Stitched with your color
Tutor! Luigi Mangione x fem!reader
Summary: Luigi, your smart boyfriend decides to tutor you. only, his way of teaching does more harm than good.
Warning: Toxic Behavior, mansplaining, gaslighting, Luigi is a big dick, unhealthy relationship.
A/N: this work is part of this fic of mine on ao3
The bedroom light of the big house you and Luigi shared was a small island in the dark house. you sat cross-legged on the bed, laptop balanced on your knees, notes spread around. The textbook was open to a subject that had become a kind of enemy: DSA, data structures and algorithms. Arrays, stacks, heaps, trees. Words that used to be just lines on a page were now mountains you had to climb.
It should have been television night. the show or news Luigi sometimes kept for background when he reviewed files from work and you completed your assignments. but today Luigi hadn’t gone to the couch after dinner because you weren't there. He’d hovered near the bedroom door, leaning against it, arms folded.
“Why are you in here ?” His voice was near whisper but carried the weight of a verdict.
“I have exams,” you said. your voice was thin. “Monday. I thought I’d study.” you kept your fingers tucked around the edge of your laptop as if it were a lifeline.
“Exams.” He sounded amused. He stepped forward into the room. something you didn't want him to do. he looked down at your notes, at the neatness that tried to mimic his own. “DSA. how exciting.”
you took a deep breath when he looked into your eyes.
“You’ve been studying all day?” he asked.
“A bit,” you admitted. “though I couldn’t concentrate”
He came closer and plucked a page from the pile, scanning it with the same look he reserved for business reports. “You know, I could help. Why are you muddling through this alone?”
“You don’t have to,” you said quickly, already ashamed at how small and relieved the suggestion made you feel. “You have work.”
“I want to see what you know.” He flicked the pen in his hand and nodded toward the study. “Wait for me there.”
“Now?” The word escaped before you could weigh the danger.
“Yes. Now.” His voice did not rise but it sharpened. “Bring those notes.”
you stood unwillingly, every step hesitant.
When you pushed the door open you felt the air change as if you’d stepped into a different climate.The study felt like another country. ordered, immaculate, every surface a mirror of his will. The smell of paper and polish and something faintly metallic. Everything in the room looked like him. the heavy desk, the way the lamp was placed exactly two fist-widths from the corner, the rows of books that were organized by height and subject rather than color.
He was finishing a call when he walked in. his voice modulated, precise, every syllable a tool. He wrapped up and set the phone down with a soft click.
“Close the door,” he said.
when you closed it, the walls seemed to fold in.
“Sit.” He pointed to the chair beside his desk. it wasn't an invite but a statement.
you sat, chair scraping faintly against the wooden floor. making sure to not close the distance between him and you too much .
He pulled the chair next to him anyway so that your knees almost touched. He took a fountain pen from the tray and opened a fresh notebook. “Explain to me, what a hash table is,” he said.
you swallowed. “A hash table… is..it stores key-value pairs…” you trailed off. your mind flapped like a trapped bird.
“That's it?” he remarked.
“It’s… it uses a hash function to compute an index where the value belongs.” your voice grew faster, thinner.
you had said those words before. in class, in a lab. but here, in front of him, they sounded brittle and insufficient.
“Give me an example.” He tapped the pen to the paper, attentive.
you gave him the classic example. a phonebook mapping names to phone numbers. He nodded. “Okay. How do you resolve collisions?”
your chest tightened. “Chaining… or open addressing… you can use linked lists or rehashing…”
“Which is better?” he asked.
you blinked. “It.. it depends.” your certainty faltered under his gaze. “Chaining is simpler for inserts. Open addressing is more memory efficient when the table isn’t too full.”
He smiled, an edge of condescension in it. “okay. We’ll do a real test.” He closed his notebook and stood. “wait here.”
you watched him walk to the bookshelf and pull a leather-bound volume you recognized as one he used often. textbooks for professionals, advanced comp-sci theory. He flipped through with practiced fingers and selected a sheet from a stack clipped inside. He walked back and laid it on the desk between them. It was a printed exam paper.
“Answer the first two questions aloud,” he said.
your chest tightened. your hands were suddenly cold and clumsy. “Can you give me a minute?”
He looked almost disappointed. “These are the basics.” His voice had folded into something colder than merely disappointed; it felt like disapproval dressed as scrutiny.
“Okay,” you whispered. The first question was straightforward. you breathed and told him everything you could remember, voice higher than normal, words tumbling.
He nodded, expression flat. “Good.” He cut the corner of the paper and wrote a small mark. a check, or maybe a notch.
“Now the second,” he said.
The second was more complicated.
you opened your mouth and found your brain had gone liquid. your mouth traced lines of half-remembered solutions.
He interrupted. “you're mixing things up” he raised an eyebrow. “god, do you just mug up shit?”
you went quiet, legs shaking because of the nervousness.
He didn’t speak for a long while.
When he finally did, his tone had gone flat. “You should know this. You had it last semester.”
you felt heat rise to your face. “I… I studied it but..”
“you forgot” He said the phrase like a diagnosis. “then what's the point of studying it in the first place. it's just like kids memorising poems they don't understand.”
you folded inward, shame folding your shoulders.
He looked at you then with an expression that made you feel smaller than you’d been all morning.
after a moment, he flipped the pages of the open notebook that had been sitting on his desk for quite a while, turning it so you could see, and started drawing graphs, edges, weights in beautiful, exacting strokes.
He drew in silence, lines precise. The page filled with shapes you recognized dimly but not enough to feel safe. His pen moved like a scalpel.
he explained everything that you had been struggling with today, in a deep calm voice. as if he could tell exactly where you were falling behind.
“See?” he said finally, leaning back, lips curling faintly. “Even a child could follow this. But you sit there looking like you’re about to cry.”
Your throat tightened. You pressed your palms flat to your knees so they wouldn’t tremble.
He flicked his gaze up at you, pen still in hand. “talk” he snapped.
“I’ll… try harder.”
He gave a low laugh, sharp, cutting. “Try harder. That’s what losers say. You think anyone cares how hard you try? Results are all that matter. But you-” He tapped the pen against the desk, harder each time, until the sound made you flinch. “You don’t even know how to think. You just regurgitate half-digested scraps from some professor who couldn’t hack it in the real world.”
You looked down at the floorboards, wishing you could sink into them.
He tilted his head, studying you. “Look at me when I talk to you.”
Your eyes lifted reluctantly. His were steady, dark, full of something dangerous. something that dared you to look away again.
“You need to understand,” he said softly, almost like he was coaxing you, though the steel in his tone cut through. “Your weakness reflects on me. Do you get that?”
“Yes.”
“Louder.”
“Yes.”
His smile returned, thin and cruel. He reached out suddenly and tugged your chin upward with two fingers, holding you in place. His grip wasn’t hard, but it didn’t need to be. The implied force was enough.
“Good,” he said, letting go like you’d been dismissed. “At least you’re capable of obedience.”
He stood, closing the notebook with deliberate calm, sliding it back into its place on the desk. “You’ll come here tomorrow night. And the night after. Until I say otherwise. this is where you’ll sit until you’re not a complete embarrassment.”
Your chest rose and fell too quickly, breath shallow.
“Stop shaking,” he said flatly, as if you were doing it on purpose.
He noticed. Of course he noticed. He noticed everything you betrayed with a tremor, a swallowed breath, the way your pupils dilated when you felt cornered. He watched you for a heartbeat, and something like hunger passed over his features and left them colder.
you couldn't stop shaking, of course.
He stepped close enough that you could count the faint ridge of stubble along his jaw. The air between you hummed with an attentive, dangerous quiet.
Your hands stilled, then betrayed you with another slight shiver. He reached out and placed his fingertips against the inside of your wrist, just above the pulse. His touch was clinical.
“You’re afraid,” he observed, as if reading the label on a jar.
His gaze lingered on your eyes, then slid to your lips, just for a fraction of a second, before snapping back to your trembling hands.
you lifted your eyes to him for a second too long, then dropped them again.
He leaned forward slowly. “You think I don’t see it?” His voice was low now, closer. “You try to hide it, and you only make it worse.”
Your throat tightened. “I’m not..” you began, but the lie was flimsy.
His mouth twisted, half amusement, half annoyance. “Breath, hands, eyes. You give yourself away without a word.” He lifted his hand and you instantly flinched even without the touch. “see, I don’t even have to lay a hand on you to know exactly where to press.”
You froze, every muscle caught in the trap of his observation.
He brushed past you toward the door, the faintest graze of his shoulder against yours carrying more threat than comfort. Before stepping out, he turned back once, eyes hard.
“And don’t make me repeat myself again, love”
The door closed, and the study was suddenly too quiet, too still. The notebook lay open in front of you, his handwriting neat and severe. your heartbeat thudding against the walls of your chest, loud enough you were certain it would have betrayed you even if nothing else had.
