, or was he the sort who wore them threadbare before looking for the next new and shiny thing?
“‘Atta girl.”
Although sleep doesn’t come easily, it does at least come eventually. The room is dark, but not pitch black, and the ambient sounds of high altitude winds spilling in from his open windows are surprisingly soothing, better than the scratchy ocean recordings you usually drift to.
The exhaustion you experience in the aftermath of your abduction overtakes you, pitching you into a deep slumber. You spend the night dreaming a tumultuous mix of reality and nightmare, some aspects exaggerated while others play out perfectly as they were. The truth of your situation is nightmarish enough without any theatrics from your imagination.
Waking up in Homelander’s bed for the second time is no less disorienting than it was the first time. Last night returns to you in bits and pieces, but nothing grounds you in reality as swiftly as the heavy arm looped around your waist, and the steady warm breaths wafting over the back of your neck, giving you goosebumps. His other arm is stretched out under your pillow, his hand resting palm up by the edge of it.
Is he asleep…?
“G’morning,” Homelander purrs, giving a firm squeeze around your middle. Not asleep, which leaves you wondering how long he’s been awake, assuming the man actually does sleep. There’s been no lack of speculation towards how human supes really are or aren’t, whether they need to eat or rest the way regular humans do. Especially those as powerful as Homelander.
The sleepy slur and fray of his voice gives you hope that he does, though. On top of everything else, it would be too unsettling a horror to learn that he doesn’t.
“Morning,” you give back after a beat, hating how meek your voice is. The tension in your body makes everything sound tight and forced. You see his fingers flex just before he curls his arm inward, hand clutching your shoulder to embrace you.
“I don’t know about you,” he says in your ear, lips brushing the shell of it as he speaks. “But that was the best damn night of sleep I’ve ever had.”
That solves that, you suppose.
The silence that follows makes you realize he was prompting you.
“Same.” The lie hitches in your throat like a hiccup.
Another pause, and then Homelander is shifting, uncoiling his arms from around you and lifting up on his side. With a hand on your shoulder he turns you on to your back, bringing you to face him. You meet his gaze, but something about the look in his eyes turns your gut cold. There’s no softness in the lines of his face, not even thinning tethers of patience. There’s simply… nothing.
“Don’t ever lie to me,” he says, his voice set low and strangely hollow. “You’re free to do whatever you want. Except for that. Understand?”
Your throat clicks on a dry swallow. The weight of his stare makes it hard to breathe. You nod.
“Tell me you understand,” he says slowly, each perfectly annunciated word dripping with malice. There’s no pleading in his voice the way there had been last night. He’s composed entirely of cold and hard lines that make you feel caged, the bars shrinking around you.
“I understand,” you choke out.
Just like that, the lines at the corners of his eyes soften, crinkling with his smile. He leans in to press a chaste kiss to your forehead. The abruptness of the shift is enough to give you whiplash, leaving you dazed. For just a moment, he was another person entirely.
“That’s my girl,” he says, seeming to savor every word on his tongue. Dumbstruck, you watch him climb out of bed, swinging his arms in a slow stretch.
“Uhm,” you start, clearing your voice of the faint tremor in it. “I should, uh… Call someone. Work. They’re going to be worried if–”
“Already taken care of,” he cuts in, lifting his suit from the suit rack next to the bed. Your eyes dart to the crumpled one he shed the night before, still in a pile. How many of those does he have? “Everyone you know is under the impression that you had a mild stress-induced nervous breakdown, and are currently on an impromptu vacation in Europe, totally off the grid,” he says with a smile, sliding his hand smoothly through the air.
You pale. Whenever work came to be too much, you’ve joked about disappearing like that, but would anyone actually believe you have? You suddenly regret the plethora of hyperbolic existential posts you’ve made.
“Oh,” is all you manage to say, feeling sick.
Homelander, on the other hand, looks as bright as the morning sun. “So! Who’s ready for breakfast?”
Regardless of whether or not cooking is enjoyable, it’s always a reliable routine. Breakfast perhaps most of all. Eggs, toast, bacon and whatever fruit is in season. You find all these things and more in dizzying variety and proportion in Homelander’s lavish kitchen.
The eggs are large and brown, the bacon wrapped in butcher's paper rather than plastic, and cut in thick strips. The artisanal loaf of bread has a perfectly crisp golden crust, soft on the inside as you slice it. It’s everything you know, but elevated.
The opulence feels weighted. It makes you wonder how you could ever be expected to pay for any of this. How you could be worth any of this. Every ounce of silky butter you swipe over the piece of artisan toast in your hand feels like another smattering of grave soil peppering you from above, burying you deeper than you already are.
You don’t owe him for any of this. You didn’t ask for it. Regardless, you lick an excess smear of jam from your thumb–the color of it as red and vibrant as fresh blood–and all at once you are Persephone taking the pomegranate seeds between her lips. There is a terrible feeling of complicitness in this, despite that you’re only trying to survive.
Homelander lurks behind you while you cook, observing from a slight distance with an idyllic smile, his hands clasped behind his back. While you’re still wearing your pajamas, he’s wearing his hero suit again, the bulk of it returning to him his larger than life silhouette.
The silence he observes you in is unnerving, making everything else too loud in comparison. It would be nice if he’d at least sit. Instead, you’re keenly aware of the oppressive weight of his expectant gaze the entire time you cook.
“Looks delicious,” he says, his voice suddenly so close that you startle, the butterknife slipping from your hand and clattering on the marble countertop. His gloved hands cup your elbows and squeeze, soothing and overly familiar. “Oops-a-daisy,” he laughs, as if you’re just clumsy. His hands stroke slowly up and down your arms.
You snatch the knife up from the countertop and dutifully wipe away the jam splatter with a dishtowel. “I hope you like it,” you say distractedly, heart racing.
“How could I not?” he asks in that same low, pleased tone. He gives your arms an excited little shimmy before releasing them, reaching around either side of you to grab each plate. You feel his chest against your back, where he lingers just a second too long. “You made it just for me, after all.”
He moves away from you, taking the plates with him to the small round table near the floor to ceiling windows. The view from his penthouse is stunning–overlooking the entire city, all the way out to the waterfront–but it’s also dizzying. It unsettles your stomach to sit so close to the window, the size of them making it feel as though there’s nothing between you and a hundred story fall.
“You’re not scared of heights, are you?” He asks, settling down across from you.
You look from the window to him. He wastes no time splaying a cloth napkin in his lap and picking up his utensils, though he never takes his eyes off of you. You’re not sure he ever does. “Uh…Not particularly. I just don’t think I’ve ever been up so high,” you say, draping your own napkin similarly in your lap. Never has breakfast felt like such a formal affair.
“You’ll get used to it,” he says confidently, jabbing his knife into the yolk of his egg to spread over his buttered toast. “I’ll take you flying again. You’ll be conscious this time around,” he chuckles, flipping a piece of bacon on top as well.
Your gut tightens, toast paused halfway to your parted lips. You gawk at him. It’s difficult to comprehend how someone can be so beyond reproach, so intensely cavalier about something like drugging you into unconsciousness and kidnapping you.
I saved you. That his voice already lives in your mind–correcting you–is sickening in and of itself. Your already tenuous appetite vanishes, but you take a bite of the toast out of spite. The jam’s farm fresh sweetness is tart, though it’s offset perfectly by the savory sea salt richness of the butter.
It’s as exquisite as it is repulsive.
A crisp snap brings your attention abruptly back to Homelander, whose hand is still poised in the air, his thumb and middle finger pressed together. His hand falls away once he has your attention, his smile returning. “That good, huh? Looked like you went a million miles away.”
If only, you seethe, taking another bite of the toast. You use the moment to chew, swallowing the anger over being snapped at alongside your mouthful of food.
“It’s delicious,” you say, curating your words carefully. Don’t ever lie to me, his words echo again, helping you to shape a mental survival guide. Feeling his eyes on you, you meet them. His smile widens a touch, though you don’t think it quite reaches his eyes. He’s appraising you like one might an exhibit at a museum.
Glancing down at his plate, you notice he hasn’t really eaten his breakfast so much as he’s toyed with it. It’s all just cut apart, yellow egg yolk oozing slowly across the pristine white plate. “Is there something wrong with yours?” you ask with a lurch of anxiety. He’s drugged you once already.
“Not at all,” he beams with clean white teeth, hands resting in loose fists on either side of his plate. “It’s perfect. You’re perfect.”
The strange earnestness of the compliment stuns you. “Thank you,” you say uneasily, still not convinced there wasn’t something in the jam, or maybe the butter.
His smile broadens and this time it reaches all the way up, crinkling his eyes at their outer corners. There’s a sort of pride in his expression that makes you feel like a dog that’s finally learned the trick he’s been trying to teach you.
“Whelp,” he sighs, clapping his hands together as he stands. “As much as I hate to go, duty calls,” he says, sliding his chair back beneath the table. Rounding it, he holds his hand out to you. “Walk me out?” he asks, his smile gleaming with predator charm. You only hesitate briefly before slipping your hand into his, reminding yourself to choose your battles wisely.
He lifts you to your feet with such ease it makes your stomach flip, breath hitching in your throat. He doesn’t let go of your hand, choosing to keep it snug within his grasp as he walks you through the decorated halls of his penthouse. There’s scarcely a space untouched by decor, making even these spacious corridors feel claustrophobic, dozens of carved and painted eyes leering at you as you pass.
The tour of the penthouse had been brief, awkward. He hadn’t especially known what to say about each room, giving you more facts about the artwork than anything. The lack of personal effects only make the place feel even more like a museum than it had before.
The only pictures of him were Vought promotional material. Not a single photo of him outside of his suit. No trace of family or childhood. Just The Homelander.
He holds your hand all the way up to a set of double doors made from dark wood, where he stops and turns to face you. “Thanks for breakfast,” he says with a picture perfect pearly white smile. Not a speck of food to be found. Uncomfortable with how fixated you’ve become on the condition of his teeth, you force your attention back on his eyes and nod.
“You’re welcome.”
He leans closer, and you have to fight the urge to lean back.
“Will you kiss me goodbye?”
You blink, the question striking you in the same way his compliment had, but for a different reason. In the wake of asking, his smile has lost that razor sharp edge it usually carries. Like his eyes, it’s softer now. More boyish. There’s a level of nervous apprehension in it that’s a stark contrast from his usual smugness. Yet again it hardly feels like you’re even looking at the same person.
Swallowing dryly, you bring your hand to the underside of his strong jaw. His skin is warm under your fingers, and he leans readily into your touch. You can feel the tension in the muscle beneath his cleanly shaven face as you turn it away, simultaneously moving in to press your lips to his cheek.
When you pull away, he’s staring sidelong at you, his face still turned away, his thin lips parted. For a beat, you think he’s going to be upset, but you realize quickly that the heat you see rushing to his cheeks isn’t anger. It’s a blush. Of all the ways you expected him to react, bashful was not among them.
“Okie-dokie,” he says, suddenly sheepish, and the tension in your shoulders drains as he relinquishes your other hand, busying himself with slipping off one of his gloves. “Should be home around 4:00, but I might be able to squeeze out closer to 3:00,” he says, tossing you a conspiratory little wink. As if you should be as excited as he is at the thought.
You watch him reach for a black plate next to the door handle, which he slides up to reveal a sleek number pad with a glowing blue circle, which he presses his thumb to. The circle turns green, and you hear a mechanism unlatch. Your stomach drops. All at once you understand why he brought you all the way to the door. He wanted you to see this.
“Pretty nifty, huh?” he asks, sliding his glove back on. “State of the art,” he says with a grin, pulling the door open. Over his shoulder, you see nothing but a long, long hall and a distant elevator at the end of it. You consider screaming down it to see if anyone might hear you, but the noise gets stuck in your throat. Even if they heard you, no one would reach you in time.
Homelander steps through the threshold, lingering in the doorway, leaning partially inside. “Don’t you worry,” he says, taking in the stricken expression you wear. He looks pleased with himself. “You’ll be perfectly safe. No way anyone’s getting in or out–aside from me, that is.”
He offers a few parting words, but they distort into unintelligible static. The door closes. That green circle turns blue, and the locking mechanism echoes in your ears like the slam of a prison gate. Turning around, you stare down the lengthy corridor you came from, your ears buzzing with the eerie quietness of the penthouse.
annaxmalina
kianamaiart
titsay
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dededos
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dailybridgerton
