HI! I've been thinking over a scenario in my head for awhile, and wanted to request Vicious with a selectively mute reader, who just spoke to him for the first time. I just find the dynamic interesting if Vicious realized someone does not view him as a total monster, but instead as their special person.
How Sweet the Sound (Vicious x Reader)
𝗔/𝗡: 𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗴𝗼! 𝗶 𝗵𝗼𝗽𝗲 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗲𝗻𝗷𝗼𝘆! (𝗮𝗹𝘀𝗼 𝘃𝗶𝗰𝗶𝗼𝘂𝘀 𝗶𝘀 𝗮 𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘁𝗹𝗲 𝗼𝗼𝗰 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀. 𝗶 𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗼 𝗷𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗳𝘆 𝗶𝘁 𝗯𝘂𝘁 𝗶𝘁 𝗺𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗯𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗯𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝗟𝗢𝗟 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝗶 𝗺𝗮𝗸𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗿𝘂𝗹𝗲𝘀 𝘁𝗲𝗲𝗵𝗲𝗲)
𝙒𝙖𝙣𝙩 𝙩𝙤 𝙧𝙚𝙖𝙙 𝙢𝙤𝙧𝙚? ⇒ 𝙈𝙖𝙨𝙩𝙚𝙧𝙡𝙞𝙨𝙩
𝙟𝙤𝙞𝙣 𝙢𝙮 𝙙𝙞𝙨𝙘𝙤𝙧𝙙 𝙨𝙚𝙧𝙫𝙚𝙧?
𝙗𝙪𝙮 𝙢𝙚 𝙖 𝙘𝙤𝙛𝙛𝙚𝙚?
When it’s just you and him, he throws a lot of questions your way. And he never expects a response to any of them.
To be honest, he just can’t help it. It just feels natural. It’s a reminder that even under all his thick skin and scowls, he’s human and he’s not immune to doing human things. Especially if it involves someone he couldn’t help but find himself attached to. Someone who’s perfect for a man looking for a little slice of heaven at the end of each long day. Someone who’s sweet and soft and precious. Someone like you.
Though sure, the first few times it happened, it felt odd hearing no response. In the beginning, he had to constantly remind himself of the advice he had received from your Doctor- that no amount of prompting would force you to speak. That if you wanted to speak, it would be on your own terms and on your own time should you ever feel comfortable enough to do so. But now? Now it feels natural to let his words linger in the air rather than to receive an immediate response. Now it feels right to speak his thoughts out loud and just to have them there.
Though that doesn’t mean you’re completely reactionless. Admittedly, he’s grown fond of watching your reactions to some of the statements and questions he poses to you simply because he can. In his line of work, the type of softness you display is perhaps the worst form of weakness. There’s just no way around it. But he keeps you so far removed from that part of himself and his world that in you, he can still enjoy what it's like to see the same type of softness that would get his men killed. And he indulges in it.
He drinks up your curious expressions and your wide-eyed looks of surprise or confusion. He relishes in your shrugs, silent pouts, and avoidance of his gaze, and furrowed brows when you’re not in the best of moods. And he memorizes every smile and soft sound that could almost be mistaken as laughter, the best he can, every time he sees it. He never knows when it’ll be the last. But he knows it keeps him from going insane every time he steps out the door to the bedroom he shares with you. So he holds onto it. All of it. Because without it, he’s sure he would completely turn into the monster that the entire Underworld knows him to be. The monster that you only barely know exists. He has been very careful about what he shares with you, after all.
Though as much as he enjoys watching you and interacting with you during the rare moments he gets a break from his work, your presence alone is something he has come to adore. To know that there’s someone in the room as he speaks what he wants to say offers him an odd, comforting feeling. Whether you’re just reading or lying on his chest, napping, or giving him every ounce of your attention, he finds himself getting lost in your presence.
Even now, as you lay cuddled up to him in bed after a long day cleaning after a subordinate’s subordinate’s subordinate’s mistakes, he finds himself more than content to just breathe in your scent as you sleepily nod along to his telling of a very sanitized version of what happened as a bedtime story. It’s like the anger almost disappears completely and the stress goes quiet in his mind the longer he lies there, absently stroking your hair as he speaks.
He’s relaxed. He’s at ease. There’s no two ways about it. So it’s no surprise that he ended his retelling of the underling’s major fuck-ups over the past two weeks with a rhetorical hum of “What do you think I should do with him, sweetheart?” But what does come as a surprise is how you respond back.
“...dunno…”
The sound comes directly into his ear, carried by a hushed breath as you continue to lie by his side in the dark bedroom, mostly covered by the sheets on the bed and the arm he has slung around your waist. It’s only a whisper. A word he could barely hear from a voice he doesn’t even know. It doesn’t even register to him as he continues to stroke your hair until a couple of seconds later. Only then do his ears catch up with his brain. Only then does he freeze in place, his hand hovering over your hair and breath hitching as he realizes what he heard.
You spoke. You spoke out loud. You spoke to him.
He doesn’t know how long it’s been since you’ve last spoken. But when he found you at that Warehouse on Mars over two years ago, cowering in fear as bullets soared through the air and bodies fell to the ground all around you, you were already mute. And he was convinced early on by the personal Doctor he hired for you that placing cameras all around your room would be worse for any progress you might make towards warming up to him- even if it is all for your safety. The last words you could have spoken could have been two years ago. It could have been longer than that. Or it could have been shorter than that too. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t really care.
Because this is the first time he has gotten to hear you speak. And now he doesn’t know what to do.
In an instant, his mind races for a way to react or respond to you. In truth, your response doesn’t offer much in terms of continuing his usually one-sided conversations with you. It’s the equivalent of one of your shrugs. But he doesn’t care. He never asks you to respond. He never forces you to respond. He never, ever makes you bad for not responding. In fact, he spent so much time listening to your Doctor (and sometimes biting his tongue while being scolded by your care team) just to get here. So many little quirks and habits and softness he had learned just to get to this point. But now that you’re here- now that you’ve spoken to him, he finds that he’s ill-prepared to react.
Should he ask you more questions? Is this a sign that you want to talk more? No, it might not be. At least, he shouldn’t assume that you need more prompting when your previous dynamic has worked out fine for the two of you. Then, should he soften his voice to respond to you? You’ve told him shyly once through your notebooks that you enjoy his voice- that’s part of the reason why he speaks to you so much despite getting no response. But would it be more encouraging? Perhaps it might be better if he doesn’t acknowledge it fully. He could respond to your response, but not mention anything about you speaking. Maybe you’ll feel better if he treats it as normal? Would it show you that no matter what you do, he adores you? Or would that get discouraging? You’ve enjoyed praise from him before. It’s what got you to soften up to him too, initially, after all. Would that be something you’d like right now? Or would it be too overwhelming? He remembers how shy you used to be. Would you become that way again if he’s not careful? How should he respond? What are you looking for right now? What do you need right now? What do you need from him?
He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know how to do this. He doesn’t know how to be soft.
You’re not someone he can bark orders or speak to like a comrade. Hell, you’re not someone he wants to bark orders at. He wouldn’t have let you move into his bedroom all those months ago if that was the case. But that makes you different from everyone he’s used to managing or fighting or interacting with outside of these four walls. You’re more fragile, more important, more special to him than anyone who has the displeasure of meeting with him. But he spent so much time trying to be the person that you needed just to get to this point that he can’t help but freeze when the moment that everything had been building up to happens.
But that’s the thing: you froze too.
It was only after he forgot to continue stroking your hair that you reacted on your own. But in the time it took for Vicious’ thoughts to race, you had tucked your face in his neck and desperately grabbed fistfuls of his clothes in an attempt to…to do something. To hide? To comfort yourself? To get him to respond? He doesn’t know. But what he does know is that he’s failed you at this moment.
And somehow the ache it causes reminds him of the pain he feels whenever thinking about Fearless. Maybe that’s why he strives to take such good care of you? Maybe that’s why he does everything in his power to show you that you’re precious. Maybe, but who’s to say? Either way, it doesn’t matter now.
Because his reaction was so delayed- his silence was so loud that you couldn’t help but freeze too. Like when you spoke, it took him a while to realize that this had happened. And he hadn't realized it at first because he was too captured in his own thoughts and fears about messing things up- something so fragile and fleeting to realize that perhaps the worst thing he could do was offer his own silence in response to you breaking yours.
So he stops overthinking it. It’s not him, anyway. It’s not what your Doctors recommended either. And instead, he offers up the first thing he could think of:
“You sound beautiful, sweetheart.”
And he holds his breath and counts the seconds that pass between the two of you afterwards. He goes back to stroking your hair. He goes back to breathing you in. He goes back to carefully picking the next words he wants to say to you- the next story or question or compliment or praise or whatever he thinks would be best to say next. To wrap this up in a way that’s neater than any job he’s ever pulled. It’s hard because you’re soft and sensitive and he’s still learning how to be the same when he’s with you. It’s hard because your face is still tucked into his neck like nothing happened at all but also like you’re still the scared little thing that he took in on a whim just two years ago. It’s hard because it just is. And it will always be when a monster has to learn how to care for something without claws of its own for the very first time. And yet?
And yet you make it easy.
You make it feel natural.
You make him feel human. Which is so, so, so important…
“...t-thanks…”
…for a man who was almost convinced that he was anything but.
