── . Welcome ✦* I'm always open to general concepts, ideas, or casual chats, but I don't take specific requests. My focus is strictly on heterosexual Character x Reader pairings (e.g., Male Character x Female Reader).
Themes & Disclaimers: Expect the typical tropes that come with writing yandere characters. However, please remember this is pure fiction: I do not condone or romanticize toxic relationships or harmful behavior in real life.
Content Boundaries: I do not write explicit NSFW/smut. I might write suggestive themes occasionally, but I'm very selective about it and generally avoid it. Violence and (extreme) gore are fair game and highly likely to appear.
Reblogs: Reblogs are permanently turned off for my own peace of mind. Please refrain from asking me to turn them on (I’m still super happy if you enjoy my stories though!).
A Quick Note: English isn't my first language, but I always do my best to make every piece worth your time! & this is a sideblog.
The MASTERLIST is under the cut.
꒰𐔌 DO NOT INTERACT :
You are under 16, a minor, or emotionally/mentally immature.
You attempt to debate topics I’m uncomfortable with, such as personal beliefs, religion, or social issues.
Even with millions of people on this platform, believe it or not, I still check who likes or follows my blog, and I will block anyone who fits those criteria (especially point #2).
(♥︎) a yandere content or has yandere tendencies #♥︎ intensity
(♡) non-yandere content #♡ intensity
(n) titles with matching number tags share the same universe; characters across these stories are likely acquainted or interconnected (e.g., ¹ Jealousy (?) and ¹ The Texture of Love ft. Underworld Circle).
⬩➤ Oneshot:
⋮ ♥︎ ┆² Too Shy, Huh. New!
summary: You think he's a terrible groupmate. Turns out he's just a severe introvert. Or so you think. Yandere! Shy! Friend! OC x F! Reader (3k wc)
⋮ ♥︎ ┆ Yeah, no. North Duke.
Summary: you're raging because your father sold you off, the duke goes and bullies your (ex) fiancé, and your (ex) fiancé is yearning for you. Yandere! (Medieval) Merchant! OC x F! Reader ft. The North Duke! OC (3.3k wc)
⋮ ♡ ┆Additional content: Flower and Talk
⋮ ♥︎ ┆² Stereotypical Popular Guy?
Summary: He blackmailed you into joining his group of popular kids, and... nothing bad happened? Yandere! Popular! OC x F! Reader (1.7k wc)
⋮ ♥︎ ┆¹ Jealousy (?)
Summary: This is what happens when you throw a glance at another man, and there's this doctor who's pretty unhinged (literally) but has complicated feelings toward you and does 'this' to you. Yandere! Doctor! OC x F! Reader (0.7k wc)
Summary: He misses you and has finally reached the point where the guilt, longing, affection, and fear are unbearable. So this crudely made plastic flower is one of his last resorts before literally begging at your feet for you not to leave him. Workaholic! Husband! OC x F! Reader (2.1k wc)
⬩➤ Headcanons & Concepts
⋮ ♥︎ ┆ Warm Warm
Summary: My thoughts on the Deity! Reader who inhabits a children's storybook and becomes a collectible item, and some of my thoughts on your relationship with the collector, the curator, and someone more or less like you. There are yandere tendencies. (1k wc)
⋮ ♥︎ ┆¹ The Texture of Love ft. Underworld Circle
Summary: The texture of love, according to the men (the Hitmen, the Doctor, the Dirty Cop, the Engineer & the 'Monster') who work in the underworld. Criminal-esque and at least almost all the cast here have yandere tendencies or are actually yandere. (12.4k wc)
⡞⠳⣄⣀⣠⠞⢷
꒰𐔌 About ⚞ YURAN ⚟ !
Yep, my username is just a keyboard smash.
This blog started as a theme test. But after my blog that I used to post my writing got shadowbanned (and I was too lazy to deal with emails), I switched over here.
I’m not good with aesthetics, and using images I don't own makes me uncomfortable because it feels like stealing.
I’m cautious about the content people encounter here, so I try to be very selective when mentioning specific media.
˖᯽ ݁˖ # Likes
✧ Writing: Keeps my hyperfixations in check, but mostly it's just my favorite comfort hobby. Huge x-reader fan—it’s most of what I write, and I can easily adapt my non-x-reader concept into one.
✧ Reading (Manga, Manhwa, Webnovels):
Currently craving typical male-lead isekai without romance subplots.
Outgrew my "villainess-only" phase.
Like reverse harem, though a break from it (still know plenty of titles!).
Love well-fleshed-out characters even if they're stereotypical, but I get tired easily after getting attached to someone else's characters haha.
✧ Food & Drinks: Spicy food, mangoes, and any drink as long as it's cold.
˖᯽ ݁˖ # Dislikes
✧ Debates/Arguments: Seriously drains my energy (drama, trending news, social issues, hot takes). I can't control any of it and it exhausts me, so I'd rather avoid these topics completely.
✧ Explicit / NSFW content: Steering clear of this. It feels unhealthy for me and creates unrealistic expectations.
✧ Soupy foods: Not really my thing—unless my mom cooks it, then I have to eat it.
˖᯽ ݁˖ # Random Facts:
I'm not pretentious about literature or writing standards; fiction is just subjective entertainment. I have my own preferences, but don't worry about me judging—I don't have the energy for that.
I hate how different the posts look on mobile and on the website
˖᯽ ݁˖ # If you made it this far and don’t mind any of the above:
Please feel free to hit me up! I’m way too shy to start a conversation, but I’d love to connect with someone who also likes writing. Having a writing buddy is such a great motivator! (For me especially)
The teacher calls your name along with the one group of classmates you most want to avoid for this project. What's that supposed to mean, having to work with people who practically never show up to class?
You let out a heavy sigh and decide to just get through it. Whoever doesn't pull their weight can deal with their own karma. You look around; everyone else is already up and drifting toward their groups, except for one boy still sitting with his head bowed, staring at the desk. That's one of your groupmates.
God, does it have to be you who starts the awkward conversation and somehow makes it sound natural?
"Hey, what do you think about the assignment? I've already found a few sources, want to take a look?" There it is: you pull out the chair across from him, keep your tone friendly enough to bury the irritation underneath, and this guy just glances at you for half a second before dropping his head again.
Is he messing with his phone under the desk? "Let's divide up the work. I'll look for the material—can you give me your number so—" Something clatters to the floor. The boy who'd been ignoring you scrambles to grab his phone before it skids away. Wow. So he really is ignoring you? What an ass.
"I'll do the presentation—no, wait, not the presentation—I mean the materials… yeah. The materials...." He talks so fast you half expect him to start spitting. Is he nervous? With that wall of a face? His voice and his expression are completely disconnected, and it gives you a weird kind of whiplash, leaving you wondering what he actually wants.
You raise an eyebrow, confused. "So you want to handle the materials and do the presentation? Is that it?" You just repeat back what he said. Not that you'd mind. Of course you'll help put together the slide content.
"No, just the materials. Or the slides." The reply comes fast, but noticeably slower than his first answer. His expression looks steadier too. Did you just catch him off guard earlier?
"Got it. In that case, want to take a look at this? I jotted down a few details about the assignment and browsed around for a rough idea of the topic. But if you've got other ideas, just say so." You show him the article you found. He glances at what's on your screen.
"Okay... I'll do it at home later." What kind of answer is that? You wanted to hash this out now, that's the whole reason you came over here. Before you can spell that out, he's already opened his contacts app and asks, "Your number?"
For some reason it still feels like you're being brushed off. He isn't ignoring you exactly, but he's clearly ignoring what you say. Still, once he looks ready to start typing, you rattle off your number, because he seems dead serious.
After giving your number to him, "I'm heading out, then." And that's how your group work ends for the day. Nothing gets properly discussed beyond a vague sketch of who'll do what, and even that's barely settled before he's gone, leaving you with maybe three words total. He practically bolts from the room.
If he dislikes this so much, why even bother showing up to class in the first place? Your friend, who watched him bolt, comforts you (read: laughs at your suffering) with a text wishing you good luck dealing with him.
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To your surprise, that evening after all your classes are done, you find an unfamiliar number has sent over a handful of topic references with a short message: "which one do you think fits best?"
No opener, no introduction, not even a hint about who's texting or what he thinks of the assignment. You almost figure he's got the wrong number, except one of the topics he sent is more or less the same as what you showed him in class.
Apart from being blunt and taking what feels like ten minutes to type out every message, he turns out to be a competent teammate. More than competent, actually. So why not just talk about this in class? Is he an introvert? Probably, given how much more he gets done over text than face to face.
Your theory that he's actually shy and a little awkward gets confirmed when the two of you have to interview an interviewee for the assignment. You'd agreed to split the questions, but... "Have you ever had a workplace accident." It doesn't come out sounding like a question at all.
The interviewee blinks, caught off guard, but answers well enough. When it's his turn again to ask the next question, he flips his notes over and tears the page. Then, scrambling to grab the torn piece, the rest of the paper slips out of his hand. On top of that, he knocks his elbow into the table.
Watching him struggle, you end up asking his questions for him. For the rest of the interview he stays quiet, tracking (maybe) your exchange with the source while staring at his notes.
After you say goodbye to the interviewee, he finally speaks again: "I'll write up the minutes." It comes out flat, considering he's already done about three-quarters of the group's workload, covering for the other members who've vanished off the face of the project.
"Are you sure that's okay?" He's already found a backup topic, dug up more material, and is planning to build the slides, and now he wants to write the minutes too? You've pitched in here and there, sure, but this guy is way too competent once you leave him alone with a to-do list.
"Yeah. Because... you did the whole interview..." That's a nice reminder that he stayed silent through almost the entire thing. But he showed up, and he tried (?), as much as he could. Compared to the ones who only put their names on the project, this guy beside you, staring blankly at the ground, is leagues better.
You let out a small laugh. "Don't worry about it, it's fine. Thanks for showing up and helping write the questions." You're not really holding a grudge, and he just seems nervous most of the time anyway.
Your words make him whip his head around so fast you almost worry he's pulled something in his neck. "I see... okay." He blinks once during the brief eye contact, then turns his face away, this time to an angle where you can't read his expression at all. "But I still want to do the minutes."
"Alright, just tell me if you want a hand." He only nods in response. Besides, once the interview's done and the material's together, all that's left is the slides, and then you can both relax.
Just as you think you're about to part ways and say goodbye, he cuts you off with a sharp "wait." Then he digs through his bag for something. When he finds what he's looking for, it turns out to be a few cookies wrapped in plastic. "My mom made these... and she asked me to give them to a friend."
He holds them out to you, a little too close for comfort, but you take them with a confused thanks. Then he zips his bag shut in a hurry and leaves just as fast.
What is even going on with this guy? But, well, turns out he's a mama's boy.
────────
The day's a little too sunny, but not bad enough to keep you from heading out for a walk. Shopping, or stopping by a café, that's the kind of thing that usually fills the gaps in your schedule, but here's the thing: your friend is... a little too... how do you put it? Not the type who likes leaving the house.
As you head back with the drinks you both ordered from the counter, you spot him cornered by two girls. His face is practically readable (from your point of view), his jaw is tight, and you know him well enough by now to tell he wants out of this. Poor guy, you think.
Stepping closer, trying to think of a polite way to bail him out, you catch him talking slowly, deliberately. "Yes. That's right. Please excuse me, she's back."
Still trying to piece together what's going on, the two girls take a small step back the moment you sit back down across from him. You shoot him a look: what is this? To your confusion, he immediately grabs your hand, or rather, the hand holding out his drink.
He says your name, his face dead serious: "babe, thank you. Next time, I'll take care of it for both of you." Now you get the game. Biting back a comment about how badly his deadpan face matches those words, you have to fight not to laugh.
"No problem, just buy me a drink next time." You squeeze his hand back and take it a step further (purely to sell his stiff little act, of course) by lacing your fingers through his.
The grip makes him flinch slightly, but you push on, turning to the girls with an apologetic look. "Could you give us a minute? I'm sorry, but we really need to get this assignment done." The assignment part isn't even a lie; your table's already covered in open books and pens.
Standing at the edge of the table has clearly gotten more awkward for them, and one of the girls finally tugs her friend away. Once they're far enough off, you finally let go of his hand, which had honestly been a pretty one-sided grip, given how hard he'd been struggling to squeeze back the hand he'd grabbed in the first place.
Finally, your pitiful friend yanks his hood up over his head and cinches the strings so tight his whole face vanishes into a little bud. Then he drops his forehead onto the table with a long sigh you'd recognize anywhere as his.
Rolling your eyes, you say, "We haven't even been here an hour and you already want to go home?" You decide to take a sip of your drink instead.
"Whenever I'm outside, I want to go home, no matter what. Why else would I be here? Life is too cruel to me, I'm nothing but a dry, brittle leaf—" and off he goes, grumbling on in something that sounds like gargling.
"You're whining. Didn't you say you wanted to come out for your mom?" You've never met his mother, but you know she must be attentive enough to drag him out of his comfort zone and land him here.
All you get back is a click of his tongue. "Yeah, well... but I'd rather go back and rot at home than get bullied like that again." It trails off into something that sounds like a toddler's whine.
Bullied, he calls it, even though he'd clearly just been flirted with by a couple of girls, but that's just how he is. You set your drink aside and open your book back up. Another unhappy huff comes from your study partner. He's cracked open a sliver of a gap in his hood by now, enough to eye your book, and starts scratching away at the pages of his own.
"Are you seriously going to work like that?" You mean him studying with his hood swallowing nearly his whole face, his head buried in the dark.
He peels open a small gap in his cocoon, and there you catch his expression: a deep scowl paired with an irritated glare. "Yeah. What else am I supposed to do? Let them think I'm some pathetic hobo, who cares what other people think. It's not like I can control them anyway."
He finally starts unpacking his pens and notebook, still hooded, still scowling. You let out an amused snort at the sight, and right on cue, he snaps, "What's so funny?"
"Nothing. Or maybe the fact that at school you're always the quiet loner, but you also dodge interaction like it's the worst thing in the world." You flip to the last page where you left off.
"Don't make fun of me, or I'll—" there's his empty threat again. You've already got a comeback loaded, and it's about to make you the clear winner here.
"Or what? Tomorrow you're presenting this project. Oh, sure, I'll back you up." You clasp your hands together and lean back in your chair, the pose of a winner.
Now, the irritation written straight across his forehead, every wrinkle knitted tight. His hands clench into fists, the corners of his mouth pulling down. The only word he manages is, "Cruel."
"I'm not. Come on, don't look at me like I'm some tyrant." You finish it off with a small smile, which earns you a dismissive little hum from him.
"Keep saying that and the earth's going to explode tomorrow." He finally grabs his book and starts flipping through the pages. It sounds like he's sulking, but honestly, this is already miles better than the first time you two interacted, back when he was basically a stack of bricks about to topple over, clumsy and stiff.
Looking back on those early days feels like a joke now. If you tried to remind him how stiff he used to be, and how he acts now like some stubborn little creature (taller than you, by the way), you're pretty sure you'd never get tired of watching him squirm about it.
"Right, is your phone working now?" Out of nowhere he brings up your phone, the one he fixed himself, no training, just taught himself. Turns out he knows a surprising amount about tech and how to service a phone. Maybe it's just something he does when he's bored, but hey, it's free, so why not?
"It's much better now. Thanks a lot for that." What you get back is a small nod and a quiet smile. A rare sight, but one you'll happily take.
────────
What do you think he does once he gets home? Lounges around in bed? Rolls around being lazy? Texts you while reading his favorite book? Not entirely wrong, but that's too typical. It makes him sound too normal.
"Hm, I need to make a new folder." Here he is, your diligent, competent, shy, awkward friend, managing a collection that anyone else would look at with disgust.
Not that anyone could open his locked folder anyway, buried in the background where no ordinary manual search would ever turn it up. His eyes stay fixed on his monitor, fingers busy clicking through thousands of photos, the results of your group (date) study sessions together.
He clicks his tongue in annoyance at a low-storage warning. Hard to believe a 500-gigabyte flash drive is already down to 100 megabytes. Would anyone even believe this is just one month's worth, among several others?
His phone lights up all of a sudden, showing a notification that isn't even supposed to be his. A message reads, "girl, wanna come out with us to the party at XX's? It'll be a blast." Complete with an emoji that turns his stomach.
First thing he does is check the tracking app, the kind whose icon passes for a parental-control tool for keeping tabs on a kid's device. Dig deeper into his version, though, and it's built to monitor a specific device far more thoroughly than any parental app ever would. Since when do tracking apps let you kill the camera-active indicator on someone else's phone?
He hums, satisfied, seeing the monitored device is off, or at least inactive. He quickly types a reply to the earlier message: "sorry, maybe next time. I can't this week." And he ends it with the emoji you always use.
A little while later, the understanding reply he expected shows up. He wipes the entire conversation immediately. "Alright, that's enough." He savors his small victory.
Then again, on second thought, maybe it'd be smarter to ask you out himself, right then. If the two of you happened to run into your "friends" somehow, the blame for lying wouldn't fall on him first, since he's already set the background app history to show nothing whenever he's operating your device's system.
Killing two birds with one stone, basically. Just as he switches the interface profile back, a voice from downstairs calls up his name: "dinner!"
"Coming!" He runs through his checklist, powering down the device, locking the new files, before finally heading out of his room. There's still plenty left to do, no doubt about it.
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Bonus 1:
What's going through his mind the first time you ask for his number: brain shuts down, hand forgets it's holding the phone.
What's going through his mind when he sends a message, forgets to open with anything, and you read it right away: 'shit, shit, shit, shit, shit! Arghhhhh' searches: how to bury yourself alive from shame.
The night after the interview, what's running through his head before bed: 'why am I so pathetic? Stupid, idiotic, insane, filth, I hope tomorrow never happens.'
Him: overthinking at its peak.
Bonus 2:
Q: Does he have a collection of spicy stuff?
A: Yeah, he does. But it's completely untouched, and he'd rather it stay that way, unused for anything except the validation of simply owning it. (How ironic, lol.)
Q: Why doesn't he actually enjoy his spicy collection?
A: The way he sees it, romantic relationships and physical intimacy are things best had mutually, in person, and a handful of pixels on a screen are just a cheap, temporary imitation. He'd rather not wear himself out over pixels. The real thing is better!
Summary: you're raging because your father sold you off, the duke goes and bullies your (ex) fiancé, and your (ex) fiancé is yearning for you. Yandere! (Medieval) Merchant! OC x F! Reader ft. The North Duke! OC
✧ note: this idea came from a viral tiktok video that showed up on my fyp about the North Duke finding you "interesting" and turning it into everyone's problem, plus me being in the mood for a morally shady man have chummy feelings.
✧ context: you transmigrated into a medieval world that feels like your typical manhwa formula, except you don't know anything beyond being a marquis's daughter, and your (ex) fiancé is a successful merchant, perfect for the lazy ever after life.
✧ cw: Forced/arranged marriage, physical violence, threats of bodily harm (lol what a fancy way to say this), dark/murderous ideation, toxic/manipulative romantic dynamic.
═══════════
"I. Said. No!" That's it. The last thread of your patience snaps. Your hands slide under the table and shove up with everything you've got, hoping to send it flipping into the air.
The chaos doesn't come close to what you wanted (splinters of wood catching everyone in the face, say), but the teacups shatter into pieces, tea stains spreading across the sofa and the deep ombré folds of the smug-faced noble's fine uniform, sitting right across from you.
He had the nerve to wreck your beautiful, quiet life. Fine. You'll wreck something on his right back.
"Oh my god, good grief, dear! Servants! Bring clean clothes, quickly!" Your father's hands flap through the air like a mime pressing against an invisible wall, except he's actually panicking, actually cornered.
The clown act doesn't last. He claps his hands together fast, plastering on an awkward smile. "Don't worry, Your Grace, your dignity remains untouched no matter what. I understand that completely, and my daughter does too. I'll do my best to—"
You will too? Oh, don't joke. This whole thing turns your stomach: your father groveling nonstop to this man, and a stranger who deliberately brushes off your opinion even though this is about you. About your marriage.
Who does he think he is? A 21st-century woman versus some old-fashioned medieval man, who's going to win that fight? Physically, maybe him. But you'll geld him first, before he lays a hand on you.
Servants come rushing in. One of them, thinking fast, brings out another bottle from your father's expensive wine collection to replace the one you just wrecked, along with the tea set already in pieces on the floor. Good for you. You grab it and smash it against the ground too, adding another puddle to the mess, sending the servants into hysterics and your father screaming your name.
The one at the eye of this chaos, meanwhile, still sits there, legs elegantly crossed, calm, even with you pointing the jagged edge of a broken wine bottle at him. He just looks at you, curious. "Listen here, you cardboard cutout with a template manhwa face. Even if we really do end up married, on our wedding night I'll do far worse than this, and cut off your—"
"Guards!" Your father, aghast at your outrageous behavior in front of His Grace the Archduke, claps a hand over your mouth and strikes your wrist until you drop what's left of the wine bottle. "Take my hot-tempered daughter to her room!"
Instantly, and finally, the guards stationed at the door come bursting in. But you elbow your father in the gut first, hard enough to knock a rough huff out of him and double him over, both hands clutching his stomach. "Old man, you too! Just wait till I tell mom and get the two of you sleeping in separate beds—"
A small, amused laugh cuts off your tirade against your father. It comes from the man titled Archduke. "Lady, you really do have colorful words. I already ache on our wedding day."
Silence. Everyone freezes, even the guards already breathing down your neck. "You son of—" The words drop like a bomb into that thick, awkward quiet, and the guards finally slide their arms under yours and haul you backward. "Let go! I said, let go! I can walk on my own!" Both guards murmur small, trembling apologies to you as they do.
"Your Grace! I'll make sure our families are fully united, in days! Thank you, thank you..." Your father's voice drowns under the commotion building up around you. That bastard's stare doesn't leave you even as you're dragged off, and he even has the nerve to smirk down at you.
"Just... wait..." you snarl, glare still locked on him. "And you two, if you don't let go of me, tomorrow your pants—" At once they throw their hands up, almost in unison, like they're staring down the barrel of a gun. You twist your arm and shoulder free, patience completely gone, and this time you actually walk out of the room.
When you reach the door, you insist on shutting it yourself even though the guards posted there want to do it for you. How could you possibly pass up the chance to annoy everyone by slamming it as hard as you can (and, of course, flipping him off on your way out, even though he has no idea what the gesture means).
The second you do, you catch your father babbling apologies like there's no tomorrow. Serves him right, selling you off without your permission. (Honestly, it's probably not even enough.)
You're not about to just nod along and get shipped off to some frozen northern land with a stranger who probably won't even guarantee your basic human needs. Besides, in an era where the powerless just keep getting trampled worse and worse, if your worth is going to be measured by the man you marry, it had better be one with appropriate intelligence and a sense of basic decency. There's no surviving people with egos that big.
Your current fiancé, no, not the one whose boots your father is busy licking, is unfortunately away on trade business. You can't believe you actually found a moment to doubt him, just because he's a crafty merchant.
Bottom line: send him a letter first, since your father will obviously keep him in the dark, assuming an ordinary merchant can't do a thing about any of this. Your judgment of your fiancé shouldn't be entirely wrong. Even if he ends up walking away from you, you at least owe him a verse to slap across his face, literally.
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"My lord, your fiancée has sent a letter." His right-hand man stands beside another man he takes for your personal knight. The knight bows slightly, dipping his head, and hands over what's supposedly "your letter": something thick enough to remind him of a chronicle in the guise of a letter. Your heart must be heavy right now, he thinks.
"Thank you. In that case, would you care to wait for my reply over tea?" Unfortunately, his offer of tea-drinking company gets turned down politely, and he finds himself missing you, the way you would casually accept without a second thought and drop all formality just to talk about something interesting with him.
For a moment, he naively assumes it's an emotional letter, that its contents amount to you expressing some deep longing to see him again, but thinking of you, that guess feels like it is underselling your character. And sure enough, something unexpected happens. Or maybe it is not unexpected at all: if it is you, some out-of-the-ordinary suitor has probably already planted himself at your table by now.
Judging by the state of it: your lady-in-waiting's handwriting, a little rough and messy, words chopped up mid-thought, and a string of foreign phrases he has never heard. What is "voluntold"? Rewarded with a pizza party? Bringing back your father's bald spot? Mostly, he gets the sense you're just being sarcastic, worked up about something right now.
Maybe he should remember your recommendation about this timber merchant. Still, the way it is written, the structure, feels deliberately conspicuous. Is this a verse? Are you desperate? Even though any other lady would happily drink poison to be in your position right now.
Taking pen and paper from his right-hand man, not even glancing at your knight, he asks, "How was her ladyship holding up, when it happened?" He has already turned over how to phrase this to you, and the odds this letter gets intercepted.
The knight's answer comes out stammering. He watches the man, brow furrowing as he tries to catch the right words. God, what did you do, dearest, to make a noble knight lose his eloquence. "Please, do not worry, just tell me exactly what happened. The better I understand the situation, the better."
A heavy sigh escapes your knight, and he finally explains what you did, unable to help being blunt about it. "I beg you, please do not think less of the lady, she—"
What a shame, seeing a knight's loyalty put to use like this. He knows full well you wrecked your composure on purpose in front of the archduke, but if he would have been standing in the nobleman's shoes, watching your little rebellion would have had him laughing outright. No, he can not laugh in front of your knight. The thought of you scolding him, nagging at him for finding your situation funny, is charming all on its own.
Midway through writing, his aide warns him, "My lord, our birds are singing about worrying weather." So, the archduke is moving faster than he expected. Apparently you matter enough in the man's eyes that he'd come in person.
"Sweep up properly, would you? The leaves, from our yard. I want the yard looking tidy, you understand?" He settles back into his chair, rereading the letter he's about to finish. While his aide relays the surveillance and turns away the archduke's visit, he's weighing a safe option for you against gambling on something uncertain. No, he needs to see the bigger picture.
'Material supply... the north still needs a certain amount too. Feed storage, Count in the southwest, the matter of heirs...' He taps his pen, occasionally touching the pendant you gave him, until his aide bursts into the office.
"The archduke is barging in, my lord! What should we do? He will reach this room any time." The words come out edged with a fear that pushes him up out of his seat.
"Is anyone hurt?" He stands and quickly packs away the letter meant for you.
"No... more like they were knocked down, but no one is dead..." At his aide's answer, he snorts hard. So this is how the archduke wants to play it: testing the waters, flexing muscle. Understood, then. He will make himself the perfect mark for whatever the duke's got lined up.
"Tell everyone except the guards on the important rooms, and the front door, to stay out of sight until the duke leaves. Besides that, keep at least twenty-five guards posted from the gate all the way to this room. That is all." He seals the envelope. A shame he can not spray it with his perfume for this particular reply. His aide, taking the order, hurries straight out.
Turning to your knight, "As for you, please wait under my desk. Keeping you out of sight matters most right now." He hands over the letter, and the knight's reaction lands somewhere close to resignation. Men are supposed to keep their faces guarded, but he can tell: eyes shut a beat too long, on your knight's part, means something.
He tucks the pendant you gave him away and grabs a few papers for extra show. He settles back comfortably until things outside turn loud. And when the moment comes, he bolts to the door and throws it open hard, arranging his face into worry, furrowing it like he never expected a nobleman to be beating his staff.
"There you are, honorable sir. The guards said you were not in." The archduke stands there in all his splendor, a little disheveled, both hands still fisted in a guard's slack collar, the guard's face already blooming blue with bruises. His tone stays courteous, deliberately letting the seams of the lie show through.
A flaw he would put there on purpose, actually.
"M-my apologize, forgive me, Your Grace! However could I let myself appear before you with nothing worthy to offer. Forgive a lowly servant like me." He bows deep, pleading like a farmer just robbed of his beautiful harvest.
"Never mind, you are here now. Let's talk." He carries himself like he owns the place, dropping onto the sofa, while the merchant, playing the careless farmer, fusses over clearing the desk full of business papers.
"How can I help you, Your Grace? Would you like a cup of tea? I'm afraid all I have on hand right now is tea—"
"I will not stay long. I only wanted to mention that my wedding is coming up soon." And with that, he says your name, right in front of the man who is supposed to become your husband, this other man of pure noble blood, saying it like you are already his sweetheart and about to marry him, out of absolutely nowhere.
"I..." He does not stammer because of the insult, does not bow his head with fists clenched because of helplessness. Not that. "I wish you both happiness, from the bottom of my heart." He presses his lips together, eyes threatening to well up, holding back his own contempt while his stomach turns with disgust at the man sitting across from him.
The archduke shifts, crosses his legs, tilts his head like he wants to see past the act, past the farmer who just happens to know how to read. "Really? Why is that?"
A heavy breath escapes him, almost a choke (deliberately let loose). "I do not have much to offer a woman like her. Her honor as a lady would shine far brighter at the duke's side than at mine... the lady deserves to be cherished more than I could ever give her."
If you would have heard that, he knows you would have decked him before he even finished the sentence. Honor this, honor that, you would have argued you are more than something to be owned by a man, and to him, that's exactly true. True enough that it is what made him fall for you in the first place, and the reason he will never let any man take your hand.
"Polite words are empty if they are just kneaded out through gritted teeth, are they not?" That is said in a tone edging toward amusement.
Must be nice, being high-ranking nobility. Accusing people, saying whatever you please without knowing a damn thing, and getting to be right just because you were born in the right bed. Even though the archduke clearly knows he is lying, screw it, he has no fondness for the man whatsoever.
"I agree with you, Your Grace. Which is exactly why our words ought to be the true shape of our hearts." He nods gently, all the while thinking that if he actually lived by that, he would have lost every coin he owns a long time ago.
The archduke taps his fingers. "Why don't you tell me a little about the lady? I would like to know more about her, seeing as we will soon be pledging to complete each other's lives at the altar." And he smiles like he holds some special fondness for you. Couldn't that smile go scrub some gutter somewhere instead of showing up uninvited in his beautiful home?
But if this arrogant man wants to go there, fine, he will shove that man's back right off a cliff with his own foot. "There is a lot of grace to the lady. I think this deserves something to drink first." He stands to call the nearest servant to prepare tea, and the archduke doesn't stop him.
────────
Finally alone in his office. No smelly nobleman, no exhausted knight, no restless aide, no one but him, he pulls the pendant you gave him back out. He feels a little careless now, for not keeping it somewhere cleaner. Glad for him, the dust wipes away easily enough, and the gem's shine is still there under the gentle pass of his handkerchief.
Still watching the pendant catch the light, the solitude carries his thoughts straight to you. No, the whole day has already been about you, and unfortunate as the situation is, he hopes hard that nothing stands between the two of you being together. The evening sky past his window is too beautiful for his gloomy mood, but he lets himself sit in that light anyway, hunting for some comfort in it.
Long day. He wonders if you felt the same way when the archduke came calling at your house. He hopes whatever charisma the man has doesn't move your heart even a little. You wouldn't, would you?
God... he lets out a long breath, trying to chase off the anxious, restless thoughts by clutching the pendant tight between his palms and pressing his forehead to it. Anyone watching would think he's praying. Maybe he actually is.
"My dearest lady..." It's a whisper, one so faint even he barely hears it. "Please, stay with me. If you don't, I... I won't be able to hold on."
He squeezes his eyes shut, the discomfort in his chest peeling through onto his face.
"Please… please..."
What if you can't? What if you end up leaving him after all? What if the words in your letter were lies and he ends up rotting in some filthy back alley? What if—no. There is no point stewing in something that has not even happened. He refuses to become that kind of man, and he opens his eyes to find the sun already half-swallowed by the horizon, still bright enough to sting.
Right. He is going to see this through with everything he has. With you at his side, even a single bronze coin could be worth more than a polished gemstone.
To him, this is just how life works, brutal and degrading. To survive, he had to build his bridges out of other people's blood and sweat. Maybe he does not actually need to see the archduke's head on the ground. Whatever it is that holds him back, whichever life would cause the biggest blow, the deepest wound, that alone would already be enough.
You might never forgive him for it, but you will come to understand it was the best choice available. He wants you, needs you, found you and had you first, and you promised him you wanted to stay with him. One life, two, three, dying is still better than a hundred.
The greed you once called him out for does not make him back down now. He understands your soft heart, how you hate needless harm, but he also remembers how you draw the line between what's necessary and what is not. Yes. He is not going back down.
Remembering the one word you told him never to become: "loser." True. He refuses to be a loser here.
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Bonus:
Your dynamic with them:
The North Archduke and you: the "ragebaiter x victim" ahh dynamic.
The merchant and you: he's basically your alpha-CEO type who's got that respect-women-juice energy, a 21st-century mind living in a medieval-era guy. Pragmatic, rich, ambitious, polite, with a soft side all his own. His downside: negative points in the morality department, and he's extremely good at hiding it. (Still husband material though.)
Summary: Only he could make such a fuss out of giving you a flower from the street.
✧ note: just dialogue practice today. But I'm in a loving mood. No cw. Additional content for this piece.
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You approach him where he stands lost in thought, staring at a flower in his hand. You call his name and ask, "What's wrong?"
"Ah, my lady." He looks at you, a little hesitant. In his mud-streaked hand is a flower the color of grass, only paler — not faded, really, just naturally that shade.
"What flower is that?"
"This… it is just a wildflower. Nothing that really matters." He bends to set it back on the ground.
"Then why did you pick it?"
"I…"
You let out a soft sigh. "Is it something hard to talk about? It's fine if you don't want to."
"No, that is not it. I'm just… disappointed in myself, for even thinking of giving you a flower off the side of the road."
He brushes the last of the dirt from his hands and offers you a small smile. "Forgive me, my lady. I will bring you a far lovelier one."
"Honestly, you." You pick up what he'd already set back down. "Just give it to me."
"My lady! You—"
"It's fine, it's just a little dirty. I'll wash my hands before lunch."
"My lady… you do not need to protect my pride over something like this." His eyes lower slightly, giving him the look of someone resigned.
"I… not really? I just want to know why you wanted to give it to me. Do you like this flower?"
"'Like' might not be quite the right word, but I pulled it from the ground wondering if you might have seen this flower before."
"If that's what you were thinking, then no, I haven't. The color's close to grass, just a shade lighter."
"It smells sweet too, if you bring it close—my lady! Please do not do that so suddenly!"
"What? You said it was fragrant. I wanted to know what it smelled like."
"I mean, not like that. I pulled it up with dirt still on my hands. It probably smells more like… dirt."
"Hm, not really. It's fragrant. You just have to hold it the right way."
"My lady…"
"What is it with you? Something this small isn't a problem."
"You might not think so, but your hands—"
"Don't give me that nonsense about how my oh-so-delicate, noble little hands shouldn't be touching some wildflower. Is that it?"
He falls silent a moment, almost as if you've struck close to the truth. "No, of course not. I only thought there were plenty of flowers more beautiful, and more fitting to give someone dear to you, than this one."
"You're being too smooth about it. You must be lying."
"How could I be? I'm busy mourning my own mistake, and I would rather you not think less of me for it."
"Yeah, yeah. Excuse after excuse." You think about turning back toward the tent.
"But I'd be happy with whatever flower you give me. This one's actually quite pretty." You lift it up to the sun, and its petals turn out to be fairly translucent.
"Only you would call a flower from the roadside pretty."
"Only you would give me a flower from the roadside this pretty."
He huffs out a laugh. "You're not wrong about that."
Then the two of you walk on together in silence, until he speaks softly, "Actually, when I was little, I used to make flower crowns with that flower."
"The girls in the village taught me how, and every time my mother finished her rounds, I'd give her the crown I'd made."
"That sounds like a lovely memory."
"It is."
"Tell me more."
"I'm afraid you will come away thinking I was a troublesome child who played in the dirt too much."
"Did you play in the dirt a lot as a kid?"
"No."
You bump his shoulder with yours, playful. "Come on, you just said you did."
"I don't know what you mean, my dear lady."
"Such a tightwad. Well, make me a flower crown later, then."
"And that would be… for?"
"I just want one. Is that not allowed?"
He doesn't answer, only looks at you with a soft smile, his gaze full of fondness.
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The next morning, you wake to find a flower crown made from that same flower resting on your wardrobe. The maid who greets you passes along his message: "I hope you woke up in a lovely mood." That maid ends up teasing you about it at least three times before the day is through.
Summary: you're raging because your father sold you off, the duke goes and bullies your (ex) fiancé, and your (ex) fiancé is yearning for you. Yandere! (Medieval) Merchant! OC x F! Reader ft. The North Duke! OC
✧ note: this idea came from a viral tiktok video that showed up on my fyp about the North Duke finding you "interesting" and turning it into everyone's problem, plus me being in the mood for a morally shady man have chummy feelings.
✧ context: you transmigrated into a medieval world that feels like your typical manhwa formula, except you don't know anything beyond being a marquis's daughter, and your (ex) fiancé is a successful merchant, perfect for the lazy ever after life.
✧ cw: Forced/arranged marriage, physical violence, threats of bodily harm (lol what a fancy way to say this), dark/murderous ideation, toxic/manipulative romantic dynamic.
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"I. Said. No!" That's it. The last thread of your patience snaps. Your hands slide under the table and shove up with everything you've got, hoping to send it flipping into the air.
The chaos doesn't come close to what you wanted (splinters of wood catching everyone in the face, say), but the teacups shatter into pieces, tea stains spreading across the sofa and the deep ombré folds of the smug-faced noble's fine uniform, sitting right across from you.
He had the nerve to wreck your beautiful, quiet life. Fine. You'll wreck something on his right back.
"Oh my god, good grief, dear! Servants! Bring clean clothes, quickly!" Your father's hands flap through the air like a mime pressing against an invisible wall, except he's actually panicking, actually cornered.
The clown act doesn't last. He claps his hands together fast, plastering on an awkward smile. "Don't worry, Your Grace, your dignity remains untouched no matter what. I understand that completely, and my daughter does too. I'll do my best to—"
You will too? Oh, don't joke. This whole thing turns your stomach: your father groveling nonstop to this man, and a stranger who deliberately brushes off your opinion even though this is about you. About your marriage.
Who does he think he is? A 21st-century woman versus some old-fashioned medieval man, who's going to win that fight? Physically, maybe him. But you'll geld him first, before he lays a hand on you.
Servants come rushing in. One of them, thinking fast, brings out another bottle from your father's expensive wine collection to replace the one you just wrecked, along with the tea set already in pieces on the floor. Good for you. You grab it and smash it against the ground too, adding another puddle to the mess, sending the servants into hysterics and your father screaming your name.
The one at the eye of this chaos, meanwhile, still sits there, legs elegantly crossed, calm, even with you pointing the jagged edge of a broken wine bottle at him. He just looks at you, curious. "Listen here, you cardboard cutout with a template manhwa face. Even if we really do end up married, on our wedding night I'll do far worse than this, and cut off your—"
"Guards!" Your father, aghast at your outrageous behavior in front of His Grace the Archduke, claps a hand over your mouth and strikes your wrist until you drop what's left of the wine bottle. "Take my hot-tempered daughter to her room!"
Instantly, and finally, the guards stationed at the door come bursting in. But you elbow your father in the gut first, hard enough to knock a rough huff out of him and double him over, both hands clutching his stomach. "Old man, you too! Just wait till I tell mom and get the two of you sleeping in separate beds—"
A small, amused laugh cuts off your tirade against your father. It comes from the man titled Archduke. "Lady, you really do have colorful words. I already ache on our wedding day."
Silence. Everyone freezes, even the guards already breathing down your neck. "You son of—" The words drop like a bomb into that thick, awkward quiet, and the guards finally slide their arms under yours and haul you backward. "Let go! I said, let go! I can walk on my own!" Both guards murmur small, trembling apologies to you as they do.
"Your Grace! I'll make sure our families are fully united, in days! Thank you, thank you..." Your father's voice drowns under the commotion building up around you. That bastard's stare doesn't leave you even as you're dragged off, and he even has the nerve to smirk down at you.
"Just... wait..." you snarl, glare still locked on him. "And you two, if you don't let go of me, tomorrow your pants—" At once they throw their hands up, almost in unison, like they're staring down the barrel of a gun. You twist your arm and shoulder free, patience completely gone, and this time you actually walk out of the room.
When you reach the door, you insist on shutting it yourself even though the guards posted there want to do it for you. How could you possibly pass up the chance to annoy everyone by slamming it as hard as you can (and, of course, flipping him off on your way out, even though he has no idea what the gesture means).
The second you do, you catch your father babbling apologies like there's no tomorrow. Serves him right, selling you off without your permission. (Honestly, it's probably not even enough.)
You're not about to just nod along and get shipped off to some frozen northern land with a stranger who probably won't even guarantee your basic human needs. Besides, in an era where the powerless just keep getting trampled worse and worse, if your worth is going to be measured by the man you marry, it had better be one with appropriate intelligence and a sense of basic decency. There's no surviving people with egos that big.
Your current fiancé, no, not the one whose boots your father is busy licking, is unfortunately away on trade business. You can't believe you actually found a moment to doubt him, just because he's a crafty merchant.
Bottom line: send him a letter first, since your father will obviously keep him in the dark, assuming an ordinary merchant can't do a thing about any of this. Your judgment of your fiancé shouldn't be entirely wrong. Even if he ends up walking away from you, you at least owe him a verse to slap across his face, literally.
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"My lord, your fiancée has sent a letter." His right-hand man stands beside another man he takes for your personal knight. The knight bows slightly, dipping his head, and hands over what's supposedly "your letter": something thick enough to remind him of a chronicle in the guise of a letter. Your heart must be heavy right now, he thinks.
"Thank you. In that case, would you care to wait for my reply over tea?" Unfortunately, his offer of tea-drinking company gets turned down politely, and he finds himself missing you, the way you would casually accept without a second thought and drop all formality just to talk about something interesting with him.
For a moment, he naively assumes it's an emotional letter, that its contents amount to you expressing some deep longing to see him again, but thinking of you, that guess feels like it is underselling your character. And sure enough, something unexpected happens. Or maybe it is not unexpected at all: if it is you, some out-of-the-ordinary suitor has probably already planted himself at your table by now.
Judging by the state of it: your lady-in-waiting's handwriting, a little rough and messy, words chopped up mid-thought, and a string of foreign phrases he has never heard. What is "voluntold"? Rewarded with a pizza party? Bringing back your father's bald spot? Mostly, he gets the sense you're just being sarcastic, worked up about something right now.
Maybe he should remember your recommendation about this timber merchant. Still, the way it is written, the structure, feels deliberately conspicuous. Is this a verse? Are you desperate? Even though any other lady would happily drink poison to be in your position right now.
Taking pen and paper from his right-hand man, not even glancing at your knight, he asks, "How was her ladyship holding up, when it happened?" He has already turned over how to phrase this to you, and the odds this letter gets intercepted.
The knight's answer comes out stammering. He watches the man, brow furrowing as he tries to catch the right words. God, what did you do, dearest, to make a noble knight lose his eloquence. "Please, do not worry, just tell me exactly what happened. The better I understand the situation, the better."
A heavy sigh escapes your knight, and he finally explains what you did, unable to help being blunt about it. "I beg you, please do not think less of the lady, she—"
What a shame, seeing a knight's loyalty put to use like this. He knows full well you wrecked your composure on purpose in front of the archduke, but if he would have been standing in the nobleman's shoes, watching your little rebellion would have had him laughing outright. No, he can not laugh in front of your knight. The thought of you scolding him, nagging at him for finding your situation funny, is charming all on its own.
Midway through writing, his aide warns him, "My lord, our birds are singing about worrying weather." So, the archduke is moving faster than he expected. Apparently you matter enough in the man's eyes that he'd come in person.
"Sweep up properly, would you? The leaves, from our yard. I want the yard looking tidy, you understand?" He settles back into his chair, rereading the letter he's about to finish. While his aide relays the surveillance and turns away the archduke's visit, he's weighing a safe option for you against gambling on something uncertain. No, he needs to see the bigger picture.
'Material supply... the north still needs a certain amount too. Feed storage, Count in the southwest, the matter of heirs...' He taps his pen, occasionally touching the pendant you gave him, until his aide bursts into the office.
"The archduke is barging in, my lord! What should we do? He will reach this room any time." The words come out edged with a fear that pushes him up out of his seat.
"Is anyone hurt?" He stands and quickly packs away the letter meant for you.
"No... more like they were knocked down, but no one is dead..." At his aide's answer, he snorts hard. So this is how the archduke wants to play it: testing the waters, flexing muscle. Understood, then. He will make himself the perfect mark for whatever the duke's got lined up.
"Tell everyone except the guards on the important rooms, and the front door, to stay out of sight until the duke leaves. Besides that, keep at least twenty-five guards posted from the gate all the way to this room. That is all." He seals the envelope. A shame he can not spray it with his perfume for this particular reply. His aide, taking the order, hurries straight out.
Turning to your knight, "As for you, please wait under my desk. Keeping you out of sight matters most right now." He hands over the letter, and the knight's reaction lands somewhere close to resignation. Men are supposed to keep their faces guarded, but he can tell: eyes shut a beat too long, on your knight's part, means something.
He tucks the pendant you gave him away and grabs a few papers for extra show. He settles back comfortably until things outside turn loud. And when the moment comes, he bolts to the door and throws it open hard, arranging his face into worry, furrowing it like he never expected a nobleman to be beating his staff.
"There you are, honorable sir. The guards said you were not in." The archduke stands there in all his splendor, a little disheveled, both hands still fisted in a guard's slack collar, the guard's face already blooming blue with bruises. His tone stays courteous, deliberately letting the seams of the lie show through.
A flaw he would put there on purpose, actually.
"M-my apologize, forgive me, Your Grace! However could I let myself appear before you with nothing worthy to offer. Forgive a lowly servant like me." He bows deep, pleading like a farmer just robbed of his beautiful harvest.
"Never mind, you are here now. Let's talk." He carries himself like he owns the place, dropping onto the sofa, while the merchant, playing the careless farmer, fusses over clearing the desk full of business papers.
"How can I help you, Your Grace? Would you like a cup of tea? I'm afraid all I have on hand right now is tea—"
"I will not stay long. I only wanted to mention that my wedding is coming up soon." And with that, he says your name, right in front of the man who is supposed to become your husband, this other man of pure noble blood, saying it like you are already his sweetheart and about to marry him, out of absolutely nowhere.
"I..." He does not stammer because of the insult, does not bow his head with fists clenched because of helplessness. Not that. "I wish you both happiness, from the bottom of my heart." He presses his lips together, eyes threatening to well up, holding back his own contempt while his stomach turns with disgust at the man sitting across from him.
The archduke shifts, crosses his legs, tilts his head like he wants to see past the act, past the farmer who just happens to know how to read. "Really? Why is that?"
A heavy breath escapes him, almost a choke (deliberately let loose). "I do not have much to offer a woman like her. Her honor as a lady would shine far brighter at the duke's side than at mine... the lady deserves to be cherished more than I could ever give her."
If you would have heard that, he knows you would have decked him before he even finished the sentence. Honor this, honor that, you would have argued you are more than something to be owned by a man, and to him, that's exactly true. True enough that it is what made him fall for you in the first place, and the reason he will never let any man take your hand.
"Polite words are empty if they are just kneaded out through gritted teeth, are they not?" That is said in a tone edging toward amusement.
Must be nice, being high-ranking nobility. Accusing people, saying whatever you please without knowing a damn thing, and getting to be right just because you were born in the right bed. Even though the archduke clearly knows he is lying, screw it, he has no fondness for the man whatsoever.
"I agree with you, Your Grace. Which is exactly why our words ought to be the true shape of our hearts." He nods gently, all the while thinking that if he actually lived by that, he would have lost every coin he owns a long time ago.
The archduke taps his fingers. "Why don't you tell me a little about the lady? I would like to know more about her, seeing as we will soon be pledging to complete each other's lives at the altar." And he smiles like he holds some special fondness for you. Couldn't that smile go scrub some gutter somewhere instead of showing up uninvited in his beautiful home?
But if this arrogant man wants to go there, fine, he will shove that man's back right off a cliff with his own foot. "There is a lot of grace to the lady. I think this deserves something to drink first." He stands to call the nearest servant to prepare tea, and the archduke doesn't stop him.
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Finally alone in his office. No smelly nobleman, no exhausted knight, no restless aide, no one but him, he pulls the pendant you gave him back out. He feels a little careless now, for not keeping it somewhere cleaner. Glad for him, the dust wipes away easily enough, and the gem's shine is still there under the gentle pass of his handkerchief.
Still watching the pendant catch the light, the solitude carries his thoughts straight to you. No, the whole day has already been about you, and unfortunate as the situation is, he hopes hard that nothing stands between the two of you being together. The evening sky past his window is too beautiful for his gloomy mood, but he lets himself sit in that light anyway, hunting for some comfort in it.
Long day. He wonders if you felt the same way when the archduke came calling at your house. He hopes whatever charisma the man has doesn't move your heart even a little. You wouldn't, would you?
God... he lets out a long breath, trying to chase off the anxious, restless thoughts by clutching the pendant tight between his palms and pressing his forehead to it. Anyone watching would think he's praying. Maybe he actually is.
"My dearest lady..." It's a whisper, one so faint even he barely hears it. "Please, stay with me. If you don't, I... I won't be able to hold on."
He squeezes his eyes shut, the discomfort in his chest peeling through onto his face.
"Please… please..."
What if you can't? What if you end up leaving him after all? What if the words in your letter were lies and he ends up rotting in some filthy back alley? What if—no. There is no point stewing in something that has not even happened. He refuses to become that kind of man, and he opens his eyes to find the sun already half-swallowed by the horizon, still bright enough to sting.
Right. He is going to see this through with everything he has. With you at his side, even a single bronze coin could be worth more than a polished gemstone.
To him, this is just how life works, brutal and degrading. To survive, he had to build his bridges out of other people's blood and sweat. Maybe he does not actually need to see the archduke's head on the ground. Whatever it is that holds him back, whichever life would cause the biggest blow, the deepest wound, that alone would already be enough.
You might never forgive him for it, but you will come to understand it was the best choice available. He wants you, needs you, found you and had you first, and you promised him you wanted to stay with him. One life, two, three, dying is still better than a hundred.
The greed you once called him out for does not make him back down now. He understands your soft heart, how you hate needless harm, but he also remembers how you draw the line between what's necessary and what is not. Yes. He is not going back down.
Remembering the one word you told him never to become: "loser." True. He refuses to be a loser here.
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Bonus:
Your dynamic with them:
The North Archduke and you: the "ragebaiter x victim" ahh dynamic.
The merchant and you: he's basically your alpha-CEO type who's got that respect-women-juice energy, a 21st-century mind living in a medieval-era guy. Pragmatic, rich, ambitious, polite, with a soft side all his own. His downside: negative points in the morality department, and he's extremely good at hiding it. (Still husband material though.)
summary: He blackmailed you into joining his group of popular kids, and... nothing bad happened? Yandere! Popular! OC x F! Reader
✧ note: I just read a few pieces with this trope, so I wanted to try writing one myself.
✧ cw: blackmail/coercion, one bloody beatdown, background family stuff (mentioned, not detailed), swearing, some concerning tendencies.
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"Look what I've got." He holds up a photo that captures your family's mess, waving it like a hundred-dollar bill in front of a desperate beggar. He's cornered you in the one place you usually find some peace from the swarm of hormone-charged teenagers.
A bastard is still a bastard whether he's popular or handsome, and this one is painfully childish. "What do you want?" You snap your lunchbox shut and snatch the photo, which he lets go of without a fight. Of course he has copies.
"Join my group for lunch in the cafeteria tomorrow." He stands there now, weight shifted onto one leg, hands shoved in his pockets.
Hellishly suspicious. Threatening you out of nowhere, acting like you're already friends, assuming you won't notice how strange that is? He's probably in the middle of some game of truth or dare, and tomorrow he'll find a way to humiliate you. (Or maybe that's just you, having read too much fiction, and he genuinely wants to be friends. Hmm. No. This is too contrived to pass as "making friends.")
"Yeah, and then you'll dump your lunch on my shirt or something, and everyone will laugh at me." You go back to packing your things, trying to think of a way out of this.
"Ugh, what kind of delinquent still does that these days? I could trash your locker instead, and everyone would say you had it coming." Look at that. He actually huffs with pride, as if he isn't some psycho straight out of a horror show. "Whatever. Just show up tomorrow. It's not like you have a choice." He shrugs and walks off.
Should you tell a teacher? The police? Chances are you'd end up in trouble too and get expelled in the end, or at best your quiet school life would curdle into being the kid labeled a troublemaker, rumors trailing you even after graduation. Sounds like reporting this to the authorities just makes everything worse….
You blow out a long breath. Life is really exhausting, isn't it? You stare up at a sky that knows nothing.
────────
"Let's meet again, sweetheart." Your school's cheerleader captain blows you an air kiss and throws in a wink as the two of you split up in the hallway. You wave back, trying to shake the faint daze of realizing nothing truly awful has happened, except that they've all gotten… friendly? Maybe just more stares, more attention. Beyond that, not much.
"See, not so bad, right?" The one who's been dragging you along, insisting on walking you to your next class, tilts his head with an air of total innocence. You don't answer, just keep walking, and let him fall into step beside you.
He lets your silence slide and keeps going. "Come again tomorrow."
You click your tongue. "Should I?" Why keep playing along at all? Who knows if they're just waiting for you to feel like you belong before they turn around and stab you in the back.
"Yeah. If you want that photo deleted." As if he isn't going to keep it forever anyway.
"You're going to keep holding that over me." The words come out in one breath, your voice kept low. You try to walk faster.
He matches your pace easily. "I'll delete it after six months. Until then, you just have to listen to me nicely."
You roll your eyes and scoff. "So I'm your slave from now on, is that it? You should've said so yesterday."
"That's a cruel way to put it. Haven't the others been treating you well? Besides, they don't know anything about the photo." You stop walking and turn to actually look at him. His expression seems innocent. He's already been watching you.
"What do you actually want?" You clench your fists, holding yourself back from punching his stupid face.
"You'll have to figure that out yourself." He muses over his own answer, and just as you're about to kick him in the groin, he stops you by raising a finger, like he's offering some kind of pinky promise. "I promise I'll delete it after those six months, if you behave." Okay. What kind of nonsense is this?
You don't answer and keep walking. Luckily your classroom is only a few steps away, and freedom from this misery.
Not to be left behind, he digs something out of his pocket and presses a folded piece of paper into your palm. "Here. Don't forget." Then he strolls off, waving and calling out loud enough that even more eyes turn your way.
────────
"Raining, huh. Want a ride?" You're about to pop open your folding umbrella on the front steps for the walk home when you find him standing beside you, spinning his car keys around one finger. His laid-back manner never changes, not even with rain coming down outside like a typhoon.
"Not driving the others home first?" Even as you consider taking him up on it, you don't close the umbrella. Just in case you decide to turn him down, or in case you say yes and still need it on the way to his car.
"Nah, let them figure it out. Maybe later, so I can get them to owe me drinks." Before you can call him out on the habit, he's already slipped himself under your umbrella. "So?"
"You're still asking when you've already decided to steal my umbrella?" His hand has wrapped over yours where it grips the handle. You just let go, and he takes it with a look far too pleased for someone merely holding it for the two of you.
Like a proper gentleman, he lets his own shoulder get a little wet, tilting the umbrella to keep you covered, then opens the car door while still holding it over your head, before folding it shut and tucking it into the door pocket. You've ridden in this car enough times to know exactly where he keeps his towel. You pop open the glove box and hand it to him.
He thanks you easily and takes it, then attacks his damp hair with the towel, ruffling it with such theatrical vigor that you scold him and the two of you end up laughing together. Then he goes quiet all at once, as if remembering something. He pops open the armrest compartment and holds out what you assume is a flash drive.
"Here… that photo. Sorry, for being a bastard about it." You take the flash drive, a little stunned to realize it's already been almost six months, and that you've been having so much fun you'd forgotten the whole reason you ended up with these friends in the first place.
Six months isn't exactly short, but it isn't long either. Still, at least now you know they've genuinely been trying to be your friends, rather than setting up some cruel trap that would scar you for life. You huff, amused despite yourself. "Well. As long as you know you were wrong. I'd say you owe me about seven lunches for it."
"Even if it's a hundred, just say the word." He starts the car.
"Show-off." You give him a look that says exactly how shameless he is about money.
"Isn't it natural for a guy to want to look cool in front of someone he likes?" There he goes again, throwing you a signal, though he keeps the tone joking. Whatever he wants, whether he means to keep playing games like this or let it turn serious somewhere down the road, it isn't as if this catch game of his is something you can actually win over.
Still, you aren't about to let him off the hook. "If anyone else heard you say that, they'd kill your vibe and call you a boi-failure. Remember the spicy noodles that—"
"Hey! That came out of my nose because I choked, and it was way too spicy!" He clears his throat loudly, scraping together what little dignity he has left, which has probably shrunk to the size of an acorn by the time you're done wrecking his hair with the towel. In moments like this, he looks boyish, nothing like his usual playboy resting face.
Maybe the only thing you still regret is how your old friends, the ones who used to be with you, have drifted away like you were some kind of germ. To this day, you still don't know what you did wrong to make them leave.
────────
To be fair, what do you really know about him? His antics, his place in the school’s social hierarchy, his hobbies, his family situation, and what he’s like when it’s just the two of you?
"Stop it. If you keep beating on them, they might actually die." He's already dropped you off and, just like he said, is driving the rest of your mutual friends—the popular kids home too, except he happens to swing by an alley and takes so long that the friend riding along gets out to check on him.
"Ah, sorry. Almost done here." That's all he says, tossing a couple of limp bodies toward the dumpster and the still-damp corner of the alley. Lucky for him, he's worn dark clothes today, or the blood splatter would show clearly. Unfortunately, that does nothing about the smell.
"What is it this time? Aren't you overdoing it a little?" Overdoing it, apparently, only applies to the bodies he's beaten, not to what's spilled from the victims' bags: books, a phone with its screen cracked. He can throw a punch, sure, but he prefers to keep things tidy.
"One of those guys got a little too close to her. I couldn't just let that slide." He brushes off his hands like there's dust on them, though they're scraped red and raw. It has to sting, but he lets it be for now. "I wonder what she'd do if she saw my hands like this."
His friend huffs, annoyed at how easily his mood shifts the moment you come up in conversation, and grumbles at him, "she probably will just scold you for being a bad dog."
He should snap back at being called a dog, but if it comes from you, he supposes it isn't so bad.
—
Bonus:
The piece of paper he gave you: his number with a note saying, “Save it and text me back ( ˘ ³˘)♥︎”
summary: He blackmailed you into joining his group of popular kids, and... nothing bad happened? Yandere! Popular! OC x F! Reader
✧ note: I just read a few pieces with this trope, so I wanted to try writing one myself.
✧ cw: blackmail/coercion, one bloody beatdown, background family stuff (mentioned, not detailed), swearing, some concerning tendencies.
═══════════
"Look what I've got." He holds up a photo that captures your family's mess, waving it like a hundred-dollar bill in front of a desperate beggar. He's cornered you in the one place you usually find some peace from the swarm of hormone-charged teenagers.
A bastard is still a bastard whether he's popular or handsome, and this one is painfully childish. "What do you want?" You snap your lunchbox shut and snatch the photo, which he lets go of without a fight. Of course he has copies.
"Join my group for lunch in the cafeteria tomorrow." He stands there now, weight shifted onto one leg, hands shoved in his pockets.
Hellishly suspicious. Threatening you out of nowhere, acting like you're already friends, assuming you won't notice how strange that is? He's probably in the middle of some game of truth or dare, and tomorrow he'll find a way to humiliate you. (Or maybe that's just you, having read too much fiction, and he genuinely wants to be friends. Hmm. No. This is too contrived to pass as "making friends.")
"Yeah, and then you'll dump your lunch on my shirt or something, and everyone will laugh at me." You go back to packing your things, trying to think of a way out of this.
"Ugh, what kind of delinquent still does that these days? I could trash your locker instead, and everyone would say you had it coming." Look at that. He actually huffs with pride, as if he isn't some psycho straight out of a horror show. "Whatever. Just show up tomorrow. It's not like you have a choice." He shrugs and walks off.
Should you tell a teacher? The police? Chances are you'd end up in trouble too and get expelled in the end, or at best your quiet school life would curdle into being the kid labeled a troublemaker, rumors trailing you even after graduation. Sounds like reporting this to the authorities just makes everything worse….
You blow out a long breath. Life is really exhausting, isn't it? You stare up at a sky that knows nothing.
────────
"Let's meet again, sweetheart." Your school's cheerleader captain blows you an air kiss and throws in a wink as the two of you split up in the hallway. You wave back, trying to shake the faint daze of realizing nothing truly awful has happened, except that they've all gotten… friendly? Maybe just more stares, more attention. Beyond that, not much.
"See, not so bad, right?" The one who's been dragging you along, insisting on walking you to your next class, tilts his head with an air of total innocence. You don't answer, just keep walking, and let him fall into step beside you.
He lets your silence slide and keeps going. "Come again tomorrow."
You click your tongue. "Should I?" Why keep playing along at all? Who knows if they're just waiting for you to feel like you belong before they turn around and stab you in the back.
"Yeah. If you want that photo deleted." As if he isn't going to keep it forever anyway.
"You're going to keep holding that over me." The words come out in one breath, your voice kept low. You try to walk faster.
He matches your pace easily. "I'll delete it after six months. Until then, you just have to listen to me nicely."
You roll your eyes and scoff. "So I'm your slave from now on, is that it? You should've said so yesterday."
"That's a cruel way to put it. Haven't the others been treating you well? Besides, they don't know anything about the photo." You stop walking and turn to actually look at him. His expression seems innocent. He's already been watching you.
"What do you actually want?" You clench your fists, holding yourself back from punching his stupid face.
"You'll have to figure that out yourself." He muses over his own answer, and just as you're about to kick him in the groin, he stops you by raising a finger, like he's offering some kind of pinky promise. "I promise I'll delete it after those six months, if you behave." Okay. What kind of nonsense is this?
You don't answer and keep walking. Luckily your classroom is only a few steps away, and freedom from this misery.
Not to be left behind, he digs something out of his pocket and presses a folded piece of paper into your palm. "Here. Don't forget." Then he strolls off, waving and calling out loud enough that even more eyes turn your way.
────────
"Raining, huh. Want a ride?" You're about to pop open your folding umbrella on the front steps for the walk home when you find him standing beside you, spinning his car keys around one finger. His laid-back manner never changes, not even with rain coming down outside like a typhoon.
"Not driving the others home first?" Even as you consider taking him up on it, you don't close the umbrella. Just in case you decide to turn him down, or in case you say yes and still need it on the way to his car.
"Nah, let them figure it out. Maybe later, so I can get them to owe me drinks." Before you can call him out on the habit, he's already slipped himself under your umbrella. "So?"
"You're still asking when you've already decided to steal my umbrella?" His hand has wrapped over yours where it grips the handle. You just let go, and he takes it with a look far too pleased for someone merely holding it for the two of you.
Like a proper gentleman, he lets his own shoulder get a little wet, tilting the umbrella to keep you covered, then opens the car door while still holding it over your head, before folding it shut and tucking it into the door pocket. You've ridden in this car enough times to know exactly where he keeps his towel. You pop open the glove box and hand it to him.
He thanks you easily and takes it, then attacks his damp hair with the towel, ruffling it with such theatrical vigor that you scold him and the two of you end up laughing together. Then he goes quiet all at once, as if remembering something. He pops open the armrest compartment and holds out what you assume is a flash drive.
"Here… that photo. Sorry, for being a bastard about it." You take the flash drive, a little stunned to realize it's already been almost six months, and that you've been having so much fun you'd forgotten the whole reason you ended up with these friends in the first place.
Six months isn't exactly short, but it isn't long either. Still, at least now you know they've genuinely been trying to be your friends, rather than setting up some cruel trap that would scar you for life. You huff, amused despite yourself. "Well. As long as you know you were wrong. I'd say you owe me about seven lunches for it."
"Even if it's a hundred, just say the word." He starts the car.
"Show-off." You give him a look that says exactly how shameless he is about money.
"Isn't it natural for a guy to want to look cool in front of someone he likes?" There he goes again, throwing you a signal, though he keeps the tone joking. Whatever he wants, whether he means to keep playing games like this or let it turn serious somewhere down the road, it isn't as if this catch game of his is something you can actually win over.
Still, you aren't about to let him off the hook. "If anyone else heard you say that, they'd kill your vibe and call you a boi-failure. Remember the spicy noodles that—"
"Hey! That came out of my nose because I choked, and it was way too spicy!" He clears his throat loudly, scraping together what little dignity he has left, which has probably shrunk to the size of an acorn by the time you're done wrecking his hair with the towel. In moments like this, he looks boyish, nothing like his usual playboy resting face.
Maybe the only thing you still regret is how your old friends, the ones who used to be with you, have drifted away like you were some kind of germ. To this day, you still don't know what you did wrong to make them leave.
────────
To be fair, what do you really know about him? His antics, his place in the school’s social hierarchy, his hobbies, his family situation, and what he’s like when it’s just the two of you?
"Stop it. If you keep beating on them, they might actually die." He's already dropped you off and, just like he said, is driving the rest of your mutual friends—the popular kids home too, except he happens to swing by an alley and takes so long that the friend riding along gets out to check on him.
"Ah, sorry. Almost done here." That's all he says, tossing a couple of limp bodies toward the dumpster and the still-damp corner of the alley. Lucky for him, he's worn dark clothes today, or the blood splatter would show clearly. Unfortunately, that does nothing about the smell.
"What is it this time? Aren't you overdoing it a little?" Overdoing it, apparently, only applies to the bodies he's beaten, not to what's spilled from the victims' bags: books, a phone with its screen cracked. He can throw a punch, sure, but he prefers to keep things tidy.
"One of those guys got a little too close to her. I couldn't just let that slide." He brushes off his hands like there's dust on them, though they're scraped red and raw. It has to sting, but he lets it be for now. "I wonder what she'd do if she saw my hands like this."
His friend huffs, annoyed at how easily his mood shifts the moment you come up in conversation, and grumbles at him, "she probably will just scold you for being a bad dog."
He should snap back at being called a dog, but if it comes from you, he supposes it isn't so bad.
—
Bonus:
The piece of paper he gave you: his number with a note saying, “Save it and text me back ( ˘ ³˘)♥︎”
summary: this is what happens when you throw a glance at another man, and there's this doctor who's pretty unhinged (literally) but has complicated feelings toward you and does 'this' to you.
✧ note: based here (or if you want to know more about this character).
✧ cw: graphic medical gore, m*tilation, blood, forced physical contact, non-con restraint, coercion, forced ingestion of human tissue, psychological abuse, implied torture.
——————————
"Now, don't be so scared." He watches you shaking, taking it for the ordinary reaction anyone would have when confronted with a human eyeball — especially with its owner still there behind him, twitching in pain, bound to a chair with no way to break free. Just like you. Except he hasn't done anything to you. Not yet.
This whole time, your entire arm — wrist to elbow — has been bound tight, palm turned upward. Before he came to stand in front of you, he, smiling and at ease, had just finished cutting, or, in the medical term he'd used earlier, performing an enucleation, all while giving you a casual lecture on exactly how it's done.
Blood on his face, blood on his lab coat, the whole room reeking of it, and now it's staining your feet too. The echo of the man's choked screams, the one who lost his eye, still hasn't left your head. You don't dare look past his shoulder, to where the man's face is pinned open with clamps holding back the skin.
"Come on, I worked hard to keep this neat. It's not easy doing this with the patient sitting up, you know." His smile fades, replaced by a look of disappointment, like he's just caught a misbehaving child.
Your mouth is taped shut, your scream muffled, as he forces your hand closed around the eyeball. His gloved fingers lace through yours the way a lover's would, except between your palms, pressed into the spaces where your fingers meet, sits an eyeball.
"This is the first time you've touched a whole eyeball, isn't it? Try feeling the texture." It isn't a request. Feeling it against your skin is something you have no way to avoid. Wet, slick, slimy, faintly rough, utterly wrong, enough to turn your stomach. "Doesn't the texture remind you of a peeled grape? Maybe wetter." He presses it playfully tighter between your hands.
Your shriek makes him laugh, a light, genuinely delighted sound that has no business existing in a room like this. "Why so scared? Eyeballs are actually a lot sturdier than people think." He presses down a little harder between his words.
After a while, exhausted, you let him keep rubbing the eyeball against your palm without fighting it. When you stop giving him a reaction, he finally let go of your hand and pulls a scalpel from his pocket to cuts the eyeball open.
"This fluid is called the vitreous humor, from the Latin for glassy liquid. Though anyone would find that funny, given it sounds like a kind of humor." Clear fluid leaks from the cut eye, and you try to tell yourself it's nothing more than egg white as it drips slowly down his arm. What's left are small pieces of sclera, sliced thin.
He tucks the scalpel back into his pocket, then uses his now-free hand to rip the tape from your mouth. "Don't get distracted, okay? You still need to try this."
Huh? What did he just say? You feel like an idiot. No, more like you'd rather not know what he just meant by that.
Your face twists in disgust and you clench your jaw shut. It doesn't matter. He grabs your chin with the same hand holding the pieces of sclera. You try to throw yourself down, chair and all, but it's bolted fast to the floor. His fingers trace along your lower jaw and stop somewhere near your chin.
He presses down there, hard enough to send a vicious, aching pain shooting into your lower lip, your bottom front gums, your chin. "That's called the mental nerve, and the opening in the jaw is the mental foramen." The instant your jaw goes slack, beyond your control, he slides two fingers, and the sliver of eye they're holding, past your lips. He keeps talking as he does it. "Its whole job is being a purely sensory nerve. It sends danger signals to the brain."
The piece is small enough to slide down without making you choke, but the strange slick feel of it on your tongue, and the thought of exactly what part of a person it came from, are enough. You can't hold it back. Everything in your stomach comes up.
"Oh, for God's sake. Guess we're starting over from the top. Well, I don't mind." He shrugs, indifferent, not caring in the slightest that you're gasping for air and about to bring up whatever's left in your stomach. He catches your chin again.
Maybe because his first attempt failed, he leans in close to your ear this time and whispers, in a tone you could almost mistake for tenderness. "It's alright. Your eyes are for looking, after all, even if you did point them at another man." Then he kisses your cheek, soft, before starting the whole thing over again.
⟡ note: Just some things I've been thinking about, with reader in the mix.
⟡ cw: implied yandere tendencies, no graphics content.
—
Being a deity doesn't mean being almighty and terrifying. You just get to live in a world that feels like a fairy tale, free from everything that traps ordinary humans. Being somewhat isolated from human civilization doesn't mean giving up your cozy hut and the view that comes with it.
In short, you're basically living inside an illustrated children's book, the kind that tells a simple, everyday story, and honestly, being there isn't so bad. What you don't know, though, is that this ‘children's storybook’ counts as some kind of anomaly in the dystopian world of Dungeon overbreak, one that can't be detected even by high-tier ‘skill’ analysis. All they can ever return is something close to a system redaction.
Being the main subject of a book when reading happens to be your favorite hobby makes the whole thing feel oddly fitting.
But of course, you're not some hostile deity. You're human. As if ordinary people would just take your word for it, not when you're always wrapped in that soft, warm light, radiating a strange kind of calm, the sort that never quite lets anyone relax completely without some part of them suspecting a hallucination, or a trap.
—
The collector:
So there's a collector obsessed with items that carry real aesthetic value, keeping and caring for them like priceless things whose beauty demands preservation, even when the item itself might ruin or endanger anyone nearby.
You're probably grateful he's the one who brought you into his gallery of a collection, keeping out anyone who might damage your ‘book.’ But sometimes… this man just has too much energy, and it drains your social battery faster than you'd expect.
This man is a lost cause the moment he sees you manifest in the physical world, and succeeded in achieving a complete manifestation. There's a certain time frame where the CCTV camera catching your laugh, your smile, while you're talking with your curator.
It's probably a little blurry, maybe unsettling to anyone else, but for him it's reason enough to replay the footage, to listen closer, to watch the way those captured flecks of light trace out your bright, delighted shape.
Calling you the most beautiful piece he owns feels a little unfair to the rest of his collection. Every piece has its own charm, and that charm deserves respect; as a collector, he refuses to talk down one piece in front of the others.
Still, that footage nearly changed his mind. If only he'd been standing where the curator stood. If only the camera could be upgraded to a higher resolution, one able to capture a deity properly and preserve that image the way it deserves, he'd start every morning looking at that beauty.
This person will give you more of the things that make you happy—just ask, and he’ll bring them to you. As a lover of art, he wants to see more of your beauty and watch you flourish; even if the world were to fall apart in the process, he wouldn’t regret it.
The Curator:
Then there's the curator assigned to look after you. A soft-spoken man, and very polite.
Oh man, pity the guy who keeps picking up overtime and extra work just because he happens to be competent.
As a former researcher shaped by passion and a serious streak of curiosity (and no small amount of talent), he's more or less the type who could accidentally unleash a disaster on the outside world, simply because his attention, his pride, and his fondness for the Dungeon subject he studies outweigh his humanity.
Of course, he's self-aware enough to know that isn't right, and that he needs to find the best path for both.
Still, when you're an entity that naturally falls under the ‘charmer’ category, even while you insist this is just you being you, he ends up captivated anyway, not only by your ‘nature’ but by your complexity, by the way you inherently grow, expand, and become the personification of the entity itself.
He could blame whoever dragged him into this, a certain collector especially, since he's the reason for it. Then again, in the end, that only leaves him as your curator, and it was his own choice to keep taking care of you.
When you tell him his eyes look like the sky (a reference to one of his skills that you probably don't even realize), and that they're beautiful and clear (which accidentally buffs him for a few days straight), how is he supposed to stop searching, stop trying to find your warmth (sorry, humanity)? As a researcher, that's something carved into his soul.
He's probably well aware that you're only complimenting him on his looks.
On a personal level, if you’re not a deity, he might find you someone who’s enjoyable to be around—damn, doesn’t that just deepen his attachment to you?
He might actually cry if something happened to you out in the world and you just disappeared.
Although he’s generally polite to everyone, his protective nature can give people the chills because of how determined he is to get what he wants. Of course, you wouldn’t see that side of him—he’s far too gentle and loving toward you at this point.
Hardly anyone can actually see you properly, and I mean that literally. Everyone you meet says the same thing: all they can make out is a cluster of faintly warm points of light. It's a little sad, honestly, because you end up having to explain in detail what you're feeling, since your voice apparently loses its pitch and clarity the moment you step outside your book. And since the only way you can really communicate is through the writing that passes between the pages, holding a proper conversation is hard. Not being able to look the person you're talking to in the eye makes that worse, doesn't it?
‘He’:
would be nice if there were someone like you, maybe. That person could turn out to be a good friend, so you wouldn't have to be so lonely.
Well, at least one person can see you clearly, though he's also said that the dim light doesn't seem to leave your skin, not even in the physical world.
He's more or less in a similar situation to you, except he's bound to a painting instead of a book. But underneath the gloomy look, he's an incredibly gentle, caring man.
It's almost endearing, the way he complains about people seeing him as some grim reaper harvesting souls, when the moment anyone even brings up the idea of him killing someone, he flinches back (internally, of course).
To you, he's basically a hamster shaking with fear.
You two have a kind of kinship, both of you so often misread, and you're closer because you can actually talk to each other in the physical world more easily than with anyone else, without having to worry about scaring them or causing some unnecessary misunderstanding.
hard to say if this is really okay, him depending on you as much as he does.
—
A/n: if anyone recognizes the reference, please don't judge me too hard 😭 this is purely me venting my attachment to a novel/manhwa I've been reading recently (no… I prefer not to tell it for the sake of my peace of mind). I didn't mean for this to be anything in particular, I just love the characters. I'm posting this to make myself feel better, but no need to worry, I'll delete this later.
── .✦ Business Man, Plastic Flowers, Reconciliation
Summary: He misses you and has finally reached the point where the guilt, longing, affection, and fear are unbearable. So this crudely made plastic flower is one of his last resorts before literally begging at your feet for you not to leave him.
⟡ Word count: 2.1k+
⟡ Cw: Themes of emotional neglect / workaholism in a relationship (non-abusive, resolved within the piece), No violence, no graphic content.
⟡ note: just my supposed 500 words count writing exercise but went overboard. The idea came because I just read some chaebol manhwa lol.
-----
Life is busy. Tracking economic trends, adjusting and growing the business, supply chains, stocks, products, stakeholders. That's a lot for one person to manage. Of course he has a secretary and department heads; being competent in this era is simply mandatory, if that's where success is found.
He has to hold his ground in the position, as director, the primary heir to a family business his father built from nothing, he has to surpass and become more than what his father achieved.
But life is also a choice. On one hand he feels responsible for the business entrusted to him; on the other, even though he's managed to give the company his best so far, if he's honest, it leaves him cold inside.
There was a time he was lost in it, his youth, the most beautiful spring in bloom, when you stood there beside him taking it all in. That memory still carried a little warmth after hours in front of his computer, staring at income reports and drafting the next business model. He wanted everything to work, but for a while now, the two of you had been drifting apart.
It wasn't your fault. You understood his ambition to compete in the bigger markets and give more back to society through the business he ran. And he'd left you out in the dark… over the sake of being busy, yes. He didn't want to make excuses for it; he was trying to make up for what he'd lost.
“Sir, why not take a few days off? You haven't touched last year's annual leave either, a week might do you good.”
He hadn't meant to dump his domestic troubles on a colleague, thoroughly unprofessional, even on a break—but the conversation had drifted there on its own, and before he knew it he was talking like a man who missed someone. You.
Of course he wasn't about to spell out his longing and affection for you outright, but the HR assistant manager, rumored to have a sharp eye for talent and competence, turned out to be fairly perceptive too, even without the full picture.
“I'll keep the offer on the table, though I'd still need to fill the time with something. A vacation is basically the same as work anyway, isn't it?”
Across from him, the younger man pressed his lips together like he was holding something back. He didn't think there was anything wrong with what he'd said. He wasn't the type who could sit still and stare at the sky with an empty head, either. Taking you hiking or into some physical training regimen seemed to need more prep than seven days off could cover. (Yes, he wished he had more time with you, something to do together that wouldn't be hard on you.)
“I'm not sure my own experience would suit you, sir. But in my free time, I usually make crafts with my little sister. Watching them make a mess of it is honestly pretty entertaining.” The younger man tilted his head slightly, gaze drifting up toward the ceiling for a moment.
Crafts, huh. He'd taken a few art and craft classes once, but they'd always felt more like an obligation than something he actually enjoyed, an economics trend magazine held his attention far better.
“No, no, not at all—I don't think developing one's artistic side is ever wasted effort. An experience is an experience, after all. If you don't mind my asking, what kind of crafts do you make?” Up to this point, it was pure courtesy on his part. He could be busy, but that didn't mean he had to be some stiff who only talked business.
“Quite a range, actually. Painting, making decorations and little trinkets, sometimes pottery out of clay. Ah, my sister loves making plastic flowers most of all. She and her friends even take commissions for it.”
Well, look at that. He was clearly proud of his sister, judging by how pleased he looked. Plastic flower crafts, though? He knew how much you loved flowers; he always sent you some, along with your favorite food, on your birthday and on your anniversary.
Maybe that wasn't such a bad idea.
—
“Are you sure you're not starting some new business venture, sir?” His personal assistant set down the tools and materials for making plastic flowers, the ones he'd ordered, based on a tutorial for crafting your favorite flower out of plastic.
“I'm not. But thanks for bringing it, just set it on the desk, please.” He didn't look up from the screen, his fingers still typing out instructions for the company's next product development phase.
Once break time rolled around and he'd had his daily dose of caffeine, he finally sat down on the sofa in his office and got to work cutting and shaping petals. To his surprise, what he ended up with looked almost nothing like what the video had shown.
It was almost funny, really, how sure he'd been that this would be easy. Whoever was behind that tutorial was clearly a master at it, cutting each petal into a perfect shape, and not the least bit beginner-friendly.
Your anniversary was two weeks out, and the last time he'd been home, the gift he'd bought still sat wrapped in its box. Sure, he'd ordered it online, or had his assistant pick it up, but he'd chosen it because he thought you'd like it. Did you not feel the sincerity in it, or had you already fallen out of love with him?
That could not happen! Not after he'd begged for your hand back in college. Even now, the last thing he wanted was to end up in a lonely divorcé.
Either way, he was taking leave this time, ten days. He'd work overtime, take on more of his usual duties beforehand, clear every important document, whatever it took so nothing could drag him back into the office on his days off!
(A rumor was already going around the staff that the CEO was trying to set a better example for everyone by working even more overtime.)
—
The day had come. He left work early and waited for you to get home. He'd hidden the plastic flowers in the kitchen, along with the dinner he'd attempted to cook. The dinner turned out "okay-ish," but the bouquet still looked pretty amateur. Now he was regretting not just buying something from a shop.
While he tried to read a book he'd grabbed from the study, not that he could focus on a single word of it, he heard the front door open.
Was that you? Should he go to the front door? Should he just wait for you in the living room? Why hadn't you called out an "I'm home" or something? Was that even you, or the monthly deep-cleaning crew? They weren't supposed to come today.
At the sound of footsteps, he turned his head to see who it was. “Oh, you're back early? Is something wrong?” Was that really what he'd sound like now, as if he only came home when something was urgent? You hadn't even expected anyone to greet you back when you walked in! Just how far had he let you slip through the cracks…
“Welcome home, love. It's our anniversary…” He stood to pull you into a hug and pressed a peck to your cheek and your lips. You didn't pull away or anything, but the look you gave him afterward made him uneasy. Has this already become foreign to you?
“Hmm… I forgot today was our anniversary. Sorry about that.”
Damn him and his workaholic habits, something inside him screamed with anger and despair at what that had cost. “Give me a second, let me change into something more comfortable and get dinner going. Or would you rather order in?” You moved to step around him.
“Ah—no, I already made dinner for us.” He caught your hand. “There's something I want to talk to you about.” He led you to the sofa.
You went along with it, asking with a worried edge, “Are you okay? You just got home too, didn't you?” He didn't let go of your hand.
Even after all this, you still worried about him, even though he'd carelessly neglected you enough that you'd forgotten your own anniversary. He was a terrible husband. “I left early, so I've had plenty of time to rest.” He sat close enough that your legs were touching.
You waited to hear what he wanted to say. It was almost pathetic how nervous he got, like some coward, “I want to apologize for this—for neglecting you, for being too focused on my work. I've been a terrible partner and a terrible husband.” He stared down at his hands, thoroughly ashamed of how badly he'd failed.
“I understand. You're doing your best.” You laid your other hand over his.
His head snapped up toward you, “You always say that. And it isn't fair to you, staying with someone like me who… I'm sorry, please don't leave me….” He tightened his grip on your hand.
Letting out a quiet sigh, you said softly, “If you're holding my hand this tight, how exactly am I supposed to leave you?” Your smile was almost resigned, but still so full of affection that it made his heart clench even harder.
Even so, he'd already made up his mind about this. He took both your hands and folded them between his own, “I… I'm taking ten days off. Let's do whatever you want, together. And if there's anything you've been holding back, please, just tell me, I'll do everything I can to fix it.” He held your gaze, unwavering.
For a moment, doubt flickered across your face. “You're not pushing yourself too hard, are you?”
This time it was his turn to sigh, just at how sweet you were. “You're too easy on me, but I'm glad to do this, for you, for us. I'd rather be a little worn out than lose you.” He kissed your cheek.
You rolled your eyes, exasperated but not really, “Sweet talker.”
“About the anniversary, give me a second, I'll be right back.” He got up to grab the plastic flower bouquet he'd made. Carrying it over to you, he hoped you wouldn't notice all the crooked cuts he hadn't meant to make.
You took it from his hands, thanking him with a smile that nearly stopped his heart. “It's beautiful. And it smells… interesting.” You studied the little cluster of flowers.
“Yeah, about that, I couldn't decide between my usual cologne or the flower's actual scent. So I sprayed both.” He scratched the back of his neck without thinking, admitting it sheepishly.
“It's fine, it's definitely something. But what's that bag by the shoe rack?”
“That's… leftover craft supplies and all my failed attempts. I was going to stash them in the storage room tomorrow morning.”
“I want to see them. Maybe try making some myself.”
“You're going to laugh at me.”
“Well, if it's actually funny, I will.” Ugh… only you would laugh at the desperate, hard-fought efforts of a man hopelessly in love with you.
—
After that, he laid out his plan to spend more time with you, trying a hybrid work schedule, actually talking to you about work so you weren't left in the dark, showing up for every one of your special occasions without exception. And most importantly, he got clingy. Like, seriously clingy.
While you reheated the dinner he'd made, he trapped you in his arms and made it nearly impossible to move freely around the kitchen. Since he was being sweet about it, though, you let him. Something clearly still needed to be done about how bland his cooking was. How does someone cook a whole meal and forget to taste it, that was your husband, apparently. He could cook, sort of, but it definitely wasn't his strong suit.
“Is it going to take much longer? I'm genuinely fine with ordering in.” He murmured against your ear, cheek pressed to your shoulder. His arms stayed locked around your waist, his chest practically flush against your back.
“You made this for our anniversary. Wouldn't it be a shame not to eat it?”
“But I miss you… I want more of you.” As if his want could get any more obvious than the sun at high noon, he tightened his hold and pressed the entire front of his body against yours. But you were hungry!
“After we eat, maybe, if you beg nicely enough?”
“Beg nicely, is it? Now, and later—I'll beg so nicely you won't be able to refuse.”
(In the end, he lied about taking the leftover craft supplies to the storage room in the morning. He did it in the afternoon instead.)
Introduction: a man who kills because it's the job, because it's what he's good at, because it pays for the things he wants. Most of that money goes to his hobbies: musical theater, classical orchestra, grand piano, and the rest.
He can grasp love easily (that's arrogance talking), it's just something ordinary people go through, and he's simply never gotten around to feeling it. Not that he was ever particularly interested, or maybe he just hadn't found the right person yet… until you? Whatever he feels for you only clicks into place under the label "love" once he manages to slot himself into the male lead of some action drama, the kind he'd give one and a half stars out of five.
It was a musical where even the protagonist's confession to a woman who barely mattered to the plot, no music behind it, none of the explosive, dramatic flair that was usually his taste, gave him phantom pain in his chest, like a bullet had gone through him when nothing had.
The actress was cast for her looks. He didn't know her personally. None of it had anything to do with you. But the pain was real enough that he gripped the arm of the sofa. (He even considered checking with a doctor to rule out heart failure.)
Something about that confession scene did this to him. It made sense for a musical to leave him moved or impressed, but the confession itself, under three minutes out of a two-hour runtime, made him pause and rewind it at least seven times, your face surfacing in his mind every time the man on screen said, "I want to be with you." Never mind that the character was a defector. What was this? Why would the man still confess when it could only put the woman he loved in danger?
After that he let the rest of the drama play out, more focused on the woman's fate than the plot, waiting for her to reappear. When she died, he went rigid without meaning to, his heart slamming like it might give out. Sure enough, that short, barely significant confession turned out to be the reason she'd chosen to join the protagonist's noble cause. It was moving, in theory, but nothing about it should have wrecked him like this. And of all people, his mind kept landing on you.
This wasn't even a well-known musical. He only watched it because it was an early work of that lead actor, the one famous for making every role feel real. Honestly, this one showed the man had his amateur years too. Still nothing to do with you. Your acting is worse than his, he decided, refusing that smug mental image of you.
Even so, rough as it was, it was a diamond in the rough, and it left him sitting with a tangle of feelings he couldn't sort. It made him question how he actually saw you. Was he really falling for you? You lack the grace to be his dance partner, you never own up to it when you're teasing him (you're not, not really), you're far too normal for this world, you could die here any day of the week. He'd want someone competent, at the very least… or so he thought.
That was his whole night: arguing with himself, losing, arguing again, cornered by some positive verdict about you that part of him wanted to reject and couldn't (the nerve of him, getting nervous and flustered over you just occupying his thoughts). The thought never went away. It followed him straight into his dreams. When he saw you again, and after his doctor's visit cleared him, none of it changed. It just stayed, like some pointless filler scene padding out the runtime.
He isn't detached, and he isn't unfeeling. Most of what he does for work has become routine by now: take the commission, carry it out, maybe get hurt, maybe walk away clean, rest, watch more musicals, run through a few piano pieces. He's fairly self-aware about his own feelings, but something unfamiliar can still throw him off balance.
But lately, ever since that musical, just one of his usual evenings off, small things start reminding him of you without fail: food, dessert, whatever. Other times, when a lead actor, or practically anyone he's watching, wears a smile, wide, small, amused, pouting, it doesn't matter as long as it reads as genuine, the next face his mind reaches for is yours.
You take up space in his head, and he doesn't even complain about it. Not complaining isn't the same as admitting how much he likes watching you, or how you move through his mind like you've taken up permanent residence there. Maybe you have. He just lets himself enjoy it.
The next time he sees you, aware of it or not, he closes the distance, leans in closer than he needs to. He's stopped sizing you up like a target by now. He just rolls with it, watching for your reaction: flustered, annoyed, or that particular look you give anyone who steps too far into your space. He finds it endearing. He always did. He's just finally admitting it.
A string of small admissions about things he likes about you eventually leads him to confess outright, easy as anything, telling you flat out that he wants you, his face about as expressive as when he's discussing business. Minus the closeness. Minus his eyes, which go a little soft when he says, "I'm going to make you happy." Casual, obviously, since he wants to test the water before he takes you to dinner.
And you just stare at him blankly and ask if he's rehearsing lines or something. (How could you misread it this badly?! Why would he go through the trouble of confessing if you're not even going to believe him. Granted, he's usually insufferable to be around, and dropping a line like that out of nowhere does feel a little out of place.)
Since that leaves room for doubt, he tries to get more explicit, courting you with clichés (holding hands, forehead against forehead), but his timing usually lands in the middle of business, in the middle of some negotiation, which just leaves you wondering whether he's being serious or trying to catch you off guard for fun. (Like the time he tried to negotiate physical affection in exchange for protection and his services as a hitman, no money involved, because you flat-out refused to give him the affection he was asking for.)
You tell him that if he actually wants to say something, he should stop acting (he's an overeager spectator most of the time, and you'd rather see what's behind the performance) and just be himself, no theater. So that's how the real confession goes: sincere, genuinely sincere, none of the act, none of any drama he's ever watched, just him. Serious, without breaking eye contact. (What you hear might sound like a throwaway line, but it comes from somewhere deep. You can trust it, if nothing else, because of how seriously he takes his commissions.)
When you try to dig deeper, ask why he likes you, he can answer with a straight face, none of the usual shyness or nerves: "You're weak, but you keep fighting anyway. You never turn away from someone in trouble even when you know it's a stupid move that'll bite you later. I find myself wanting to be loved by you." But in a different moment, when you're upset or worn down, he'll go into more detail, and if the answer actually reaches you, he feels something close to a strange, gentle comfort, which only makes him want you more.
What he likes best (the thing that genuinely floors him) is when you smile without holding back, whether you're cracking up or just crouched down while some stray cat rubs itself against your leg and you look at it like it hung the moon. He just watches. He's aware enough of how you see him right now to know that if he tried to join in, you'd probably just glare at him.
Even when you talk about your own feelings, love for some man who isn't him, it still strikes him as something beautiful and gentle. For a second his face does something complicated, an expression he doesn't consciously choose, caught between the sting of it not being about him, the jealousy, the irritation, and a tenderness that just wants you happy.
Don't mistake this for selflessness, for him putting your happiness first. Up to a point, that's true, but his choices always come down to how deep your investment is in this other man. If it's still shallow, he'll find some excuse in a mission, a commission. And if you two have already gotten close... he won't kill the guy outright, but that's only a matter of timing, waiting for the right moment to sweep you into his arms instead. If you still show no interest in a relationship with him, he'll drop the act and take out his rival. (A male friend, though, he'll probably leave alone, no need to deal with that unless it grows into something more than friendship.)
He'll take any job you ask of him, with payment, of course. Not money. The first time, he'll let you name the price; after that, he does the naming. Give him a kiss on the cheek, and next time he'll want one on the mouth. Give him lunch together, and next time he'll want dinner. Once he's set a price, he won't settle for less, and expect it to escalate past a kiss or a dinner, since he's going to angle for more than "vanilla." (The look on your face when you realize you can ask him to kill someone that easily makes him want to cup your cheek and whisper more sweet nothings into your ear.)
You can try to be clever and dodge his attempts to push the relationship forward, but he already wants you, and the more time you spend together, the more he wants you. He respects people who are honest with themselves. (Generally, that's the kind of reaction that makes him want to dig deeper, to prove it's just a mask and the rest is him taking out his own envy on people like that.)
If the underworld ever puts your life at risk, he won't think twice about quitting the job and skipping town with you. He's been detached from being a hitman for a while now. The older he gets, the more he sees it for what it is: money, power, a job. Love lives and dies too, and he'd rather you both stayed alive.
Something you say gives him a little clarity, that he can still become whatever he wants. What he's done isn't right, so you tell him to live, to try to make up for it somehow. (A hitman tends to know too much and usually gets killed the moment he's handed over to the authorities or stops being useful "for killing." You wince at the thought, and that empathy is one more thing he loves about you.)
Give him a piece that's practically torture to play, especially with his hands still stiff from an fresh injury, and he will get it perfect no matter what. (Regardless of how hard it is, he's stubborn enough that only his best performance will do, and you're worrying about it... it takes him a while to master it, at least enough to satisfy his own ego.)
Whoever arranged this Opus Clavicembalisticum and handed you the sheet music to give to him is out of mind. Tell him who it was, and he'll pick a proper fight, break a few fingers, so that person don't hand you "garbage" and let you think it's good. (The arrangement in question was of the preludio-corale, an F minor chord adagio, running seven minutes. What you hear might sound like something melancholic enough to validate your exhausted day. What he hears is practically blasphemy against history and technique.)
He'll play it anyway, because you asked. Your calm, soft expression is enough to make him fine with it. But he'll definitely warn you not to play the recording out in public. (He's worried some purist will start yelling at you for playing something legendary "sloppy." Ironically, the thought reminds him of exactly the kind of person he'd have been if he'd never fallen for you.)
If you try asking him to wear something "questionable," it changes depending on where you two stand. If you're still stuck in some undefined situationship, he'll use it as leverage to demand an exclusive relationship first. And if things are already clear between you, he'll wear it just for your eyes only, fair warning: it won't stay just looking. There's more he intends to do about it. That part is up to you, whether you want that "more" and can handle what comes with it, or not at all. Make your call. He never goes back on his word.
Canon event: he snaps at you for acting overly cute or overly tough, tells you flat out how fake it sounds, like nails on a chalkboard. Another time, he'll snap at you for singing badly. (He's a purist, after all. It settles down once he's actually fallen for you.)
The Doctor
Introduction: a man with no real license running an illegal clinic simply because he can. Eccentric, impossible to predict. Rumor has it he causes more trouble than he ever cures.
What is love? He's always found the thing people call "love" foreign, honestly a little confusing. Something he considers kind of stupid, since its whole biological function is species preservation. Here's the thing: he doesn't have most of the "natural instincts" an ordinary person is supposed to have, the ones that help you contribute to civilization, or just exist…
The strongest thing he can feel toward you, and this is definitely not what 99.99% of people feel, is the effort it takes to hold back the urge to tear you apart. Literally. His mind runs through countless images of your body coming apart, your eyes going dark. The stranger part is how much more variety this fantasy has, and how specifically it's always you.
Aren't you special to him? Very, actually. He's never thought about one person this often, not since his late adoptive mother. In fact, you occupy his mind so constantly that he's decided fighting the thoughts would be more trouble than it's worth.
There are also times when thinking of you brings on something painful, something nauseating, growing out of his chest like a parasite, climbing up his throat, leaving his head dizzy and pressured like it might burst. This happens most when you're hurt or in danger. Can anyone believe it, that there's a single person capable of hurting him from the inside?
Love, hate, or some extension of it, whatever this is, he wants it returned. That much he's certain of. There's a foreign kind of comfort that gives him chills when you pay him attention, when you touch him. He pictures dying inside that feeling and would praise you for it.
For a good two weeks straight, he keeps circling the same problem: you. Anything about you makes it hard to focus on much of anything, and he's had to learn to work around that instead of trying to get rid of it, which feels close to impossible. He's already run scenarios where he kills you, but that never solves anything and would probably leave him with something to regret. He almost never regrets things, except for one time at thirteen when he forgot to sabotage a violin competition to humiliate his music teacher. (Something he still genuinely regrets to this day.)
So this is how he finally "confesses": asking you to be exclusive with him. Whether you say yes or no isn't really the point. Either way, the outcome barely changes. He could court you the normal way, or he could just terrify you by showing you what's underneath the human-shaped skin. As long as you stay "you," nobody has to worry about a clinic visit turning into your last.
What he says when he "confesses": "I want to be yours, and I want you to be mine. Please. You can do anything you want to me." His voice drops to nearly a whisper. He brings your hand to his forehead like he's praying, his face calm, at peace.
By the time he's confessing, you know him well enough to call it out: shallow, empty words hiding whatever he's actually after. He laughs, genuinely, when you look ready to hit him if he keeps going. "Yeah. That's exactly you," he admits, and it's the more honest line, fondness spilling onto his face in a way he can't see or control, making him look boyish and completely unfit for everything he's actually done.
After the confession, he settles on a new conclusion: what he really wants is for you to know that something thorny has grown inside him, and it's about you. A cold relief, the kind that comes after something festering finally pushes its thorns out of the wound in his chest.
Look closely, though, and you'll see he doesn't really need your body, or your feelings returned. You can still tell what he feels by the flush on his face when he drinks wine around you (he's got a high tolerance, for the record, so it's probably just that the wine tastes stronger with you there), by the way he sets down a knife or any sharp tool and turns his back to you, and, once in a while, by the flowers and homemade food he brings over (safe to eat, promise).
Most surprising of all, you can visit him when he's sick, or a mess from alcohol poisoning, and find him still handsome even wrung out, teary-eyed, covered in vomit. Nobody who knows him as the underworld's unlicensed doctor would ever picture him doing any of it.
Everyone says not to take his word at face value, but once he actually shows you something, you can trust about 75% of what he says as true. If he tells you he'll arrange some legendary classical piece to suit your taste, you'll get exactly what he promised, just keep it to yourself, or trouble will probably come to find you.
You could become a millionaire overnight if you asked him to; for you, he'd hand over that much money without blinking. But you'd never be able to carry the weight of what he did to get it for you, not without losing some part of your humanity. The two of you could live off it for a while. Then again, who knows.
Ask him to describe what he feels for you honestly, and you'll get something disturbing before you get anything that sounds like love. His eyes look at you like you're the most beautiful, most beloved thing in the world; his mouth spills something bloody, nowhere near beautiful at all.
"There's no word that can capture how deep my feelings for you run." That's true, and it kills every butterfly in your stomach on the spot. What's left there instead is just worms, writhing.
Ask what made this feeling grow in him, and all he'll say is, "Because you're you." Vague, but exact and heavy at the same time. Is it the way you hold onto your humanity even while the underworld grinds you down without mercy? The way you refuse to get blood on your hands even when killing would save more people? Maybe it's your selfishness, your hypocrisy, the parts of you that make your humanity that much more tempting to destroy and nurture at once. Whatever it is, it's the thing that makes you singular, that turns him into a moth flying straight for the flame.
By this point, he wouldn't mind dying because of you, or dying by your hand. Honestly, he's curious what expression you'd make watching him die, or the moment you finally kill someone for the first time. That said, he still won't let his own plans, or his intent to kill you, slip. If any of this ends in waste, he at least hopes it doesn't reach you.
You could show up at his door covered in wounds, filthy, dying, and beg him to buy you more time. He's no god, but that plea is enough to keep him hours in his operating room, stitching and pulling out whatever's trying to kill you. Even if you end up paralyzed, he's willing to care for you until your time comes, and it might actually be the one thing that gets him to stop causing trouble in the underworld.
So far, he's never been more selfless than when it comes to you (more selfless than he ever was for his adoptive mother, even). He knows this isn't him, none of it. It's inefficient, inconvenient, and he can't understand how someone gets to use him this much when he's usually the one wringing people dry until nothing's left. But that sickening ache in his chest keeps pushing him to do more for you anyway. It's a poison, one that drives him a little insane and a little addicted.
Frankly, he respects anyone with a strong will to live, a stubborn drive to survive. Someone who stays themselves after hardship, doesn't change much, earns his respect. That said, he'd honestly find it more entertaining if they sank deeper into the pit of despair instead. You're more or less the same case, except if you die before him, once his feelings for you have grown this strong, something far more intense will hit him.
Don't misread any of this, though. Yes, he'll waive his fee for you. Yes, he'll get you things ordinary people can't touch down here. Yes, he'll let you kill him. But none of that means he'll ever lower himself past an animal, and it never means he goes without what he wants, and it never means you can actually stop him from taking what he's set his sights on.
Ask him to wear something "questionable," and if it's not to his taste, you're the one who ends up wearing it instead. Don't bother trying to manipulate him into it. You're the one putting the outfit on, one way or another, whatever's left of your dignity.
Canon event: at least once, he tries to kill you, or force you into doing something you don't want to. If you survive it (and you will, because if you didn't, you'd take him down with you), there's a decent reward waiting on the other side.
The Dirty Cop
Introduction: a man who trades on inside intel from the underworld, conspiring with its people for mutual benefit, and stepping on whoever's in the way to climb higher.
There was a woman once, one of the ones his father brought home, who gave him a lesson about "love." She said love was a feeling, a willingness to do something that makes you happy even if it costs you something. Apply that to who he is now, and you could say he "loves" his promotion. Some would say that's too strong a word, but he can confirm his current rank buys him a lot of ease, and everyone likes ease.
That excuse turns out to be less honest than he'd like to admit. You keep working your usual job, and he keeps dropping by (buying something small every time as a cover). He keeps tabs on you even after it stops mattering for the case, and both of you know it.
When you try offering an "explanation," he always shoots it down, treats it with suspicion, like you're asking to get arrested. (You're stubborn, and you never seem particularly rattled about your own situation. He finds that admirable, honestly, and also reckless as hell.)
It sounds excessive, paranoid, and maybe you'd be safer in a cell. But he knows your usual route by heart, and at least once a week, on some day you can't predict, he'll pull you over for a "random" check. His eyes track your outline all the way until you disappear around the corner, watching, logging it, privately, whenever he gets the chance.
He memorizes details, word for word, whatever you say, and every time you read him with unnerving accuracy, he freezes for a beat (his face gives nothing away, obviously), like a blade's been pointed at him from a direction he wasn't watching, because he was too busy staring at your face. Restless, anxious, half-tempted to bolt from his post, his stress spikes hard the second anything involves you. Regular patrols and paperwork have never been this hard.
A colleague clocks it and needles him about it, jokingly: how fixated he's gotten, how worked up over one girl, does he have something going with you? His answer is a disgusted face, comically overdone for someone this stoic. No matter how insane the workload his superiors dump on him, no matter how filthy the crime scene he has to walk through, even the sour donut the old woman down the block gives him every time he climbs a tree to rescue her cat, none of it moves him off his default face: composed, diligent, dependable. (Don't worry, he manages to keep this from becoming a running joke at the precinct. Everyone's got something to hide, anyway.)
Part of him thinks you're a magnet for trouble, whether from sheer bad luck or some elaborate scheme you've somehow fooled everyone with. And as two-faced as he is, he can't stand it in other people, not when it's used to justify hurting a lot of others. You're taking up too much room in his head, and every time you enter the picture, he feels stupider and less productive by the minute.
Fine, say his colleague is right. So what? What changes? Love and hate are supposed to sit on either side of a thin line, the same intensity, the same weight of color. But there's no way it's solving his internal mess that easily... yeah, that's the complaint running in a loop in his head...
What does he even expect from you? You practically go out of your way to trip into problems that aren't yours and end up tangled deeper into the underworld every time. You don't look like someone chasing trouble on purpose, but the trouble you find is never the ordinary kind. What is he supposed to do with you? Can't you keep your nose out of the stink of blood and crime and just stay somewhere safe?
Again, his colleague calls him out, guesses exactly what's eating at him and where his headache's coming from: you. He wonders, is it that obvious? What's he doing wrong that his thoughts keep leaking out this loud? An informant, a dealer he uses as a contact into one of the local organizations, mentioned seeing you show up somewhere specific. What were you doing there?!
For about three days straight, the same information kept coming in, so he chased down other sources to verify it. And look what he ended up doing (for you): he went undercover, dressed and acted like anything but the cop he actually was, blending into the corrupt, ugly structure that runs every corner of that district. He grabbed you by the collar and stared you down, and you glared right back, disgusted and furious. He threatened to have you locked up for illegal weapons trafficking if you didn't stay out of the underworld.
And right on cue, you threw back the same nonsense his colleague had been feeding him lately, pointing out that the two of you were basically strangers. But he kept digging for some flimsy excuse just to get a scrap of your attention. He'd trailed you all the way here just to threaten and warn you, and for what?
You were only getting your phone fixed, at a shop that happened to offer the cheapest price in the area. When he snapped at you for trusting some random shopkeeper who could easily be planting a virus or a tracker in it, you cut him off with a pinch to the cheek, a genuinely painful one, and asked why he cared so much about your safety when it did nothing for him, when it had nothing to do with him at all. (You're sharp enough, he figures, that you could take him down with you if he ever tried anything.)
In that moment, your words hit him like lightning, and he scrambled to bury the shock on his face. Before he could find any words to defend himself, you drove a fist into his stomach as hard as you could and left him doubled over on the ground.
That night, back home, he went online to search "what does it mean to fall in love," since it's a phrase he'd been hearing more and more lately. He ruled out family love right away, which left romantic love as the likely candidate. As a starting point, he already knew this much: you constantly irritated him, which is a mark against every symptom list he found. Most of the articles he pulled up didn't match his situation at all, until he landed on a blog that dealt in archetypes instead of personal stories.
The writer laid out the different ways people behave when they're expressing "love." And because these were archetypes, plenty of them straight-up contradicted each other, which made him wonder if any of it was even real. Love, romance, partnership, none of that appealed to him, but one entry mentioned "denial." The exact point his insufferable colleague had been drilling into his ear. (He could always buy a book grounded in the biology of "love," but he'd hate having to go looking for a reason it exists in the first place.)
So if this actually is "love," what exactly does he find so compelling about you? You're brave, too brave, honestly, enough that watching you sometimes makes him feel like a coward by comparison. You're reckless, half in love with your own death. Clever? (Fine, good for you, finding your way out of a corner when you need to.) A slippery liar. What else? (The glare you give him is somehow captivating enough that he can't look away, and he can jot down report notes while watching you at the same time; the way you refuse to bend on what you believe is right moves something in him hard enough that he forgets to breathe.) Actually, nothing else. You're fairly ordinary, but your entanglement with the underworld, dangerous, capable of getting you hurt, disgusts him. (Not that any of it was your choice.)
None of his research turns up anything actually useful, so he lands on a last resort: if this doesn't work, whatever's growing between the two of you gets buried, and you're left to deal with it or not on your own. However, he still needs the last confirmation which is asking his close friend, a dedicated, genuinely good cop, exactly the kind of person who should have a rank well above junior patrol officer after… two years? Hard to believe. (But there's no one else left to ask.)
"Seems like it, yeah. Your face right now is saying... hm, something melancholic. You've been staring at her like that for a while now." At that, he turned away from you, sitting on a park bench reading a book beside some perfectly ordinary-looking man, and looked back at his friend, who met his stare evenly. What kind of answer is that? What does "love" have to do with "melancholic"? All he's actually doing is weighing whether you're genuinely just some ordinary civilian, no flowery language, no hopeless daydreaming involved.
So he decides to just keep doing what he always does, and you're still just as ready to kick him if he gets too close. It starts becoming genuinely fun to watch: wary of something vague and dangerous, braced to defend yourself, never letting your guard down. That look suits you. He doesn't go digging into your relationships with other people, and honestly he'd rather not know, for his own peace of mind. But if it ever became warranted, whoever that person is would get removed. Better if you never find out what he does, but for whatever's unavoidable, he always keeps enough ammunition, alibis, accusations, justifications, to make someone disappear.
One time, you walk into the precinct to report your wallet stolen. By coincidence (not really a coincidence; he'd transferred to a station near your workplace on the excuse that the neighborhood was crime-heavy, though the real reason is one he'd rather not examine too closely), he's there and ends up handling the case. You're close to tears, panicking about your money, your credit cards, all your ID gone with it, no cash to hire anyone to track it down, and in this country, what cop wants to bother with something this thankless anyway.
That's the version you give his colleague, and both of them feel a little sorry for you and a little insulted at the same time, though seeing the state you're in, they swallow it. When one of his colleagues reaches to pat your shoulder, he clears his throat loud enough to stop the hand mid-air, keeps his own voice level as he briefs you on the next steps of the investigation. And he hands you his personal number, specifically, to call.
For about three weeks, your wallet is finally recovered in one piece. During that stretch, you get by on grocery money this cop hands over, which he'll collect once you can pay it back. Anyone would be skeptical of an offer this generous, too generous, but he doesn't even bother with gloves when he passes over the cash (yes, you check, you touch his hand just in case it's synthetic skin, and it isn't; he's just sweating a fair amount). If anything, the loan feels like something a good friend would do for another.
The whole time, he keeps telling himself this is an investment, something that pays off later if you ever turn out to be dirty and he needs a stepping stone. God, the effort it takes him to convince himself this benefits him somehow, rather than just being impulsive and pointless. And he genuinely hates it when you look at him like it's all a joke and don't take him seriously.
Only in specific a time, everything he feels, thinks, and says finally lines up, and it's the moment he sees you stumbling in, out of breath, half-collapsing at the nearest station to report a mass abduction (every phone confiscated, the whole block gone quiet, you'd only gotten out through some gap in the plan, hurt from the run, still being chased). The cost of that report is your blood. He's the first one there with the first aid kit, wrapping your wounds, waiting on the ambulance. He doesn't know what comes over him at that moment, doesn't know what his own face looks like, when he says, "Can you just be…” safer? "Stop finding trouble?" (You watch him say it and you can see how much pain he's in, his face, his voice, the way his hands wrap the bandage around you.)
This one's on him. He hadn't tracked the movements or plans of one particular player closely enough. If he'd cleared that alley without drawing attention, none of this would've happened; he'd gotten overconfident seeing the street look clean. (No, he won't admit he counts this as a failure because you got hurt, not because it's a professional failure.)
Put bluntly, however far he's willing to admit his feelings go, this is the extent of it: a relationship where he sees you as someone "normal," someone with genuinely terrible luck. He knows, and would say it out loud, that men like him should know better than to drag someone "normal" into this world for something as shallow as feelings.
He'll always help you get out of it, keep you away from it when he can, and kill, if he has to, anyone who means to make your life miserable or drag you through the mud. As for his own pride (which is honestly not worth much), he'd rather you find a decent man somewhere else than end up with anyone in this city, himself included.
Don't bother asking him to wear something "questionable." Just give it to him as a gift instead, and maybe commission an artist to draw it on him. Send both to him. No matter how mortified he is, he will keep the gift because you are the one who sent it.
Canon event: he writes you a ticket for something that makes no sense and demands payment on the spot. (But once he's fallen hard enough, he gives the money back to you, and it feels more like luck to you than something he actually regretted and returned.)
The Engineer
Introduction: a man who never wanted to be here, working as a weapon assembler, but has no way out after getting conned into crushing debt. He could've been a brilliant engineer if this string of bad luck hadn't found him.
He's about to learn what it feels like to fall for someone without any grand conditions attached. His late parents loved him well, raised him right... he even had a crush back in elementary school, though that one didn't end well... what can he even say about romance, or any relationship really, at this point in his life? He figures it would just be a mess. Well... you're actually good news, if he's honest.
The people around here are clearly not the best of anyone, probably the worst of the worst, if he had any say in it. He feels like a sore thumb sticking out where it shouldn't; that's just his own take, but he feels completely out of place here. He thinks you are too. Did the universe mean well sending a good soul here, or is this just delayed torture?
In the middle of all his bad luck, can this even be called "love," or is it just desperation, latching onto anything good he finds? Would he feel the same way about you in a normal life? Ugh, he shouldn't be zoning out like this. The shop owner will kill him if he catches him slacking.
He won't blame you for something out of your control. Meeting you, wrong place and all, is honestly a relief. It also low-key horrifies him to imagine you treating the dangerous people around here casually (you don't, it's just that he happens to stand out as normal). If you weren't like that, the two of you would never have really talked at all.
Regretting things doesn't undo them anyway. He doesn't regret meeting you, doesn't regret finding out how many good things there are about you. But what's he supposed to do with all of this?! Sit on it? Confess? He knows how basic that sounds, but honestly, better to stay friends than have you go cold on him. Besides, there are plenty of men out there far more stable and capable than some errand boy drowning in debt.
But if you ever do notice how he feels, he hopes you'll pretend not to, so you don't pity him, so the friendship stays intact, assuming you don't think too little of him for it. Being a decent man is genuinely hard. If only the whole world worked like Euler's identity: continuity, room for subjectivity, cycles that resolve themselves, never erasing what makes an individual who they are while still reaching equilibrium. Actually, thinking about it more, you're kind of like Euler's identity too, still out there searching for peace in the middle of chaos.
He misses college, back when he didn't have to think about monthly interest payments or dodging gunfire. Back when he could lie in bed reading a book on forecasting with Python, wondering if there was some downward trend in interest and sales for antiques, since his father's shop had gone dead quiet for months. He still hasn't finished, or even properly started, anything from that book. He really wants to talk to you about it, but telling that story would just spiral into something sad, and he doesn't want to put that weight on you.
Unfortunately, he also tends to get so excited talking that he forgets not everyone follows what he's saying. You keep asking side questions, occasionally asking him to recap what he just said, trying to explain it back in a way you'd get, which makes him painfully self-conscious that he just rambled and you sat through the whole thing... worse, you're so nice about it. Can anyone really blame him for liking someone this sweet?
You never laugh at his money troubles, never look down on him for being a little awkward, cut off and isolated in a world he never asked for. What else can he offer you besides fixing your stuff cheap? Having decent company makes him a little desperate, surrounded by criminals the way he is; he doesn't even know what people talk about these days if it's not underworld gossip that gets someone killed if it spreads too far.
Sometimes it's enough just to let you talk about your day, something new you learned, whatever's on your mind. Your voice is easy to listen to, especially when you get animated and excited about something. (He doesn't even realize his head's practically nodding along to everything you say, half-following, and he stumbles when you ask him to repeat what he just agreed to. Anyone walking past watching the two of you would clock him head over heels immediately.)
He starts looking forward to your presence every single day. Not you visiting the shop (front) where he assembles and sells illegal weapons, he'd honestly rather you kept your distance from there, but texts, calls (he really wants to just talk on the phone but is too shy to start it himself), or just some cute animal video you send from social media.
Once he sent you a coding joke he found hilarious, some programmer flipping a table because his class didn't modularize right, and had to explain the whole thing when you didn't get it. He genuinely felt like a loser having to explain his own joke. (But when you laughed at the end because you'd finally gotten it, all he could do was clutch his shirt over his chest and hold back from screaming about how cute you are.)
So he starts finding other things to share with you. A kitten playing in an alley gets cropped and sent your way. Wildflowers on the roadside, purple and pink, a cloudless sky, progress shots of his own small side project (completely harmless, promise), the occasional antique from his father's shop.
He always wants to ask you to walk somewhere together, but that would make it too obvious he's not asking as just a friend. So every photo he sends is really just an unspoken wish, wanting you beside him to see these things too. (His favorite is sunset. All he can do is picture that soft orange light settling over your face.)
Alone with his own thoughts, he often wonders what you actually think of him. Some soft, spineless guy fixated on something he'll never get to have? He doesn't want to think badly of you, but isn't that how people would see it in the end? Then again, you're not always "people" to him. If you were, would he even stand a chance with you? No. He shouldn't be dragging you down into this abyss of his just to fill some hole in himself.
If his father had just lived longer, maybe he wouldn't have had to make the stupid call to borrow money from the wrong person and end up here, only able to watch you thrive out there in a brighter world. Three more years until his debt's cleared, supposedly. But is that even true? What if they squeeze more out of him? What if you've already found someone else? What if he doesn't want to keep going down this road? Maybe he should just stop feeling this way about you.
There was a day that broke him completely, one where it felt like this might be the last day he could still breathe. He'd been walking with no destination in mind when he found himself, without meaning to, outside your building. Some part of him didn't want you seeing him this pathetic, but his feet moved on their own, his hand knocked on your door, and his mind went blank with dread, more intense than anything he'd felt before. He hoped you weren't home, so he could just go on with his miserable life.
The coldest day of his life didn't happen in winter. It happened the moment you were home and opened the door before he could run. His tongue failed him completely, nothing came out but broken, meaningless sounds, and it ended in an awkward smile that looked painfully fake. Maybe it was how wrecked he looked, but you let him in anyway. And for an uninvited guest who showed up empty-handed, you were kind enough to make him something warm to drink and sit down right beside him.
The two of you sat in silence for a while, maybe you were waiting for him to finish his drink, before you carefully asked what happened. At first he tried to play it off as nothing, just an average day around here. A few fights, some gunfire, a body mutilated in the worst way imaginable, he'd nearly been stabbed and shot himself, the shop owner keeping tighter security on the ballistics and, apparently, more bodies. What's worse than that? He survived in the end. Nothing wrong here.
You didn't look convinced, not for a second, but you took his hand, which he hadn't even noticed was shaking, and guided his head to rest on your shoulder. Strange, how comforting this was. Warm. And... he realized just how exhausted he actually was. He cried with his jaw locked shut, the tears just came, no matter how hard he willed his eyes to stop, and your words, telling him he'd already done his best, that it was fine to be tired, only made him cry harder, until his eyes swelled and could barely blink.
You didn't laugh, didn't tell him to be strong and push through, you were just... sad, and worried, for him. If you kept being like this, no, he's already run out of reasons to move past this feeling. You're just too... he only wants more of it now, and he feels guilty for leaning on you when all he's technically allowed to be is a friend.
Maybe the worst part of all this isn't that he couldn't run, it's when you ask how he even knew your address. Right. Good question. The realization leaves his soul practically leaving his body on the spot, and he bows so low his forehead touches the floor, explaining, badly, that he'd picked up a tracker signal off you once before and just... forgot to mention it.
His heart is pounding, terrified, but you, being too kind for your own good, tell him to get up, that it's fine, a small mistake. Still, he swears he'll make it up to you somehow. (Honestly, this is nothing compared to some of the others who know where you live and walk around acting smug about it like it's no big deal.)
After that, he can't (well, maybe he still can, barely) hide how obvious his feelings for you have gotten; it's basically written across his forehead. One time, and plenty of times after, he says, "You're smiling... don't worry about it, I just like it." Slow, drawn out, dripping with adoration he can't hold back. Then he catches himself, flustered, fumbling out some pathetic attempt to change the subject.
Ask him to wear something "questionable," and he'll probably go along with it if you agree to wear something similar, or if you ask nicely enough, that works too. Or you could tease him a little, trick him into being the only one wearing it. His reaction to realizing he's been had is just a sheepish, resigned sigh, secretly a little pleased you're having fun with it. (He trusts you a lot, okay? Don't be too cruel to him.)
Canon event: you buy some "equipment" from him or ask him to fix something. (Once his feelings grow deep enough, he'll go as far as building you a dangerous weapon of your own... even though it terrifies him to do it.)
The 'Monster'
Introduction: a man who's frighteningly good at killing, because that's the job. When it comes to killing and fighting, even a carefully laid trap won't be enough to take him down. He's earned the name "Monster" just by surviving this long. He's also completely obsessed with fiction, especially romantic fiction.
There's a mountain of literature and media out there defining what "love" means. He specifically wants one, wants to feel it for himself, but everyone around him is nowhere close to understanding what the word actually means. Isn't "love" supposed to be mutual, driven by something instinctive and emotional? It has to be about the soul, mind, and body moving in sync! What's the point of joining bodies without joining hearts? Isn't that closer to being an animal than a person?
You're a good person, he knows this. More than good, actually. Charming, in his eyes. Most people would've just walked past a shop clerk cleaning the shelves, kept going even after knocking a stack over by accident. But maybe it was instinct, maybe he just looked like he needed help, and you followed whatever pulled at your conscience, picked up the fallen books, and asked where they went.
From that point on, you're friends (confirmed explicitly, when you told him he'd make a fun reading buddy), and he starts thinking this could be a legitimate route into romance: "bonding over shared hobbies at the bookstore." He'd already run the odds on a formula like this, part of why he took the shop job selling books and films in the first place, but the other half of his life, the part that kills for money, also opens up a path toward "acceptance of the dangerous," and it makes his heart race, wondering where the two of you might end up.
Just as he suspected, you turn out to be genuinely lovely. You try his recommendations, tell him what you thought, argue theories back and forth with him, and never once dismiss his own opinions or interpretations. You're the best. He wants to share even more of what he finds interesting with you. It might be pushing it to ask you to stop by even when you're not buying anything, but he doesn't mind, you popping in just to say hi is enough. Should he ask you out to a café to keep discussing this? No, too soon at this stage, and he doesn't want to scare you off. Maybe he should just warn you upfront that his schedule runs erratic, given the commissions he has to fill.
And you actually tell him your guilty-pleasure genres and tropes? Of course he adores you for that. He shares his back, and your reaction, a little surprised, but sweet, since you probably should've guessed he'd have some complicated soft spot for melancholic, open-ended stories, you take it in stride, no hint of thinking your own taste is more refined. God, did you really just say that? But your small, easy laugh tells him you probably didn't mean it.
Once you've traded guilty pleasures and picked up a few inside jokes, is this the right time to go further, to show you his own personal stash of writing? A little embarrassing, since he hasn't been writing that long, nowhere near as skilled as he is at his actual job, and building it all alone with zero feedback probably means it's rough. But privately, he's had fun making it, at least. The good news: he finally has a first person to share it with, and if that person's you, he already knows this is going to be a good time.
What will you feel reading this? Moved, the way he was writing it? Surprised? Or will you connect a dot or two about what he actually feels for you? He genuinely wishes he could speed up the calendar until you visit again.
It's hard to believe, honestly, watching your face turn unreadable after all that back-and-forth, and it's harder still to figure out what you actually made of it. What he wrote was meant to be a beautiful, sincere love story between two people who wanted each other completely. How could you possibly read it as slapstick dark humor?! The scene where the characters get drunk and lean on each other, trading stories about their pasts, that's a bonding moment, half-remembered through the haze on purpose for suspense, nothing about it is "laughing at someone else's pain" just because the hero laughs when the heroine trips right after talking about her dead mother.
You shake your head, tell him he's genuinely upset about this. He is. Now he's spiraling on what he got wrong, even though he can't control how people read it externally, it still stings to be misread this badly. But you're understanding about it, offer him some encouragement, sweet enough that he wants to kiss you right there just for bothering to comfort him when you don't have to. "It matters that it made you happy to write. Next time, maybe give me a synopsis first so I know what I'm walking into." Fair. He'd gotten too excited handing you the draft to think about giving you any context at all.
Now where else in the world would he find a heroine as perfect as you? No sane person travels that far out of their way just to see a friend. You're funny, charming, tease him just enough to nearly make him lunge at you right there (even though you're just messing around), and you still show up to support his writing. Your laugh, unguarded like that, is genuinely adorable, and he wants a closer look at it. You're so much kinder, so much more beautiful, than any heroine he's read or ever found.
The pull toward you gets harder to ignore, and at the very least he wants confirmation of what you feel for him. And you (maybe not fully aware of it, or just letting it happen) say yes to a movie next week. Still, his feelings run too hot, and he has to grit through a full week of impatience, since a client wants a modest massacre carried out on a rival mafia's party guests. Well. Work is work.
Out on the job, mid-massacre, he wonders what you'd think if you could see this. Blood everywhere. A skull split open from a bullet straight through. A throat cut clean. A body twitching on the ground from the sheer agony of a dozen bullets buried in it. Would it scare you? Or would you be impressed, watching someone do this competent work?
One of the targets, a woman whose photographed face matched his assignment, slipped out through a window. Her build looked a little like yours, though, honestly, out of any woman alive, you're the one he most wants to see naked. He set off the gasoline trap he'd already rigged, burned down the entire ballroom with brutal efficiency, and went after her.
In the alley, he followed the blood trail; he'd wounded her arm, at least. He found her easily at a fork deeper into the alley, dragging herself along the wall. Huh. Wasn't that hair color the same as yours? Even so, it didn't stop him from loading his gun, telling her, in a disguised voice, to say her last words. To his shock, it was actually you, your voice shaking, saying something about never getting to say a proper goodbye, about not being able to apologize for giving false hope to the man who'd asked you to see a movie with him.
At that confession, he dropped the disguised voice instantly, switching back to how he normally sounds off the job, and called your name, pulling off the skin mask. You went rigid with shock, your face already with tears, and it wrecked something in his chest, though even crying, he thought you looked good.
He pieced together that you'd been threatened, forced to be a body double for the woman he was hired to kill. But if he killed you now, that would save him a much bigger headache: an out-of-control gang war, plus the commission for a completed job. He'd still love you even dead, he explained, plenty of romance stories end in tragedy anyway.
You snap back at him, furious, that you don't even love him yet, and he's already ready to walk away, when his own male lead, in the draft he'd shown you, fought tooth and nail to win his heroine's heart. You call him a hypocrite, since he'd told you himself he wrote that story because he wanted a love like it. That lands. He can hear himself breathing too hard, and, fair, that tracks. So the solution, obviously, is to make you fall for him inside a week.
He basically moves in with you, sticks close through your shifts at work, even tries sleeping in your bed and showering alongside you. The excuse is that he needs to pour love onto you constantly to make you fall for him, though you both know the real reason: keeping you from running.
When you try negotiating your way out of it, it turns out your situation just complicates things further, since he still has to kill the real target, and that doesn't take you off the list either, not with what leaked at the party that night; the job needs zero witnesses. But the time he spends with you shows him new sides of you, lets him look closer, and even gets him his first kiss, exactly the way he always wanted it: taken by the woman he loves.
As the deadline closes in, you switch the movie plan to whatever's your actual favorite (or he takes you to his enormous TV and puts it on there instead), and over what turns out to be your last dinner (one he ordered specifically for you), you tell him you don't want to die, that if he really loved you he'd listen, since he keeps refusing to hear what you actually want. He tries to defend himself, small, unsure. Then you flip the little table and try to kill him, or at least disable him. He wins easily, of course, and knocks you out cold.
Right as he's about to pull the trigger, he finds himself staring at you longer than he means to, his hands shaking, sweating, his heart pounding hard enough he can hear his own blood in his ears. You're beautiful, even unconscious, but could he actually live off just your corpse? Your corpse won't smile at him sweetly. Your corpse won't talk to him about anything. Your corpse... is just a dead body. Not you. He can't hold the laugh back, it rips up out of his chest and through his throat. If he kills you now, he's killing himself right after.
"I love you. Let's do this the way where we both stay alive." That's the first thing you hear when you come to consciousness, finding him watching you. Before he goes on to say he'll settle this commission dispute somehow, that if it comes down to wiping out an entire organization, he'll do it, and, naturally, he expects you to help and prepare for that. He'll teach you to handle a gun, weapons in general, how to kill. You do have to survive down here, after all. And of course, he'll do anything you want, if that's what it takes for you to feel loved by him.
Even though he says he'll listen to whatever you want, he won't notice himself dragging you deeper into this world regardless. Not drugs, not selling your body, nothing like that, but killing, surviving, money (that part's optional, there are other ways to get it), all of it shapes you the same way it shaped him.
Even knowing he shouldn't be doing this, the step he ends up taking is asking you to kill him, or find some way to fix your situation that costs him his life, because he genuinely believes he'll never be able to stop being a hitman, someone dragging you further into the underworld, and because the idea of never having you is unbearable to him, even if he'd never phrase it that way out loud.
Ask him to wear something "questionable," and he'll do it gladly, maybe even happier if the two of you wear it together, stripping down in front of each other and putting it on at the same time…
Canon event: he overshares his collection, badly, to the point where you start wondering if it's even safe to keep listening. (The deeper his feelings get, the more he overshares things he probably shouldn't, like his fantasies about you.)
Fun fact:
You in this setting actually work here as a bakery employee, or something food-related.
The Doctor is so smart he's stupid about the simplest things.
Yes, that music piece you received came from the Doctor, and the Hitmen was literally on his way to kill him over it. Instead, they struck a deal…
The two who cough up blood from being overwhelmed by love: the Doctor and the 'Monster.' The one who gets a nosebleed: the Engineer, from sheer exhaustion. (The Hitmen's commentary: can someone actually get any dumber than this? Forget it, don't answer that.)
Yes, the Dirty Cop is in love (everyone too, the title speaks for itself), but too deep in denial for a pile of reasons he's mostly invented himself. If he ever actually admits it, it'll be out of frustration, anger, and exhaustion, not because it's something he actually wants you to carry.
The Engineer should really be called the weapon assembler, but he hates the job, genuinely hates it. How many lives has he cost just by putting those weapons together? He doesn't know, but he's obviously complicit, since all of it's illegal! (So love has nothing to do with how well he knows his way around a gun. He'd rather actually be an engineer for a living than settle for a euphemism covering up what he actually does.)
There was supposed to be a Good Cop too (except that would break the underworld-exclusive premise) and a Right Hand (I'd already moved on from that concept and didn't want to add another 2k+ words, plus that guy was basically the underworld's filth given human form, the worst of the worst).
There's also one more guy, some underling from the rival mafia group who threatens and blackmails you into going to the party. That brings the total to eight love interests. Sorry, my instinct to write reverse harem for x-reader is genuinely uncontrollable.
The Engineer can build Gundam models or Transformer miniatures out of paper clips. He desperately wants to finish one and show it to you.
The 'Monster's taste is actually pretty sophisticated, and he can give genuinely good recommendations. But having good taste doesn't mean he can create anything close to it himself; he's also fairly detached from how ordinary people think and experience things, though not nearly as bad as the Doctor. He also tends to take things at face value rather than understand them intellectually, which is basically the opposite of the Doctor, who can internalize things intellectually while staying a stranger to them on a personal level. At least he's glad his taste gives him something to connect with you over.
Even though the Hitmen can kill someone cold-blooded, that doesn't mean he's incapable of empathy. He's just numb to the job by now and tends to do what's necessary over acting on his feelings. Besides the Doctor, he's also the sharpest read on people out of the whole roster.
Their ages: the Engineer (23), the Doctor and the Dirty Cop (26), the 'Monster' and the Hitmen (27, with the Hitmen slightly older). You're somewhere around 23–25.
Without any of them confessing outright, the only two you'd realistically be able to tell have a thing for you are the Engineer and the 'Monster.' They're way too obvious about it, and honestly, anyone watching would feel bad for how desperate they look.
The Doctor genuinely blushes; his face heats up, and he just blames it on the alcohol, or whatever else happens to be burning his throat and skin that day.
Even though the Hitmen just trashed "that" arrangement, and he's usually blunt to a fault, his own guilty-pleasure piece is, ironically, Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, Op. 18, the adagio movement. Don't call him out on it. He'll lose what's left of his dignity.
Hand the Hitmen Khachaturian's Spartacus Ballet Suite No. 2, and that's basically what falling for you feels like to him.
Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 5, Op. 64, is what "love" feels like for the Doctor. (No, he'd never admit that himself. He'd rather stay an edgelord about it. Kidding. Kind of.)
Love, for the 'Monster,' hits like the uncanny valley.
Just a brief mention: the Engineer does struggle with suicidal ideation.
The stock in the 'Monster's shop is actually all bootlegged. His reasoning: the more copies get distributed cheap, the faster and further they reach people. The other reason is that his ties to a certain organization make it easy to dodge any legal trouble. Ironically, the shop still sits mostly empty, occasionally bought out by resellers, who, again, only know because they're aware of the 'Monster's backing. The shop mostly functions as a front for commission work, though he can be reached in plenty of other ways too.
The 'Monster's shop' doesn't show up on any digital map. You genuinely just stumbled onto it while wandering around.
You, here, are completely ordinary. Not a mafia boss's secret daughter, not undercover, not secretly gifted at building or breaking down weapons. Isn't that you too, reading this? I just think it's more realistic if you're genuinely at the mercy of these men. It's sad, and it's true, but there's not much to be done about that.
Their more extreme versions (just one example among many possibilities):
The Hitman: forces himself on you and kills off the people around you.
The Doctor: traumatizes you badly with his own death.
The Dirty Cop: has you locked up, then pulled out only to be kept somewhere private, his.
The Engineer: turns volatile, prone to violence, guilt-trips you into staying with him.
The 'Monster': breaks you down psychologically and reshapes you into his ideal. (He also kills off the people around you.)
Their first impressions, before you know who they really are:
The Hitman: a handsome man, insufferably arrogant, way too much trouble to deal with. (This is without any disguise.)
The Doctor: handsome, but the second he starts talking about himself, you can tell immediately something's off.
The Dirty Cop: an ordinary-looking man with a smile that never reaches his eyes, clearly hardworking.
The Engineer: a little awkward, but actually kind of sweet.
The 'Monster': nerdy, quiet, so quiet most people assume he wants nothing to do with anyone. (This is without a disguise, and before any conversation touches on his hobbies.)
Reverse harem dynamics:
The Hitman and the 'Monster' fight (literally, weapons included) in complete silence the second your back is turned, then act like nothing happened the moment you look their way, playing it off like it's no big deal.
The Dirty Cop has already silently judged every criminal around him in his head. He initially wrote the Engineer off as normal, but grows to resent him more for trying so hard to seem normal when he isn't.
The Doctor makes a point of unsettling and terrifying the Engineer (and occasionally trying to cut him) every time they end up in the same room.
The 'Monster' basically (tries to) keep you away from every other man in the running.
Small bit ver. Underworld circle
Unhinged level: the Doctor (9.5), the Dirty Cop (8.5), the 'Monster' (8), the Hitmen (5), the Engineer (2).
Hand-to-hand combat skill: the 'Monster' (9.8), the Hitmen (9.5), the Doctor (8.8), the Dirty Cop (7.5), the Engineer (6). (The Engineer can still hold his own, as long as he's had time to prepare.)
Torture skill: the Doctor (10), the Hitmen (9.5), the Dirty Cop (9), the 'Monster' (8), since he leans toward physical torture over psychological (that option's still on the table for him, just nowhere near as refined as the three above him), the Engineer (4), knows only the basics and has never actually done it.
Who's most invested in keeping your humanity intact: the Hitmen = the Dirty Cop (it's the thing he values most about you and he flatly refuses to let you get blood on your hands) > the Engineer (he wants you to stay yourself, though he's also realistic about how this environment changes people) > the Doctor (complicated: he wants you to survive, but at the same time wants to watch you fall as hard as possible into the same pit that's stained everyone else down here) > the 'Monster' (up to a point; he wants you comfortable enough in the underworld to protect yourself when he can't).
Possessiveness level: the 'Monster' (9), the Hitmen (8.5), the Dirty Cop (8), the Engineer (5), the Doctor (3).
Lustfulness level: the 'Monster' (9.5), will basically touch you and get worked up even while you're exhausted and fast asleep. The Hitmen (8.5), a bit above average, but that's because you're the first person to ever make him feel this way, and he's intense to begin with. The Dirty Cop (7.5), normal but capable of intensity, clearly driven by whatever emotional mess he's suppressing. The Engineer (7), baseline normal. The Doctor (4.5), he genuinely thinks of the human body as nothing more than an elaborate arrangement of meat.
Kissing skill rating: the Doctor (9.7), a fast learner with prior experience. The Hitmen (8.5), experience and technique he's actually studied. The Dirty Cop (7), average, but always improvable. The 'Monster' (4.5), sloppy, since even though he's also a hitman, every one of his jobs runs on violence, not finesse. The Engineer (3), a virgin, too nervous to even hold a girl's hand.
Would they kill for you? All of them, yes. Worth noting: the Engineer is by far the one who'd carry the heaviest psychological toll out of the whole roster. The rest are used to it by now and wouldn't think twice about padding their body count further.
Ranking of who'd spoil you most: the Hitmen = the 'Monster' = the Engineer (assuming he has the money) > the Doctor (roughly on par with the three above him, honestly, but he gets "very" creative about how he does it) > the Dirty Cop (moderate, never over the top, but still plenty soft where you're concerned).
None of them are actually that bothered by wearing something questionable; they're all secure enough in themselves that it doesn't threaten anything. That said, a few of them would rather keep it exclusively yours to wear, or just won't hand you what you want that easily.
Who can assemble Lego straight from the box with zero instructions: all of them can, technically, but the Doctor and the Engineer are the ones who actually do it every time.
Why they cry:
The Hitman: gets genuinely moved, swept under by a musical that's objectively excellent.
The Doctor: he's in real, serious physical pain, and the tears are just an involuntary bodily response, nothing he can control.
The Dirty Cop: nothing, really (maybe the same pain-response as the Doctor, but he'd die before letting himself cry over it), except once as a kid, when his father praised his older sibling for the same grades he'd gotten.
The Engineer: normal things. His mother's death, his father's death, near-death experiences, a genuinely moving story, and so on.
The 'Monster': moved to tears by your attention, your affection.
Insult-praise lines they use:
The Dirty Cop: "your partner is way out of your league." Or, "I just can't picture you in a relationship."
The Doctor: "You're unique."
The Hitmen: too blunt for passive aggression. He doesn't bother with any of this, he just goes straight for hyperbole, or his fists.
The 'Monster': "You have potential." Though usually, he just ignores anyone he doesn't like altogether.
The Engineer: he'd never normally say something like this, but if he gets irritated enough, it's, "I could never do that, but good for you, I guess."
Who most often mistakes you for flirting with them?: The Hitmen (he'll accuse you of being some kind of sinner for it) > the Engineer (a little delusional, honestly, since you're just too kind to him) > the 'Monster' (also delusional, but because his whole idea of romance is unrealistic to begin with) >>>>> the Doctor and the Dirty Cop (both sensible enough about basic kindness or overly familiar interactions to never misread it).
