🩸🪡 Wireface x Reader — “The Night You Let Him In” Headcanons/Imagines
Note: "Elias" is the hc name I use for "Wireface" if you wonder, I will use it until if it's confirms his real name so. This might be ooc but I'll try to make his characterization accurate.. 😭
✷ The world outside is already falling apart — the sky has that dull, metallic orange glow, sirens far off, and the wind smells of ash and oil. You hear something scraping against your door — not a knock, but a hesitant drag of fingers, like someone too weak to try harder. When you open it, he’s there.
Tall and lean.
Blood dried like rust down his chin.
Wires threaded through the corners of his mouth — pulled tight.
His eyes hollow, not from malice, but exhaustion.
He doesn’t move at first. He looks ready to run if you so much as raise your voice. You don’t. You whisper, “Hey… you’re hurt.” And for a moment, you swear you hear him try to reply, a sound like breath through broken metal.
✷ He’s trembling, half-delirious. The wires in his mouth aren’t neat, they’re jagged, stitched by force, not by medicine. He keeps trying to cover them with his hands, ashamed of being seen. When you guide him in, he flinches at every small sound — the door creak, the click of a lock. He’s been hunted or mistaken for something inhuman for so long, he expects pain with every movement. When you offer to help, he shakes his head at first. But when you say softly,
“If you stay like that, it’ll get infected,”
his shoulders drop. He finally lets you approach.
✷ His hands grip the edge of the table while you work. It’s not quick, you can see how the skin has begun to scar around the stitches. Each snip of wire makes him twitch, but he doesn’t make a sound. Only when the last one comes out does he exhale — a broken, breathless noise that sounds like someone remembering how to breathe again. There’s dried blood on your hands, and when you dab ointment on the wounds, his eyes flutter shut.
He whispers something for the first time — soft, muffled, and unrecognizable:
“Zggzrh… droo hvxivg.”
You don’t understand. You think it’s nonsense, until later, when you realize it was Atbash, his secret language.
(He said: “Thank you. You’re kind.”)
✷ He doesn’t leave your house. Sleeps near the window, facing the door — not out of distrust of you, but out of instinct. When he wakes from nightmares, he mutters in Atbash, trembling words that sound almost melodic, mournful.
You start keeping paper near him.
Elias writes slowly at first, his handwriting angular and neat despite the shaking hands.
“No danger.”
“Need quiet.”
“You safe.”
✷ You begin to realize he uses Atbash to hide emotion, the cipher gives him a way to speak without being fully vulnerable. Over time, he begins translating his words for you — one word in Atbash, one in English.
“Zgyzhs… good.”
“Drgs… light.”
“You… warm.”
✷ The first time you hear him speak full English, it’s by accident. You hand him a cup of tea, and he murmurs, voice hoarse,
“Hot… thank you.”
You freeze, surprised — he looks just as startled as you. He averts his gaze quickly, like he’s afraid of being caught speaking aloud. From then on, you notice: when he feels safe, the Atbash fades a little. The English slips through like light through cracks.
✷ He constantly watches over you during the night, not in a threatening way, but like a guard dog who doesn’t quite believe safety exists anymore. If you’re asleep, he’ll sit near the door or window, keeping watch. He doesn’t rest much anyway, and the way his eyes flick toward every sound shows how he’s wired to protect what little peace he has… you.
✷ He never asks for thanks. He only nods when you smile.
✷ When you touch his hand, just once, his whole body goes still. You feel how tense he is, but also how warm. He looks down at your hand, then whispers in Atbash again, voice smoother than you’ve ever heard it:
“Zmw drgs gsvb.”
(And that means: “You and the light.”)
✷ Elias doesn’t “fall in love” quickly; it’s more like relearning humanity through you. Your kindness confuses him — he can’t understand why you didn’t push him back out into the storm. Sometimes, he’ll just stare quietly while you talk, trying to memorize your voice.
✷ When you ask if he remembers his real name, he hesitates, then writes: “Elias… maybe. It was, once.”
✷ Elias fears that if he speaks too much, someone will come again to shut him up, to brand him a “creature” for the way his words sound. He remembers the punishment. The metal. The blood. The forced quiet... So even when his mouth has healed, he touches his lips often — a subconscious tic. You’ll notice it: he presses two fingers to his mouth after every few sentences, as if checking whether it’s still there.
✷ But because you don’t rush him, he becomes deeply loyal. He appreciates that you don’t flinch when he makes strange sounds, or when his accent twists words oddly. You don’t make him repeat himself — instead, you try to read him, and he feels that. Sometimes, when he can’t form words, he’ll just murmur your name — it sounds distorted, but he tries so hard.
“Y–you… rehm… ember?” he mumbles once, half in Atbash rhythm.
You smile. “Remember what?”
His eyes flicker softly. “Kindness.”
✷ Elias’s English is broken but intelligent. You can tell immediately that he’s not stupid — he’s just rusty, and physically limited by years of forced silence. Like when he first meets you, he assumes you’re Russian too and his panic shows. He flinches when you speak, not out of fear of you, but because he expects misunderstanding. The moment you say something softly in English, “It’s okay, I understand you.”, you can see relief wash over him. His body language changes completely: the defensive posture softens; he looks almost human again. He trusts English with you only. Anyone else — he’d revert to Atbash or silence entirely.
Imagine a moment with you... he sits by the window again that night, whispering to himself in Atbash.
You don’t interrupt, you’ve learned it’s how he calms down. When the thunder rolls, you reach out, lightly touching his sleeve. He looks at you, eyes tired but soft, and murmurs something — not in cipher this time.
“Stay...” he says. The accent smooth, almost musical. “Please.”
You stay.
✷ He doesn’t say “I love you” — he shows it. Fixing your generator, bringing you something warm to drink, quietly cleaning the blood off your hands after an encounter. These small acts are his way of saying “You’re safe because I’m here.” Would move silently through the house, tidying small things, securing windows. Even when he’s tired or shaking, he’ll take broken trinkets: your lighter, an old pendant, a cracked mug — and fix them. It’s his way of keeping you intact, since he couldn’t keep himself that way.
✷ At first, he avoids contact, not out of disgust, but fear that his presence could harm you. But eventually, his fingers will brush yours when he hands you something. Later, he’ll rest his forehead against your shoulder wordlessly, it’s his version of a hug.
✷ His way of “kissing" 😳: Because of the trauma from his stitched mouth, he’s hesitant to actually kiss. Instead, he might gently rest his face against yours, his temple to your cheek, and his breath trembling as he exhales as if wanting to kiss but too fragile to risk it.
✷ Sometimes he’ll leave you notes. Scrawled, uneven English mixed with Atbash — phrases like:
“Yruoy tahw peek I nac ton.” (I cannot keep what’s yours.)
Later, he’ll write clearer ones: “You make it quieter in my head.”
✷ Elias doesn’t know how to comfort with words, but he’s exceptionally good at sitting in silence beside you when you’re anxious or scared. He’ll just sit there, knees drawn close, and after a while, his quiet becomes peaceful like a blanket of calm.
