summary: lohen rescues you after you were captured by fatui !
warnings/tags: mentions of blood/death/violence, mainly just fluff, established relationship
a/n: lohen I’m genuinely madly in love with you
wc: 1k
Frigid. Terrified. Alone.
Those were the three feelings haunting you at the moment, the words etched into your bones ever since you were captured however many hours ago. You’d lost track of time at this point, honestly.
At first, you thought this would be a simple combat mission. Defeat the Fatui camp and return home. In and out, simple. Just in time for you to return home and have dinner with your beloved Lohen. But no. It turned out that these Fatuus were hiding many more numbers among their ranks, which only became obvious to you once you began to fight them…at which point, hordes of them swarmed your every side. You were clearly no match for all of them at once.
Which was how you ended up in your current predicament. Humiliating, to say the least; you sat on your knees on the frozen Dragonspine ground with rope cutting into your arms and torso. Not to mention you hadn’t had any food or water in hours…and the Fatuus kept making snide remarks at your expense.
“Seems nobody’s coming to your rescue. So much for the Knights of Favonius being ‘formidable’, huh?”
“Pathetic. Don’t you dare so much as look at us.”
“Not so tough now, are ya? Damn foolish Knight.”
To be honest, you’d given up arguing with them a good while ago. There was nothing that you could possibly retort with that would calm your anxious heart. Instead, you sat with your eyes closed and your head leaned back against a wooden crate within the tent, desperately wracking your brain for an escape plan.
It had been long enough since your disappearance for you to reasonably assume the Knights were searching for you, at the very least. You kept telling yourself they’d be here any minute, but nobody showed. Only looming, mocking Fatuus patrolling just outside the tent kept you company. Way too many of them for your liking.
Surely Varka would be putting together a team by now, right? He had to suspect something was up.
Then your thoughts went to Lohen…for the fifteenth time since you’d been captured.
He had to be on your trail at this point. Maybe he went off when he first noticed you were missing. He’d stop at nothing to get his lover back, especially from enemy troops. You knew that all too well.
Why did the Fatuus even capture me if they aren’t interrogating me? You wonder to yourself. Sure, they’d pass by and drop snide comments at your feet every half hour or so, but for the most part, they avoided you.
…maybe they wanted to lure the Knights here to wipe them all out at once. That was truly a bone-chilling thought: lying in a sea of your comrades’ corpses, all due to your own weakness in battle. Waiting to be finished off yourself.
You shook your head vehemently to rid yourself of such horrifying thoughts, causing a wandering Fatui skirmisher to glance your way. “Keep still,” he spits, “vermin.”
You had half a mind to bicker back at him, but you held your breath and sighed instead.
Lohen, please get here soon…
Suddenly, you heard a noise outside, as if your prayers had been answered by the Heavenly Principles themselves. Your ears picked up increased chatter among the Fatuus, a hint of challenge in their voices.
“A Knight? Come for vengeance, huh?”
Could it be…?
Then that familiar voice reaches your ears, and you’re so overjoyed you could cry. “Where are they? Move out of my way.”
You perk up, hearing the tone of Lohen’s voice. No longer the light, teasing tone you knew and loved, his voice was low and dangerous. Clearly, he was pissed off with the Fatui for capturing you.
“Lohen! I’m in here!” You call out, wriggling against your binds in a fruitless attempt to get free.
Before you can yell anything else, you hear the sounds of battle commence - Lohen’s spear colliding with the Vanguards’ shields; his crazed laugh over the sounds of bodies collapsing to the ground.
To some, the sound was unsettling. To you, it reassured you that you were in good hands. The hands of your beloved.
“Got any more for me? Or is that it-?!” He shouts, manic now that he’s been tested. You hear the panicked yelps of a few Cicin Mages, followed by the shattering of a Mirror Maiden’s glass projectiles. More than anything, you desperately hoped Lohen was alright.
Then, pure silence.
After a few tense moments passed, the flap of the tent flew open, and there stood Lohen. Panting, covered in blood, and clearly exhausted - but overwhelmingly relieved to see you.
“Lohen!” You beam at him, your eyes lighting up at the sight of him. “I knew you’d come for me!”
A languid smile spreads across his lips as his eyes travel over you, analyzing the state you’re in. “Of course…I could never leave you here.”
“Are you alright?” You both ask the other at once. You nod, and so does he. “I’m okay now that you’re here, Lohen.”
“Mm, I feel the same, darling.”
He kneels down and cuts your restraints with his dagger, then offers you his (less) bloody hand to help you stand. To your surprise, once you’re up, he lifts you into his arms like a bridal carry. Grinning the whole time, of course - that manic look in his eyes from fighting hasn’t quite faded yet.
“Now,” he leans in, voice lowered to that tone that always makes your heart kick, “keep your eyes on me, love. Don’t look at aaaanything else until we’re back, alright?”
He carries you out of the tent, and you obey, watching his face all the while. The truth is, he doesn’t want you seeing the carnage he left outside the tent. Mangled Fatuus lay helpless in the snow, stained in blood so red it gleamed like the Scarlet Quartz crystals dotted across the mountain. Lohen has to step over quite a few limbs on his way out, yet he keeps his eyes locked on yours throughout it all.
To you, it seems overly romantic. To him, it’s necessary to protect you and keep you happy.
And that’s all Lohen could ever want.
do not reupload / translate / use for ai! likes, comments, and reblogs are always appreciated :)
Lohen loves fighting monsters. Everyone knows this. What they don't know is that there is something Lohen loves more than fighting monsters, and that is you.
You, the cutest thing he's ever met. You, the person he had to leave behind when he joined the expedition. You, who he was so happy to see again. He could hear you now, greeting him with open arms and tears about how much you missed him as you begged him to never leave you again.
In truth, when he told you he would be leaving for Nod-Krai, you were overjoyed. For while he saw your relationship as two lovers destined for church bells you saw your relationship as obsessed predator and prey, with him as the predator.
Now, he's back and worse then ever. When he left you held out hope that maybe, distance would make him give up on you, that Nod-Krai's troubles would distract him so much from you, you could return to normal life. Alas, it only made his love for you stronger.
So, the moment he touches the land of Mondstadt and greets the knights he rushes towards your house and almost knocks down the door with his fist.
"Darling, I'm back!" He yells while knocking on the door.
You freeze at the voice, you know that voice all too damn well. You peek out the window and see Lohen's red and green eyes and manic smile. You lock the door but you can still hear him begging for you to open the door before you hear him throwing himself against the door, the hinges and wood creaking under his blows before you hear a loud crash and see Lohen standing in the door way, still smiling that manic smile you hoped to avoid.
"Darling. Come out, come out wherever you are," he says in a sing song voice.
You cover you mouth and breath as you tuck yourself into the deepest corner of your closet. You can hear him calling out to you as he moves through your house, looking and touching all you things. You hear your bedroom door open and the sounds of Lohen looking for you. You tuck yourself more and more into the corner of your closet as the sounds of footsteps approach the closet door.
"I know you're in there, darling. Come on out. I've missed you so much," he begs.
You don't even move. You hear him dramatically sigh then ho quiet. You left out a quiet sigh of relief, only for the closet door to be almost ripped off the hinges. Before you can even scream Lohen pulls you into a crushing bear hug, making sure his chin rests on the top of your head. You can hear him chuckling and planting kisses on the top of your head as you try to pull away. He hugs you tighter, only pulling away to look at you.
"Now, let's get some food so I can tell you all about my time away," he says, dragging you out of your house.
You try and tell him jo, but the look in his eyes tells you that doing that would be a really bad idea. So, you let him drag you all the way to Good Hunter where he tells you every detail of the expedition between bites of food. By the time he's done, you feel a bit sick. He then casually mentions that since he's back, you can move in with him. You tell him no, standing up from the table. He looks at you and laughs.
"Oh, darling. It's so cute you think you have a choice," he says.
He then lays out the plan, you pack your stuff and you move into his home for good. You try to give your opinion but he shushes you and gives you the same look that turns even the bravest of knights to stone, so you do as he says and you pack up and move in with him. As you get settled he can't help by smile. His life long dream is coming true, he finally gets to have you in his home and all to himself.
synopsis⋆✴︎ Half-dead in a Snezhnayan storm, caught mid-shift between human and crow, you're found by Il Dottore — who takes you in not out of mercy, but curiosity. To him, you're a specimen worth studying. Slowly, without either of you naming it, that changes: you become his assistant, then something closer, while he tells himself it's all still just research.
tags⋆✴︎ NSFW,Smut(mdni),drugging(anasthesia), dub-con, vague consent, p in v, no aftercare, use of y/n, Dottore x reader, Dottore x f!reader, Dottore x fem assistant reader, reader is a crow shapeshifter, implied kidnapping, slight jealousy, mention of other fatui harbingers
wc⋆✴︎ 5.6k
Note" HELLO EVERYONE this is my first smut I've written in my entire life so it might be a bit messy and disorganized.. I got inspired thinking of the connection between Dottore and a crow and came up with this fic :) ENJOY AND PLEASE LIKE AND REBLOG IF YOU DO NOT MIND
The storm in Snezhnaya had no interest in mercy, and neither, generally, did he.
Dottore moved through the snow storm with the brisk indifference of a man crossing a room he was familiar with. Snezhnaya’s winters were an inconvenience to be routed around, not endured, and his escort trailed a careful distance behind, having long since learned not to speak unless spoken to. The mission ahead was unremarkable. A supply route to confirm, a facility to inspect, nothing that required his full attention, which was, admittedly, why he noticed it.
A flicker of black against the white.
He might have dismissed it– a bird? Driven low and vulnerable by the wind, it was hardly worth the fraction of a glance he spared it, except that the shape was wrong. It moved wrong. It didn’t so much fly as fold, mid-motion, the way a variable folds when an equation resolves itself, and where a human had been stumbling through the drifts a blink ago, there was now a small, dark thing curled low against the snow, feathers driven flat one moment and puffed the next, some instinctive system trying and failing, to gather heat it did not have to spare.
Dottore stopped walking.
His escort nearly collided with his back and had the sense not to ask why.
He watched for a moment, longer than concern would have permitted, longer than urgency would have allowed. Not out of hesitation, hesitation was for people who had not already finished the calculation, but because there was, he found, a certain professional obligation to observe a specimen accurately before disturbing it. THe shift had not looked deliberate. No control in it, just seemed like a survival instinct.
He pondered what he could from his position: the size of the creature, different to any true bird, the way the feathers seemed to belong to it rather than replace something, patterned like an afterthought grafted onto a body that had, moments ago, with two legs. The traits of a hybrid shapeshifter would explain the phenomenon.
He had read reports of such things. He had never had the good fortune of finding one just in front of him.
“How unfortunate,” he said, to no one, and began working toward it.
He crouched, unbothered by the snow soaking into the hem of his coat, and studied it the way he might study anything half-alive and full of questions.
“You’ve made rather a mess of yourself,” he said,
“Tsk, freezing to death mid-transformation. Sloppy. Though I suppose you weren’t given much choice in the matter.”
No response. Only the faint ragged movement of feathers trying, hopelessly, to hold in the warmth that had already mostly gone.
Dottore considered, briefly, the shape of the decision infront of him, not should he, which was never really the question, but was it worth it? A shapeshifter, found alive, however in a critical state, was not the sort of variable one encountered twice. Leaving it here would settle the matter cheaply and immediately. Taking it would cost him time, resources, the responsibility of carrying something half-frozen back to a facility that had better things to process today.
The greater loss, he thought, was letting the data die in the snow.
“Well,” he said, already reaching for it with efficiency, “Let’s see how much of you is left to examine.”
He did not gather it up with his both hands, did not cradle it against his coat the way any human might have. He simply peeled off one glove, slid his bare palm beneath the small, half-frozen crow. It weighed almost nothing. That, too, he noted.
The crow curled instinctively into the warmth of his palm, feathers pressing flat against his skin, too far gone to do anything but accept the heat it was given. He held it there, level and unhurried, one hand outstretched before him as he resumed walking to his laboratory.
The warmth felt nothing like kindness.
__________________________________
Warmth came back before thought did.
You opened your eyes just to see a faint stray of light coming in. It was not sunlight, or fire light. It seemed like a surgical light..?
You tried to sit up and noticed, with a small jolt of alarm, that you could not.
You were, you realized with growing horror, still a crow. Small, black, undignified, nested in what appeared to be. You took a moment to process this, the folded corner of an expensive coat on a table that was absolutely not designed to be a bed.
Shift back, you told yourself, the way you’d told yourself a thousand times before.
Nothing happened.
Suddenly, the creaking sound of the white door echoed through the unfamiliar room, with a tall masked man with silver-blue hair entering.
“Ah. Awake.”
The voice sounded entirely too pleased with itself of a sentence with so little content. You went very still, every feather on your small figure rising at once and turned your head toward the source of sound.
He was seated an unhurried distance away, one leg crossed over the other, a notebook balanced against his knee. Red eyes beneath the pointy mask, unreadable, tracked you with the same clinical patience you imagined he might give a slide under a microscope. There was nothing in his expression that resembled relief, or welcome, or anything you might have wanted to see from the person who had dragged your half-frozen body out of the storm.
“Don’t strain yourself trying to change back,” he said, before you’d so much as attempted it again, as though your thoughts were as transparent to him.
“You’ve been at it for the better part of an hour already. Rather embarrassing, watching something struggle.”
You opened your beak, some urge to snap back at him, but produced nothing but a thin croak.
Something in his mouth curved, not quite a smile. “How articulate.”
He placed the notebook aside, and approached the table with slow, deliberate steps, the way one might approach something skittish they had no interest in startling, not out of kindness, you understood immediately, but because startled specimens tended to produce less reliable data.
“You’ll forgive me for skipping the formalities.” he said, leaning down until his shadow fell fully over your small, feathered form. “Names are better exchanged once I’m confident you’ll survive long enough for them to matter, For now-” he reached out, tilting your chin up with one gloved finger, turning your head this way and that. “Let’s see exactly what I’ve brought.”
_________________________________________
The first month, you escaped thirty-seven times.
The first attempt was clumsy. The second, ambitious. By the seventh, you had discovered that the laboratory possessed more hidden corridors than doors, and that the guards, though well-trained, had the unfortunate habit of assuming a crow incapable of understanding architectural layouts.
The thirty-seventh ended much like the first thirty-six.
The laboratory door slid open.
“.....Finished?”
You froze atop a bookshelf
Dottore stood beneath you, a stack of reports tucked between one arm. He sounded neither irritated nor amused. Merely curious. You stared. He stared back.
“Well?”
A long silence. Then, with all the dignity available to an exhausted crow, you fluttered down onto the desk. He made a note.
Escape attempt 37
-subject returned voluntarily.
-reason remains uncertain.
He never once wrote your name. Only Subject, followed by a number that changed less often than you'd have liked. He logged your feeding schedule, your shift frequency, the days you refused to speak in either form. He logged, once, the exact moment you stopped trying to leave, though whatever conclusion he drew from that, he kept entirely to himself.
Months passed. The escapes stopped being counted, mostly because they stopped happening. You learned the rhythm of him the way you'd once learned the ventilation shafts, instinctively, without meaning to, which reports he wanted first, which tools he reached for without looking, until it became easier to simply have things ready than to wait to be asked. "Scalpel," he said one afternoon, and it was already in his hand before the word had finished leaving his mouth. He paused, not gratitude, nothing so generous ever crossed his face around you, turning the instrument over as if it might explain itself, then looked at you the way he looked at anomalies in his data. "You anticipated that." "You always ask for it after the second incision," you told him. He said nothing further, but he watched you a moment longer than the observation strictly required, and something in his expression resembled a man quietly recalculating a variable he'd assumed was fixed.
It was around then that you found the error in his notes, a miscalculated variable buried three pages into a report, easy to miss unless you'd spent months learning the particular shape of his mistakes, which were rare enough to be memorable. You corrected it in the margin, small and unsigned, and braced for nothing to come of it. He said nothing the next morning either. But the notebook started staying open after that, not handed to you, not offered, simply left, angled just slightly toward whichever chair you tended to occupy, as though by accident. It hadn't been. Neither of you said so.
The first mission came without much ceremony. "You're coming with me," he said, already halfway out the door, and when you asked why, he told you he needed a pair of hands that wouldn't faint at the sight of exposed viscera, and that you were, unfortunately, the only candidate who met that bar reliably. That was the reason he gave. You didn't ask for another, you understood by then that whatever this had become would always be filed under usefulness in his ledger, never anything softer. You went anyway.
Somewhere in the months that followed, without ceremony or announcement, the notebook changed. You noticed it by accident, glancing at a page left open longer than usual, an entry dense with clinical shorthand, except for one line near the bottom, where Subject C-17 had quietly become your name instead. No footnote. No explanation. As if the correction had simply always been there and you were the one behind on the update. You said nothing. He never brought it up. But you found yourself rereading that single line more times than the occasion warranted, and somewhere beneath the part of you that still remembered thirty-seven escape attempts, something settled that hadn't settled in a very long while.
It was Pantalone who noticed first, out loud. "You still have the crow?" he asked lightly, glancing your way like a curiosity left over from some indulgent phase of Dottore's research, which, to be fair, was exactly how you'd started. Dottore didn't look up from his notes. "She's assisting with the project." "Interesting," Pantalone said, in the tone of a man filing something away for later amusement. Dottore didn't understand why that was amusing. Watching from the corner of the room, you thought you might.
After that, he stopped leaving you behind for meetings he once wouldn't have dreamed of bringing an assistant to. You attended in your smaller form, perched on his shoulder like an afterthought he'd forgotten to correct, silent through hours of politics you had no formal right to witness. He never announced why. When Sandrone glanced pointedly at you during the third such meeting, he only said, without looking up from his notes, that you were quieter than most of the room and considerably more useful, which ended the conversation, though not the glances.
The Harbingers, to their credit, adjusted quickly. Arlecchino barely acknowledged you at all, treating your presence the way she treated most things beneath her direct concern, noted, filed, dismissed. Scaramouche found you endlessly, openly funny, and made no effort to hide it.
"The Doctor's got a pet now," he said once, loud enough to carry across the table, "how domestic." Dottore didn't dignify it with a response, though you felt his shoulder tense fractionally beneath you, which you decided to count as a victory. Childe, for his part, seemed genuinely delighted by you in a way that made Dottore visibly suspicious of his motives, and took to greeting you by name, your name, not Subject, not the crow, every time you entered a room, as though testing to see whether Dottore would correct him. He never did.
It was Pantalone who pressed hardest, and always with that same unbothered smile. "Does it understand what we discuss," he asked once, mid-meeting, tone light enough to pass for idle curiosity, "or is it merely decorative?" "She understands considerably more than most people at this table," Dottore replied, flatly, already returning to his notes, "which I'd have thought was self-evident by now." A small silence followed. Pantalone's smile didn't falter, but something behind it recalculated. You stayed very still on Dottore's shoulder and said nothing, because saying nothing had always been safer, and because some small, traitorous part of you had liked the way he'd answered, quick, unthinking, almost defensive, in a way that a purely clinical arrangement had no real reason to be.
He never seemed to notice he'd done it. You noticed enough for both of you.
It started as research. He arrived one afternoon with a small dish of mixed nuts set beside his usual instruments, informing you, without a trace of irony that he intended to observe whether corvid dietary preference persisted across your forms. You indulged him, mostly out of curiosity about what he'd do with the data. He recorded which ones you picked first, which you ignored, which you cracked open yourself versus which you left for him to shell, and none of it, as far as you could tell, ever made it into any report that mattered. The "study" simply never concluded. Weeks became months, and the dish kept appearing, always with slightly more of whatever you'd reached for first the time before, and slightly less of what you'd left untouched. He never once admitted the experiment had ended. You never pointed out that it clearly had.
Around the same time, he began noticing the other habit, the one you were less inclined to explain. A stray bit of foil, a polished button, the glass stopper from an old vial, all of it accumulating in some corner of your quarters that you told yourself was simply organized, not hoarded. He found the collection by accident and said nothing cruel about it, which surprised you more than mockery would have. He only made a note :specimen retains magpie-adjacent fixation on reflective objects, function unclear, possibly ornamental.
Except the notebook was lying, a little. Because not long after, small things started appearing in places you hadn't put them. A smooth, dark stone, catching the light strangely. A fragment of mirrored glass, sanded soft at the edges so it wouldn't cut. None of it explained, none of it acknowledged, all of it simply present the next time you looked. You started leaving things back, without meaning to at first,a curled wire twisted into some rough, deliberate shape, a coin from some country neither of you had been to. He never commented on those either. You both understood, by then, exactly what the exchange was, and exactly why neither of you would be the one to name it first.
The trouble started with Childe.
He asked casually enough needed an extra set of hands for a task in Liyue, something involving negotiations that required more finesse than force, and you, in his words, had "a good read on people, for a bird." Dottore didn't answer immediately. When he did, it was with the same flat, procedural tone he used for everything. "She's occupied with my research. Find someone else."
"She's not a piece of lab equipment, Doctor," Childe said, grinning in a way that suggested he knew exactly what nerve he was testing. "Let her answer for herself."
You opened your mouth. Dottore spoke first.
"She doesn't need to. I've already answered."
The room went quiet in the particular way it did whenever he said something that revealed more than he meant it to. Pantalone, watching from across the table, said nothing at all, which was somehow worse than if he had. Childe raised both hands in mock surrender and let it go, but not without one last look your way, amused, calculating, filing the reaction away for later the same way Pantalone had.
Dottore didn't look at you for the rest of the meeting. You noticed his hand had settled, at some point, on the back of your chair not touching you, not quite, but closer than procedure required, and it stayed there long after any reasonable justification for it had run out. When you finally caught his eye, he looked, for just a moment, faintly annoyed not at Childe, not at you, but at himself, at the shape of whatever he'd just let slip in front of a room full of people who'd remember it.
He didn't explain himself later. He never did. But that night the dish of nuts appeared again, unprompted, with exactly the kind you liked best already sorted to the top, and neither of you said a single word about what that meant.
The order came directly from the Tsaritsa, which meant there was no version of refusal available to him. You were to accompany Sandrone to Sumeru, to retrieve something the Akademiya had buried deep enough that a subtler pair of hands was required than his usual methods allowed and subtlety, everyone at the table seemed to silently agree, was not among Dottore's more reliable qualities.
He didn't argue. Arguing with a direct order from her was not a mistake he'd ever make twice. But you caught the stillness that settled over him when the assignment was read aloud the same stillness you'd learned, by now, meant something was being suppressed rather than simply absent.
"Two weeks," Sandrone said mildly, already gathering his notes. "Perhaps three."
"I'm aware of the estimated timeline," Dottore said, in a tone flat enough to cut. He didn't look at you. You didn't need him to.
That night, before you left, he said almost nothing useful a list of standard precautions, a reminder to report any anomalous data, nothing that acknowledged what the separation actually was. But he pressed something small into your palm before you go, wordlessly, without ceremony: not a farewell, not affection, just a habit he seemed to need to complete before he could let you leave his sight, and you understood, without either of you saying it, that this was as close to be careful as he was ever going to get.
Sumeru was strange in a way you hadn't expected not the climate, which was gentler than Snezhnaya in every conceivable way, but the sense of walking through a place that had shaped someone you knew without ever having said so. You found yourself noticing things you had no real reason to notice. A particular shade of sandstone. The layout of old Akademiya corridors, half-reclaimed by the forest, that felt, absurdly, like the kind of place a much younger, much angrier version of him might have once walked through unnoticed.
You found the trinket in an abandoned research annex. Sandrone had no interest in a small brass instrument, delicate and old, some kind of measuring device whose function you couldn't fully place, etched with faded Sumeru script along its edge. It caught the light in a way that made your fingers itch before you'd even decided to pick it up. You told yourself it was simply a habit. You didn't entirely believe it.
You didn't decide to bring it back for him until you were already halfway home.
Sandrone noticed, of course. She noticed everything, in that quiet, clinical way of hers that made you suspect she filed people the same way Dottore filed data. She watched you turn the little brass instrument over in your hands more than once during the return trip, watched you wrap it carefully before you'd even reached the border, and said nothing about it until you were both standing in the doorway of his study, waiting to be acknowledged.
"How curious," she said, not quite looking at you, not quite looking at him. "Y/N randomly picked up some old, forgotten thing in the middle of an assignment." A pause, deliberate. "It's rather surprising she wanted to gift it to you, out of all people. How strange."
There was no warmth in it. You'd gathered by then that there rarely was, where Dottore was concerned whatever history sat between them, it clearly hadn't left room for particular fondness. Dottore didn't rise to it. He rarely did, with her.
"Was there a report to file, or did you simply come to observe," he said, without looking up from his notes, "because I don't recall requesting commentary on either."
Sandrone's mouth curved, thin and unbothered. "No report worth mentioning. The mission was uneventful." Her gaze slid to you, briefly, unreadable. "Mostly."
She left without waiting for a response, the door falling shut behind her with a quiet, unhurried click, and it was only once her footsteps had faded down the corridor that the room settled.
He was waiting when you returned, not visibly, not obviously, He didn't ask about the mission first. He asked, instead, with a carefully measured indifference that didn't fool you in the slightest, whether Sumeru had been "tolerable."
You held out the instrument instead of answering.
He went very still.
He took it slowly, turning it over in his hands the way he examined everything, clinically, at first, cataloguing its make, its age, the faded scriptwork along the edge until his thumb found a small, worn inscription near the base, and something in his expression shifted into territory you'd never once seen it occupy. Not detachment. Not amusement. Something quieter, and much harder for him to hold steady.
"Where did you find this," he said. It wasn't quite a question.
"An old annex. It looked forgotten." You hesitated. "I thought-" you stopped yourself, unsure, suddenly, how much of the truth you were willing to hand him along with the object. "I thought it might mean something. To you."
He didn't answer right away. He was still looking at the inscription, thumb tracing it once more as though checking it hadn't changed since the first pass, and when he finally looked up at you, the distance he usually kept so carefully maintained between observation and feeling had, for once, entirely failed to hold.
"It does," he said, quietly, and offered nothing further to explain it no clinical justification, no rationalization dressed as data, nothing to file this under but exactly what it was.
For the first time since the snow, he reached for you the way you'd once reached for shiny, precious things without meaning to not out of usefulness, not out of ownership, but because some part of him had apparently decided, somewhere between the storm and this moment, that he wanted to.
The mission after that one went wrong in a way none of you had accounted for.
It wasn't catastrophic, you'd walk away from it, you knew that much even as it was happening, but a blade caught you across the ribs before you could shift clear, and by the time you made it back to the lab, your human form was shaking too hard to be useful and your crow form wasn't an option, not with a wound that size. You didn't remember much of the walk back. You remembered his hands.
He didn't send for anyone else. That, more than anything, told you how seriously he was taking it. Dottore, who delegated everything that didn't personally interest him, doing the cleaning and stitching himself, sleeves pushed back, face unreadable in the particular way it went when he needed complete focus. His hands were steady at first, clinical, exactly as precise as you'd expect from a man who'd done far worse to far less willing patients. He didn't speak much. He didn't need to; the quiet was its own kind of attention, the sort he rarely gave anything that wasn't a problem worth solving.
Somewhere in the middle of it, though, cleaning a cut that had already stopped bleeding, checking a bandage that didn't need checking again, his hands stopped being quite so steady.
You noticed before he did, or maybe he noticed and simply didn't stop. His fingers lingered at the edge of the bandage a beat too long, tracing skin that had nothing left to examine, and when you looked up at him, he wasn't looking at the wound anymore.
"You should rest," he said, low, though he made no move to step back.
"You're not moving," you pointed out.
Something flickered behind his eyes, irritation, maybe, at being caught, or at himself, for the same reason as always. "I'm making sure the wound is properly closed."
"It's already closed."
He didn't have an answer for that. For the first time since you'd known him, he didn't reach for one.
You could have let the silence hold. You didn't.
The surgical lamp hummed, a steady, droning vibration that echoed the throb in your ribs. The world tasted of copper and sterile alcohol. Everything felt distant, as if the room were viewed through a thick sheet of frosted glass. The anesthesia clung to your mind like wet wool, heavy and suffocating, turning your thoughts into slow, drifting clouds.
Dottore leaned into your line of sight. His mask caught the harsh white light, splitting his face into a void of porcelain and shadow. He didn't move. He simply watched, his gaze tracing the rise and fall of your chest with the precision of a clockmaker.
"Can you hear me?"
The words sounded like they were coming from the bottom of a well. You tried to nod, but your neck felt like it belonged to someone else. A small, broken sound escaped her throat.
"Focus. I need to know the level of cognitive impairment remaining."
He reached out, his gloved fingers pressing firmly against your cheeks. The coldness of the latex was a shock, a sharp needle of reality piercing through the fog. He shifted, his weight leaning over you, the scent of ozone and expensive chemicals enveloping her.
"You're drifting," he noted. His voice had lost its clinical edge, it had dipped into something lower, a resonant vibration that seemed to hum against your skin. "The sedative is still saturated in your bloodstream. Your heart rate is elevated. Interesting."
You blinked, your eyelashes heavy. You tried to lift a hand to push him back, but your arm felt like lead, flopping uselessly against the metal table.
"I... can't..."
"I know you can't."
He didn't pull away. Instead, his hand slid down, tracing the line of your jaw, then dipping lower to the edge of the bandages wrapping your torso. He didn't touch the wound, but his fingers lingered on the healthy skin just beside it.
"You were reckless," he murmured. "A lapse in judgment. A variable I hadn't accounted for."
"Did I... fix it?"
"The wound is closed. The internal bleeding stopped. You are, physically, a success."
He paused. The silence in the lab grew heavy, thick with a tension that felt different from the sterile atmosphere of the surgery. Dottore’s breathing shifted, becoming rhythmic and shallow. He moved his hand, sliding it beneath the hem of the thin hospital gown, his palm flat against the warmth of her stomach.
You shivered. The sensation was magnified by the drugs, every touch feeling like a lightning strike across a numb landscape. You tried to speak, to ask what he was doing, but the words dissolved into a hazy sigh.
"Your skin is flushed," Dottore whispered, his face inches from hers. "A systemic reaction to the trauma, or perhaps a response to the stimulus. I find myself wondering which."
"Dottore... stop..."
"Hm, should I?"
He didn't stop. He shifted his position, stepping between your sprawled legs, the heavy fabric of his coat brushing against your thighs. The movement was deliberate, devoid of the usual clinical haste. He looked at you really looked at you, not as a specimen or an assistant, but as something he intended to consume.
"You've spent months learning my rhythms, y/n. You've corrected my notes. You've anticipated my needs."
He leaned down, his lips brushing the shell of your ear. The heat of his breath contrasted sharply with the chill of the room.
"Now, I want to see how you react to a variable you cannot anticipate."
His hand moved higher, his fingers grazing the underside of your breast. You gasped, your back arching instinctively. The anesthesia made the pleasure feel distorted, an overwhelming wave that crashed over you without warning, stripping away your ability to resist. You felt the world tilt, the white ceiling spinning as he captured your mouth in a kiss that tasted of desperation and dominance, blowing your mind away.
It wasn't a gentle kiss. It was a claim. He tasted of iron and obsession.
Dottore pulled back just enough to look into your glazed eyes. His pupils were blown wide, swallowing the red of his irises.
"Tell me you want this," he commanded. "Fight through the fog. Give me a conscious response." He was completely aware that you did not have the strength to protest.
You struggled. You wanted to say no, to reclaim the boundary he was systematically erasing. However, your body was screaming for something else, your hole clenching around nothing and your mind going more cloudy not because of the anesthesia, but the intimacy you are in. The warmth of him was the only thing keeping the cold of the lab at bay. The bond you guys had built, the shared silences, the hidden gifts, the unspoken trust, warped under the pressure of the moment. Your hand, trembling and weak, managed to clutch at the lapel of his coat, pulling him closer.
"Please..."
"Please what?"
"Just... don't leave."
A dark, triumphant sound vibrated in his chest. He stripped away the remaining barriers of cloth with a sudden, violent efficiency. The air hit her skin, cold and biting, before he replaced it with the crushing weight of his body.
He did not waste time entertaining you with his tip, and pushed his length all the way inside you.
You cried out, the sound echoing off the walls. It was too much, the pain in your ribs, the haze in your mind, and the sudden, invasive fullness of him. He froze for a second, his muscles locked, his forehead resting against yours.
"Does it hurt?"
"Yes-..," you whispered, your voice so vulnerable, near to crying.
"Good."
He began to move, a steady, punishing rhythm that mirrored the precision of his research. Each thrust was a calculation, designed to elicit a specific response. He watched your face, his eyes tracking every flicker of pleasure and pain, as if he were recording the data in real-time.
"Your pupils are dilating. Your respiration is erratic."
He gripped your hips, his fingers digging into your skin, bruising the pale flesh. He wasn't being careful anymore. The mask of the Doctor had slipped, leaving behind a man driven by a hunger that no amount of knowledge could satisfy.
"You are the only thing in this facility that doesn't bore me," he groaned, his voice breaking for the first time. "The only variable that refuses to be solved."
As you parted your lips to gasp for air, he captured them with his, giving you no room to breathe. It was messy and almost like a predator devouring its prey.
You wrapped your legs around his waist, pulling him deeper. The fog in her mind began to clear, replaced by a strong desire for release. You could feel the friction, the heat, the way your breaths mingled in the chilled air. You stopped being a subject. You stopped being an assistant. In the wreckage of the moment, you were simply two broken things colliding in the dark.
“Ngh- Doctor I-..!”
Dottore gently wiped the single tear trailing down your cheek and arranged your strands of hair.
“Shh.. Not yet. You can hold it in for a bit, can't you?”
After few moments, the doctor's movements accelerated vigorously, hinting an immediate need for orgasm.
“Come for me,” he groaned in the crook of your neck as he slapped into you faster. “I- I’m close.”
As the climax hit, it felt like a physical blow. You clung to him, your nails scratching into his back, your world narrowing down to the point where your bodies met. Dottore let out a low, guttural sound, his body shuddering as he collapsed against you, his weight pinning you to the table.
For a long time, neither of you moved. The only sound was the hum of the surgical lamp and their ragged, synchronized breathing.
Dottore eventually shifted, pulling away slowly. He didn't offer a hand to help you up, nor did he apologize. He stood and began to dress, his movements returning to their usual, effortless composure. He reached for his mask, sliding it back into place, the porcelain void returning to hide his expression.
He looked down at you, lying breathless and shattered on the metal table.
"The recovery period will now be extended," he said, his voice once again flat and clinical. "I'll need to monitor the effects of the physical exertion on your sutures."
You watched him, her chest heaving. The haze was gone, and in its place was a terrifyingly clear understanding of what you were to each other.
"Was that part of the research?" You asked, your voice raw.
Dottore paused at the door, his silhouette sharp against the hall light as he looked back to you over his shoulders.
"No," he replied. "That was for me."
The door slid shut with a quiet, unhurried click, leaving you alone in the silence of the laboratory.
Finally! Someone who just gets it. He’s all over that and everyone will know it
You’re absolutely the favourite when he’s around. Extra attention, extra lingering touches and stares. Everyone notices how much he perks up when you speak.
He’s always looking at you silently as though you can read his mind. Picture this, someone, maybe Varka, is giving one of his many speeches but he’s dragging it on to the point everyone just wants to leave. Lohen sighs, glances at you and you meet his contact. Then as though you understand each other without even speaking, you guys just form a way to get out of there somehow.
Compliments become rare but incredibly genuine. Instead of calling them attractive outright, he'd say things like, "You're reliable," or, "You handled that well." To him, those are high praise.
If they compliment him, he won't know what to do with it. He'll give a small "Thank you," then spend the next several hours replaying the conversation.
He'd fall in love gradually rather than all at once. One day he'd realize he's memorized their favorite drink, their routines, and the sound of their footsteps, and that's when it hits him that he's completely down bad for them.
Once he accepts his feelings, he's deeply loyal. He isn't flashy or overly romantic, but he'd consistently show his affection through actions, reliability, and always being someone they can count on.
Aether:
He naturally starts spending more time with them. It never feels forced, and they somehow keep ending up exploring together.
Paimon absolutely catches the shift in Aether’s mood. She’ll tease and make excuses for him to be sitting next to his hopefully future romantic partner.
He offers to help with almost anything, whether it's gathering materials, fighting monsters, or simply walking them home.
During combat, he instinctively keeps an eye on where they are. If they're in danger, he'll reach them without hesitation.
Small moments mean the most to him: sharing a meal, watching lanterns drift into the sky, sitting beside a campfire after a long journey.
He'd encourage their dreams just as much as his own. He wants a partner, not someone who follows behind him.
Once they're together, he's incredibly affectionate in subtle ways. Walking beside them instead of ahead, reaching for their hand naturally, sharing food, and always making sure they're safe and comfortable.
Wanderer:
He becomes more sarcastic around them than usual. Teasing is often his way of hiding genuine interest.
He pays close attention to them without meaning to. He'll remember tiny details they mentioned weeks ago, even if he acts like he wasn't listening.
He'll quietly start appearing wherever they are. He'll claim it's a coincidence every single time. Lowkey stalker but he means well.
He gets annoyed when other people monopolize their attention, though he'd never admit it's jealousy.
He becomes noticeably more patient with them than with anyone else. Others may even point out that he's unusually tolerant around them.
If someone flirts with his crush, he becomes noticeably colder. He won't start a fight, but the other person will definitely feel the temperature drop.
Once he's in a relationship, he's deeply loyal. He doesn't express love with flowery words, but through consistency such as staying by their side, making sure they're safe, remembering everything important to them, and gradually letting them see the softer parts of himself that almost no one else gets to witness.
Kinich:
He notices competence before appearance. If they can keep up with him, solve problems, or stay calm under pressure, they'll immediately catch his attention.
He doesn't flirt intentionally. Most of the time, he's simply genuine, and that sincerity ends up being more charming than any pickup line.
Loves it when they back chat with Ajaw. Lowkey finds it endearing that both them and Ajaw are comfortable enough to start bickering.
He respects their independence. He won't hover or treat them like they need protecting if they've proven they can handle themselves.
He remembers practical details about them, like their favorite food, what equipment they prefer, or what environments they dislike.
If they're hurt, he remains calm on the outside while dealing with the situation, but afterward he'd quietly stay close until he's certain they're recovering.
He shows affection through actions more than words, like sharing meals, repairing their gear, walking them home, or making sure they're safe before thinking about himself.
Kazuha:
It’s the little things like how they speak, how they treat others, and how they react to the world around them that he’ll pay attention for.
Simply enjoys being in their company. Even if you two are just sitting quietly. He cherishes the comfort.
Will start asking them on adventures. He especially loves it when they’re just as adventurous as he is, exploring the world and whatnot.
He often compares them to nature in his mind. A laugh might remind him of a breeze through leaves, or their determination of the sea during a storm.
He writes little poems or haiku inspired by them. At first, he doesn't intend for them to know they're the inspiration.
He respects their space. If they need time alone, he'll give it without taking it personally, trusting they'll come to him when they're ready.
Physical affection develops slowly but naturally. Once he's comfortable, he'll brush their hand while walking, tuck a stray lock of hair behind their ear, or offer his shoulder during long trips.
Durin:
He’d be so incredibly shy and awkward for a bit but he does quickly warm up to them. Perhaps a bit too quick
He'd light up whenever they entered the room. His excitement would be obvious to everyone, including them.
He'd look for any excuse to spend time together, whether that's exploring, talking, or simply sitting nearby.
If they taught him something new, he'd be delighted and remember it for a long time.
He'd give them little gifts he thinks they'd like flowers, interesting rocks, shiny trinkets, or anything that reminded him of them.
He'd mirror some of their habits without realizing it, like picking up their favorite phrases or enjoying the same activities.
He'd ask innocent but heartfelt questions like, "Can I stay with you a little longer?" or "Do you like spending time with me too?"
Albedo:
He becomes quietly intrigued by them and starts observing them. Not intentionally in a creepy way, but with genuine curiosity. He wants to understand what makes them them
He asks thoughtful questions that most people wouldn't think to ask. He isn't making small talk he's trying to understand how they think.
He starts sketching them absentmindedly. At first it's for "practice," but eventually he realizes most of his recent drawings somehow include them.
He'll invite them to Dragonspine, and it’s not because it's convenient, but because he wants to share a place that's important to him.
He's incredibly patient. If they're learning something new, he never makes them feel embarrassed for asking questions. Will definitely help them with alchemy.
Physical affection isn't instinctive for him, but once he's comfortable, it's deliberate. He might brush snow from their hair, gently take their hand to guide them across icy ground, or rest his forehead against theirs during a quiet moment.
He admires authenticity. Someone who's comfortable being themselves, even with flaws, fascinates him more than someone trying to appear perfect.
