okayy i lowkey wanna bully some of the male harbingers (dottore, pantalone, childe etc) so.. can i request a reader with spider-like abilities that can be very manipulative to get their way, displaying powers of control and master scheming. Like literally spinning tales and pulling at people's strings and its so subtle people never seem to be able to stop themselves from fufilling the reader's plans even if they're aware something is up. Their partner is usually a witness of this and what they do. sort of a terrifying recognition of the things the reader is able to weave and the fact their own partner could be caught in a trap and not know it themselves. Bonus points if the reader isn't even a high rank when really they're the mastermind behind it all 💀
cough.. yes i like spiders if you couldnt tell already and this is very much giving the web from magnus archives. recommend checking it out! 😇
“Web of Our Own Making”
Tags: Childe x Reader, Dottore x Reader, Pantalone x Reader, Romance, Manipulation, Psychological Tension, Power Dynamics, Subtle Control, Balanced Dark Romance.
Warnings: Mild Psychological Manipulation, Mild Dark Themes, Mild Threatening Atmosphere, Implied Power Imbalance, Some Characters May Feel Intimidated.
It always amused you, watching Dottore dissect the world with his logic. His scalpel carved open both bodies and truths with the same precision, and yet—he’d never once noticed the silken thread wound quietly around his wrist.
You’d only been an assistant in name, assigned to the Fatui segment’s laboratory as a low-ranked functionary. The others whispered about his temper and his mind like it was divine fire; you simply smiled and watched. Patterns unfolded in people like veins beneath glass. Dottore’s segments bickered over resources, over theories, over who deserved to speak in his name.
You didn’t order them. You merely nudged. A misplaced document here, a stray remark repeated there. Like a spider plucking one strand, you made the entire web hum.
When Dottore finally noticed, he cornered you beside the specimen jars, eyes cold and curious.
“You’ve been busy,” he said. “Strange how my segments move in the direction you prefer.”
You tilted your head. “Strange how they all think they’ve decided for themselves.”
That earned a low chuckle. “Manipulation through suggestion. You’d do well as an experiment subject.”
“Why experiment on something you already admire?” you murmured.
He stilled, the scalpel pausing mid-air. Admire? The word tasted foreign to him. He should have dismissed it—should have dismissed you. And yet your calm, that faint smile that promised secrets he hadn’t dissected yet, rooted him to the spot.
Over the months, your partnership became a dance of intellect and control. He’d test the limits of your power of persuasion; you’d test the limits of his rationality. He claimed he wanted to understand you, but every question he asked drew him further in.
When an internal conflict among his segments nearly tore the lab apart, Dottore returned to find order restored—because you had whispered the right words to the right ears.
“You fixed my mess,” he said, voice low.
“No,” you corrected gently. “I simply reminded them of their purpose. You, after all, are too valuable to waste on squabbling.”
He caught your wrist, gloved fingers cold. “One day, I’ll find the pattern of you. The way you spin people until they dance for you.”
“Perhaps,” you whispered, leaning close enough for his breath to hitch, “but by then you’ll already be dancing too.”
In Snezhnaya, fortunes change faster than snowfall. The Fatui’s Banker knew this better than anyone—and still he underestimated you.
And though he laughed, a sharp, scientific sound, something in his gaze softened. He never mentioned the silk-fine string around his wrist again—but you both knew it was there.
You were a mere clerk when he first noticed you, ink-stained fingers counting ledgers with unnerving calm. When a dispute over trade tariffs erupted among the merchants, you stepped in—not with authority, but with suggestion. By the time the shouting ended, everyone believed they’d reached the compromise they had proposed. Pantalone only smiled from his seat, eyes gleaming behind his glasses.
Later, he found you in the archives. “You solved a problem even Mora couldn’t fix,” he said.
“I didn’t solve it,” you replied. “I just rearranged their greed into something useful.”
He laughed softly, rich and dangerous. “A spider in my treasury, spinning profit from chaos.”
You bowed with mock modesty. “I prefer ‘strategist.’”
You rose through the ranks faster than logic allowed. Rumors followed you—of contracts rewritten overnight, of rivals suddenly “seeing reason.” Pantalone, always the businessman, indulged his fascination. You weren’t overtly powerful, yet rooms bent around you.
One evening, during a negotiation with foreign dignitaries, you stood silently behind him as usual. When their demands grew unreasonable, you whispered a single phrase near his ear. He repeated it, tone silky, and the room fell quiet. They agreed to terms against their own advantage—and walked out thanking him.
When the door closed, he turned, smile sharp. “How did you do that?”
“I only spoke to what they already wanted,” you said. “People like to believe their greed is virtue.”
His gaze lingered, equal parts admiration and wariness. “You could bankrupt nations with words alone.”
“Would you let me?”
A pause. “If it profited us both.”
It became a habit—your whispered counsel, his execution. He provided the gold; you spun the web that caught it. Sometimes, though, he’d look at you across the table, expression unreadable.
One night he broke the silence. “Do you ever use that gift on me?”
You smiled, tracing a finger along the rim of your glass. “Would it matter if I did?”
His breath caught—a tiny lapse in control. “Perhaps not,” he admitted. “But I’d like to believe I can tell when I’m being ensnared.”
“You can,” you said softly. “That’s what makes you stay.”
Unlike the others, Childe didn’t fear you. Not at first.
And he did stay. Even as profits soared and empires bent under the weight of your schemes, Pantalone never left your side—half certain you’d already wound him in silk, half afraid to find out just how tight it held.
You’d met in the mess of a mission gone wrong—a minor Fatui operation in Liyue, full of posturing agents and bad planning. You weren’t anyone important, yet somehow, when the dust settled, the right people had survived, the wrong ones had vanished, and the mission reports all told a story that put Childe in the hero’s light.
He knew manipulation when he saw it. He just didn’t expect to like it.
“Y’know,” he said after, grinning while you walked the snow-covered streets of Snezhnaya, “you pull strings better than anyone I’ve met. Even Pulcinella couldn’t make paperwork disappear that cleanly.”
You shrugged. “People just want to be told they’re doing the right thing. I give them that.”
Over time, you became his quiet constant. When his temper ran high, you soothed him with steady words. When politics tangled his missions, you untangled them with ease. He called you “his lucky charm,” never realizing the charm went both ways.
But Childe wasn’t a fool. He began to notice—how others deferred to you without knowing why, how conversations twisted toward your goals. One night, after a long battle, he leaned against the railing of a frozen bridge, eyes on you.
“You ever wonder,” he said slowly, “if I’m here because I want to be… or because you made me?”
The question hung in the cold air.
You smiled faintly. “Does it feel forced?”
He hesitated, then shook his head. “No. Feels right. Feels… easy. Maybe that’s what’s scary.”
“Then don’t think too hard about it.” You stepped closer, the breath between you visible in the frost. “You fight what’s in front of you, Childe. Let me handle what’s behind.”
He laughed softly. “You say that like I have a choice.”
“You always have a choice,” you said, eyes glinting. “I just help you pick the one that doesn’t hurt.”
From then on, he watched you more closely—how you spoke to superiors, how you smoothed conflicts before they sparked. Each time he thought he’d caught the thread of your manipulation, it slipped from his fingers like water.
And yet, when danger came, it was you who stepped into the line of fire for him, weaving a web of false orders and misinformation so intricate the enemy never knew which way to strike.
Afterward, when the two of you stood among the ruins, he brushed a thumb over a smear of soot on your cheek. “You scare me sometimes,” he admitted quietly.
“Good,” you said, smiling. “Fear keeps you careful.”
He kissed you then—not desperate, but certain, like a man surrendering to a tide he’d chosen to drown in.
If he was caught in your web, he didn’t mind. After all, a spider’s silk is soft until it isn’t, and love—like battle—was just another form of surrender.
You just asked to borrow your room mates headphones once. You remember the music sounding so much better when you listened on them. So you asked to borrow them again, over and over. And she borrowed them to you, over and over.
You don´t remember when it started, but you suddenly cared a lot about what your pretty room mate thought about you, how you looked and how you acted. You started buying new, cute outfits, hoping it would get noticed by her. And it did. "Is that a new skirt? It looks really good on you", just a simple compliment. But the compliments felt better and better each time she said them. They made you feel all warm inside. You wanted Mi-, sorry, her to always notice.
You remember feeling more and more tired every time you had to make a choice. One day, you found yourself wondering what she would choose for you. The next day, you asked her to help you choose what skirt to wear. "Use the pink one", she said, choosing effortlessly. You never doubted her choice. Of course it was the right choice. You found yourself starting to ask her opinion about more and more, eventually everything. It was so much easier when Mis-, sorry, she chose for you.
You kept using her headphones. You only wanted to listen to music through her headphones. Nothing sounded like your music anymore, but that didn´t matter. The sounds and voices calmed you down, you could just lay in bed for hours listening to them. She even said you could keep them. Now you would listen to the nice, calming sounds all the time. You fell asleep to it, and woke up to it. You wanted to keep listening to her, sorry, Mistress´s headphones forever.
Your mind started feeling more and more hazy, at least when Mistress wasn´t there. You had a hard time concentrating on anything. Other than being a good girl, of course. You love it when Mistress calls you that. You love it when Mistress makes all your choices for you. "Good girls dont think", thats what Mistress always says. And she´s right, of course. All you do now is listen to what Mistress tells you.
🆕 「Melodies」 by HANDSOMEBOY TECHNIQUE, Subtle Control
💿 from 「TECHNIQUE」 now available overseas!
Listen to it on Spotify 🎧 https://open.spotify.com/track/0rFVl4If1goAr0aoIRLsay
