when our world becomes a tool for comfort || part one
pairings: oc x gabriel o’hara variant!
description: After not heeding the warning given to her by Lonnie and Kaleid again, Scarlet finds out the hard way.
warnings: language, sexual themes, mentions of mental illness, drug use, alcohol use and other content may be within this work of fiction. reader discretion is advised.
you have been warned.
note: scarlet does not belong to me, this character is owned by @scarlet-celeste
this is for her!
He towered over her in moments, with that same, bewildered expression. The one many have seen but never lived to tell the tale of it. Dr. Haywire cracked his neck, vertebrae snapping with an awful, deliberate rhythm, as he peered down at the woman in front of him.
Scarlet didn’t move.
Not because she wasn’t terrified---she was, acutely---but because something in the Doctor’s stare held her in place far more tightly than any webbing could. Those mismatched eyes shimmered as if it were fragments of broken glass.
Sharp.
Unpredictable.
Forever on the verge of burning deeper the longer she stared back at him.
“You…” he murmured.
He said it, almost reverently. Almost as if, she wasn’t currently trespassing in his dimension. Scarlet swallowed, flexing her fingers subtly. The tremor in her chest was real; the tremor in her voice shouldn’t have been.
“Me?” She replied, keeping her chin lifted. “You’ve been following me for three days.”
Dr. Haywire sneered, a twitch of his mouth; almost a smile, but too wrong and definitely stretched in the uncanniest of ways.
“Observing,” he corrected softly, tilting his head. “You move as if you were being hunted. Yet you keep circling like the little vulture you are, pet.”
His fingers hovered inches from her face, not touching, but close enough that she felt the heat of him.
“You were waiting for me, Scarlet.”
The way he said her name in that slow, speculative, curious in the way a scientist is curious before he would cut something open. It sent a ripple through her spine.
“And here I am.”
Scarlet’s breath hitched before she could stop herself from doing it.
“Afraid?” he asked, voice dripping into something low, dangerous, something that suggested that he already knew the answer.
He wanted to hear it from her lips instead.
She refused to look away. “Should I be?”
A soft laugh escaped him, the kind that curled like smoke. He leaned closer, enough that Scarlet could smell the scent of his cologne, a concoction of cedar wood, orange and bergamot notes wafted into her nostrils; it sent a wave of tingles throughout her once more.
Yet it calmed her, more than anything,
“You should be.” He bent down, inches from her ear. “But you aren’t. That is what is perplexing.”
She shivered. He circled her, slow, methodical, like she was an experiment he intended to understand from every angle. Scarlet tracked his movement with steady eyes, though her pulse hammered relentlessly in her throat.
“And perplexing things,” he continued, “tend to end poorly in my hands.”
She exhaled deeply. If he was going to play a game, she would play it back.
“Then it’s a good thing,” she muttered, “I’m not in your hands.”
Dr. Haywire stopped only an inch away. Close enough for his shadow to swallow hers, enough for the air to thicken, enough for her to feel his smile against the back of her neck when she could feel the pad of his tongue lick her nape.
“Not yet.”
The air shifted back to the stillness as Dr. Haywire gripped Scarlet’s hips, hard. Neither of them dared to move. Her heart rate never calmed, as Scarlet began to feel more and more lightheaded.
The city hummed far below, cars whining, the neon buzz of billboards, rain dripping from rusted fire escapes. Up here? On the rooftop edge, the world felt paused.
“Turn around, pet.” he ordered.
Scarlet didn’t listen.
Part of her wondered what would happen if she did. If he would grab her throat, or her wrist, or simply tilt his head with that almost gentle curiosity. Another part, the reckless part, wanted him to keep wondering what she would do next.
“You’re proficient at disobeying,” Dr. Haywire gritted his teeth, his hands sliding lower.
The way he said it was like a compliment, like a threat.
“Maybe you are bad at giving orders,” she shot back.
A low, amused hum vibrated from him. “Oh no, I give orders quite well. You are just…”
His fingers brushed her hair, not a caress, but scientific swiftness, testing the texture of something rare and unclassified. Scarlet stiffened despite herself, and she hated that he felt it.
He definitely felt it.
“That,” he stated, voice dipping. “wasn’t fear. Not entirely.”
Her jaw clenched. “You are imagining things.”
“I imagine many things,” He retorted. “Most of them end poorly for the subject involved. But you…”
He had removed his hands from her hips, and now she could feel his knuckled skim down the curve of her neck, slow, and unbearably light.
“You are…a little fucking tease.”
Scarlet spun, hand snapping up to strike. He caught her wrist mid-air. His grip was iron, unmoving. Entirely effortless.
Scarlet’s pulse slammed against her ribs as he drew her closer until their faces nearly touched. His eyes roamed her expression with a predatory slowness. He said it with a strange kind of delight.
Scarlet tried to yank her wrist back. He didn’t let go. Instead, he moved her hand a fraction of an inch higher, examining the tension in her fingers.
“You knew exactly where I would be tonight. Followed me to the rooftop of my lab, like the lost puppy you are. And you don’t even belong here.”
“I didn’t know anything.” she snapped.
“You hoped.” He corrected.
Scarlet’s voice sharpened. “Why the hell would I hope for you?”
A beat of silence. Then, his smirk unfurled.
Not wide.
Not gentle.
Knowing.
“Because” he slurred. “you feel alive around me…and you pique my interest.”
Scarlet shoved forward with her free arm, aiming for his jaw. Haywire dodged, pivoting just enough that her fist cut the air in front of him.
“You keep trying to hit me.” His grin widened a fraction. “You have no idea what it does to me.”
Something in his tone, made Scarlet’s chest tighten.
“Let me go you freak!” she demanded.
Haywire didn’t. If anything, his grip only tightened, as his mechanical arms slowly retracted from his back.
“I could break your wrist right now,” he hissed. “I’m more interested in how far you will go when cornered.”
“I’m not cornered.”
“Pet… you are on a rooftop. ledge with my hand around your pulse,” he cooed. “You are precisely cornered.
Scarlet met his eyes directly. “Try me.”
His breath hitched this time. A single sound, soft, quick. Then suddenly, violently, he shoved her back. Not enough to hurt her, but with a force that sent her stumbling until her back hit the ventilation unit. Before she could recover, he was already there, one hand on either side of her, caging her in.
“Do you know what I see?” he chuckled, “when I look at you?”
“Someone who won’t run.” she said tightly.
He shook his head slowly.
“I see a lost little hen who escaped from her coop.” His finger traced the metal behind her head.
“Who doesn’t understand that she’s in the wrong fucking dimension.” A gust of wind tore across the rooftop, sending her hair whipping around.
Haywire didn’t blink.
“You’re insane.” She spat.
He cackled, bending down so close Scarlet could feel his breath on her lips.
“I’ve heard that before, sweetheart.”
Scarlet, before she could get the strength to retort, something snapped below. A glint of color. A sound like a web-line stretched too taut. Haywire’s attention flicked just long enough for Scarlet to sense it.
Two figures shot upward in a violent arc, landing between Scarlet and Haywire with a crack of kinetic energy.
Lonnie.
Kaleid.
Lonnie’s mechanical limbs extended instinctively, forming a defensive barrier. Kaleid’s fractal patterns shimmered like a warning flare.
“Back off her.” Lonnie hissed.
Scarlet almost laughed despite herself. Lonnie only used that tone when he was seconds away from ripping someone’s face off.
Dr. Haywire straightened slowly.
“Oh,” he purred. “They sent the children.”
Kaleid stepped forward. “Touch her again and you’ll find out how fast we can end this.”
Haywire tilted his head, studying them both with an intensity that felt predatory. “Adorable.”
Lonnie shot forward without another word.
Haywire moved like a blade through smoke—dodging, parrying, weaving—and for a moment the rooftop became a blur of metal limbs and neon glimmers. Kaleid launched a burst of refracted light; Haywire vanished and reappeared behind her, fingers grazing her shoulder like a mockery of gentleness.
“Predictable,” he murmured.
Scarlet used the distraction and darted behind Lonnie’s shield plating. Haywire’s eyes flicked to her instantly.
Something almost possessive.
“You think they can take you from me?” he asked softly, voice lifting just enough for her to hear over the chaos.
Lonnie lunged again. Kaleid’s light exploded in a prismatic wave.
His breathing hitched again—subtle but undeniable—when Lonnie hooked an arm around Scarlet’s waist and pulled her back toward the fire escape.
Haywire’s expression fractured.
A flicker of something uncontrolled snapped across his face. His posture stiffened, jaw locking, eyes dilating in a way that made her blood run cold.
“Scarlet,” he said, low, raw, almost strangled, “do not walk away from me.”
The city roared below.
Scarlet was yanked off the edge, Lonnie’s line firing them both down to safety. Kaleid followed. Haywire stood frozen, staring at the space she’d been moments before.
“You can run,” he whispered into the night, voice shaking with volatile, barely contained emotion. “But you will not get far from me.”
His pulse thundered visibly in his throat.
“And next time—”
His fingers curled against his chest, as if trying to quell something rising uncontrollably inside him.
“I won’t let them touch you.”