aether is telling you about his newest expedition in nod krai, mentioning things like columbina, and how much paimon loved their food. his new friends, new enemies, and a clue to his next journey... it was both breathtaking and hitching all at once and-
"and... oh, well you know how they are i- mmh!" it was already too late when your lips were on his, aether's eyes widen before easing into you.
he hadn't even realized it but he already had cupped your face and was already trying to lean into you for more. "huh? why'd you stop?"
kaveh is ranting to you about his most recent client, i mean, his infastructure was astounding, and certainly nothing went wrong with the prototype, who the hell just cancels out of nowhere?! what was this jerk even thinking??
"it's just- aarrgghh! infuriating!" you could see the steam coming out from his ears, his eyebrows quirking in his usual way. a small pout forming, and when his mouth finally was about to move- "an- mmm..."
he already had his hand tilting your chin upwards, letting out a pleased groan. "ah, leaving way too soon. you trying to tell me to shut up, or something?"
dottore and you were just walking in silence, silence that didn't include him. because for.. you stopped counting, but probably around fifteen minutes of just talking about his newest plan. something about... well probably snezhnaya and the gods again. you didn't really know.
"hah, can't you believe it. could mortals really be as... stupid?" - "what about me?" - "i know you aren't stupid enough to think you're includ-"
placing your lips on his briefly was enough for him to stop, and let you take the lead for a few steps. "you coming, zan'?" - "you... are interesting."
pantalone loves the time off he gets because god, he barely gets time off anymore. especially with the new currency plan he has in mind, and now he had the time to tell you all about it! so, what happens when that's not all you wanna hear from him?
"you see the pinnacle of my plan, yes? it's something i've been working on for a wh- mmm," he already closed his eyes, he was taken a bit aback yet he found himself already wanting more.
trying to lean in for one more before you pull away toooo far... "hmm? you started this, do you really wanna run off?"
itto being itto was him talking about his newest beetle, checking out how how its size would make any other challengers cower, you couldn't really find yourself wanting to listen. not when you hadn't seen him in a week and this is what he was doing?
"can you believe it, babe?! i beat him before ten second even hit the clock, i'm just amaz- mmhmmm! mmmh..." before he knew it he already (and very nervously) placed his arms around your waist.
"good... lord, you taste... nice, baby, is that the chapstick i got you last week? ack! okay, sorry!"
cyno is haha very tediously telling you a joke. and you just couldn't take it anymore so you just leaned in and made sure it was a gesture he wouldn't forget about and would stop telling you about how a shoe made out of a banana its called a slipper.
"wasn't that funny? why... babe, why aren't you laughing, beautiful? did i- mmmh." for how 'funny' his jokes are, he finds his hands caressing the sensitive skin of your lower back. pulling your closer by your waist.
"mmm, you... you are something." - "better than your jokes?" - "ill have to consider, you're a good kisser."
tighnari was just talking and talking and talking about the mushrooms he had been recently using for the dishes he had been so insistent on cooking. in which he did but realized pretty late that you had left that dish untouched, thinking of touching something else instead.
"and, you know how often these appear? how lucky are we that we have them growing our garden? baby? are you li- mmh!" you could already visualize his ears pointing upwards in the shock, only to feel him lean into your lips a little more.
"you... you are so... you are gonna be the death of me."
durin has you leaning on his shoulder while the rest of your friends danced in the middle of angel's share. sharing apple juice with each other that felt even more romantic and cheesy than it should've.
it was cute in a way really, it got to a point where varka and albedo have commented, and now here he was. your favorite dragon talking about his newest conch he-
"-found in liyue, isn't that great? hat guy took me out there, i wish you were there. all the views reminded me of you. so here, keep the co- what are y- mmn..." subconsciously his wings flap at the sudden warm sensation on his lips.
"y- you... what?"
lohen is busy talking to you about his latest encounter with the abyss. ringing an arm around your shoulder as he shows you around, pulling you close and super distinctively inhales your scent in. i hope you know that he cuts off a lot of his sentences just to tell you how nice you smell and look and are today.
"geez. you're amazing, i can't help but appreciate y- mmmn! mmn..." you can tell he was a little surprised but pulls you in more. it really get to a point where you need to pull away to breathe.
"oh? you seem excited. now you wanna back away."
varka is the kind of guy to pull you in by the waist, and starts to trail his kisses down your neck that turns to bites. has his free hand already cupping your face. it's so habiskjdasdjkhsa that the guy who was trying to hit on you just a moment ago. he would've just told the guy to fuck off but he doesn't mind this either.
"oh? what makes you think they aren't take- huh? what's that ba- mmn!" taken offguard the moment he feels you on him but again, hey. he likes showing off what's his.
When Lohen's finished with all of his excruciatingly long Vice Captain duties, the first thing he plans to do is remove all the heavy clothing off himself and collapse face first on his bed.
But whaddya know? You were there too, already sleeping on his pillows like you owned it. He assumes you've been waiting for him but fell asleep before he could make it home.
Lohen blinks tiredly and takes a moment to just stare at your body in his bed. His brain almost short circuiting when he sees your bare legs barely covered. His blanket is right there!
Yeah, he'll talk to you about that later.
He begins to strip off his coat and armor and belt and whatever that was in the way which eventually left him clad only in a thin night shirt and boxers.
He says nothing when approaching you and silently adjusts himself behind you so he could wrap an arm around your waist and press his face into the warm skin of your nape.
You always smell so good in his sheets, all pliant and pretty. He wishes moments like this could last at least half the time he had on the daily.
His scent practically engulfs you, exuding faintly of patchouli and mint along with the summer heat that clung to his skin all day.. this manages to pull you further into the soft embrace of slumber.
He relishes in the simple comfort you gave him during the long nights he was particularly exhausted in. The steady breathing of your chest which he tries to match with, his legs interlocking themselves under yours automatically and his front pressed flush against your back to protect you from whatever lurks in the darkness of this room.
Soft and safe, that is what he likes to feel when he's done with Captain duties. This was much better than hugging a pillow.
Lohen curls closer— as close as his body will allow it, all lean muscle and limbs around yours like vines wrapped around a strong pillar. To him, you were something similar to that.
Someone who didn't see him as manic or impulsive. But as someone capable of being thoroughly loved and understood.
Maybe it's just wishful thinking, but to Lohen? You're definitely somebody worth fighting for.
Imagine you reject them with only one reason, you are too good for me–how would they react
Calm down, we'll be okay
Just some turbulence, we're on our way
We're going down, but not today
We'll never say mayday
Yandere genshin men x reader ( diluc, alhaitham, varka, lohen )
>> sorry if it's a little messy
DILUC
Everything was perfect, he proposed to you on the hill overlooking dawn winery–he expects you would say yes but instead he is met with a no by you, before he could do anything you ran as fast as you can leaving him there shocked. The entire night he's stressed and would think of many reasons why you decided to reject him–he didn't receive any blank sleep that night and when he opened the curtains as well as Adeline knocking on his door to give him his morning coffee it was already day time.
The next day, he barged into your office in the favonius headquarters–and begged for an explanation why you rejected him, he was desperate for an answer. Give him an explanation, did he do something wrong or is there another person he needs to fight for your love.
He is taken aback when you said that he was too good for you, diluc brain would stop working for a second. You believe that he deserves someone better than you, maybe marrying another heiress or a woman who is intelligent. Diluc would absolutely found your reason as childish yet truthful, how sweet are you believing that you don't deserve him–who are you to decide it, he chooses you as his wife and that's final.
You underestimate him as well as you. He doesn't care about other women and how others would be better for him, he chooses you because he loves you. He would be heartbroken that you think so lowly of yourself–he only wants you and have eyes only for you, and if you don't have the courage to love yourself then he would gladly fill that role.
To this day, mondstat and its citizens would remember how diluc the uncrowned king of Mondstat chased his spouse yelling assurance to them. "YOU'RE TO GOOD FOR ME" "I WILL LOVE YOU FOR ALL ETERNITY" "YOU DESERVE BETTER" "I DON'T WANT 'BETTER', I WANT YOU".
ALHAITHAM
Alhaitham has already calculated and planned everything to your futures would look like, what type of gifts would gift to you towards your anniversary, what flowers that would be displayed in your wedding and what ring you guys would have. Everything was thought through, if plan A failed there's still plan B to work if not plan C would work.
Unlike diluc who would propose in a hill with a perfect view, alhaitham would be proposed when you guys are alone. Because he feels safe being vulnerable with you. While kaveh drunk out of his mind, alhaitham would casually ask you to marry him but he's eyes are filled with hope and love at you.
When you rejected him, he would start to ask questions about what led you to reject him–was it something he did or anything that would cause you to say no, to the point he overwhelmed you–leaving him alone in the cafe with his only thoughts. He would barge in towards cyno and tighnari tgcf game to ask what he would do to get rejected, honestly they are as shocked as he is–kaveh suggested that he is not romantic, or tighnari would find his direct approach as wrong because he might overwhelmed you.
The next day hes on a quest to find you and have an answer, but when your eyes meet each other–you start to run hoping to avoid him. He manages to corner you in an isolated part in the house of daena–he would come and ask you face to face what causes you to reject him.
He would have a face of dumbfoundedness when you said that he's too good for you, he is looking at your confession as if a scholar saying that the moon is made out of blue cheese–highly Inlogical. Now how can those exact thoughts come to your mind, has a person been feeding you with lies and doubts about your own worth. He would be silent but after the silence he would say with pride that he loves you and nobody would ever stop that. He carries you in bridal style towards his house, and when people asked him he would be proud of stating a fact that you are the love of his life.
VARKA
By far in his age, many would ask why he is still not married yet or settle down. He would laugh it off, saying that he was often too busy protecting mondstat to find love in his life. He would often put mondstat above his own needs, so it's a weird sensation when he meets you–when he's eyes meet your eyes, he sees you guys future reflect on your eyes.
Varka would start to court you, and would ask for advice from barbatos, married couples, and heck from Alice and the other hexenzirkel members wanting to know how to court you. He is determined to have you, is this a gift from fate towards his sacrifice. Even if he loses the title of hero, at least he's able to keep one thing from that future–having you as the love of his life.
When he confesses to you, he is met with rejection–that instantly leaves him stunned and just stands there with all his thoughts eventually he is found drinking more than usual and crying out your name on why you would reject him. Kaeya, rosaria and diluc would be there for emotional support–the entire time hes drunk, he is monologuing on how beautiful you are which makes the atmosphere awkward.
For the next few days, varka would be more upset to do any paperwork causing jean more duties. The mondstat instantly senses the shift of attitude from the grandmaster–even when flora offers him a Cecilia to make him happy, "it's beautiful like... ( Name )" Then continue to cry again–he would start to debate with himself whenever or not he asked for a love potion from Alice.
When jean got tired of all this heartbroken varka, she decided to drag you to his office and lock you in until you and him reach an understanding. When hes eyes found you, he immediately went on his knees and wrapped his arms on your waist starting to cry asking you why did you reject him, and when you tell him the ultimate reason of him deserving a better person than you–his ugly crying immediately stops and lifts his head from your stomach and he ask with dead seriousness who told you that. He would stand up and pin you to the door and would then to rant on how your logic is not right as well as breaking for each other's hearts–he would say that it's not your place to torture yourself like this and would say how much he loves you. The next hour, a wedding is already planned.
LOHEN
Similar towards his enthusiasm over battles, lohen sees love as another form of battle–fighting for dominance and if you love somebody, he sees that it's something that you have to prove for and fight for it. If he chooses you, then he has to be ready to fight through anything to have you. For the past few months hes been bringing dead carcass of rare and beautiful monsters as well as purposely causing himself injured just to see you patch him up, he would often put the dead carcass of monsters in your door stop as a way to court you and to show you his devotion towards you.
Lohen is in a state of obsessive love to the point you plague all his thoughts, he would purposely put himself in fights with monster as not the only way to put his moves to the test but also thinking of which monster would you love–when he's done, he would choose the most beautiful out of the monster and bring it to you as an offering of love.
And when you rejected him, he immediately went into a rampage around mondstat fighting monsters for two days straight and taking his frustration on them while also ranting what causes you to reject him–did you find him scary or is there another on your picture, he knew that Huffman have been getting to comfortable with you. He will be sure to spar with him, so that he can win your heart.
It got so bad, to the point varka himself got to intervene in the vice captain of the fifth company's broken heart phase. Varka knows that hes unable to stop lohen, but he brings a secret weapon with him... You of course. And when lohen sees varka and you walking towards him after not returning to mondstat, he is charged in full speed–varka got his claymore ready but instead of him, lohen tackled you instead.
He immediately pins you "is there another one in your heart, do I have to kill them" "what do I do to have your love" and when you told him that he deserves better, lohen would be stunned and would burst in laughter and started to say how doesn't want better he wants you, and how much he's willing to do for you to the point it even creeped out varka. But I guess that work, because lohen cameback to mondstat after two days of not returning unable to let you go and the entire journey glaring at varka because how dare the grandmaster crash his date with you.
NOTES. We are not gonna talk about how I wrote for half the number of characters this time around but still ended up with the same word count. We are not talking about that. There will be no mention. Also, you are sort of... mildly threatened in Wrio's part? Not by him, ofc.
Buuut, its fluff all around!! Fem!reader, she/her pronouns used.
Part 1, Part 2 (you're here!)
Al-Haitham
You'd been coming to Al-Haitham's place for research so often that it had stopped feeling like you were imposing. He'd never made you feel like you were, which was the thing about him—he didn't do false hospitality. If he didn't want you there, he'd say so. The fact that he kept making tea and setting out space for your notes suggested he actually didn't mind.
Today you weren't even pretending the visit was strictly academic. You'd finished what you needed to do an hour ago, but you'd both just... stayed. You were sitting at the table while Al-Haitham read something, occasionally looking up to comment on whatever you were saying. It was easy. Comfortable in a way that surprised you, given how sharp he could be.
"That scholar from the other day," you said, thinking out loud. "The one who argued that Dendro propagation follows a seasonal pattern regardless of region?"
"The one who contradicted himself twice?" Al-Haitham asked, not looking up from his page.
"Exactly. He came up to me in the hallway today and doubled down on it. Like he genuinely believed repeating himself would make it more true."
Al-Haitham turned a page. "Some people mistake conviction for evidence."
"Is that what you do when you're wrong?" you asked. "Just state it more firmly?"
He glanced at you then, and the corner of his mouth twitched slightly. Not quite a smile, but close. "I'm rarely wrong."
"That's the conviction talking, not evidence."
"Actually, the evidence is extensive," he said, returning to his reading. "But I appreciate your effort to provoke me."
You'd thrown a pen at him for that, and he'd caught it without looking, set it down beside him, and continued reading like interruptions were just part of his normal day. Which, around you, they apparently were.
That was the thing about Al-Haitham. He didn't waste energy on pretense. He said what he thought, you either agreed or you didn't, and the conversation moved on without any of the exhausting social dance that made time with other people feel like work. Somewhere along the way, you'd stopped making excuses for why you were at his place so often. He'd stopped asking you to justify it. You just showed up, he made tea, and hours would pass without either of you particularly noticing.
You were halfway through explaining why you thought that scholar's methodology was flawed when Kaveh emerged from his room, looking distinctly disheveled and irritated. His eyes immediately landed on the sink full of dishes, and you watched his entire face sour.
"Are you serious right now?" he said, staring at them like they'd personally offended him. "I cleaned this yesterday."
"You did," Al-Haitham said, not looking up from his reading. "That doesn't mean it stays clean indefinitely."
"It's been one day!" Kaveh gestured wildly at the sink. "One day and you've already—you know what, I'm not doing this. I'm not your maid."
"No one asked you to be," Al-Haitham replied, his tone completely level. "I was going to wash them."
"When?" Kaveh demanded. "When you finally take a break from whatever you're doing? I don't understand how anyone tolerates this. How do you even manage spending this much time with him?" He looked directly at you, and his expression softened slightly, almost sympathetic.
You felt Al-Haitham's attention shift slightly, but he didn't look up from his book. "Well," you said, laughing, "he makes good tea. And he's usually right about things, which is annoying but useful for my research."
Kaveh laughed, shaking his head like you'd just confirmed something he'd suspected. "That's fair, I guess. But I really don't know how you managed to get a girlfriend who's smart, funny, and actually willing to put up with him. The last part is honestly the most shocking."
The words landed, and for a moment you couldn't quite process them. A girlfriend. He'd just assumed, in the most casual way, that you were Al-Haitham's girlfriend. Your face went hot immediately. You opened your mouth to correct him, to clarify, to explain that you and Al-Haitham were just—
"Your method is inefficient," Al-Haitham said to Kaveh, turning a page in his book like the comment had never happened. "You rewashed items last week that didn't need rewashing. That's wasteful."
Kaveh's head snapped toward him. "You're seriously lecturing me about dish-washing right now?"
"Someone should," Al-Haitham said. "Your approach suggests you're cleaning reactively rather than systematically. You should establish a schedule."
Kaveh's voice went up. "This is exactly what I'm talking about. This is why I don't understand how anyone—"
"If you'd just listen instead of assuming," Al-Haitham continued, still not looking up, "you'd realize systematic cleaning takes less time overall. Your current method is objectively less efficient."
Kaveh opened his mouth, closed it, then threw his hands up and disappeared back into his room. You heard his door slam, and then there was just silence.
You sat there, staring at your notes without actually seeing them. Al-Haitham had completely ignored what Kaveh had said. He hadn't corrected the assumption about you being his girlfriend. He'd just... moved past it. Addressed something else entirely like the comment was irrelevant.
But it wasn't irrelevant. You could feel it sitting there between the two of you, unacknowledged but present. The fact that he hadn't corrected it meant something. You weren't sure what, but it meant something.
Al-Haitham turned another page. You watched him do it, waiting to see if he'd acknowledge what had just happened. He didn't. He just kept reading like this was a normal afternoon, like your heart wasn't doing something strange in your chest.
An hour later, you said you should probably head back to your dormitory. Al-Haitham stood when you did, and as you were gathering your things, he said, "I'm going that way. I'll walk with you."
It wasn't a question. You grabbed your bag, and the two of you stepped out into the night. The temperature had dropped significantly since you'd arrived at his place. The air was sharp and cold, and you found yourself wrapping your arms around yourself without really thinking about it.
You felt Al-Haitham notice. He didn't say anything for a moment, just kept walking beside you. Then, without any fanfare, he was shrugging off his jacket and draping it around your shoulders.
"Al-Haitham—"
"You're cold," he said simply. Then he was pulling you closer by the sleeve, drawing you against his side. His warmth was immediate, and you could feel the steady rhythm of his breathing.
You walked in silence for a moment, unable to focus on anything except the fact that he hadn't corrected Kaveh. That he was walking like this with you now, your arm linked with his, his jacket around you.
"Kaveh thought we were together," you said finally. Some part of you did that to spark conversation, an interesting little tit-bit to talk about. The other, more genuine part brought it up because it had been killing you for hours. It felt like a little animal inside your rib cage that was constantly being killed and brought back to life, a little flicker of hope, a mix of dread. You wanted an answer.
Al-Haitham hummed non-commitally. You could feel the weight of his arm around you, steady and deliberate.
"Did it bother you?" he asked, raising a brow.
The question caught you off guard. You'd expected him to explain himself, to rationalize why he hadn't corrected Kaveh. Instead, he'd flipped it back on you.
"That's not—I was asking why you didn't—"
"I know what you were asking," he said. His tone matter-of-fact. "I'm asking what matters more. Whether I corrected him, or whether the assumption bothered you."
You opened your mouth and closed it. You weren't sure how to answer that honestly.
"It didn't bother me," you said finally, and it was true. It hadn't bothered you. It had confused you, unsettled you, made your pulse race for reasons you didn't want to examine too closely. But bothered wasn't the right word.
"Then we're fine," he said.
"Al-Haitham—"
"Besides," he said, and there was the faintest hint of something that might have been amusement in his voice, "I didn't say he was wrong about the general principle."
Wanderer
You were three pages into your research on Dendro propagation when Wanderer arrived at your study table without asking if he could sit. He didn't ask permission for things like that. He just pulled up a chair and settled in like he'd always been meant to be there.
"That's going to be wrong," he said, not bothering with a greeting.
You didn't look up from your notes. "You haven't even seen what I'm arguing."
"Doesn't matter. Whatever thesis you're building on that foundation is going to collapse." He leaned back in his chair. "The propagation rates in the northern regions don't follow the same pattern as the southern ones."
You did look up then, specifically to narrow your eyes at him. "That's because I'm specifically studying the southern regions. The northern data is irrelevant to my argument."
"It's always relevant," he said. "Ignoring contradictory data doesn't make your conclusion stronger. It makes you look like you didn't do the work."
The comment landed like a jab. You wanted to argue, but he wasn't entirely wrong. You made a note to revisit the northern data, grudgingly accepting that he'd identified a gap in your research. There was something about the way he sat across from you—completely at ease in his certainty—that made you want to prove him wrong just to see if he'd admit it when you did.
"Anything else, or are you done?" you asked, turning back to your work.
"For now," he said. "I need to find that text on Dendro cultivation. Should be in the older section."
He stood and disappeared into the depths of the Archives, and you returned to your notes. You'd lost track of time when you noticed someone settling into the chair he'd vacated. One of the other scholars—someone whose name you could probably remember if you tried, but hadn't bothered to. He was the type who was always hovering around, always trying to insert himself into conversations in ways that made your skin crawl slightly. There was an entitlement to him, the kind of confidence that came from never being told no and deciding that meant he didn't have to listen when someone eventually did.
"So," he said, leaning back in the chair like he owned it, "you're always studying. You should take a break sometime. Come get dinner with me."
It wasn't a question. It was stated like a foregone conclusion, like your agreement was merely a formality. You didn't look up from your work. "I'm pretty busy right now."
"Come on," he said, and there was an edge to his voice that suggested he didn't appreciate being declined so casually. "You can't study all the time. I know this place outside the city. We could go tonight."
"I really can't," you said, keeping your tone polite but firm. You turned a page, hoping the gesture would make it clear you wanted to return to your work.
He was quiet for a moment, and you thought maybe he'd gotten the message. But then he leaned forward, and his tone shifted into something sharper, more frustrated.
"What does he have that I don't?" he asked, and there was real irritation underneath the words now.
You looked up, confused. "I'm sorry, what?"
"Wanderer," he said, his jaw tightening. "You're always with him. Every time I see you, he's here. You two are constantly together, and I don't understand what he has that makes you so willing to waste your time with him but not willing to give me five minutes. So what does he have that I don't?"
Before you could respond, before you could even figure out what you wanted to say, Wanderer appeared. He was just suddenly there, that book in hand, and his expression was the kind of blank that suggested he'd caught enough of the conversation to understand exactly what was happening.
"A brain," he said flatly, and his voice had that particular edge that made people take him seriously. "How about you go and pester someone else?"
The scholar's face flushed immediately. He tried to salvage the situation with some blustering comment about respect, but Wanderer had already turned away with a dismissive wave of his hand.
"Humans," he said, more to himself than to anyone in particular. "Can you believe them? Making assumptions about things they don't understand. It's exhausting."
He settled back into his chair like nothing had happened, opening his book with the kind of finality that suggested the conversation was over. He didn't look at you. Didn't acknowledge the scholar's eventual departure. Just sat in silence, reading or pretending to read, and left you sitting there with the weight of what had just happened pressing down on you.
The scholar eventually gathered his things and left, embarrassed and defeated.
You should have left it at that. Should have just gone back to your research and forgotten the whole interaction. It was the kind of thing that happened sometimes—someone misread a situation, made an assumption, got shut down. But as you watched Wanderer settle back into his chair, something stuck with you.
He hadn't corrected the scholar. He'd had the perfect opportunity to clarify—to say "we're not together" or "she's free to see whoever she wants." Instead, he'd simply shut it down with a cutting remark and moved on like the misunderstanding wasn't even worth acknowledging. The fact that he'd called out the assumption about humans making assumptions felt deliberate somehow, like he was pointing out something specific about what had just happened without actually saying it outright.
Hours passed. You continued your research, but your mind kept drifting back to that moment. To the way Wanderer had stepped in without hesitation.
You found yourself noticing things you probably should have paid attention to earlier. The way Wanderer always positioned himself where he could see you in the Archives. How he'd appear exactly when you needed him, like he had some sixth sense for when you were about to run into trouble. The small gestures that suddenly seemed like they might mean something more than friendly concern. How he leaned closer when you were talking, like he didn't want to miss anything you said. The way his attention was always on you, even when he was pretending to focus on something else.
By the time evening rolled around and you were both packing up your things to leave, you were thoroughly unsettled. You couldn't stop thinking about it, couldn't make sense of why he'd let the assumption stand. Why he hadn't corrected it.
Wanderer noticed. You could tell by the way he glanced at you, by the particular expression on his face that suggested he'd been watching you think all afternoon.
"You've been quiet," he observed. "Usually you're insufferable by this point in the day."
You didn't bother denying it. "Are you thinking about what happened in the Archives?" he asked, and there was something almost knowing in his tone, like he'd been waiting for you to bring it up.
You hesitated, then decided there was no point in pretending. "Yes. When that scholar made his assumption, you didn't deny it. You just let him think what he wanted."
He was already walking toward the exit, assuming you'd follow. You did follow, because of course you did. You always did.
"Why does it matter?" he asked as you walked through the hallways. "Why do titles matter anyway? People are obsessed with naming things, categorizing them, putting them into boxes so they can feel like they understand something. It's exhausting."
"That's not an answer," you said, frustration creeping into your voice. "You could have just told him the truth."
"I've had too many names and identities to care about what we're called," he said, adjusting his hat to block the evening sun. "But I know what you mean to me."
The admission hung between you, heavy with implication. You felt your pulse pick up, felt something shift fundamentally in the way you were looking at him.
"And what do I mean to you?" you asked, your voice quieter now.
He smirked, and that familiar arrogance slipped back into place. But there was warmth underneath it, something that looked suspiciously like fondness.
"How about you figure it out?" he said, tilting his head slightly. "You know, for someone so intelligent, you're remarkably oblivious."
You stood there for a moment, completely still, watching him disappear around the corner without a backward glance. Your pulse was racing, your chest felt tight with something unfamiliar and terrifying, and you were left standing there in the empty street realizing that you'd completely miscalculated everything about him, about this, about whatever was happening between you. The worst part was that he knew it too.
Wriothesley
The Duke of the Fortress of Meropide had a habit of making you wait. Every time you had an excuse to visit his office, he'd somehow find a way to extend your stay. A question about the documents you'd brought. A piece of tea he wanted your opinion on. A conversation that started about work and drifted into something that had nothing to do with the Fortress at all. Every time, the line between professional and personal blurred when you were with him. And if you were being honest, you didn’t mind that at all.
Today you'd come to deliver some documents. You'd done it a dozen times. But as you walked through the corridors, you found yourself hoping he'd be free. Hoping he'd ask you to stay for a few minutes. Hoping for that particular smile he got when he saw you—the one that suggested you were the most interesting thing that had happened to his day. Which was ridiculous. He was the Duke of the Fortress. He had actual responsibilities. The fact that you'd somehow become part of his routine was probably just coincidence. Or convenience. Certainly not because he enjoyed your company the way you'd started to enjoy his.
His office door was open when you arrived. He was reviewing paperwork, but he looked up the moment you knocked.
"Documents?" he asked, already setting down his pen.
"From the west wing," you confirmed, crossing the room to set them on his desk. "The quarterly inventory."
He gestured to the chair across from him. "Stay. I want to ask you about the discrepancies in the last count."
It was a convenient excuse. You both knew there were no significant discrepancies. All the paperwork you did was perfect, and Wriothesely knew that. But you sat anyway, because you were, apparently, incapable of saying no to him.
The next hour passed in a blur of conversation that had nothing to do with inventory. He asked about your week, mentioned something he'd read that reminded him of you, made you laugh at some observation about one of the other guards. His attention was focused entirely on you, and it was intoxicating in a way you weren't prepared to examine too closely.
At one point, he stood to get something from his filing cabinet, and when he passed your chair, his hand brushed your shoulder. It was such a small gesture, probably meaningless. Except you'd noticed he did it every time he walked past you. A small touch. Like he needed to reassure himself you were still there.
Or maybe you were reading too much into it, and he did that with everyone.
"You're distracted," he observed, settling back into his chair. "Something on your mind?"
"No, I'm fine," you said quickly. "Just thinking about work."
"I have a meeting with the senior guards in a few minutes," he said, glancing at his pocket watch. "Bureaucratic tedium. You're welcome to wait here if you'd like. Shouldn't take more than an hour."
Your pulse did something stupid at the casual offer. Stay in his office. Alone. Surrounded by his things. "Sure," you said, trying to sound unbothered. "I have time."
He stood, straightening his jacket. "There's tea on the side table. Help yourself to anything you need." After he left, you told yourself you'd spend the time reading one of the books on his shelf. Instead, you found yourself noticing small things. The way his desk was organized but not obsessively so. The way he'd left his chair still warm. The faint scent of something cool and expensive that you'd come to associate with him. This was getting out of hand.
You needed to be more careful about how much time you spent in his company, how much you looked forward to it. The Fortress wasn't a place where relationships happened casually. People noticed things. People talked. The city as a whole was a place rife with gossip, and you weren’t exactly sure if this was the kind of gossip that needed to be spread.
You stood and walked to the window, staring out at the courtyard below. The guards were doing their rounds. You weren't paying attention to your surroundings the way you should have been when you decided to stretch your legs in the corridor.
The hand on your arm came from nowhere. You were spun around, slammed against the cold stone wall before you could process what was happening. The air left your lungs in a sharp gasp.
An inmate. One you didn't recognize, eyes wild and desperate.
"You're with him, aren't you?" he hissed, his grip on your arm painfully tight. "The Duke. His partner. You'd know things."
Your heart was pounding so hard you thought it might burst. Fear flooded through you, crystalline and sharp. This was real. This was actually happening.
"I don't—" you started, but his grip tightened.
"Don't lie to me," he spat. "Where's the emergency exit? Where does he keep the keys?"
You tried to pull away, tried to think of something to say that might defuse this, but panic was making your thoughts scatter.
His other hand came up.
Then he was gone.
Wriothesley stood between you and him, and you'd never seen him look like this. All the charm, all the politeness stripped away. What remained was something colder. He looked every bit likt eh terrifying, infamous warden of Meropide. The kind of man you heard rumors about from people all around Fontaine but were hard pressed to believe them because he was never like that with you. Until now.
"Touch her again," Wriothesley said, his voice dropping, "and you'll find out exactly why I run this place." He didn't raise his voice. The threat was implicit in everything about him. The way he stood, the way his eyes had gone cold, the certainty that he could make good on whatever he was implying.
The inmate scrambled backward, apologizing frantically, and Wriothesley didn't even watch him go. He turned to you immediately.
"Are you hurt?" His voice shifted back to something more familiar, but there was still an edge to it. His hands came up like he wanted to touch you but was restraining himself.
You shook your head, still trembling. Your arm ached where the inmate had grabbed you. "I'm okay. I'm fine."
Wriothesley guided you back to his office without a word, one hand on the small of your back. Steady. Grounding. Once inside, he had you sit while he examined your arm, his touch gentle now, checking for damage.
"He didn't break the skin," he said. "But you'll have bruises."
You nodded, still trying to process what had just happened.
After several minutes of silence, when your heart had stopped racing quite so violently, the other part of what had happened filtered through.
You let out a shaky laugh—the kind that comes from adrenaline finally releasing. "Well. That was terrifying."
Wriothesley watched you, his expression softening slightly now that the immediate danger had passed.
"Maybe I should stop spending so much time with you," you said, trying to inject some levity into your voice. "He thought we were together. If I'm going to get cornered by inmates, at least let it be for something I'm actually guilty of."
He let out a low chuckle, shaking his head. "Is that what you're concerned about? Your reputation?"
"Among other things," you said, managing a small smile. "Mostly just the part where I nearly got my arm broken because someone thought I had access to your secrets."
"Fair point," he said, and there was genuine warmth in his expression now. He stood and moved to lean against his desk, close enough that you could see the amusement lingering in his eyes. "Though for what it's worth, that inmate did you a favor. Gave you a decent excuse to stay in my office longer than usual without anyone questioning it."
You stared at him. "That's your takeaway from nearly being cornered?"
"One of several," he said, a smile playing at the corner of his mouth. "Though I admit the timing was inconvenient. I was just starting to enjoy our conversation."
"You're impossible," you said, but there was no real heat in it.
He tilted his head slightly, considering you. "You could always use it as an excuse to come back more often. For your safety, naturally. Can't have you getting cornered again." His tone was light. "The offer stands. Anytime you need it."
The way he said it made clear he wasn't really talking about the physical space anymore.
Xiao
You'd learned to recognize the patterns of Xiao's presence. The way he appeared on your commissions before you'd even finished the previous one, materializing from nowhere with that particular blend of concern and restraint that he tried so hard to hide. How he'd always position himself where he could see you, even when he pretended he wasn't watching, his attention a constant weight you'd grown accustomed to. The small, almost imperceptible softening in his expression when you looked his way—a shift so brief you'd miss it if you weren't paying attention. But you were always paying attention.
Today's commission had been brutal. Your muscles ached with the kind of deep weariness that came from hours of constant movement, and your clothes were torn in at least two places. You were fairly certain you had a bruise forming on your ribs, tender to the touch. By the time you'd finished and made your way back to the inn, all you could think about was a hot bath and sleep, in that order. You climbed the stairs toward your room, already mentally preparing yourself for the solitude of it, when you remembered you hadn't eaten yet.
You made your way to the balcony overlooking the courtyard instead, needing air before food. And Xiao was there, exactly where he always was, leaning against the railing like he'd been waiting. You'd stopped trying to figure out how he got there before you did—he was an adeptus, after all, and teleportation was hardly the strangest thing about him. One moment the balcony was empty, the next he was there, solid and present, his gaze already on you.
"You're hurt," he said, his eyes sweeping over you with that clinical precision he had, taking in every torn seam and scraped knuckle.
"Just sore," you replied, settling onto the railing a few feet away from him. The evening air was cool against your skin. "Nothing serious."
"You should have called my name," he said, and there was something almost accusatory in his tone. "I would have protected you."
You couldn't resist. "Aw, were you worried?" you asked, tilting your head with a small smile.
He looked away, toward the valley. "I'm always worried about you," he said, his voice quieter than before but no less earnest. There was no deflection in it, no attempt to soften the statement with humor or distance. Just the plain truth, delivered with the kind of sincerity that made your chest tighten.
You didn't tease him further. Just sat in comfortable silence for a moment, watching the sunset paint the sky in shades of orange and pink. The wind moved through the courtyard below, carrying the scent of evening flowers and distant rain.
The innkeeper appeared on the balcony carrying a tray with soup, bread, and fresh water—the way they always did when you returned from your commissions. They were smiling warmly, clearly pleased with themselves for the thoughtfulness.
"Your partner must be hungry as well after watching you out there all day," they said kindly, setting the tray down on the small table beside you. Partner, you registered with faint amusement.
Their gaze flickered to Xiao, who was standing at the railing, and you could see them putting the pieces together in their mind. The protective stance. The way his attention never wavered from you. The obvious care. "Should I bring something for them as well?"
The words landed, and you felt Xiao go rigid beside you. You had to suppress a smile at the sheer absurdity of it. Partner. Xiao. The adeptus who spent half his time trying to convince you he didn't care about much else besides his ‘karmic duty’, who was allergic to admitting feelings, who acted like wanting someone was the most burdensome thing in the world.
"We're not—" Xiao said curtly, his voice sharp with irritation. He didn't even look at the innkeeper, just stared straight ahead. "I'm not her partner."
The innkeeper flinched slightly at his tone and quickly retreated with an apologetic bow, clearly having misjudged the situation.
And that's when you lost it.
"Oh my god," you said, not even trying to hide your grin as Xiao stood there, clearly agitated, his entire body practically vibrating with embarrassment. "Did you just—did you actually just deny that in front of everyone?"
"Don't," he said flatly, but you could already see the flush creeping up his neck. His ears were turning pink.
"Your ears are completely red right now," you continued, absolutely delighted at this rare display of genuine flustering. "I didn't know you could blush like that. It's actually kind of adorable."
"I wasn't blushing," he said, but his ears somehow got even redder at the mention of it, which rather defeated the entire purpose of his denial and made the situation even funnier.
"You denied it so fast," you said, leaning back in your chair with the kind of satisfaction that comes from genuinely embarrassing an immortal being. "I've never seen you move that quickly. Usually you're all stoic and composed, and then someone says 'partner' and suddenly you're rushing across a room like—"
"That did not occur," he muttered, and you could practically feel the irritation radiating off him in waves. “...no respect for the Adepti,” he mumbled under his breath.
"You were embarrassed," you pressed, enjoying this far too much. "Genuinely flustered. Xiao, what would be so bad about people thinking we were—"
"It's not that," he cut you off, his voice sharp with frustration. He finally looked directly at you, and there was real emotion in his expression—the kind of frustration that comes from not being able to articulate something you're desperately feeling, something that's been building up inside you. "It's just... people don't understand what I am. What being associated with me means. It's—" He stopped himself, jaw clenching hard enough that you could see the muscle work beneath his skin.
You tilted your head, your smile softening slightly as you realized this wasn't just about embarrassment anymore. "What? Being associated with you is what?"
He was quiet for a long moment. The sounds of the inn filled the space between you—the gentle murmur of other diners, the clink of dishes in the kitchen, the wind moving through the open windows. You could see the internal struggle playing out across his face, the way he was fighting to find words for something that clearly didn't have any.
When he finally spoke, his voice was lower. Quieter. Like he was admitting something he'd been trying desperately not to say, something that had been eating at him for longer than either of you probably wanted to acknowledge.
"You're the only thing I've ever wanted to keep. And that scares me more than anything."
Your breath caught. The teasing dropped from your expression entirely. Your pulse picked up in a way that had absolutely nothing to do with exhaustion or adrenaline. It was just him. Just those words, delivered with such raw honesty that you felt them like a physical thing, like they'd reached inside your chest and squeezed.
"Xiao, I—" you started, but the words wouldn't come.
He stood abruptly, like staying still was suddenly unbearable. He simply disappeared—one moment solid and present, the next gone entirely, like he'd never been there at all. You sat alone on the balcony with the untouched tray of food, heat flooding your cheeks, your heart racing so hard you were certain the entire inn could hear it.
You had absolutely no idea how to respond to that.
...i should really stop getting out of control with the word count >:(( but i get too excited writing about them 😭
Premise : Picture a parallel universe where all your blorbos are the ones expressing their profound yearning for you (yes, YOU) through the sacred arts of fanfics, fanarts and exchanging kudos. Perhaps you're a celebrity, perhaps you're just an ordinary person charming enough to have an entire fandom behind you or, you're the fictional character in this universe instead. Let's dive into this website, shall we?
Note : So uh, I typed this down with almost zero critical thinking and 100% whimsy within one hour. Character selection is random, too. Please excuse any unintentional errors <3
— THE WRITERS AND ARTISTS
Phainon has an erratic writing pattern, no one can guess what this guy will whip up in his next post. One moment he's weaving gourmet in text-form about an emotion-packed forbidden love story between knight and monarch and the next he's posted some unedited word vomit with a witty ‘no beta we die like ___’ tag. That, or it's his stick figure comics against the world. Everyone thinks he's mad funny though, so the readers forgive him.
Scaramouche who started as a HATER. What do you mean people are so obsessed with one person that they've made a digital shrine of fanfics and fanarts for them? He's going to do a thorough research on you... for the sake of ethically sourced hate of course. One thing leads to another, his ‘research’ spirals and all you need to know is that he's a diehard [Name] simp now — not that he'd admit it.
Mydei who, in great contrast to his usual self, writes some very cutesy stuff. “What if you two turned into chimeras for a day” stuff like that. He's mostly known for his chibi drawings though. Very escapism-from-a-burdened-life themed, if you want to psychoanalyze, that is.
Sunday who just can't cross the boundary of writing gentlemanly hand-kisses and heartfelt hugs in terms of physical affection, even though he's probably read hardcore smut by someone else. And even when he's writing about kissing your hand, he's squirming in his seat, wings restless enough for him to start taking flight or something. His characterization tends to be very thoughtful though so the readers don't care.
One of the very first dwellers of the website, Gepard's... unique drawings fed many people back in the days and are still remembered fondly to this date. Nowadays, he isn't as active as he used to be though.
Venti's blog is dedicated to poetry about you, everyone is low-key jealous of his rhyming skills. He's also one of the more active people, sharing others' works regularly without fail.
Dr. Ratio who becomes SICK of the amount of mischaracterization floating around about you in the fanfics and the burn from the majority of the fics not meeting his standards, so, he starts writing fanfics catering to his specific needs himself.
Alhaitham who posted like two or three 10k something word-count fics and then dipped because he lost motivation. The readers are still in mourning, because he left them on a devasting cliff-hanger. Kaveh, Cyno and Sethos have made a ‘Day X until @/vulturevolans posts’ chain in the comments. They just don't know it's Alhaitham who's the writer.
Albedo is that artist whose works you'd think would be hung on museum walls, yet, he's here posting jaw-dropping art with you as the muse. His ‘character study’ series of sketches about you is noted to be... very brainrot-worthy, let's say.
— MISC. INHABITANTS
Aventurine is the famous ‘commissioner’ guy who drops by people's inboxes with hilarious memes seeking fic or art, or just to appreciate the existing works. You can bet he's commissioned something out of every writer and artist on this site.
Childe is another commissioner. He'd most likely commission Phainon though because he knows Phainon can whip up a good flirting-through-sparring oneshot with accuracy ensured about how a sword works and all. They say Varka of Mondstadt has this fic printed and binded like a book.
Don't tell the Trailblazer and March 7th, but Dan Heng is one of the admins who manage the site. He knows every work posted here like the back of his hand. He may or may not know about the true identities of everyone who has an account on this website.
— NOTABLE READERS
Anaxa who gets exposed as a fanfic reader in class after he accidentally comments, ‘‘This looks like something that you'd find in fanfiction.[you].net.’’ while grading a few students' (read: Phainon and Castorice) essays. He got back at them with the threat of ‘If the next fic doesn't meet my standards, I'm failing you.’ though. So, no worries.
Argenti who's known as the ‘long comment guy’. He leaves whole paragraphs of praises with sparkly rosy emojis under every work on the site, without exception. It's kind of an honor to receive his comments.
Ayato, Jing Yuan, Flins, Neuvillette and Zhongli aren't really part of the dramatic crew. They tend to savour the works from a distance. They don't even have to commission the writers here, the sincere compliments and ideas they share are enough to keep the facilitation of brainrot smooth.
your soulmate has spent his whole life in constant pain, and you’ve spent your whole life feeling it—fleeting for you, unending for him. after years of hoping, you finally find him…right as he dumps piping-hot tea onto his leg and burns you both at the same time
word count. ❤︎ 11.2k words — i promise its not too bad pls give it a chance
before you read. ❤︎ female reader + female gendered terms like “miss” and “pretty lady” ; canon compliant + soulmates au ; feeling your soulmate's pain trope ; heavy references to wrio's backstory, which alludes to child exploitation and trafficking ; mild implications of sexual trauma (wrio) ; reader sits on his lap + gets carried by him ; reader has an unspecified job at the palais/court ; protected vaginal sex ; slight handjobs ; very vanilla sex ; a series of events of you and wrio navigating how to fall in love and enjoying every second of it ; alternating povs
commentary. ❤︎ happy birthday to my bewtiful boy
Your soulmate is always in pain. It’s all you’ve ever known about him.
“His back is killing him again,” you sigh in concern, rubbing your lower back for a moment.
Clorinde looks at you, raising a brow. The fortress is…well, it’s not the cleanest or brightest of places, but there is at least enough light to still make out the look she gives you. “You mean, your back is killing you, yes? You can feel it, too.”
“For just a moment,” you huff, “it’s gone very quickly. It’s not as though it troubles me for long. He, on the other hand…well, I wonder what that fool could have gotten himself into this time.”
The first time you feel what he does, you’re ten. It feels like there’s a sharp kick to your ribs, and then your back feels like it’s slammed hard against a surface just a moment later. You remember it vividly—how you cried out and hunched over. How your mother had rushed over to you and whispered words you couldn’t even hear, wiping your tears. All you knew then was that he was in pain, too. Agony. For a blinding second, you felt it with him, before it dissipated like it was nothing.
At age ten, you learn what it means to worry for someone you’ve never met. To fear for another’s safety more fiercely than a child should be capable of. To wonder about his well-being. His survival. Whatever your soulmate is going through, it can’t be safe. Can’t be the life of a normal child with a normal upbringing or a normal home. You know it’s worse for him, even if you feel it too. Where your aches vanish in seconds, his must linger—throbbing, bruising, weighing down small limbs that have no business carrying so much hurt.
At ten, you learn that not all children are created equal. Some are born to live their lives as children. And others…well, others it seems, are only there to prove how blessed those children truly are.
That is the reality of Fontaine, the nation of justice.
By the time you’re thirteen, there’s a constant ache in your muscles and your bones that comes and goes. A phantom pain that haunts you in bursts, disappearing as quickly as it comes. You can feel it—the burdens he carries. The constant soreness in his back and the tightness of his shoulder blades. Like he has nowhere proper to rest. No surface that curves along his spine and nurtures his developing body the way it should.
It isn’t until you’re fourteen that it gets bad. You’ve known for a long time now that he has a habit of getting into fights—the soreness on your knuckles only implies that he can throw a punch or two back at least now and then. But this time, it’s…frightening. Something dark. Something heavy. It’s a long fight. You can tell that much. There’s a hard tug on your hair, then a bruising grip around your throat, then a swift kick to your stomach. Finally, you feel that familiar sting in your fists. And then it stops. For two days after that, you feel nothing. It’s almost as though he’s no longer conscious, as though someone has eased the pain and left no trace of it—and then, suddenly, it returns all at once. Like he’s been thrown back into reality after two days of being blissfully removed. This time, when the pain returns, a rawness to the skin around your wrist joins the list of things that hurt.
Since the age of ten, you know that he has always been hurting. Always.
There is always some part of his body that is bruised and battered and tender from cruelty. Even as he gets older, even as the sharp injuries stop along with the fights, the sore muscles never do. The throbbing in your arms and legs, and lower back, never goes away. Like he’s been fighting, even if no one has been there to fight him back. Like he’s been keeping his strength, so no one could knock him off his feet again.
“How far is this warden’s office, exactly?” you huff, “and how do you even find anything down here? All these halls and tunnels look the same! I’m starting to wonder if agreeing to work down here was a mistake.”
“All you have to do is come down here for official Palais matters twice a week,” Clorinde hums, “and you’ll learn the tunnels just fine.”
“Ah, Miss Clorinde! You say that like you didn’t get lost for three weeks straight,” an unfamiliar voice calls ahead as she twists the door handle to enter a room.
Clorinde exhales through her nose, unimpressed. “I wasn’t lost. I was exploring alternate routes.”
“You walked into the same dead-end storeroom six times,” a man—you assume to be Wriothesley—says as he comes into view, leaning against the doorway to his office.
You pause. He’s…handsome. That’s the first thing you can think of. Second, you realize he can’t be much older than you. A lot younger than what you were anticipating for a Duke who runs a prison—a prison that he reformed all on his own, no less, from what you’ve heard. You meet his icy, blue-grey eyes, and it puts a shiver down your spine. There’s something…well, you aren’t quite sure. But there’s something about him.
And you wonder if he senses it, too, because his brows furrow for a second as he takes you in.
“I had to be sure you weren’t storing corpses in there,” she replies dryly. You blink out of your trance and look between them—apparently, this is normal. “Anyway,” Clorinde says, gesturing you forward, “this is the warden’s office, and this is Wriothesley. He’s supposed to brief you without embarrassing himself, but I make no promises.”
Wriothesley scoffs. “I’ll have you know I am an excellent host. I even made tea.”
“For your own interest, I presume,” Clorinde shoots back smoothly.
“Okay, so I made some tea for myself,” he huffs, “but I’m more than happy to share.”
He gestures for you both to come in. Clorinde gently nudges you forward once more. “I’ll leave you to it,” she says—and then she throws him a pointed look. “Try not to scare her off, Wriothesley.”
“You’re the scary one,” he calls after her, but she’s already halfway down the hall.
He shakes his head after her before he clears his throat and lets you in, gesturing for you to sit across from him as he settles into his own chair. “Right,” he says. “Formal introductions are probably overdue. I’m Wriothesley—warden of the Fortress, glorified administrator, part-time peacekeeper, full-time babysitter, whatever you would like to call it.”
Your laugh slips out before you can swallow it, and he grins, pleased. “Rest assured, you won’t have to babysit me,” you hum as you introduce yourself.
“That’s quite the relief, miss—but not to worry, nothing you’ll do down here is too complicated. Monsieur Neuvillette has given me the rundown of your responsibilities, and I’ll walk you through protocols, safety procedures, all the boring stuff—really, it’s easier than it sounds. Would you like some tea?”
“No, thank you,” you say politely.
“Well, if you don’t want any,” he sighs dramatically, “guess I’ll drink some all alone.” He reaches for his mug mid-sentence, still flipping through a folder with his other hand.
Except his grip on the handle slips. Then the glass tilts. Then—
“Ah, fuck,” he hisses, the scalding liquid burning through his pants and leaving the skin of his thigh raw.
A moment later, you feel a ripple of pain burst through…your thigh? You gasp, letting out a low hiss of, “Shit!” as you grip your upper leg.
His head jerks up, glancing at you with narrowed eyes for a moment at your gasp, seeing you clutching your own leg. He leans over the desk, concerned. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” you mumble, “just felt like I got burned….”
It hits you then.
It hits you as you notice him watching your expression, still feeling the remnants of the same burn as you on his own thigh. His eyes widen as the realization hits him at the same time as you.
“You felt that?” he gapes.
You blink as your eyes hold his gaze. Could this mean…could he be…? No, you think, perhaps it’s just a freak coincidence and…
“Hang on a second,” Wriothesley murmurs, and then he pinches the skin of his forearm hard. He grimaces at the sting, and not even a moment later, you hiss and clutch your arm as a wave of pain radiates along the perimeter of your own skin.
“What the fuck?” You glare.
He blinks again. Then he whispers, almost shaky, “Well, what do you know…you do exist.”
“Was that really necessary?” you huff.
“Sorry,” he says, rubbing his neck awkwardly. “Just…just testing a theory there.”
“You could have tested your theory without pinching so hard,” you pout, rubbing over your arm as if the pain hadn’t already faded away. The phantom linger of pain is always the worst part—the part where you can’t forget how it felt to be hurt, even if it didn’t last long. The ghost of the injustice of it all. The unfairness that torments you without so much as a bruise as proof. The reality that somewhere, the person you are meant to find is hurt, and there is proof taunting you without making itself known properly.
But now…now he isn’t just somewhere. No—he’s right here.
It dawns on you just what theory he’s tested and proven. Your head snaps up, getting a good, long look at his face before you stand and walk over, gripping the collar of his shirt and pulling him closer like you’re inspecting him more properly now.
He stares at you in bewilderment. “Um…wha—”
“Oh my god,” you gasp at the mark under his eye, “this scar—I remember this! That one felt awful—oh my god! Wait! I remember this, too,” you point to the one peeking through his collar at his neck. Without thinking, you quickly unbutton his vest and the shirt underneath, making him squawk in protest. But you pay him no mind—your hand delicately, gently, slowly tracing over the years and years and years of evidence of pain.
Pain you felt. Pain you shared. Pain you carried with him, even if only for a moment.
Your hand trembles as you take in the awful, cruel marks scattered across his skin—the raised, discolored grafts melding into the healthier patches. You ignore the way his eyes bore into your face, watching you carefully as every emotion twists across your expression.
“How could anyone…I don’t…I don’t understand,” you whisper, tracing a particularly thick scar across his left pec. You wonder if it narrowly missed his heart. Your eyes well up with tears against your will, much to your disdain.
His own eyes widen with alarm. “It’s not a big deal,” he says quickly. “They’re nothing, really! I’m strong, see?” Wriothesley flexes his arm, showing the bulging muscle of his bicep before he tries—poorly—to lighten the mood with, “Nothing’s beatin’ me down, miss.”
“Are you joking? These hurt,” you hiss. “Don’t pretend they didn’t! I felt them all too, in case you’ve forgotten!”
His face drops at that—guilt sprawling across every feature. (It’s a beautiful, handsome face. He’s gorgeous, and you wonder if he’s ever been made to feel that way. Even if only for a moment.)
“I’m sorry,” he whispers, “I never…if it were up to me, you would’ve never felt—”
“Never mind me,” you sniffle. “What in the Archons’ names have you been dealing with all your life?”
Your hands gently pull off his vest and the shirt underneath fully, giving you a proper look at the full map of suffering carved into him. It should be a bit unprofessional, really, to undress your new colleague the moment you meet—but, well, the circumstances are a bit unique here. And he just sort of lets you without protesting, this time.
Your breath hitches as soon as you see his bare upper body. His torso is a constellation of old wounds—some thin and faded with age, others thicker, more jagged, warped in ways that make your stomach twist. Every scar is proof that this nation does not serve justice the way its divine nature intends. No one, especially not a child of his age when these injuries had marked him, should have endured such cruelty under the Hydro Archon’s watch.
You lift trembling fingers to his arm, tracing a long, uneven scar that snakes along the front. “This one,” you whisper, voice cracking, “I remember waking up in the middle of the night because of this. I thought—Archons, I thought someone had sliced me open.”
Wriothesley winces—not from your touch, but from the look on your face. His hands hover like he wants to steady you, but he doesn’t have the courage to fully reach.
“Ah, that,” he mumbles. “It…it wasn’t that deep. Just…caught a knife the wrong way, that’s all.”
You give him a watery, withering look. “Don’t you dare lie to me.”
“That was years ago,” he insists. “It’s over now! I’m…we’re okay.”
“I was always okay,” you bury your face in your hands. “All this time, I was okay, and you weren’t. If we’d…found each other sooner…or if—if maybe we’d tried to communicate somehow…perhaps if we’d even tried to—”
His hands gently wrap around your wrists, tugging them away from your face before pulling your hunched figure forward so you’re no longer bending awkwardly over him. Instead…you’re on his lap.
His lap.
Sure, he’s your soulmate, and of course, you’ve always felt a great deal of care for this stranger you’ve been bound to for years, but never really known, but you only met him not too long ago. And now you’re sitting on his lap.
You gasp, flustered as you stammer, “W-what are y-you—”
“Hey,” he hums softly, tilting your face to look at him. His hand cradles your jaw—gentle, delicate, impossibly careful from someone who’s known nothing but hardship at the hands of others. Your eyes lock with his as he murmurs, “I’m okay, sweetheart. See? I’m sitting here in the flesh right in front of you…if that’s proof.”
“Guess…guess it is,” you swallow thickly.
“Y’know? It’s strange,” he admits, voice low.
“What is?”
“Finally having you here. And not just some weird temporary feeling every now and then.”
You hum, studying his face. He really is young for a Duke. Handsome, sure, but too young to carry the burdens that he does. Then again, you think that might have been true all his life. “Strange as in good?”
He huffs a quiet laugh, eyes crinkling at the corners. “Yes. Very good.”
Your fingers have begun tracing along a scar on his shoulder slowly, without even realizing it. He glances down at your hand, then back to you, lips curling into a loose, amused grin. You quickly stop the movement, clearing your throat as you mumble, “This is not professional work behavior, you know.”
“You took my shirt off,” he points out.
“And you pulled me onto your lap!”
He tactfully ignores that part and hums, “You know…I think you should come by outside of official business. That way we’re not interrupted by duties and all.”
Your heart thumps hard enough that you’re sure he feels it. “Is this your way of asking me on a date? Because then it’s a little lackluster.”
He shrugs, giving you a boyishly charming smile. “Are you gonna turn me down? After I waited this long to find you?”
“Guess not,” you sigh dramatically, “perhaps I can spare some time here and there. In these…dark, dingy halls.”
“Your kindness moves me, miss soulmate,” he beams.
You stare for a moment. (You should be embarrassed that you do, but he stares right back, and he doesn’t seem to be complaining about the circumstances. You can’t help but get lost in him—it’s almost a force that’s beyond your control. Perhaps beyond his, too.)
Finally, you blink and force yourself out of whatever trance he has you in. “I should get up…” you say, mildly embarrassed. You try to move—but he has one arm around your waist, keeping you in place as he gives you an unhappy frown.
“What’s the rush? Not like either of us has to be anywhere.”
“This is unprofessional! And entirely not the sort of position anyone should see the warden of this place in if they walk—”
“Well, that’s the fun part,” he gives you a confident, wolfish little grin, “no one walks into a warden’s office without knocking.”
“I’m gonna write that in my report,” you warn, “that you use unlawful tactics for intimidation and control.”
“The fortress is an autonomous region,” he shoots back.
“It’s still a partnership!”
“Yes,” he grins, eyeing you softly, “I suppose it is.”
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Wriothesley knows he’s not very lucky in most departments. The soulmate one, however? He likes to think he got pretty damn lucky.
You’re pretty and funny, and you have a good head on your shoulders. That much is evident, and most people would be thrilled just by that. But you have other endearing things about you—things he tallies up over the weeks as he gets to know you and keeps locked away in his memories.
You can’t drink liquids if they’re piping hot, but somehow, food is not a problem. You like flowers even if you’re allergic to half of them. You’re passionate about how much you dislike Fontaine’s silly, unnecessary laws. You work at the Palais because it makes you feel useful. You insist you can’t decide what your favorite color is, but you unknowingly always seem to favor a certain one. You always insist you don’t want anything when he offers to pay, but you’re very bad at hiding your excitement when he buys you a pastry anyway.
He could keep a list. He doesn’t need to write them down because his mind could not forget these little things even if he wanted, but he could keep a list. A list of everything he learns day by day, week by week, month by month.
“I thought you hated bananas,” he raises an amused brow. You sit across from him in the bakery, happily slicing through the banana bread he bought on his mora.
“I do,” you argue, “but banana bread doesn’t count. It makes the banana work—and there are chocolate chips, see?”
He doesn’t say anything—just stares and takes in the sight of you. All of you. You.
“Want another slice?”
“Oh no, thank you,” you shake your head, “I’m good, really.”
(In the end, he gets you another. You pretend like he’s gone out of his way for nothing, but you eat it with no complaints, a happy gleam in your eye. He wonders if he’ll be blessed by the Gods enough to buy you sweets until all of his hair turns grey.)
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It takes a few months before Wriothesley talks about his past. You work at the Palais and sift through legal documents often enough that coming across his trial’s records is not difficult business. But you wait for him to tell you on his own terms.
The first time he brings it up is also the first time you fuck him. It’s been a long time coming—you want him so badly, it almost hurts. You think about him all the time, and you’ve seen him in enough instances without a shirt that your imagination has begun to run a little wild. You want Wriothesley, and if you can just find out if he wants you too, you can have him, you’re sure.
So you set out to find out.
“You wanna make out?” you ask from the couch in his office as he does paperwork.
He pauses, doing a double-take. “Sorry?”
“You and me,” you gesture between the two of you with a finger, “do you wanna make out? Like kiss and stuff with our tongues and—”
“I know what making out is, thank you!” he interjects, neck flushing a little, faint trace of red, “We’ve done it before, I’m not clueless. I’m just astounded by your forthcomingness, is all.”
You pout. “Well, I’m bored. And you look very handsome right now. So? Making out—yes or no?”
He drops his pen as he stares at you. It rolls off the desk. He makes no move to retrieve it. “Sweetheart,” he says slowly, like he’s talking to a toddler, “you can’t just look at a guy while he’s trying to finish disciplinary reports and ask if he wants to swap spit.”
“Why not? If you don’t want to, you can just say so.”
“I—” He blinks. Once. Twice. His ears are also red now. “I didn’t say I didn't want to.”
You grin excitedly, walking over to him with a little bounce in your step as you lean your hip against his desk, arms crossed in victory. “So you do want to.”
“I didn’t say that either.” He rubs a hand down his face. “We’re in my office.”
“So?” You shrug. “We’ve made out here before—you didn’t care then. Why start now?”
He glares, but it’s the useless kind—more fluster than defiance. “W-well, that was…after everyone was in their bunks for curfew!”
“Mhm.” You take a slow step closer. “So what about that time we made out behind some pipes in the middle of the day? Curfew only matters selectively, huh?” His breath stutters. Very slightly. But you notice. You push a finger under his chin, tilting his head up so he has to look at you. His pupils are blown—just a little, but it’s enough to knock a spark of heat straight into your spine. “You can tell me no,” you murmur. “Just say the word.”
“M’not ever going to say no to kissing you,” he mumbles, pulling you onto his lap, “you know that good and well, you little troublemaker.”
“Troublemaker?” you gasp, “I’ve no criminal history, your grace!”
“For now,” he snorts, “may have to take you into court myself for the damages you do down here.”
Before you can protest, he leans in and closes the gap, kissing you soft and sweet with a little edge of desperation. You gasp, and his lips move against yours again—harder this time, as if the first kiss has cracked open some dam to his self-control, and everything he’s been holding back is now spilling over at once. His hands slide to your waist, fingers digging in just enough to make your breath hitch. He pulls you flush against him, swallowing the small sound you make as he kisses you deeper, fuller, like he’s been starved for this—starved for you.
You fist the front of his shirt, dragging him closer, and he groans into your mouth, low and rough. The sound shoots straight through you and goes straight to your core. He tilts your head back, cradling it as his mouth slots against yours impatiently. When his tongue grazes yours, you answer him with a low moan, wrapping your arms around his neck and tugging at his hair.
He makes a sharp, pleased noise at that. You feel his smile against your lips—brief and crooked, making something between your legs ache. “Like that, huh?”
“Be quiet,” you huff. He only laughs before deepening the kiss again, his mouth claiming yours with an amused smile.
Suddenly, an arm wraps tightly around your waist and hoists you closer—you can’t focus on it too much with the way he’s nipping at your bottom lip. It’s not until your back hits the wall that you even realize that he’s been moving you, walking to the short distance to the wall behind his desk with his arm curled around you, holding your weight like it’s nothing. One of his hands fiddles with something behind you—a click later, and you realize it’s a doorknob.
The door opens, and he quickly strides in with you in his grip. You pull away, panting, glancing around as you take in this new room. A bedroom, you realize—his bedroom. His gauntlets are there, in a corner, tools sprawled around them from the last time he spent tinkering away at them. You take in the simplicity of it, how there isn’t anything in here apart from his essentials. The bare necessities.
“Is this your room?” you whisper.
“Didn’t think I slept in the bunks with the inmates, did you?” he murmurs, gently setting you down on his bed as he hovers over you. “What’s the point of being a duke if I don’t get at least a few perks?”
“You should decorate the place more,” you murmur, “I’ll help.”
“Yeah?” he pecks your lips, “awfully nice of you, sweetheart.”
You tug him down by the collar, chasing his mouth when he breaks away to speak. He huffs a laugh, breath warm against your lips, and then he’s kissing you again—messy, hungry, more unrestrained now, like he’s finally given himself permission to want this as badly as you do.
His teeth catch your lower lip.
Your answering gasp is all the invitation he needs to bring his hand to your thigh, rubbing up and down the side of it as he groans into your mouth roughly when you tug at his hair some more. “Was this your plan all along?” he rasps, “get me in your bed?”
“This is your bed,” you point out, “and you brought me here.”
“You have a smart little mouth,” he grunts, angling your jaw up as he fixes you with a playfully stern look, “that’s insubordination, miss.”
“I think I need to be disciplined, your grace,” you say, giving him a cheeky little wink.
He huffs out a disbelieving laugh, looking at you in awe and wonder before he shakes his head and brings your arms up, pinning them over your head as he presses kisses along your jaw. “You,” he murmurs between kisses, “are a handful.”
The moment he pulls back enough actually to look at you, though, something shifts. His breath hitches, barely perceptible, but there. His eyes glaze over with something as they take in the sight of you under him—you can’t quite make out what it is, but you know it makes you feel important. Special. Some sort of feeling that no one has quite made you feel before. Then his hands, firm a moment ago, loosen just slightly around your wrists, as if the reality of holding you like this suddenly hits him all at once.
You watch him swallow. His gaze flickers from your eyes to your mouth, then lower, before he willfully forces him to look up and direct his gaze to your forehead so he’s not looking into your eyes or downwards along your body.
“What?” you whisper, a small smile curling at your lips.
“Nothing.” He clears his throat, though it comes out rougher than he means it to. “Just… you’re—” he cuts himself off abruptly, the unfinished thought hanging between you. He releases your wrists, carefully, like you’re something fragile that he’s only just realized he’s strong enough to break. His palms settle instead at your waist, hesitant in a way they weren’t before.
You tilt your head, watching him with growing curiosity. “You okay?”
“Course I am,” he huffs. “Just noticed you’re…very pretty. That’s all.”
“Only now?” you pout—but your lips are already curled into a cocky little grin.
“Stop that,” he grumbles.
“Stop what?”
“You know what,” he huffs.
You giggle, tugging him down by his stupidly loose tie and bringing his forehead against yours. His eyes are always icy blue, but they’re the brightest pools of warmth you’ve ever swam in, all the same. “You’re getting shy on me, you know.”
“Am not,” he argues.
“Are too,” you grin.
“Nope,” he all but pouts. His breath hitches as you untie his tie and fling it somewhere, slowly working at the buttons of his vest while he lets out a shaky breath over you. “You’re…sure about this?”
“I’m always sure about you,” you smile softly. He closes his eyes, breath stuttering for a moment as you pull off his shirt and vest, admiring the hard planes of muscle and the broadness of his physique. “You’re pretty, too, by the way.”
“You’re killing me,” he rasps.
Undressing is an awkward ordeal. But endearing. Wriothesley struggles to kick off his boots, and unclasping your bra takes him a moment before he can tug it off—but finally, in between kisses and soft, amused giggles and breathy, embarrassed chuckles, you’re both bare and tangled in his sheets.
He’s hard—his cock is thick and curved, and the tip leaks with the evidence of his arousal in the form of pre cum. You bring a hand between your bodies, gently smearing it with your thumb like a lubricant while he shivers and lets out a soft groan.
“Fuck,” he hisses out, breathing harder as you wrap your hand around his girth. He stares down at where your touch meets him—and he’s more than a little dizzy by the way your hand can barely wrap around the full width of his thickness.
“It’s…so big,” you murmur, staring in awe and disbelief.
“You can’t just say that,” he groans.
“Sorry,” you giggle, biting your lip as you give him an innocent smile.
“You’re not sorry even a little,” he huffs. Then his eyes flutter closed and his lips part in a low, shaky moan as you slowly move your hand and drag your palm along his length, stroking languidly while he buries his head into your neck.
“I am,” you insist, kissing the side of his head sweetly, “here, I’ll even make it up to you.”
“Ngh—fuck,” he curses as your pace quickens, the friction of your hand gliding over the sensitive skin of his erection making his breaths come out unevenly. He’s pretty when he feels good—and Wriothesley is pretty and easy on the eye any time, of course, but when he’s bare and vulnerable and trusts you to witness him at his rawest, he is particularly beautiful.
Your eyes can’t help but keep themselves glued on him—and he can’t help but notice and get more flustered.
“Stop staring,” he grunts.
“What am I meant to look at then?” you huff, “the wall?”
“Close your eyes.”
“You’re unbelievable,” you shake your head with a snort.
There’s a building ache between your bare legs, a wetness leaking and spreading down your inner thighs as you watch pleasure sprawl over his features and hear the sweet, delicate sounds of approval he makes when you touch him particularly right.
Finally, his hand gently grasps onto your wrist as he stops you, panting and gritting his jaw as he murmurs, “O-okay—think…think we should get to…you know.”
“What?” you tease.
“The main part,” he glares weakly—and then, he spreads your legs and takes a closer look at your wet, needy cunt. “You want this just as badly—I can literally see it. Don’t be so smug, sweetheart.”
“Of course I want you,” you hum, “why wouldn’t I?” He shivers at that. Gives you a dazed look before he leans in and kisses you—almost like it’s more to distract himself than it is to distract you.
(Wriothesley is endearing when he’s flustered. This is the conclusion that sex with him draws you to. When he fumbles through his side drawer to pull out a condom, and when he struggles to open the package, you are hopelessly endeared. And when he gives you a half-hearted glare as you giggle, you realize how endearing he also is when he is grumpy.)
“Ready?” he whispers, eyeing you good and hard once he finally lines up with your entrance. You nod, and he mumbles, “I need words, please, sweetness.”
“Ready,” you sigh fondly, “I want you. M’not backing out.” He takes a moment to look at you properly. Like he has to be sure you’re here and want this. With him. Wriothesley has brought you pain before—against his will, he’s made you ache and throb with soreness and harsh stings. He makes you ache again—this time, though, it’s a little different. It’s not because you carry his pain with him. It’s because that look he gives you makes your chest tighten and your heart ache all on its own accord. “I want you, Wrio,” you breathe, cupping his cheeks, “swear I do.”
Only then does he close his eyes, smiling softly as he nods and murmurs, “Lucky me. Got you all to myself—the universe said so. You’re all mine.”
“All yours,” you breathe.
He presses the thick tip of his cock along your entrance, rubbing along your folds and collecting your wetness as you shiver. You gasp, and he chuckles softly at the fragile sound, pecking your lips as he murmurs, “Barely even done anything yet, sweetheart.”
“Then do something,” you click your teeth, wrapping your legs around his waist and pulling him closer, pressing his pelvis closer.
He swallows, whispering, “You’ll tell me if I hurt you, yeah?”
“You’ll feel it anyway,” you murmur, “quit your worry-warting and move.”
“So demanding, miss soulmate,” he chuckles.
And then—finally—he pushes past your folds, pressing into you slowly, carefully, delicately. Wriothesley has a reputation. It’s a bit out of his control—people tend to see a prison warden as rough and strict, and people often mistake him for a brute with just a glance. You know better. You know him to be soft and sensitive and so caring, it’s almost unfair that he spends his time under waves of the ocean instead of up in the real world, where he can share his warmth. You know him as the kind man who feeds squirrels in Fontaine and pets stray cats in the alleyways. You know him as the gentle guy who holds doors open for children and lets them cut in line at the ice cream shop. You know him as the delicate boy who never wants to hurt you with his strength when he already feels waves of guilt for having brought you so much hurt all these years without meaning to.
When he sinks into your tight, welcoming cunt, and stretches you open, you wonder how you went this long without him. How you survived without knowing him. How you lived this long without being tangled in his arms and being connected to him deep and close.
He feels so right—so good. He curves into you so perfectly, stretches you apart, opens you up with his thickness, and presses the blunt head of his against a delicate, sensitive spot in your walls that makes your head spin.
“W-wrio…” your breath hitches, “f-fuck—so deep,” you whine.
“And you’re…so tight,” he groans, “shit, sweetheart—never felt so good before.”
You never dwelled on the reality of soulmates. Your mother and father were lucky enough to meet each other—you know that soulmates are real before Wriothesley’s pain is ever yours because you watch them love. You watch them nurture you, the byproduct of that love, with so much care and diligence. You don’t need the proof of your own soulmate to know that they are real and they exist.
For the longest time, you know nothing about Wriothesley apart from the fact that he exists. You’ve only ever known that he was yours. That one day, if you were lucky, you’d find him. It never occurred to you that once you did find him, you’d realize how incomplete you’ve always been. How everything was there, but there was no one to share it with. Now that he’s here, pressed into you deep into you, you wonder how you’ll ever disconnect. How you’ll ever part from feeling so whole and complete.
His hips move—he pulls almost all the way out before slamming back into you, hard and rough but still careful enough that it doesn’t hurt you. It blinds you with a pleasure that burns through your spine and finds every nerve. It makes a soft, pleasant ache start to form at the pit of your stomach, building up stronger and stronger with every roll of his hips and every drag of his cock along your walls.
The friction makes you sob, curling your nails into his shoulders as you whimper, “S’good, Wrio—so…so good, please don’t stop.”
“Now why would I do that?” he grunts, moaning when your walls flutter around him and squeeze tight. “Why would I stop feeling my precious girl?”
Your head spins more at that—precious girl. Wriothesley is smooth about calling you things like that. He calls you something affectionate so casually that sometimes you almost mistake your own name for a sweet, loving pet name. Sweetheart. Sweetness. Precious girl. Sometimes, when he’s feeling particularly sentimental, he calls you honey. When he’s in a playful mood, he likes to say miss soulmate. (You ask him why he says it once, and he tells you, it’s because I like reminding you you’re my soulmate. And I like saying it out loud, too. Makes it more real.)
You like it when he calls you things that remind you that you’re his. You like being his. It’s your favorite thing to be—the thing that takes burdens off your shoulder and lets you simply exist without having something to prove. Something to offer. You like being so easy for someone to care about you, it feels like it happens for no other reason than just because it’s natural to do so.
“Faster,” you plead.
“Anything you want, precious,” he breathes. “You—hah—you are so beautiful. You know that?”
A hand moves up your thigh and travels to that delicate spot between your legs—and then you throw your head back and mewl as he finds your clit and rubs circles with that rough, calloused pad of his thumb. You’re sensitive—every brush against the bundle of nerves sends a jolt of pleasure that has you hurdling towards your end.
“Close,” you rasp, “Wrio…m’so c-close.”
“Yeah, sweetheart? Is that right?” he asks, his own voice shaky enough that you gather it must be the case for him, too. His pace has become sloppy enough that he must be near the edge himself, as well.
“Mhm,” you nod, biting your lip and letting out a soft, drawn-out moan as he sinks deeper into you and presses right against your sweet spot.
“Me…me too—come with me, okay? Want…want you to finish with me,” he pleads. His thumb is merciless against your clit—it rubs smooth, unpausing circles and builds you up to your release with one, then two, and then a third thrust of his hips.
Your vision all but goes white as you fall apart. Your back arches, and he curls an arm around you and brings you flush against him, kissing you rough and hard and needy. You swallow each other’s sounds as your walls flutter around him and his cock twitches inside of you, letting warm rope after rope of thick seed spill into the plastic that separates you.
“Fuck,” you both hiss.
“Sweetheart,” he breathes, “you…you’re so perfect. Know that? Huh?” He kisses along your jaw. They’re wet, messy kisses, pressed into your skin with a drunken, hazy sense of control as you milk his cock for every last drop of his release.
“C’mere,” you beg, “closer.”
“M’right here,” he murmurs, “fuck, m’not going anywhere. Ever.”
And then he collapses beside you once he’s fucked you both through the last few waves of your orgasms. He pulls you against him, wrapping two strong, muscled arms around you and tangling your body with his.
“That was nice,” you whisper.
“That was your plan all along,” he accuses, “you never wanted to just make out.”
You giggle, beaming up at him. “Guilty. Will I serve a sentence, your grace?”
“Life in prison,” he gives you a faux stern look, “directly under my supervision.”
“Doesn’t sound so bad,” you hum, “serving down here with you. I think I’d live.”
For a while, it’s quiet. You bask in the afterglow of him and you and the skin that melts you both together. And then, his voice carries through the space that hardly exists between you both.
“I served down here,” he mumbles. “Bet you already knew that—you probably have better access to legal documents than me.”
“I’ve seen a paper or two,” you admit.
“You’re rather calm regarding my history,” he says carefully.
“I guess I just…always had a feeling things played out the way they did. I remember it,” you whisper, tracing the skin of his chest, feeling the scars from memory. “The night you killed your parents. I felt it, y’know?”
His breath stills. You’re sure he’s not surprised—it was nothing short of vicious, the fight he’d put up. You’re sure he remembers better than you how it felt in every nerve ending. You don’t think anyone could ever forget.
The truth is that you’d known about his court case long before you pieced together he was your soulmate. It’s a case most people in your line of work know about. A popular case that opened up a popular investigation into chains of corrupted institutions for children. Places led and controlled by people who have intentions to do anything but keep the less fortunate children of Fontaine safe. Most people in your field consider him a hero of sorts—a boy who sacrificed his freedom to make a change the justice system wouldn’t.
You think Wriothesley is troubled. He was as a child, and in some ways, he is now. You wish he could have been like other boys and girls, that he could be like other men and women. You wish life was kinder to him so that his circumstances never had to feel like the extremes were the only way out.
You wish Wriothesley could have had a good life. You wish Fontaine and those who uphold its justice hadn’t failed him every chance he had to get one.
He doesn’t look at you for a while. His gaze stays focused on the ceiling as he swallows. “The night I killed my foster parents maybe wasn’t my proudest moment.”
“Maybe not,” you agree, moving your hand to grab his, lacing your fingers together. “But I think you’ve had a proud moment or two since then.”
He stays silent. For a long time, Wriothesley is silent. You don’t think he’ll say anything else, so you close your eyes, slowly drifting off to sleep against his chest when his voice rumbles in your ear. Low. Hesitant.
“I don’t regret it,” is all he says.
You crack an eye open, tilting your head up. “Killing them?”
“Setting the kids free,” he corrects. “No one else would have done it. That was the only way I could think of. I felt like they deserved it.”
“How about now?”
“Well. Still think they deserve it,” he mumbles. “But…I would do it differently now.”
“That’s because you can,” you point out, “you have the connections and the resources to do things the ‘right’ way.”
“Think so?” he cracks a grin—small, but there.
“I do believe you hold some authority, you grace,” you chuckle. He doesn’t say anything else—just laughs softly and kisses your forehead. You fall asleep lulled by his fingers along your back and the smell of his faint cologne.
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Wriothesley has a habit of throwing himself into the ring when things get hard. It was the only outlet he had down here in the fortress for the most part when he served—the only way for him to break a sweat and get his energy poured into something. And maybe get in a few good hits to anyone who’d been giving him a hard time. But, well…some habits just stick. They’re hard to grow out of.
Nowadays, being in the ring is more or less a matter of keeping in shape. At least, that’s what he tells himself, anyway—he knows it’s no coincidence that when his mind is particularly heavy, he spends more time hitting a punching bag with taped fists. He’s always had a high pain tolerance. The sore muscles in his arms and the sting of his knuckles ground him half the time more than they do hurt him.
He wonders if he’s grown accustomed to pain because it’s been the only constant in his life, or if it’s because he simply deserves it.
“Wrio,” he hears a soft voice call, pausing him from throwing his next punch. He drops his form, straightening his back as he looks over his shoulder. It’s you, of course. It had to be even before he’d registered your voice—only one person is allowed at the pankration ring at this hour (him) and only one person gets away with breaking his rules (you).
“What’re you doin’ here, sweetheart?” he tilts his head a few times to crack his neck, “you’re supposed to be in bed.”
“So are you.”
“Got a little restless, is all,” he says vaguely.
“You’re tired,” you raise an unimpressed brow, “and that poor bag has had enough—it never did anything to you.”
“I’m not tired yet,” he denies. (He is. Even for his standards, his arms and shoulders are rather tense and sore. He’s pushed himself further than usual. He bets you would know because you can feel it.)
“You can’t lie to me when I can feel the same things as you,” you huff, rubbing sleep from your eyes. “You’re too young to have stiff shoulders, y’know.”
His eyes soften with guilt before he lets out a heavy sigh and lets his shoulders drop. You walk over, standing behind him as your arms wrap around his midsection and your nose buries into the bare skin of his back.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” he lies.
“Wriothesley,” you say flatly.
“Just a busy week,” he says half-heartedly. “Seriously, I’m fine. So…just drop it.”
“Okay,” you sigh, too tired from your sleep being interrupted to put up a proper fight. You kiss his back, and he melts a little at the gesture, limbs loosening up even more. “You’ll talk to me if you need to?”
“Yeah,” he whispers, “I’ll come find you if I need it.”
Wriothesley is aware that you know he won’t. Not of his own free will. He doesn’t talk about his feelings or share his burdens because then he’s no longer in control of his image. The less strong of an image he has, the more innocent and frail he seems. The more innocent and frail he seems, the more likely it is that he’ll be taken advantage of.
It’s not that Wriothesley doesn’t trust you, or that he thinks you’ll take advantage of him. You won’t. He trusts that much. You’re the only good thing that’s his. But muscle memory is muscle memory.
Some habits just stick. And they’re hard to grow out of.
You gently shuffle to stand in front of him, wrapping your arms to rest around his neck now. His hands find your hips. “Let’s go to bed,” you whisper, pulling him down so his forehead rests against yours. “If you’re really that energetic, I’ll tire you out some other way.”
“Yeah?” he cracks a grin.
“Mmh,” you hum.
“Then lead the way, sweetness,” he chuckles.
(In the end, he’s out like a light as soon as his head finds that comfortable place against your chest. He’s sure you’ll tease him for it as soon as he feels himself start to drift off, but he thinks it’s worth it when he feels your fingers card through his hair.)
────────────────────────
Sometimes, you forget Wriothesley can feel your pain just as much as you feel his. Your whole life has been spent so focused on how often he endures suffering compared to you, that you forget to focus on your own.
He doesn’t forget to focus on you, though. He never does. He’s one deep scowl and a hand on his hips away from making that known.
“With a headache like that, I’m surprised you’re still conscious, let alone finishing paperwork,” he clicks his teeth.
You glance up and give him a tired look when you register his words.
“I just need to finish these up and get them out of the way so they don’t haunt me—”
“No, you need sleep. And maybe a proper meal,” he interrupts.
“But—”
“No buts. Let’s go.” Before you can protest any further, he has you lifted and settled in his arms as he drags you to your bed from your desk.
You learn quickly on that Wriothesley doesn’t like spending nights apart. He’s grown too used to your presence. On nights you can’t come down to the Fortress, his simple solution is just to come spend the night up at the surface. You can’t pretend like you aren’t relieved by his presence yourself—one night without him makes for a terrible night of sleep. And maybe a worse headache the next day.
He shuffles through your apartment with a sense of familiarity that makes your heart full, even if your head is pounding. You nuzzle into the crook of his neck as he walks with you carefully tucked against him.
“You give me headaches,” he mumbles, “literally.”
“S’only fair,” you yawn, “you’ve put me through worse.” Your words have no bite to them. Nothing more than a good-natured quip. You’d go through worse in a heartbeat for him.
He smiles fondly, sighing as he kisses the side of your head. “Yeah,” he whispers, “guess that’s true.”
────────────────────────
Sex is a complicated topic for Wriothesley.
It’s a topic he’s been thinking about more lately. The more that sex happens between the two of you, the more he’s starting to realize that it’s a complicated topic for him.
Although if he’s being honest, what he engages with you can hardly be considered just sex. It’s intimacy. Wriothesley has never partaken in intimacy before you. Sex, though? Plenty of times. Sometimes, it was more for survival than his own desires, and sometimes it was simply because he was a growing, curious boy with needs and wants. Sometimes, a quick fuck got him what he needed for survival much quicker when he was still a prisoner. Sometimes, a quick fuck got him through his pent-up emotions better than sitting and processing them.
Whatever the case may be, Wriothesley has always had just sex because it was just that. Sex that has a purpose—some purposes less sanitized than others, but a purpose all the same.
But being intimate is something different from having just sex. When Wriothesley is having just sex, he can put on an air of cockiness. He can play into what people want, slip into whatever role they carved out for him—innocently sweet and naive, or dangerously charming and experienced, sometimes even a little rough and a little wicked. He can wear confidence like a mask, sharpen his smile into something rakish, tilt his chin just right, and say the things he knows people want to hear.
He can disconnect. He can keep his heart out of it. He can survive it.
Intimacy, though? Intimacy is different. It demands that he stay honest, not perform. That he be soft. That he be seen.
With you, there’s no room for the cocky smirk or the confident swagger. And he tries—he really, really tries—but the moment your hands are on him with care instead of expectation, the moment you kiss him like he’s precious instead of convenient, the moment your eyes are fond instead of just lustful, his whole front crumbles.
The mask doesn’t fit. The persona slips. The smooth, practiced words get stuck in his throat.
He’s clumsy with intimacy in a way he never was with just sex. His touches hesitate. His breath stutters when your fingers thread through his hair. He keeps searching your face like he’s waiting for the moment you change your mind, like he’s terrified you’ll see too much of him and walk away. Vulnerability of this kind turns him quiet, nervous, almost boyish in a way he hates himself for, and yet can’t seem to stop.
With you, he’s not performing. With you, he can’t.
You’re not just hoping he touches you for your own pleasure—and you don’t want to touch him back just to indulge your own wicked fantasies. You care about how he feels, how it is for him more than it is for you. You care about his experience with affection and gentleness.
The more that you and Wriothesley are intimate, the more he opens himself up to gentleness. And Wriothesley has never known what to do with gentleness.
He doesn’t know how to accept it. Not ever since the day he realized it came with a heavy price that he could never afford. (And how could he afford you? You are so patient and happy to have him, so willing despite knowing his past and the horrors of his crimes, despite enduring the agony he put you through physically. Your affection, of all things, should come with the highest of prices.)
“Did it bother you growing up?” he whispers, tracing your hip bone with his thumb as you lie against his bare chest. You like cuddling after intimacy. He likes it, too. You curl against him in his dark bedroom, bare and sleepy and satisfied, and for a moment, he feels normal. Like you’re not with him under the literal ocean. Like he’s not an ex-convict who now sees over other convicts. Like he’s not the guy who made you feel sharp kicks and deep bruises all your life.
“What?” you hum.
“You know what,” he huffs. You give him an earnestly confused shake of your head, and he sighs. He decides that perhaps you are being honest and not purposely dense just to make him properly communicate his feelings. “The pain,” he mutters. “It didn’t bother you that I was always bringing you pain?”
“It did,” you say bluntly. He tenses under you. You gently press a kiss to his chest as if to soothe him, like you’ve already read his mind. “Not for the reasons you might think, though.”
“Oh?” he arches a brow, “then do enlighten me, miss soulmate. How exactly did it bother you that I’m not gathering here?”
You roll your eyes. It’s affectionate.
Wriothesley misses that. He misses affection in the simple forms he once knew—Mother’s fond eye-roll, the way she’d sigh and grab a handkerchief to clean the chocolate smeared at the corner of his mouth after Father brought home treats. The way she’d bend down and wipe the smudges away as she’d gently scold, You’ve got to be more careful, ▇▇! Heavens know what other people would think if they saw you so filthy. Whatever would you do without me? The way she’d sigh and pull him into a hug, kissing his cheeks when he’d pouted at being lectured.
Mother was always so soft—he still wonders, sometimes, how anyone could possibly fake so much gentleness. Some of it had to have been real, right? Just a fraction? A small morsel? It had to be, hadn’t it? Even if he wasn’t worth loving long enough to keep, he must have at least been worth loving for that temporary time she showed him that affection.
If only he were worth more than a pretty sum of mora. If only he could have made Mother fond enough of him that keeping him was worth more than selling him off like some animal on the market, a piece of meat to butcher and cut open and devour with filthy, disgusting hands.
Affection has always cost him something. Some price that is not worth paying. His innocence, his freedom, his life. You are the only person who affords him affection without any price. And how funny, he thinks—that the one person capable of it is the one person meant for him, decided by fate. He wonders then, that if there was no such thing as fate and divinity, if he’d be worthy of any affection at all. If you are the one person the world has granted him because it is their begrudging duty to assign him another half. If you alone are a miracle that he was lucky enough to be allowed by Celestia, as they smiled down on him out of a single, twisted instance of mercy.
He can’t dwell on it too long before you’re cupping his cheek and pulling him out of his thoughts, pressing a kiss to his lips. His breath hitches for a moment—he forgets sometimes that can do this whenever he wants. He can kiss you. Claim your affection. Feel the proof of it for himself. He presses into you harder, desperately trying to swallow down as much of it for free as he can in case one day, this too has a price that is out of his means.
“It never bothered me to carry your pain,” you whisper against his mouth, “though I won’t lie—it did hurt,” you chuckle. You peck his lips before he can say anything in response. “It bothered me that it was your reality. I couldn’t understand why it was like that—how different we were.”
“You shouldn’t have had to try to understand it,” he mumbles, “if you weren’t stuck to me, you’d have—”
“Mwah,” you cut him off, pressing a loud kiss to his mouth. “Don’t say that, silly. I’m not stuck with you.”
He blinks before he huffs out a soft snort, shaking his head in disbelief. “Silencing me with a kiss isn’t going to—”
“Mwah!” You kiss him again, theatrically louder this time as you giggle.
“If you keep kissing me when I say self-deprecating things, it’ll only condition me to say them more,” he warns.
“Then I’ll kiss you after you say anything,” you hum. “Then you’ll only bother saying the nice things since you might as well.”
“I don’t know if that’s how it works—”
“Mwah!” You kiss again.
He laughs, pulling you impossibly closer before he tilts your face up, cupping your cheek with a large hand that practically swallows your face entirely as he kisses you. Hard. You hum against his lips, eyes fluttering shut as you kiss him back. As if kissing him is enjoyable. As if someone like him was worthy of your time and affection and touch. As if someone of his status is worth tangling your life with, despite being who he is and where he is from.
“Wrio,” you murmur, trying to pull away from his needy lips.
“Mmh,” he mumbles, bridging the gap every time you try to create it. You giggle, gently stroking through his hair before delicately tugging at the strands to pry him away. He caves, sighing before he pulls away, grumpy as he stares at you, dazed. “What?” he frowns.
“I would have taken your pain for myself if I could,” you whisper, “if it meant you didn’t have to live like that. Feeling it was never the issue. You should know that.”
“You’re insane,” he breathes, “now c’mere.”
He moves to kiss you again—but instead, you cup both of his cheeks and force him to look you in the eyes. “You didn’t deserve to feel it all either.”
“I know that,” he mutters, frowning. (He is grouchy when he’s vulnerable. He’s known that from a young age. Feeling weak fills him with a sense of anger and disgust that makes him lash out. Maybe he’s angry with himself for being so weak. Or perhaps at the world for making him that way. He doesn’t know. All he knows is that it makes him want to become bigger. Stronger. More untouchable. Whether it’s through bloodied gauntlets in his childhood living room or some bulked-up muscle in the pankration ring, he is always trying to seem stronger.)
“And you deserve someone to carry everything with you,” you continue. “You know that too, right?”
“Course I do,” he grunts, not meeting your eyes, “what’s the point of saying all this?”
“The point,” you say firmly, “is that you start believing you can have nice things.”
“I have nice things,” he says petulantly. “Got a decently good income and…and my title is literally Duke, and I got you—I have a pretty lady that’s all for me, don’t I? You wound me, sweetheart. Are you trying to say I don’t have anything nice because I live under the sea or something—”
“Wrio,” you say softly. “Please.”
He deflates.
Wriothesley has always kept a respectful distance away from people. His colleagues and this prison are all his home. His family. But he keeps a respectful distance. It’s the smartest option. Because distance is what keeps him most safe. What keeps people close enough that he’s never truly alone, but not close enough that they are people he can lose and suffer the loss of. But distance is difficult to maintain in an intimate relationship, though—distance is impossible to keep for longer than a small period of time.
Wriothesley is realizing that, slowly but surely—that no distance means having all the hard conversations. The ones that make him feel so raw and vulnerable, it’s like he’s peeling his skin straight off and exposing his bones and tissue.
He takes a moment, focuses real hard on tracing the skin of your arm rather than meeting your eyes before he mumbles, “Yeah. Fine.”
“I don’t want you to feel guilty,” you say softly.
“S’not a feeling I can just turn off,” he shrugs.
“Yes,” you agree, “it’s not. But we can talk about it when your mind goes there.”
“I don’t like talking.”
“But you like me,” you smile, “and I like you, too. And if we want to like each other and make it work, we have to do that thing you don’t like where we talk about our feelings. Communicate. Do that couple-y sort of stuff. Yeah?”
You’re right about one thing—Wriothesley likes you. He likes everything about you. He likes hearing you talk and listening to your voice. He likes learning about you and the things you like. He likes looking at you and the way you smile or laugh. He likes everything. He even likes the way you add too much sugar to the tea he brews up for you (even if you don’t properly enjoy its flavor that way). He likes having you. Likes being able to say you’re his—not because he doesn’t want to share you with the world, but because he wants to have something he can keep. Something that isn’t here one second and gone the next. Something that was meant for him, so he can have it and never have to exchange it for something else because the universe only lets him have one good thing at a time.
But Wriothesley also knows that things are just a set way for a guy like him. Not all people are created equal. Some people are blessed and lucky and can have a good life. Others are simply there to serve as a reminder that those people should count their blessings unless they want to end up like the others.
He’s one of the others. And you’re one of the blessed. And sometimes…well, sometimes he wonders if it’s better that you stay in your blessed little bubble of a world instead of getting caught up in the whirlwind that is him. And his life. And his terrible, awful luck.
He’d love it if he could save you the trouble of mingling with someone like him and realizing you were made for something better. And maybe, a little selfishly, he’d love it if he could save himself some heartache in the process and lose you before it would wreck him completely. He feels like he deserves that much—feels like he’s helped enough people and atoned enough for some of his darker sins that he should be able to just hold onto the stability he’s built himself. Sure, he’s not exactly fulfilled or happy, but he’s not exactly miserable or suffering.
He’ll take that minimal win happily.
You…you are everything he’s dreamed of. Maybe more. Maybe even more than more. You could very easily leave him miserable and suffering—not because you’re bad and you want to hurt him, but because he’s one of the others. And you’re one of the blessed. And things just work out a certain way for people like him versus people like you.
You kiss his thoughts away again. Kiss his lips all soft and sweet and filled with a certain amount of adoration he doesn’t know he’s earned. (But he’ll take it. He’s not above something soft and sweet and just for him.)
“Your head is not a very nice place,” you murmur, tapping his forehead. “I can tell. It’s being mean to you.”
He laughs at that, raising an amused brow. “Yeah? Think so?”
“Yeah,” you hum. “In my head,” you move your finger to now trace his chest, running your fingers through the hair that litters his skin, “you’re just a good boy who did some bad things. And you’re trying to be good now, see? You reformed a whole prison! Very good. I think that we can work with that.”
“Good boy,” he repeats in disbelief, “you’re talking to me like I’m a dog?”
You pet his head teasingly. “Such a good boy.”
His face lights up as he suddenly gets an idea—you watch it in real time, the scheming look in his eyes. In an instant, he’s grabbing your wrist as he pulls it against his lips and murmurs, “Careful,” before gently nibbling at your inner wrist, “I might bite.”
“No!” you shriek, letting out a series of giggles, “no, don’t bite, please! I have treats! Spare me!”
He shakes his head, fighting back a lopsided grin. “Unbelievable,” he huffs, “you’re unbelievable.”
“I’m not,” you brush back his hair. “If you just believe me, you’ll feel a lot better.”
“Yeah? What should I believe then, miss soulmate?”
“That we’re good together,” you murmur, “and that we’ll be fine. And that we deserve each other—as in you deserve this, too. Just trust me on that.”
He lets out a soft, heavy breath. Not all people are created the same in Fontaine. In fact, they aren’t in any nation. But all soulmates love each other the same—and this time, the way you look at him is not the same picture-perfect, falsified look from Mother. Or the same deceivingly kind, careful words from Father.
These are real. He can work with that.
“Okay,” he pretends to cave, shoving his face into your neck. You let him hide away in there. Let him keep that fragile look in his eyes hidden from view. “M’trusting you on that. Deceiving the Duke is punishable by ten years in prison, miss.”
“Yes, sir,” you smile, stroking his hair. “I am no rule breaker, you see. I’m a law-abiding citizen.”
“Good. I’ll hold you to that.”
“Wanna talk about what’s on your mind?” you offer softly.
He hesitates. And then he decides that maybe he can afford nice things—the Fortress has granted him a pretty amount of mora these days, anyway. “Yeah,” he murmurs, “maybe not this second, though. But we’ll talk about it.”
He can practically see your smile even if he can’t look. “Okay,” you murmur, “fine by me. We have plenty of time, baby.”
Your arms wrap tighter around him. Perhaps this is Fontaine. Perhaps this is the nation of justice. Perhaps he has found his justice in your arms, feeling your warm skin against his as you erase every memory of pain from his body where you and he touch.
This is not a very linear format in terms of plot and story telling it. It jumps along many months and weeks and doesn’t have a specific timeline. It is just the journey of wrio falling in love despite his flaws. Hope you enjoyed that
Warnings: A lot of talk about childbirth, labor, and possibly inaccurate medical terms. Mentions of storing and freezing the placenta. Segments using swear words and being involved with the delivery (except 8, he's a minor). Segment 35 (Omega), being a little possessive and self-centered as always. No smut, but mentioned and implied nsfw.
Sitting in the labor room, you held the red scarlet-eyed baby in your arms, stroking the infant's tuft of blue hair every now and then. Segment 8, or "Little Doctor" as you like to call him, leaned over the side to look at the newborn, an innocent sort of curiosity brimming in his very own pair of red eyes.
Your baby was born healthy, looking just like a mix of both you and Zandik. He'd helped deliver it himself, muttering about how he trusted no one but him to take the task upon himself.
Well, technically, it was just Segment 25 who helped with the main task; the others volunteered themselves with other stuff, such as weighing the baby, stitching your tears up, cleaning the blood, storing your placenta and umbilical cord for research purposes, etc.
All the segments insisted on helping out, even Little Doctor, who unfortunately had to sit outside for most of the labor but was eventually allowed in to see the baby and check on you. Everyone's main goal was to ensure the mother and newborn were both safe and healthy.
Now that everything was successfully executed, you and the newborn were both taking a small, well-earned nap. All the adult segments turned to look at one another with suspicion.
Who the fuck was the baby's real father?
They all had slept with you, came inside of you, so the possibility that one of them was the father was 20%.
Except they were all Zandiks.
They all had the same DNA, the same blood. They might as well all be identical twins, if identical twins were all the segment of a man who died a century ago.
"Well? What were we all even expecting? That the baby would be born, and we could take a DNA test to verify the paternity? We all share the same blood dipshits. Ever thought of that?" Segment 18 spat out, looking at the other older segments after they'd all stepped out.
Segment 25 merely took off his mask and gloves, opting to let the other Segments deal with the guy instead.
"We were hoping to keep the peace until the baby was born to keep our Lady's pregnancy smooth. You know she gets troubled when we all get into unnecessary fights." Segment 65 explained, stepping closer to your door to make sure it was locked in case their argument woke you up. "A miscarriage would've been tragic. Besides, we all had our own goals to accomplish during this period. I doubt Omega is going to let you have a share of the placenta."
Omega, or Segment 35, who snuck off to the side to keep your placenta in a freezer, shot them all a dirty look. "How rude! Preserving the placenta has it's benefits-"
"We never said it didn't. But must you be so greedy as to keep it for yourself?" Segment 45 cuts off.
"-because I am the most research-oriented out of all of us, one who shall produce the most fulfilling results. In case of a genetic disease or a tumor, it will prove to be very useful." He preened
"You talk as if you're the real father." scoffs Segment 18.
"Well, of course I am. Who else but I could produce such brilliant progeny."
The comment riled up Segment 18, who walked up to Omega's face, his sharp teeth bare, "So sure of yourself, aren't you, old man? You sure your sperm can even swim that far? Your cock get that hard? Well, getting erect would be no problem for such a beauty; however, I bet her fallopian tubes shriveled the moment you got in you son of a-"
"Alright, alright. There's no need to stir up a ruckus right here," said Segment 25, wiping his hands dry on a towel, clearly the most tired of them all.
Unlike the other Segments, he had to be on-call and close to you that day, and hence had stayed by you till the moment you had pushed the baby out. "She's still inside, sleeping, taking a well-earned nap before one of us has to wake her from her blissful slumber in two hours to take her vitals again. Not to mention, we will need to attend to my newborn as well. For now, we could all take a moment, Segment 8 will alert us should anything happen-"
"What do you mean, 'my newborn'?" Segment 45 butts in, "You didn't even try to debate whether the child is yours or not."
"Well, of course, because it is mine. Only fools fight over what's not theirs-"
"Get a load of this asshole-"
"Can we all take this somewhere else, the baby might wake up-"
"Dottore!" a voice booms from down the hall, along with the sound of multiple footsteps.
All Segments turned around to see The Regrator, Pantalone, along with a few Fatui agents carrying many boxes and bags with them.
"I believe congratulations are in order? How is the missus and the baby?" asked Pantalone.
"Who let this guy know about her labor? I thought we were to keep this information from the other Harbingers," sneered Segment 25.
"And you certainly did, I assure you. No one other than me knows about this little joy of yours. I only happened to find out about this because the 8-year-old segment seemed quite anxious about not being let into the operating room. Seeing as you did not hesitate to let him watch the dissection of the original Zandik, my only conclusion about not allowing him in the operating room was that your wife was giving birth. That, and the fact I hadn't seen her for quite some time. Seemed easy to deduce." The Regrator stated, shrugging and rustling his fur coat.
"And what if it was a surgery like, say, an appendectomy? What use are the gifts then?" Segment 18 pointed out.
"Then I believe that you must get started on producing a progeny, no? Anyway, I've brought a few tokens of goodwill. I hope you'll accept them from a friend."
"Leave them out here. She's sleeping, and we'd rather not disturb her or the baby." Segment 65 said, pointing towards a table for the gifts to be kept. "We'll let her know of them as soon as she's able to concern herself with things other than herself and the baby. I hope you understand she's not in the condition to receive guests at the moment."
"That's alright." The Regrator signed his agents to keep the presents on the table and take their leave.
"Speaking of not disturbing the baby, though, what were all of you arguing about? Well, it's not rare to see each of you in disagreement with the other. Rather, it happens pretty often to be rare. But an opportunity that brings all of you together to have such a conflict......."
"We were discussing who the real father of the baby is," said Segment 18.
Pantalone nodded in understanding.
"I'd hardly call that a discussion. But does it truly matter? All of you are the same person, and hence, similar at your core. I'm sure the child would benefit from having multiple parental figures. I wouldn't call it a major issue."
"It is." Said all the Zandiks there in unison.
"Dear Feofan, it seems you still don't understand us all, even when you are a dear friend of ours. We all may be derived of the same Zandik, but as Dottore, we're all different," Omega explained, "Our values, our approach to research, our research, and our view of this world, they all differ due to the number of memories we carry. Determining the true father is determining whose legacy will be carried on. It isn't as simple as 'raising a child'."
".......so it has to do with your ego," Pantalone cheeked.
"How rude, I have genuine affection towards my wife and my child," said Omega.
"There he goes again," Segment 45 groaned, rolling his eyes.
"Oh my god, it's MY baby you twat," argued Segment 18.
"Well, you're certainly not raising my child with that mouth of yours," said Segment 65 calmly.
"Gents, gents," Pantalone raised his hands, trying to mitigate and calm down all the Dottores before it would escalate, lest they end up dissecting another one of them again.
"I have a solution. How about you solve this the way you know best? You're all intelligent and highly educated individuals; surely you can come to a conclusion amongst yourselves."
All the Zandiks looked at each other, as if they had never considered that idea.
"Determining the father of the baby through research. We can't do a DNA test, but....." mused Segment 45.
"Surely, only DNA can't be the only factor to determine the paternity," suggested Segment 18.
"If we can't find a way to find a match with blood, tissue, or DNA, we could always narrow down the possibility of one of us being the father by calculating the fertility factor of our sperm, the time between conception and delivery, and the general condition of the mother and the baby during pregnancy," Segment 35 muttered.
Pantalone sighed, seemingly relieved that he had managed to prevent another Zandik from being dissected today.
"I must, however, object to executing this plan right now," said Segment 25, "her postpartum period is to last for at the very least 2 months, and we have a newborn to care for as well."
"Naturally," all Segments agreed and nodded.
"Then," smirked Omega, "we shall have a time limit of 2 months to conduct our research. Whosoever manages to bring concrete proof along with the timeline and convinces everyone that the baby is theirs shall get to claim the progeny and raise them. Do we all agree?"
"Yes," said all the Segments.
"Then shall I volunteer as a referee? You know, as a neutral party, to keep things nice and fair?" asked Pantalone.
"Of course, friend. You're more than welcome to invite yourself to my research discussions. You are, after all, the one funding all of our experiments," said Omega gleefully.
Pantalone watched with interest as all of the Segments dismissed themselves, some going to rest after what he assumed was a long day of being in the delivery room, others sprinting to their assigned labs to get a head start on their research, while the rest stayed to be available for you.
'Ah,' Pantalone thought to himself, stepping outside and pulling out a cigarette, 'this whole ordeal shall be quite entertaining.'
Part 2??? (˵ ¬ᴗ¬˵)
a/n: hello hello everynyan |˶˙ᵕ˙ )ﾉﾞ I wrote this at 3 am in a fever dream lol. Fun fact: kids of identical twins are genetic half-siblings. SO if you have an identical twin and have a baby, the baby is also half of your twin lol. It gave me the idea about what if multiple people shared the same DNA and boom that's how I wrote this fic in 2 hours when I have like 12 other drafts that have been collecting dust ehe (ᵕ—ᗜ—) I might make a few edits here and there so pls excuse any grammatical errors lol I don't know english well ≽^•⩊•^≼ anyway enjoy ٩(ˊᗜˋ*)و ♡
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